So Hello all (with an interesting house rule discussion)

[The Dude]

So i was browsing the net the other day and came across this place, and I have to say its pleasantly surprising to see people discuss Overpower in a fairly regular pattern. I actually was playing this game from day one and in my mind it's perhaps the most fun board game ever created. I had not touched my cards in several years, and then busted it out to teach a younger family member the game about a year ago (taking them set by set as we went along).

Anyway I think we can all agree the game's two biggest flaws are that 1-all the most popular comic charcters are fairly useless, and 2-most real comic teams are completely unplayabe assuming you can even make a legal team out of them (see the avengers). So about six months ago we instituted a house rule and after extensive playtesting it seems to really open the game up, especially for real comic teams.

The key is in Homebases, and Fleer hid the best solution for it themselves. I think we can all agree the best homebase was FF Plaza, and luckily it's the only homebase that had two team inhernats, thus our houserule is take FF style shifting (with the Powercard blocking errata) and apply it to ALL homebases. FF Plaza remains unique because it still is the only homebase with powercard defense bonus, but now all comic teams like the X-Men or Avengers get that same shifting bonus. Comic-logic wise I like the idea that the Avengers (or whoever) have a team advantage compared Spawn and X-Man hanging out together, while playability-wise it gives a much needed boost to the dozens of characters from the first few sets, who just can't compete with anyone from Monumental.

This was implemented with a second house rule that you only need 1 character listed on a Location to use it as your homebase. Now you don't get the shifting unless all 4 heroes are listed on the card, but with just one you still get the inherant and Aspects. If using a Homebase with a negative inherant then you can build an 80 point team. The only card that seems to broken under this rule is Mojo World (especially if X-Babies are used--but we have a gentleman's agreement to never use them again in any deck) and maybe Muir Island due to the Aspect with Professor X, otherwise after playtesting six months straight it seems to work well. Any thoughtsout there?
Post Merge: July 22, 2011, 04:38:16 PM
Oh and one other thing, another nice thing about this rule change is it is a way to improve the original/popular heroes without homemade cards. (Although ironically I had never used homemades until after we introduced this rule, because after two months we wanted every Location to have Aspects and for DC to have some homebases). But then point stands if you don't want to make or don't have the equipment to make homemades this is broad fix that can help many heroes and real comic teams.

[Nostalgic]

I like it.     I think I either read or suggested adding the shifting component as general rule if you were using 4 characters from a 'real' comic team (or homebase) somewhere else on this site.  I'll see what my OP partner thinks of adding this to our amalgamation of house rules and homemades from various places.

[BigBadHarve]

Hmmm, I'm generally of the anti-shift mentality. I too recall this idea being suggested elsewhere. 

That's not to say I don't use shifting cards, but like anything else I think it should be special and unique. I was always more for the depowering of FF Plaza's shifting ability. (And the smacking upside of the head of the people who didn't playtest thoroughly before making certain cards!) Cards like the image inducer are nicely balanced, because you only get them for one round, it only shifts to a single character and it costs you to use it. But they've saved my sorry ass many times over. Even the hated Vertigo can be negated, thus putting a player who relies on it in a rather precarious situation.

Our thoughts on this end regarding FF Plaza were to only allow the shift if the FF team was defending with a power card of 4 or less. It more or less combines their two inherent abilities, still keeping a thematic concept (the FF working together to protect one another) while not being too powerful - they can get a maximum of 4 such defenses, all low level. Anything else and they're just as susceptible to attack as other decks. Using this rule, we've found FF Plaza teams to be reasonable and balanced.

As it stands, the official rule for FF Plaza states that you must use a power card based defense (including Basic Universe, doubleshot etc.) after shifting - are you still adhering to that for your experiment on other homebases? Or are you playing it as written - a pure shift that can be ignored or defended as the player sees fit?

I think a blanket shift rule would simply mean most players would stick to only character specific homebases, rather than experimenting with various team options. You mentioned Mojoworld as broken because of the babies, but I would argue that with a free reign to shift attacks Stark Enterprises would be more of a threat. Each character with a grid of 3 or less on that team is immune to a cumulative KO of that power type. A team like that could absorb the majority of all your opponent's attacks. A front line of Cap, Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch would be 100% immune to all single icon attacks if you could just shift attacks. Cap can't be cumulative KO'd by energy, Hawkeye is resistant to Intellect and Scarlet Witch can absorb all Fighting and Strength hits. Multi power hits would be a threat, but you'd be able to save enough defense to hold those off.

That being said, I like that you're thinking about empowering other homebases! I also felt that they were too weak, given certain deckbuilding limitations. The secret to fixing that would have been in the creation of really powerful Aspects, but alas that didn't happen. Check out my idea about playing the specials of absent characters....

Keep the ideas and conversation flowing!

My two cents.

-BBH
Post Merge: July 22, 2011, 04:38:26 PM
OH! And welcome to the boards Dude! 

Whereabouts are you from?

-BBH

[Nostalgic]

Our thoughts on this end regarding FF Plaza were to only allow the shift if the FF team was defending with a power card of 4 or less. It more or less combines their two inherent abilities, still keeping a thematic concept (the FF working together to protect one another) while not being too powerful - they can get a maximum of 4 such defenses, all low level. Anything else and they're just as susceptible to attack as other decks. Using this rule, we've found FF Plaza teams to be reasonable and balanced.

As it stands, the official rule for FF Plaza states that you must use a power card based defense (including Basic Universe, doubleshot etc.) after shifting - are you still adhering to that for your experiment on other homebases? Or are you playing it as written - a pure shift that can be ignored or defended as the player sees fit?

I was thinking about using the shifting rules in the context of the official ruling.  I think limiting the defensive options to power cards valued at 4 or less defeats the purpose becasue the 'problem' as I see it with many homebases is the mismatched powergrids of the characters listed on the cards.  Allowing attacks to be shifted for 'real' defensive purposes,which means blocking the attack not just to absorbing hits, helps to mitigate the powergrid issue. 

I think a blanket shift rule would simply mean most players would stick to only character specific homebases, rather than experimenting with various team options. You mentioned Mojoworld as broken because of the babies, but I would argue that with a free reign to shift attacks Stark Enterprises would be more of a threat. Each character with a grid of 3 or less on that team is immune to a cumulative KO of that power type. A team like that could absorb the majority of all your opponent's attacks. A front line of Cap, Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch would be 100% immune to all single icon attacks if you could just shift attacks. Cap can't be cumulative KO'd by energy, Hawkeye is resistant to Intellect and Scarlet Witch can absorb all Fighting and Strength hits. Multi power hits would be a threat, but you'd be able to save enough defense to hold those off.

That being said, I like that you're thinking about empowering other homebases! I also felt that they were too weak, given certain deckbuilding limitations. The secret to fixing that would have been in the creation of really powerful Aspects, but alas that didn't happen. Check out my idea about playing the specials of absent characters....

Again I like that idea. 

[The Dude]

We are using the FF erata of Powercard Block Defense for the homebases. (and of course it only applies to character specific ones no Marvel Manhatten or whatever) and only if you use four heroes listed on the location.

That said the very first Homemade cards I made were Aspects for all the other Locations. Subsequent to playing Powercard Shift Defense for all homebases a handful of homebases were given a One-Per-Deck Aspect that allowed Special Card block shifting as well (so still no Hit Stacking allowed, just increased defense). Those locations were all ones that had real comic book teams on them so FF Plaza, Avengers Mansion, X-Mansion, Ship, Outback, Danger Room and Asteroid M were the Homebases those cards were limited to.

Oh and I'm from Jersey btw.
Post Merge: July 22, 2011, 04:38:33 PM
Oh to clarify BBH, the thing with Mojo World is a second house rule we are playing where you only need one of the listed characters to use the homebase. Now you don't get the shifting with this rule because thats only for using a complete homebase team but it just opens things up more in terms of homebase selection and was hopefully going to help some of the underused (yet popular) characters. I don't know if the second goal has been achieved, but it does make the game more fun.

I'll give an example: take Captain America-- a very popular character but only borderline playable when compared to the usual Monumental-Spawn-HforH etc heroes. So now if I want to try to build a team around Cap I can use Avengers Mansion, Hellicarrier, Stark Enterprises or Landau, Luckman & Lake as well as the 3 generic homebases. So that's a wide range of additional possabilities to consider when building a deck and (and of course each teammate opens additional possabilities); In fact the first time we playtested this rule I stuck Cap with the Hand (with Post and Black Widow) and ended up using Hand to get Hell's Kitchen as the Homebase so I could have mobile reserves and thus more playable cards per hero (while Widow could do some defense when she moved back there). Of course teams built with popular heroes still tend to lose to Spawn and friends but if you're playing for fun its just another way to add some variety to your decks. And generally speaking none of this is game changing or unbalanced: go back to Cap those first two Location inherants are fairly useless, while Stark and especially Landau make a nice change of pace from the generics but are not exceedingly better.

With Mojo World its a strong inherant even if you're using relatively useless heroes like Psylocke (one of my favorites in the comics so this came up fairly quick) but if used with Mojo who is cheap and can negate you can build some real nasty teams (including Beyonder teams that heal specials every battle) and then there is the wretched X-Babies who singlehandeldy cancel out a 23 point hero so you can build just about anything with them and they negate and they are unkillable. And now you can stick them with both Spawn and HForH and whichever active reserve you like and everyone is healing special cards too, and well good luck finding a way to fight that. Although we've more or less banned X-Babies even before these homemade rules (which I find to be a much better solution than errating 97 other cards when its just X-Babies who are the ones who are broken). But we're finding that even with no X-Babies, Mojo World may be the one location this rule does not work for.

[Karmanal of Zert]

Welcome, The Dude! Do you take that name from that movie with all the philosophical metaphors about the guy who likes to bowl? I forget the name of the movie but "The Dude" was the main character's nick-name. Pretty sweet movie. I'm glad you decided to join us! Perhaps your activity here will inspire others still. I hope! To steal a catchphrase...OP lives!

[The Dude]

Yes, indeed the movie is called the Big Lebowski, and tis my most favorite of films.

"I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me. You know that His Dudeness or Duder or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

[Onslaught]

This is a pretty elegant house rule since the worst part about house rules is making the game feel inauthentic by adding a bunch of imaginary text to cards or just flat out creating your own homemade stuff. With this, it's just adding one simple line in the rulebook to how homebases function and almost feels like something that could have been included from the start.

The problem with it though is that some decks would be terribly broken with this rule in effect, especially when taking some aspects into mind like Asteroid M's.

[The Dude]

Yea, our original intention with house rules was to not do homemades (although that changed over time only because we enjoyed the two new homebase rules so much that we wanted Aspects for the ones that didn't have it, and we wanted DC Locations to give them the same help we were giving spidey, cap, etc.)

As I said we've play tested this every game for six months straight now. So far the only major problem has been with Mojo World. Asteroid M hasn't been a problem because only Quicksilver is really fighting based there; although as I mentioned in an earlier post Muir Island due to the Aspect is troublesome because you can make both killer Professor X teams that are unstoppable if you go the Power Pack and Shadowcat as the reserve for all Intellect Draw Decks. Because of Muir Island we've considered modifying the rule regarding Aspects in some way either maybe only having them be able to be used while the heroes specifically listed on the homebase are still active or perhaps seperating it so OPD Aspects can only be played if using a pure homebase team while non-OPD can be used by the teams with just one hero on the listed homebase present; but for now we are still sticking with it.

PS - after six months you know what homebase seems to get used most often? Wundagore Mountain. (which I would not have seen coming in advance of this rule) The negative inherant is a relatively small price to play for those white 7 defense Aspects, and with Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Nightcrawler listed thats three strong characters you can easily build new teams around, plus if you are trying to fix Dr Doom this is the best location he's got.

[Nostalgic]

This is a pretty elegant house rule since the worst part about house rules is making the game feel inauthentic by adding a bunch of imaginary text to cards or just flat out creating your own homemade stuff. With this, it's just adding one simple line in the rulebook to how homebases function and almost feels like something that could have been included from the start.

The problem with it though is that some decks would be terribly broken with this rule in effect, especially when taking some aspects into mind like Asteroid M's.

If the shift mechanic has the potential to be broken, even with the restrictions to how a shifted attack could be defended, I think the 'compromise' may be to allow only 1 attack to be shifted per battle.  I still haven't playtested it yet, but I'll try both ways.  I'm not as crazy about allowing the homebase inherent ability to be used if only one character on the team is from the homebase.  In part because now I play using the NEO system "cost-capping" rules for calculating the sum-deck for a tournament legal team.  With these rules many more combinations of character teams are possible because most characters are cheaper.  Homebases aren't as necessary from the standpoint of legalizing a team for deckbuilding purposes and allowing such libral use of homebase inherent abilities could probably create other unforseen problems.  I do think however that the shifting rules + the homebase inherent ability & aspects/"absent character cards" (discussed in another topic) are worthwhile advantages and would make many of the restricted character-specific homebases more playable even with our cost-capping rules.  

[BigBadHarve]

This is a pretty elegant house rule since the worst part about house rules is making the game feel inauthentic by adding a bunch of imaginary text to cards or just flat out creating your own homemade stuff. With this, it's just adding one simple line in the rulebook to how homebases function and almost feels like something that could have been included from the start.

The problem with it though is that some decks would be terribly broken with this rule in effect, especially when taking some aspects into mind like Asteroid M's.

I'm not as crazy about allowing the homebase inherent ability to be used if only one character on the team is from the homebase.  In part because now I play using the NEO system "cost-capping" rules for calculating the sum-deck for a tournament legal team.  With these rules many more combinations of character teams are possible because most characters are cheaper.  Homebases aren't as necessary from the standpoint of legalizing a team for deckbuilding purposes and allowing such libral use of homebase inherent abilities could probably create other unforseen problems.   

I am not crazy about the idea either - allowing a Homebase to be used with only one character present is too easily broken, and it defeats the purpose. Yes, some of them have screwed up grids, but that is also part of the challenge of making those teams - can you make an effective deck despite it? (Try making an effective Fall's Edge team...)

But, for the sake of discussion - applying the house rule of using a Homebase with only one listed character present, I submit to you a Stark Enterprises team:

Scarlet Witch (your one character appearing on the card)
Marauders
X-Man
Dr. Strange in reserve. (It can be anyone, but we'll use Strange for the teammate avoids from reserve as well as the 8 energy.)

Take a look at Stark Enterprises inherent. For each character with a grid of 3 or less, that character can't be cumulative KO'd by that power type. So Witch can't be cumulative KO'd by fighting or strength attacks. Marauders are resistant to Intellect and Strength. X-Man can't be cumulative KO'd by Fighting, Strength or Intellect!!! Suddenly you have a highly resistant front line. Combined with Vertigo or an image inducer you suddenly have a combination that's far more broken than the Marauders/Xbabies combos ever were. Even without the ability to shift you have a highly resistant team. Sure, you can still be spectrum KO'd, but the amount of hits you can absorb means you'll have plenty of defense to stop any potentially damaging attack.

This is only one possibility. A potentially similar problem could come up with Asteroid M as a base. There are any number of characters with two power types of 2 or less, effectively creating a team that cannot be spectrum KO'd.  Off the top of my head, let's try -

3 stat Magneto.
Professor X
Shadow King.
Spider woman in reserve for the 1-9s.

As a front line, that entire team would have to be cumulative KO'd, as none of them would be subject to a spectrum KO. Too powerful for an entire team to have, and too easily broken.

That's just off the top of my head, it wouldn't take me long at all to figure out how to exploit it further. And what about homebases with a penalty for an inherent? You essentially make them useless by offering up no reason to use them in the first place (Not that many of them do, mind you.)

My two cents' worth.

-BBH

PS: Who's got OP online? So far I've had some great matches with Rucker73 and Bios. Let's try and broaden that shall we?

[Karmanal of Zert]

I really would love to take you up on that offer, BBH! Unfortunately there are some ongoing difficulties ( http://www.beenhereandthere.com/SMF/index.php?topic=54.15 ) which currently preclude me from doing so. If you can help me get this working, my first match is yours!

[BigBadHarve]

I really would love to take you up on that offer, BBH! Unfortunately there are some ongoing difficulties ( http://www.beenhereandthere.com/SMF/index.php?topic=54.15 ) which currently preclude me from doing so. If you can help me get this working, my first match is yours!

Once everything is installed, have you tried running OP Deck by right-clicking and selecting 'run as admin?'

That's what got mine working.

-BBH

[The Dude]

To Harve,

I'll give you some of what you suggested sounds broken with Stark Enterprises, etc. (although as an aside are people still playing three-stat heroes? There was talk of banning that in our tournament circuit back in 2000, and 10 years later I can't imagine going back to mixing them with 4-stats despite the cheap [in both senses of the word] morph and spiderwoman decks).

Anyway I guess the only counterclaim I can make is any blanket rule change is going to benefit the elite characters too, and since they are pretty unbalanced already its going to give them more opportunities for abuse. I'm not sure what the solution to that is, short of making massive homemades for individual heroes.

I guess in our circle (which is admitedly a small circle) it hasn't come up just because we don't use the old tournament staples that often. We'd rather play with characters we like than with the same 10 heroes every game (most of whom I wouldn't read about in a comic unless you paid me).

PS - As for as the negative inherant homebases, I thought I mentioned this in the first post, but if you are using the one-per-character rule we allow you to build an 80-point team if using a negative inherant homebase. On the one hand this helps actual popular characters like Spidey or Doom (each have two such homebases to choose from to try and build a strogner than normal deck around). But of course on the other you could build an 80-point Marauders deck using Morlock Tunnels which has a negative inherant few would mind absorbing since they don't play Training anyway.   

[BigBadHarve]

To Harve,

I'll give you some of what you suggested sounds broken with Stark Enterprises, etc. (although as an aside are people still playing three-stat heroes? There was talk of banning that in our tournament circuit back in 2000, and 10 years later I can't imagine going back to mixing them with 4-stats despite the cheap [in both senses of the word] morph and spiderwoman decks).

I don't mind  3 stat heroes, but I only use them occasionally. Some of them have interesting grids that are completely different from their 4 stat counterparts, and that allows a little more flexibility in deck design. Also, it's fun to build a deck with the old oversized promos.

I guess in our circle (which is admitedly a small circle) it hasn't come up just because we don't use the old tournament staples that often. We'd rather play with characters we like than with the same 10 heroes every game (most of whom I wouldn't read about in a comic unless you paid me).

I would have to agree with you there - I always hated that the characters that I really liked got the shaft, and other characters you've never neard of were made ridiculously powerful. Just a little spreading of the wealth and more unique cards given to all characters would have made a huge difference in deck variety. I do make a point of making use of underused characters. I'm currently testing out a Galactus, Brood (3 stat), Dazzler and Rhino deck. (Bet you never thought you'd see THAT combo!) 

-BBH