Palatinus' OverPower Forum

I teased this character card a few weeks back, and I think it's pretty vanilla.  There's one new Special card mechanic that I think is pretty cool, but nothing that I think blows you away with this card or its specials.  I think you can put together a pretty strong team on the Helicarrier Homebase with Nick Fury (particularly the DOS variant)...what do you guys think?

Also, I feel like this is the calm before the storm in terms of card releases - the next two that I have completed are pretty awesome.  If you guys can get me your feedback on this card pretty quick, I'll repay you guys with a more exciting hero.


I would love any feedback you can provide.  It will really cheer me up after my dreams were crushed by the Vs. Announcement.  (If you missed it, Upper Deck will be releasing the VS card game again, and a commercial release of overpower is that much further buried in the sands of unlikeliness for a few years)

sweet
but why general discussion?
and not the usual custom cards

and cheer up mr. gloomy
this just means that we the people  can do whatever we want with this game

and FP for the win (it doesnt over do it)

Surveillance is different.
Similar to Super Skrull's "Alien Fire" (discard 5 cards).  Not discarding 1 card is a penalty for getting to choose from the top 8. 
Also similar to Maggot's "Intestinal Fortitude" 7 attack, discard 1st 3 Specials if successful).  No chance of avoiding yours, but 4 of top 8 is not statistically to be of higher quality than 3 Specials.
Maybe a "Reshuffle Draw Pile" should be added at the end, so as not to have the additional bonus of knowledge of half of opponent's next hand.

I said before I wished Nick Fury DOS had a "play (some) SHIELD cards" in the IA.  I like your idea of SHIELD playing Fury specials better, since he has the legacy ones.  But both cards that Nick DOS can play from Reserve are OPDs.  Kinda steals the thunder from the DOS.  Maybe making it "non-OPD" on SHIELD would spice it up a little.

screw reshuffle
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8qqe7J7NBzY/VJI2axXfY_I/AAAAAAAAD-A/hGcd-XfZpeU/w250/SHIELD_Surveillance.jpg)
the whole point of surveillance is that someone doesnt know your there
which is what this card does

Quote from: steve2275 on December 23, 2014, 11:31:22 AM
screw reshuffle
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8qqe7J7NBzY/VJI2axXfY_I/AAAAAAAAD-A/hGcd-XfZpeU/w50/SHIELD_Surveillance.jpg)
the whole point of surveillance is that someone idoesnt know you're there
which is what this card does

I agree that the reshuffle isn't necessary - this is a re-casting of the offensive card "surveillance" which allows you to draw 8 of your own cards, pick 4 to be on top for your next hand, and reshuffle the other 4 back in...all we've done here is add the burn (discard to dead pile) element, but without shuffling it's working as intended.

I have to agree on this one. It's rare that no shuffle clause is correct, because of the amount of information it presents.

In this case though, your best case scenario is knowledge of 4 cards. That's strong, but it's nothing compared to, say, Thanos and his "search your draw pile, choose a card, don't reshuffle". That's a brutal amount of knowledge - Whole deck. 4 cards, while very strong, is only half of one hand, and that's assuming no other shuffle or draw effects before the next battle.

Especially for a character that is (no offense teesaw, truly) rather vanilla, this kind of special helps justify their inclusion.

Also, to clarify - Sets/games need vanilla cards. Not everything can be wild cherry. And, because the instinct to push cards is innate in game designers (IMHO), vanilla design is particularly difficult. I think there's a strong argument that characters filling that slot deserve at least one or two notable specials with a power level higher than you would expect. In this case, I think "Tactical Surveillance" is that special.

I do think that the Nick Fury specials that S.H.I.E.L.D. can play should be non-OPD. I'm trying to formulate my reasoning into words (trust me, it does exist), but the short version is that team cards should basically only access non-OPD specials from team members in my opinion.

Quote from: DoktorSleepless on December 23, 2014, 01:26:14 PM
I do think that the Nick Fury specials that S.H.I.E.L.D. can play should be non-OPD. I'm trying to formulate my reasoning into words (trust me, it does exist), but the short version is that team cards should basically only access non-OPD specials from team members in my opinion.

I think I'm going to keep that as is for now.  I used X-Men Original Team (and my homemade Sinister Six) as the benchmark for this, and I think it works well.  It's different from Team X (and my homemade House of Magnus) where those are combining several characters into a single card.  The most compelling argument to change the IA came in an earlier post, where it was mentioned that if Nick Fury: DOS can play his OPD cards from reserve, having a team of SHIELD and NF:DOS is redundant, and it weakens NF's inherent.  While I don't disagree, I am apprehensive about making any changes to these, at this time - for constructed play, I think S.H.I.E.L.D. should have the additional flexibility.

(http://overpower.ca/cards/characters/333.png) (https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V-SPWbIP9O0/VIhu8QOLKOI/AAAAAAAADlA/pcZvEh9zN_Y/w275/Sinister_Six.jpg)

I agree with the rest of your post, though.  Thanks as always for the great feedback.

Hopefully you don't mind some necro-posting, but I like this and wanted to encourage your efforts.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Good to see this. Large organizations like this and the Skrull Empire (which someone should consider making someday) work well as a "team hero". Much better than a superhero team. In those cases I rather see the individual character cards for each team member.

I like the inherent ability. Instead of coming up with a new location card or editing an existing one, adding the inherent ability slips them in without a lot of trouble. It also keeps them from being used as part of a battle site. Yes?

The aesthetics of the character and special cards are appealing and looks comparable in quality to the original cards.

The grid I'd mostly agree with. It is that 8 Intelligence that seems off to me. May I ask your reasoning behind that? What it for mechanical balance or flavor? Flavor wise, S.H.I.E.L.D. has a lot of scientists, yes. They probably have one of the best human R&D groups in the Marvel Universe outside of superheroes and villains like Reed Richards and Dr. Doom. But that's it, those are the people I'd see as having the 8's. Even the Kree Empire is noted at a 7.

I'm not a mechanic's guru. Honestly I've only played a handful of Overpowers games that weren't against myself. So I can't speak to balanced the mechanics of your designs are. But I do feel that the flavor of the special cards you created is solid. The name, the effect, and the art all mesh well. 

Have you done any play testing with these? If you want to do more playtesting you may want to consider trying to get in contact with Picks-At-Fleas. He created a plugin for LackeyCCG that allows people to play OverPower online with each other. You might be able to work with him to get you cards added to it. That would make testing them out a lot easier.

Quote from: Urborg on November 18, 2015, 07:07:36 PM
Large organizations like this and the Skrull Empire (which someone should consider making someday) work well as a "team hero". Much better than a superhero team. In those cases I rather see the individual character cards for each team member.

I totally agree with that too.  I'm planning on splitting up some team cards (New Warriors, Alpha Flight, maybe others) into individual characters.  The villains (Reavers, Serpent Society, Enforcers, Hellfire Club etc.) probably not, since they're usually encountered together as a group and not as well-developed as the heroes tend to be.  And I do have a Skrulls Character planned, which might show up in my first Marvel expansion.