Utopia and the Phoenix Five

[teesaw]

Earlier today, Dr. Death pointed out that my previously previewed Utopia homebase was a bit underwhelming.  I must admit, I don't disagree.  I've been apprehensive about previewing the Phoenix Five cards because I can anticipate heavy criticism.  Here is my pre-emptive defense.

(1) While we currently play overpower in a 20-years-later world where most collections are 99% complete, I've designed my sets for real-time play; that is to say, buying boosters, and owning cards based on their rarities.  MY intention would be for the phoenix five to be the most sought-after chase cards of my particular set that I've been working on.  Collecting all five of the (gold foil lettered?) phoenix five heroes would be a conquest, and putting them together in a deck would be exciting - there would be no reason why this 92-point team under the battlesite SHOULDN'T dominate the current 20-year-old meta.

(2) I'd like it to be pointed out that I've maintained the integrity of these characters' grids.  Sure, I've pumped their stats a bit, but in terms of balance, we haven't given any character access to any power type that they were previously cut off from.  It's not changing an energy hero to strength, or saying 'well that guy is stronger than this guy, so if he's a 7 then he's an 8'.  I like to think of my customs as being very deliberate. 

With those two points being said, I present for your evaluation, the utopia battlesite, and the Phoenix Five *Chase* Variants.  As always, please provide any feedback you may have.

 

   

 

[drdeath25]

Ok well yea, now that explains the homebase alot more. Those are some sweet homemades, i wouldn't worry about critisism.

Magik: Phoenix Five would probably be the best character in the game if she were real. 8-7 stats, a negate, a 9 or less, AND a JW. She would be friggin awesome to play with!

[Tussin]

i would only do a few adjustments, i would keep it true to their natural strengths, but keep them amplified to that level

Colossus - 5-7-8-3 (swapped Energy with Fighting)
Cyclops - 8-5-3-6 (swapped Strength with Intellect)
Magik - 8-7-4-4 (stays the same)
Namor - 2-7-8-6 (swapped Energy with Fighting then swapped with Energy with Intellect)
White Queen - 8-3-5-7 (stays the same)

ok the reasoning isn't all that much, Colossus is a brawler with strength, his second highest stat was usually Fighting then Energy, i may suggest leveling his Energy/Intellect out to 4 each as well

with Cyclops he is a natural leader which should jump him to 6 Intellect, his Fighting is better than his Strength

Namor is generally has had superb strength with fighting ability right up there, low energy with moderate intellect, you could adjust to make his energy 3, intellect 5. a little more balance stats and properly adjusted imo.

i love the artwork, its amazings

[steve2275]

absolutlelys

[teesaw]

Thank you everyone for your feedback - please keep it coming. 

Colossus - 5-7-8-3 (swapped Energy with Fighting)
Cyclops - 8-5-3-6 (swapped Strength with Intellect)
Namor - 2-7-8-6 (swapped Energy with Fighting then swapped with Energy with Intellect)

Tussin - With regard to your specific suggestions, allow me to lay out my thought process and you can tell me your thoughts on this (please dont regard this as a defensive or argumentative position, just sharing my thought process). 

My thought overall was that each member of the phoenix five would be an 8-7 +8 (somehow Cyc ends up at +7).  If they were previously a 7/8 in a category, that would be their '8', and if not energy, energy would be the 7, otherwise, their next strongest category would be their '7'.  In designing the cards as a set, I considered two things: First, from an overpower standpoint, my intention was to create very deliberate stat synergy between the members of the Phoenix 5, so that they could be interchangeably played together.  Second, from a comics fanboy/nerd standpoint, I viewed the Phoenix Force as a beacon of *Energy*, and I felt that it would be untrue to the comics to nerf someone down to 2 energy (frankly, your namor suggestion is almost identical to the original draft of Namor:P5, that I since scrapped).   

For Cyclops (who as an aside, has never been my favorite) I felt that an upgrade to 6 strength was on par with Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix transformation (and I consider Cyclops and Jean's strength level in their normal forms to be about the same..).  While a bump-up in intellect would have been more consistent with his non-P5 incarnation, I felt that Cyclops's Phoenix Five incarnation was the energy equivalent of Gamma-Induced Rage; in the comics he was a power-consumed monster and his intellect sort of fell by the wayside - at least that was how I felt, when he *spoiler*ed *Spoiler* X.

For Namor and Colossus, both characters during the Avengers vs X-Men storyline maintained pretty baseline fighting prowess - it was sort of like "fight, fight, fight, you kick my ass a little, i kick you're ass a little...oh yeah, I'm the Phoenix, duh...ENERGY BLAST!!"  For Namor, there's an awesome image of him that I couldn't crop right for the image on the card, (see below from superior spider-man), but it sort of illustrates how he is an energy being in this incarnation.

With that being said, if anyone completely disagrees, that's cool too!  Please let me know any other thoughts anyone may have on the set.

absolutlelys

I agree!

Magik: Phoenix Five would probably be the best character in the game

Put that in your forum signature and smoke it.

If you can use the Phoenix 5 variants on Utopia, then it seems the IA is a little UNDER-negative.
By comparison, I believe Avalon allows the highest team grid total of all the legacy locations.  Using Cable, Magneto, Bishop, and Acolytes gives a total grid of 84 (+8).  Using this location costs you one hit per hand.  Using Utopia with the P5 variants of Colossus, Magik, Namor, and Emma Frost allows a total grid of 92 (+12)!  All you lose is the ability to play TW cards.
Love the concept, though.

I think this is an item that playtesting can weed out.  Maybe the better homebase inherent is "Utopia team may not play One-Per-Deck Special Cards," but I think that this would be overwhelming for the NON-Phoenix-Five team that tries to use that homebase.

As I mentioned previously, I'm not overly concerned if a 4-Phoenix team on Utopia is the best deck in the game: (1) because in this fantasy world of mine where this is a produced set, the cards would be VERY rare and (2) I think that would be sort of appropriate, from a comics/realism standpoint.  With that being said, I think the specials that these heroes bring to the table from the base set are a bit underwhelming (with a few exceptions), and their ability to pull off massive teamwork combos (and some tricks using the Aspect, as well) is their strongest trick.  Frankly, I think you'd see Namor:P5 show up in FFP decks where you have access to more exciting special cards, or see White Queen:P5/Cyclops:P5 on X-Mansion.

Ultimately, the answer is very simple: Playtest, playtest, playtest. 

Thanks again for the feedback!!  Keep it coming.

[DoktorSleepless]

Saw this comment, had to chime in.

I totally agree. I think this could easily be a situation where playtesting shows it just isn't as bad as it could be.

It could be the opposite, too. Playtesting could show it's way too easy to combo out and win the game on the spot with a Phoenix team and this home base. But I'd be inclined to assume it's not. Breaking a game is much harder than people think, and in this case I think either Destroyer of Worlds any character special or a good negate (something like after the 1st attack they stick in a negate that shuts down any comboing) could shut this down.

I think it's easy to see how this could be game-breaking. The character cards are aggressively statted, yes, but operating from the idea that this would be an expensive tournament-level deck, it seems fine. Is this really any more aggressive than an activator deck that's accessing multiple game-breaking specials via their battlesite? I don't think it is. There are likely cards to combat this, or there could be. If it turns out to be very brutal, maybe print a special that generates an achilles heel (for example: if opponent controls 3 or more Phoenix Force characters, randomly KO one character. That's just a [probably bad] example).

[drdeath25]

For the record, I agree that with the Pheonix Force team on Utopia that the IA of not being able to use teamworks seems a little light at first glance.

But really, for this specific team, that really hurts them. Think about all the possible teamworks this team could fling out, with characters with 8 or 7 in all 4 stats the teamworks would be devastating. Teamwork followups would routinely be 10 to block (Example: 8TW, 8+2, then 7+3), and we all know how hard it is to block a 10 attack with the current meta. So arguably, I think being able to use teamworks would be this teams greatest strength out of everything the deck can do, and the IA takes that away from them. Trust me, you wouldnt want to face a Pheonix Force Utopia deck that was allowed to play teamworks.

So even though it seems light at first thought, i think the Utopia IA fits this specific team perfectly. For most teams, it would be light. But with these powergrids, it seems appropriate.

Plus, the team has the potential of 10 different unique teamworks to put in the deck without having a duplicate. Even if you were only going to play 6 teamworks in the deck, the IA removes those 6 unique cards from being in the deck. The things you would probably have to add like additional powercards or duplicate specials greatly increases the chance this team would have alot more duplicate discards than your average team.

Normally, I think homemades are fun, but never really consider trying to actually play with them. But I must admit, this team intrigues me to want to playtest it, and see exactly how powerful it would be. Gotta give you mad props for coming up with this, TSaw.

[Tussin]

no problem at all, i've only followed the cards, cartoons and movies in the marvel universe. i have never really gotten into any of the comics. i may start with reading the infinity saga however

i see your reasoning, it all works

[teesaw]

Thanks for the great feedback on the hero cards and the location! What does everyone think of the Aspect?

To give some background (phoenix for dummies), the phoenix force is a cosmic being as old as the universe that is the life-energy of mutantkind.  In the phoenix saga from the 90's, the phoenix came to earth and impersonated Jean Grey, and fought alongside the X-Men before going crazy (Dark Phoenix) and being banished to space, only to return to earth shortly following Scarlet Witch's "no more mutants" spell which rendered 99% of the mutants in the marvel universe powerless.  Upon Phoenix's return to earth [in search of Hope Summers, Cable's adopted daughter, the mutant messiah], Tony Stark attempts to destroy the Phoenix force, and incidentally shatters it into 5 pieces, which go into Namor, Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik, and Cyclops.  In a highlander-like situation, each time the phoenix is purged from one of the 5, the remaining ones get stronger, until ultimately the phoenix is boiled back down to a single entity...

Apart from mutant powers, another main theme of the Phoenix is death and re-birth.

I kicked around a bunch of ideas for an aspect, some around card placing, some around stat enhancement, and some around ressurecting KO'd heroes, and I finally settled on this one.  For example:

* Target character on Utopia Team may have one additional power card placed for each KO'd teammate.  If the character with the Phoenix force is KO'd, move the phoenix force to active teammmate.
* Utopia Team may have a total for four power cards, special cards, universe cards, and tactics cards placed in any way.  May not be duplicates.
* When one character on Utopia Team is K.O.'d, remove all hits from current battle and hits from permanent record, and move to reserve.  Affects venture total. 
* Acts as a level 10 any-power attack.  if unsuccessful, this card may be exchanged for any card in the dead pile.
* Acts as a level 6 any-power attack.  The phoenix force is discarded to the power pack.  Does not count as a duplicate of level 6 power cards.
* Target character's power grid in the chosen skill is increased to 8 for the remainder of the game.

Ultimately, I wanted the aspect design to be something brand new and useful, but not overly complicated.   I may re-use some of those for other Aspects in the future, but I'm happy with what I chose.  Let me know what you guys think.