The Age of Apocalypse

[Tussin]

yeah i definately love the update of the set color scheme. the medium or light grey is the best

the dark is awesome, but it makes it harder to read some text, so i would be in favor of reducing darkness to help out

[justa]

I agree with Tussin, since I am one of those who do not have the greatest of eyes.  (Sounds almost like the "daring young man..." - I'm not.)  The lighter gray makes both the red and black more readable.  On the darker gray, the red could go to an orange/yellow, but I don't know what you could do with the black.  So I definitely vote for the lighter gray.

[chuu]

What?! Old people play overpower?! Where were they in the promotional videos??

[justa]

I don't play anymore - my son moved across the country a few years ago.  But he & his sister & their friends liked playing with me back in '95 when it all started.  It was me that got hooked instead of them!
And nobody talked to me 'bout no video....

[Tussin]

Gambit's AK changed to OPD?

Cyclops innate change to AR? instead of AA? to avoid complaints and confusion with extra attack

Banshee innate still needs work

Quicksilver innate needs changing

Abyss' innate?

Opponent is -2 to venture total every battle?
Opponent is -1 to venture for each hit in current battle (teamwide)
when Abyss is ko'd opponent must draw 1 card from draw pile. drawn card and any duplicate of it, placed or in hand, must be discarded?

[justa]

This may be a day late & a dollar short, but for Abyss, Sinister, Mikhail, & Holocaust, why not name them War AoA, Famine AoA, Pestilence AoA, and Death AoA?  It shouldn't affect the base character specials, and would keep them consistent with each other.  There aren't that many NGs that the IA would be cancelled, and they can always be negated.
justa thought.....

[DoktorSleepless]

Interesting thought, but let me ask you this:

Did you ever see Apocalypse refer to any of the AoA horsemen by those titles? I've basically re-read the entire series doing art sweeps, and the answer is no. He once refers to Sinister obliquely as Death, but that's it. The "roles" of the other 3 are never truly defined. They're just the Four Horsemen (even in AoA: The Chosen). So I wouldn't actually know who to call what, other than Sinister is Death.

For whatever reason (I assume a not-fully-developed mythos), Apocalypse's standard nomenclature for the horsemen wasn't applied in AoA. In our (616) reality, they make it clear (Uncanny X-Force, the Dark Angel Saga) that Death is the title for Apocalypse's successor amongst the Horsemen, and that Death's selection is a priority. The others appear to simply be, as Dark Beast puts it, "selected during one of Apocalypse's many opium binges". So their titles aren't identifiers in a true sense, just appellatives Apocalypse assigned on a whim.

As for other character revisions, I promise I'm going to come back to them. Right now I'm just trying to get the bulk of the initial work done on the specials for each character, as the amount of text in Specials makes them take longer to put together on a per-card basis. Once every pre-existing character has at least 3 specials done with AoA artwork, frame, colors, etc, I'll go back and revise character cards again. In the end, nomenclature is just going to be ugly. Marvel OP really screwed the pooch with naming, making it difficult to produce alternate versions or other individuals with the same heroic name without things getting messed up. I'll do my best to get things internally consistent within my set and (relatively) consistent within the larger body of naming, insofar as that is possible.

[justa]

Right as rain, Dok.  Guess I didn't think it through.

[DoktorSleepless]

Hey, no problem. I had approached naming from every angle I could think of, and I WANT to find some name to fit in the designations of Apocalypse's horsemen. Fortunately Angel: Horseman of Apocalypse made sure that there is no answer that won't result in some ugly naming designations.

EDIT:
I have lots of new specials that I will be posting (Jubilee, X-Man, etc) later today, but I just finished doing Abyss specials and a 1st-draft of his IA. I'd be curious for thoughts about his IA (which seems strong but reasonable to me), and the specials themselves. If anyone is curious, when doing specials I typically look for characters with similar power-sets, then look through their specials for roughly analogous attacks/abilities. When it comes to a little more "free-range" sets (like 2099), I'm happy to flex my design chops trying to create new cards. But AoA is a much-beloved alterniverse, and nothing in it calls for new cards per se, beyond the new characters (which are technically Abyss, Mikhail, and Blink at the moment). Since I'm trying to create a set that is compatible with already-existing OP, the last thing I want to do is design really unique specials which have had no play-testing. It's (likely) much safer to use already-coded specials to create the special sets for new characters.
Also, again, thank you to everyone for all the support and encouragement! There's been quite a bit of interest in seeing these printed up, and I will keep everyone informed as the set progresses.

Now, without further ado, the current Abyss:







For reference -

Special 1 is equivalent to "Rebuild Form" from Absorbing Man. See Amazing X-Men#4 for Abyss's Rebuild Form (after being shoved into his own internal abyss by Quicksilver in Amz X-Men#2)
Special 2 is equivalent "Kinetic Absorption" from Parasite. See Amazing X-Men#2 (battle with Banshee) for an example of his power absorption.
Special 3 is equivalent to Holocaust's "Consume Lifeforce". See Amazing X-Men#2 (discussion with Quicksilver, and why humans are "gum" to Abyss)
Special 4 is equivalent to Blob's "Bottomless Belly". See Amazing X-Men#2 and 4 for multiple examples of Abyss's bottomless depths.
Special 5 is equivalent to the Inhuman's "Medusa". See Amazing X-Men#4 for example of this ability in action (the art I used on the card).

[cyber0820]

Gotta get them printed, I'm game for several sets so count me in! Nice work man, I tried rereading my collection after seeing the post originally & was wondering how you would pull of Abyss.. He really isn't big or main focus on most pages. Love what you did! I could give you a character that would be a challenge as a request  

Arkady Rossovich, I'd love to see if you could pull him off! Though I think he would be even harder than Abyss due to lack of material.

[Tussin]

i agree with your method and approach to AoA specials.

i would upgrade Abyss' AH because you gotta make it playable



all AH's should have that upgraded or altered into errata imho.

his innate is cool, but i'm not sure how balanced it will be

[DoktorSleepless]

Gotta get them printed, I'm game for several sets so count me in! Nice work man, I tried rereading my collection after seeing the post originally & was wondering how you would pull of Abyss.. He really isn't big or main focus on most pages. Love what you did! I could give you a character that would be a challenge as a request  

Arkady Rossovich, I'd love to see if you could pull him off! Though I think he would be even harder than Abyss due to lack of material.

You and I clearly have some similar thinking, because I totally thought about Omega Red too! He was such a major character in the original OP, at a time when he was seeing a lot of appearances in X-Titles. Plus, in the most recent (Uncanny X-Force) AoA sojourn, you find out he survived Domino's assassination attempt and went on to consolidate the entire Russian bloc into an empire to rival Weapon Omega's. Too bad there is so little art... I think you see him in maybe 5 frames of issue 1 of X-Man. I might give it a try though!

i agree with your method and approach to AoA specials.

i would upgrade Abyss' AH because you gotta make it playable



all AH's should have that upgraded or altered into errata imho.

his innate is cool, but i'm not sure how balanced it will be

Agreed to the AH. It hits the sweet spot in terms of flavor (I mean, it shuts down attacks in a way that evokes the attack being useless against a guy with no insides) but is really, really bad in terms of game play. How bad? Well, to teach my wife OP basics I cracked open a couple of sealed starter decks, Lethal Allies for me and Clobberin Time for her. After half a dozen games, I had played Doctor Doom's AH in literally every game, and it had never done anything. Not once. The one time she did have an energy card that was playable, she aimed it at Omega Red anyway.

I hate messing with already-printed cards, because I'm trying to integrate a set into an existing framework, not rebuild/fix the framework. OP3 is doing that, and I don't blame him. Like a lot of CCG's in the first wave in the early 90's, there was a steep learning curve for the game designers that ended up creating a lot of ugly templating and weird conundrums. The only real solution is to take all the useful bits of the game and reintegrate in a top-down redesign for the game. Again, OP3 is taking that route, and doing a pretty top-notch job IMHO.

However given that there isn't an over-riding OP governing body to make "official" rulings an errata, and how truly miserable AH specials are (along with enough other existing issues that had to be fixed and required some tweaks to already-existing cards) I'm game in this case to pump it up a little. Suggestions are welcome. My initial thought is to either expand it to a 2nd type of power card, or make it "No Power cards of X or less" or something else that covers a broader swath of cards. As it is, the elimination of a single card type is so narrow it's basically unplayable. You can't put a card in your deck that could easily be blank (against a Strength/Intellect deck, for example) in some matches. Again, input is appreciated. I have a tendency to push past the ok point and then have to rein cards in, as opposed to starting with a weak card and then trying to push it more.

I also worried about Abyss's special being balanced. I considered making it 1 or less, since as a 2 it already eliminates every 1-2 E power card, quite a few specials, and 1-2 Multi cards.  I like the idea that it cares about the icon, not power cards, so it can eat specials too. I noticed that there didn't seem to be many level 1 special attacks though, so I defaulted to 2 and figured I'd wait to hear back from the community.

Also, I forgot to get the other specials posted! I've got 3 or 4 Jubilee specials done, as well as a few each of Colossus and Domino specials.

FYI, characters that have fewer than 5 specials, it's because artwork is difficult to find or requires a LOT of editing. Cleaning up text bubbles is one thing, but once you have to start filling in backgrounds and such, it takes a while to get a single piece done. I've tagged art which I need to go back and clean to finish character special sets, my intention is to power through the rest of the "bulk" specials with easy-to-use art in the next month, and then to split my time between finishing art/specials and revising Character cards. Ideally by the end of March that will put me on Universe, Artifact, and Teamwork cards. I'm dreading the Artifacts and Teamwork, because I'll have to produce templates for them (I don't currently have one) before I can start on the cards. Universe I just haven't figured out what to do, other than Sentinel Hands. I'm so excited to do Sentinel Hands as a card, you don't even know. If you're curious why, check out Weapon X #1. There's an awesome scene where Sentinel hands detach with rocket boosters, grab Havok, and then teleport with him. The scene after involves Dark Beast, a bone saw, and statements regarding how objects in a teleporter fuse together.

Oh man, before I forget:
Blink and Morph are still on deck for creation. I am struggling with both; Morph because he was done as the AoA version originally, with AoA artwork. It feels pointless and stupid to redo both his character card and his specials when, with the exception of the border, they're already exactly what I would ask for in a perfect world. Blink because I know that Power Balance did her already, and while I have a copy of his Blink card (I held onto it when I got it in that auction, he really did a bang-up job on the stuff I've seen) I don't have her specials. I'd really like to see his specials/their coding/their naming before diving in. My goal is not to create more inconsistency across the game of OP if I can avoid it.

I also have not forgotten the other characters that remain undone. Unfortunately, Iceman is proving incredibly challenging for art (the coolness of his AoA version is slightly overridden by the fact he's always spread across multiple frames with tons of other characters in them), as are the teams other than Gambit+the X-Ternals. It also occurs to me that Sentinels are a playable character, and there's probably enough art of the AoA version to make it worth doing them. No promises though. Continually adding more characters/specials is not a way to ever get anything finished.

EDIT:
I went back to post the new specials with the appropriate characters, and things are getting ugly there. I don't feel like putting in the effort to rearrange and resize images, so in the future I'm going to post updates at the end of the thread. Like these:




As soon as I got these uploaded, I saw all sorts of issues with Jubilee. Jubilee's 7 attack OPD is off-position for the number, and the art is messed up. I have no idea what happened to the art. I'll go back and re-edit it later, if I have to I'll stop using the web-lifted image and pull the original (which has a different background) from the actual issue of Gambit & the X-Ternals. I think there were others, but now the images aren't in front of me I can't see them offhand.

Also, @cyber0820: I'm totally going to try and do Omega Red. I'm not sure there are even enough images of him to do a set of specials, but why not try? I'm having the same problem with other, more "major" characters that are slotted for the set. But I want your input on naming. I can post images, but in the opening of X-Man where we see him, he's only referred to as Arkady Rossovich. In the Uncanny X-Force revisit more recently, he is referred to as Omega Red, in spite of his clearly blue costume from the original AoA (nearly 20 years earlier). Should I go with Omega Red, or Arkady Rossovich? It's tempting to call him Omega Blue, but there's no basis for that other than the look of his costume. Anyway, I'm going to do a mockup tonight under the "Omega Red: AoA" name structure, and see how many specials I can find art pieces to fulfill.

[cyber0820]

Humm.. I'm not familiar with this new reappearance of Rossovich!  I'll find it next weekend when I run to the city.

I was thinking to request him in your set for him because... Well for the same reasons as you stated.
1. He was there...
2. He was in the OP starter decks off launch.
But... my more personal reason... Because Red has always been a favorite.  I like villains more i guess. But I wanted to do him but I didn't because I didn't have enough source material, you already had started AOA, hoping he'd make the cut I didn't want to step around your work with another AOA..

As for the name.... Old school says Rossovich... But does this new aoa "Omega Red" have the 2 tendrils in his arms or 4 in the abdomen? I'd use that as your guide or for which version you are looking for. I'll go see if images have been posted somewhere yet. I know that when Red faced off with spider... They put the tendrils on top of his arm??.. Still don't know why other than my guess of the artist maybe not knowing reference material... but that doesn't make since ether. I'll go try to find art from the old made new Rossovich while your working on cards.

[DoktorSleepless]

Sadly, they never show him in the Uncanny X-Force issues! He's just mentioned. Anyway, in original AoA he appears in 8 frames of X-Man #2. These cards use 6 of them. Needless to say, the art is a stretch.

[Tussin]

great work. on Omega's AU it says ust, not must

a massive project you are undertaking... take your time and keep plugging away 1 step at a time

we will be here to help with what we can