How nice that one of our Heroes has an Action Card titled “Self Sacrifice”… placing the good of others before himself. Yes … that’s our guy: Qorox!

So in our list of Hero Groupings … I decided to make a list just for him … and am calling it ZERO (thus the last comes first in our counting order since zero comes before 1).

0. Qorox

Self-Sacrifice

Qorox – this is an EFFECT card. While it is on your cooldown track it is in effect! If an enemy is about to attack another Hero but  Qorox ALSO is a valid target, that enemy will attack Qorox instead of the other Hero! The other Hero is NOT attacked! Plus a nice side benefit to this card is that each time it slides to the left, you gain 1 shield and 2 movement (yes, you get to move during a “not my turn” moment!)

Look over the full set of Hero Groupings:

• ZERO => Absolute Zero (Placing Others Before Self)
• ONE => Invisible One (Cloaking)
• TWO => Move Through You Two (can’t block or stop them)
• THREE => Jumping Three (Jumping Jehoshaphat)
• FIVE => Favored Five (Healing Heroes)
• SIX => Super Six (Longest Range Weapons)
• SEVEN => Secret Seven (best Hacking Heroes)
• EIGHT => Excellent Eight (Speed Runners)
• TEN => Terrible Ten (Unblockable Attack)
• TWELVE => Dirty Dozen (Damage Multiple Enemies in One Action)

Enemies canNOT block or stop these two Heroes from moving! If an enemy is occupying a square in front of them, they just say “I will move through you!” … and they DO!

1. Xalia actually moves through the occupied enemy square
2. Melithys pushes them out of the way first, then moves through the square they used to be on!

Dodge and Bolt

Xalia – She is not blocked by enemies. She does not have to sidestep to walk around them. She can just walk through the same square that they occupy, but only if she has at least TWO moves left (ie, she cannot end on the same square as an enemy). Note: she cannot walk through a square occupied by a fellow Hero or non-enemy character (only enemies)! However, she CAN end up with quite a good move (up to 7). She begins with a move of 1 square, but rolling THREE dice likely gives a substantial move since both the “move” icons AND the +1 and +2  results add to her movement! Only the “shield” icon does not add to her movement!

Unstoppable Advance

Melithys – Rather than moving through an enemy square like Xalia, Melithys can push an enemy one square from it’s current position and then move onto their original position (which is now empty after they have been pushed to another square). Plus, at the same time, deal 1 unblockable damage to the enemy. You can push an enemy away at the start of your move (to make room for your longer move) or at the end of your move (just to do damage to them or move them to not be adjacent to you). Also note that your die roll can increase the number of squares you can move. Only the “shield” result doesn’t add movement! The other five die sides add to the movement!

Honorable Mention (for pushing enemies but not moving through their square):

• Qorox (Shield Emitter)
• Eradicator (Shock Pulse Emitter)

See Also=> Jumping Jehoshaphat (Jumping Three)

Look over the full set of Hero Groupings:

• ZERO => Absolute Zero (Placing Others Before Self)
• ONE => Invisible One (Cloaking)
• TWO => Move Through You Two (can’t block or stop them)
• THREE => Jumping Three (Jumping Jehoshaphat)
• FIVE => Favored Five (Healing Heroes)
• SIX => Super Six (Longest Range Weapons)
• SEVEN => Secret Seven (best Hacking Heroes)
• EIGHT => Excellent Eight (Speed Runners)
• TEN => Terrible Ten (Unblockable Attack)
• TWELVE => Dirty Dozen (Damage Multiple Enemies in One Action)

The key here is being able to use the weapon again SOON!

The key to THAT key is the number in the top right of the Action Card. That specifies what cooldown slot the card can be placed on.

At the end of your turn you get a free rest action which slides all cards on the cooldown track slide one slot to the left and the card that was in the 1 slot goes back into your hand to be used again.

If you play a weapon Action Card that can be placed on the 1 slot of the cooldown track, the free rest at the end of your turn brings it right back into your hand to use again the next turn. However, any weapon with a range of 5 or more must be placed in a higher cooldown slot (so it can’t automatically be available again on your next turn).

So… how can there be long range weapons that can be used two turns in a row? Well, you get two actions when it is your turn. If one of your actions is to REST, that slides all the cards on the cooldown 1 slot to the left! And your free rest action at the end of your turn also slides the cards 1 to the left. So, yeah, combining the free rest action with taking a rest as one of your two actions, means cards slide TWO to the left… thus cards in slot 2 WILL slide to the left twice and go back into your hand! Note: of course, the 2 slot must be empty in order for you to play the card there:)

So, to be included in this list of long range weapons that can be used two turns in a row, the card must be able to be placed in cooldown slot 2 AND be able to have a range of at least 5 (to be considered LONG range). Let’s call a range 3-4 weapon a medium range weapon:)

The 6 Heroes included in this list: Gia, Sigyn, Xalia, Memnon, Eradicator and Tarira

If you’d like to actually use your cool long distance weapon card frequently, here’s your list:

CSS-701 Proton Blaster

Gia – This is an example of an Action Card that allows you to place it in any cooldown slot! That is what the X in the top right means. However, the lower the slot you place it in, the less damage it does! But, it does have a default range of 5 and thus will qualify for a two turn weapon card if you play it in slot 1 or 2.

Continue reading “Two Turns In A Row Long Range Weapons” →

Every Hero had at least one of their Action Cards updated from the prototype to the final cards that will be in the game when released! Two of the card updates were significant enough to change the RANKING for both the Hacking Heroes and the Long Range Weapon Heroes!

The Hacking group was six heroes and now is seven heroes (Sigyn, Jastin and Bassilus joined while Memnon and Eradicator dropped out):
=> Secret Seven

The Long Range Weapon group lost one Hero (Tarira dropped out):
=> Super Six

First, here are the NON-hacker Heroes (ie, they only can hack via their Basic Interact card): Antathys, Melithys, Qorox and Tarira. If these are the only Heroes in your game, you will have a rougher time with hacking because only the Basic Interact action will be available!

Note: See also the original Hacking article now called => the Secret Seven

Note: Hacking is important! Of course you want to hack into a terminal or network … but you also will need to open LOCKED DOORS by hacking, which is imply drawing one interact token from the bag. You need THREE MATCHING COLOR interact tokens to be successful (white is wild, but don’t draw two white in one action of you fail that attempt). This is possible with all the hacker Heroes, though it is easier for some of them:) However, most of these Action Cards go into cooldown slot 2, so using 1 rest action will let you use the card again on your next turn.

There are TWELVE Heroes with a hacking special action, so you might like to have at least one of these on your team! I highly recommend that at least one of the players uses one of the following Heroes:

Continue reading “Updated Hacker Specialists” →

The updated front page of each Hero’s Dossier now includes their focus … summing them up in one or two words … what they are best at! When choosing a team for a new campaign, maybe try to include heroes that each have a different focus? Want a “tank” on your team? Yeah, there are three that are summed up in that way! To help give a better overview, after listing what a Hero has as their focus, I will also include inside (parentheses) their personality type, focus (for rerolls), shields and scars allowed:

1. Adryel: Generalist (Cautious -> 5 / 2 / 6 )
2. Antathys: Close Combat / Tank (Dominating -> 2 / 5 / 12 )
3. Bassilus: Tech / Support (Cautious+Supportive -> 2 / 3 / 9 )
4. Eradicator: Combat / Tech (Dominating -> 3 / 4 / 9 )
5. Gia: Stealth / Tech (Supportive -> 6 / 2 / 6 )
6. Hiro: Ranged Support / Generalist (Inspiring -> 4 / 3 / 8 )
7. Jastin: Versatile Support (Supportive -> 5 / 2 / 7 )
8. Laelia: Ranged Support (Cautious+Inspiring -> 3 / 3 / 8 )
9. Melithys: Offensive Close Combat (Dominating+Inspiring -> 2 / 3 / 12 )
10. Memnon: Tank / Tech (Supportive -> 4 / 3+ / 9 )
11. Qorox: Tank (Inspiring -> 3 / 5 / 11 )
12. Sigyn: Tech / Close Combat (Dominating -> 3 / 3 / 8 )
13. Talya: Ranged Combat / Tech (Very Cautious -> 5 / 1 / 8 )
14. Tarira: Ranged Combat / Close Combat (Very Dominating -> 2 / 4 / 10 )
15. Vera: Fast Support (Inspiring -> 4 / 3 / 8 )
16. Xalia: Close Combat (n/a –> 5 / 4 / 8 )

In all my playthroughs, Vera was my favorite … and, yeah, “fast” is a good way to view what she is good at (though her Jet Pack Action Card was updated from the prototype to be a tiny bit less cool:). With my play style, FAST moving was a good Hero to have on my team! Let’s use Vera as an example of how the front of the Dossier now provides a focus summary of the Hero:

Her FOCUS is the last item in her Dossier summary!

Here is an updated look at the Dossier envelopes for all 16 Heroes (yes, you can see the tape I used to tape the updated front page to the black envelopes … I think they will be black in the final game and now that I have made my own black dossiers, I think they are much nicer in black). You should be able to zoom in on each one for a closer look (but it does get blurry when zoomed… I might do each individually later)!

Let’s face it … you will be seeing your character’s miniature through mission after mission. You will be moving that miniature around the map. Maybe you just want your Hero to have a miniature that you really like! So … go ahead … choose your Hero based on their miniature!

Here is a quick view of each of the 16 Hero miniatures rotating to see all sides:

Continue reading “Choose Your Starting Team (part 2 your favorite mini)” →

When you begin the first mission of your campaign, you need to select what Heroes to play as during the campaign. Each Hero begins with one of the four personality types (other than Xalia). There are four Hero personality types:

• Cautious (yellow boost tokens)
• Supportive (blue boost tokens)
• Inspiring (green boost tokens)
• Dominating (red boost tokens)

As you end some missions, you can choose to have your Hero GROW in one of the four personality types. If you begin with a cautious Hero, you can grow and be even more cautious (with more yellow boost tokens at the start of each mission). Or you can balance out your Hero personality into the other three areas (blue, green, red).

The Character Sheet and Action Cards for each Hero should seem a bit tilted towards their personality type(s) (and perhaps your preferred play style).

This is YOUR game! You can choose the Hero to play during the campaign yourself (the way that I do it … I have more fun if I select the Hero I would like to play). However, if you go by the rules, each player gets 3 Hero dossiers and must choose one of them. If only one person is playing, they must play as two Heroes (and get 3 Hero dossiers for each Hero they will play as).

It might be a good idea to play with Heroes that compliment each other. So, in a three player game, rather than choosing 3 cautious Heroes, perhaps choose one from each personality type. You can look at the CHOOSE ME page for Heroes of the personality type you would like to play as (I will update these for the changes made in the final game).
=> Choose Me

Continue reading “Choose Your Starting Team (part 1)” →

I don’t have any fancy cool graphic editing tool on my Chromebook. So I was happy to use the uncropped Action Card images. Yeah, they had significant extra graphics along all four sides which made everything look smaller when I fit them into a normal card size image. But it was the best I could do with what I had.

Well … I decide that getting the Action Card images full size would be worth paying for an online graphics photo editor called PIXLR. So now I am redoing (yes doing them all over again) all the Action Cards making them full size! You should see the difference! The font size appears to be about 1 or 2 points larger (and of course the icons and images are larger on the card now too).

Here is an example showing an original uncropped Action Card and the cropped full size card.

First … the image I received (uncropped):

Next … after I cropped it (just like the cards will get CUT):

And here they are … side by side (easier to see how the one on the right is much easier to read and see the icons):