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):

As you look at my short articles about the changes to the Hero Action Cards (or on the full sets in the Proto Upgrade page) you might think that the size of the font and icons looks smaller. Well … that is **MY** fault. True. I don’t have cool graphic illustration tools at my disposal. The images of the final Action Cards that I have include the area of the card that is TRIMMED! There probably is a name for this:) They make the image much larger so that when it is trimmed, even if it is cut slightly off, it will still look good! I am thinking that this extra on each card might actually make the card image 12% larger … so if I print that LARGER image on a NORMAL size card I will be REDUCING it … making it SMALLER! So … look forward to the action cards in the final game having a much larger look to the images, icons and fonts!

Here … let’s see if I can show this visually. Here is a final Action Card with all the trim area included. Next I marked where the card will likely actually be cut. This shows how much trim area was included:

Or maybe a better way to visualize it would be with a change in the font size. When I reduce the size of an actual Action Card image that includes the trim area, I reduce it enough that the font size is probably at least 1 point smaller (likely even smaller than that). Here is another visual for you to see how this seemingly small difference can actually make a HUGE difference when glancing at an Action Card. Consider the font being 1 or 2 points larger … and wouldn’t it be way way easier to read?

So … I definitely look forward to that slight (but significant) increase in the final game!

Maybe I can try to trim off the excess in the card images. But it would take ME a long time since I have no easy way to do it :(

If you are fortunate and have a prototype, you now can upgrade it to have the FINAL Action Cards. I have access to the 224 final Action Cards and have permission to share them.

I can fit 8 full sized cards on one page, then share it as a PDF for you to grab and print. Then, if you sleeved your cards, just cut out the new final Action Cards for your Heroes and slip them in front of the original Action Cards!

I put all 7 standard final Action Cards for each Hero on one sheet. I used the 8th spot to provide notes on everything that changed in the final cards (so you know what to try out!). Even if you don’t have a prototype, you are welcome to take a look at all the final Hero Action Cards!

One page for each of the SIXTEEN HEROES is on this page:
=> Proto Upgrade

And for those who want to do a run through with a couple Heroes final Action Cards … make sure you also use the updated Campaign Books (just view pages online as you go … or print all the pages (like I did) and spiral bind them:)
=> Campaign Chapter 1
=> Campaign Chapter 2
=> Rulebook (near final)

I reduced one of the sixteen pages to include it here as an example of what the pages look like (though if you open the image in a new tab it will be larger). I chose Sigyn since all five of her Action Cards were updated!

Laelia is another of our 16 heroes who had all five or her Action Cards updated.

The red boost was completely changed. It used to give you 4 rerolls on your next action this turn. Now it gives you a +1 instead. The +1 does help you plan your next move better I think :)

However, the nicest change was extending the range for healing someone to 5 (it used to be 4). This lets you heal another hero from quite a distance … and not just to remove one damage card, but to remove two!

Continue reading “Updated Look at Laelia’s Action Cards” →

Gia U’Coni is one of four Heroes that has had all five of her Action Cards updated. Let’s take a look at those five standard Action Cards, starting with her very UNIQUE card:

Gia is the only hero with the ability to cloak (just like Klingons do in Star Trek). And just like Captain Kirk could KIND OF determine where a cloaked Klingon ship was, enemies do kind of know where you are and can move towards you. However, they do not know exactly where you are so they cannot target you in an attack. But, also like how a Klingon ship had to become visible again to attack, you lose this card and it’s ability if you attack or interact with an object! However, you CAN be damaged by global or indirect effects. If a mission has rocks fall on the square that you are on, those rocks WILL hit you! :) Oh … and what changed? The yellow boost now gives you TWO additional dice (before it was only 1 die). Also note the icon in the top right of the card … that icon means the card stays active as long as it is on your cool down track!

Continue reading “Updated Look at Gia’s Action Cards” →