The New Justice Info - 2017-03-10 16:00

The Difficulty of Being a Vigilante

 
The Multimen featured many novel concepts when they appeared. A team that was resolutely focused on combos between Krosmasters, a themed pack with  6 characters, with its own special rules, with each Krosmaster playable in 3 copies… With the arrival of the Eternal Deck, it was unthinkable that we wouldn't take another look at their design in order to make a few well-deserved changes.

 

Let's go back to the beginning. The original game design concept of the Multimen was:

• They're all level 2.
• Each has attacks or powers that have a direct effect on the Multimen, but doesn't affect other Krosmasters.
• Each one has "thresholds" (linked to Prosecution) that allow them to unlock new powers and or secondary effects for their attacks. What's more, they're surrounded by Vigilantes, and they reinforce themselves.
• Up to 3 copies of each one can be played.

 

Theoretically, the design is consistent. In reality, the Multimen had a bit of difficulty finding their place in the sun compared to other Krosmasters of their generation. Although their design is synergistic, it's also decidedly focused on themselves: with few exceptions, the Multimen don't mix well with other Krosmasters.

In addition, their special Prosecution rule demands a lot of mental effort from the player. After each death in the team, it was necessary to recalculate which Multimen lost their powers, and take into account how that could influence the current strategy. And if your opponent was also playing Vigilantes, the calculations became even more complex!

It wasn't a complete failure: it's possible to play a team of 6 Multimen (composed of Skale, Beelzebug, and Krobax in different quantities) that is both very technical and very lethal. However, it's clear that their profiles don't meet the goals set for them when they were created.

 

The New Law

 

That's why, as well as having their profiles revised, the Multimen will have their principal rule changed: Prosecution will now work differently. This change to the rules will become official at the same time as the Eternal Deck is released.

Here's the new definition:
 

Prosecution X: if at the start of the fight, your team contains at least X different Vigilantes, the additional effects or powers indicated after this word will apply.

These changes are more profound than they seem at first glance, for two reasons.

Firstly, Prosecution will now refer to the number of different Vigilantes in the team: three Skales will equal one single Vigilante for these purposes. You can still play up to 3 of the same Multimen in your team, but to get the most out of them, you'll need to put them in a varied team with lots of other Vigilantes.

Secondly, the condition to activate Prosecution is now only checked at the beginning of the match. Which means that no matter what eventually happens to your team, if it was active at the beginning of the game, it will stay active until the end. No more constant and complicated calculations, all while guaranteeing a constant power from start to finish!

We've also made another change that you'll be able to see on new cards: for the sake of simplicity, all the Multimen's Prosecutions will have a value of 4. Yes, all! This way, it is very easy to determine from the moment your team is created if your Multimen will have their improved powers or not.

Note that the number 4 doesn't only apply to the Multimen: another character in the Eternal Deck will use Prosecution with a lower value…

 

Call for Reinforcements!

 

Now that we've been able to share our thoughts on this little group of superheroes, it's time for us to show you their new costu— I mean, profiles!

 

Krobax and Beelzebug are two Krosmasters who played their cards right, and are probably some of the most popular Multimen. They've both had a similar change: their primary attack no longer needs Prosecution to get the secondary effect, whereas their power will be triggered at Prosecution 4. Krobax has also lost a little bit of range with his Transposition. Except for that, their profiles are the same as the day they were made.

 

Trank was, until now, collateral damage of the Unfazed power's evolution. From the moment where it forbid extra movements, Trank became a sort of tank with few MP, no personal movement, and an inability to be helped by his comrades. Oops!

Removing Unfazed from his powers was the first step in our rebalancing in order to make him functional once again. We also decided to revamp his second attack to offer a speed boost once per game, which can help another Multiman if needed.

 

So he has the dubious honor of being the only Multiman to suffer a nerf! Skale could reach 18 or even 24 AP with his team's help, allowing him to unleash a torrent of attacks which very few could resist. This technique unfortunately promoted playing the waiting game, and one-turn kills, two tactics which are incredibly frustrating to come up against in a board game. His attack is now limited to 1 per target per turn, mitigating this problem.

However, his two special effects will only be triggered at Prosecution 4. So you'll have the choice of staying away and inflicting normal damage, or gaining mobility and power at the cost of vulnerability to counterattack.

 

Lumino is a special case. He had a very strong profile for a level 2, but a big weakness: his high Prosecution made it so that the slightest loss in his team would deprive him of his advantages. By downgrading his Prosecution to 4, we made him a bit more stable and effective all throughout the match… but we found his profile to be a little too effective!

As a trade off for this stability and flexibility in use, Lumino had to give up some of his advantages. He therefore lost a Health Point and the Counterattack power, which makes him a bit fragile. On another note, we're trying to reduce the number of Krosmasters that use Counterattack, because it's a complex keyword that creates a lot of strange interactions for the players.

 

Shadow is the strangest of the Multimen: he doesn't participate in the Prosecution's collective effort, but only reveals his true power against a team made up only of his peers. Although the idea behind this character was interesting, his design was much too restrictive to be played regularly. So we decided to keep the original idea while simplifying it quite a bit.

Say goodbye to Revenge! The "Villain" version of Prosecution was only used for a single, unique attack across all the profiles, and it was also removed, with its effects being transposed onto the main attack. His power has also been strongly reworked: instead of gaining Health Points in the presence of multiple Vigilantes, he'll now gain AP by hurting them.

In the end, Shadow is just as effective against Vigilantes as before, but his performance will be a bit more regular and no longer depend entirely on the composition of the opposing team.

There you go! Now you know all the news about the new justice that will descend (we hope) upon your game boards. We'll see you next time for new anecdotes about the development of the Eternal Deck.