New Ability: AP redistribution

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

Was just running a 280 Daken/Thor/Hood team, and like usual, I have a great ability on everything but purple. Starting board has a match 5 in the top left.

Guess what fucking color it was?

I started thinking back to the days where I was actively playing this game with my Thor/BP/Cap team, where once again, purple was completely useless, and started thinking up a way to actually do something with it, and this ability popped into my head.

(Terrible Pun Here) [Level 1, x AP of selected color]: (Character) is so freaking wacky. Turns any basic tile into a y turn countdown tile of the same color, that randomly distributes all AP of that color among the other 5 colors. If the tile is destroyed, (character) gains x+2 AP.

Higher levels could reduce the length of the countdown, cost less AP, or return more AP when matched. The ability should always be a random distribution so that people can’t dump 20 blue into black and go nuts with x force. Could possibly allow it to overwrite any tile at level 5 (much like Cap can, to kill off enemy CDs)

Not only can you use this ability on ANY color of your choice, but it doesn’t really have much of a downside, other than being like Smash where you’d want to have a decent amount before using it. I’ve had 30 AP in a dead color before without even trying to match it, so that shouldn’t be much of an issue.

The only real issue I have with this move is how to cost it: nobody really has a move that can be fired from any color. Might be better to have this cost x purple AP specifically. It’d make it a little weaker on purple and stronger on the other colors, because you could spend some purple to redistribute your black.

Give this to She-Hulk and make the name a really awful lawyer pun (litigation/something evidence based) instead of her burst of health ability and she’d.. Well, she’d probably still suck

2

An amusing option for a Scarlet Witch Hex power would involve having the enemy team’s AP levels either randomly swap, or specifically have their ‘strongest and weakest’ and/or ‘highest and lowest’ be swapped.

MtG has lots of character with the ability to transmute one color Mana into another. Possibly a Dr. Strange ability that allows him to do swap of AP between colors. The ratio of converted AP could get better as you add covers… you could start with 3->1 conversion of a Dr. Strange color → a different color that he doesn’t use, escalating up to 2->1, 3->2 with covers?

3

I like that a LOOOOT. It’s as-yet undone. It’d have the potential to be broken, if you could affect yourself.

4

I like the idea of “take x colour AP and turn it in to y colour AP” better than I do the current way of just converting tiles to other colours.

5

Unless you can specify, this would be pretty disastrous. The AI tends to stockpile a massive amount of AP in the colors they don’t use, and the last thing you’d want is all of them getting swapped into a color they do use.

6

If it is explicitly ‘high for low’ or ‘strong for weak’ it could go terribly. If it was ‘random’ it could go badly as well. Another option would be wholesale swap (with a reduction)… my AP pile becomes their AP pile and vice versa - this power could also go like crap. (The AI is almost guaranteed to manage that last option disastrously - making it among the worst powers for a defensive team.)

Lots of tile-swap powers have gone really badly for me too, though and I still fire them constantly. I have fired Thunderstrike a few times and only gotten 3 greens for my trouble (and I had to match them, ending my turn). The enemy (typically Hulk, because FML) then winds up getting a juicy 20-green cascade.

I draw a lot of parallels between MtG and MPQ because I think some of the MtG mechanics could translate and make the game richer. One of the things about MtG that I liked was that there was always that 1 card that no one could stand - I liked trying to find a way to make that card work. that proposal for Hex is an example of a power that could be great, and could be terrible. I like guaranteed home run powers, but I would also like there to be some powers that could break either way. It makes them interesting. I’m not saying I want powers that are utter garbage that we have to find a way to justify the existence of (ahem Bagnarok), but take IF as an example. His purple power could go a lot of ways. It could be super useful, or it could bury you. A lot of its value to the meta is defined by who else gets to play on his team though. Hex could be the same way, if you look at it as a stand-alone power it could go lots of ways, but does it make a ripple in the Meta? Would there be some other ability she (or some other character) could have that could make Hex interesting enough to take a chance on?