She's done!

No way. LessonZero!Twilight needs to be a villain card. Unless we're doing a full Elements of Harmony theme team.

5075267
Yay, I'm glad you came!

I think you may need to tighen the deck theme.

First question: In battle, what is Twilight's role? DPS? Nuker? Deck control? Crowd control? Each one of the offical SotM heroes has a job such as Ra being DPS and doing damage and Tachyon being a Nuker by charging up one big attack.

Second Question: How will she do this? Playing many One-shots? Targets? Ongoings? A combination of spefic card plays?

Third Question: How will her deck support her role? If she is DPS will her deck give her many one shots that deal damage alongside a power to do so? If she is a Nuker then will her cards and power help her charge that power faster?

Just some food for thought.

5076903
The main thing is getting all her Friends out (targets), playing the Elements (Equipment) and nuking the crap out of one target per round. She can theoretically do 11 damage a turn all on her own, it's just a matter of getting 11 cards in play and keeping them there. The Friend cards and one-shots give her some support options. If there's a weakness to the deck right now, it's probably the Pets, because they're literally just there for Fluttershy to have something to do. <.< I should probably toss them, with the exception of Spike.

5077160 I think that you might want to toss the elements of harmony as well because then you have two sets of cards that both want support, and the elements don't even do anything without the correct card.

5077416
Thematically, though, what is Twilight without her friends?

I mean, doing what you suggest, I could then make each pony her own hero, with her own Element as equipment, but I kind of don't want to do that. XD

5077425 what I mean is that the current decklist has to many different card tips that wasn't super, two of which need the third to do anything.

I would just focus on Twilights deck searching out the other mane 6 and bending from that

5077821
Hm.

What about the environment deck? I shoulda maybe made a separate thread for that. <.<

Well, I did what I said I wasn't going to do. But instead of DFEing and starting from stratch, I'm trying to do this conceptually.

I want all six of them to be able to work together. For the ones who have pony-specific support cards, if there are no other ponies in the game, they'll just be supporting themselves. I haven't gotten a fully cohesive set of ideas down yet, though, but I wanted to share what I do have.

Each pony gets a few cards in common: an Element (Equipment), a House, and a Pet. Each pony has support cards to help the others get cards into play, keep them alive, etc., with the exception of Twilight, who gets an extra House and Pet instead.

Of course, you'll note that still leave three special cards and five characters. :B Applejack is the House maintainer; Fluttershy deals with Pets. Rarity deals more generally with Equipment, which helps with the Elements. Pinkie I'm less sure on, but she seems to be going in a "fourth wall-breaking" direction, which would include playing cards off the top of people's decks. And then there's the question of Rainbow Dash. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Twilight is focused primarily on damage dealing and card draw with a bunch of magical effects like teleporting (ends her turn but keeps her stuff on the field). Like I said, she's not as focused on team support, but her Element does make all the others do irreducible damage. (Similar to the deck concept above, they power each other up; even if there's only one in play, it'll still give that character a secondary damage type, and for Twilight, irreducible damage, something she otherwise lacks.)

Applejack is primarily a single-target damage-dealer with a mechanic I came up with in the form of Trees. She can grow trees and then spend her power and/or card plays dealing damage to them, which lets them do extra things, primarily healing. Like I said, she does stuff to get Houses out and Winona can be used to round-up damage-dealing targets.

The rest I haven't thought as much about. Pinkie like I said is going to be doing a lot of wacky stuff, playing things out of turn, letting others do random stuff. Possibly using parties to prevent villain damage. I have no idea what Gummy should do. Fluttershy gets Pets into play, all of her damage is done by Pets, she does a lot of healing. Rarity again is all about giving others card draw, card plays, and maybe something like playing Dresses on heroes to give effects.

So yeah, Rainbow Dash. She's primarily multi-target damage, but other than that, I have two ideas for her and no idea what either would do. Also, no idea how she could support the others beyond doing stuff -- hitting more targets, doing more damage, drawing more cards -- based on the number of active heroes in play, i.e., her friends. The first mechanic is along the lines of the Naturalist: Awesome, Cool and Radical "modes" with A, C and R extra text on one-shots. I have no idea what I'd do with this. The second mechanic involves her doing Tricks, possibly stringing them together with ongoing Routines into Finales like the Sonic Rainboom. Again, I don't know what all this could do.

But there's what I've come up with in the past couple of days. :B

5077821
Bumping this thread because -- holy shit -- I've got a whole new thing to show off, and good gravy is there a lot to read. :B Good luck.

Changelog 5/11/16:
- First round of changes to Twilight.
- Buffed Spike and Owlowiscius's HP. Gave them both ongoing effects. (Thanks go to takuza.)
- Owlowiscius now does what Smarty Pants did, and she in turn does something else.
- Reshelving Day has been reworded for clarity.
- The Element of Magic is now the only Element that deals irreducible damage.
- Apples to Oranges has been changed so the playable card must be in hand. Team communication is now a must!
- Want It, Need It now has an ongoing cost. The damage is dealt at the end of the turn it's played to avoid free destruction of targets.
- Letter to the Princess works differently.
- Major rewrite of Applejack's deck: she is now the tank.

Current thoughts on Twilight:
- It might be worth changing all, or almost all, of her one-shots into Magic-text ongoings, even Magic Surge. This would come with instant activation during her power phase, rather than combining them with her innate power. Would tone down her complexity, prevent 'storing up' Magic text effects, and allow her to use Spike's power at the end of her turn, to say nothing of variant innates.
- Want It, Need It is also suggested to be overpowered. Using the "all Spells are ongoings" suggestion above could negate this. If, say, it made all damage dealt to one target irreducible for a turn (a la GI Bunker), thematically it might work, as everyone's likely going to turn on that target.

5075267
ohei, there's an Elements of Harmony team now :V

5227144

Damn you.

Play a round sometime today/tomorrow?

5227170
Maybe later? :B Are we Steam friends?

5227179

I believe so!

Changelog 5/15/16:

- Major change to Rarity's deck. Actually thought about how Couture and Events should interact, tightened her main mechanic, gave her a little more card draw, and reduced the ridiculous variety of Couture cards.

5234066

Given an admittedly cursory read, the only thing that really jumped out was

Tank (Pet, 6 HP): Reduce damage dealt to this card by 1. Whenever Rainbow Dash is dealt damage, you may reduce that damage by 1 and redirect it to this card.

Effectively DR 2 is big for a single remains-in-play card. I might skip the extra reduction - an HP 6, DR 1 buffer is already quite impressive.

Also, I now have a strong urge to make stats and card writeups for Celestia.

5268458
I've been tossing around a combined Celestia/Luna hero, Southwest Sentinels style, but that I have yet to actually play them is probably why I've been holding back.

Of course, I've also got a mockup for a Nightmare Moon villain deck with Luna as her flipside, so that could be kinda weird. :B

The last time I commented in this thread, I hadn't played the Sentinels? c.c Wow.

Okay, well, Twilight's done. :D Full card images there, with a link to the deck thread, which also has larger images if you want to print the deck or something. Next stop: Discord!

5971186

I like the idea of theory crafting cards, tho my lazy ass could never get beyond that.

Spoilers: She's not done! :B Here's how she plays right now:

6113821
Nice. What's the game system you're using to showcase it?

6115168
That's Tabletop Simulator. I'm using thereaperx's "Sentinels + Cauldron" DLC. (I wonder if I shouldn't say this at the start of each video...)

6113821
When I'm less busy (or, more accurately, when we're not busy at the same time), we really should play more. Would love to start helping you test out pony stuff.

6116097
Yeah, man. Just hit me up when you see me on.

Looks like you can't link directly to images on Google Drive, but if you click that second link (it's also in the first) you'll find it.

Wanted to show off the variants I'm working on, see if anyone has any feedback, since it's sparse on BGG.

6198987
Shouldn't the first one have a different name since the original is called Twilight Sparkle?

Want It, Need It should probably say "until the start of your next turn"

Future Twilight's power is about as perfect as perfect gets.

6199215
There's precedent for unnamed variants: see also the entire Freedom Six. :B

The only difference between "start of your turn" and 'start of your next turn" is if you're under the influence of Wager Master's turn-phrase-reversal card, and I've never found that enough of a common situation to warrant the extra four characters. <.<

6198987

2x2 damage is powerful. Even dedicated damagers only get 2x1 damage base (except for tempest, and his 1 damage to many is not always better).

Future Twilight is awesome, though. Unpredictable extra card play is fun, and the power encourages you to save it for the biggest boom possible.

6199429
Note the burning power doesn't let you hit only one target. So if there's only one non-hero target, you're hitting a hero, too.