SuperSystem 4th Edition is...not coming

While the Kickstarter campaign for SuperSystem 4th Edition was still running earlier this week we got together to play a game of 3rd Ed. I stat-ed up some characters to play with and we set up the table.

I chose to play the Legion of Super-Villains: Saturn Queen, Cosmic King and Lightning Lord. William was playing Exiles: Blink, Nocturne and Sasquatch. Starting off the game Lightning Lord grabbed Cosmic King and flew up over a building to keep an eye on the Exiles. Sasquatch moved up and Nocturne ran towards another building and hid in the shadows. Saturn Queen and Cosmic King moved over towards a lower building to avoid Blink's cowardly hit-and-run maneuvers.

The following round Saturn Queen lands a mental attack against Sasquatch but isn't able to slow her down. Nocturne stays in the shadows and fires some hex-bolts at Lightning Lord with no success. Cosmic King moves towards the source of the hex-bolts but is unable to determine their exact origin. Sasquatch charges up to the building under Lighting Lord, which provides a little cover against his lightning attack. Blink again makes a cowardly hit-and-run attack, this time causing some damage to Saturn Queen.

Knowing she's in trouble, Saturn Queen makes a desperate attempt to dominate Sasquatch's mind and succeeds! The Exiles scramble to take down the Queen before Sasquatch turns on them, but her resolve allows her to remain standing and in control of the white beast. Lightning Lord and Cosmic King move up in hopes of flanking the stealthy Nocturne. Blink is simply too fast and erratic to be worth pursuing. As the round ends Sasquatch snarls, turns and charges Nocturne, landing a near fatal blow on her teammate!

Blink once again teleports in, this time finishing off the Saturn Queen. The Cosmic King takes advantage of the confusion and lands a lucky strike against Sasquatch and drains her powers...leaving her almost completely defenceless! Seeing the trouble Blink pops in to rescue Sasquatch. Nocturne draws Lightning Lord's fire as he hovers over the trees.

We had to call the game due to time, but at the end both Nocturne and Lightning Lord were nearly KO'd. I think the Exiles would have won the day based on Blink's huge mobility. I simply couldn't hit her with all of that teleporting.

The character powers worked out pretty well, but we discussed a few tweaks to make them feel more suitable. Most notably were the strength values on my characters. I had only give the king and queen 3s there, which should most definitely be 4s. Blink's hyper-movement should be switched to use her mind instead of her agility, to slow her down just a bit. All in all though it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to making some more characters, and perhaps next time I'll try the 4th edition beta rules instead.

The following day I was asked to run a game for another local miniature player, so we set up some Alpha Flight vs Dr. Doom!

Post Script

Those of you who might have been interested pledging in the 4th Edition campaign are sadly out of luck. The creators canceled funding earlier today saying they didn't feel they would reach their funding goal and wanted to 'go out on their own terms' rather than let the campaign run its last few days.

Having supported a large number of projects in the past few years, I think this was a mistake. If the project hadn't met its goal, no harm would have been done as the campaign would simply end. However, most campaigns really ramp up during the last three to five days and often make almost half of their total cash in that time span.

With three days left they were over 3/4 of the way to their $12,000 goal and I'm absolutely certain it would have succeeded. In my opinion it seems like fear of failing, rather than anything else. I don't know the situation, only the creators know that...but calling it quits just before the finish line feels pretty un-heroic to me.