**** Gertrude Yorkes (Runaways) ****

Borstock

The only fun aspect of this character is the ability to place the trap tiles wherever you want. Otherwise, there isn't much she does where you'd be hard pressed to find a better option.

tonypq

Does her yellow really need a 1 turn countdown tile ? Just seems really silly, what's the point. Red is designed to only have some bite if you have the 5 more tiles than the opponent. If you don't have any more tiles at all the damage is pathetic. Especially as it's supposed to come from her dino friend, for fantasy sake and cool factor they could of made the ability do more damage. Her trap ability is good. 

The characters released these days are really starting make the game a bit stale to me. It's nice to have some of the more obscure characters brought to life as well as Marvel's traditional ones. However it just seems the balance or pacing is off, at least for me. Getting so many oddball characters, show & movie tie ins and not enough fan favorites or more powerful characters in the Marvel universe to balance the releases out.

Srheer0

pink and red powers seem to be at odds with eachother. What if you cover the whole board with specials (polaris). Then you won't have any basic tiles to make traps.   

Not a fan of her kit. Might like it once I play with a champed version to see the full dmg. 

TheEyeDoctorsWife

Enjoyed her in comics and on TV , how humans are unfamiliar with her yet play this game amazes me. Not impressed with the power set, although the devs have been nailing most new 4* so I don’t mind an average 4*. One power seems almost redundant to Melinda May who can stun lock a team easily so she’s not going to replace her. An all Runaway team is nice for their fans though .

TheEyeDoctorsWife

Waddles_Pines said:

IceIX said:

Waddles_Pines said:

@IceIX
That was a great clue for Gertie.  I didn't get it at the time, but second I saw this I did a little imaginary golf clap 🤣.  Bravo.

It was a bit Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but one other person in the office got the links after some thought so I went with it.

In case ppl are still confused, the clue was for arsenic.  There's an old stage play and movie called "Arsenic and Old Lace" 

That eluded me as it’s not one of my favorite poisons due to its popularity and easily attainable in retail. I guessed  Bella Donna , an obscure X book character.

BriMan2222

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

Enjoyed her in comics and on TV , how humans are unfamiliar with her yet play this game amazes me. Not impressed with the power set, although the devs have been nailing most new 4* so I don’t mind an average 4*. One power seems almost redundant to Melinda May who can stun lock a team easily so she’s not going to replace her. An all Runaway team is nice for their fans though .

Most people don't read comics and only know the characters from movies and tv and she was on an old streaming service only tv show that barely advertised even when it was new.  That most people hadn't heard of her before doesn't surprise me at all.

The show is pretty good though, I would recommend giving the runaways show a chance if anyone is able to.

Bad

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

Enjoyed her in comics and on TV , how humans are unfamiliar with her yet play this game amazes me. .

I don't know who is gertrude and I don't feel bad for that.
Probably you wouldn't know who is Monkey D. Luffy, Tanjiro, Vicious, or Shishio and you'll never see me looking down on people because of that.

bbigler

From a Marketing Perspective, I think they’ve run out of well known characters to introduce, so in order to keep this train rolling for as long as possible, they spread out the exciting characters and then use the duller ones as gap fillers.  This creates highs and lows in the game, which is actually good for business.  They do the same thing with powerful characters, stores, vaults and other offers, creating highs and lows.  

If they did it differently, it wouldn’t work as well.  For example, if they introduced all the most popular or most powerful characters first, then each successive release would get less and less interesting, which eventually loses players and kills the game.  

If they released nothing but new powerful characters every 2 weeks, then you would have some serious power creep.  But there’s a large variety of character mechanics to power up and create a new meta, so it’s like a power creep rotation.  Nevertheless, they’re stretching things out and only releasing meta breaking characters every now and then.  

Since I’m in the mood, here’s my list of 5*character mechanics that could be improved to create a new meta: 
==================================

Changing board colors : they tried with Sersi & Wanda & Storm

Stealing or Draining AP : they tried with broken Gambit

AP Cost reducers : nothing good in the 5* tier

Periodic Strong Passive Dmg : they tried with Ronan & Big Wheel & Kitty

Producing strong specials: they tried with Ultron & Sersi

Spamming Strike tiles: they tried with the Wolverines & Knull

Spamming Attack tiles: they tried with Kitty & Carnage

Stealing specials: they tried with Elektra

Removing specials: they tried with Kitty

Spamming CD tiles & repeaters: they tried with Abby 

Reducing counts on Repeaters & CD tiles: nothing good in the 5* tier

Charged Tile mechanics: they tried with Black Bolt & Storm

Fortified Tile mechanics: they tried with Green Goblin & Hawkeye

Web Tile mechanics: they tried with Spider-Man, of course

Invisibility : they tried with Yellowjacket

Airborne mechanics: nothing good in the 5*tier

Frequent Stuns: they tried with Cable & Ghostpool & Iceman

Jump to Front Shield: they tried with Odin

Decrease enemy power levels: they tried with Wanda & Black Bolt

===================================
Here’s the list of existing meta mechanics: 

Great AP battery = Thor
Very high match dmg = Shang
Strong Individual Healing = Shang (surpassed OML)
Strong Damage Reduction = Colossus & Wanda (they tried with Elektra)
Spamming Protect Tiles = Beta Ray Bill
Strong Chip Damage = IHulk & Wanda
Strong Damage Buffing = Okoye & Apocalypse (they tried with Wanda)
Strong Tile Buffing = Kitty (they tried with Sersi)
Strong Team Bursts = Crystal
Increase enemy AP costs: Prof X 

MegaBee

Tony_Foot said:

As amazed as you are that humans are unfamiliar yet play the game, I'm amazed adults read comics. 

Just @ me next time...

bbigler

MegaBee said:

Tony_Foot said:

As amazed as you are that humans are unfamiliar yet play the game, I'm amazed adults read comics. 

Just @ me next time...

I like games and I like movies, but I don’t read the books that accompany a movie nor read the comics that accompany this game.  

DyingLegend

Not impressed.
Just another 4 star that won't get much usage outside of required events.

Timemachinego

Bad said:

I don't know who is gertrude and I don't feel bad for that.
Probably you wouldn't know who is Monkey D. Luffy, Tanjiro, Vicious, or Shishio and you'll never see me looking down on people because of that.

One Piece, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Cowboy Bebop, Rurouni Kenshin. Some of us just like all these nerdy things lol.

DAZ0273

Tony_Foot said:

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

how humans are unfamiliar with her yet play this game amazes me. 

Because of the MCU. This game wouldn't have even be made if it wasn't for it. If it did it would have lasted for a year. I don't give a toss about 75% of the characters in this game and I'd never heard of them. I only then care if the powers are good. Like Kitty, BRB and co. As amazed as you are that humans are unfamiliar yet play the game, I'm amazed adults read comics. 

Actually Runaways was launched at the teenage market and dealt with teenage themes. They were packaged and priced at this market and were a great gateway in Marvel as there is some interaction with other Marvel characters. The books were manga sized but not back to front. It is often said that we at some point think of our parents as evil or monsters, especially during our pre and teen years. In this case, it turns out to be true - that is the overarching story premise from the beginning. The kids don't know that some of them have super powers (and some don't) until they discover their parents secrets. Growing up I gave the first volume to my young sister-in-law (not so young now) and my nephew and they both absolutely loved it.

She doesn't seem great but I think is in line with the theme of the character and they went with that.

DAZ0273

bbigler said:

MegaBee said:

Tony_Foot said:

As amazed as you are that humans are unfamiliar yet play the game, I'm amazed adults read comics. 

Just @ me next time...

I like games and I like movies, but I don’t read the books that accompany a movie nor read the comics that accompany this game.  

The comics pre-date the game by quite a bit but I think they did get re-booted and there are some collections. If you have any teenagers who like the MCU in their life this is a pretty cool story. Likewise the fellow Tsunami print book Sentinel which dealt with a boy who's best friend is a battle damaged Sentinel! Not sure you can still get that though but could be wrong.

DAZ0273

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

Waddles_Pines said:

IceIX said:

Waddles_Pines said:

@IceIX
That was a great clue for Gertie.  I didn't get it at the time, but second I saw this I did a little imaginary golf clap 🤣.  Bravo.

It was a bit Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but one other person in the office got the links after some thought so I went with it.

In case ppl are still confused, the clue was for arsenic.  There's an old stage play and movie called "Arsenic and Old Lace" 

That eluded me as it’s not one of my favorite poisons due to its popularity and easily attainable in retail. I guessed  Bella Donna , an obscure X book character.

Gambit's wife?

ThaRoadWarrior

I only know the Runaways from the Hulu show; it felt maybe the most like “old man trying so hard to write kids and being out of touch” as anything I’ve ever seen, particularly with names like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Old Lace.” Not a comment at all on this implementation, just the IP itself I suppose. Always nice to see more affiliated characters in the game.

kirk justice

bbigler said:

From a Marketing Perspective, I think they’ve run out of well known characters to introduce, so in order to keep this train rolling for as long as possible, they spread out the exciting characters and then use the duller ones as gap fillers.  This creates highs and lows in the game, which is actually good for business.  They do the same thing with powerful characters, stores, vaults and other offers, creating highs and lows.  

If they did it differently, it wouldn’t work as well.  For example, if they introduced all the most popular or most powerful characters first, then each successive release would get less and less interesting, which eventually loses players and kills the game.  

If they released nothing but new powerful characters every 2 weeks, then you would have some serious power creep.  But there’s a large variety of character mechanics to power up and create a new meta, so it’s like a power creep rotation.  Nevertheless, they’re stretching things out and only releasing meta breaking characters every now and then.  

I think my issue with this is that they don't release the same character in a tier very often because of a limitation they have imposed on themselves. Nothing stops them from removing the limitation that prevents us from bringing the same named characters into battle together. Heck, they could even make it less restrictive by allowing same named characters from different universes into battle together (i.e. a 616 version of Cap and an MCU version of Cap). But because of this restriction the devs seem very adverse to releasing new versions of characters that already exist in the tier. 

I'm not arguing that lesser known characters like this are bad for the game. I actually think its good that characters like Gertrude are released occasionally. I am arguing, however, that there is no way that a character like Gertrude would bring in more revenue for the game than a new flagship character (like say, Iron Man or Dr. Doom) based on name alone. Also, not taking into account viability in game, because strong or broken characters probably also generate a ton of revenue. Though doing that too often also has its drawbacks. 

HoundofShadow

There are three possibilities as to why Gert was released now:

1) Marvel dictated it. In case you don't know, Marvel dictates majority of character releases. They use Marvel games as tie-ins to their comics, movies, and tv shows. They see us as an advertising platform as well and I think it's working well. There are so many characters I've never heard of and I didn't know Carnage has a god-like form.

2) Marvel sells IP in sets, and the dev purchased ips for a set of characters from Runaways. As to why they didn't release Runaways consecutively, look at point one and there were backlogs and schedule clashes that pushed Gert's releases to now.

3) The dev has purchased set of ips of each group of characters. They want to keep things fresh, so they released them sporadically to make sure there's something to look forward to for fans of each particular group. If this theory is true, we might see other characters from Phoenix Force this year or next. 

As far as 2022 character releases are concerned, I know only Rhino and I didn't know Elektra became Daredevil. As for the rest, I've no idea who they were and neither do I know their existence before their releases. So, it's refreshing for someone like me who don't read comics to know more unknown Marvel characters.

DAZ0273

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I only know the Runaways from the Hulu show; it felt maybe the most like “old man trying so hard to write kids and being out of touch” as anything I’ve ever seen, particularly with names like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Old Lace.” Not a comment at all on this implementation, just the IP itself I suppose. Always nice to see more affiliated characters in the game.

I didn't like the show it did not do justice to the original source material. The original was written by Brian K Vaughan who was riding high on Y the Last Man and as would go on as a writer on Lost. Not sure if he had anything to do with the Hulu show. As for the old man thing, he was mid 20s when he wrote Runaways.

bbigler

DAZ0273 said:

bbigler said:

MegaBee said:

Tony_Foot said:

As amazed as you are that humans are unfamiliar yet play the game, I'm amazed adults read comics. 

Just @ me next time...

I like games and I like movies, but I don’t read the books that accompany a movie nor read the comics that accompany this game.  

The comics pre-date the game by quite a bit but I think they did get re-booted and there are some collections. If you have any teenagers who like the MCU in their life this is a pretty cool story. Likewise the fellow Tsunami print book Sentinel which dealt with a boy who's best friend is a battle damaged Sentinel! Not sure you can still get that though but could be wrong.

My point was that you don’t have to read the comic books to play or enjoy this game.  So, comic book fans that are playing this game shouldn’t be surprised when people say they never heard of someone.