Next up, objects as hindering terrain.

We tried, we really did. It’s one of those concepts that’s simple to say, but devilishly difficult to put into clean unambiguous rules. There’s a lot of corner cases involving moving and then the square you’re in or next to suddenly becomes hindering or is no longer hindering. And then how it interacts with things like water markers. And then how it temporarily redefines “areas” of hindering terrain. And a lot more.

HeroClix already has something that does exactly this: hindering terrain markers. And they have their own rules. ‘Objects as hindering’ duplicated a bunch of their rules while adding a bunch of unique interactions. It was almost a full page in the rulebook just for this (and the attendant sidebars explaining it.) That page is going away… but that’s not the whole story.

‘Objects as hindering’ wasn’t really what was foremost about objects in the minds of players we talked to (which was, unsurprisingly, mostly “bashing characters with them”). It reasonably gave a player something to do with an object if you didn’t have a Super Strength character but wasn’t their key feature.

So initially, the plan was just to remove the connection between objects and hindering entirely. It seemed simplest. But then we heard an idea that we tested and checked with some players. An idea that will preserve the best parts of what ‘objects as hindering’ did, but in a way that doesn’t add pages of complex interactions into the rules and is much more flavorful.

Introducing Hide, another inherent ability (Vehicles also do not have this one).

Hide

At the end of your turn , if a heavy object is in this square and this character has or , you may place a hindering terrain marker here. At the beginning of your next turn , or immediately when no heavy object is in this square or no character occupies this square, remove the marker. (You do not need to physically place the marker. The heavy object serves as a reminder of it.)

Now, one goal of this rules update is to remove a bunch of fiddly rules, not introduce them. And we recognize that Hide, at first glance, would definitely qualify as having some fiddly-ness. We do not want players to have “feel-bad” moments because they forgot to say “my character is hiding”. So the tournament rules will get an update along the lines of “unless a player specifies otherwise, a player’s characters that can do so always use the Hide ability.” You won’t need to say “my guys are always hiding” at the beginning of the game, and you won’t need to physically lift your guys up and place the markers, the heavy objects will let you know where the markers are. For the rare time that it will matter, you can explicitly say “my characters aren’t hiding.” But the vast majority of times characters will want to Hide, so that’s the default, and you’ll know that in terms of the rules it’s a hindering terrain marker in that square. And since it is a hindering terrain marker, you’ll be able to figure out how that properly interacts with all other effects in the game, without an additional page in the rules.

Essentially, the rule is now “Heavy objects in a character’s square are hindering terrain when it’s not your turn”, but because of important rules interactions, we’re using hindering terrain markers to do this.

This also nicely gives light objects and heavy objects different things to do in a game, that should make deciding which type of standard object to add to your force more of a real choice. Light objects can be picked up and used in an object attack by anyone. Heavy objects can be hidden behind, and picked up and used for bonus damage by Super Strength characters.

Flavor-wise, this played a lot better too. Having a stealthy character hide behind a “light” manhole cover or a cinder block or a gumball machine was pretty nonsensical. Having a speedster character not able to move their full speed value or have to stop because of an unmoving object (of any size) that they can see also seemed less than ideal. Now, the stealthy character can only hide behind larger, heavier things, and the speedster can, you know, see light and heavy objects and not be tripped up by them.

Giants and colossals? Well, no matter how big and heavy the object, hiding doesn’t seem very realistic, so they can’t. Also, it already would be less useful than with other characters, considering how few have Stealth and how hard it is to get every square of their bases in hindering at once.

This does change some strategies – you can’t “block off” a hallway with objects anymore (even heavy ones) to slow an opponent down, they can find the gaps and step right through them. But we and players we’ve spoken to feel that the changes in total will definitely improve both the flavor and use of both types of objects.