Rules spotlight: Medusa August 21, 2015 08:38

Hi folks, welcome back to the second entry in our series of model spotlights.  This week, we are still on the topic of Medusa, but from a different angle: her rules.

The first consideration for Medusa was to make her a thematic character and a solid choice for any list.  Thematically, we wanted to really reflect that she was a mythic character.  In myth, the blood of a Gorgon is a potent thing, with the blood from one side of the body said to cure any ailment up to death and from the other side a deadly poison.  While we have a few characters that deal bonus damage, healing is rather rare, and in the cases where it does exist it tends to be a disruption of the natural order.  Thus Ichor was born as a way to tie our Medusa to her mythic counterpart.

Taunt was a tricky decision for us.  We wanted to give Medusa extra utility from her core Ichor ability, and a way to keep her sister Gorgons intact a little longer.  Taunt could quickly become a way for a staged model to bog things down if it persisted in both stages, and even become a liability during the relatively vulnerable transition between stages. For these reasons we decided to stick with Taunt in her first stage only, and to give Medusa another new rule in her second stage: Mirror.

Those of you who read last week’s piece will know a bit about the importance of the name for the ability, but we thought it was a great way to give her a little more defensive punch in her second stage. It makes her less of a target right when opponents might be tempted to burn favor to finish her off as she’s transitioning.  It also makes her efficient offensively against opponents who have a stockpile of favor, making her a strong finisher herself.

Lastly, Singular makes her a little more available to players who want a specific Ludus playstyle for their cohort.  She is a sort of ‘Titan in spirit’ (alongside Stheno) with this rule.  As unaligned gladiators with two stages it seemed too difficult to work these great centerpieces into a moderately sized cohort, but giving them all of the attendant Titan or Beast rules just to exempt them from Ludus benefit math didn’t feel right either, and they were really right where we wanted them as staged models (especially the Gorgons as a set).  Singular gave us a nice way to give them some of the feel of Titans while keeping them thematic and balanced.

Thanks again for reading.  I hope these articles enrich your time with Arena Rex, or at least give you a fun way to spend a break in your day.  Next week, we’ll go into more detail on the Gorgons and how they come together as a minor Ludus.