Any reviews coming for the various Champions Villains books?

[Blorn]

I only come to the forums occasionally so if I missed a review or discussion of the various Champions Villains books, please forgive me. None of my searches are finding anything relevant. My wife asked if there were any books that I wanted for x-mas and I'm not sure if I want to ask for these... Should I?

I run a Teen Champions campaign on a fairly regular basis with plans on a possible second, more "Champions Normal", campaign in the future. I have almost all of the 5th Edition books and have just been, painfully, converting published villains over to 6th Ed. when necessary (mostly just creating from scratch)

My biggest fear is that the 6th Ed. Villains books will be too similar to the 5th Ed books that I'd be wasting my money. I'm not wanting to buy books where the villains are just converted without thought going into how the character concept fits into the new rules... for example, were characters realized with the new divorce of characteristics and figured characteristics in mind (DEX, I'm looking at you). With the sample characters in the Character Creation book, I'm afraid of what to expect.

[Enforcer84]

I've seen the solo villains book. The characters, by and large struck me as very similar to their 5th Ed counterparts, with most of the changes being in the Combat Value/Mental Combat value area, there are a lot of Strong Willed individuals without mental powers who have a high MDCV but lower MOCV. The Regular CVs still remain in the realm of DEX/3 with some variation but if a guy has a 7 OCV/DCV he probably has an 18-21 Dex and vice versa. In fact many of the write ups would be the same if Figured Characteristics were still intact, I saw one or two departures from this...Evil Eye's 5CV's 18 Dex comes to mind, but by and large the would-be figured characteristics are altered upwards.

I didn't really see much change in characteristics for classic characters (Bulldozer has 20 Dex still), and depending on where you personally draw the line for what is superhuman, that might be cause for alarm.

There are a lot of classic characters (good thing) and new (to me at least) villains - also good thing. Because of the volume of characters, the book is rather cluttered. (Bad thing) I have the pdf version so this might need to be taken with a grain of salt, but some of the long background cause other characters to start in the middle of pages or at the end. The book is in color (good) the art is uneven (a negative) - not bad art, in fact of the dozens of characters in the book only one was "bad" but I don't think the concept lends itself well. The uneven part is that most of the art is done in what I'd call "comic book" style, and a few are done in "Animated" style. And quite frankly, those few pieces just don't look like they belong.

As for the villains themselves, I don't have a big problem with them overall, but there were a few write ups that seemed to fit the exact same role, same motivations, similar powersets, same power level - of course you're going to have that I guess, but it really stood out on a few of them. Most of them are like old friends, however, it's nice to know, for instance, that Mechassassin decided the vomit colored battle armor was a bad idea...or that Howler is still turning heads. Some of the new (to me) villains were pretty cool and having the whole thing in color was awesome.

[Blorn]

Thanks, Enforcer84... It sounds like my fears are valid when Bulldozer has olympic level Dex. I suppose that in the long run, it's a minor quibble... I can just as easily drop/raise a villains dex to where I think it fits... most of the dirty work of converting will have been done for me, should I get the books. I just don't understand the bias for high Dex now that it doesn't affect CV. Artwork in full color may be worth the money for the book.

What new villains are there? How many? Like I said, I have most of the 5th edition books, I need new stuff to justify spending money on this.

List of my Pros and Cons so far:
Full color art +
Minimal realization of stats (Dex) -
Number of new villains ?
Creative uses of powers I haven't seen before ?

[Boll Weevil]

Now that all three villain books are released (featuring many villains I have bought as many as 3 times previously ), I wonder if there will be a bundle deal for buying the trifecta.

[brionl]

Are vols 2 & 3 going to remain PDF only?
I got the volume 1 hard cover and it looks pretty nice, lots of good stuff.
I'm going to vote for a PDF bundle too.

I don't buy many just character books, so besides Dr Destroyer and Mechanon, The Warlord is the only one I could spot right off as one I owned for 5ed or earlier. I am pretty sure I've still got my copy of The Island of Dr Destroyer arond somewhere though.

[Steve Long]

Are vols 2 & 3 going to remain PDF only?

Absolutely not -- we've just run into some delays on the printing end. We'll have hardcopies available for ya just as soon as we can.

[brionl]

I am pretty sure I've still got my copy of The Island of Dr Destroyer arond somewhere though.

Yep, there it was, in the pile with my copy of Champions (3ed), Champions II, Champions III, various adventures, and for some reason, 4 copies of Bad Medicine for Dr Drugs.

[brionl]

What's with all the Canadians, eh?
Somebody got a lifetime supply of Tim Hortons or something? 13% of the World's Master Villains are Canuck related, and only one African? And a ghost Nazi who wants to annihilate Canada? Really? Really?

[ghost-angel]

The Canadian villains were incorporated from the Champions Of The North supplement.

[Matt the Bruins]

I was much happier with the team write-ups in Volume 2 than with the master villains from Vol. 1. Concepts and backstories seemed cohesive, and there were very few head-scratchers in terms of the builds themselves. Hopefully the solo villains tome will continue the trend.

[brionl]

The Canadian villains were incorporated from the Champions Of The North supplement.

I wasn't questioning the source so much as the quantity. I know it's traditional for comics to be North American-centric, but there are more Canadian themed master villains than all of Asia.

[ghost-angel]

Because they converted the some 400 characters they had already created to 6th Edition, so that's why the quantity - there was a sourcebook on Canadian Villains, not one on Asian Villains, to add in.