Custom Faction: Iconoclasts (Shadow of the Colossus)

Hey Reddit!

Today I bring you Iconoclasts, the Shadow of the Colossus Smash Up deck adaptation that Ludichrisness (the man who brought us Selkies, Painters, and Diabolists recently) and I have been collaborating on. Sparing you flavour text for now, the Iconoclasts faction comes with a deck's typical 20 cards with an additional 16 card "Colossus deck". These Colossi can be played with the various cards in the Iconoclasts main deck, serving as an additional "mini base" that comes into play. These Colossi typically award just 1 VP and a "boon" that provides the winner with some sort of award. You can somewhat compare these "mini objectives" to the quest actions in "Knights of the Round Table". For every card in the Colossi discard pile, *all* regular base breakpoints are reduced by 1. There are 16 different Colossi in deck, and we've found about 3-6 Colossi are played each game.

The overall strategy for Iconoclasts is to score Colossi earlier in the game with powerful cards like Wayfare, and in the late game use the reduced breakpoints to your advantage. Of course, other players can take advantage of lower breakpoints as well, so there is high risk to breaking too many Colossi (much like how destroying a Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus isn't exactly a positive thing). Iconoclasts have abilities they can use after a base scores, as there a lot more bases scoring overall in a game where Iconoclasts are involved because of all the Colossi.

ALL art was made using Midjourney 5.1. Credit to Francisco Rico Torres, as we used his name in the majority of text prompts. FRT is one of the main artists for Smash Up these days. I have recently discovered he is very opposed to AI art, and because of this going forward I will not be using his name in AI prompts. Please, check out his work if you get a chance. ArtStation - Francisco Rico Torres

We had a ton of fun creating this faction and would love your feedback. If you get a chance to try them out in TTS or if you happen to print them, definitely let us know! Thanks everyone!

PS. There's a Smash Up Custom Wiki that's being worked on! In the process of deploying it and sharing it with the rest of the internet. Stay tuned :)

Imgur link: Iconoclasts (SOTC) Custom Faction - Imgur

This was an extremely fun project to collaborate on with Onassi2, and I'm glad I had help for it, since there were 28 card designs factoring in the Colossus deck!

The idea of these mini-objectives really appeals to me, and forces you to question short term benefits vs long term risk. Having normal bases reduce in breakpoint in response to Colossi scoring was absolutely critical from a game standpoint, because it means that games stay around their normal length. It would be very easy for Colossi to consume lots of resources and power without giving out much VP; but by accelerating normal bases and making them easier for any player to score, we found in testing that most games are still around the same length. The mercenary aspect of opening these VP farming quests to other players is very intriguing to me, as it allows other players to potentially steal those point; but they are generally less equipped than Ico(noclasts) to recover from spending those extra resources afterwards.

Some fun things to mention -

Broken Idol is really cool as ensuring that Ico always gets the better end of the deal from Colossi scoring, as you can tap the winner's boon later - double tapping it when you won it yourself. By putting the Colossus in the box, it turns back time on the breakpoint degradation, to buy you a few extra turns.

Wayfare has an insane power formula which was really carefully calculated. He starts at 7 power on a Colossus and 3 power on a normal base. After 4 Colossi have scored (the average for a game) he has see-sawed to 7 power on a normal base and 3 power on a Colossus. This makes a soft incentive to start attacking normal bases instead as the game progresses.

Guiding Light is awesome for the waste potential of getting rid of a challenging rival minion while helping you win a Colossus, since most of them are 1-0 with nothing for 2nd place.

Perfect Shot is often their hail mary late game play but is surprisingly versatile, and is the most common modifier to save with Grip Strength. The breakpoint limit of 15 is really intriguing since it can either score a Colossus cheaply, or convert a Colossus score into bringing a base in range where it was staged earlier. It feels like a very fair version of Overgrowth for them.

Long Lost Maiden can get pretty scary big after several Colossi have scored, and usually enables a double score 1-2 punch from Ico of scoring a Colossus and then a normal base.

I love all of the Colossi designs, and many of them feature interesting dynamics. Some are designed to be easy to plunder, while others fight back a little bit. Many of them tempt or force you to leave them in play instead of scoring them immediately, which is interesting because it gives the possibility to rivals of stealing them. Many of the boons are also designed to enable a double score as well, cascading from their Colossus.

Thanks to the incomparable Awesom360 for the name, meaning one who destroys religious icons. We mostly call it Ico however, in honour of the studio that produced Shadow of the Colossus.

Lastly, credit to bandit of Crank It Up for the idea in theory of the base The Last Colossus, a base that awards you a titan for the rest of the game after you win it. That is a really cool idea to me, being able to claim ownership of the base itself. This is something I wish we could see in the real game, as it gives non-titan factions a path to clash other titans (although this particular titan isn't well suited for that). For Ico, it lets them break Colossi much more efficiently and gives them some extra mobility to get onto those mini bases.

I hope you enjoy!