The Return Of Sky Ace

A few days ago we watched 'Spiderman: Homecoming' for the first time. It was OK, but whilst I liked the effects they used for The Vulture, I kind of missed the classic 'old guy in lycra with wings' look of the original. This led to me wanting to play out a fight between Spiderman and the classic Vulture, and that led to me getting out a game I'm pottered around with a few years ago called Sky Ace.

Sky Ace is an abstract superhero skirmish game driven by standard playing cards. Whilst a bit odd, and possibly flawed in a few places, it has a rather clever mechanism where the position you lay your cards affects the kind of attacks you make.

Rather than repeat all of the rules I will refer you to two comprehensive posts from a few years ago. The first has a description of the game, some changes I made to it (obviously) and the report of a fight between Captain Britain and Slaymaster: Sky Ace

The second is simply a report of a Batman vs The Joker fight: More Sky Ace

The two reports together should give you the background to the rules and how they play, saving me repeating a lot of it here.

Anyway, I've played a few games during odd moments this week, come up with a few minor tweaks and decided that it was time I tried a fight with more than one character on each side. I'd played out the desired Spiderman vs Vulture fight, and added to it - Spiderman was joined by my favourite X-Man, Nightcrawler, whilst The Vulture was teamed up with The Hobgoblin. I threw together some quick stats for them, which will only make sense if you've read the rules and my posts linked above:

Spiderman

Hand to Hand - Every Time

Distance - Occasionally

Charge - Rarely

Stealth - Almost Never

Hardiness - Rarely

Dodge - Every Time

Cunning - Occasionally

Shield - Almost Never

Nightcrawler

Hand to Hand - Occasionally

Distance - Almost Never

Charge - Rarely

Stealth - Every Time

Hardiness - Rarely

Dodge - Every Time

Cunning - Occasionally

Shield - Almost Never

The Vulture

Hand to Hand - Rarely

Distance - Almost Never

Charge - Every Time

Stealth - Occasionally

Hardiness - Rarely

Dodge - Every Time

Cunning - Occasionally

Shield - Almost Never

Hobgoblin

Hand to Hand - Almost Never

Distance - Every Time

Charge - Occasionally

Stealth - Rarely

Hardiness - Rarely

Dodge - Occasionally

Cunning - Every Time

Shield - Almost Never

(I tried a few games with the original defence mechanism, but prefer the extra option my new version offers)

In previous games I'd somehow played the hits wrong, applying full damage to character, when in fact you halve the combat score difference. However this creates weird situations where either a hit can never score damage, or it's not worth playing a defence because it can't affect the result. So in this game I experimented with increasing the number of hits a character can take - normally you have five lives, and five cards, with the latter going down by one each time you lose a hit. In this game I gave each character ten hits and five cards; they lose one card for every two full hits they take, and you don't halve the damage. So a single hit can still be significant.

Anyway, here's the cast of characters, with their initial position draws. 

With the highest card this left Hobgoblin setting up the positions. The sequence of play would be Hobgoblin, Nightcrawler, Vuture and Spiderman.

For his opening moved Hobgoblin moved to the side of Spiderman, which meant initiating a Stealth attack hitting on Royal cards. However Hobgoblin had a hand of these, scoring three hits (one for each card played).

Spiderman was on a Club, so used Cunning as a defence (the initial letters of things are used as mnemonics throughout this game), blocking hits with odd-numbered cards. He only had one of these, so blocked one point of damage, taking the other two. This put him down to eight hits and cost him a card from his hand.

Now it was Nightcrawler's move. He also initiated a Stealth attack, teleporting to the side of Vulture. Nightcrawler's Stealth attacks hit on Even cards, and he played one. But you also count the card on which you're positioned, if that is valid, plus that on which the target is positioned as well. Nightcrawler was on an Even card, but Vulture wasn't, so that added an additional hit. Vulture was on a Club, so defended with Cunning, requiring Odd cards. The card he was on was odd, so he automatically blocked one hit, and he could play another from his hand to block the second hit. So he survived unscathed.

And now it was Vulture's turn. He moved down onto the card vacated by Nightcrawler; you can play your card on top of a previously played card, so long as it maintains the red/black checkerboard pattern. Simply replace the original card with the new one. This move put Vulture in a position to either attack Spiderman with a Hand To Hand attack, or Nightcrawler with Charge attack. His hand meant that the Charge attack was his best option. He played two Even cards for two hits, but got an additional two hits for being on an Even card himself and for Nightcrawler being on one as well - a grand total of four hits! Nightcrawler was defending with his Dodge, so was also looking for Even cards. However he only had one, so took three hits, reducing his hand to four cards.

Finally Spiderman got to act. He also had two targets, Hobgoblin to the side and Vulture above him. He made a Hand To Hand knockback attack against Vulture. This allows you to play your card directly behind your target, and then move the target onto the card, replacing the normal play a card and move onto it yourself move. Note that the placement also replaced a card previously in play.

Spiderman's Hand To Hand hits on Even cards. He played one, and got two extra hits for the card he was positioned on and that on which he'd placed Vulture, so his punch did three hits. Vulture was on a Club (again) do defended with his Cunning using Odd cards. He had plenty of those and blocked all three hits.

So at the end of the first turn Spiderman and Nightcrawler had both taken hits and were down one card each. The villains had them at a disadvantage.

I didn't keep a detailed track of the rest of the game - the first turn above was just to show how the game plays - but in the second turn Nightcrawler did manage to get in a couple of hits on Vulture, who returned the favour, whilst Spiderman scored a single hit on Hobgoblin. At the end of the turn Spiderman was still on four cards, but Nightcrawler was now down to three, whilst Vulture was on four cards and hobgoblin was still fighting with a full hand of five.

Miller joined as an observer at this point.

In the third turn Hobgoblin inflicted a telling Distance attack on Nightcrawler who was unable to block it.

(Ignore that nine in Hobgoblin's played cards - that was an error I corrected)

Nightcrawler failed to respond effectively, and Vulture finished him off with a Stealth attack.

So now Spiderman was fighting alone. A knockback attack did little damage to Hobgoblin, but did put him away from the main fight for a while,

Spiderman moved the fight further up the play area, away from Hobgoblin, so that he could concentrate on Vulture

But Vulture was up to the task, and a lucky draw of Aces and Jokers saw him able to launch an effective Distance attack (his worst attack) to pretty much finish off Spiderman. Down to one card, and facing two foes with four cards each, I decided that Spiderman would retreat to fight another day.

So Vulture and Hobgoblin won a fairly straightforward victory.

I still have a few rules issues to tweak, including in my own changes, but the game ran very smoothly for the most part, and gave an entertaining fight. For all that it is very abstract, it still feels like a free-wheeling superhero fight, and scratched that initial itch caused by watching the film over the weekend.

Sky Ace is another addition to my 52 Games project.

52 Games - Game 24