Hero Academy

[Isgrimnur]

Sounds more OP than the Night Elves.

[wonderpug]

They've got to have horrible horrible defense or something, and maybe really weak healing (unless you manage to chain-heal multiple units).  They certainly sound overpowered based on unit descriptions alone

Some more info from their forums (underlines mine):

The Tribe is definitely the most unique team we've put together to date. Their "deck" isn't quite put together like the other teams are. For example, they have a shield and sword upgrade, but no helm. And as I mentioned in the blog post, instead of scrolls and healing potions, they have four hocks of meat that both heal and supercharge them.
Virtually everything they do, even defending, is about attacking. Their armor upgrade actually deflects some of the damage back to the attacker. And wait until you see the Chieftan's whirlwind attack

And there are pictures of the new map (three crystals each!) and some units in action over here at Touch Arcade.

From the second screenshot there, it looks like the barbed crystals have at least a range of two, but from the look of the middle right crystal, they may lose their barbs after they get damaged.

[Isgrimnur]

No helm, but I notice Helm spaces for magic defense.

[wonderpug]

Yet more info:

The blue spell is a Typhoon. You drop it on the map, and it sends huge typhoon waves outward in each direction from that vertical row of squares. Enemy units are pushed from that origin point accordingly. If someone's getting all up in your grill, you can kick their whole team back a bit.

[rittchard]

Ummm they sound incredibly OP but we'll see!  Can't wait!!!!

[Isgrimnur]

The game kicked me out for the update.

And of course, it's over 500 MB and I have no wifi at work. 

[happydog]

When I tried to play this morning it said there was an update, but then it would take me to the app store and there was no update yet.

[Isgrimnur]

The update finally did come in through the App Store, but yeah, there was a lag where it wasn't playable.

[wonderpug]

Far too early to pass any real judgement, but so far the Tribe doesn't seem overpowered at all—just very very different.  All their units have a 200 dmg base (no archer/impaler/gunner equivalent), so their damage output is not nearly as overpowered as it sounded on paper.  The two exceptions are the axe thrower and warrior's conditional powers, each of which makes it hard for those units to kill things single-handedly.  The seemingly overpowered synergy between those two units is hindered by their slow movement and limited axe-range; without using a typhoon wave to shove the enemy into place it can be hard to set up the one-two punch.

The witch is sort of the most normal unit of the bunch—basically a necromancer with corpse explosion instead of phantom raising.  Very fun.

The chieftan has the lowest damage single-target damage of all the superunits, but his charge ability makes it easy to get him into the thick of things and get good multi-target whirlwind damage.  I think the idea is to treat him as somewhat disposable (especially since you get two of him), so he can just rush in, spread around some damage, and get the enemy softened up for the rest of your units.

The shaman is a fun twist on the healer formula.  The chain healing/resurrecting dovetails nicely with the mechanic of team rage when a hero is stomped.  You don't want to stomp a unit and add 50% to the next attack... but then there's that potentially long reach of the shaman resurrection to worry about.

If anything, the typhoon spell seems like the most potentially overpowered part about the team.  No damage, but so much utility.  Shove the whole enemy team back to give you breathing room; ruin claims to boost tiles and formations; draw a target unit into killing range while shoving healers further away... and you get to cast it three times!

[Harkonis]

I really think I'd enjoy this more if each unit got one move per turn or something similar.

[wonderpug]

I really think I'd enjoy this more if each unit got one move per turn or something similar.

I know it's different than most other turn-based strategy games in that regard, but now that I've put a ridiculous number of hours into the game I don't find it at all off-putting the way I did at the start.  I've gotten to play against some really high-skill players as I moved up in a recent Penny Arcade tournament, and the different game mechanic is just, well, different. 

I think you'd really like the game if you got back into it now.  With the numerous teams and maps now, it's getting more and more of that fighting game fun where learning the different matchups is just as important as simply knowing your team's strengths & weaknesses.

[Lee]

Would be nice if there was a ranking system so I would be more likely to get other newbies to play against. Neat game though. I am leeabe51 if anyone wants a game against someone who is clueless.

[The Grue]

I guess the fact they went iPad doesn't mean they used retina assets for it?  I downloaded it and the art was pixelated.  I immediately deleted it.

[leo8877]

I guess the fact they went iPad doesn't mean they used retina assets for it?  I downloaded it and the art was pixelated.  I immediately deleted it.

Yeah it's universal, but still not retina display quality on the iPad.

[kathode]

Retina display or not, it looks damn good to me.

Anyone else been having networking-type issues lately?  I'll frequently get long delays or errors trying to log in, or refresh my games list, or submit my movies.  Pretty irritating.  I thought it might be an ipad 3 thing but it happens on my phone as well.

[wonderpug]

I had a bunch of issues the day of the patch, but since then my only problems have been from being in at&t black hole areas.

[leo8877]

I've been seeing a lot of issues regarding login failures, even though I never changed my password.  After a few tries it finally works.

[Isgrimnur]

Ditto.

[USMC Kato]

I've had to restore my phone twice the past month, then had to replace my iPhone since it just flat out died. I reinstalled hero academy, and I apologize to everyone that I had a game in progress with. I should be good to now so please feel free to invite me for some games.

[Isgrimnur]

Horde are capable of extreme turtleshit.  Get two chain healers in a solid wall of units, and you never have to worry about losing a unit.

[leo8877]

I just found out on the Tribe map with the barbed crystals, you can use the crystals to attack an enemy. 

[Isgrimnur]

Yup.  Once per crystal per turn, 300 physical, Range 3.  Certainly changes the normal dynamic if someone rushes the middle.

[wonderpug]

They were originally planning for the crystals to do 400 damage. Yikes.  They only dropped it to 300 a couple days before the patch released.

I'm kind of bummed to find out that the lead designer for the game was PAX East and I didn't get a chance to stop and chat with him.  Their booth was mostly focused on Orcs Must Die with just a little two-iPad kiosk set up for Hero Academy, so I just figured there wouldn't be anyone from the Hero Academy team present.  Ah well.

[leo8877]

Did you guys know if you double tap on your opponents portrait in the in-game screen, it tells you how many reinforcements they have?  I just noticed that this AM.

[Isgrimnur]

Been using that for a bit.  I pretty much play resource depletion games.  Especially on the map wit one crystal out front and the other one in back.  Of course, they've now tweaked it so the one in fromt is 2/3 of your strength rather than 1/2.

[Isgrimnur]

I've cracked the top 4000 in the leaderboards.  72 wins at the moment. 

[kathode]

Been totally slammed at work as we headed toward a milestone today.  I'll get caught up on moves soon.

[leo8877]

http://www.robotentertainment.com/blog/detail/Hero-Academy-1.2.2-Update-Coming-Today

[leo8877]

http://www.robotentertainment.com/blog/detail/Hero-Academy-Coming-Steam

Coming to Steam and will include an unlock for a TF2 themed team.  The team can be unlocked only on Steam, but can then be used on iOS as well.  Cross-platform play is also available.

[wonderpug]

Moving thread to PC Gaming...
Moving thread to Portable Gaming...
Moving thread to PC Gaming...
Moving thread to Portable Gaming...

[wonderpug]

Woah woah, everyone quiet down for a sec.

There's a video interview out now that shows some footage of the new team, with some info provided by the interviewee as well.

[leo8877]

TF challenge maps available now on iOS.

[wonderpug]

The team's mechanics seem so complicated; I'm a little worried. I guess they all seem confusing at first, so here's hoping.

[leo8877]

The team's mechanics seem so complicated; I'm a little worried. I guess they all seem confusing at first, so here's hoping.

I agree it seems more complicated than the others.

[wonderpug]

Anyone aside from Leo expecting to be playing tomorrow? I've been dormant for a whole but I'm excited to get back into it to try the new team and see how the PC version is, and I'll be starting a bunch of matches tomorrow.

[leo8877]

What am I, chopped liver?

[wonderpug]

lol, the idea being that you are a person who it's already clear will be playing tomorrow.

I don't know if you're looking for a bigger pool of regular opponents, but there's a group of people over at Penny Arcade I play with regularly (when I'm regularly playing).

[leo8877]

Hehe I'm just being silly. I haven't played in a long time either. Not sure how much I like this new TF team though!

[wonderpug]

"Sad news, Heroes. Hero Academy on Steam won't quite be coming along today as expected. We found a very last-minute issue that we aren't comfortable shipping with. We need more time to investigate so that we can ship the best product possible. Apologies to everyone for the inconvenience. We'll keep you posted about new ship date/time as soon as we have this figured out."

[wonderpug]

Tomorrow should be the day