Awesome new info about Inevitable!

There's a load of neat new information and developments in the world of Inevitable.  You've probably already been following our leaks on the Leaks blog, but we've been busy elsewhere too!

We've announced what the 21 groups will be in the Core set.  Here's the list again:

The Adrenaline Junkies, ACME, The Child Prodigies, The Church, The College Students, The Faces in the Crowd, The Famous International Playboys, The Handmaidens of C'thulhu, The Identity Thieves, The Living Dead, The Mafia, The Makers, The Mental Patients, The Ministry of Truth, The Ninjas, The Paparazzi, The Taxi Drivers, The Post-Apocalyptic Beasts, The Time Travelers, UPS, and the agents of HappyCOM-9, the Clone Police.

Many of these groups are from the very first iteration of Inevitable (ACME, The Child Prodigies, The Church, and so on), but a few of them are from iterations of the set from "the PSU years." (The Paparazzi & Taxi Drivers) More than a few are revisions and re-imaginings of classic groups (The Adrenaline Junkies and The Handmaidens of C'thulhu), and at least one is almost entirely brand-new from this 2010 launch (The Makers).

The thing that makes me happiest about them is that it is tremendously hard for me to pick a "favorite" group.  Each group brings good fun to the table when it's in the game; each one has good odds for winning.  Here, let me do a quick break-down of each group:

Adrenaline Junkies: Movement + extra income and influence boosts. 

First off, parkour is cool and parkour in a dystopic future mega-city is just awesome.  I'm glad that we have a group that does parkour.  The Adrenaline Junkies have a great movement power with secondary income- and influence-boosting effects.  Movement powers are very useful in Inevitable (and will only become more important as we release expansions in the future), as it's one of the things you have the least control over in the game. 

ACME: Lots of extra cash +  discounts on items.

ACME used to be a shoe-in for, "Hell yeah, I'd play that group."  However, with our new focus on shorter games, ACME's power has waned a bit.  After all, if the game is shorter, players spend less $$$ on items, resulting in les money flowing to ACME.  Consequently, we've given ACME an extra secondary power to help 'em make their dollars go even farther: an Employee Discount!  Massive income combined with items "at cost"?  Yeah, ACME is awesome.

Child Prodigies: Grow as you play; The most versatile "growth" group in the game.

Although there are other "growth" groups in Inevitable, none of them have the awesome versatility of the Child Prodigies.  Even though you start weak as a baby (Literally. Really!), played correctly, the Child Prodigies are a freakin' juggernaut.  Like ACME, the Child Prodigies suffered from the shortening of the game, so we amped up their power a bit.  Also, the new re-cloning costs mean that it's dirt-cheap to get re-cloned when your Power Maximum is crazy low.  For the Child Prodigies, that's another mark in their favor.

The Church: Die roll modifiers; The only group that can win (or make you win) round 6 of You Bet Your Clone!

If you're an Inevitable veteran, there's no surprises for you here.  The Church, much like its arch-nemesis The Ministry of Truth, has changed very little.  Good income and influence, combined with a kickin' die modifying special power. The Church's ability to add or subtract one from a die roll, even if it makes impossible results (like a seven on a six-sided die) is very potent. It's also important to note that part of the amazing versatility of a power that modifies die rolls is that it doubles as a movement power. If you keep your power in reserve and only use it when you roll to move, you'll never-ever land on a space that'll hurt you.  It's simple and easy to play, and darn fun to negotiate and blackmail people with the threat/promise of changing a die roll.

The College Students: Special powers?  Sure, I'll take three! 

If you're familiar with previous incarnations of The College Students, they're even more awesome than they used to be.  Why?  When you trigger their special power, there's no risk of it mis-firing.  Yeah, a great group got even better.

The Faces in the Crowd: Election advantage + special immunity 

All it takes is a few good turns at the beginning of the game and the Faces in the Crowd have better-than-even odds of beating HappyCOM-9 in the Election.  The new Outfiting phase at the start of the game just makes it that much easier for the Faces to hit the ground running.  While other groups are still trying to build their Influence and Power, The Faces are making a beeline for the center.  On top of this, they're shielded by their immunities.  The Faces used to be my favorite group, simply for the fact that they were nigh-unstoppable if you played to win.  They aren't any worse (They still rock), but we've brought up all the other groups to their level of awesomeness.

The Famous International Playboys: Big income +  special immunity

One of the few groups that's even simpler to play than The Church.  Move, buy stuff, boost your stats, and progress inexorably toward victory.  What more is there to say?  They're not flashy, (which is a little ironic, given their name / role) but there's a lot of room for wheeling and dealing when you rake in the kind of cash that the FIPs do.

The Handmaidens of C'thulhu: Special immunity + mild income and influence growth.

As you may have noticed, I've been a little vague about how some of these groups work.  That's because we're only giving five of them away for free - the other 15 (or 16?) will be part of the $9.95 PDF (or the Deluxe set, of course).  The Handmaidens of C'thulhu are not a free group, and their special power is... intricate... so it's challenging to explain what it is that makes them so fun to play.  I'll just say this: They're the only group with rules for amassing followers and building a cult.  Also, they're a mid-range combat group, so that's cool too.

The Identity Thieves: Meta-power + specialized growth 

The Identity Thieves are the "final evolution" of the group formerly known as The Metamorphs (Well, that makes sense. The Metamorphs metamorphosed into the Identity Thieves.).  Again, I can't say much about them except that they have one of the cooler special meta-powers.  Anyone can play the I.D. Thieves, but it takes a smart, savvy player to really use them to their fullest advantage.  But if you do...  Hoo boy.

The Living Dead: Special immunity + massive combat power + specialized growth + combat-linked growth

Okay, let's start with the inability to die.  Right there, that's pretty cool.  On top of that, let's add the second-highest starting Power and Power Maximum in the game.  That's also awesome.  On top of that, include the ability to regenerate Power at the start of each turn.  What?  You want more?  Okay, howzabout the ability to add all unarmed combat damage to deal to your Power Maximum? You're a literal combat monster!

Yeah.  The Living Dead rock.  And they're gonna eat. Your. Brains!

They're coming to get you, Barbara...

The Mafia: Special immunity + income boost / direct damage power + combat tweak

Okay.  I'm going to have to be vague again.  What I can say is that you have a relatively cool immunity that'll prevent you from getting disrupted at inconvenient times.  On top of that, you get to torment the other players (which gives you some nice negotiation leverage) and a nifty "combat tweak" that could very easily turn what would look like certain defeat to victory.  It all may sound complex, but it's actually a rather simple group to play.  Also they start with decent all-around stats.

The Makers: Special item access + extra-special item access

Those of you "in the know" may have noticed that a core group with "Clone" in the name is missing.  This is the new incarnation of that group.  Aside from having that former group's item access, we've added extra-special access to every item in the catalog.  This makes for a group with a lot of negotiation power and flexibility.  Big fun, indeed.

The Mental Patients: Arguably the best immunity in the game + passive area-effect "contagion"

I've written a lot about how awesome the other groups are.  Lots of, "If you can't win with this group, you're a monkey," kind of stuff.  However, I (deliberately) neglected to mention the one great equalizer in the game: Boxes of Dead Raccoons.  For $150, you can send a BDR to another player and make him or her gain six points of stress.  Since you can send three items per turn, $450 and three mailings will boost a perfectly sane group's stress to 18 - a mere three points away from involuntary admission to Happydale Sanitarium.  Odds are that three BDRs will push any mid- to end-game player to at least 23 stress and a one-way trip to a comfy padded cell.  Boxes of Dead Raccoons are the single best way to stop a player who's making a run for the center.  You can't refuse to open the packages, and going insane pulls you back to the outer ring and makes you lose at least one turn.  Knowing this, it's a little remarkable that anyone ever manages to win Inevitable.  You have to keep your stress super-low and be really sneaky.

Unless you're the Mental Patients.  You're immune to stress, so you just don't care.

Take a look at the board (There's a link to it at the bottom of this post. ).  There's more than a few spaces where part or all of the negative effect is gaining stress; pay special attention to the inner circle.  For the Mental Patients, these spaces aren't scary at all.

Even with this special power, we realized that the new, quicker game made their power less useful than it'd been in the past.  So we added a secondary power to them.  If you pass through or share their space, you gain stress.  It's great for the Mental Patients, and it sucks for everyone else.  It's perfect, really.

Okay, I'm getting tired and it's getting late.  I'm not going to stop short altogether, but the following reviews are going to be a lot shorter...

The Ministry of Truth: Die roll modifiers = powerful negotiation.

The Ninjas: Special immunity + combat tweak + decent starting combat power + ninja awesomeness!

The Paparazzi: The most amusing movement power ever + free bribes (kind of)

The Taxi Drivers: A very powerful movement power + a weird combat tweak

The Post-Apocalyptic Beasts: Special immunity + board modification + special movement power (with a mini-game!)

The Time Travelers: Clever movement power + high starting intelligence

UPS: A flippin' cool item-oriented power = powerful negotiation

The agents of HappyCOM-9, The Clone Police: If the players lose, you win + lots of special abilities + kickin' stats

A quick note on the Clone Police – No one ever starts as them.  You have to die or go permanently insane to play the Clone Police.  That said, we've made it significantly easier to enter play as the Clone Police than it used to be.  Don't pound your opponents down too hard or they'll come back as the Clone Police and exact their bloody, bloody revenge.

You have been warned.

Whew!  On top of all that, we've also posted a near-final picture of what the board will look like.

I'm looking forward to printing and release.  It'll be awesome!