Elemental Champions

Deep within the Akaishi Mountains of Japan is a collective of monasteries where the monks of the Tenshi Seugikan order reside. When the Monsterpocalypse began, they attempted to sit out the conflict, but as the situation grew more and more dim, the order decided they had no choice but to stand up and protect the innocents of Earth. The monks cast aside their meditation robes and summoned forth elemental kami and avatars to help them in their duty. Then the greatest of these monks took up the most revered of their artifacts. In the most critical of times, these humble monks focus all their power through these artifacts and are able to grow 30 times their size to become elemental warrior-gods that can stand against any opposing force.

In developing the monsters and units of the Elemental Champions, we drew inspiration from the attributes of the elements the figure would represent. For instance, water is about fluidity—it’d hard to pin water down. Therefore we set out to make Aquosia and the water units very adaptive and mobile. In Aquosia’s case, the new Quick skill allows her to move without spending an action die. We also gave her ultra version Annihilate, as she is a master of all forms of attack. Her stats are balanced to represent this as well; she can come at you in many different ways. On the unit side of things, the Water Avatar is very fast for a unit (Speed 7) and has the Transport ability, which allows it to bring a Water Kami into the battle. Water Kami, of course, are little beat sticks designed to put a hurt on the non-enlightened.

If you consider that fire is very aggressive and destructive as it spreads, you will understand where we came from in developing Incinerus, who is all about his blast attack and making hazards. Incinerus features a new action called Ignite that allows you to flip over rubble tiles to their hazard sides. He also has Hazardous in red, so any units in his agenda adjacent to him catch fire to deliver extra damage when monsters are body slammed on top of them. Incinerus can make it very difficult for your opponent to find a safe place to hide. For fire-themed units, the Fire Kami are awesome little blast attack figures with the Ignite action as well.

Earth and air are the other two elements. While the Earth Avatar does appear in this set—it sports Nesting, Amplify, and a rock-solid Defense 4—the rest of the air and earth figures will come in future sets.

Visually, the Elemental Champions are unique and inspired. To be honest, making up monsters is the easy part of creating new factions; the challenge is always in generating good ideas for the units. When we first began talking about making these guys, we talked about doing some monstrous samurai to complement the visuals of the ninjas in the first three series. As we batted around concepts for these units, Matt had an idea for little elemental beings wearing armor. At that time I just could not picture it; I was too caught up in the idea of armor being helmets and shoulder pads and could not make any sense of what he talking about. When I saw the concept art, though, the whole faction came together for me in an instant.

I really like that while these guys are Protectors like the G.U.A.R.D., they have a spiritual essence about them. I think it solidifies the idea of the agendas a bit more and gets to the core of what motivates the factions. What’s more, these guys perform great with the G.U.A.R.D. My own current plans include running a couple of Rocket Choppers and Strike Fighters alongside Incinerus when I play him and running some of those Fire and Earth Avatars with G.U.A.R.D. robots.

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