Fall 2023
We have updated our art to better depict abilities, toned down Wanda, and buffed Jerry.
After demoing Unsung Heroes to many people, we noticed that our some of our symbols were not as sharp as they could be. So we fixed that. We also knew that Wanda could have some pretty crazy dice interactions with her passive. Quick statistical math showed those instances to be rare, and so we were ok with it. But after demoing and watching many games, the instances were creeping up more than we liked. So we fixed that too. Further, despite untold hours of playtesting and nerdy talks about probability and statistics, what we didn’t account for was loss aversion. Go figure. As such, Jerry received some changes that help him and his swapping shenanigans.
Art Updates
Jerry’s passive adds a Red die to any new dice he plays, but he can discard any color die from the roll after. This update more clearly shows that this is how his ability works.
Similarly, the previous swap image showed that only Red dice being swapped. Given that Jerry can swap dice of any color, the symbol has been updated as such.
Since the game uses specific colors to help denote specific things, Wanda’s old passive made it seem like it only worked on White dice. When it was simply described as working on all dice, the next logical question was why it didn’t work on her Purple die. The update to the art now shows the dice Comedy of Errors affects.
Tilda’s art was redone. To be honest, our Artist was never happy with the outline art and took the opportunity to improve it.
Wanda
It is not surprising to say that Wanda is our strongest character. After all, someone needs to be the best, why not Ms. Wondrous herself? Yet, Comedy of Errors was proving to be too powerful.
It was so powerful that she would stomp every game. But when she started rolling 1s, she would quickly spiral out of control. I remember simulating millions of dice rolls to figure out the statistics around Comedy of Errors, and thinking to myself, ” A 1 in 100,000 chance seems rare enough.”
But then while at Origins 2023, almost to prove herself, Wanda pulled out not 1, but 2 of those unlikely scenarios.
Comedy of Errors wasn’t a problem in every game, yet she can play a Skipping Stone and get a 9 (normally, only a maximum of 4), which is at the level of Alfred’s Gold Card. So, we decided to cut off the tail end of her distribution.
As such, Comedy of Errors now only generates dice on the initial dice rolled. If a Comedy of Errors die is rolls a 1, it does NOT generate another die. Now she is still strong, but not “I’ll trade you an item card for a Gold Card” strong.
Speaking of Gold Cards, Wanda’s double 
on her Gold Card let her score 9+ with an 80% probability. If you wanted a 10+ on your die, I believe you had greater than a 50% chance of getting that.
This was a bit too safe for a character designed to be go big or go home. So her Gold Card now only has 1 reroll. It Worked! worked a bit too good.
Jerry
Jerry has been in a weird spot. He is targeted the most by Nopes and was having a more difficult time. We found that it is all because of his swaps.
If Alfred plays a +5 and is winning by 3 points, no one seems to mind terribly much. However, if Jerry plays Never Get Caught, swaps Your die with his, and is now only winning by 2 points, we have a problem on our hands. Interestingly, it is not because Jerry got a higher score… it is because He took YOUR die!
His cards triggered an emotional response that we didn’t design for. So we’re hoping to fix this by giving him a new rule: Defiant Laugh.
If this card is Noped, Gain a 
Both Never Get Caught and Hide in Plain Sight gain Defiant Laugh.
This makes it less appealing to target Jerry with so many Nopes. And gives the poor guy a chance to do Jerry things.
Additionaly, Jerry needed more dice. Never Get Caught gained a 
And finally, His Gold Card changed from Reroll All, to Reroll Everyone Else’s.
To add some context. There is a concept called the Law of Large Numbers. It says that as you roll more dice, the closer to average your dice will become. If everyone had rolled their starting dice, plus a few cards that included dice, and then Jerry plays his Gold Card forcing everyone to reroll all their dice, the score should not change much on average.
You can try this out by taking a handful of dice and rolling them, recording the score, and rolling them again. The more you roll, the more you will see the score does not change significantly.
The idea behind Jarry’s Gold Card is that he would be able to cause mayhem, and then swap his worst for the best die. Additionally, any rerolls used by his opponents to make their dice better would be nullified with his Reroll All.
Given how Jerry’s Gold Card works, he would tend to save it for the end of the round. This is also when people have the most dice, and so the Law of Large Numbers is more applicable… and as a response, everyone would save their reroll cards until after Jerry used is Gold Card.
As such, his Gold Card functioned like Hide in Plain Sight. This wasn’t enough for a Gold Card. So it got buffed.
As Always...
We will continue to monitor the game. If these changes proved too much, we will bring them back in. We would love to know your thoughts on the changes (leave a comment below!) and will be including all changes in the future printings of Unsung Heroes.
