Order of the Stick

This collection is based on the Order of the Stick webcomic by Rich Burlew.

Heroes

Belkar Bitterleaf

Belkar is a sexy shoeless god of war, and he stabs things relentlessly and with great enthusiasm. He is rewarded for getting the kill himself, befitting his fairly selfish approach to life, and has a lot of ways to temporarily increase his damage to help him deal with the limitations imposed by exclusively dual-wielding his tiny little swords. He also has a miniature story arc where he can become inflicted with the Mark of Justice, which is a major story moment for him in the comic, and have it help him pretend to undergo character development. Compared to the rest of the Order, Belkar has less utility and less ability to manipulate the board, but his temporary manipulation of his own damage gives him interesting decision-making options and rewards planning ahead to maximize your murders.

Here's a video by TakeWalker showing off a game with Belkar!

Durkon

Durkon is probably the simplest character in the collection - he's a classic tank and protection character that's designed to be new player friendly. My main objective with with the Order of the Stick is to capture the feeling of being the characters, so picking up Durkon and playing him should feel like stepping into the boots of a fairly understated, well-meaning dwarven cleric with a delightful accent and the occasional blast of hammer smashing courtesy of Thor.

Here's a video by TakeWalker showing off a game with Durkon!

Elan

Elan is a goofy jack of all trades bardic support. He uses his bardsong and limited magical abilities to help and protect his allies, or at least to annoy them so much that they go fight the enemies so they can get away from him. Elan scales better to high H, but that's traditional for all bards, and you can pretty easily plan around his expected power level when you're designing the fight.

Here's a video by TakeWalker showing off a game with Elan!

Haley Starshine

Haley is a utility DPS that specializes in ambushing targets that just entered play. She can choose between a few different ammo types with each of her arrows depending on the context, and has a selection of roguish shenanigans capitalizing on her copious Charisma. A small equipment subtheme runs through the deck, which matches her preference for preperation and focus on material possessions.

Roy Greenhilt

Roy is intended to be an archetypal D&D fighter - he can off-tank with self-healing and protection, but doesn't have global damage mitigation like Legacy, and his main power comes from his damage output. He's focused on dealing single-target damage, and tends to leave clearing larger mook crowds to people like Vaarsuvius and Haley. He's specifically intended to have a high scaling limit with minimal complexity, representing how Roy levels up and gradually acquires power over the course of the comic. Like Durkon, he's intended to be new player friendly, so almost every instance of damage in the deck starts from the same base value of 2, minimizing the petty arithmetic required.

Vaarsuvius

Vaarsuvius is a wizard of ambiguous gender and unambiguous power. They have historically been the center of power for the Order of the Stick, just as wizards have historically been in D&D - provided that they have the right spells prepared. The idea of spell preparation is core to both Vaarsuvius and classic D&D wizards, and I tried to make the deck reflect that. Of course, you can't wait 24 hours before the next fight in Sentinels, but even a one turn delay is enough to make a big difference. All of Vaarsuvius' spells are flashy and powerful, but are also ongoings with three requirements: a card play, a power use, and a one turn delay. The complete package is a wizard with an interesting prepared spell mechanic and the ability to pull off devastating plays - if you prepare correctly.

Villains

Xykon is an monumentally powerful lich whose only weakness is his tendency to not really take anything seriously. His quest to rule the world, with his mostly faithful cleric Redcloak at his side, drives the overarching plot of the Order of the Stick. He was defeated once early on, but simply regrew from his phylactery and returned to wreak more havoc.

In Sentinels terms, this means that Xykon has a highly damaging first phase, but has very few hit points as villains go. Once he is defeated, his overall threat level is lowered while the heroes rush on a quest to find and destroy the phylactery before he regenerates back to full strength. He's a strategy-heavy villain that gives the heroes a lot of agency to avoid the disaster that comes from him regenerating, but he can be brutal if the heroes don't plan enough.

Here's a video by TakeWalker showing off a game with Xykon!