After visiting some of the statistics pages (most notably http://public.tableau.com/profile/arathorn#!/vizhome/Sentinels1/Overview and http://x.gray.org/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-difficulty-scores.html), I couldn't help but notice Omnitron has almost a bizarre percentage of wins compared to how he usually seems to unfold at my table. On some tables he's ranked higher than Grand Warlord Voss, even.
This seems pretty weird given that Omnitron (non-Cosmic) is rated at 1 difficulty and I even usually run him as an "Intro to Sentinels" for new players, since Baron Blade just feels too easy in regular mode.
It seems like almost all of the game he spends his time playing components, then those components blow off of him because of taking 7 damage before they actually go off and hurt anyone. Sometimes drones come out, they do a little damage or healing, and then they die.
I'm wondering if I'm missing something about how Omnitron plays that would make him tougher? Or is it just that his flechettes and technological superiority cards can inflict lots of board-clearance and damage and sometimes those result in things going south for the heros?
That would be part of it along with a bad timed Terraforming. Also games where you either don't have Ongoing destruction to get rid of Adaptive Plating Subroutine which slows the game down in Omnitron's favor if you have a smaller group. Omnitron can be a pushover at times but there are games I've been hammered by him.
Edit: Early EPEs can be deadly too when you aren't setup to deal with it yet.
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This. Plus very bad timed 15-damage-a-pop bombs. I guess you have never seen a bomb come out at the worst time when theres nothing you can do about it. If so you are far luckier than most and I'd consider you a major statistical outlier.
Try playing him on advanced (something I recomend with all of the "easy" villains). In addition, Omnitron II is a tougher variation you might find more pleasing.
Start a game with two Electro Pulse Explosives in play (1 played for the the play phase, 1 played for Rampaging Robot) and there's not much you can do to not lose by the start of his second turn.
I almost forgot those bombs existed. We've seen them, but it seems like every time they come up we've got something that can deal with them in an inappropriately easy way (Nightmist or Tachyon redirecting their damage back at them, Visionary using Wrest the Mind, etc.). I could definitely see the game being hard if in his play-2-villain-cards mode or via Terraforming he throws out a board wipe followed by a bomb.
Thanks for clearing that up. It's good to know we're playing it correctly, we've just been fortunate not to ever have his wombo-combos come out on us.
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And if you are on a three hero team that requires some setup? Two starting EPEs is pretty much doom. Another rough situation with EPE is having Pillars of Hercules or Time Flies causes EPE to be played start of turn with little ability to react.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31