A couple of weeks ago I introduced my friend Greg to SotM. Since then he's been obsessed with figuring out how to beat Citizen Dawn when she's in Advanced Mode. Last night he had a chance to try.
My husband and I had several friends over for a Game Night, including Greg. One table played Magic: the Gathering and the other table played Sentinels of the Multiverse.
(Which leads to a side question: is MtG a gateway drug for SotM, or is SotM the innocuous-seeming first step on the slippery slope to Magic? Or, like carrots and coffee, do they have nothing in common with each other except the fact that I love them?)
Anyway, we had a four-player SotM game going in the living room. Greg and I had played before, but Leigh and Robert were new to the game. We eased the newbies in by playing a simple campaign against Baron Blade in Metropolis. Wham bam thank you Tempest, in just half an hour the team of heroes had overwhelmed the Mad Baron. Now for Omnitron on Mars!
The rampaging robot ate our shorts. Badly.
Of course we had to play him again, so we did. Fiercely, without mercy. Grrr, argh! We beat Omnitron even though he was in Advanced Mode, with Dinosaurs!
(How did the robot get to the dinosaur island? We figured that there had been an advanced culture of sentient dinosaurs back in the Jurassic era, that built spaceships once they knew a deadly comet was on its way. Several hundred of them left the planet just before the comet hit the earth, wiping out all traces of their dino-civilization. But now they're back, with their deadly robot factory, and they're pissed.)
We congratulated each other on our amazing victory. I celebrated with some spicy tofu snacks and a bottle of sparkling Adult Beverage. (No, not champagne, it wasn't THAT amazing a victory. Think micro-brewery summer lager.) Sadly, I'm a wimp when it comes to Adult Beverages, even deliciously mild micro-brewery summer lagers. One bottle at 11:00 PM and I'm down for the count. Nodding off, I said my goodnights and toddled off to bed.
But.... before leaving I learned that the next SotM game was going to be a campaign against Citizen Dawn in Advanced Mode. Greg was prepared to lead the team to victory. He had brought notes.
As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear our friends laughing and shouting in the living room. The game was in full swing. Next thing I knew, the alarm was ringing, birds were chirping, and my husband was making those snorty groany sounds a man makes when he does not particularly want to wake up at 6:00 AM and shave for work. In fact, he sounded like a man who sincerely wished he could call in to work and explain that a thieving velociraptor had taken all his equipment the night before, so he was going to just sit out this day thank-you-very-much. With typical wifely concern, I lovingly shook him and tenderly turned on the bright lights.
"Did Greg do it?"
"Argh, the lights, they burn, precious! Warn me before you turn them on. Did Greg do what?"
"Did Greg beat Citizen Dawn in Advanced Mode?"
His huge yawn morphed into a big grin. "Yes he did! It was beautiful."
"How? How? How how how how how?"
"Can't talk, got to get ready for work now...." (My dear husband's revenge was sweet. To him.)
I still don't know how Greg did it. But now that I know it's possible, I AM going to find out!
If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
I can't speak for Christopher and the rest, but I know I've never managed to beat Citizen Dawn on advanced mode. Now that I think about it, though, I'd think Haka could be a good choice for doing that with if you broke out Savage Mana early enough...
See the way my body's glowing? Yeah, a lot of people can't do that.
Haha! I love this idea. Robots+Dinosaurs is ALWAYS a good plan. And wouldn't you be pissed if you left a nice neat planet (comet notwithstanding), and came back to what we've done to it?
Oh, the suspense!
I take the words. I scatter them in time... and space.
A message to lead myself here.
For his next challenge: beat Citizen Dawn on advanced mode.... without The Visionary :D
“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
As far as we know, this was the first time EVER that any team beat Advanced Citizen Dawn. I just found out the environment was Ruins of Atlantis, and the team was Fanatic, Tempest, Tachyon, and Visionary.
If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Hello everybody! Greg here.
So, without Visionary huh ... that could be fun to figure out. I think it's still possible perhaps with Absolute Zero, will get back to that.
The setup for how to do it is a bit cheesy, I'll admit - and requires a fair amount of luck.
Fanatic wants to get and play End of Days as early as possible, Visionary obviously helps in doing that, but so does Tachyon -
We were lucky and actually got it to drop turn 1, though the citizens on the board weren't PARTICULARLY threatening yet, so we could have probably survived a few extra turns this early without any real problem to the overall board state.
End of Days dropped, Citizen Dawn Flipped, and I started fishing for another End of Days for when Dawn flipped back. Then a unexpected surprise happened. Tempest drew a Reclaim from the Deep ... Problem Solved!
Well, kind of. It took a few turns to get 5 citizens on the board, and during that time poor Tempest got crushed under a rock ... but she flipped back, and Fanatic blew up the sun again ... and then the real game started.
That's most of the set up, the rest of the game was trying to control the board and prevent as much damage as possible, we eventually lost Tachyon - and found a amusing combination with fanatic that let me play Aegis of Resurrection ... every turn.
Not going to lie, that helped ... alot.
As far as I can tell, one of the most important keys to beating Citizen Dawn on advance mode is to keep her from flipping. Once she's flipped, you just have to sit there and take all the damage she and the other citizens can take until she flips back. If you fight back, you can't harm her. If you survive until she flips again, your team is severely weakened. Visionary is so helpful in doing this because she has a lot of cards that affect the other decks. She can help the other players get what they need to do the most damage or even simply survive. More importantly, however, she is able to affect what comes out of the villain deck and when with some of her cards and if you combine that with a little luck, you can surely beat her. To date, I have done it one time. Paul is right that the next step is to do it without Visionary.
For me, I started playing Magic after I started playing SotM and, frankly, I don't think I would have enjoyed it even remotely as much without having played Sentinels first. So, I don't know if one causes/can cause a love for the other, but in my case, it was Sentinels first and Magic more recently.
Jodie :-)
Warehouse Manager
jodie@greaterthangames.com
I would think that Absolute Zero, Legacy, Tempest, and some other fourth hero wouldn't be too bad. Absolute Zero being able to absorb Winter's attacks and get an extra attack from both Summer and Hammer. If legacy can get two "Next Evolutions", "Danger Sense", "The Legacy Ring", and "Lead from the Front" would be extremely helpful. Leaving Tempest being able to heal, attack multiple opponents, and using "Regain from the Deep" for when Citizen Dawn decides to use "Devastating Aurora". Absolute Zero and Tempest are both able to destroy ongoing cards aswell, and as everyone probably noticed Citizen Dawn has plenty of 'em. The fourth may be between Fanatic and Haka, considering Fanatic's deck is mostly one-shots and other than "Aegis of Resurrection" I don't think her Equipment and Ongoing would be fine getting destroyed. Then Haka's bute strength and self healing would also add a lot to the table.
All this is just a theory so far, now if only I could get a hold of more of my friends at once so that way they can learn the game better and try it out.
Citizen Dawn is definitely a tough villain to face. Beat her once on Advanced mode with four characters in the city. The main strategy that we used was 1) not letting her flip over and 2) using Visionary to mind control Citizen Dawn's moves while others beat her up.
See, I disagree - I think the key to beating her is letting her flip, and in fact forcing her to, getting your lashings out of the way and then blowing up the board and not trying to dance around killing what's doing the real damage to your team - her citizen allies.
That said, Robert, the friend I played with before - has a theory to try to beat Dawn without Visionary. We're going to try it probably on Friday or over the weekend. Haka, Fanatic, Legacy and Tempest is his plan - with the "try not to let her flip" idea ... with fanatic as backup in case she does anyway.
The problem with the 'don't let her flip' strategy is when you're in Ruins of Atlantis and you get the Atlantean Font of Power and just happen to pull a bunch of high powered mass effects cards - when that happened it blew all of the chunks. Ever. Granted we had let her flip and this was the turn she pulled her 5th minion (on advanced mode). Suffice it to say, we did not save even a piece of that Multiverse.
"Crime doesn't keep the Sabbath"
I tend to follow the strategy of having her flip as early as possible too, because too many of her Citizens out there makes it very difficult. Especially since so many power eachother up and you never want Citizen Anvil and Citizen Truth out together, all damage to Truth is a minus two to hit and can only hit him, it gets really annoying after awhile.
So, last night me and some friends played a game against Citizen Dawn in advanced mode.
We had Wraith, Haka, Fanatic, Legacy, and Ra.
We absolutely trounced her. However, the card combo we used to pull this off seemed a bit off and there was some discussion about whether or not this should work.
In the second round Fanatic played Chastise on Legacy and then Legacy played Heroic Interception. Huge sigh of relief as the damage being dealt was absurd. We had another Heroic Interception and Haka drew Ground Pound.
Huge luck streak, but the pain was coming soon enough.
Except Legacy drew Lead from the Front. And this is where things became broken.
With Legacy immune to damage and able to redirect all damage to himself, we could just sit and pound on Dawn until she died completely ignoring her minions. Well, Dawn herself and the environment could still damage us, but they did not do enough damage to threaten us. On top of that, with Infrared Eyepiece from Wraith we could avoid cards that killed Ongoings effectively allowing us to keep this up forever.
This seems dreadfully broken, so I'd guess it was either not intended or we missed something.
So piecing this together...
Fanatic's Chastise made Legacy immune to damage.
Legacy's Lead from the Front directed all villain attacks to Legacy, who was immune to damage.
This seems to work as far as I can tell. However, this will only work for as long Fanatic has HP to sacrifice to Chastise. If Legacy gets Motivational Charge out, though, they can pretty much keep this up forever until something wipes all ongoings.
See the way my body's glowing? Yeah, a lot of people can't do that.
But with The Wraith using Infared Eyepiece, it makes it hard for a card to destroy ongoings to show up from the Villan deck, inless of course two appear in a row or the game carries on so long that it ends up getting to the bottom where one gets drawn. Another thing, is there a card that destroys all ongoing cards in the environment, I know i've seen equipment ones but can't recall an ongoing, aside for ones that require one ongoing card from each or one hero and only take two damage anyone who doesn't will recieve four, there is also the ones that requre everyone or one person to destroy an ongoing to destroy the environment. The easy way to by pass both of those is to have ongoing cards out you wouldn't mind discarding.
This particular interaction is currently the most concerning to us in the game. If we decide to do an official errata, we will announce it here and post it on the website.
“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
My friends and I defeated Citizen Dawn on Advanced this evening. Our team composition was: Tempest, Visionary, Legacy, Hakka, and Tachyon. Our starting citizens were Sweat, Tears, Anvil, and Winter and we were playing on dino island. We got off to a slow start on account of Citizen Tears but eventually we were able to knock her out and gain some momentum. Citizen Assault came out before long and a few Stratospheres from Tempest allowed us to fight him a few times and delay any nastier cards from coming out long enough for Hakka to find Savage Mana. A well timed Rise with the Dawn brought citizens back one at a time and two obisidian fields allowed Hakka to eat them handily. Visionary didn't manage much of Dawn (we were never able to use brain burn or suggestion) but Visionary was integral to avoiding the worst the environment had to offer. It soon became a game of keeping Hakka alive to protect the Citizens he had squirelled away under Savage Mana. Fortunately we had Cleansing Downpour from Tempest and Legacy's healing and damage absorption. Tachyon was able to get in a double Lightspeed Barrage turn to put some major hurt on Dawn. Together we were able to take her out without her flipping.
I had assembled this Villian/Environment combination in an attempt to bring our team down and demonstrate how hard the game could be (4 of our players were playing for the first time). While we did claim victory, my friends got a sense that it was quite narrow and could've been lost had the cards gone against us. We certainly lucked out for not seeing either Devastating Araura or Citizen Truth.
I apologize for any spelling grammar mistakes (a few adult beverages were consumed). My friends eagerly await the arrival of the expansions (which unfortunately are on back order!). Thanks for making a great game!!