Characters that scare me a bit.

Presumably Omnitron-X had to severely restrict itself in order to be able to jump back in time.

In terms of which version is more powerful, do consider that Omnitron is a difficulty 1 villain, whereas Omnitron X is often considered one of the most powerful heroes in the game.

Soloing anybody against anybody doesn't go too well. I will admit I regularly cringe in Omni-X vs. Omni battles in anticipation of Technological singularity.

That is mechanically within the game. There's no reason to believe that game mechanics is an actual representation of the power a character holds.

Is the Chairman more powerful than Omnitron then? If we're going by game mechanics to determine the power of a particular villain than the Chairman is more powerful than Voss, Omnitron and arguably even Iron Legacy. The Chairman's difficulty in mechanics is determined partly by his physical prowess, but mostly by the fact that he has such a large and intricate empire that simply getting to him and making him vulnerable is an epic battle in it of itself.

There are several things that Omni-X can do that Omni classic can not. Omni-X can do irreducible damage, heal his allies and not just himself, manipulate time around him to benefit himself or others, protect himself from multiple damage types instead of just one at a time.

Also, as I said earlier, there aren't really any heroes that can stand up to a villain one on one. Does this mean that the villains are inherently more powerful, not necessarily.

Heroes aren't mean to function by themselves in this game, it's just not how it's built, but there is a huge jump in Omni's effectiveness from villain to hero. As a villain, he is sometimes a big challenge given the makeup of your team and what cards he gets out, but most of the time, he's not much of a threat. When he becomes a hero though, he is almost always a valuable asset to his team and helps ensure victory.

We really have no way of judging the power level between heroes and villains. However we do know several of the heroes have their own comic line, I really don't see every one of those issues always having 3 to 5 heroes working together to defeat a villain. Legacy has totally thwarted Baron Blade's plans without the the help of other heroes. Argent has probably even sent Akash'Bhuta packing on his own.

Do we know that the loss of drones is between 9 and 10? Or the size change? To me, the biggest question is what was version 9 like? It could already be very different than 1. Maybe it already stopped making drones earlier, because the common way to bit it was to severe the link. Maybe it already became smaller, because it was to big of a target, or it needed the humanoid shape for ease of mobility. Maybe the Empathy chip was an attempt at camouflage into human society. Maybe Omnitron was trying to become a cylon. Maybe 9 was Con, and Omnitron already moved from robos to human drones.

Er, Tactics is competitive isn't it?

Not completley. It's semi co-op. Team of players vs another player(s). SotM and GSF are true Co-ops in that it is 100% Player vs the games card-based AI.

Is Vengeance Blade weaker that regular or Mad Bomber Blade then? Because those Blades could fight the Freedom team by themselves, whereas Vengeance Blade requires a team with him.

My basic understanding is that the battles we fight in the game are adaptations of battles that happened in the universe of the multiverse. Sometimes a villain's scheme requires a team to foil, sometimes it doesn't. Superman doesn't always need the Justice League to defeat Brainiac or Lex Luthor. It really varies with each issue and the story being told.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a game first and a story second. None of the heroes can take on a villain alone because that's not how the game is designed.

To an extent, I can agree with the basic argument. In order for villains to be threats they generally have to be at least the same level of power that the hero is at, but in a long running story heroes and villains change overtime and a villain that may have taken everyone to defeat the first time he was introduced may not be so difficult the second time he comes around because the heroes understand how he works and how to defeat him.

Well, on his own he's probably weaker; he hasn't riddled the city with bombs, and he isn't pulling the moon into the earth. He does, however, have a team to back him up, making him a considerable force.

No no no. He is stronger individually now story wise. He perfected that serum he injected into himself remember. Physically he might almost rival legacy, but that's conjecture. 

He's physically stronger, yes, but on his own you could probably solo him.

The original point was whether or not mechanics reflected the actual power difference between heroes and villains. Mechanically, yes, Vengeance Blade is probably weaker and you may be able to solo him, but the point is that he's supposed to be stronger and more dangerous than his earlier incarnations, but mechanically it clearly seems that he's not.

So, I guess that answers the question, doesn't it?

I'm not sure how much the heroes are able to dictate the terms of the fight or even run away given that one of the environments is the Freedom Tower. Baron Blade didn't become less intelligent with his serum and probably has lots of gadgets and devices to limit the heroes' effectiveness. In the Vengeance story arc he may have even come up with a long intricate plan on how to kill the heroes rather than just going, "Now we all attack at once, hit whoever you feel like."

The point is that Vengeance Blade does not seem to be less powerful or dangerous than Regular or Mad Bomber Blade despite not actually being able to fight the heroes on his own.

One of the statements was that sometimes it's not about how powerful the VILLAIN is, but how difficult their PLAN is to overcome. So while pretty much everything you said is absolutely true, something to take into consideration is that having teammates is PART OF THE PLAN. You can't take them out, or rob him of essential pieces of his strategy.

The point was that upon initial inspection of the mechanical difference between Vengeance Blade and Baron Blade, that Vengeance Blade would appear to be weaker than his earlier incarnations because of a reliance on a team. I didn't say that that's what I actually thought. My point was that mechanics can be a bit misleading when trying to compare a villain's power to a hero's and vice versa. V

engeance Blade is supposed to be a bigger, badder version of Baron Blade who is attempting his most fiendish plan of defeating the Freedom Five yet by coming up with a team of his own. Even if you could solo the deck on your own, that is not an accurate way to compare the power difference between the the incarnations.

Original Blade is a difficulty 1 Villain...pretty wimpy overall.  I'm guessing that the Vengeful Five are a diff 4 all together, which means that individually they might amount to 0.8 difficulty each...but I don't know how they operate, it's entirely possible that they function enough like The Ennead (ie the team overall plays one card per turn, regardless of how many members are standing) that VengeBlade alone could still be a 4 even after his allies have fallen.  So I don't find it too hard to believe that he could be more powerful in the game, to reflect being more powerful in the story.  (Although a lot of his story power comes from his devices, which may not be portable enough to come with him when the VF attacks.)

I doubt that Blade's deck will just be him; even with the super serum, that's just not his style. If I'm right, then mechanically he will be weaker than normal BB, despite being super strong and just as prepped.

Trying to extrapolate a particular villains "comic" strength from their "mechanical" difficulty is a pretty silly fools errand in its entirety. It flat out doesn't work that way. Apples/Oranges. Not a fair comparison. By that logic, we could argue say that DW Fixer is physically stronger than Legacy. Sounds like a pretty silly argument to me. 

It is ultimatley an Apples/Oranges comparison. Regardless of how close making that comparison might get you to the reality of the comic vs game power scale, its still a fundamentally flawed extrapolation. Its fun to think about, and the arguments put forth are no less creative and thoughtful for it, but I'm not about to agree that its a sound argument.

Argent Adept actually makes a very effective tank. A DR of one and regaining four hit points a round. He do do that, while allowing a card draw/play or deal a point of sonic damage.

Surely you can see the difference between extrapolating art and flavor text (you know, things that are actually directly "lifted" from these imaginary comics) and extrapolating relative power scales from the limited mechanics and scope of a structured card game. I believe you can do better.

He is also not being a primary damage dealer, usually. his 30 damage if you go completely balls out is nothing compared to the triple digit scored DEDICATED damage dealers (huzzah alliteration!) like Chrono and ExPat can rack up.

True that card effects show us how a hero does things, but a hero never hits a villain and says 'I just hit you for 2 points of damage'.

Comic Books are, first and formost, a story - if the story would  be better told for having the hero fail to hit, he's going to fail to hit. That is not in the 'I play Thokk and hit you for 2 damage' that the card says. Legacy may be about to Thokk Blade into oblivion, but the story says that blade dodges and kills Young Legacy instead. Story triumphs over 'mechanics' that we play with.

The original idea that spurred this argument was the idea was Omni-X was much less powerful than Omni classic because he can't fight Omni classic on his own. I think to an extent that this is a flawed perception. If we can say that part of Vengeance Blade's strength comes from his ability to utilize his team and utilizing his team doesn't make him physically weaker, than can't we say the same for Omni-X.

He doesn't have drones because he doesn't need them. Other heroes are much more effective than drones will ever be. On the surface it may seem that Omni-X is weaker because his effects aren't as large or as immediately devastating than his earlier counterpart. Terraforming destroys all environment cards in play and gets Omni a free number of plays equal to the cards he destroyed, whereas Bioengineering Beam can destroy only one environment card at a time. The power of Terraforming is completely dependant on the number of environment cards in play, and most of the time, he's only going to get one or two extra cards. Most of the time Terraforming doesn't give him that much of an advantage and can actually help the heroes by getting rid of nasty environment cards. Bio Engineering Beam I would say is much more useful because once it's out it can be used every turn. Omni-X does a much better job of molding the environment to his needs than Omni classic.

Let's also look at the components. Disintegration Ray and Magnetic Railgun do a lot more damage than Focused plasma cannon, but saying they're more effective is a bit flawed given how easy it is to destroy Omni classics components. You only have to do seven damage in a round to Omni to destroy all of his components and his only means of armor outside of advanced is Adaptive Plating which does not at all protect his components if the team he's fighting uses multiple damage types. Omni-X's components only take five damage before they're gone, but five damage in a single turn is a lot harder to do than an entire round. Also, Omni-X's plating cards reduce the damage he takes from multiple sources simultaneously which is more times than not much better than Adaptive Plating. His components while individually don't do as much damage as his older incarnation are more sturdy, durable, and consistently effective.

There is also the issue of the global destruction. Omni-X can pretty much also do the technological singularity since his singularity card allows him to destroy any equipment card and not just his own. He can wipe the board pretty easily depending on the other members of his team. Disruptive flechettes is just as effective as Sedative flechettes. It doesn't do as much damage, but it hits all non hero targets which includes environment targets as well as villain ones, and even though it destroys only two ongoings, how many villains regularly have more than two ongoings out at a time. Most of the time Disruptive Flechettes will rid the field of all the ongoings you want destroyed.

Your argument with Ambuscade while correct can be applied to absolutely anyone. It's basically the argument people give for why Batman should be able to beat anyone and anything. There's no reason for us to assume that the heroes can't fight the villains solo if they were given enough preperation time as well. There is also no reason to assume that the heros never fight villains on their own and win in their individual comic lines. That's like saying that after Superman formed the Justice League he stopped taking on and defeating villains on his own.

The game has no mechanic for soloing because that defeats the whole purpose of the game. It's a game first and a story second. It's supposed to be a game where you and your friends enjoy being superheroes, and having the heroes be able to solo against the villain goes against that.

... Second

Original Omnitron does exist in a vacuum and isn't really that impressive of a villain. I just don't buy that Omni-X gave up more than what he gained coming into this particular incarnation. I'm not saying that gameplay tells us nothing about the characters, I'm saying that it can't be relied on alone to tell us what the power scale is between characters. Visionary is considered by many to be one of the most powerful characters in the game, but by herself she is also not that special. We know from flavor text and art that she can control people's mind and incapacitate large groups with her psychic powers. She has her damage cards by the majority of her powers are represented in utility and helping the team.

This does not mean that a damage heavy version of the Visionary's deck would be unfaithful to the character. It would just be more boring. This is a team game, and in order for a team game to be interesting different characters have to fill different roles and niches, and visionary's is mostly control. Likewise, Legacy is a mostly support character even though we know he's strong enough to lift trains and stop meteors. The gameplay of a hero greatly reflects their personality and how they work with others, but it shouldn't be the only factor when trying to judge a character's overall power.

If Omni-X has any weakness over his earlier form it is simply a lack of available resources. He doesn't have as many devices lying around, but again he doesn't really seem to need them. We can't judge a hero by how powerful they are based on how they could act by themselves because that's not how this game is designed. If it was designed with the intent of heroes being able to solo fights, then I guarantee you that there would be drastic changes to the existing decks that would make soloing more possible. Each hero would still have their strengths and weaknesses but they would be designed to exist in a vacuum. They're not designed to exist in a vacuum though, so judging how they do by themselves is an inaccurate way to judge or compare a hero's power or effectiveness.

One thing that can be good to consider is how the DIFFICULT villains stack up against each other. Like, is the Chairman; a relatively normal, if hard-to-kill and highly intelligent -- mob boss, REALLY more of a threat than an invading alien army, a fallen angel, Gaia on PMS, and a freaking ELDER GOD?

The Chairman is more powerful than all of those because, unlike all of those, he's concentrated all his power into one spot.  Trying to fight Akash is like trying to go through a mountain...given time, you can drill a path straight through, because you're attacking one spot on the rock, and ignoring the rest of the mass because it isn't directly in your path.  Chairman, by comparison, is a reinforced iron gate - much smaller, but made of a tougher material, designed specifically to block your entry rather than just happening to be in the way.  You can beat Akash'Bhuta because you were only ever capable of commanding about 1% of her attention, and that's when she's fixated on you; the rest of her is just spread across the whole planet, turning corporate executives into animals and stuff.  You could never beat ALL of her; the game just shows you beating one particular incursion.

Likewise, Voss is trying to conquer the whole galaxy; his billions of troops are distributed across many star systems at a time, and while he's come down to supervise this invasion personally, he doesn't want to waste time transporting his entire army across vast distances, so he sends the vast formations of troop transports out in all directions, and uses a smaller and more mobile flagship to get to each battle when the time is right for him to assume personal command.  Gloomweaver is a cross between the two - a vast cosmic entity emanating from another dimension, probably not yet fully made real in this universe, and when you beat him, he just oozes back through the membrane into his home reality...it's not like you actually HURT him any more than a mosquito hurts a person, you just distracted him enough to thwart his plans and make him withdraw temporarily.

But the Chairman?  If you come into his town and start messing with his racket, arresting his Thieves and firing his Crooked Cops, then you suddenly become his sole priority, and all the might of The Organization is thrown behind no other purpose than getting rid of you.  He doesn't mess around; he doesn't hold any resources back to divert to other battles; he doesn't try to ensure his survival in case the worst happens, because he has no fallback plan and so can't afford to lose anything.  He devotes all the power he can muster to squashing you like a bug, caring nothing for reputation or a propaganda victory, willing to play as dirty as he must, taking no prisoners, etc. etc.

I thought it was a pretty trite lesson in "The Dark Knight Rises" where they said that you couldn't get out of the Pit until you learned the fear of death...but, whether it's true in any general sense, it's very much fitting for stories in the Batman vein, and The Chairman is a pastiche of a Batman villain.  If it makes sense for Batman to be able to stand side by side with Superman in certain battles, then it makes sense for Chairman to draw such strength from his desperation, his urge to win or die at the game of thrones, that he poses a much greater in-the-here-and-now threat than some cosmic villain, who basically clowns around and doesn't take the battle seriously because they think Earth is just some tiny planet, just a stepping-stone on the way to a far greater conquest, and/or humans are an insignificant species whose entire civilization is just a geologic eyeblink.

Legacy and Visionary would be hurt just as much from being on their own as Omni-X. Legacy has no ongoing destruction and few cards that hit multiple targets. It would take a while for him to die, but villains can easily overwhelm him. Also he cannot benefit from his own base power without a Legacy Ring effectively halving his effectiveness on his own versus with a team. Visionary has a lot of control bur very little damage. Wrest the Mind also has a steep damage cost and she can't keep it up for long. Again, by herself she woul also be overwhelmed pretty quickly.

If the game was indeed designed for one on one battle, than the limit for Omni-X's components would probably be increased. 5 is a mechanically sound number for the average dealt to heroes from the villains in a round. I gave a long list of example of card by card comparisons with Omni-X and classic Omni. Omni-X trades raw damage for more durability, consistency and efficiency.

The only advantage Classic Omni really has the potency of Technological Singularity. In pretty much every game I've played with the two, Omni-X completely dominates the field until that card is played. In story terms, Omni-X can only carry whatever he has on him when he time travels, but that's still a lot of stuff that appears to generally be more useful than drones or devices. It' pretty consistent with how technology normally advances becoming smaller and more efficient. There are trade offs in both forms, but I think saying Classic Omni is just way more powerful is incredibly deceptive.

So for fun, and because I'm off school so I've got some time to burn. I threw out both omnitron's "perfect set-up", of all their components best plating ect. This sort of represents their "comic book power" as it gives them all their options all the time.

For omnitron I put out copies of interpolation, railgun, and disintegragtion, as well as adaptive plating. I did not count his drones of electro-pulses but I will make note of them. I also did not do nemesis bonus, I just didn't feel like it

Repair drones don't do any good damage wise, but if all drones are out they would heal 10 each.

Automaton drones are generally pointless (omnitron deals mostly energy so Omni-x would equip elemental exochasis so Auto drones need at least H=3 to deal any damage)

Assault drones would be devasting, 10 damage each if all drones are out (30 total) this is also true of the electro-pulses if both were put out.

Interpolation does 0 damage (1-2)

disintegrationg does 0 damage unless h=3, in which case it does 2 total ((3-2) *2)

railguns will do 2-4 depending on h (an h-1 I said could not end up below 1 damage)

so if we do not count drones and pulses we get omnitron dealing about 6 damage at h=3, any lower and we have 2 damage. If we count the drones and pulses and set h=3 he deals about 69.

Omni-x

would have reactive plating in play, so deals at least 2 energy damage, perhaps more depending on if you count complete cancelations and you bother hitting drones since omnitron is immune to energy after the first hit

Start of turn omni-x  has 2 electro deployments so he can play 2 cards without sacrificing anything to his big cards at this point 2 sedative fletchettes would be useful, killing all drones in play (if we put them there) and destroying adaptive plating. 4 damage

2 plasma cannons deal 4 damage

2 gausian coils deal 2 damage (and could hit 2 other things if other targets still exist)

omni-x gains 2 hp from innervation (could also heal 4 other targets if so desired and if they exist)

play slip through time

use defenseive blast for 4 damage to everything

use defensive blast for 4 damage to everything

play self sabotage, destroy all of own and omnitrons components for 28 damage

Total damage to multiple targets would be about 14 or so damage (enough to kill or at least neuter the pulses)

to omnitron it would be about  48 damage

So, if X strikes first then he destroys or neutuers omnitrons entire field and hits him for almost half his health.

If omnitron strikes first without his drone army and massive bombs (and we set power at h=3) he has enough damage to destroy X's components and severly neuter the rest of his play. If h does not equal at least three omnitron does negligible damage. If he  brings to bear his entire drone army and massive bombs he destroys X quickly, which makes sense if you have 1 guy vs an army.

So, straight up 1v1 with all components X rips omnitron apart. If omnitron can use his army then he wins, of course, then it isn't 1v1.

While doing this my Darkwatch promos finally arrived, so I'm going to go enjoy them for a time

First off, why wouldn't you include the drones? They are tools, created and controlled by Omnitron; they aren't like allies or servants or something. They are PART of him. He is a SENTIENT ROBOTICS FACTORY, not just a big robot. That's an important part of the character you can't overlook, but people seem to do.

Second, you switched the effects of the disintigrator and the railgun around. The Railgun hits 2 for H-1, the railgun hits 1 for H+1.

I still don't agree that X is significantly weaker. Again, I did a comparison of the similar cards like Terraforming and Bioengineering, and from what I can tell, X when performing similar functions to his counterparts is generally more consistent and efficient.

Also, X doesn't need help from other heroes to be great. His components don't do more than two damage each, but they all go off at the start of his turn and essentially give him free damage before he plays any cards or uses any powers. Rocket punch as well is a pretty solid damage power. He's not going to outdamage someone like Ra, but he will still be doing consistently decent damage every turn, and as far as DR goes, he is one of the only heroes who can naturally do irreducible damage. I don't think an isolated hero will hurt Omni-X so much more significantly than other heroes.

X also has some of the quickest setup time out of all the characters. Reset gives him a free draw and play, Technological Advancement allows him to draw a card and search for an equipment or component, and then his own base power gives him a free play on top of all that. Usually Omni is pretty ready to go on his own in about round 2 or 3 with no help from other heroes.

Having other heroes around certainly helps reduce damage, but depending on who you're fighting with the right plating X takes little to no damage even when he's taking the majority of the damage, especially if he's in a game of H=3. I just don't find him significantly less effective on his own than heroes like Legacy or Visionary. He relies a lot on his components but he has some of the quickest set up and recovery out of any hero.