Help dealing with a Scholar Player

Honest question with no intent of antagonising you: why is this a problem?

Advanced Iron Legacy's damage is irreducible on the front side.  Deadline may also be a good fight.  Or Wager Master if you don't want the decks to matter a ton.

RAndomize your setups, by that I mean use an actual randomizer to pick the heroes available.  Barring that, villains with ongoing destruction like Miss Info, V5, etc, can mess with his setup or advanced IL who does irreducable damage

If irreducible you want to use

Plague rat may be one also to choose

not as hard as IL

so not quite as hard of a sell

Scholar's still good - but there's less to abuse

It is never a good idea to antagonize another player. He is playing something he enjoys, as everyone else in the world does. It is annoying you because you find it boring to see the same thing all the time. It sounds like this player is choosing Scholar less for any obsession with the Scholar's theme or play style, than with an obsession with winning. He believes the Scholar has the highest chance of winning, so plays him. If that's true, then choosing enemies that Scholar handles less well will have him playing a different deck... but only against those enemies. He'll still play the Scholar to win against all others. The success will be short lived.

Trying to change someone that doesn't want to change will only drive that person away from you.

The trick here is to find something else that this player likes. Target that second enjoyment, and promote him playing decks that satisfy the other urges. Scholar has multiple forms, but Naturalist and Sky-Skraper do multi-form a lot better. I don't know the guy... I don't know what else he might like. You'll have to find those other wants and find other decks that will fulfil those urges.

The other thing that you might want to do

If Scholar's causing wins to accrue

If the diff'culty's too low

then give Challenge a go

see if that brings the balance to true

Sounds like a situation where you're going to have to use your own judgement both as to what is important and how to achieve it. If you're not enjoying yourself, seems like you'll need to do something about it. What? Depends on you and the other players. Maybe talking about it will help. Maybe you can all agree that you should find other people to game with. Maybe people's feelings will get hurt.

I hope you find a way for everyone to be happy. If you can't, I hope you stand up for yourself without stepping on anyone else's feelings. If that doesn't work out for some reason, well, you can only do your best. No use beating yourself up about it.

One thing that might potentially help is bringing a team that will help emphasize the scholar's other strategies.

I love liquid energy scholar, and he works very well with teams that can either give him off turn heals or small damage. (Liquid energy scholar is my term for the combo of the other two forms. Liquid form increases your healing, energy allows you to deal damage based on what you healed). If the problem is he is a static block, then making him a energetic damage dealer will help make things more exciting.

If you do pull some sort of "play something else" move though, bring that challenge to both scholar and nightmist. It's harder to feel targeted if you aren't the only one changing things up.

Play with a villain that destroys a bunch of Ongoins like Iron Legacy or Matriarch, or that deals irreducible like Advanced Plauge Rat, or that deals a bunch of AoE damage like Progeny. 

I'll second the recommendation to use a randomizer. You get interesting matchups that you would never try if you're trying to pick the "best" team, and everyone gets exposed to new heroes and combos.

Like a few have said already, IL on advanced might make your friend move to another character...though it would probably only be for that fight.  A randomizer is the safest bet as long as your friend doesn't think you are doing it simply to make him change characters.

This is a shame, if he can use the Scholar that well he can probably use other heroes just as well if he would change up his picks.

I actually know exactly how you feel. We have a person in my group that used to always use TLT and Tempest, and now Grandpa Legacy. Playing the same deck is not inherently a bad thing, and finding a character you truly enjoy is wonderful. What I then ask is: has this personTRIED the others out? I find myself rotating between my favorites as well, but I want to at least get a feel for each hero to increase game diversity and learning different strategies. I suppose if your friend isn't getting totally bored from using the same hero over and over, more power to them. But I think mixing it up helps each game feel fresher. And if he/she HAS played all the heroes and still becomes comfortable with Scholar, then I too suggest using a randomizer.

Scholar is by far one of my favorites as well, simply because he can mitigate SO much damage.

I know my group had some tendencies to play the same heroes over and over again.  It wasn't bad except that new players often weren't encouraged to join in to our established group.  It's hard to go on and on about the variety and options in this game when two or three of the decks are always going to be the same characters...

But that may involve your Nightmist and Scholar player's trying something new.  It may help if you just said that you would love to see what other strategies can be implemented with different characters.  I have had players who thought they had figured something out by playing heroes that consistently won games for us, but after a while a lot of our players just got tired of the same hero in every single game.

The results didn't always turn out positive, but it may help if you mention that having favorites is cool but you and/or your group would appreciate trying out a few diverse teams rather than having one to two slots always spoken for by the same team.  Hopefully they will be flexible and try out new heroes sometimes.  There's nothing wrong with favorites, but it can be somewhat stagnant for the table if you always know what half the team will be.

Ask if you can play scholar. That will force him to play someone else.

I am of the opinion though, that there is nothing wrong with playing the same character over and over.

I would get bored, but i play with the randomizer

I don't think there is anyone saying it's "wrong" to play a single character over and over again. Just like it's not wrong to only play against Gloomweaver, or never play any other environment than Rook City.

As long as everyone is having fun it's the "right" way to play. But it sounds like someone playing the same character over and over again in this player's playgroup is negatively impacting their fun on some level.

That being said, asking that player if the original poster could play The Scholar for a game is a great idea. Well said!

If you really want to break them of it you can play DW Fixer and constantly destroy flesh to iron.

That's not any better than banning a hero when choosing decks.

Add in some Setback wih "Whoops! sorry!" as well.  Kidding aside.  I think the best suggestions are asking to play Scholar or using a randomizer. 

You could also come up with some thematic battles that you want to play, e.g.:

• V6 vs Iron Legacy
• Dark Watch vs Gloomweaver and Spite
• Prime Wardens vs Akash'Bhuta

These would force a non-Scholar choice for a few games, at least, and might give him a "Wow! Argent Adept is great!" moment.

My personal goal in this situation would be to teach him that Scholar isn't always the right call, and using advanced modes will help with that. Advanced Iron Legacy, La Capitan, Plague Rat, and the Vengeance crew will all put a hurt on to Scholar. They tend to either use irreducible damage, smash ongoings like tissue paper, or both.

Once you have him, Deadline is great too, as is Wager Master, as both of them put an emphasis on styles of play other then simply absorbing damage and dealing it back. 

How often does your Scholar wind up battling alone with Incapped support?

The 2xFtI trick greatly increases survivability, but at a cost of offensive output. If the Scholar is simply outsurviving the other heroes, then the Scholar is not overpowered, it's merely selfish. Many slow heroes can win with Incap support. Bunker in Turret Mode with Flak Cannon and Maintenance Unit (all the "use a power" incaps can heal him or deal damage). Mr. Fixer puts Fanatic's Aegis or Ra's Staff into play. If the Scholar is overcompensating for damage dealt to him at the cost of not dealing the damage necessary to win as a team, then there is indeed a significant issue. That's gloryhounding.

The trick here may be a simple house rule. When two decks are incapped, the players lose immediately. This is "in the interest of getting players that are out back in the game so everyone can play". Promote winning with everyone alive.

Or find the tankiest tanks you can, and play a game where NO-ONE has enough damage to deal with anything. 

If he thinks Scholar is broken with x2 Irons, just wait until they stop being boring and discovers Liquid/Energy/Energy. 

Have you tried Dawn on Normal/Advnaced? She forces a ton of discarding and has a lot of destruction. 

Not every fight only damages the hero with the highest HP. Plauge Rat and Iron Legacy or even the Chairman would be hard since they spread the damage out.

What I'd do in that situation is be honest with him - the rest of the group doesn't get the challenge they are looking for when he plays Scholar and would have more fun if he played other characters more often.

For villains that other heroes tend to handle better than Scholar... they are pretty hard to find. Scholar is very powerful and flexible. I'd say maybe Progeny, Iron Legacy, and Dawn? Looking at the Stats project, Scholar looks like he has done worse than many other heroes against Chairman, Progeny, Miss Information (play her with 5 heroes for a greater challenge) and Cosmic Omnitron.

That's pretty good. My group encouraged me to play heroes that slow the game down less often. We worked something out. Honestly, you don't necessarily need to restrict him yourself; you could state things as dclietz said and try to get him to restrict himself. You also probably shouldn't push too much on the issue if you're the only one bothered by it. If you haven't yet, get a feel for other players' feelings on the subject.

My group also restricts use of high-teir heroes so we don't have too many against a villain that does not require such. We try to give both the heroes and villains a fair chance most of the time.

The Scholar is more thematic than balanced; I agree that he is broken. That's why he isn't in one of the core or expansion boxes and was stand-alone like Unity. He also can slow the game down in a variety of ways.

The time cataclysm environment has Smog, which reduces healing by 2. That really messed me up as The Scholar. The Dreamer villain is also a liability for The Scholar because his AoE is risky and playing unknown top cards of decks is dangerous.

"Broken" is a really strong word, and it doesn't apply to the Scholar. I wish people would stop using it.

I think it could arguably apply to Team Leader Tachyon, though.

Yeah, the Scholar isn't "broken". I don't think any deck is "broken". Some of them just do well in more situations than others. We've certainly lost plenty of games which included the Scholar. Another thing to consider might be playing against villains who don't just hit the person with the highest hp, or in environments that aren't too choosy in their targeting -  I noticed a lot of the guys in the Enclave of the Endlings hit the non-environment target with the second-lowest hp and Dok'Thorath has quite a few things that hit everyone...come to think of it, so do places like Atlantis and Silver Gulch. Then you've got Megalopolis and Atlantis again, both of which can stop people playing cards and stuff. Villains such as Dawn and Omnitron can nuke your stuff with nothing you can do about it unless you can deal with the card before it has a chance to be played.

Or, as has been mentioned previously, you could ask to play the Scholar yourself. What'd be cool is if you did this in a game that also involved the Adept, preferably a game that'll be long enough to let him get set up with at least the Pipes and both copies of Rhapsody of Vigour - Akash'Bhuta is pretty good for this as her games tend to be pretty long and the only time you have to worry about the Adept taking extra damage from the Nemesis bonus is if she plays that ongoing that I've temporarily forgotten the name of, the one that hits all heroes at the start of her turn for some psychic damage but hten goes away if it hits everyone. Also the Ensnaring Brambles will be more likely to hit the Adept, who's probably the least likely to do damage. Anyway, get the Scholar with at least a couple of copies of the Liquid and Energy forms out and make sure you get hit a bunch of times so that you actually have some hp to recover when the Adept keeps healing you every round and letting you hit stuff for free as a result. Add in Tempest with Cleansing Downpour for added epic :D.

I'll also say that until you've played most of the andvanced/challenge modes it is definitly premature to call anything broken, as you need to put the heroes through the paces on those to truly asses balance.

I disagree. Sure, she often makes the game easier (in some ways she's less good than regular Tachyon, but that's another discussion), but is she really so good that she makes the game unplayable?

This gets to the heart of the matter. But I think the issue is, even if we all experienced the exact same win/loss ratios for hero/villain/environment combinations, different people would still have different thresholds for unplayable.

I personally don't think any of the heros pass my threshold for being so powerful (or weak) as to ruin the fun of the game. Dark Visionary, Greatest Legacy, and TLT are the closest, but I am OK with them in most situations. However, I personally don't enjoy fighting Gloomy (as printed, I like him a lot with some simple house rules) at all, so I consider him broken.

We almost always play with a random setup, but I could definately see it getting old for me if someone always chose Dark Visionary.

TLT doesn't make the game ubplayable, no, but I find that she often takes a lot of the excitement of it for me. If I have a super-extra-special hard match that I'm having trouble beating I may bring her in, but otherwise we usually just houserule both her and Finest Legacy to apply to a maximum of 2 heroes instead of all heroes. It works pretty well for us:

But it didn't stop him from using the Scholar in general. That's why I have been seeking other solutions.

That doesn't actually jive. If it's "broken", and he knows it, then since this isn't a video game that can fix and repair unbalanced content, it is up to the players themselves to balance the content. Having "proven" the Scholar unbalanced, he should be putting it down and moving on. A need to win does work to keep him on one deck for a length of time, but that motivation falls somewhat short for explaining the continual use of a "broken" deck beyond identifying the unbalanced nature. I also have a need to win, but I ensure variety by picking the villain and environment, letting others pick their characters, then choosing what I feel is the best deck to produce victory. At the same time, I need complexity during the turn, so my favorite decks are AAdept, Nightmist, and AZ. Scholar is too simple a deck for me, but not for him.

I can't post every 15 minutes, so sometimes I have to proceed on assumption due to awaiting confirmation unnecessarily slowing the conversation. Normally, I present answers for both situations -- assume yes do this, assume no do that -- but in this case, there was a spectrum response you could provide, so I just covered the most likely case as I saw it.

Solving this (if it can be) is going to require identifying the root cause of the need to win. The failure of Akash'bhuta shows he won't just abandon the deck simply because it lost once.

Has anyone ever insisted on playing the Scholar instead of him? If so, how did he react? If not... carefully consider his personality before attempting it. How poorly would he react?

My fear here is that the need to win is not the full expression of his motivation... it's the need to feel personally responsible for a team win. If that is it, he will react extremely badly to someone else trying to take that deck from him.

I'm not sure we need to be examining the psychology of Sentinels players quite that deeply ;).

Anyway, if the reasons for playing the Scholar so often are because of tanking, suggest other characters who can be pretty good at it - the Naturalist, for example (Rhino Form, Resilient Hide x2, Indomitable Force). Characters like Nightmist and the Adept are also potentially capable of healing themselves with enough frequency (and in enough quantity) to remain sitting at their max hp most of the time. In Nightmist's case you sort of need to get hold of some kind of healing anyway, just to balance out normal card/power use ;).

That's why I said "arguably." I'd say she certainly speeds up a lot of otherwise slow characters nicely, and gives the entire team a plethora of options. Add Argent Adept and/or Captain Cosmic, and you can use her power several times per round.

But make the game unplayable? Not at all. It's not as though she herself is doing the most damage necessarily, but she allows the entire team to benefit by providing them with a huge arsenal of resources. If a certain hero is dominating the fight, it's because their character is already amazing. TLT simply enables them to get to that point. Scholar is a good example, because he needs the discards to be able to maintain his forms.

TLT is inferior to regular Tachyon in so few situations, and that is seriously discounting the value of team draws, counting team draws at full value TLT is always better, and selfishly just an overwhelming percentage of the time.

The extra card draws unbalance many mechanics, like mars base, dawn, any battle that uses cards in hand as a commodity TLT changes the game, often reducing challenge to the point that the fight loses engagement.

Scholar can do that as well.  I understand the problem, and I think trying to steer them to a hero like Naturalist is a great step.

That's the thing though. "Broken" means "renders the game unplayable".

I'm objecting to the use of the term "broken" when people mean "this hero seems better than others". I don't think TLT's win rate is significantly higher than other easyish-to-win-with heroes. She doesn't break the game.

Obviously some people find that she makes their games easier than they'd like (and Legacy too), and that's a perfectly fine way to react. I think of her and Legacy as tools to make the game a bit easier against harder villains, or with new players.

Let's save "broken" for things that truly are non-functional.

I'd just like to refer to Urban Dictionary's definition of broken, which myself and other players usually associate with:

• Something/Someone that is so good in a particular context that it eclipses second place.
• A game object or facility that is too good to exist. It is so powerful that it is unbalancing and hence breaks the game. Every winning player has to use this to be competitive.

Now, the reason why I prefer this distinction is because while having an overpowered or "broken" hero can infringe on the enjoyment of a game, it doesn't make it unplayable; it just removes part of the challenge. I'd apply "unplayable" to a hero with complicated essential setup to yield underwhelming benefits, or a villain which modified the win condition in a silly way, or hindered the players' moves to a nigh-unwinnable situation. But that's taking it to an extreme; sometimes "broken" can refer to a mechanic that breaks the rules by utilizing a silly and unintentional/unintuitive combo.

I find TLT does none of these things; I agree. But in many cases she "eclipses" other powers, like Bunker's Initialize. It all just depends on what your team is trying to accomplish. If you need an extra power from AA's songs to help with AoE, you might be better off with a Squall or one of Expat's guns.

TLT doesn't fit either definition.

You can argue TLT, Scholar, Legacy are overpowered, which matches your description better than TLT, but broken I would save for things like the original Omnitron IV, where other decks become largely insignificant and nothing other decks do is likely to change the outcome.

I think all I'm saying is that in many situations, I would rather the team draw a card as opposed to 2 points of damage, but then again it would depend on the situation.

Maybe "broken" is a strong word, but she's got one of the most useful powers in the game that would in many cases get the top pick when asking the table who would like to use a power from Argent Adept's songs or Unity's Hasty Augmentation.

Generally I believe blanket support for the team is better than individual support, unless the situation calls for something otherwise, or if one hero benefits from something better, etc. Which is why I enjoy playing the support role, I guess. I would rather the whole team regain 1 HP than regaining 2 myself, unless I'm badly injured and I can still make plays.

Original Haka was broken when combo'd with any dmg buff, (Galvanise, Inspirational presence, TtE etc)

I'm curious; what did those cards allow him to do differently, originally?

To be fair, there are a few powers that eclipse Bunker's Intialize such as Redeemer Fanatic and Visionary. That's part of the reason why my favorite Bunker is G.I. Bunker.

I know. Your previous description of the near loss led to my conclusion. The player is not obsessive/compulsive. He will adapt to the circumstance, which in this case meant ditching the -4 damage taken trick. If he adapts, then he will adapt to a loss in the same way, by using a single identifiable deck that maximizes chance of victory. So while this particular case was not a loss, I am confident in your description and know the original plan to find particular villains will not solve the long term problem.

OC players will fixate and try to force one solution to work in all cases, sometimes lashing out at others who they perceive interfered with their "solution", blaming others instead of accepting their solution was flawed.

The open question is, "Do you still want help?" While the pessimism of others never deters me, you didn't respond with anything more clarifying about the player. You have a problem player. I have a lot of experience dealing with problem players, and have seen short-sighted methods tear apart groups and friendships. My experience can help identify pittraps, but I need to understand him better to recommend a viable course of action. You had a goal starting this thread, and I am attempting to assist you reach that goal. I think it can be achieved, but the method used must reduce the risk of the destruction of any of the involved players'  friendships to as as low as possible.

There are two choices here.

1) Continue as is and accept that this will never change until that player gets bored and moves on. It is, truly, the safest option, though it requires self-sacrifice by all but one player.

2) Don't wait, try something (even as simple as a prepared conversation), and maybe get the same end result, but at the risk (we hope small) of tearing the group up.

If you choose 1, then we're all done. But if you still want 2, then there is no magic bullet that works in all cases. You will need to make the right play, and that will take talking about, and maybe to, him.