My sister and I love SotM, but after beating every villain we own on advanced mode, and with another week or two before we get OblivAeon, we're starting to get bored with cooperative play. So, we thought we'd try and come up with a way for one person to play the villain, while the other plays the heroes. Here's what we came up with.
The game is the same as usual, with the following changes:
- The villain player has a hand of 2-3 cards; where the villain would normally play a card for their turn, they instead choose a card to play.
- When a card says to play the top card of the villain deck (e.g. Paradoja Magnifica), it is played from the deck, not from the villain's hand.
- At the end of the villain turn, the villain draws the top card of their deck.
- Cards like Infrared Eyepiece now let the heroes look at the villain's hand instead.
- The damage dealer chooses the target/order (if necessary).
- Environment damage hits villain targets by default, and if only damaging villain targets, the villain chooses the target/order (if necessary).
- If a card forces another target to deal damage (e.g. Compulsion Canister) the player that forced the damage chooses the target/order (if necessary).
We tried a few games against Blade, Omnitron, and Dawn, and there are definitely moments when you feel as if you are plotting a grand scheme for world domination as you play the villain! However, a big problem is balance. A 3-card hand is WAY overpowered for Dawn, while Blade seems to lose miserably either way. Also, just by luck of the draw, sometimes a huge advantage is given to one side from the beginning, and makes the game much less fun for the other player. Of course, the number of heroes also makes a big difference (all of our games used 4 heroes).
Has anyone else tried to come up with a way to play competitively? If so, what were the rules? Does anyone have any suggestions for improving the ones we used? I'd love to see what people have/will come up with!
Qapla!
You're further along than my irregular, brief thought experiments have ever gotten. You've identified that villains with swingy decks become more powerful when someone has some control over what card comes out. Not sure how much it would help, but consider a programmed deck, rather than getting to choose from a hand. I can't quickly puzzle out how that would work.
Alternatively, consider teams of heroes vs each other, where the other heroes act as villain targets to your team.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Unfortunately, PvP with only heroes quickly demonstrates the power level differences between them. I've played around with similar things and only really discovered that the Freedom Five are OP, which I already knew. :P
What an interesting idea! It could be as "simple" as having the Villain play one turn ahead - so, a Villain that plays one card per turn instead puts one card into a staging area, and then the card they put in the staging area last turn gets put into play.
A more complex idea, that could handle Villains that play more than one card per turn or unpredictable numbers of cards per turn: make the staging area hold X cards, where X is some reasonable maximum, like 5. Place those cards in a row, left to right. Each Villain turn, play the leftmost Villain card in the staging area as if played from the top of the Villain deck. If the Villain is to play more cards from the deck, play the leftmost unplayed card in the staging area instead. At the end of the Villain turn, slide all the cards in the staging area to the left and the Villain player adds cards to the right of the staging area until there are X Villain cards ready to go, then draws back up to a hand of X cards from the Villain deck.
That might force the Villain player to make more interesting decisions. It would also make them less reactive to the hero players, instead coming up with a diabolical plot that has to execute properly, which would tend to spread out their more powerful cards.
Did a Hero v Hero match up once with my buddy and we played Freedom Five (team variants) versus Prime Warden (team variants). I recall it being fairly well balanced.
Trajector -- for the line of villain cards, when it's the Villain player's turn to put another card in the staging area, how many do they have to choose from?
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
My first idea is for the villain player to have a hand that's the same size as the staging area, as a way to keep the staging area from running out. But it might be more strategically interesting to have a bigger staging area than hand (to force the Villain player to act on a delay). I'm not sure what should happen if the staging area runs out and then tries to play more cards.
Most of the villian decks have 2-5 cards that are designed to be the "big threat". Forced Deployment and the capital ship from Warlord Voss for example. Any format where you dig for those cards quicker is going to imbalance them.
I suggest pulling those cards out and setting them aside face up. Then come up with a system where may be played as the heroes grow stronger. Perhaps you roll 2d6 dice and they get played on 12 and you check at end of turn with a bonus when they have taken 25% damage, then at 50% damage (with +3 on the roll) and again at 75% (with +5 on the roll) then one auto plays at 10% or something. Or maybe it has a countdown timer on it starting at 12 or something with it ticking down by 1 on each players turn. Maybe a player can take 5 damage to put a counter back on or something. I'm sure there's a creative way to do it.
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