I just bought SoTM on steam. I bought the original edition years ago, but never got around to getting any of the expansions, because I rarely get to play the game since it requires at least 3 people.
I've beaten all the villains, even beat baron blade on advanced. I tried to do it again just for fun. My team was tachyon, wraith, bunker, tempest, and absolute zero. I was doing perfectly fine, until he drew a 'devious disruption'. Killed tempest, and brought everyone else down to less than 10. Some less than 5. 2 were knocked out the next turn. Next turn, lost wraith. Next turn, toxic seawead, after I had just drawn 3 cards with tachyon.
The other three have cards that forces you to destroy all your equipment, and baron blade has one that just screws you over if you have any. Up until now, I was only playing equipment-heavy heroes (which would be pretty much be half the heroes you have available) against baron blade. Having even one with the other three is just suicide.
How can you possibly play an equipment-heavy hero when all 4 of the villains have cards that screw you over if you try? I mean, absolute zero is practically useless since he can't even do anything unless he has at least 3 pieces of equipment out.
You can do a lot to prevent those cards showing up, depending on the heroes you've chosen, e.g. Visionary, Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece, etc. Alternatively, you can simply recover from the loss.
Oh dear.
AZ can be played without his equipment, he just requires a lot more thinking.
And destroying hero cards is one of the things you have to plan for, you can mitigate it but not playing equipment or manipulating the villain decks so that the destruction effect comes out at a time that doesn't hurt you, or any number of other strategies.
I think I'd direct you to the Handelabra live streams so you can see hwo others deal with these problems.
https://www.youtube.com/user/handelabra
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
Useless? That's a bit of an exaggeration. Sure, he's better with equipment but he doesn't need it, and he can still do things without any equipment in play.
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
While it's a bit of an exaggeration, I can understand the frustration. Without his modules in play, you pretty much have to skip Zero's power phase, and it makes his one shots like Frost Bound and Hoarfire less effective. While he can be effective without his modules, he's probably still not going to be contributing as much as some of the other heroes on your team.
Good ideas are usually just bad ideas a stubborn person eventually fixed.
As a side note, Blade, Dawn, and Omnitron have some of the nastiest board wipe cards in the game; as the expansions add more villain variety, equipment should be safer (on average).
"To such simple minds, my advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic!"
That plus I think most of the other destructive effects only target a specific number of things (rather than all of them) and/or aren't a one-shot so you have a round in which to deal with them (unless the environment brought them out or something) before they actually go off.
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Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
Heh, I never noticed that warlord voss has no board removal besides that one flagship...
Are the villains from the expansions as hostile towards equipment? Thinking about picking up the mini-expansion on steam. It's only like 1 or 2 dollars anyway. The villain for that is 'ambuscade', which I know nothing about. The hero is 'unity', which relies heavily on minions, though she has to destroy equipment to summon things it looks like.
Ambuscade has no equipment or ongoing destruction.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Amubcade has no destruction. Mostly he is all about dmaging heroes. He also only has one ongoing so ongoing destruction is less useful against him, although when it comes out, you'll really want to destroy it.
Unity creates minions. Her base power trashes equipment (she has lots, it's fine.) but some of the equipment allows you to disacard or destroy itself to place more. Her minions are not Equipment and so are immune to ongoing/equipment destruction, although they take damage like everything else.
G+ games: I am part of the 100%
Ambuscade doesn't break anything as far as I recall, though I haven't played him much. As for Rook City, (Coming Soon!) Plague Rat has no destruction at all and everyone else has some, but none can board-wipe you like the base game can.
“You gotta have blue hair."
-Reckless
That said, all of the destruction in Rook City is all strategic decisions. Kill the Fence and take retaliation damage and push the Chairman towards flipping, or leave him around and lose up to 2 pieces of setup a round and let the operative heal a lot. The matriarch either hits you or destroys your stuff. Spite puts it back in your hand every round, but he has other issues
Ambuscade, as has been mentioned, doesn't break your stuff - he just has a whole bunch of ways to shoot at you or blow stuff up in your face whilst occasionally going invisible and thus being immune to damage. He often manages to chain one-shots and can be pretty damaging but on the whole isn't majorly difficult. He also has a relatively low hp total of fifty.
Unity's thing is her bots. Like PWatson said, they're neither equipment nor ongoing (their only keyword is "Mechanical Golem", which all of them have) but they do have hp so they are hero targets, thus anything which hits "all hero targets" or "the hero target with the highest/lowest hp" and so on will target them, and some of them don't have much health to begin with. But they can do a variety of different things and if she gets set up with a bunch of them you can expect Unity to utterly destroy pretty much anyone :D. Also worth noting is that her bots all have the condition that they can't be played during Unity's Play phase. She has equipment which can be used to put them out in her Power phase and her base power itself can destroy equipment (hers or someone else's, it doesn't matter, but I can only think of one or two occasions I've broken someone else's stuff) to put bots out. The important part is that the bots can't be played during Unity's Play phase. Anyone else's Play phase, or Power phase, or anything else? That's fine and that's one reason she really loves heroes such as the Adept (Infernal Relics) or Omni-10 (Shattered Timelines) who can let her play cards out of turn :D. With Unity I find that games can go one of two ways. One is that you can start with either all bots or all equipment and take ages to get hold of whatever you didn't start with, meaning you may achieve very little in terms of contribution to the group in general. The other is that you do get what you need - bots and the equipment necessary to play them, and then manage to keep said bots in play long enough to just destroy everything. One single bot (of which there are three copies and might possibly be one of my favourite "characters" in the game) can do about fifteen damage in a single hit, or something (and acts during Unity's End phase), if you can get set up with enough other bots to cause his damage to be that high. That's with no external help from anyone else. A good game with Unity is a really good game. Just be prepared for the fact that this doesn't always happen.
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Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
Past the initial 4 villains the game gets lighter on destruction. I don't think there is any universal destruction other than Apostate's Apocalypse, which activates at start of turn and can be stopped with ongoing destruction before then.
A lot of villains have a couple of Destroy (H) equpment/Ongoing card cards, but you can get past that if you build smart.
Also Rook City introduces Mr. Fixer, who has a card (Salvage Yard) that lets every hero take every equipment card in their trash into their hand. (it is awesome) And later Sky-Scraper supports Equipment users with a granted power to search for an equip and put it into play.
If you enjoy the game the season pass is a really good option, as the coming expansions add a lot of variety and awesome fights, and it covers 11 heroes, 19 villains and 11 environments.
Play your cards, use them, accept their destruction.
Equipment cards, as ongoing cards, are not meant to be permanent - they are here for some time, you take advantage of them, and then you lose them, often with a few HPs to round the deal. But it is worth it because while you have them, they give you the edge you need to slowly drive the villain to defeat.
If you have the luck to put together and maintain a good equipment combo, the hero will feel awesome - but none of these heroes is meant to be played with a big equiment combo everytime. It is not rare for Bunker to only play with one Equipment card available. AZ often has to play a long time without having his two module combo. They still can do a lot - but the contrast with what they can do with a big combo makes them feel less effective. It's like playing with Legacy : there is a big difference between a Legacy with 4 ongoings and a Ring in play, and Legacy without it - they almost feel like two different heroes.
AZ is the hardest to play without equipment. Self-damage is always hard to accept, and his base power is useless without modules. But keep in mind that you don't need the modules all the time. You'll need them to heal - so you can heal the self damage you deal yourself now later, when you finally get the modules to play with, so use your cards right now.
Most SotM fights, whatever the villains, are about rythm. The rythm at which you build your heroes to make them more effective, the cycle of buil-up / destruction / build again, the fast or slow inversion of advantage (from the Villain having lots of cards out at the beginning while heroes have nothing to the opposite), the rythm at which you can take damage and or resist it, etc. You take a beating in the first round. Then slowly fight your way back - until the villain gives you a beating again, and the cycle starts a-new.
I am in the habit of explaining to new players ( not that I suggest you are a "noob" ) that SotM, being a game about super-heroes, is built around the idea of sacrifice : to win, you have to accept to lose bits of your power. Be it your HPs, your cards, maybe even your character (incapacitated side is often useful). We , player , tend to think in terms of "leveling up" : you gain new, permanent advantage over time. SotM is more a game of small, temporary power-ups, slowly leading you to success. Unless you are very lucky and you can put together a big combo, like a fully equiped AZ or Bunker or RA, master of volcanoes, or Visionary, invulnerable ether-twisted demoralizer.
You have to keep fighting. Whatever the odds, whatever the frustration of having all your work undone. Even if you feel you can't play optimally - or powerless. Heroes never give up. :D
I remember very well my first games of Sentinels - at first the villains seemed unbeatable. It took a lot of rematches to find how to survive and win, lots of discoveries. And lots of readjustment from a RPGer's mindset to a "whatever the cost, I won't let you win, Blade !" mindset ;)
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
The rules actually say that you can play with 2 players. They both play 2 heroes. I once played 3 while a friend only played 1 while I was trying to teach him the rules.
Yeah, nearly all of my games have been played 2 player where my wife and I each take two heroes (though that looks to be changing as my daughter has adopted Tempest)
The only time I don't play with just two people is at the monthly London meet-ups, where there's usually four or five of us. Otherwise, I'm playing with my partner. I prefer to just concentrate on one hero so I do that while he has two. I did try playing with two as well, early on, but decided I preferred to just stick to a single one.
I am the Wordweaver...
Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
I'm used to playing 4 characters on my own, so 2 at once shouldn't be much of a problem. My mother has yet to really learn the game, but that's mostly because we play it so rarely. Perhaps playing it with her more often will help. Plus, I have her play Ra all the time, since he's obviously the simplest. I'd figure he'd make a good introduction for someone who's still learning how a turn transpires.
I hate to say it, but the solution to this problem is inevitably for me... Wraith in first player slot. Get her IE out and use it to fiddle any equipment or ongoing destruction to bottom of deck, with the side effect of determining which type of damage Legacy should be immune to. But as others said, one-turn destruction was drastically toned down in future villain and environment decks (worded carefully to not include La Capitan), probably due to the very complaints you are making in this thread.
AZ without equipment is frustrating. He can have some Start of Turn damage out, but his one-shots are often suicidal and he doesn't get to use his innate power. Be certain to save trash searchers and duplicate modules to get it back into play as quickly as you can, just in case.
IE isn't exactly completely reliable. For one, you have to draw it first, or impromptu invention. Secondly, on occasion you'll get the same 2 cards (last game I got 2 forced deployments!), though that could be fixed with a second IE and utility belt. Third, if citizen dawn flips, she'll be playing 2 cards every turn. Last time I played her, her second card draw was devastating aurora, and I did use IE on her the previous turn. And fourth, you'd obviously have to have a wraith in every game. Yes, IE helps a lot, but it's not 100% reliable. Oh, and that won't save you from a pervasive dust, or other environment cards that wreck havoc on you (I'm finding hostage situation to be particularly annoying, it might as well say 'villain and environment get an extra turn, if drawn early).
I did just try a game with wraith, trying to find an ideal 3-hero combination against baron blade. I didn't see her as ideal. The best line-up I've found so far seems to be visionary, tempest, and ra. Of course, last game had to be the ONE game where he didn't draw disruption (and he drew it as his first card the previous 2 games!). But from the looks of it, all three of these seem to rely on equipment and ongoings the least. Yeah, tempest kinda needs them, but he doesn't need a lot out, and he can easily recover even if they do all get blown up. Tachyon also technically doesn't use them much (she only has 3 different kinds her deck), but I haven't figured out the best way to use her yet. Her damage seems minimal to me, besides of course barrage. Mostly I just use her for utlity. To me, her most useful cards are blinding speed, synaptic responce, and that one that makes everyone unable to deal damage I forget the name (I normally remember cards more by the picture than the names).
And yeah, I've gotten into the habit of having back-up modules in hand when I play AZ. Besides, that one card that lets you tutor for them also gives you an card draw and an extra play, so why not use it?
You just have to play around those cards. That's just part of the larger strategy you need to keep in mind while going up against those villains. If you dumped your whole hand into the board right into one of 2 devestats from Dawn, yeah you're gonna have a bad time.
Plan every turn as if you might see those board wipe cards and have a gameplan for when it happens. Those cards suck but they can be played around. Figuring out just how to do that is a big part of the whole game.
True of every single card in every single deck. Not a unique issue for Wraith. She suffers less due to the commonality of the card in her deck vs. other deck searchers, and to my memory II is the only deck seracher that can pull a deck manipulator (IE) out of a deck. DW Visionary can do that with Innate, but that isn't available to me and many others, and DW Visionary cannot use the Innate and deal Power damage at the same time, as Wraith can.
That is actually a positive. You suffer it once, and know exactly where the second copy is and how long until it appears. IE has a side-effect of increasing the frequency of such cards appearing by doubling Villain deck draw rate, so one to trash and one to bottom means you know a long time is going to pass before you need to IE again, and you can see it coming as the deck depletes. Wraith can use other Powers until it gets close.
Omnitron draws 2, Infinitor draws 2... It is still at 2/3 effectiveness in that situation (33% chance of suffering it, instead of 0%), so still better than not having it. You're looking for perfection, and you can make similar Villainous citations for other cards.
I didn't say it would. Not sure why this is relevant. I don't think there is any Ongoing or Equipment card out there that will control both environment and Villain decks over multiple turns, so this is not a disadvantage vs. any alternatives, nor a reason not to use it against the Villain deck.
Didn't say she was ideal vs. all decks. And no deck comes out 100% effective every game, so a single game test is not demonstrable of any strengths or weaknesses. The card you're avoiding here is Devious Destruction.
Define "ideal". Your need a sample space measured in dozens (maybe hundreds) of games for every combination of decks to have any Confidence Interval on a conclusion. Three games provides no confidence.
Kind of surprised that you don't like RO+MTC+UB+TK/SB, which deals 8 to BB and reduces damage dealt by 1, or does 2 others 3. Grappling Hook for the few Ongoings BB has. Replacing Visionary seems obvious. V's damage is very low and inconsistent due to being all one-shot, Mental Divergence is overkill... grappling Hook does that job. TtE is really attractive in every situation, but only 2 copies in her deck means many games end without seeing it in play.
But from the looks of it, all three of these seem to rely on equipment and ongoings the least.
Nope. Tachyon. Only one equipment and one Ongoing. But it's not about not having equipment in play with BB's DD. It's abotu getting it back into play after DD fires, too. One held back II can put Wraith way back ahead, after destroying everything... she only needs one desirable card in hand to play from it, the other is from deck.
If you're lucky enough to have Cleansing Downpour come out for the destruction then, yes, but he has no deck searching to get his power out. Neither does V. Ra can search for Staff only. Wraith can search for any equipment in her deck, which means it is much easier for her to come out strong early and recover fast, compared to any of the decks you list. Tempest can recover from trash, but it takes one turn to play Reclaim from the Deep, and the next to play the card he recovered. Please note that he can reclaim Wraith's II to boost her recovery speed.
With Legacy and Visionary. Legacy gets her low damage up to 2 or 3, and Visionary pumps cards into trash for Lightspeed Barrage. Tachyon hits everything, and can cause them all to skip a Round of damage. Hypersonic Assault on Matriarch when she's out hard. Hit Matriarch first to shut off Mat's damage, then Domains to shut down theirs, then kill birds and take no damage for it. Voss' minions dislike her, too.
Did you do that for Wraith against BB?
I still own the Demonic tutor I pulled out of Alpha. Save Modular Realignment, and use your Onboard Module Installations as fast as possible. They thin AZ's deck to make one-shots more common and speed delivery of Thermal Shockwave. Best played with Legacy online and many like shooting him with Ra, but he gets the most help from Visionary if she gets lucky on TtE draw, for twisting Thermal Shockwave's Fire feedback into Cold Feedback. Argent Adept helps in myriad ways, and Captain Cosmic can give him a blade when he can't use his Innate for anything. In some situations, Setback can redirect the right damage his way.
But with no one to support him, AZ is a B. Just a great deck for combos.
I didn't start using Wraith until I got the online game. I realized later I don't like a DC hero similar to her, and extended my prejudice. Once I gave her a few shots, and saw her come out strong, I realized I had never given her a fair chance. She's #1 slot in any online game I play to win right now. Deck control, deck control, deck control wins wins wins.
What's RO+MTC+UB+TK/SB even mean? I don't get any of your abbreviations besides V. I've never even seen any other decks outside of the original release (I don't even have the enhanced edition).
Razor Ordinance, Micro Targeting Computer, Utility Belt, THrowing Knives/Stun Bolt. Still, a good reminder for us not to use abbreviations and slang when talking with folks newer to the game (I am guilty of that myself)
And for those of us who are very much not new to the game but have cognitive problems.
I can't work out abbreviations quickly at the best of times, especially if they haven't been written in full (or close enough to full that it's easy to recognise them). I usually don't have the mental energy necessary to do the extra mental work that "translation" requires, so I end up not understanding.
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
I'm not entirely sure the point trying to be made in that rather lengthy post (other than that it seems to be trying to compare Wraith to everyone, or at least all the heroes in the base set, for...reasons...of some kind...), but I will point out that Tachyon has three ongoings and one equipment, not one of each - her equipment being the HUD Goggles and her ongoings Research Grant, Pushing the Limits, and Synaptic...thingy...Interruption, I think (the damage redirection one) ;).
When you say "DW Visionary" I presume you actually mean Dark Visionary, who is not a member of Darkwatch (that's Setback, Fixer, Nightmist, and Expatriette...and, later in Tactics, Nightmist is being swapped for Pinion, the heroic version of the Matriarch, though that's not exactly relevant here so never mind her ;)). It's easy enough to have access to her abilities - all you need is a piece of scrap paper, a pen/pencil, and a couple of minutes to look up an image of her card online in order to copy the text ;). For Blackwolf's benefit, she has 25hp and her base power is called "Torment", which lets you look at the top two cards of any deck, then put one on the top and one on the bottom. I can't remember what her incaps are but I'm sure you can find them somewhere ;). She's pretty powerful if she has any of her other "look at the top card(s) of a deck and do stuff with them" abilities (or is used in conjunction with stuff like the Wraith's Eyepiece, or Parse's deck-messing abilities) since you still have a second chace to look at a deck if both cards are horrible - both copies of Devastating Aurora in Dawn's deck, for example (I've had it happen - I think it's worse knowing something really horrible is coming up and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it).
Anyway...as far as I'm concerned, never mind about playing a precise herop combo in the hopes of getting out an exact card (or set of cards) in order for maximum arse-kicking efficiency. Just play what's fun for you and learn your own wicked combos. If all you do is constantly compare heroes to other heroes, you'll end up neglecting those you think are "bad" just because they weren't very effective in a particular game or whatever. I'm pretty sure everyone likes some heroes more than others, but which heroes they like will vary from person to person, as will how they choose to play said heroes. The exact circumstances of every game (which decks are involved, the order in which they play, and the order in which their cards come out, amongst other things) will differ between games and if you find a hero who comes out effective in more games than others, fine. But personally I like a bit more variety and a bit more of a challenge. I mean, I've had gamse in which, as Unity, I achieved very little because I kept just getting equipment or bots, but not both and so didn't do very much except draw cards and occasinally deal some plinky damage with a one-shot. Then I've had games where Mr Chomps alone (each copy of him) was dealing about sixteen damage to the main villain and subsequently ended the game a round or two later :D.
Just do what's fun for you and don't worry about getting bogged down in trying to "calculate" which hero is best in each specific situation that comes up. It's a game, after all, and the idea behind a game is that it's fun :D.
I am the Wordweaver...
Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
Agree wholeheartedly!
I always associated SB with Smoke Bombs. Stun Bolt also being on The Wraith is kind of confusing as far as acronyms go.
I like the equipment cards, I try to play "all of them" when playing The Wraith so I can Inventory Barrage, if against Dawn or some other villains with a "That Card" I don't plan for it to destroy my stuff, I try to plan to destroy my stuff before she does! (usually I mess it up and get good damage but spend a few turns with less damage output than other heroes before That Card comes along again and levels the playing field).
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
All of them.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
You've discovered reason #329 to avoid acronyms entirely and just write things out! An acronym doesn't really save that much typing, and it ends up adding confusion. I encounter this issue at my workplace all the time...
As many have already stated equipment heavy heroes can still be played but you have to adjust your play to fit what just happened...much like any TCG or LCG. Also when you get other expacs you find villians won't just be like "Hey I see you have stuff...'boom'....now you don't."
Use equipment on AZ, Bunker, Wraith, or whoever you're playing and try to pump damage as much as you can before you have to rebuild or rework your strat.