Luminary - Complexity 1?

He is complexity one because he can be picked up and played without much explanation.  

I tend to put Luminary at the outer edge of 1. Knyfe is a 1 also but less straight forward than some others. Luminary is unique in the 1 category because he has devices which are unique to his deck.  Most 1s don’t have that mechanic. Luminary is pretty simple, but I would say he’s nearly a two also. 

I personally think there was some complexity creep in this last set. I think most of them are about right if you add 0.5 to their listed complexity ratings. Benchmark, Harpy, Idealist, and Akash'Thriya are much harder to use than the early 3's. Luminary is borderline 2 for sure.  La Comodora's 2 I disagree with intensely--I've played her a few times now and I don't understand her at all.

I feel like both Complexity and Difficulty are less discrete categories and more like a spectrum which has numbers plopped equidistantly along it.

Sorry but the thought of complexity creep makes me chuckle a bit.  Though I get the point and since this is the last expansion it makes sense to me they are probably the most complex group of heroes to play.  Overall, complexity is just a guide as to which heroes should be easier to just pick up and play.   Each person’s experience will vary and influence how they feel about it. 

In all seriousness, I wouldn't mind seeing peoples' rankings of the characters in difficulty order.  It'd be neat to see how others view them on the spectrum of easiest to hardest.

The thing about Luminary is you can discard your hand, let your all your stuff blow up, and still do 15 damage to something if you held on to that one card. He doesn't really care what happens to him so long as he hits that trash limit.

Weirdly, this makes him a little more complex if you're a long-time player of the game, because he really changes how you consider your plans over the course of the game.

I think the 'Complexity 1' rating is well put. Luminary's cards and mechanics are reletivley straight-forward, easy enough for a person who has a basic understanding of the game to pick-up and play. Like it was said by TakeWalker, we may just think he's a little more complex since we're all a bit more experienced with the game and can understand the possible combos and such hidden just beneath the surface...

Yeah, I would say with Luminary that you could use the phrase "Don't worry about it" most often...

"Oh, I had to discard a card" - Don't worry about it, it's just making yout trash bigger.

"Oh, I had to destroy my whole hand!" - Don't worry about it, it's just making your trash even bigger than if you'd discarded one card.

"Oh no, all my stuff just got blown up!" - Don't worry about it because guess what? Yup, it's making your trash bigger!

"This card I just played is making me discard cards that look cool!" - Don't worry about it - you'll get them back later when your trash inevitably cycles.

Really, you have to keep even less of an eye on your trash than Tachyon does, considering it doesn't matter what cards are in there, just how many overall. And once you reach that magic number, all you need is whichever Doomsday Device is most relevant to the situation and boom. Literally >:).

There's definitely some debate to be had here. The statistics project compiles a bunch of objective measures, which definitely don't agree with the published difficulty/complexity rankings. But also, individual players have anecdotes that don't agree with the statistics project.

For example, I lose to Baron Blade more than I lose to Grand Warlord Voss, I think because I've fine-tuned my Voss strategy but sometimes there's nothing I can do about the Baron's clock running out. And I find the Ruins of Atlantis to be an easier environment than the statistics suggest - if you plan for Krakens, they are more helpful against minions than hurtful to the heroes.

I will be interested to see how the new heroes do in the statistical rankings.

This.  He's a complexity 1, not because his deck doesn't invite interesting decisions or have cool internal interactions, but because so many his cards are effective most of the time- if you just shuffled your hand and played a random card every turn, and used your base power until it's time for Doomsday, you would still be effective ~80% of the time.

Unfortunately, the stats say nothing about complexity, just how likely a hero is to win or lose.  Some complex heroes do badly, mostly because of setup time, but many don't.

Here's my sticking point about Luminary: compare him to Tachyon or Captain Cosmic, both 2's.  Tachyon has the whole Burst thing, which is a special keyword but is really easy to grok.  She has a slightly complicated strategy in that you have to know when to pop your big attacks, but that's about it.  Captain Cosmic also has his Constructs, which have HP, but are very simple mechanically.  The toughest part about him is knowing when to use Construct Cataclysm or Conservation of Energy (and personally, I almost never use either), and sometimes deciding what order the constructs should take damage in.  Luminary has Devices and cards that interact with Devices, he cares about his trash, he cares about damage order, he cares about when and which Doomsday Device to use--he has everything that makes either Tachyon or CC a 2, put together.

Tachyon is a better comparison.  Captain Cosmic hands out extra powers, healing, an alternate power, and retribution damage all of which can end up outside of his own play area.   All of Luminary’s stuff stays in his play area.    In regards to Tachyon, Luminary doesn’t have to track a card type in his trash, doesn’t have cards that give him extra card plays, and has no self damaging abilities.   The worst case for a blind card play I can think of for Luminary is having Triple Cross played by Hasten Victory resulting in having to destroy a card he has or another hero’s.   You can find some good strategy with Luminary but he’s a hero I feel confident to hand to a new player without much issue.  

Interestingly it was a few such discussions that led to me formulating that observation. One was a discussion of people noting that Gloomweaver felt like almost a 0 Difficulty compared to Baron Blade who in turn was surprisingly hard at times for a 1, one was people saying Progeny felt like on the easy side of 4 compared to Chairman and Iron Legacy and wondering if Dreamer was too low rated, and then on the hero side was Nepycros saying he felt like Argent was a Complexity 4 which led into a hero-centered discussion.

I was alluding to the ease of play, not the overall win rate .  I would readily recommend Luminary to a new player because he's hard to be ineffective with.  Most of his cards give him setup and passive effects, and many of those that don't set up still build his trash.  You don't need much deck knowledge, or, indeed, knowledge of the game, to do great things with Luminary.  While a high-skill player can do great things with him, a low-skill player can do a lot too.  He cares a lot about a lot of things, but he doesn't ask that the player do the same.  Hence the high blind success ratio (or BSR).  Tachyon has a lower BSR- a lot of her cards are neutered in the wrong situations and knowing what to save and what to toss can require a developed game sense.  And anyone who's played Requital CC can tell you that his BSR is lower than it seems.  In general, I would say that:

A complexity 1 hero can be effectively played by a child who is unfamiliar with the game, and is sufficient for a group that is all learning.  BSR: >70%

A complexity 2 hero can be effectively played by an adult who is unfamiliar with the game, with some advice from more experienced players.  BSR: 40-70%

A complexity 3 hero requires an understanding of the basic strategies of the game, as well as a very basic familiarity with the ideas of the particular hero, to be effective.  BSR: <40%

That gives me an idea for a unit test =)

I hope this idea comes to fruition and we get to see results.  

That's an excellent point and yet I completely disagree with you. :)

I have a player in my games who is smart but not very strategy-minded.  She usually plays heroes like Legacy, Wraith, and Tempest to fairly good effect.  But she also plays Tachyon and has done quite well with her, even by the end of her first game with her (not SS Tachyon, but any other version).  Luminary, she still hasn't really figured out even after 3 games or so.  She also picked up Doctor Medico without much difficulty despite him supposedly being a 3.

I think "complexity" is actually a combination of 3 things:

1. How difficult it is to understand the rules required to even play the character
2. How difficult it is to strategically come up with effective ways to use the character
3. How difficult it is to track the character's various moving parts

Luminary isn't quite the lowest level of any of those.  He has some cards that need to be read carefully to understand, he has a few different ways of managing resources that have to be balanced, and he can have a lot of cards on the table in front of them, most of which have HP.  Tachyon is fairly low in point 1, quite low in point 3, but higher in point 2.  Captain Cosmic is low in points 1 and 2 but higher in point 3.

I don't know what that is, but that's what I'm here for!

EDIT: Assuming you were talking about the BSR, that is.

So, how about a composite score to represent the sum of all of these.

For example, let's take KNYFE.  KNYFE doesn't have many/any cards that change the rules of the game in a significant manner, outside of giving her additional plays or draws.  I'd give her a 1 for Question 1.  However, piecing together when to trigger things like For the Greater Good, Battlefield Experience, and Overdo It can be particularly difficult.  I might even give her a 3 for Question 2.  However, she doesn't have much in the way of moving parts:  turns are pretty straightforward even when she's getting extra plays or powers.  I'd probably give her a 1 for Question 3.

That'd give KNYFE a composite score of 5 out of 9.  

Sure, let's see where that goes.

Tachyon does have a keyword thing that I usually have to explain to first-time players, though it's a simple concept, so let's say a 2 for Rules.  When to use her big attacks and when to take damage to Pushing the Limits is easy to grasp but also easy to screw up; I'd call Strategy a 2.  She's dead simple to Track, so that's a 1.  Total = 5/9.

Captain Cosmic also has a keyword and I often have to double-check to make sure players are putting constructs on legal targets, so let's call Rules a 2.  Because you do have to pay a bit of attention to what all the other heroes are doing and can do, but you don't really have combos, I think Strategy could be a 2.  Lots of moving parts in lots of play areas makes Tracking a 3.  Total = 7/9.

As a point of comparison, Legacy.  Rules are a 1 for sure.  Strategy with him is actually pretty complex--he has a lot of options and prioritizing them situationally can be tricky.  A good Legacy player is godlike, but I've seen bad Legacy players act like a crappy Ra.  High floor, high ceiling.  But using him somewhat effectively isn't too hard, so maybe a 2.  Tracking is also super-simple, definitely a 1.  Total = 4/9.

Some quickies: Wraith is like Legacy: simple to use, hard to optimize, I'd say a 1/2/1 = 4.  The Sentinels require some explanation but are actually easy to use, and no harder to track than a hero with 3 minions: 3/1/2 = 6.  And Luminary I'd put at a 2/1/2 = 5--he seems simple but I keep having to correct people who are using him wrong (rules, not strategy), and you do have to track minion health and behavior, and your trash, though they stay in your play area and don't do anything fancy.

I don't think this approach is going to work to come up with the defined values.  Some work, but none of the individual things seem to be valued consistently, and the 5-6 range is going to cover a disproportionate number of heroes.

I might argue that Luminary should have a 3 for tracking issues, given that he has to keep track of both device hp and the number of cards in his trash.  That'd put him at 6.

I had no illusions that the 3 question system would be perfect.  And, really, you do want a bell curve around the 5-6 range.  I can't imagine what the game would be like if every character was an 8-9.

Yeah, we have unit tests that run various things to make sure the game continues to work properly after we make changes. One test generates random games and has the heroes do random things until the game ends. I'm curious if a team of complexity 1 heroes are more likely to win a game in that situation =)

That's an excellent question! I suspect the answer is "no," since that would only account for how easy it is for a hero to be effective, not how difficult its rules are or how fiddly it is. I'd very much like to see which heroes would be most successful under such a test.

I like those question guidelines alot, adn I feel like I'm going to use those as guidelines for heroes going forward. But I still feel that Luminary fits at Complexity 1.

I played a game with 2 other experienced players and 2 brand new players. We all agreed to choose complexity 1 heroes to start off simply. One of our new players grabbed Luminary and she did fine. All we told her at the start about Luminary was "you have Doomsday Devices that get powered up by your trash size." She didn't play "opitmally" in any sense, but besides some general rules flubs, she understood what the cards did. The main thing I saw was that she was frustrated by how little she felt like she was contributing during the early game, compared to our Ra. Then she fired off the Orbital Laser for ~25 and all was well.  

So from that and the following game (she played him twice). 

How difficult it is to understand the rules required to even play the character?
The rules flubs I remember were a) understanding that you couldn't use Luminary's power twice, via Bared Blade, then power phase, b) devices could deal damage even if Luminary couldn't via Sonic Mine, and c) the Doomsday doesn't shuffle itself. All in all, fairly simple corrections. 

How difficult it is to strategically come up with effective ways to use the character?
More like "difficult to see it come to fruition." The rough part of the game was explaining it was fine for her to lose her cards now, because it was part of the deck. It wasn't until she fired the Doomsday that it got better. The second game, she was very active in firing off the death laser, and understood on her own why All According to Plan's discard ability was fantastic. But like I said above, I noticed many missed "optimizations" that I would count as learning character stategy. 

How difficult it is to track the character's various moving parts. 
Tracking destruction for AAtP and the whole remembering to use the "reacts to damage device (forget the name)" was the hardest thing. The end of turn devices are simple (we do have the token pack with EoT tokens, to be fair), and he really never has many cards in play that really affect each other, or that need to be remembered on other turns or in other play areas. I saw no isses with tracking device HP-she herself noted when a device was the lowest HP target. And she never bothered to count the cards in her trash until she got a Doomsday into her hand/play, so she wasn't tracking that every turn. 

All in all, I'd say 1/2/1 for the score, so 3 or 4/9. But that's just some extra data points from me observing of some games. 

I’m not so sure. I think part of what makes some heroes more complex is that playing cards in the right order makes them a lot more effective, whereas the vast majority of complexity 1 heroes can be reasonably effective whatever they play, so doing random stuff is more likely to yield reasonable results (Ra for example can be played optimally, but equally there isn’t really a particular ‘wrong’ way to play most of his cards - his game plan is essentially pushing out damage which you can achieve by grabbing better powers or playing his one shots).

Compared to someone like Absolute Zero and random actions could actively hurt you more than help you - he can be extremely powerful, but you’d rarely see that without a slightly more discerning approach.

In this sense, I think Luminary fits with the complexity 1 heroes - you could optimise his play, but actually just pitching cards out and seeing what sticks will still produce results. I’d probably argue that he was more complicated than the other complexity 1 heroes (Ra, KNIFE, Tempest, Haka, Legacy, Wraith), but some of them are definitely close to him, at least in terms of the options they bring (arguably Legacy, Wraith and Tempest all have the flexibility to build into different rolls, while Ra and KNIFE are only trying to do one thing as effectively as possible).

That's true for some, but not for all.  Legacy and Wraith, for instance, are considerably more effective when used strategically, though they're not horrible used randomly.  KNYFE, however, could be really bad used randomly.

Benchmark can't quite be used randomly, but with a simple rule--play hardware if you have hardware equal to or less than the software you have +1--he could be fairly good.  The Sentinels could be used randomly pretty well.  Doctor Medico and Sky-Scraper don't sound bad, and Setback is somewhat random anyway.

The 2's are all over the place.  Bunker and Parse would be rubbish.  Naturalist would be pretty bad (was he always a 2?  I thought he was a 3.)  Tachyon would depend a lot on what order she drew her deck in.  Fixer and Expat need a bit of luck to get set up but would then be fine.  Unity and Stuntman wouldn't be bad at all.

Huh.

How do you generate expected results for that test? Or is it just looking for successfully reaching an end-of-game state?

More to the point of the topic at hand, sometimes I wish I could play with your ability to run Monte Carlo games. It might be interesting to that that unit test, run it a whole bunch of times with random heroes, and then sort by win rate for each hero. 

Have any of the heroes complexities been adjusted since they were originally printed? Part of this comparison is Tachyon being a 2 but thats always seemed strange to me. I've always chalked it up to the base set complexities weren't quite as well defined yet otherwise she would also be a 1. 

I think a lot of them were re-evaluated as part of the release of the big box. Many do fall on a fine line between 1 and 2. I always considered Tachyon a possible 2 because all of her damage is basically low 1 pt shots and she can be really shut down by any form of DR. This results in forcing more strategic play and requiring an understanding of her burst mechanics. 

That test is just looking for crashes or infinite loops. If it finds one the setup & seed is recorded so we can reproduce it and investigate.

So since we're talking about other heroes...I'm not the only one that thinks Scholar is difficulty 2 and not 3, right?  Like picking up on the guy's power moves takes a lot of doing but I picked up on Flesh to Iron tanking pretty quickly in a gloomweaver fight.  Really the only things you need to worry about playing at the wrong time are alchemical redirection and know when to turn loose.

I think he’s a three.  First, all the Forms are not limited which is not picked up off the bat for most people.  At first glance to me I would say I didn’t understand what the goal or strategy was.   Until reading guides and trying stuff on my own after going through those it still took me a while to truly grok what he can do.  

I think Scholar is fine as a 2.  The only "gotcha" is that the forms aren't Limited.  Like Legacy and Wraith, here are many ways to play him, but none of them are wrong.  You can just put out a couple of Flesh to Iron and tank, you can play the yo-yo game with Mortal Form to Energy, you can hoard your cards and save them for Know When To Turn Loose, or you can just use his many solid one-shots and powers that don't involve healing- or drawing-based strategies.  All are perfectly viable, if not necessarily optimal.

On the other hand, I still think La Comodora is a 3.  She has the same upkeep issue as Scholar but has a much harder time paying for it, and her equipment doesn't have obvious synergies with each other or with her other cards or powers.  I'm having a harder time trying to grok her than any other hero so far.  I don't have great strategies for some of the other new ones, but with her I have almost no strategy at all.

It's Powerhound, that's a typo. 

I agree with this, at least initially. La Commadora came off to me very quickly as a much more complex Scholar with all of her self-discard. The fact that she's a 2 and he's a 3, I can only guess, is because she can just play her cards as "fire and forget" one-shots and do ok; Timeless Treasure just drawing 3 cards is real good. Whereas Scholar's Form cards directly build into his other plays, and could be nearly useless if not used and destroyed correctly.   

I personally am fine with Scholar as a 3. Most people playing him don't get the ways he can work -- they tend to focus on one thing and go with that for the game, such as just tanking. He's so much more powerful if he's transitioning through different forms throughout the game, "going with the flow", as that allows him to be his optimal self. I rarely see folks play him like that, though. (Note: I know that there are games when sticking with one approach IS the optimal approach. ;-) 

I don't feel like I've played La Commodora enough to give my thoughts there, though, so I'll hold off on that one. :-) 

Yeah but complexity is based more on skill floor than skill ceiling.  If it was based on skill ceiling pretty much everyone in complexity 1 would be a 2.  Suboptimal play on Scholar is usually enough to get the job done, trust me Flesh to Iron and oneshot spam is my main strategy with the guy and it's yet to do me wrong (so long as I use DDA to regrab DDA/PaA of course.)

How Scholar’s deck plays is not fully obvious until multiple plays even for someone who has played the game for a bit.   He isn’t a two just because it’s possible to get by with a suboptimal game as that can be accomplished with any hero of any given complexity.  

Yeah, Wraith would be a 2 or even a 3 by that logic.  She has multiple strategies depending on whether she's focusing on offence (Targeting Computer, Razor Ordnance, Throwing Knives), defense (Stun Dart, Smoke Bombs), deck control (Infrared Eyepiece), or a hybrid strategy.  She's easy to be effective with but very difficult to optimize, especially with Impromptu Invention which requires you to know her deck well.  Similarly, Legacy has a to balance or choose between offense, defense, and support, and his ceiling complexity is very high with Next Evolution shenanagans (and even higher with Greatest or F5 Legacy, who have to know the other heroes at the table and have good communication).

I’ve been part of games where the person playing the Scholar, that includes me, where he was carried through the game or got themselves killed quickly because they thought what’s the worse that could happen with Alchemical Redirection while having Flesh to Iron in play.   

I'm not what you'd call a new player by any stretch, and I still do things like that. <.<; I've lost many a Naturalist to bad timing...

For those of you talking about La Comodora, here's what I've learned after a few plays:

- Concordant Helm is paramount. Get it out as soon as you can, keep it out even if it means sacrificing others' setup, unless you have another one in hand. Always take your draw phase first so you can get two cards.

- Shipshape is probably her next most important card, followed by Maria Helena's Plan. Shipshape is especially good when you're still looking for Concordant Helm, it will help you keep one or two portals open with minimal extra draw.

- The coolest thing I've found to do with Shipshape's secondary text (returning a card in play to the top of your deck, then playing it) is retrieving a Paradoja Figurehead from someone else's play area when you've already got one in yours. You can't move them to separate play areas, but you can play both together, and that will get you the amazing +2 damage boost you need to have an explosive turn with lots of your stuff out.

- When playing the base version, a great strategy (after you've got Concordant Helm, anyway) is using your innate power on yourself to put that Harness Anomaly you just played under the top card of your deck, where you'll draw it next turn and be able to play it again. Cycling that card will make up for the fact that you're not using your power on anyone else.

Other than that, I mostly don't try to plan too much. I've rarely felt like I needed to have any particular equipment in play beyond maybe the Figureheads. I mean, Weigh Anchor will give you anywhere from 0-6 Equipment all at once, and you'll likely not be able to sustain all of it, so I kind of take that as a cue to not sweat strategy too much beyond setting up with the cards I mentioned above. Cannon Portal is always nice, Brig Teleporter is good in certain situations; I rarely bother with Future-Tech Deck Gun because I'm too busy cycling Harnessed Anomaly. And of course, I'd hardly call myself a Comodora expert yet; I think she's got more interactions and combos left to find. :)

Having gone through that with Scholar it does make me hesitant at times playing Thorathian Monolith or Indomitable Force 

To be fair, often if someone gets incapped by a bad turn of tanking, it's because there was so much damage being thrown around that it would have just led to everyone else being half-dead instead (especially if the amount of damage is large enough to get through the DR that tanking abilities often grant), so it's not that bad a gaffe.

Yeah, Monolith doesn't feel anywhere near as good to use as Indominable. It's easy to see why though, with all the DR and self-healing that Naturalist can stack on himself. He can recover from a bad play much easier than Sky.

I just do my best to always be in rhino mode before using Indominable, maybe even have 'Resiliant Hide' and 'Blend into the pack' out if it's possible.

I think Scholar is a solid 3. I've played him probably 50 times, and I'd say he is actually better using a delayed Keep Moving + Liquid + Energy strategy (sometimes you still want Iron in the early rounds) than an Iron strategy in 2/3 of games, and most people just use Iron the whole game. Learning to set up LEE or even LLEE / LEEE gives you a whole new view on the character. 

Just to revisit this having played Luminary a bunch of times in digital, I think he is actually pretty easy to get. Maybe that’s coloured by my view as an experienced Sentinels player and I’d find him more confusing if he were given to me as a first character, but to be honest while you have a lot going on, you can kind of just throw stuff out and see what happens a lot of the time. His base power plays bots or sets you up for a doomsday later, most of his oneshots are pretty flexible, etc.

The only caveat I have for that I guess is the difference between physical and digital - you would have to remember what each device does and when it does it in the Physical game, whereas all that leg work is done for you digitally. 

He was definitely the easiest ObliVeon hero to ‘get’ I think though, including Void Guard, Stuntman and Benchmark.

Yeah, just chipping in that Luminary is pretty straightforward (and FUN).

The only complaint: am I the only one who's underwhelmed with the Explosive Reconstructor? I mean, 2 damage to everything doesn't really feel "doomsday" to me. It's just a fire-type Grevious Hailstorm with a buildup cost of getting 15 cards in the trash, and then destroying the device.

Is there something I'm missing, and this is way better than Grevious Hailstorm?