One of the interesting dynamics of the game as a whole is the Nemesis system, so I'm curious as to how each of the heroes stacks up against their nemesis. Wwhich heroes are uniquely suited to take on their nemesis from a gameplay perspective, which ones are not particularly effective but thematically linked, which manage to do both? So, without further ado, here's my own thoughts, at least for the heroes and villains I have access to (Core set, Rook City, Infernal Relics, Unity, and Ambuscade.)
Skipping AZ, Bunker and Visionary for the moment, as I don't have their Nemesis decks.
Fanatic: Definitely more on the thematic side against Apostate, their decks are basically mirrors of one another, though hers focuses on self-sacrifice, his on accumulating power. Certain of her cards, in combination, can be very effective against some of his tactics, though -- Chastise can keep things like the Relic Spirit alive when huge global attacks come out, and Divine Sacrifice + Undaunted can mean that Gauntlet of Perdition doesn't harm anyone. Final Dive is a godsend (Ha-HAH) for when the Orb of Delirium and the Tome of the Unknowable are both out. Further, given Apostate's relative lack of personal DR, Fanatic effectively starts with a 4-damage base power against him.
Haka: Ambuscade does a lot of damage, and Haka can heal a lot of damage. Rampage is perfect for taking out a stream of Devices, and Haka's selective-damage powers, like Taiaha, can keep him from accidentally triggering things like the Sonic Mine. Meanwhile, Ground Pound can put Ambuscade at a standstill when he manages to get a lot of devices out. And adding the +1 to Haka's already formidable attacks helps him take the hunter down that much faster.
Legacy: Let's face it, Legacy's whole deck is hugely useful against just about any villain, and this is the case with Baron Blade -- Heroic Interception keeps his devastating cards like Devious Disruption from being a total party wipe, and Take Down keeps him from putting more into his trash. Interestingly, this works out badly for Legacy, since he opens himself up to more damage with those plays -- but his other ongoings, like Next Mutation, Fortitude, and Superhuman Durability actually make that work to his advantage against Blade -- boosting an attack that might have hit for 4 up to 5, with those cards out, bounces it back down to 1 damage. But, again, this all applies to most villains, so Legacy, while effective against Blade, isn't especially great against him compared to other villains.
Ra: Ra likes to burn stuff, and the Ennead are great at giving him lots of targets. The Ennead are also great at belting out fire damage, meaning Ra can significantly weaken their offense with one card play. And even though they have no ongoings, the +1 from the Nemesis boost makes Drawn to the Flame a good round-one play, with all Ra's buffs turning it into a game-winner. Flame Barrier is also a no-brainer play, since Ra's going to be taking a lot of damage and the +1 makes the Ennead feel it.
Tachyon: Thematically, yeah, this doesn't make a whole ton of sense, but Tachyon is absolutely the best person to take on the Matriarch for one reason: Hypersonic Assault. Hit Matriarch first and you wipe her board clean with no fuss, particularly useful after she plays Darken the Skies. There is one interesting mirror parallel gameplay-wise: Like Tachyon, Matriarch really likes playing all her cards very, very quickly, and has an eye-piece that lets her play extras.
Tempest: The king of global damage is, of course, matched up against someone who likes to put a crapload of minions out. A boosted Grievous Hailstorm can wipe a board -- and the Elemental Subwave Inducer can help you pick and choose which minions to leave alive at the end of it (keeping the Soldiers out instead of the Frosthounds, for instance). Into the Stratosphere is also handy for delaying a card for a round, such as Forced Deployment.
Wraith: Maia is, perhaps, the most directly and best suited to taking on her nemesis, thanks to her ability to play two powers, scan the deck, and keep him from doing damage consistently. While there's still risk, since Spite plays two cards a turn, with a little luck Wraith can shove his drugs and Lab Raids to the bottom of the deck, picking which order they come out. Failing that, her Nemesis bonus lets her force a Throat Jab through anything short of an H5 game, and failing that, Stun Bolt doesn't need to do damage to apply the debuff, so having two of them out effectively neuters him and lets the heroes get way ahead of his healing.
Expatriette: Against Dawn, Expatriette has a few things going for her -- RPG Launcher is fantastic, given the number of ongoings Dawn has, and Pride and Prejudice becomes at least 6 damage against her. One unique thing about Dawn is that you don't necessarily want to clear her minions out, but with how many of them do damage, keeping them alive is rough -- but a Submachinegun with Liquid Nitrogen Rounds can keep it from being too painful and Reload and Speed Loading can keep her bringing them out. Alternately, Assault Rifle lets you pick and choose which Citizens you put down, always handy with a trash-revolving villain like Dawn.
Mr. Fixer: His nack for Irreducible damage is really handy when you have to manage which Thugs and Underbosses to target -- leave the Deputy and his Corrupt Cops out to focus on the others while Fixer and his Dual Crowbars clobber whoever needs it directly. That tool in particular is handy for the Chairman and Operative, since it's always fun to let the Nemesis Bonus stack up. Grease Gun is also a godsend once the gunmen come out, and keeps the Operative and Chairman from retaliating.
Argent Adept: Like Legacy, there's not a ton about AA that makes him specifically good against Akash'Bhuta, but he is one of the few with power-based Ongoing and Environmental destruction, which can be handy, given how Akash interacts with the environment. His best asset is probably being able to give other players turns -- an extra helping of Powered Shockwave or Scorched Earth can do serious damage to all the targets she puts out. Also fun is when you realize that Akash'Bhuta has only one card that lets her do damage to the heroes (Entomb, an ongoing which, as mentioned, can be easily taken care of) -- the only other times she does damage is to herself, when her limbs go down. Argent Adept can get a lot of mileage out of boosting her with Syncopated Onslaught right before taking out her limbs with little risk.
Nightmist: Another generally useful character -- most of what she can do to Gloomweaver works on other villains. Her Nemesis bonus, however, is a handy buff for spells like Heedless Lash or Oblivion, in which it's effectively a +2 or +3 once she has her Amulet out. Astral Premonition and Mistbound are also great for putting painful cards like the Cursed Acolyte and the relics where you want them.
Freedom Six:
While I don't have Shattered Timelines yet, I did notice one thing about the Freedom Six variants and how they go against Iron Legacy. Tachyon gets everyone to draw cards; Bunker gets Ongoing destruction; Wraith gets a damaging power; Absolute Zero gets a direct damaging power; Unity can get her bots out without equipment; Tempest gets extra card draw.
Wraith, AZ and Unity's powers are all about speeding up their play and doing damage first turn -- very important in a hard-hitting game like Iron Legacy, who does so much damage the heroes might well not get three or four turns to set up. Bunker gets an ability to take out Ongoings right off the bat -- and of the six, he's the only one who has no ability to do so normally. Tachyon and Tempest get card draw, helping the whole team get the stuff they need that much faster.
In short, they're all built for a fast paced, desperate game, which is exactly what Iron Legacy usually delivers.
Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Captain Cosmic and Infinitor make sense as nemesis but I don't feel that Captain Cosmic has many good counters to the manifestations put in play.
Sky-Scraper certainly has a lot of tricks up her sleeve to make her a crowd favorite in the Colliseum against Kaarga with a lot of it coming from her Huge form.
The Naturalist and Deadline make sense but I don't feel either one is a good counter to the other. I think Deadline has a bigger advantage since he can deal irreducible damage on his flipped side meaning Rhino cards won't help.
KNYFE and Progeny seem to good counters. Games against Progeny seem to primarily be a damage race and KNYFE is certainly capable of dishing out a lot.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
The Naturalist in Gazelle Form can really help vs. Deadline by wiping out those Ongoings (2 per card play with the right card). But, so can AZ, Setback, anyone with Ongoing destruction...
Setback and Kismet - Both about fortune and misfortune. Setback's Karmic Retribution can flip the Trinket with one shot. He has good ongoing destruction and his tokens can't be affected by her jinxes. His nemesis bonus makes Reckless Rush a great trade. 3 damage and 2 tokens for 2 health. Likewise Cause and Effect gives better returns for him. However, he still isn't very helpful against Lady Luck. That card is the meanest one in her deck and has been the greatest cause in my experience of losses to her.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
That's why I don't feel the Naturalist is good counter to Deadline as his weak point is just a team with a lot Ongoing destruction. The Naturalist has some Ongoing destruction but it potentially requires some setup to do and means you are stuck in Gazelle for a round.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
The Visionary and The Dreamer don't have much, but they have one little thing I like: Vis comes the closest of the heroes (I think) to having two cards where one is flat superior to the other. Psychic Maelstrom is almost always going to be better than Cerebral Hemorrhage... Except, for example, against the Dreamer.
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-Reckless
Omnitron-X can use Self-Sabotage to take out Omnitron's Components,(and then use them to deal damage!). That's always great fun.
Chrono-Ranger can utterly destroy Plague Rat. He just loves damage boosts so much, and nemesis boost and the Plague Nest infection boost allow him to deal crazy amounts of damage.
The Sentinels have an advantage against La Capitan in that she likes stealing your stuff, and they don't have very much stuff to steal.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
La Capitan also has two crew members who like targeting the lowest health hero and one of them does extra damage if they have ten or less health.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
But the drawback using Omnitron-X against Omnitron is if technilogical singularity comes out on a fully built Omnitron-X, it doesn't matter what Omni-X's health is at, he's as good as dead because of the +1 for every single equipment card in play. I've had games where Omni-X got taken down from near full health to 1 or 2 health because of that card
"A delayed game is eventually good. A rushed game is bad forever"
-Shigeru Miyamoto
Having looked over the decks I'm going to disagree with what's been said about The Naturalist vs Deadline.
Sure, Deadline's flip side is dealing irreducible damage that the Natrualist can't counter, but it's at the cost of destroying Nature, I can't think of anyone more suited to being hurt by this destruction except Akash'Bhuta.
Deadline has no damage boosting cards in the deck and almost every instance of damage is 2 or less, which, when in Rhino form, The Naturalist can counter with his Ongoings, even with the extra nemesis damage. And this damage is to all targets, meaning with the right Ongoings he can redirect damage meant for the whole team and shrug it off.
Deadline's other tactics are Ongoing destruction and shuffling your trash back into your deck. The Naturalist cares not for either of those things. The only card in his deck that cares about the trash is his character card, and that allows him to search his trash or deck so wherever his forms are he can fish them out (pun intended!). And for ongoing destruction, he has plenty of Ongoings to sacrififce and, if necessary, he can sacrifice his forms to save something the team deems more valuable, and still have it back out for the next turn.
On an entirely different note I'm going to point to a previous thread of mine for Tachyon vs The Matriarch.
TLT- flipping the bird
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
Tachyon is Matriarch's cousin? Huh. I don't remember seeing that in their bios -- something Chris said?
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I would think a nemesis of Deadline would be more prepared to take out Ongoings but I can see your point. The Naturalist does care a bit about the environment deck keeping targets in play as it can give him some DR.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
I'm pretty sure it's said that Lilian and Meredith are cousins in LIlian's biography, where it says she goes all emo about having always been compared to her highly successful cousin and when she finds the Mask she sees a way to get back at her, or something.
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The Matriarch's bio here http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/multiverse/villains/matriarch lists she had a cousin she was compared to but not who that cousin is. I think it was Christopher who told us that directly that Tachyon is her cousin.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Here's a post with Christopher confirm they are cousins, but I'm sure we've seen it before that.
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
I'd like to add to a couple things here:
Haka v Ambuscade:
Savage Mana (2 copies in the deck) can and will totally shut down Cloaking Device (1 copy in deck with 2 searchers.) Haka can effectivly neuter 1 of Ambuscade's biggest plays. The other big play by Ambuscade (Charged Attacks 1 copy) is also severly limited if his toys are already under Savage Mana.
Mr Fixer v The Mob:
This one I feel is less favorable. While with luck Mr Fixer can be set-up well and be very effective against this deck, I feel he needs just a bit more *something* draw power maybe, or even better a searcher for tools. Now I don't design card games obviously, but I play a lot of them; I think there is something lacking in Fixer's deck on a whole. I'd almost venture it's consistency that the deck is lacking. Maybe 1 less of each Over Drive and Bloody Knuckles for either a new card (draw power or equipment searcher maybe) or extra copies of Tool Box. I wont deny that Fixer has a great deck (I might have in the past, but I've been playing him on the app more often and have a new appreciation for our ninja-mechanic) it just feels like if things don't go his way he can have trouble catching up. As to how his tools and styles complement the fight vs The Mob: 3-4 of his tools can really shine here (Pipe Wrench, Jack Handle, Tire Iron, and Hoist Chain) and the 2 more "flexable" styles (the ones not tied to piercing DR) also have stellar moments against this deck.
Well there is my 2 cents, for what they're worth.
So the only matchups we haven't commented on besides the Vengeance villains are Parse/Misinformation and Guise/Wager Master. (Scholar's is untested, and Unity needs a nemesis all to herself, maybe Chokepoint?)
I'll attempt Parse/Misinformation
Parse is a beast against any villain. The amount of irreducible/increased damage she adds to villain targets stop damage reduction, and her control of all Villain decks means they just can't get out their hardest hitting cards. (I'll just Buffer Overflow "Another Reality's debt" or "Threat to the President", thank you!) So when Advanced Miss Information is flipped, you don't have to sweat that -2 damage reduction. She even has ongoing/environment destruction, extra plays, and copious card draw. Parse does have lots of ongoings for Miss Information to destroy, but her other cards are good enough that it doesn't hurt her as much as it does for someone like Absolute Zero or Bunker. So she's good in any matchup, but these strengths do specifically counter Miss Information's deck, since Aminia is all about ongoing destruction, discards, and self damage.
I would also add that deck control is particularly crucial against Miss Information.
Re: Fixer vs. The Mob, try DW Fixer -- any style/tool that doesn't specifically apply becomes a 3-damage shot instead of a wasted draw. Just keep doing three damage until you get the styles/tools you want.
If you get Bloody Knuckles it's a five-damage shot (or more if you have Crowbars or whatever out), and then can destroy Bloody Knuckles for no punishment as a result >:).
I am the Wordweaver...
Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
BurningStickman7 on Steam.
My first novel: "Brothers of the Curled Isles"
The C-Team Podcast
That's probably part of why these two are Nemeses - usually such pairs have opposing/similar deck mechanics (eg Meredith and Lilian both play loads of cards that do small amounts of damage, Plague Rat destroys everyone via lots of AE damage while Jim is really good at focusing fire on one single target, etc), so it makes sense that Ambuscade is trying to hunt down Haka, who can just eat all his stuff (and them vom it back into his face later >:)).
I am the Wordweaver...
Basically, I like writing stuff ;)
Also, with Plague Rat and Chrono-Ranger - Plague Rat fights by playing ongoings on heroes. And Chrono-Ranger fights by playing ongoings on villains.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
That is a really cool interaction, and something I never thought of before.
It seemed like, the one time I played this combination, Parse was really well equipped to flip Miss Information.