Character Profile
- Best Attack: Charge
- Best Team Support: Grease Gun
- Best Personal Support: Dual Crowbars
- Primary Damage Type: Melee
- Secondary Damage Types: Projectile, Any
- Worst Card: Tire Iron
- Nemeses: The Chairman and the Operative
The martial-artist mechanic Mr. Fixer strives towards personal perfection. The undisputed king of irreducible damage Strikes with a variety of damage tricks. Allowing other heroes to get in on his irreducible damage is incredibly potent. Salvage Yard and Grease Gun supply some powerful team support for this unique, flavorful character.
To Strike!
Mr. Fixer has only one power, and that is Strike. Unimpressive at first glance, Mr. Fixer’s game is focused on applying all sorts of modifiers and enhancements to this single power, and using it as often as he can. Given the right boost, Mr. Fixer can overcome many of the problems villains and environments present.
Mr. Fixer has Overdrive and Charge that can let him attack more than once in the same turn. Charge is the more damaging of the two, but Overdrive has stronger utility in strange circumstances. It can be reused by Salvage Yard, and allows you two more attacks if played out of turn. If you get another power from somewhere, like the Rod of Anubis, you can play Overdrive, use the Rod, then Strike twice.
Before using these, make sure that your attacks are enhanced by something. Don’t just play them to play something. Getting out both a tool and a style allows you to use these cards to their full potential. If you don’t have a relevant style or tool in play or in hand, you would do better to pass on your weak power and draw two cards rather than play one of these.
Harmony is a very desirable boost, once Fixer has a tool and a style. Never leave home without it. Bloody Knuckles, on the other hand, is difficult to negotiate. It is sometimes a useful tool to overcome damage reduction or to deal enough damage to take down multiple things with Jack Handle or Dual Crowbars. The villain and environment can make you pay for it, so I generally avoid it. It’s a great thing to lose to card destruction, especially if the villain has yet to damage you. Definitely take the opportunity to play it if damage has been blocked by something.
Tools of the Trade
My favorite tool is probably the Dual Crowbars. It provides a much-desired boost to his damage, and lets it affect another target. Of note here is that target-specific damage increases affect the second target. If Fixer strikes the Operative, his damage is increased because she is his nemesis, and then he deals the same total damage to his second target. (All of the possible implications of this rule are currently up for debate. If we get an official ruling, I will update this.)
Jack Handle is the tool of choice for crowds, but be careful when there is something you don’t want to kill. The damage is weaker than the Crowbars, but the Jack Handle enjoys the same target-specific damage boost. Of further note is that Jack Handle and Dual Crowbars trigger whenever he deals damage. This includes things that make Mr. Fixer attack himself. With his iron discipline and a long stick, he can somehow overcome an Infection, and lash out at all of his foes an extra time. When self-damage comes up, as against Plague Rat, this is a powerful trick to have in your arsenal.
Hoist Chain features offensive damage reduction. I find this most useful against frequent attacks, especially if you can plan for them – the Matriarch, the Operative, Carrion Fields, the member of the Ennead with the fewest hit points. Unlike the above tools, this can only affect one target at a time. This is great with Charge or Overdrive, even alone. You can reduce a target’s damage twice, or apply it to two different targets. Alternating Tiger Claw is great with this as an easy way to break damage reduction to apply the effect, since the damage will never be high.
The handy Pipe Wrench is a mix between offense and defense. Other heroes usually have to play two different cards to get this effect. This is good when you need added defense. It’s especially desirable in the fights where you only care about attacking one target, since you won’t be able to use Dual Crowbars or Jack Handle with it.
Tire Iron gives Fixer a theoretical +2 damage, but only in very specific circumstances. It can only affect one thing at a time, and the relative rarity of the triggering circumstance means you won’t use Overdrive or Charge to good effect with it – which means, in turn, that you’ll want to swap the Tire Iron out pretty soon. It does change your damage type to projectile, if you really need that, but things that are melee immune are not cards you will kill in one hit. I say this is a waste of a play.
Style Network
Grease Monkey Fist is the most straightforward of Mr. Fixer’s styles. Damage boosts are always helpful, and this is a much more useful method of changing Fixer’s damage type than Tire Iron. You can’t go wrong with this one.
Alternating Tiger Claw is less straightforward. Irreducible damage amounts to a variable damage boost. Depending on the situation, that variable can be a big number. This card is tempered by Fixer’s generally low damage, but being able to guarantee damage in bleak circumstances is excellent. Obviously, the power of this depends on how often the villain deploys damage reduction. Pair it with tools that boost your damage.
Riveting Crane lets everybody get in on the irreducible party. Mr. Fixer has to overcome their damage reduction first. Other heroes or Bloody Knuckles are useful here. Then, the other heroes can unload freely. This is particularly effective against villains who can reduce damage by two or more. Against villains who reduce damage by one, this provides a target-specific boost similar to Legacy’s Galvanize. As with Alternating Tiger Claw, pair this with anything that boosts your damage.
Fixer’s last stance is Driving Mantis. This provides some clean defense, and a little bit of offense. The damage limit for the redirection is a little low, but this combines well with Pipe Wrench to ignore attacks of one damage, and redirect attacks of two or three damage. Don’t forget to remove the -1 modifier from Pipe Wrench after he directs the attack away from himself. Canny players use this with multi-targeted attacks from other heroes. For instance, Expatriette’s Assault Rifle deals three targets two damage each. If this hits Fixer, he can essentially let Expatriette attack one target twice. If you’re relying on this style, do not play Bloody Knuckles.
Use Meditation to get any of these. I tend to prefer Grease Monkey Fist, fetching Riveting Crane if I see a particularly good application for it. Meditation can get cards from your trash too, which is good. It may be worth searching your deck for a card, even if you have it in hand, in order to make it ever-so-slightly more likely you draw into some non-style card you want, like Grease Gun or Harmony.
Back at the Shop
Fixer rounds out his deck with some nice cards. Tool Box is his go-to card draw. It’s reusable, which is great, and it makes very good destroy bait if the heroes have to lose some equipment.
Grease Gun stops damage. Super good. This differs from Haka’s Ground Pound by saying that non-hero targets can’t deal damage. Therefore, damaging cards that aren’t targets, like Checmical Explosions or Rivers of Lava, still deal their damage. That has gotten in my way at very inconvenient times, but the card still rocks.
Salvage Yard is a team utility vehicle. While it’s obviously nice for heroes after an equipment wipe, this is a big boon for heroes who actively destroy their equipment, like Unity or Expatriette. This is best for equipment-heavy heroes who need a lot of cards in hand. Bunker or Nightmist on a team with Fixer should take every chance to discard extra equipment, knowing that Fixer can put them all back in one fell swoop. Try to have an Overdrive in your trash before you play this. Having a Grease Gun there wouldn’t hurt either.
Weaknesses
Mr. Fixer’s chief weakness is his relatively low damage output. He is a character strictly about manipulating damage, but he doesn’t necessarily do a lot of it. Strike deals one point of damage to one target. He can boost this up by three between various ongoings and equipment, manipulating the number of targets as well. If he wants to take advantage of his utility tricks however, like Driving Mantis or Hoist Chain, his damage and targeting potential take a hit. Damage reduction is a painful barrier for Hoist Chain and Riveting Crane.
This issue causes him to be a slow starter, as he tries to find a setup that allows him to actually start dealing damage before his field control can be helpful. Once you do find the right setup, his damage flexibility is very rewarding.
Another problem holding Mr. Fixer back is a lack of ongoing or environment destruction. While he is sometimes well-positioned to overcome the challenges these cards present, there are times these cards represent problems he cannot fix.
Teamups
Mr. Fixer loves damage boosts. They can make him hit like a truck even without relying on Grease Monkey Fist and company. Once he has found the right approach, extra power uses or plays of Overdrive allow him to Strike all over the place to amazing effect.
His main team options are Riveting Crane and Salvage Yard. Heroes specializing in a lot of hits, like Chrono-Ranger and Fanatic, appreciate Riveting Crane. Salvage Yard is nice for many, but it has the most to offer Bunker and Nightmist.