A Hero's Guide to Ra

Character Profile

  • Best Attack: Fire Blast!
  • Best Team Support: Imbued Fire
  • Best Personal Support: Staff of Ra
  • Primary Damage Type: Fire
  • Secondary Damage Type: Projectile
  • Worst Card: Wrathful Gaze
  • Nemesis: The Ennead and Anubis

Ra cares about precisely three things.  Fire, damage, and fire damage.  Ra is the closest thing there is to a pure damage dealer in Sentinels of the Multiverse.  His cards are geared towards enhancing himself to the hilt to unleash fiery fury on any villain stupid enough to cross his path.  The cards that round out his deck add some finesse to accompany this brutal force.

The Combo

Ra is the master of self-enhancement.  A good number of his cards offer boosts to his damage, and when he gets them down, few things can stand in his way. 

The Staff of Ra is a wonderful enhancement for Ra, netting Ra three hit points in addition to a blanket damage boost.  Imbued Fire is excellent as well, letting all heroes (and some villains!) get in on the action.  Add Flesh of the Sun God, making Ra immune to fire.

[Once you have those, add Solar Flare.  This boosts Ra by a further two.  It has some nasty psychic feedback damage, but since a hero is dealing it, it’s fire, and Ra is immune.  I can only recommend keeping this card around if you have a way to block the feedback damage.

Together, these cards add four damage to every attack Ra makes, and can be kept out indefinitely.  If you’re really lucky in your draws, there’s another Solar Flare in his deck, and the card isn’t limited, for a total of six additional damage on every attack.  While that sounds beautiful, I’ve never seen it.  The game usually ends well before that’s realistic.  You generally want to increase your damage before attacking, but as the game reaches a conclusion, you inflict much more damage by attacking than you do by prepping some more.  Speaking of which…

UPDATE: At the time of the writing of the guide, it was thought that this combo works. We now know that it doesn't, and future printings of SotM have an errata on Solar Flare to explain that it doesn't work.]

Attack!

Pyre is a great base power.  It sets the standard for what a base power is supposed to accomplish.  A damaging base power is very useful while you’re building up at the start of the game, as well as when something gets rid of all of your stuff. 

Blazing Tornado is an upgrade to Pyre.  It’s basically another buff, albeit one that’s less exciting than Imbued Fire or The Staff of Ra.  It looks best when you have a way to use it alongside another power, like with Flame Spike.

Living Conflagration allows Ra to keep up his damage expectation while drawing more cards.  If Ra is overkilling his targets, switch to this power to get a card as well.  The damage when it comes into play is a nice touch, making it at the very least a damaging one-shot that gives you more options.

Drawn to the Flame is Ra’s answer to villain ongoings.  Naturally, it’s the same as his answer to everything else.  Fire.  This tears through a villain that keeps a lot of ongoings, like Citizen Dawn or Plague Rat.  Even if a villain has no ongoings, you should keep this one in mind.  The reason is that affects every non-hero target.  With no villain ongoings, it deals 0 damage, boosted by whatever buffs Ra has out, which still stands to be devastating.

The Staff of Ra has a power on it, too.  It deals projectile damage, so Ra has a method of attack if the villain has something immune to fire.  With the upgrade to The Staff of Ra, he may want to throw the Staff just so he can play another and gain 3 hit points.  Make sure to wait until you can gain the life to play it, to make the most of your healing.

Fire Blast and Inferno fulfill Ra’s essential goal of piling on fire damage.  Inferno is quite potent with just a boost or two, while Fire Blast is good all the time, and crazy with boosts.  Don’t discount Flame Spike.  With a second power in play, Flame Spike can easily inflict more total damage than Fire Blast.

Scorched Earth is like Drawn to the Flame, but for environments.  Generally speaking, you can count on having more environments than villain ongoings out at any given time, which is why this is a one-shot.

All told, Ra attacks early and often.  With his base card, he is the most reliable damage dealer in the game, a fact that will come in very handy.

Utility

Flesh of the Sun God is a fine precaution against six out of thirteen villains and three out of eight environments, and using the power can make your allies extremely grateful.  Employing it against the Volcanic Eruption on Insula Primalis always makes me smile, and usually makes the villain pretty dead.

Of particular note is the combination of Flesh of the Sun God with Imbued Fire.  As detailed above, this make Ra immune to hero damage.  Powering Flesh of the Sun God, however, makes all heroes immune to hero damage.  This is useful in a wide range of situations:

  • Haka’s Rampage and Nightmist’s Oblivion carry no drawbacks.
  • Self-damage cards are much easier to use, like Fanatic’s Embolden or Tachyon’s Pushing the Limits.
  • Plague Rat’s Infections can’t hurt you.  This applies to several other villain or environment cards that make the heroes hurt themselves, but it is best against the Rat.
  • Being immune to the fire damage that you’ve made more potent with Imbued Fire is fantastic.

Summon Staff is probably the card you most want to see in general.  It gives you two cards, one of which is your single best buff, and allows you to play another card.  Excavation should generally be played when it can net you three cards, to fuel back up on your damaging one-shots.  If the game goes long, stacking the environment deck with less harmful cards is excellent.

I tend to skip Flame Barrier, because you can’t control it.  Dealing out a bunch of damage without requiring action on your part is great, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve just had many instances where he punches himself or his allies, or takes too much damage from a villain’s retributive attack.  Be careful with this one.

I only use Wrathful Gaze to embarrass the villain.  Most of Ra’s deck can reliably do the same thing.  He can use it to destroy something that’s immune to damage, which is interesting, but generally such things have more than two hit points. 

Horus of the Two Horizons

Horus of the Two Horizons (Beard-Ra), trades one hit point for Sunrise.  To look at it, this is an extremely strong base power.  No longer do you have to wait for Ra to luck into his best cards.  You can use the superior card selection granted by one of the best such powers in the game to get them instead, and start playing your combos turn one.  This is where Beard-Ra excels – setting up his combos and finding the right card.

It isn’t until you start playing that you realize what you’ve given up.  You don’t get the pure damage-dealing Sun God.  Due to the need to set up, Beard-Ra’s total damage output is usually far behind that of regular Ra.  Since amount of damage is one of the few ways Ra relates to the villain, this can give you a bad first impression.

Beard-Ra comes into his own when the villain gives you time to set up.  He can focus on assembling his power combo.  Once the villain becomes vulnerable (like when Spite flips), Beard-Ra is in a very strong position to burn him down.  If some of his other utility combos would help your position, Beard-Ra makes sure it happens.  If you need Imbued Fire/Flesh of the Sun God to immunize heroes against Plague Rat’s Infections, Beard-Ra is much more likely to come up with it. 

It boils down to this: if you want pure damage, standard Ra is the way to go.  If you need the Sun God to have finesse or patience, go with Beard-Ra.

Weaknesses

As always, it’s sad to see that Ra doesn’t have any way to remove hostile ongoing or environment cards short of damage.  He negotiates some very well, though.  If he has Drawn to the Flame or Scorched Earth, he embraces situations where there are a lot of them.

His aid can sometimes hurt the heroes – something about playing with fire?  Imbued Fire boosts all fire damage, which is painful if the enemy uses fire or makes you hurt yourself.

Teamups

In addition to his team cards, Ra’s teammates appreciate him for the fact that he always has some damage on hand.  If something Must Die, Ra can do it.

Ra is pretty good at getting extra cards and damage boosts for himself, so he doesn’t need it as much from others.  Since he frequently gets out several powers, one boost Ra really loves is the ability to use another power every turn.  If Ra has out his Flesh of the Sun God/Imbued Fire combo and Fanatic hits him with Embolden, he can use two powers a turn and is immune to the damage she deals.  In return, Fanatic, who loves damage boosts, is Imbued with Fire.  A potent combo.

Ra’s good work with Absolute Zero is covered in Zero’s guide.  Just be warned that you may not be able to use all of your cards like you want if Zero is in the game.  Imbued Fire and Flesh of the Sun God can really hamper Zero’s ability to contribute.  Somewhat less importantly, Imbued Fire also clashes with Wraith’s focus on projectile damage.

What a surprise, someone called Flamethrower has written a guide for Ra *looks for :shaking head: smiley, fails*

 

Seriously though thanks for another great guide, it's interesting to see a take on Horus of the Two Horizons before I've had a chance to play with it.

Great guide!  Don't forget that Anubis is also Ra's Nemesis!

Noted!

It should be mentioned that synergy with Visionary is stellar, notably Twist the Ether. Against Villains that do mostly damage themselves, like Plague Rat, Flesh of the Sun God plus Twist the Ether basically makes you immune to everything. And is full of win.

I agree with zelink.  We just finished a game against Plauge Rat, in which Ra delt the least amount of damage I have ever seen from him (me) due to his constant use of the "Flesh of the Sun God" power, however I prevented easily over 100 damage between "FotSG" and "Imbued Fire".

Twist the Ether on Ab'Zero when he has out his NPCU and is Infected means he can automatically heal himself for free at the start of his turn, every turn :D.

I know I'm like 3 years late to this, but just had to comment that the Solar Flare-Imbued Fire-Flesh of the Sun God combo doesn't actually work. Solar Flare says that Ra needs to take damage this way, or destroy the card. Since he's immune to the Fire damage, he doesn't take damage, and thus the card is destroyed.

I don't know if your guide was from before the Enhanced Edition and the card had different text, but that seems to be the way it is now.

There was a time, many moons ago, before the infamous ruling #15 came down from upon high, that this combo did indeed work. Enhanced Editions nowadays have the corrected errata I'm pretty sure.

Actually there was never a time where it was ever intended to work. Many players just thought it did.

Intent and result are often differet, just like Matty and hairtrigger, intent didn't line up with reality, and that is why errata happens.

It didn't work in reality either. The original result was you had to take at least 4 damage to keep it in play, the errata was provided to make it where you could take less than 4 damage but still had to take some damage.

So where were you in 2012, or for that matter, anyone else?  Why did that sit in this guide unchallenged if it was known to be wrong?

It was known, just not by us.

What about UK?

Such is our eternal struggle.

What about us?

Was it known by UK?

Yes, the UK knew about us.

Agreed.  It was acknowledged in playtesting by playtesters, and this guide was pinned as a go-to for new players.

It most certainly existed, whether the creators intended it to or not.

Or do we want to go on and on about a bunch of funny "jifs" we saw on the internet this week?

(note to self, make more Sentinels gifs).