Character Profile
Best Attack: Localized Hurricane
Best Team Support: Into the Stratosphere
Best Personal Support: Gene-Bound Shackles
Honorable Mention: Cleansing Downpour
Primary Damage Types: Projectile and Lightning
Secondary Damage Types: Cold and Any
Worst Card: Electrical Storm
Nemeses: Grand Warlord Voss, Iron Legacy
Note: Throughout, Tempest will be referred to with masculine pronouns for convenience, although technically speaking, we fans don’t know the gender of the alien, or if his race even has genders.
The favorite of many, the Inhuman Tempest controls the very storms themselves. And, whoa, can those storms do a lot. Tempest is one of the most flexible heroes. Aside from being the global attack specialist of the Sentinels, he can deal massive damage to single targets, with a lot of damage being reserved for the villain personally. His other cards can solve just about any situation plaguing the heroes.
Attack
Tempest has a potent attack routine. First, his base power Squall attacks all non-hero targets. It’s a nice effect to soften things up, as long as they aren’t sporting armor. If Tempest’s damage is increased by some effect, and especially if he’s also upgraded to Grievous Hail Storm, it can become a violent rain of death that ruthlessly shreds through minions. Squall also gets credit for being the easiest way to kill the Matriarch’s birds when you need it.
Tempest has a suite of one-shots that deal plenty of damage. Lightning Slash, Chain Lightning, and Ball Lightning can each deal a heap of damage to help solve your problems. Tempest’s damaging one-shots are about the strongest you get without drawbacks.
The other class of attacks Tempest has is the automatic attack. Electrical Storm is like Squall, but requires no action on your part. Once played, it works every turn - whether you want it or not. While this is objectively good, it may require caution on your part, as there are many times you do not want to kill everything. Helpful environment cards and Citizen management are two scenarios that spring to mind, but there are many more.
Vicious Cyclone works a bit like Electrical Storm, except it has one target, and requires discards. It may not look impressive, but it is notable for one reason - each card you discard is a separate attack. This means that each damage boost you have gets applied for every card. So if you have your Gene-Bound Shackles with Vicious Cyclone on the villain, each card you discard does 3 damage to the target. If you have any other buffs, like Galvanize, Imbued Fire, or Obsidian Field - you have one of the best finishing moves in the game.
Oh, yeah. Gene-Bound Shackles grants you two additional damage every time you attack the villain target with the most hit points. This will generally affect the villain itself. If you haven’t noticed by now, Tempest attacks a lot. Play this thing, and watch the villain die.
Localized Hurricane
Localized Hurricane gets its own section. It is an excellent double-attack, but it also draws two cards. The damage seems almost secondary! This gets obscene quickly. After a few rounds of using this power, I typically have most of Tempest’s options available, as well as plenty of extra cards to discard for Vicious Cyclone. To temper this, it comes with a drawback.
Increasing the damage dealt to Tempest depends on the villain, environment, and game state. If you’re against one of the villains or environments that enjoy pinging you to death with multiple low-damage attacks, then this is a deadly gamble. However, if you have your armor up first, it’s a different story. Localized Hurricane combines very well with Elemental Subwave Inducer or Otherworldly Resilience to reduce or eliminate the penalty. If the villain deals irreducible damage, though, tread very carefully.
Problem-Solving
Ball Lightning drops two ongoing cards and also deals good damage, making this seriously good against any villains with ongoings, and merely good against anyone without. As a bonus, you can use this to get rid of sudden problems in hero cards. If you’re done with Localized Hurricane or Electrical Storm, zap the villain with this and do some damage!
Flash Flood wipes away environment cards. I love holding this until there are two nasty environments out, then watch everybody smile in relief as I play this and make superfluous sound effects. Don’t be afraid to use it to kill one seriously detrimental card, though, that’s why you have it.
Into the Stratosphere stalls the villain by knocking a card back to the top of the deck to be played again. Stalling the villain is supergood and this one also punches him in the face.
Reclaim from the Deep allows every hero to take a card back. It will generally take a round to get the card to play, but your fellow heroes will be thrilled to pull out their best tricks again. This becomes crazy good against any villains or environments that put cards from your deck into your trash. Suddenly, everyone might have their whole decks to choose from with this card.
More Problem-Solving
Cleansing Downpour makes Tempest the team’s most capable medic. He can keep the heroes alive long after the villain should have beaten them into dust. Frequently, this becomes Tempest’s best power choice when the enemy has armor. Note that it affects all hero targets - Unity’s Bots and Visionary’s Decoy included. Shielding Winds is the other method Tempest has to protect his allies - this is mainly useful against only some villains and environments, but very nice to have when big attacks come down. Watch for it against the high-damage villains; Baron Blade, Omnitron, Kismet, the Chairman. It’s also reasonably handy in environments with big creatures or global damage boosts.
Otherworldly Resilience and Elemental Subwave Inducer are Tempest’s armor. The ESI takes time to get working, and only offers resistance to one element, but it also grants Tempest the versatility to attack with any element he wants, if lightning, cold, and projectile aren’t cutting it.
Need to get any of the above cards? Play Aquatic Correspondence, and laugh at the picture.
Incapacitated
Tempest has perhaps the most stupefying incapacitated powers. Go on, take a look at them. The use of them doesn’t really merit too much space in a guide to playing Tempest. However, if he should fall, any remaining heroes are in awfully good hands. They were nerfed quite a bit with the reprint, but they are still very nice consolation prizes for losing Tempest’s offensive power and strong solutions.
This one-armed version of Tempest loses a hit point and replaces Squall with Sacrifice. Squall was always a nice fallback power, but encountered issues against armor and targets you didn’t want to hurt. This new power turns every single one of Tempest’s ongoing and equipment cards into a source of cards, allowing him to find his answers easier. Unfortunately, Sacrifice comes with plenty of problems. You have to spend both a play and a power in order to use it. Since Tempest likes a little bit of buildup, this hurts his tempo quite a bit. Furthermore, you may have to skip your power phase from time to time, since you may not want to destroy your cards, or may not have any to destroy. Freedom Tempest wants to find a power to use as soon as possible. Sacrifice is a great way to get rid of cards you don’t want to maintain anymore, like Electrical Storm or Localized Hurricane.
As with most promos, standard Tempest is usually stronger. However, against enemies where Squall is weak or dangerous, perhaps like Spite, Apostate, or the Dreamer, you lose only one hit point to switch to Sacrifice, and may profit greatly from finding what you need.
Weaknesses
Tempest’s prime annoyance in villains is armor, which is something a lot of them can get. Turns out, they like keeping their hit points intact. His one-shots do a good job of overpowering damage reduction, though, and the Gene-Bound Shackles see their worth here as well.
Tempest’s deck has an answer for every occasion - somewhere. Sometimes it is tricky to have your Ball Lightning or the like in hand when you need it. This applies to every deck in a card game like this one, but it feels especially noticeable with Tempest. His deck is full of perfect answers and two-card combos, and not being able to draw the right card can be maddening. Localized Hurricane and Aquatic Correspondence are there to help reduce this occurrence.
His hit points do start low, but he has good protection in his armor, and a great recourse in Cleansing Downpour.
Teamups
Due to his many low-damage assaults, Tempest enjoys teaming up with anybody that can give him a boost, like Ra or Legacy. He’s quite useful in any team, with his consistent damage and strong answers. Cleansing Downpour typically makes the other heroes celebrate, especially the Scholar. Try combining Reclaim from the Deep with Don’t Dismiss Anything.
Into the Stratosphere is an able answer that can handily delay almost any card. If Wraith or Visionary go next, they can use their deck manipulation to banish that card under the villain deck - no fuss required!