(I'm fairly new to this game, so most of my insights are face value. Please contribute any strategic elements that may be found in this environment.)
The Realm Of Discord
"An ethereal plane only barely connected to this world via the crossing lines of the Multiverse, the Realm of Discord is an ever-shifting haven to chaos and entropy. The few solid forms in this dimension are constantly destroying themselves and reforming in entirely different forms.
The bizarre denizens of this plane thrive on the discordant disruptions, feeding off the panic of any which stumble upon the Realm. This is not a welcome place for mortal beings … and yet, the heroes are drawn through twisting portals to combat a great evil here as often as myriad extra-planar demons attempt to breach the barriers which prevent our world from being flooded with the innate chaos of the Realm of Discord."
Here's some pointers on surviving this strange place.
Types of Cards: distortions- Distortions have various effects but only one distortion can be out at a time.
Number of target cards: 6
Strongest Target: Ethereal Bonds has 9 hp does damage and those dealt cant deal damage until start of environment turn. Honorable mention Portal Fiend - has 17hp does damage to second highest where the damage equals the amount of cards in the trash.
Special Mention: Some of the distortions actually are helpful; Time Flies lets you draw and play an extra card, but also has the villain turn play an additional card. Time Flies' upsides are totally worth its minor downside. If you have any Environment deck control available (Nightmist, Dark Visionary, Rook City Wraith, Super Scientific Tachyon, Bunker's foam grenades), it's worth putting some effort into keeping Time Flies in play for multiple rounds.
Time Crawls - Forces you to choose either play or power phase. - For Mister Fixer this means Overdrive has no effect while this card is out and other cards like it that grant extra power uses on that turn. It also reduces all damage by villain targets by one, but not worth keeping it out as long as possible.
Imbued Vitality - Makes a difference when damage targets the lowest hp. Can help soak up some damage away from your heroes. Also this means that villain ongoings are now available to target.
Dificulty rank - 1 (According to the wiki)
This is a fairly easy environment. It has annoyances but also helps on occassion.
Villains with this environment
Most Villains work well with this enviroment. (None stand out at moment.)
Heros with this environment
Time Flies is particularly beneficial to Tachyon and Scholar as they love drawing and playing cards.
Visionary - Her Projection decoy is a distortion so when a new distortion is played it fades away with it.
Nightmist - She can take advantage of Ethereal Bonds and redirect the move so that the villain can't do damage.Or if she's hit all the moves where she hits herself won't effect her.
(I'm fairly new to this game, so most of my insights are face value. Please contribute any strategic elements that may be found in this environment.)
Anything I should add? Tips thoughts? Suggestions? Anything you suggest will added. Thanks for the help!
Here is a corner case: Time Crawls can nullify/weaken cards that grant extra power uses that turn. For example, while the card is out, Overdrive will have no effect. Since, you played a card during your play phase, you have to skip your power phase and lose the effect.
But only in some cases. Anything that says "use a power now" (Polyphoric Flare, For the Greater Good, etc) would still give you a power use, because that power happens 'now' rather than during the power phase.
I'm not convinced it would override Overdrive either. Overdrive allows you to use powers in other people's turns, so I feel like it would allow you to use it on your turn, even if you're missing a power phase.
Note that Visionary's Decoy Projection is a Distortion, so whenever the Realm of Discord plays a new Distortion, it will evaporate her protection.
I will also just say that the Realm of Discord and I are having a...disagreement...at the moment, after we had a Claustrophobic Delusion in the Bloodsword Coliseum, at the same time as Provocateur Tarnis was in play (and not the lowest health).
Nigtmist LOVES Ethereal Bonds. If she can redirect the damage to the boss, then the boss can't do damage; if she doesn't, then she can use all her damage-myself abilities without actually damaging herself.
Time Flies' upsides are totally worth its minor downside. If you have any Environment deck control available (Nightmist, Dark Visionary, Rook City Wraith, Super Scientific Tachyon), it's worth putting some effort into keeping Time Flies in play for multiple rounds.
If you get Explosive Bubbles down to 1 HP, it can be worth keeping in play to damage the boss.
Imbued Vitality often makes a big difference when the "X targets with the Lowest HP" take damage. If it comes out after you've had some decent setup time, then you can absorb a *lot* of lowest-damage before needing to kill any of your cards.
Similarly, don't forget that IV lets you directly attack Villain Ongoings.
IV can also let you do some Mister Fixer Dual Crowbar shenanigans even when there's only one villain Target around.
Time Crawls, while sometimes annoying for the "you can only have either your Play or Power phase" thing, is pretty nice against villains who do a lot of plinky damage (Lilian, for example), due to the the fact that it reduces all villain (or maybe just villain target, I can't remember off the top of my head) damage by one.
Rook City Wraith doesn't actually help keep Time Flies in play.
Say, for example, that the first environment card played was Time Flies. You now have a 6/14 chance of getting a distortion next turn, or 57% chance that Time Flies will stick around.
Now say you used Rook City Wraith's ability. Wraith has a 6/14 chance of uncovering a distortion, which you would then discard. In that case, the environment turn then has a 5/13 chance of playing a distortion. Wraith has an 8/14 chance of uncovering a non-distortion which you might or might not play. In that case, the environment turn has a 6/13 chance of playing a distortion. The total probability of the environment turn playing a distortion is 6/14 * 5/13 + 8/14 * 6/13 = 30/182 + 48/182 = 78/182 = 6/14 = the exact same probability it had if you hadn't used Wraith's power.
It's a little non-intuitive, but while Rook City Wraith is extremely useful for digging for an environment card that you want. (i.e. finding Time Flies in the first place), she does absolutely nothing towards avoiding cards you don't like.
Incidentally, I'm a little dubious of the merit of keeping Time Flies around all the time. In some cases it's beneficial, but in others it's extremely problematic. Especially if the villain has a lot of start of turn triggers, like Matriarch's birds or Omnitron's Electropulse Explosive.
Claustrophobic Delusion + Miss Information's Misplaced Memo = All non-hero targets immune to damage. Of course the memo was misplaced you try getting message to someone in the Realm of Discord.
I would like to point out that when playing the physical version of this game, this environment is a pain to play while fighting The Ennead. With cards like explosive bubbles that deal the 5 targets with the highest HP, it becomes a huge hassle to figure out which 5 of the usually 5-9 targets out in play who has the highest HP. It doesn't make them any harder or anything, it just seems to slow down the game entirley too much whenever these kinds of cards appear.
If you look up Spiff's HP counters, that might help inasmuch as they'll give you a quick number to look at instead of having to count all the tokens up.
We use dice for hp and it's never been a problem. We used tokens for maybe one or two games when I first got it but found it far too fiddly so made the changeover very quickly ;).
Haka can have a blast with this environment -- Imbued Vitality means that he can put an absurd amount of cards underneath Savage Mana. As this thread points out. Added to that, with the Distortions destroying one another all the time, he gets a lot of mileage out of Dominion.
If you reduce Explosive Bubbles to 1 HP, then it will (probably) only ever hit the main Villain.
Any card that allows you to redirect the damage of Ethreal Bonds makes it a very powerful ally, making the visionary and her wrest the mind really good
Those who use dice must not have cats <_< Tokens move far less when tapped. When using tokens, you can also arrange them such that it's really obvious who has the highest, especially if you always keep the tokens as the largest ones possible and don't use 25s. Then, you just need to look for the villain with the most 10s showing. Or the villain with the most 5s if there's a tie. Or the most tokens period if that's also a tie.
IV can be really painful when the villain does a ton of AoE damage. 6 damage to every target is sad-making, and if the distortion just doesn't get destroyed for a while, it's possible for that to happen slowly over several turns when you have villains that do lots of AoE plinky damage.
And yeah, Time Flies can be insanely bad vs certain villains because of the timing. In addition to what was mentioned, it also causes Channel the Eclipse to trigger immediately, and Mable and L'epeiste.
