I find Nightmist and Argent Adept very useful, pretty much all of the time. Absolute Zero... does fall apart sometimes.
For Argent Adept, it's the matter of his songs. Even if he can't get elaborate combinations of them going, most of the Performs are very much worth a power phase, especially Sarabande of Destruction, Alacritous Subdominant, and Inspiring Supertonic. That should get you to the point where he'll get out some modest three-card combo, and he'll start tearing things up. Well, letting other people tear things up, but still.
Nightmist hasn't disappointed me yet. She's complex, to be sure. I'm sorting through my thoughts for my next guide. But she is easily far more effective than Absolute Zero's bad games.
It's not that I don't understand Nightmist. It's not that she doesnt usually preform better than Zero, even on a bad day. But I have a few very serious issues with her.
AA is pretty much always great as long as you know what you're doing with him, which can take a few plays.
Unity... I feel Unity is the most OP hero in the entire game right now... easily. Even surpassing Visionary. Doubly (tripply) so if AA is on the team with her. Bots are immune to equipment wipe, which means very few characters (if any) are more resilent to stuff shutdown than Unity. She might lose a supply crate or modular workbench, no big deal. Valuable Construction Pylons should pretty much be used on the turn you play them, so you wont lose one of those. She has so... much... card drawing in her deck. So much. Supply crates, brainstorm, heck even Inspired Repair does the trick. Flash Forge is amazing.
You go find yourself a Swift Bot, and then maybe a stealth bot and a raptor. Get those out and you'll be pretty much set up for life. Swift Bot garuntees obscene amounts of card draw, stealth keeps the other bots alive, and raptor dishes out 4 damage a turn purely with that setup. I have had Unity's Army deal over 60 damage in a single turn before, and the sick part was that she dealt another 60 the next round too.
When the WORST card in her deck is Hasty Augmentation, you know there's something very strange going on.
We share a love for Visionary, so try thinking of Nightmist like that. Don't try to force the damage issue - lord knows Visionary was never very good at it. Instead, focus on her tanking capability via Starshield Necklace, Mistform, and Amulet of the Elder Gods - which is, coincidentally, her best source for damage. Stay alive, and continue to benefit the heroes with those outstanding support spells and Astral Premonition. There's plenty of fun to be had without touching an offensive spell. (Though I love Heedless Lash.)
I wouln't call Unity overpowered. She's very strong, but the bots are vulnerable to global damage. Most villains do that more than they do equipment wipes. She's basically subject to a different set of circumstances that wrecks her offense. She can build an army of epic proportions, but those Raptor Bots are easy to kill, and Stealth Bot can't be everywhere at once. Of course, any villain that doesn't kill the Raptors deserves what is coming to them.
Yeah, Unity is definitely not overpowered for us. She does have the potential to be extremely strong, yes, but my group usually has games where her bots get destoryed before she can build up a lot of bots at once. And like I said, she (for some reason) ends up taking a serious amount of damage, usually dying, every game.
Never play as Unity against Plague Rat. It will only bring you misery.
I'm not sure whether or not I think Unity is overpowered, but I think that she is 'swingy', as I think has been mentioned or alluded to earlier. From what I've seen she tends to do little or A LOT, depending mostly on what cards she gets, but a fair bit on how much damage is being done to all hero targets or to the lowest hero targets.
Someone above commented on the utility of her only playing equipment when she's ready to use it, thus reducing the likelihood of Unity losing her equipment to other effects. This seems blindingly obvious in retrospect, but I don't think it had occurred to me.
Last night we broke out IR for the first time. Unity's bots were doing 47 damage per turn, automated. No tricks, no one shots, just 47 damage per turn on their own. Akash played three of her Living Rockslides back to back very early, and thus there was almost no AOE going on, and the bots just demolished her. I felt a little bad for the newbies in the game, because it was absurd.
To any villain with AoE though? You're in trouble.
Thats exactly what I'm saying. I dunno, maybe I've had several back to back absurdly good games with her, maybe the luck is just on my side... But I dunno...
I will give you Plague Rat, Unity would have trouble against PR because of the global irreduceable damage. But General global damage attacks? Eh. Platform bots have DR1, and most "global" attacks deal 2 damage. So a platform bot can actually soak 2 such attacks before going down on the 3rd one. I'll skip over Bee Bot, Raptor Bot and Stealth Bot for now and come back to them later..... now all the rest of her bots have 6+ hp, meaning again, they can tank 2 global hits and be KO'd on the 3rd hit. That is without Inspired Repair or any other healing effect taken into acount.
Bee Bot is pretty much there to die, so losing it isnt a big deal, and the ease of which it is destroyed is actually a perk.
Stealth Bot has 5 hp and DR1, which makes it the most durable bot there is, although its going to be taking damage. Heroes? Screw em. Use the Stealth bot to keep your other bots alive, the Heroes can take the damage...
Raptor Bot. Raptor Bot is the only bot that is actually pretty vulnerable to Global attacks. With 2 hp and 0 dr. However this is offset by the fact that it does far and away the most rediculous damage. And its damage (thus its usefulness) is based on how many other bots you have out. Are you going to play the Raptor first? Of course you're not. You're going to wait until you have like 4 other bots out and then play it, minimizing the amount of time it can be destroyed. If you can play it at the same time as Stealth Bot (not too hard with Robot Reclaimation and Flash Forge) then so much the better.
Whoa, I've never seen Unity get that ridiculous. For us, it's always a challenge to get 3 or 4 bots out in play at once. But 47 damage per turn? You must have had every single bot in play.
I second this. Unity is absurdly powerful. If you can keep her bots in play, the Raptors and Powered Shockwave will pretty much trivialize any villain.
Well, I've never had her in a game where she's been a real powerhouse. In my book, Ra is still the hero that can become the most absurdly powerful. But I guess it just depends on the games we've played.
Also, since apparently we're discussing the new heroes, I really like playing as Nightmist. I expected Argent Adept to be my favorite, but so far he's been pretty meh for me. I played all 5 of the new villains with him on the team every time, and every time I kept being amazed at how apathetic I was to him. Not only did I find it very difficult to get a combination of instruments and songs that were effective, but when I did (Rhapsody of Vigor, the rhythm that lets someone play a card, and the drum) I just did that every single turn, so he got boring and repetitve. Maybe I'm just missing something (like I was the first few times I played as Haka) but as far as I can tell he's not my favorite.
Nightmist, on the other hand... MAN I love her. Master of magic lets you heal when you play a spell, the one amulet lets you heal at the end of your turn, and the other amulet lets you deflect the damage you deal yourself from the spell to someone else. And then the spells usually either do a bunch of damage or just have a powerful effect. I can barely think of a couple cards I almost never use (Elder Tome, Scouring Mists, Mist form) but even they aren't BAD. I've just never had low health (multiple instances of healing) and usually have a decent amount of cards in my hand so I haven't had a reason to use them. I don't really like Scouring Mists, though. It's like Sonic Vortex. I'm not a fan of "Do X targets 3 damage" cards. I'd rather have something like Heedless Lash that deals one target a bunch of damage.
The sad thing is? I didn't. I was missing at least one, possibly two or three. But I know we didn't have Turret Bot out, and think I was mising a bee bot or two.
Well, if Unity has every bot in play, then her maximum damage, assuming no external buffs, and nobody killing Bee Bots or hurting Cryo Bot for simplicity, is 64.
Turret Bot and 3 Platform Bots at 4 each (thanks to Champion Bot) for 16.
Three Raptor Bots with 14 bots out, for 16 each (thanks to Champion Bot) for 48.
That's seven sources of damage, so Ra and Legacy can add a bunch to that.
...for doing nothing yes. If she plays say, Powered Shockwave, (or two, thanks to Swift Bot...) that can add a lot. Brainstorm can add small amounts of damage too.
But thats just for lolz, I usually find that if you get enough bots out to make Powered Shockwave really good, you're dishing out so much damage with bots that the shockwave is almost superflous. Though it did let me knock Omnitron down from 5 hp at the start of Unity's turn to -57 by the end of it once.
Argent Adept can do some crazy stuff with Inspiring Supertonic and Telamon's Lyra. The Harp lets him add continuous no-cost self-healing to that combo. Counterpoint Bulwark on the highest HP and lowest HP Hero is a strong play. Also, out of turn card play for Unity, Mr. Fixer, Fanatic and Nightmist is really really strong. And out of turn powers + Absolute Zero can be awesome as well. And he can let any Hero put one card from their discard pile on top of their deck, draw it and play it all on his turn. (Requires Inspiring Supertonic, Counterpoint Bulwark, Inventive Preparation, Telamon's Lyra, Xu's Bell and one of the many copies of Vernal Sonata you will doubtless draw every game.)
As for Nightmist, I really like the Tome of Elder Magic. It's a lifesaver when your health does go really low, which does happen the odd game, as you can add to your hand size, which redirecting the damage from using your base power doesn't let you do.
You can have two in play at once, but you can't use both their powers as one power use. If you have something letting you use an extra power on your turn, like Fanatic's Embolden or the Pillars of Hercules, you can use both power uses to use both Tomes of Elder Magic, but you can't then use another power.