That fight is a nightmare, and I'm surprised I don't hear it mentioned more often. My girlfriend and I threw ourselves at them four seperate times (we had 2 heroes each) and only once it was a close battle. The rest of the matches were a slaughterhouse.
The almost victorious team was Nightmist, Argent Adept, Mr. Fixer and Haka, and it was a brutal fight. Nightmist was left alone against shu, but just couldn't win against the slog. Finally, a hostage situation coupled with a timely equipment destruction sealed our fate.
So, basically, any tips? Is there a suggested kill order for the Ennead? Damage reduction lady (Name escapes me) is always our first target, and then we usually home in on the one who plays extra cards on purple. I'd love advice on this fight, as the advanced version of this fight is an enormous jump from the standard fight. Normally I feel as if advanced modes just turn up the difficulty a few notches. This fight really takes it up to eleven.
Advanced Ennead can be crazy hard. Target priority for me is Nuit, Atum and then it depends based on my team and who is out (usually Osiris though, cos I hate him). I think there might be a thread on this previously, but the most success I've found is high damage single target heroes vs damage all target heroes. Also, environment can play a big role. The T Rex loves to wail on them since they have so many high HP targets.
I love fighting the Advanced Ennead. I definitely plan to write a guide on them.
In most cases, Nuit is the first target (damage reduction lady), and Atum is the second. He plays extra fire cards, and chains into Set, who then plays another card. Some schools of thought say Set is next to die. He will let everybody, including the Ennead and environment, flip a card every round once he's down. Some say this is awesome, because look at all the cards you get, while others say this is disastrous, since the hero cards aren't always going to be effective, while the villain cards will be. I have definitely seen both happen. Osiris is usually the next target, either way, since discarding sucks. After that, it's a free for all - my order is probably Geb, Nephthys, (Set), Isis, and Tefnut. Shu is killed whenever you can field damage that can hurt her.
I find it helpful to focus on one until it dies. Mass damage looks good, but they also heal really quickly, so a lot of that will probably be lost.
Damage reduction or blocking is super good against them. If you have to choose one bad guy's damage to reduce, make it the guy with the fewest hit points. That way, Elemental Storm's damage is reduced. Damage freezes are delightful. Grease Gun, Ground Pound, Heroic Interception, Hypersonic Assault all grant an awesome reprieve. Wait for the whole Ennead to be out before you use them.
I've never played the Ennead on Advanced mode, but I don't see why our usual technique wouldn't work against them then. Well, I say "usual" technique...it's only usual if a certain hero is present. Namely Tempest - play Gene-Bound Shackles and make sure you keep all members of the Ennead at around the same hp (within a couple of hp of each other, preferably). This way, when Tempest plays one of his "hit everything" powers (Squall or Grievous Hailstorm, for example), you get to hit every member of the Ennead for +2 damage, as they basically take it in turns to be the villain target with the highest hp. Add someone like Legacy into the mix for a load of damage buffs and you can hit all of them for a fair bit of damage every turn :).
I'm of the "nuit and set first" camp...for reasons flamethrower mentioned...though Antum is also a high priority target (for reasons flamethrower mentioned). You can leave the healing guy alone until the end he's less of a concern
I agree that of all the advanced modes the Ennead's gives the biggest boost.
Damage reduction and fire immunity help. So does stacking their deck. As already mentioned global damage stops and stopping card plays are key. Definitely focus on one target at a time. Nuit dies first.
Next would be Set, but only if you are using heroes that require setup like Unity, AZ, Bunker, Argent Adept, Expatriette. Otherwise leave him alone. Next target would be Osiris if the environment targets are problematic (love his flip side). Otherwise leave him alone. Next is Atum. Then the rest, except you should kill Shu, Nehthys, and Tefnut last.
Whew! Finally beat those guys tonight! It was a tough slog; my team was The Scholar, Golem Unity, and Ra in The Block. Set went down first, and I was lucky Nuit was the last to arrive. The whole team contributed fantastically: Ra was dealing Damage, The Scholar was tanking and dealing it back, and Unity's golems dropped while still taken 'em down (cryo bot's pretty good...). It came down to a final clash with The Scholar and Geb, which allowed The Sholar to get his crazy AZ-like engine going, and took him down!
I've only done the advanced mode once on those guys with AA, NM, YL, and Fixer. Just when things were starting to look bad we grease gunned and then deck locked them for something like 6 turns in a row due to take downs, and mystical bindings being played and retrieved via sonata. Yeah we won that game at nearly full HP. So my advice if you want to come up with team composistion is to look for people that can prevent them from playing cards.
We fought them using Legacy, Fixer, Chrono, Bunker, Unity, and Ra. Legacy and the tanks were pretty boss but Unity was horrible. We ended up winninng but it was extremely close. I think it was dramatically harder at five heroes than if we'd used less...