Citizen Dawn

Holy crap.  That is all.

Oh yeah. I fought her thinking "Hey, she's like Voss, it'll be fine." IT WAS NOT FINE. I beat her, but I haven't summoned the courage to take her on again...

And she’s from Canada!

oh yeah, she's pretty tough. I really hate when she starts the game with Citizen Truth, too, as he's the most annoying. Anything that prevents the trashing of her citizens is pretty clutch. I don't think she's the hardest villian, but she's the hardest in the base set (although I've yet to beat Omnitron).

Given she's like Magneto, I'd say that's fitting.

Just gotta stop her from using devastating aurora. Man that card is brutal. 

Yeah, horrible nasty card in that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it once it comes out - boom all your stuff is gone, now you have to start building up again, haha :P.

We tried her for the first time last night.  The first time I don't know if we got a bad draw or what, but she wiped the three of us out in about 5 rounds.  It was a brutal introduction.  Second try we lasted a lot longer but we were just killing minions and barely scratched her.  Another loss.  Third try we thought we had it down.  Did real well for a while.  Then in just one round we were completely devastated.  After that it was a full on brawl.  She killed Tachyon and Tempest.  Scholar was barely hanging on.  He healed himself for a tiny amount but it wasn't going to be enough to survive Dawn's end of turn.  But it was enough to leave Dawn with the fewest hp.  Velociraptor Pack wins the game.  We mark it a win and everyone goes home.

Just wait until you take on the Chairman!

Or Iron Legacy

Yeah, I find Dawn worse than the Chairman, usually (mainly due to stuff like Truth and that bloody Aurora). But our worst battles tend to be against Plague Rat and the Matriarch. Dawn is definitely up there, and yeah, add in Iron Legacy to the top of the pile, I'd say, though we've only fought him about three times (with one win).

I played against Dawn for the first time a few weeks ago in Insula Primalis. I want to say it was AZ, Expat, and Tempest. We beat her handily and never even saw Devastating Aurora (which is I'm assuming why we beat her easily). 

The next game we played Voss in Atlantis and he destroyed us. Since then, we have lost to Voss in Atlantis a total of three times. I almost feel like we must be doing something wrong to have had an easy time with a reputedly difficult villain (albeit with a lucky draw) and such a hard time with a villain who is supposedly not as  difficult. 

It depends on what Voss drew. Usually, games I play against him are pretty easy, but sometimes he gets a flagship or a quarkdrive and a genebound guard early on in the game before your heroes can really do anything about them.

Yeah, Voss can be a pain. Atlantis can be pretty nasty, too - try fighting the Matriarch there and seeing what happens when a Mystical Defences is played...

I agree that Voss is a pain... I still have PTSD from when I tried fighting him in Rook City. "Wait... why is the town giving him free aliens pretty much every turn?!"

 

As for Dawn I think she is one of those pretty much perfect villains in terms of being tough but beatable, and while her Devastating Aura is really awful, I like the fact that she has that occasional board wipe.

My boyfriend/game partner still gets the shivers when he thinks about the Matriarch (all those birds... all. those. birds.) But I think Dawn is the one that leads me to say "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" the most. Just when you think you've got her on the ropes, BAM Citizen Truth comes back out of the trash and then you lose everything.

Of course, time and experience have taught me to stack my hand a lot more than I did when I first started playing. When I was a wee one, I would do things during my play and power phase just because. Now I know that if I don't have the best thing ever, I should just draw and hold out a bit longer. The Aurora lives up to its name, but if you have a second copy in your hand, you can at least breath a sigh of relief. This is especially critical for people like Expatriette, who ain't nothing without her gear. Technique has turned a nightmare into a beatable challenge.

Plague Rat. Now THAT is a villain that I never want to see again.

Yeah, Rat is a bastard. I do recall a fun game we had against him once, though - two of the heroes were Visionary and Ab'Zero. The former played Twist on the latter, who at some point became Infected. The Infected damage was tehrefore converted to cold damage every time, and of course Ab'Zero had his NPCU out by then, therefore he was healing for free at the start of every turn. I think another copy of Twist may have been playe don Rat himself but I can't actually remember atm. Anyway, the only reason Ab'Zero (played by myself) didn't finish the game at full health was 'cause he nuked himself with his base power in the final turn in order to deal cold damage to Rat (by way of the IT) finishing him off :D.

I will second that Citizen Dawn is right mean (Incidentaly my friends and I also were dealing with her in the prehistoric area). It was Fanatic, Zero, Wraith, and Tempest trying to deal with her, and it was all we could do just to keep the number of lackeys under control. Eventually we managed to whittle Dawn down enough so that she qualified as having the second highest HP in the game, leading the T-Rex to reasonably decide she was now lunch.

Just...ow. No wonder the devs put her at Difficulty: 3. 

Insula Primalis is its own villain in a lot of ways. It can turn an otherwise doable villain into a beast of a slog. I'd imagine that my heroes still can't watch Jurassic Park without major PTSD flashbacks.

I usually don't have TOO much trouble with Dawn. There was this one game, however; We were playing with the Scholar, Nightmist, and I think Haka; basically all heroes that required cards in their hand to be useful. First turn she got Truth and Sweat (the discard one. I think it's Sweat? maybe Tears) and Truth, and played a blinding blast, so everyone was down to 1 card right off the bat and they were all invincible.

 

That game was a quick, decisive loss.

Tears is the one who forces a discard - if Sweat is otu at the same time, you have to discard a second card as well. Sweat destroys an ongoing card - if Tears is also out, whomever lost an ongoing instead loses all their ongoings.

Yeah, those two buggers have come up quite a lot in our games. When Tears (with or without Sweat) is in play from the start, it can be difficult to get going. Even worse if, as at the weekend, Truth is the other starting Citizen. Sweat came out soon afterwards :D.