I'm a complete noob compared to most here, but I thought I'd give a shot at writing up Chrono-Ranger, since he's fairly straightforward. I tried to format it after flamethrower's guides so it would be familiar.
Character Profile:
- Best Attack: Compounded Bow, The Masadah (situational)
- Best Team Support: "By Any Means"
- Best Personal Support: Jim's Hat, "The Ultimate Target"
- Primary Damage Type: Projectile
- Secondary Damage Types: Melee, Fire, Toxic
- Worst Card: "Just Doin' My Job"
- Nemesis: Plague Rat
Chrono-Ranger is all about attacking. He cares not for ducking, covering, or armoring. His bounties provide out-of-turn triggers, card draw, extra damage, and the ability to 2-for-1 minions. His weaponry can do extra damage, nerf bad guys, and occasionally destroy an ongoing or environment card.
Attack
Chrono-Ranger is always on the offensive. Nearly every one of his one-shot cards does damage in addition to their other effects. Each of his weapons offer something situationally effective:
Neuro-Toxin Dart Thrower reduces damage from bad guys. It's not great against Plague Rat, who deals so much irreducible damage, but against others it tends to mitigate a ton of damage. This tends to be my first gun to get out (Jim's Hat being the first equipment). It's not a great attack, but nerfing damage early helps a lot.
The Masadah does irreducible damage, and it's based on the number of bounties in play. Chrono-Ranger has the ability to put a lot of bounties out during the course of the game, which makes this very good against high-armor villains like Spite. I say it's his "best" attack because his low plinky damage seems to get hurt a lot by armor, but every one of his other weapons is useful in situations that have come up with almost every villain.
Compounded Bow is your go-to weapon for multiple instances of damage, which can be useful against Spite by canceling out his "first damage of turn" defenses. It also allows you to choose the type of the second instance, which can be useful against villains like Omnitron who have or gain immunities to certain damage types. Against unarmored villains, it becomes the weapon of choice over Masadah.
Danny-Boy is his AOE attack, affecting as many targets as you have bounties in play. It only does 2 fire damage, so I tend to ignore it unless there's a bunch of minions on the field. If I can get Hunter and Hunted into play the same turn and there's 3+ bounties in play, this quickly becomes a killing machine, but the extra damage taken from HaH can get very serious very quickly.
Temporal Grenades are one-shot weapons that destroy environment and ongoing cards. You only have two of them, but Displaced Armory can get them back if necessary.
Card Draw
Eye on the Prize allows you to draw and play an extra card. Not terribly impressive, but it gets the job done. I find it most useful for setup, but if you can get 2 or 3 saved in hand for later for a Hunter and Hunted-fueled blaze of glory, Chrono-Ranger will do monstrous damage in a single turn as well as draw some cards.
"Just Doin' My Job" allows you to draw multiple cards, but requires your friends to discard to make it work. It's limited by the number of heroes (remember that you are also a player!), and you may get grumbled at for it, but it can occasionally save your bacon. The major problem with this card is the fact that it hurts the team while nominally helping you. It may be good in very specific situations (horrendous first draw), or in allowing you to trade a bad card in hand for a new card, but most of the time the cards it produces don't seem to be that much better than the cards your teammates have to give up to power it, and you probably won't want to dump a card other than a second copy of this for yourself. If your friends have limited hand options as it is (Expatriette), you won't want them to contribute to the pile, but if you've got some hand-stackers like Visionary or Scholar, you can probably count on a few extra cards. I just don't like the inconsistency of this card. But hey, at least it does another point of damage.
"Dead or Alive" allows you to draw a card when its target is destroyed, while "Kill on Sight" allows you to draw 3. During one game we had the CR player constantly dropping "Kill on Sight" on low HP targets, killing them, then recycling it from the trash. This is probably his best play if he needs cards and doesn't have another hero feeding him.
Utility
Jim's Hat allows you to play an extra card during your play phase. Because his one-shots do damage on their own, Jim's Hat is critical to maximizing CR's damage output. The ability to destroy bounties has never really come up, though I could see it being handy if you need to reassign a bounty after it's been played. Jim's Hat will let you recover from equipment and bounty wipes (especially with Bounty Board), making Chrono-Ranger especially resilient when it comes to these villain tactics.
Sudden Contract allows you to search up a bounty card from your deck, and Displaced Armory allows you to search for equipment. Bounty Board and Ranger's Mark get destroyed bounties out of your trash, usually allowing you to endlessly cycle them onto new targets.
Weaknesses
Chrono-Ranger's primary weakness is that he has zero defenses. None. Any damage coming to him is damage he's going to take, unless someone intercepts it for him. His major self-buff, "Hunter and Hunted", increases his damage by the number of bounties in play, but also increases damage taken by the same amount (think gunfighter wading into a hail of bullets to finish off the bad guy). This is really bad against villains or situations that cause heroes to do damage to themselves, like Plague Rat. His only way to mitigate this on his own is with the "Dead or Alive" bounty, which provides a small amount of healing.
His other weakness is that, while he's doing damage ALL. THE. TIME, his damage is typically a single point. Against armored or damage-reducing foes, he can devolve into uselessness without The Masadah. A single global -1 damage card can similarly cause him immeasurable pain.
Strategy
The first goal of Chrono-Ranger should almost always be to get Jim's Hat into play, usually with Displaced Armory. Those weapons are tasty, but he can do damage without them, and that extra play every turn is immensely helpful.
Chrono-Ranger's second goal is to hit the boss with "The Ultimate Target". Not only does this increase CR's damage against the boss, but the first time the boss does damage during a turn, Jim gets to use an out-of-turn power. We usually try to follow this up with "By Any Means", allowing CR to get +2 on damage vs. the boss, and buffing all other heroes' damage against it.
After that, Chrono-Ranger needs to adapt to the needs of the situation, using his armory and bounties. "No Executions" can be used against targets that nuke on death (Sonic Mines), "The Whole Gang" helps with crowd control, and Hunter and Hunted is there for when the time comes to go all-out on damage.
If you can pull it off, Hunter and Hunted + Danny-Boy, with 3 or 4 bounties in play, is an incredible combination against villains/environments with lots of targets. Just try not to die to the swingback. "Ultimate Target" will allow a power use which might be necessary for destroying Hunter and Hunted if the villain is rolling up his sleeves for a beatdown.
In our games, Chrono-Ranger tends to be on boss duty while the rest of us worry about minions and environment targets. His abilities tend to suffer when he's got a lot of stuff to shoot at/play bounties on, and he seems to be much more useful stacking damage on a single target. With damage buffs and bounties in place, he can burn through hit points like nobody's business.
Teamups
Everybody's buddy Legacy is an obvious choice, as is any hero who can boost CR's damage. Heroes who redirect or prevent team damage will be very handy for Chrono-Ranger due to his lack of defenses, and keep him rolling with Hunter and Hunted out.
ETA: At Spiff's suggestion, tried to flesh out the commentary more. Put the bow up front on preferred weapons.