First time the three of us have played against The Chairman and the first time we used Rook City as the environment.
I knew we were getting the short end of the stick when The Broker and The Fence were in play and they both brought out a Thief and Informant respectively the very first turn of the game. It gets to our first hero turn and Tempest plays the card that deals 5 lightning damage to kill The Broker. The Informant activates and the villain card played is Jailbreak(?) and The Broker came right back. My wife who is playing Tempest just looks at me like this.
-__-
I was dying laughing.
Tempest, Absolute Zero, and Ra threw in the towel several turns later when The Chairman had the following in play.
The Broker, The Fence, whatever the underboss is that brings out Enforcers, Enforcer x2, The Contract(?), the thug that The Contract brings out, the underboss that brings out Crooked Cops, and a Crooked Cop.
On top of all that, the environment tried to help with Sam something allowing us to manipulate the villain deck but it was just so terrible. We plan to rematch The Chairman tomorrow. This was the first time we've had our butts handed to us so badly by a villain. Any advice on taking him down with three heroes?
Also, thank you Greater Than Games. We've had SotM for one week and can't stop playing it when we have free time because it's so much fun win or lose.
Th Chairman is one of the toughest villains in the game. Rook City is one of the toughest encironments in the game. Combining them, no matter how thematically justified, just results in pain and misery.
General tactics are kill the Fence and Broker as soon as possible as their mooks are far more annoying than the others. The Chairman's deck is also exclusively projectile and melee damage based so Legacy's Next Evolution can reduce a lot of the pain. He also doesn't have a lot of ongoing/equipment destruction (really just the thief) so you can build up if you can get through the damage.
One point on the way you killed the Broker - an earlier discussion somewhere on the forum decided, I think, that if something is activated by your playing a card, the act of playing a card is what triggers it - so you say "I'm playing this card" but before said card has a chance to do anything, the Broker goes "Lol, but we get one first" and has the Chairman play a card. So they'd've played PRison Break before your nuke took out the Broker :D.
Anyone with good AE damage is useful against the Chairman, so someone like Tempest or Ra is good. Haka is useful too if you can get out Savage Mana - I did that once and had "eaten" two Underbosses before I remembered that I needed to leave at least three so that they'd end up going to the trash in order for the Chairman to flip. Once he did I started eating them again :D. If you can do this to as many Thugs as possible, they aren't around to be brought back into play by their Underbosses :D.
If you have anything that blocks damage then this is good - the Contract and his Hired Guns are very painful otherwise. Heroic Interception (Legacy) can be good for this, though doesn't protect Legacy himself, but if you have out Next Evolution you can block the damage :). Wraith is a good all-rounder against pretty much anyone, so she might be a good idea. We kicked the Chairman's arse pretty quickly the other night but I can't remember exactly which heroes we were playing. Something like Legacy, Wraith, Bunker, and Ra I think. And we were on Mars. The countdown did come out toward the end of the game but we skipped a couple of turns here and there so we didn't all get insta-killed. It had three or four cards in the countdown pile when we won the game.
Some kind of deck control is good against the Chairman. Someone like Wraith, Nightmist, or the Visionary, who can control to some extent which card the villain will play next, is very useful. Note that even if you prevent villain cards from being played (eg through Nightmist's Mistbound or Legacy's Takedown), this doesn't stop the Operative from bringing out an Underboss at the end of their turn. But at least you can hopefully stop horrible nasty Prison Break cards coming out right after you've killed all the Underbosses :P. Probably the least threatening card in their deck is the Perfect Human Specimens one, since all this does is heal the Chairman and (if she's still around) the Operative a bit - it doesn't deal you any damage or bring any other cards into play, so really it's just a bit annoying.
While there are many here to have played the game much more than I, my friends and I just played The Chairman in Rook City, and had a lucky time of it.
The characters out were (from first player to last) Argent Adept, Tempest, Young Legacy, and Ex-Pat. Tempest and Ex-Pat were on good-sweeping duty, using Tempest's default power and an SMG respectively. Both were boosted by the Legacy by one point. Tempest was boosted another point from his deck, and had electrical storm in play. A^2 would use his performs to allow Tempest to do another area affect attack. Young Legacy had "Lead from the Front", her ring, and "Nex Evolution" out, allowing her to soak the incredible amounts of melee damage being generated all the minions going into the trash.
When not needed for minion clearing, Tempest and Ex-Pat could use other powers or their one shots for extra damage.
The net effect was the underbosses and thugs were out in a turn from these attacks, and Young Legacy could then attack the Operative and Chairman with her default power.
I will say that the Environment deck helped us not more than it had any right to do so, pulling the falling statuary card quite often. I decided that the thugs must be dancing on the gargoyles.
The general advice that can be pulled from this game is area effects and mitigating melee damage really helps against the chairman. Clearing out projectile damage is also good. The Chairman seems not very good at destroying character ongoing and equipment cards, so a mix leaning more heavily towards "slow burn" characters might be rewarded.
Thank you for clarifying that. Stupid Prison Break…
I appreciate all the advice folks! We'll try to down him later today and hopefully succeed. One thing is for sure. No more Rook City, no more home field advantage.
Visionary's Brain Burn card can be exceedingly useful, moving all of the thugs from the trash into the deck so the underbosses can't pull them out.
For damage mitigation, Legacy's combo of Next Evolution and Lead from the Front is the best. Another option is The Wraiths Smoke Bombs combined with a tank. Let Bunker get out heavy plating and go into recharge mode, perhaps, and if he's got the most HP and smoke bombs is out, he'll tank a ton of damage.
Other damage reduction includes Mr. Fixer's Grease Gun and, in a way, Legacy's Take Down or NightMist's Mistbound.
If you get to the point (likely) that you're fighting both The Operative and The Chairman at the same time, concentrate on one or the other first. I think going after The Operative first may be the best choice, but I'm not sure.