Since there have been a bunch of questions about how to use La Comodora, I figured it was probably a decent time to post this La Comodora guide I wrote. Personally, La Comodora is my favorite hero and I believe is among the most powerful heroes in the game.
La Comodora can be a top notch damage dealer, a top notch support hero, or a mix of both. Her central mechanic involves equipment cards which require discarding cards at the start of your turn to remain in play. Each of these equipment cards grant La Comodora either an end of turn effect or an alternative power. La Comodora also has the unique ability to alter the timing of effects that occur on her turn. She also, has the ability to cause the best hero cards to re-occur multiple times throughout the game. La Comodora's playstyle can be compared to The Scholar's since maintaining her equipment cards is similar to maintaining his elemental cards. She is also similar to Omnitron-X in that she can focus on supporting herself or supporting other heroes and utilizes equipment cards with passive effects.
Trajector described the feel of playing La Comodora the following way:
It doesn't feel like she's directly engaged in the battle. She's off behind the lines, providing direction and supporting effects. That's an awesome thing to come through in the mechanics for a ship captain!
Objective of this Guide:
This guide is meant to provided both a high level view of the character's capabilities and a moderately comprehensive look at the specific tactics you can use as a player to get the most out of this deck. The more general information is toward the beginning of the guide and the more specific interactions are toward the back.
Overview:
Best Damage: Cannon Portal
Best Defense: Combat Timing
Best Personal Support: Concordant Helm
Best Team Support: Timeless Treasure
Best Utility: Take Time
Primary Damage Types: Energy, Projectile
Secondary Damage Types: Fire, Melee
General Strategy:
There are many valid playstyles for La Comodora, but all have one thing in common - hand management is critical. La Comodora has many card draw options. However, she has many appealing effects which deplete your hand, emptying your hand early is an easy mistake to make. Decide early on how much of your initial effort you want to aim at your long term set-up vs. short term support to an ally. If you focus on your own set-up, decide if you want to build-up methodically and towards something specific or chaotically but rapidly setting up towards whatever cards happen to enter play.
Option 1: The slow build
This option sacrifices La Comodora's speed getting set-up to instead provide early game support to other players. Generally, under this style of play, La Comodora will use her play phase to either play an immediately useful one-shot, or to play an ongoing or equipment card. She will use her power to support an ally by returning a useful card from their trash to under the top card of their deck.
Option 2: The accelerated ordered build
This option requires you to commit both your play and power phases towards setting up but rewards you with greater set-up speed. Switch from La Comodora's base power to Rudder in the Timestream. Use this power to stack the bottom of your deck with equipment cards. Once you've stacked a few equipment cards this way, use Weigh Anchor to play them. Use your play phase to set up; if you play Harassed Anomaly target another hero.
Option 3: Maximum speed chaotic build
This is the fastest way to set La Comodora up. However, that also means it's the method that will require the most work in maintaining your hand size. To use this method play Harnessed Anomaly on yourself as much as possible and use La Comodora's base power on yourself frequently to get Harnessed Anomaly back in your deck. Once you have Concordant Helm and Rudder in the Timestream in play, replace your base power with the power on Rudder in the Timestream. Play Weigh Anchor when possible and hope you get lucky and hit a run of equipment cards.
Worth noting is that you can switch strategy's easily without losing too much ground. No matter which of these strategies you go with Timeless Treasure and Concordant Helm are amazing cards and are worth getting into play as soon as you can.
Deck Composition:
La Comodora's deck contains 1 limited equipment card with 3 copies, 7 other equipment cards with 2 copies each, 4 limited ongoing cards with 2 copies each. The 5 one-shots make up the remaining 15 cards.
The Character Card:
La Comodora has 29 HP. Her base power, Time's Lessons, is one of the best base powers in the game. The ability to put a card from a hero trash under the top card of their deck, allows heroes to play their best cards more frequently. Often, it's not great early in the game when trash piles are nearly empty; but once one or two great cards are in circulation this power shines.
Full Deck Breakdown:
Personal Support Cards:
Timeless Treasure (Equipment): This card doesn't increase your hand size, but it does let you cycle through your deck more quickly, which is just as important for La Comodora. This deck cycling also means that any cards you move to the top of your deck with your base power, can be in your hand by your next play phase. Additionally, this card provides valuable card draws to your allies.
Rudder in the Timestream (Equipment): This power cycles your deck. Additionally, it allows you to move 2 cards from different trash piles to the bottom of their decks. This combos well with Concordant Helm and Weigh Anchor, which makes up the heart of La Comodora's fast set-up options. In addition to its personal support function, this card can serve a utility function against certain villains and act as support when on a team with certain other heroes. Also, if your deck is empty you can use this power to move any card from your trash directly into your hand.
Maria Helena's Plot (Ongoing, Limited):
This card allows you to see the bottom card of your deck. This allows you to make more informed decisions about when and how to use Weigh Anchor and Concordant Helm. It also allows you to either deal each villain target 1 damage or draw a card, whenever one of your equipment cards is destroyed.
Combat Timing (Ongoing, Limited): This card is La Comodora's only defensive option. It works like Expatriette's Flak Jacket preventing an instance of 3 or more damage. Combat Timing also allows La Comodora to deal 1 target 2 damage when it triggers.
Shipshape (Ongoing, Limited): The first effect of this card allows you to offset the first card you discard each turn by drawing a card. This helps La Comodora to sustain one more equipment card than she otherwise could while also providing protection against villain and environment discard effects.
The second effect allows you to discard a card to reorder your cards in play by returning one of them to the top of your deck and re-playing it. There are two disadvantages to doing this. It means you can not draw an extra card during your draw phase by not playing cards or using powers. Also, it may require you to pay the start of turn cost of the card you moved a second time. As such, this is not an effect you'll want to use most rounds, but it can be very useful in the right situation so dismissing it entirely is a mistake.
Here are some ways to take advantage of this effect:
-You can move Paradoja Figurehead into your play area (even if there is another Paradoja Figurehead in your play area).
-You can move Brig Teleporter after Cannon Portal in execution order, allowing Cannon Portal to reduce a target to 6 or fewer HP before Brig Teleporter is triggered.
-You can move Chronological Sweetspot after Timeless Treasure in execution order. Using your base power and Timeless Treasure, you'll be able to move a one-shot to the top of any hero deck in time for Chronological Sweetspot to play it.
Take Time (one-shot): This card acts both as utility and as personal support. Use this card to destroy an environment card, ongoing card, or target with 1 HP. Then this card lets you draw until there are 5 cards in your hand. This is great when you're low on cards, but it uses up your card play, so you won't want use it every turn.
Weigh Anchor (One-shot): This card will play the bottom card of your deck. It will keep doing so until this does not result in an equipment card being played. This is one of the few means La Comodora has of building up by more than one card in a given turn. You stack the bottom of your deck with equipment cards or play this card blindly. Played blindly, here are the approximate probabilities for how many equipment cards it will play before playing another card:
0 equipment: 56.4%
1 equipment: 25.6%
2 equipment: 11%
3 equipment: 4.4%
4 or more equipment: 2.5%
Concordant Helm (Equipment, Limited): This card let's you move either the bottom card of your deck or an equipment card from your trash to your hand at the end of your turn. This is generally equivalent to a card draw. If you're using build-up option 2 you'll want to make sure you're getting enough equipment cards into your trash to move 1 to your hand and 1 under your deck. Additionally, this card allows you to take your play, power, and draw phases in any order. Taking your draw phase first, usually means you'll be able to draw an extra card since you haven't played any cards or used any powers yet. Taking your power phase before your draw phase can allow you to use Rudder in the Timestream one extra time before playing Weigh Anchor or to use the promo's power to discard a card into an empty trash so you can play Harnessed Anomaly on that deck.
Team Support Cards:
Chronological Sweetspot (Ongoing, Limited): At the cost of destroying one of your cards every round, this card will reveal the top card of each hero deck and play each revealed one-shot. With La Comodora's base power, a one-shot can be moved under the top card of its deck. Using La Comodora's draw phase or Timeless Treasure to draw a card, can set that one-shot up for Chronological Sweetspot.
Timeless Treasure (Equipment): In addition to the deck cycling personal benefit that this card grants, it also lets up to two other heroes draw a card. Occasionally, it's even worth giving all three card draws away to other players. If you can get both copies of this card into play, then any card you move with your base power can be in its owner's hand by the conclusion of your turn.
Paradoja Figurehead (Equipment): This card can give a damage boost to all hero targets in the same play area as itself. At the end of your turn, you can move it to any play area that doesn't already have a copy of this card. This means that the only hero play area that can have more than one copy of this card at once is your own, and that if you move either copy to another play area you cannot move it back to your own without replaying it.
Temporal Rigging (Equipment): This card grants a hero of your choice a power use. If none of the heroes have a power worth using you may draw a card instead.
Harnessed Anomaly (one-shot): This card shuffles one card from a trash into its associated deck and then plays the top card of that deck. It also grants you an additional draw or play. Used on yourself this is La Comodora's best way of playing multiple cards in one turn. Used on another hero this card will play a random card. How useful or dangerous this is varies widely based on which hero you target. Additionally, it's worth noting that using this power on any empty deck, allows you to choose any card from that trash and put it directly into play.
Damage Dealing Cards:
Cannon Portal (Equipment): At the end of your turn, this card deals 1 target 3 damage.
Brig Teleporter (Equipment): At the end of your turn this card deals 1 target 1 irreducible damage. It also stops that target from dealing damage if they have 5 or fewer HP.
Future Tech Deck Gun (Equipment): This power let's La Comodora deals 1 irreducible damage to up to 5 targets. With 1 or more damage boosts from Paradoja Figurehead, this power can go from merely ok to quite strong.
Flintlock and Cutlass (One-shot): This card deals 1 target 2 projectile damage and 1 target 2 melee damage. Four damage is not bad for a one-shot, but this card gets even stronger with a damage boost.
Run Aground (One-shot): This is a potential big source of irreducible damage. If you are attempting to build up by stacking the bottom up your deck with equipment avoid this card like the plague. However, if you using the chaotic build-up method this card is actually very helpful. The more equipment cards in your deck the higher the odds you get more than 1 card into play via Weigh Anchor.
Builds:
Sweetspot Build: Start by getting Maria Helena's Plot, Timeless Treasure, and at least one other ongoing or equipment card into play. Then play Chronological Sweetspot. On each subsequent turn, you can destroy a card to fuel Chronological Sweetspot and play an equipment card (or in a pinch an ongoing) to replace it. Use your base power and Timeless Treasure to set up powerful one-shots for immediate re-use.
Support Build: Timeless Treasure, Paradoja Figurehead, and Temporal Rigging are La Comodora's best support cards. In order to maintain these cards, La Comodora will need Concordant Helm and/or Shipshape. Even with both La Comodora won't be able to sustain 2 copies of each card without either outside help or well timed usage of Take Time. This build generally works best when La Comodora focuses her attention on providing 1 or 2 other heroes a lot of support rather than trying to support all other heroes a little bit.
Damage Build: For this build, focus on La Comodora's damage dealing equipment cards and using Paradoja Figurehead to boost your own damage. Maintaining all these cards is very difficult and La Comodora will need to either get outside help for a source of card draws or give up a few of these cards. With even a fraction of this set-up though, La Comodora can be one of the best damage dealers in the game.
Mix and Match Build: While focusing purely on support or damage can pay larger dividends than a mix and match approach, this approach has the advantage of being easier to set up since it's let reliant on finding specific cards.
The Magnifica Gambit:
Imagine being able to destroy each of your equipment cards at the start of your turn, triggering Maria Helena's Plot, while still having every equipment card in your deck in play by your end of turn phase. Now imagine, if you could repeat this feat every round while also, dealing up to 15 irreducible damage via Run Aground. With careful planning La Comodora can pull this off, especially if other heroes are able to accelerate her gameplay.
In order to accomplish this, you will need:
1. Exactly zero cards in your deck
2. As many equipment cards as possible in your trash or in play
3. At least 1 copy of Run Aground in your trash
4. At least 1 copy of Harnessed Anomaly in your hand, and at least 1 copy of Weigh Anchor in your hand.
Having Maria Helena's Plot in play is really strong, but not 100% necessary. Here's how to use this combo:
At the start of your turn, let all of your equipment cards destroy themselves. Play Harnessed Anomaly and choose to shuffle Run Aground into your deck. Harnessed Anomaly will play Run Aground. Have Run Aground shuffle all non-limited equipment cards in your trash into your deck. Then, Harnessed Anomaly will let you draw or play a card. Play Weigh Anchor to put your whole deck into play (since all cards in your deck will be equipment). If you want to repeat this effect the following round use both copies of Rudder in the Timestream to return Harnessed Anomaly and Weigh Anchor to your hand (using Temporal Rigging on yourself for the second power use). It's unlikely, more than 2 rounds of this will be needed though as the damage from this combo is likely to win you the game fairly quickly.
Variant:
La Comodora: Curse of the Black Spot has 28 HP and is almost as strong as the base version. Her power, backtrack shot, makes this version incredibly strong with a damage dealing build. The ability to discard the top card of a deck, can be useful for heroes like Tachyon, Luminary, or Lifeline. But, used on La Comodora herself it can make pulling off The Magnifica Gambit more feasible. Additionally, this power is usable on turn 1 and it can allow you to use Harnessed Anomaly on a given deck earlier in the game.
Weaknesses:
La Comodora is a bit slow out of the gate. She needs some set-up time before she is fully effective. Ongoing destruction, Equipment destruction, and discards are all threats to La Comodora's game plan. Cards that shuffle hero trashes into their decks are problematic for La Comodora as well.
Match-ups:
Thanks to Rudder in the Timestream and Brig Teleporter, La Comodora has several notably good match-ups.
Rudder in the Timestream can:
-Slow down Baron Blade's countdown
-Mitigate the danger of Voss's Forced Deployment.
-Make it harder for Citizen Dawn to flip
-Circulate Thugs into Chairman's deck
-Put the Mask and Cohorts under Matriarch's deck
-Get La Paradoja Magnifica out of La Capitan's trash
Brig Teleporter can:
-Completely shut down The Dreamer's damage
-Completely shut down any of Voss's minions, Infinitor's manifestations, or Omnitron's drones.
Team-ups:
The extra cards draws La Comodora can give to other heroes via Timeless Treasure are especially useful for Bunker, Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Fanatic, Unity, Expatriette, Chrono-Ranger, Scholar, Parse, KNYFE, Guise, and Lifeline.
Out of turn power uses from Temporal Rigging are particularly useful for Legacy, Wraith, Tempest, Haka, Mr. Fixer, Expatriette, Argent Adept, Scholar, The Sentinels, The Naturalist, Luminary, The Harpy, Stuntman, and the Void Guard heroes.
The following heroes really like the damage boost Paradoja Figurehead can provide: Absolute Zero, Tempest, Fanatic, Unity, Mr. Fixer, Expatriette, Omnitron-X, Chrono-Ranger, The Sentinels, KNYFE, Guise, Luminary, The Harpy, Stuntman, Benchmark, Mainstay, and Idealist.
Several heroes have cards that make excellent candidates for Time's Lessons. Here are some of the very best:
Legacy - Lead from the Front and Take Down
Wraith: Impromptu Invention
Tachyon: Lightspeed Barriage and Fleet of Foot
Haka - Ground Pound and Rampage
Ra - Fire Blast and Scorched Earth
Expatriette - Unload
NightMist - Mistbound
Omnitron-X - Technological Advancement
Chrono-Ranger - Eye on the Prize
Scholar - Don't Dismiss Anything and Keep Moving
The Sentinels - Team Communication and Unique Capabilities
Guise - Guise the Barbarian or Best Card Ever
Lifeline - Calculated Action, Unleashed Energy, and Enclave Tech
Benchmark - Deployment Actuation
Doctor Medico - Regeneration, Lifeforce of Will, and Immunization
The Idealist - Making Things Up and Vivid Thoughts.
If La Comodora can sets up her Sweetspot Build and uses Time's Lessons on Tempest's Reclaim from the Deep, Scholar's Don't Dismiss Anything, or Argent Adept's Vernal Sonata. If she reveals Tempest's/Scholar's/Argent Adept's deck first then they'll be able to put one shots on top of all other hero decks which Chronological Sweetspot will immediately play.
NightMist's Mistbound, Temporal Rigging, and Time's Lessons can be used to permanently lock down the villain or environment deck
When La Comodora is set up for damage she generally deals many instances making her really excel when her damage is boosted. As such, Legacy and Ra can do a great job of supporting La Comodora's damage build.
With Shipshape in play, Visionary's base power can be used to have La Comodora draw 3 cards and discard 1 card. This is not only great from a hand management perspective but also in making The Magnifica Gambit more viable.
Tachyon moves through her deck quickly, making her a great target for Harnessed Anomaly on an empty deck. This can be used to grantee that Harnessed Anomaly will play Lightspeed Barriage.
Mr. Fixer's Salvage Yard is very useful for La Comodora since she has a large number of equipment cards and returning the ones in her trash to her hand gives her cards to discard to maintain the ones she has in play.
La Comodora's equipment can make good targets for Unity's base power since destroying La Comodora's equipment can trigger Maria Helena's Plot.
Cards put on under the top card of a deck by Time's Lesson's can often be played via Omntiron-X's Timeshift or The Harpy's Swift Summoning.
Parse's Updated Intel and La Comodora's Rudder in the Timestream can lock any villain that plays only 1 card per round down to a 2 card sequence.
Sky-Scraper's Micro-Assembler is great for La Comodora; it can dramatically reduce her set-up time.
The Sentinels and their former nemesis work very well together. Rudder in the Timestream and Writhe's Extract can combo together to force the villain to play the same card again and again. Chronological Sweetspot has great odds of playing a one-shot from the Sentinels' deck. Cards played from Chronological Sweetspot or extra power uses from Temporal Rigging can trigger Sentinel Tactics out of turn to give The Sentinels an extra power use. Using Rudder in the Timestream on signature cards makes recovering them from destruction much easier since signature cards on the bottom of your deck can be put into play by Unique Capabilities while signature cards in your trash cannot be.
Rudder in the Timestream can move elemental cards under Scholar's deck so he can play them via Keep Moving.
La Comodora's equipment cards with end of turn effects are great targets for Guise's Lemme See That.
Any Constructs that Captain Cosmic plays in a play area with Paradoja Figurehead will also receive the damage boost from Paradoja Figurehead.
La Comodora and Lifeline can each provide the other with extra card draws. Matter Manipulator can turn a card draw given to Lifeline into an out of turn power use.
If Akash'Thirya's Akash'Flora has 6 or fewer HP, Brig Teleporter can shut down its self damage for a round. This means that every hero will be able to use a power at no cost at the start of Akash'Thriya's turn.