Just curious on the scale of 1-4 where they'd be ranked. Thoughts?
Probably a solid 3. He is beatable, but with the wrong team and bad luck the fight can go downhill for you pretty fast.
Sentinel sidekick has them listed as 3s.
Groovy. Thanks. :)
If Gloomy is a 3, then he's pretty definitely really a 3 this time. A Citizen Dawn or Miss Information kind of a 3, even.
Just played SkinWeaver (Haka, Scholar, Tempest, Expatriette, on Time Cataclysm). He's kinda 'meh' on his first side. As in 'nothing special'. Once he flips, He's all about healing himself at the expense of everything else. It gives him a 'beating a dead horse' vibe that you can get from Ms. Information or Iron Legacy to an extent. Dealing 4 apiece at the start of turn doesn't help. He's no Citizen Dawn, but he's no Grand Warlord Voss either. As above, a solid 3.
hm, I dunno. most of the opinions (and my own experiences) say new Gloom is pretty difficult. Maybe you just had a good game, I dunno. Are you giving him damage reduction from the pouch of bones? Are you healing him when zombies come into play?
Not sure what the last reference was supposed to be insinuating, I guess you don't feel Dawn and Voss are the same difficulty, its unclear to me which one you think is hard and which you beat easily.
Dawn is a three but is one of the most feared villains, the Anvil/Truth start of doom, and the card that shall not be named are big parts of that. She's a three, but a scary as heck three.
Voss is a three, but he doesn't destroy your cards and is more fun to go against than scary.
Putting Gloomweaver in the Dawn category of a three would put him more in the scary to play againt, but not going to kill you as much as you might think from the game play.
I think I lose a lot more agianst Voss than I do against Dawn....
Voss is more nearly a solved equation than Dawn; his minions are all the same (low) number of HP, so about the only serious trick up his sleeve is Forced Deployment, with the threat of a Nonstandard Game Over. But since you always get one turn to remove minions before they win the game, the danger level is pretty low. Dawn has a lot more hurdles for you to clear...it's extremely difficult to just beat on her without letting her flip, and once she flips you're in for a hard time, having to intentionally leave Citizens un-killed so she can un-flip. Voss can destroy you with a lucky draw of Vyktor or Flagship or something, but Dawn inherently manufactures her own luck of that sort by playing extra villain cards. Her Citizens are tougher, have a wider array of abilities, and she routinely heals them or raises them from the dead. It's not really a contest, even if you fail to build your hero team specifically to beat the villain, which is FAR easier to do with Voss than with Dawn (even a single point of DR makes immense difference against Voss, who almost never destroys Ongoings or Equipment).
Voss can be just as scary as Dawn, though maybe a touch not as consistent. His flagships are damage monster houses that really punish low [H] games with non-scaling damage and minion revival, but they are generally managable and the only way he is going to throw you a loop is with well timed Forced Deployments.
Dawn is one of the few villains that's actually harder with H=3 than 5 (along with the Chairman. He is THE WORST with 3 heros. Whether H=3 or 5, you need to do the same amount of overall damage to win. 9/10 there isnt even a remote chance of that happening). Dawn is pretty easy up until the final few rounds, when her ongoings start to pile up. Less heros = less chances of taking out those ongoings out when it counts and return with the dawn is a backbreaker late.
Her arsenal is overall much scarier than Voss's. She covers a wider breadth of effects you have to plan for, while Voss tries to spread you thin with damage immunities to buy time for his Forced Deployments.
I guess this isn't the best place to discuss these two but, I dunno, I guess I just disagree... With gene-bound guards, Tamar, and his Advanced Mode text, he can easily just shut the door on all hero damage. Then a Dreadnaught or Flagship shows up when heroes are at -3 or -4 damage and it's all over for you.
Dawn I tend to have an easy time with. I just selectively target only the most dangerous Citizens, and focus her down until she dies, never letting her flip. Sometimes the strategy gets burked up from an Environment taking out an easy citizen, but even then I can usually recover, flip her, and win.
My general impressions on Skinwalker and AoG Spite (not to distract from the Voss/Dawn conversation, which is fascinating!):
AoG Spite: I'd call him a 3, and general more difficult than his base version. The primary reason is that he does more damage, with a secondary one being that his drugs are on a timer rather than randomly coming out. He does much less healing, but compensates by increased aggression. Flipping him can be a huge risk, since he's likely to get a monster damage turn before you start pulling hostages out of the safehouse to decrease the damage and get extra plays. Because of the damage increase, getting rid of collateral damage is absolutely essential, as he can chain-kill all victims with a single hit (initial huit kills a victim, causing him to do damage, which kills another victim, etc, etc, etc)
Controlling the drugs is difficult, but not impossible. You need to be either be aggressive and take a lot of risks in playing his own cards (in an effort to get enough victims out), or stack the deck so that you know whats coming. the first round is likely to set the tone of the game, as an initial play of a lab raid, forced entry or collateral damage (which destroy victim he starts with) can detrail any sort of strategy.
He's slightly easier with 3 heroes, in that theres a better chance you'll be able to flip him before he has all his drugs out. 5 player games may never reach his flip side. Good samaritans are a HUGE risk, but the only real way to get out ahead of the drugs.
Skinwalker: I'd call him a high 3, possibly a low 4. A lot depends on the heroes and environments, as giving him lots of targets is an easy way to get far more cultists/pins/relics/etc than can be contained. He's suprisingly resilient, despite the 50 HP, and a few bad plays can really make life miserable. AoE damage is very, very, very useful. Damage control is very useful, especially as H goes up.
I've found that the initial side tends to be the most dangerous, as its easier for things to spiral out of control. If he flips with a large army, its going to be a bad scene, but if he is on his own when he flips you can leave him to chew himself up. Selective immunity/damage control is very, very awesome, as is redirection. In general, he wins or loses the game on his initial side. If he can get you low enough, strip away enough cards, or amass an army before flipping, he's in good shape. If you can control the flip, you're in a better position. As always, Vast Followings can completely screw up plans and pull things back into play that took several turns to bring down (I'm looking at you, Pouch of Bones...).
***Special Note for Unity Players
Play Unity at your own risk! She (usually her bots) tend to get hammered, and you may have your teammates glaring at you as Gloomy gets cards for killing bots. If you play her, make sure you are VERY aware of who is likely to take a hit, and use scrap metal to pull a vulnerable bot back after it does it's damage (particularly useful with Raptor bots). Trying to build a large army with little planning is VERY likely to fail, and cause a lot of harm in the process.
I'm not at all certain that's true. Dawn has a LOT of effects which scale with H, notably including the number of starting Citizens and the length of time she stays invincible after flipping. In an H=3 game, her innate damage is a 1-point plink which Bunker or Fanatic can soak indefinitely, she starts with just two citizens (who might well be Spring and Sweat, posing no active threat to you whatsoever on turn 1). With H=5, she only needs to pull one Citizen from the deck before you'll have enough to flip her, unless you can refrain from killing at least one (which isn't easy; even if it's someone like Spring that you don't really care about, you're likely to hit her with damage-to-everything attacks which are too powerful not to use against the more important targets)…then, once she's flipped, you need to sit for a bare minimum of 2 full rounds, likely much longer, letting every Citizen stay in play no matter how deadly they are, just so that you can get out of an unwinnable state - and desperately hoping that the Environment doesn't kill Citizens on that last turn before Dawn'll unflip. H=5 games with Dawn are a nightmare in my experience. 3 might be too few to hit the 80 damage, unless it's an extreme power team (say Ra + Unity + Argent Adept), but I'd definitely take 4 over 5, particularly if playing advanced.
@Envisioner
Yes, It is very true. H=3 games, on average, last far longer than their H=4-5 counterparts. This is mainly due to two reasons 1) Less heros = less hero damage output and 2) Most Villains have their main damage dealing abilities scaled to H, reducing Villain damage output on average as well.
Any Villain that is more dangerous the more time goes by will effect low H games to a far greater extent than high H games. The number of Dawns ongoings doesn't scale (And there are a lot and they all suck). Neither does the number of Citizens in the deck you eventually have to mow through, and neither does their health. The more time she has to keep pumping them out, the more likely the smaller number of heros will not have have an immediate answer for it. Also consider Tears and discarding effects which hit low H games harder than higher H games simply due to math (more cards in combined players hands = more of a chance to answer a given situation). Now, you could say that most villains could fall under argument, but the honestly no other villain has the sheer breadth and depth of effects that Dawn employs, making that ticking clock a huge burden for a small hero team that just can't offer the diversity of situational help that a large team can. And thats the difference. What you need to respond to vs. what you can respond to.
Note that villains whos main shtick is just damage, or are not as diverse in effects, are by far easier in H=3 games. As villain damage scales downward, every point of DR a hero increases in effective value. Consider Dawn in a H=3 game dealing her scaled end of turn damage. She deals H-2 damage, turning into 1 for 3 player game and 3 for a 5 player game. Lets say you are playing Legacy and managed to get out Fortitude which grants 1 damage reduction. In the H=3 game, your Fortitude manage to completley nullify the damage, while H=5 you are merely mitigating (by the same token, cards like Shielding Winds and SuperHuman Durability greatly increase in effective value in higher H games. When H=3, there are only 1 or two villains where you will find a use for these effects). Again it is coming down to what you need to respond to vs. what you can, and villain damage is a far easier effect to control and manipulate as H decreases.
I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me....
I think this is a good example of the theoretical vs the practical. True, in lower H games you can nulify the damage, but does it really matter?
Consider 3 heroes with 25 hp each, and an attack of H-2. Let's see how many instances of damage are needed to wipe out the team:
3p game - No DR: 75 / 1 = 75 instances
3p game - each with DR 1: Nullified
4p game - No DR: 100 / 2 = 50
4p game - each with DR 1: 100 / 1 = 100 Instances
5p game - No DR: 125 / 3 = 42 instances
5p game - each with DR 1: 125 / 2 = 53 instances
In each case, DR does help. Now, its true a DR of 1 can nulify the damage in a 3p game, but look how many times the heroes need to be hit before they are killed. Even in a 5p game with no DR, it would still take 42 times of being hit before being incapped. That's huge. You can often kill the villain before then, so it doesn't really matter, and villains don't play mroe cards baed on the number of people. To compensate, you get an extra play, power and a variety of effects to help you kill the villain even faster. While it's nice to end the game at full hp, in many circumstances it simply doesn't matter, and more players make the game much easier.
True, if you have a villain that can put out that many instances (Matty), then a 3p game will make a difference, but if they can't, a 5p game will almost always be easier. The only other instance this matter is if there is a lot of AoE damage.
I was just elaborating on my view of why I think it to be true.
The Dreamer's flipside does play more cards with higher H, and you need to kill more projections to win too. It basically gives her the equivalent of scaling villain health. With H=5, you get an insane 4 villain cards per round, giving pretty decent odds of having two Dark Heroes out at once (which is always something to be worried about).
Personally I find most villains to be easier with more heroes, but it's certainly not guaranteed.
Fair enough. Forgot that one.