Does Mister Fixer need Fixing?

General GTG General Discussion
1

I was just curious to get everyone else’s opinions on Mister Fixer. Having played several games with Rook City components now, I’ve found Expatriette to be pretty straight forward and useful. Tactical Shotgun is awesome; Assault Rifle is awesome, and she’s even got utility with RPG Launcher. However, I just haven’t really found a place for Mister Fixer. His base damage is pretty negligible, and while he can search for his stances, he relies on luck of the draw for the right tool (possibly luck enhanced by Toolbox if he draws that). Many of his tools have excellent utility (Jack Handle, Hoist Chain, Tire Iron) and the other are a solid damage increase (Pipe Wrench, Dual Crowbars), but I rarely seem to have the right tool for the job. I think Riveting Crane is probably one of the coolest ideas in the game, but quite commonly, I end up in this situation:

Some critters are on the table, and some effect is reducing all damage by 1. “Awesome, I’ll use Riveting Crane and make my group love me! Oh, wait. My base damage is only 1. My damage will be reduced by 1, to 0, meaning I didn’t deal any damage, and Riveting Crane doesn’t work…Hmm, I can use Meditation to search for Grease Monkey Fist, to make my damage 2, but I can’t have that and Riveting Crane out at the same time. Well fooey.” Every time this happens (and it happens to me a LOT), I ponder that if Strike did 2 damage as its base, this would work out.

Now, I do understand that under perfect conditions, You could have out Grease Monkey Fist, Harmony, and Dual Crowbars, and be doing 4 damage to 2 targets, and that’s awesome, I’ll admit. Even using Jack Handle to deal 3 damage to all targets is pretty slick. However, it just seems like that situation never happens.

What bothers me the most is that I LOVE Mister Fixer thematically. I love how his tools work, and while I wish stances worked the same way (bouncing to hand instead of discarding), I think their effects are awesome. Salvage Yard and Grease Gun are neat. I do wish their was some way to play Bloody Knuckles along side Charge or Overdrive, but whatever, you can’t have everything you want.

To be clear, I’m not trying to start a flame war, nor am I criticizing >G for making a weak character. What I’m actually hoping for is for a bunch of people to point out combos or clarify something I’m missing. I fully admit, I was one of those people that didn’t really “get” Absolute Zero at first, it took me time, and a few posts by others on how awesome he could be. I’ve played Mister Fixer several times, and I love him thematically, but I hate playing games where he never seems to come together, and I feel like I’m letting down my team when it happens.

So, what I’m looking for is overall opinions about Mister Fixer and whether you’ve found him to be weak/strong/extremely situational/general purpose, etc. If you think he’s strong, please tell me what you do with him that makes him so, and if you think he’s weak, what do you think might make him better? As a stated above, I think Strike doing 2 damage would help a lot. I understand that >G does tons of playtesting, so I assume there is a really good reason that it only does 1, but I just haven’t seen it in practice.

2

If you can team Mr. Fixer up with another character that can increase damage dealt in some way, that would help cancel that reduction. Tempest is in somewhat similar situation with his Squall, though he does have Chain Lightening and Hail Storm (I think…) to help overcome that limitation. I’d guess that Mr. Fixer just isn’t very good against damage reducing multitarget villains, much like how Absolute Zero is not very good against equipment destroying damage modifying villains.

Although, if you can get that Salvage Yard out, he is decent support for Equipment Heroes fighting in a Equipment hostile battle.

3

I’ve had a similar experience with Mr. Fixer – love him thematically but have often failed to feel particularly useful while playing him.

I think the idea is for him to have the right tool for the job whatever the job is, but too often he doesn’t seem to have the right tool for the job.

He’s a frustrating combination of being a slow-build character (need to get the right combination of cards out) while not building up to anything particularly spectacular in terms of damage he can do.

He is, then, a slow-build, support character, which is something we have not seen before. If you have Mr. Fixer on your team, look for him to save the day with just the right combination of stance and tool or with grease gun or with salvage yard, but don’t necessarily expect him to be able to do it at the beginning of the game.

Learning to play Mr. Fixer, I think, isn’t really analogous to understanding how to use AZ’s powers in the right way. It’s more analogous to understanding how to be effective with Tachyon. It’s about patience – playing cards in the beginning to set yourself up for success later. Do what you can with the styles and tools you start with and look for ways to get more cards. That may mean not doing just a point or two of damage and instead drawing two cards.

4

Similar experience here, 2 other players in my group have played Mr Fixer and ended up doing nothing much except draw 2 cards every turn throughout the game.

I played Mr Fixer once. It was more like “just do whatever can be done”. Play a style, then play which ever tool is best for that turn. Since Mr Fixer only has 1 Power in his deck, you want to be have at least a style or tool that gives +1 damage to negate any reducing effects from the villain or environment, and use your Power every turn. If you don’t or can’t use your Power, then you are better off drawing 2 cards and look for Alternating Tiger Claw for irreducible damage or Driving Mantis to redirect damage.

If you play Mr Fixer expecting him to be like Ra or Fanatic, you will be disappointed. Play him as a deep striker (in soccer terms, between the forwards and midfielders), you might be more satisfied.

5

Yeah, Mr. Fixer is a support character for the most part. So he isn’t going to be like Ra who constantly deals out ever increasing damage.

But, Mr. Fixer can lay the pain down with his Jackhandle. Being able to deal damage to all targets simultaneously, especially if he has Harmony or that card that lets him strike multiple times, can be absolutely devastating to a Minion based villain.

I think that part of the difficulty is that two of the villains in Rook City (Spite and Plague Rat) have no minions and one (Matriarch) has minions that are easily killed. So Fixer isn’t a very good match up with those particular villains. Yet, he gets played with them more because people (in my group at least) want to play new villains with new heroes.

6

THIS

7

that is definitely part of it.

He has some utility, but honestly just not as much as a lot of other characters do. I think a lot of his problems stem from the fact that there definitely seem to be a few styles/tools that are really not as good as the rest.

I think the idea behind Fixer is to get a lot of stuff in your hand and then bounce tools from your hand into play and back to your hand… so you always have the right tool for the job. But it seems that much of the time, Dual Crowbars are the right tool for the job. Hm… I feel so disorganized, lets just go through his stuff one card at a time:

TOOLS: Jack Handle: Pretty much never useful. Dual Crowbars is much better 95% of the time considering Fixer’s low damage output.

Tire Iron: Maybe a little more useful, but not much. This might be good in combo with Alternating Tiger Claw Style to take out armor guys, but again, it’s probably better just to have Dual Crowbars for the +1 damage.

Hoist Chain: I like a lot. It’s kind of like a weaker version of Wraith’s stun bolt… Unfortunately its a weaker version of Wraiths stun bolt.

Dual Crowbars: +1 damage FTW!! Dual crowbars is great.
Pipe Wrench: +1 damage ftw again. Between this and Dual Crowbars? Potato/Potato (wow, that really doenst work in print, does it?). Play whatever you get first I suppose.

STYLES:

TWO FISTED MONKEY STYLE!!! Er, Sorry, Grease Monkey Fist: Looks all spiffy. Changing damage type occasionally useful but not very. +1 damage ftw tho. IMO this is the SECOND best style.

Riveting Crane Style: Pretty cool in theory, but the OP outlined beautifully why this card is first in line to be ditched to an environment card. It pretty much never works out.

Alternating Tiger Claw Style: Meh? Second in line to be ditched to an environment card.

Driving Mantis Style: Ok, every time I’ve seen Mr. Fixer be good, he was using this style. It makes him quite a tank to a lot of environment cards and minions. Add Dual Crowbars or Pipe Wrench and you have a pretty effective Mr Fixer, able to tank a lot of damage and redirect it to 1 or 2 targets of choice. Its not bad.

Fixer’s “ultimate” setup IMO is Dual Crowbars, Driving Mantis Style, and Harmony. Then you hope stuff deals you less than >/= 2 damage, and you can redirect it to 2 targets for 3-4 damage apeice. If you DONT have Harmony out, (Driving Mantis, Dual Crowbars) I suppose you could use Fixer’s Strike power to punch himself in the face for 2 damage, then redirect damage away from fixer with Mantis Style to 2 targets for 3 damage apiece.

Fixer’s strength is that it really doenst take much to get out his ultimate stuff, his weakness is that his ultimate stuff is nowhere near as good as most other heroes ultimate stuff. With that said, I feel like I can NEVER draw harmony, or the toolbox, or the style card I want. It can take a lot of drawing 2 cards at the beginning to get him rolling.

I tried to paint Fixer in as bright of a light as I could for this post, cause I think he’s kinda cool. But on the whole, I agree with you, he’s probably a tad weaker than most characters, and I think this is amplified by the fact that he came in next to Expatriette, who is straightforward and awesome.

8

You might have played some cards wrong there.

With Dual Crowbars, Driving Mantis and Harmony, Fixer get +2 in damage dealt by him.

If he receives damage that is 2 or less from some another source, he can redirect it. However, the source of the damage remains the same. So Fixer’s +2 doesn’t get added to it.

Also, since the source doesn’t change, Dual Crowbars don’t get triggered, so you can’t deal a second target damage.

9

I love 8bit theatre :slight_smile:

Also, I agree with ketigid. Because the source of the damage doesn’t change, Dual Crowbars doesn’t apply when using Driving Mantis. AZ can get away with stuff like that, because with his shtick, he doesn’t redirect it; he takes the fire damage, and then deals cold dmg = to what he took, but for redirections, it doesn’t work.

10

hm, true dat… How sad. Oh well, its still useful for mitigating damage, but maybe I’ll have to switch up to Monkey Style.

11

Last time I played Mr. Fixer, it was against Plague Rat. Fixer got infected, and I was gleefully planning on redirecting that damage to the rat. Just one problem. In addition to Driving Mantis Style, I had a Pipe Wrench and Harmony out. There is nothing more disheartening than having the ability to redirect 2 damage per turn, and be dealing yourself 3.

12

Also, I can’t remember which one (maybe Jack Handle) states that if Mr. Fixer would deal damage, he deals that damage to all non-heroes. Assuming I’m reading that correctly, that cancels the original damage, meaning that Infection and Afflicted Frenzy (I think that’s the one, where heroes deal damage to other heroes at the start of their turn), and one of Plague Rat’s assigned powers (the one where you deal damage to another hero to regain HP) all turn around to hit Plague Rat (and environments) instead.

13

heh, nice. Unfortunately, it just seems that in practice, stuff just never works out like that. He pretty much always draws things that are bad.

Today I was desperate for a little extra damage against Omnitrons Electro-Pulse explosive, so I played Bloody Knuckles. This is against my usual mantra of: NEVER play Bloody Knuckles. Anyway, environment turn rolls around (Atlantis) and we draw Atlantean Font of Power. Omnitron plays his Railgun (fixer was one of the two highest, btw) and Fixer plays… Freaking Bloody Knuckles.

So Fixer ended up taking +4 damage from both the pulse explosive and the railgun, darn you, Fixer… By the way, NEVER play Bloody Knuckles.

14

Bloody Knuckles is nice when you know you are going to lose the card before your turn (especially if before the bad guy’s turn). E.g. with Spites drug, Mr. Fixer could play Bloody Knuckles to increase his damage, and then Spite can force it back into his hand, thus he now doesn’t recieve damage bonus from Spite.

15

I think part of it comes down to “What are you expecting Mr Fixer to be?”

I can think of many games with different heroes where I have not been able to draw the cards I want. Ex. Bunker not getting a damage card early, Absolute Zero not getting combos early, etc.

Mr Fixer has an innate power which does damage and other cards which feed off of that. Is he going to come out and be able to bash super hard? Not normally, but he stays consistent.

The games where his various tools/styles come into play are during the times where the field keeps changing. As someone above said if you are fighting Spite or Plague Rat once you get the combo down that you want you won’t have much need for changing. But in ones where the amount of targets and various effects are changing you will see him switch cards more. And who knows what other villains/environments are coming down the road. He may shine even more against some of them.

I’ll try to sit down in the future when I have the cards in front of me and try to do some comparisons.

And of course one of the great things with SOTM is just how different the different characters play. Some people will just naturally enjoy playing some of the Heroes over the others. So Mr Fixer will be not enjoyed as much as others to some and yet to others he might be their favorite.

16

Mr. Fixer is probably one of my favorites, so I personally don’t think he needs to be changed at all. I think it would be nice if his strike did one more damage but oh well.

Imagine this, during playtesting he didn’t have Harmony, I think it replaced another card that searched for a tool.

17

I think he’s great against villains like Plague Rat or Spite, where there’s a main target to focus on and not worry about a ton of minions. In those situations, he’s not the best at crowd control.

18

I had great luck with Fixer and Expatriette against Matriarch. What happened was Ex had Hairtrigger Reflexes (1 damage to any Non-hero target that enters play) out. This meant that every time a Fowl (1hp) came into play, it just died. The problem with that is that if there’s a Carrion Fields in play, you take a ton of damage. The Fowl comes into play, it triggers another draw. It dies. The other draw, if a Fowl, triggers another draw and dies. This can go on ten times a turn. That’s ten damage from the Carrion Fields each turn. Ten damage, dealt 1 damage at a time. What I was doing with Mr. Fixer was using Hoist Chain on the Carrion Fields. Hoist Chain would reduce all damage the Carrion Fields dealt by 1. Since it deals damage 1 at a time, it dealt zero damage each time a Fowl came into play while I tick it to death with Hoist Chain. If I have Harmony in play and a style that adds damage, that goes pretty fast. If two Carrion Fields, use Overdrive to lock them both down. Expatriette deals enough damage that we can usually kill one pretty easy. He seemed to work really well like that. We basically never had Fowls to deal with, and Carrion Fields did nothing. That made for a relatively easy win.

19

Awesome!

Now, someone explain to me how to use Mr. Fixer against Plague Rat after he’s infected.

20

Hmmm … Driving Mantis (redirect 1st damage of 2 or less to Mr. Fixer each turn) paired with Dual Crowbars (Foreach attack, may do same amount to 2nd target) looks like a winner.

I think that in the future I want to play Mr. Fixer with a cheat sheet that lists what all of the styles and tools do.