Easy Villain Makeover, forum edition.

General GTG General Discussion
1

I've been working on some Challenge modes for villains that aren't that difficult even on advanced.  The only one I'm really pleased with is a re-hashing of Gloomweaver that I really enjoy, it is hard, but I don't find it harder than Ennead or Chariman advanced.  I'm still testing an ambuscade remake, but it isn't very good yet.

I thought I'd start this thread to see if anyone else has some custom villain cards that they want to share.

RULES:

No changing non-character card text, don't mess with the regular villain card text.

No altering Villain HP

No dice rolling or coin-flipping or anything like that.

Try to make it feel different than the regular villain.

Try to keep the text from getting ridiculous, dont want a rule book for one villain.

 

2

I don't have such strict rules as you (or goal), but I do use the following simple one:

Ambuscade: <before text of placing devices>. Put the Personal Cloakig device in play.

When a card trap is played or revealed, play the top card of the Villain deck.

Ambuscade wins if just 1 or more heroes are incapacitated.

His trap cards are his low point, when he plays one it's a whole lost turn for him basically. The second part is to strenghten his theme that he is a hunter. Once he hunts one, he leaves with his prize. This doesn't make him THAT much harder, but it's a nice little touch all around.

Gloomweaver: There's an variant by Launius (sp) in BGG which I tried but didn't like (zombies = H+2 life, Pins can only be attacked by the hero character where it's placed on and when destroy deals the character it's on it's HP damage - so basically you have to kill them just by attacking them).

I tried playing the top card of the Villain deck when a Pin card is played and Vast following searching the Villain trash for Cultists/Relics (so it always pops them up if there are in the trash) and thought it was ok. Still I'm not hot on Gloomweaver's concept, or what I understand that is, which is just to stall the game with cultist and zombies until relics show up. Those Profane Zealots can be a pain early game against several heroes though (both at the same time).

 

Note though that I usually play 3 Heroes, so probably it's not enough of a challenge for 4-5 Heroes. I didn't went for something like Mad Bomber or Cosmic Omnitron, just small tweaks to make them enjoyable to me.

3

Gloomweaver remake:  Going for a gloomweaver who is trying to get back into the world, the ritual is being prepared by his cultists, and the Heroes must find the ritual and then stop Gloomweaver once he's summoned.  Once Summoned his Cultists are in for a surprise.

First Side:  Shadow of the Ancient One

Setup

At the start of the game put Gloomweaver's villain character card into play, Shadow of the Ancient One side up.

At the start of the game put all Zombie cards in the Trash, reveal cards from the top of the deck until (H)-2 cultists are revealed, put them into play.

Game Play

At the start of the villain turn if there are three relics in play flip Gloomweaver's character card.

All relics are immune to damage.

Gloomweaver is indestructible.

When a cultist is destroyed, search the trash for a Zombie card and put it into play.

Advanced:

Reduce damage dealt to Cultists by 1.

Secon Side:  The Nightmare Reborn

Setup

When flipped to this side destroy all Cultists.  put into play from the trash or deck x voodoo pins, where x=the number of cultists destroyed by this effect.  Shuffle the villain trash into the villain deck, put all zombies not in play into the trash.

Game Play

When a Cultist is destroyed search the villain trash for a Zombie card and put it into play.

When a Cultist enters play destroy it and play the top card of the villain deck.

Gloomweaver is indestructible while one or more of his Relics are in play.

Advanced

At the end of the villain turn reveal cards from the top of the villain deck until a target is revealed, put that target into play.  All other revealed cards are shuffled back into the deck.  If no cards enter play this way shuffle the villain trash into the villain deck, put all zombies not in play into the trash, then Gloomweaver deals each hero (H) Infernal damage.

4

Oh, I like the all Zombie's on trash and the !Cultist -> Zombie on his flip side.

 

OTOH, he can be a real wreck if one of his nasty Relics (can't recall name) pops out early, destroying your stuff or dealing damage. Wouldn't making his Relics indestructible be enough? Although I see you don't have him dealing damage on his flip side on normal.

5

I've liked the flip side so far, as it has mostly been a nuke fest.  Gloomweaver's first side can be pretty slow, so I knock him down low in health before he flips, then it is just an absolute damage race to kill the relics and him before he finishes you off.

The first side feels tougher, as it is basically a survival contest, the second side is a lot of fun.

6

So, how have that worked so far? Read somewhere something didn't worked out as intended?

I played again against Gloomweaver keeping all his cards intact but doing the "At the end of the Villain turn, if 3 Cultist are in play, destroy them and reveal cards until a Relic card is revealed and put it into play". That besides putting all Zombies in the trash at setup and adding to GW "When a Pin card enters play, play the top card of the Villain deck". The game was of little evidence because Argent had Dissonance in his opening hand and 2 of the 3 first cards played where Relics so the game was pretty straight forward. But besides that, the Cutlist -> Relic thing seems to make GW closer to his intended beahviour. Cutlist bring Relics, so you kill them but Zombies stall the game which gives more time to get the Relics back. You want to fill the discard with Zombies so Vast Following has less chances of putting out more Cultists / Relics. 

I think that  6-H Cultist in play for the Relic should work, 1 of 3 Cultist should be super easy to kill in 5 Heros games (I do 3 Heroes games). Oh, and also check at the end of the Villain turn the "all Relics in discard -> GW dies" thing.

7

I was thinking change the auto-win condition to "if all 3 relics are in the trash, shuffle the trash into the deck and play a card." that way, instead of just nuking him in a few turns with Cedistic Dissonant, you'll have to actually KILL him. Can't do non-melee or projectile damage? Guess you'll have to let him flip then...

8

Can I suggest that while the discussion stays here, someone makes a googledoc for each character and puts all the ideas in one place?

9

I don't think that's much fun tbh McBehrer, I would just either not play him on advance or refrain from choosing several heroes. I think the main issue with GW (from what I have read, I have not played THAT much against his card as written) is that his deck is too slow so you end up killing him directly and ignoring Relics. The Argent thing is more of a corner case I guess. Helping him a bit to have his Relics be more of a threat address that issue. Might be enough or not, I just said that it felt sound. Maybe it was not taken into account because it either never happened or was too much, I just know that it makes sense with his other mechanics.

10

I was thinking change the auto-win condition to "if all 3 relics are in the trash, shuffle the trash into the deck and play a card." that way, instead of just nuking him in a few turns with Cedistic Dissonant, you'll have to actually KILL him. Can't do non-melee or projectile damage? Guess you'll have to let him flip then...

I'll have to try that, wouldn't make him flip more, but it would take the focus off of relics and make you decide whether to bother taking them out, or just focus on Gloomy.

So, how have that worked so far? Read somewhere something didn't worked out as intended?

My initial remake I posted hasn't worked out well with more plays.  The first side is a crap shoot as to when the relics come out, and if you don't have healing it becomes a war of attrition if they are at the bottom of the deck.  I think I will try it with the Cultists to relics rule, that way heroes can draw the relics out of the deck at the cost of leaving Cultists in play, but in this case I'd probably just do three cultists to get a relic.

I still like the second side of the card, but it doesn't have much damage outside of the advanced rule nuke once everything is pulled, which can go rather fast.  On normal it is too easy by far, on advanced it feels less tough than the first side.

The problem is the immune to damage relics force you to flip him, but they also leave 75 damage you have to do along with the 90 for Gloomweaver.  That effectively makes him the highest health villain, and I don't really like that.  It'd be better to lower his health to like 50 for this version, and make the advanced text just part of the card text minus the damage, and then the advanced could be when a cultist is destroyed Gloomy hits heroes for the number of cultists in the trash.  I'll try to test that soon.

11

Last night had another game with GW where it clicked me what was wrong with him. This is the setup I have been using to play Gloomweaver. Trying to change his style the least as possible while maintaining the theme the most. All of these are to be added to GW Nightmare-thing side, replacing when needed.

Gloomweaver
SETUP
Search the Villain deck for all Zombies and put them in the trash, put H Zombies into play.

Gameplay
- Whenever a Pin card is played, play the top card of the Villain deck
- At the start of the Villain turn, if 3 or more Cultist are in play, destroy them and search the Villain trash or deck for a Relic card is. Put it into play.

 

This version mostly works. Mostly because in design GW is a bit of black/white. He either does not flip and is easy (although I almost lost against this version without flipping, set-up Zero won it through) or he flips with all his Relics out and would be too hard in comparison. The solution for that is making a version where he always flips (phanta's approach) which has the downside of making his games more predictable. The other is making his regular side harder or Relics faster which still keeps the extremes of too easy/too hard. The ideal situation is one where he might flip or not, but if he does he would get harder but not crazy impossible. Thing is, the Relics have such powerful abilities that you always want to kill them anyway when they pop. If not you are either taking tons of damage or discarding cards or the Villains are healing over and over. So once assumed that the Relics are the game's goal in this case (since in this version they do come out) there are different options to make them interesting. One is making them harder to kill. Another is having the Villain make a sacrifice to get/keep the Relics in play, like say, deal GW 1 damage at the end of turn per Relic in play.  Since I couldn't think of a good sacrifice mechanic (which was also thematic) I went with a way to make them harder to kill (but not too much) which was also thematic:

- Once per turn, the first time a Relic would be dealt damage redirect that damage to the non-Relic Villain target with the lowest HP.

Note that this will redirect damage to GW if he is the only one left which makes his healing all more important when flipping. The thematic idea is that Cultist/Zombies and even GW himself are protecting the Relics so as to make the summon possible. So you can't just ignore all the Zombies and hit Pouch of Bones, gotta deal with the Cult to hit them where it hurts. This should make GW flip chances higher, but it should also leave most Relics low on HP when/if he does, so taking them out and then going for GW should be fine.

I'll be testing this as soon as I can, taking recommendations on which Heroes to pick! So far I found that any strong-late game Hero does great while others lacking reliably healing or damage reduction can die fast.

 

12

- Once per turn, the first time a Relic would be dealt damage redirect that damage to the non-Relic Villain target with the lowest HP.

I like this, I'll have to try it.

 

13

I tried my own thing against Gloomweaver.  It was very simple but it worked pretty well.

 

Setup:  As normal,   then flip Gloomweaver to his Demon God Incarnate side.   

 

 

14

Not one for Subtelty I guess.

Great move though.

15

Played 3 games against GW, 2 with that last rule ('Once per turn, the first time a Relic would be dealt damage redirect that damage to the non-Relic Villain target with the lowest HP') and the last with a modification. Having it be "once per turn" is as good as making indestructuable if your heroes don't deal damage more than once per turn, more the moment Pouch of Bones comes out. OTOH, tried it being "Once per round" and it worked just fine. Made it harder to kill them, zombies an annoyance and cultist a constant threat. Couldn't finish the game due to time, but was reaching the end of GW deck with 2 Relics at the bottom and one just brought back by Vast Following.

Doing some quick search read that original GW had the 3 Cultist -> Relic plus "Heroes with a Pin on them can only attack that Pin" but they had less health. I tried the pins doing that and found it just frustrating, but with less health (say, 6) could be interesting (and thematic). Problem is when you have 3 Pins on a low damage hero...

16

The Ambuscade fixes suggested were interesting.  I particularly like the idea of the game ending when one hero is incapped, but that's a major enough change that I think it deserves at least to be the entirety of the fix, and maybe even set aside for a completely different villain (Invisible Stalker Amby might be too good at it since he attacks the lowest HP hero…the damage is based on H, so in a 5-player game he might get insane fast, and we don't have any dedicated heal-others characters.)  Making each of his traps play the top villain card is a simpler fix which keeps him functioning just about the same

(Personally, it bothers me just that you can attack the Cloaking Device.  If he's invisible and you can't hurt him, how are you hurting a piece of tech he's wearing?  Or for that matter, his Hand Cannon and Reactive Plating?)

On another topic, have you guys considered monkeying with Spite at all?  I didn't get the impression he was especially difficult to beat.  It's possible I was just lucky or had picked the right heroes to clean his clock, but he seemed like he spends a lot of his time putting out Victims that the heroes can stop him from killing, or just let him kill and not even bother trying to hurt him, so the healing is wasted.  Then they build up for a few turns until they can unleash holy hell on him before he gets the fifth Drug out.  One of his Drugs even stops the Environment from interfering; I was intentionally fighting him in Rook City, one of the nastiest Environments there is, and he completely neutered it.

Personally (again), it bugs me that you even CAN attack Gloomweaver before he flips.  The way I read the concept of the card and backstory, Gloomweaver is off in another dimension, communicating with his cultists through dreams and mad visions, and he can't enter our reality at all unless they bring together the Relics and perform the ritual to summon him (at which point we're f***ed).  Thusly, the ability to directly attack him entirely misses the point.  It's annoying having to wait for all three Relics to come out, though; perhaps in addition to making his A-side invincible and maybe removing the auto-win for killing his Relics (you should probably also have to get rid of all the Cultists and Zombies, Omnitron style), you might also need to add an ability like "if three or more Cultists are in play, search the deck for a Relic and put it into play".

17

well, for lack of aditional mechanics dealing damage is used for different things, like baiting him out of his hiding. That's why you are "damaging/getting rid of" his cloak and you can't hurt him. Similar to his guns, the damage represents that. Similar to Spite too and his victims (and Miss Information), it's the heroes doing something other than just punching things but not being able to do other stuff if they want to get rid of it.

I have kinda given up on Spite, great theme but... uhm... ¿hard? mechanics. Tried making him flip when H drugs where out, but still playing cards wasn't good enough. If your team can take his Monster side with him on full health... well there's no contest. Stuff to try is adding damage or healing to his Monster side or w/e. You just can game his mechanics too much given his final form, but it's so thematic that fiddling with it feels wrong.
The difference with other easy Villains is that at least he has beat me the first time I played him. Same thing for Advanced Blade and Omnitron.

 

The thing with Ambuscade is that even with his advanced -1 he just dies too fast. With no ongoing/equip destruction once you have a bee line to hit him you kill him in 2 turns. I also played him the other day (besides GW) and felt about adding Charged Attacks to Cloaking device to his starting set up, makes sense thematically. Even making Charged Attacks indestructible. Spiff has an interesting version I have been thinking of trying too.

On GW, it pretty much looks he is in the Realm of Discord so if you are fighting in that environment it makes sense that you have access to him. Reconciling that with this Relics in this Realm is another thing. Making him indestructible makes sense, so he either gets summoned or you destroy his Relics.

18

I did some plays against Gloomweaver Saturday and Sunday while watching football.  To me, his biggest issue is that he doesn't put any pressure on you hardly at all.  He reminds me of normal Baron Blade in that he has a few things that are dangerous, but he doesn't stop your setup at all.  You have almost as long as you want to setup.  He has very few "destroy all ongoings/equipments" (maybe none at all other than some choices heroes have at start of villain turn), so once heroes setup, they are good.

I think his biggest combo against me in all of my plays is in Megapolis with one of the +1 damage environment cards out.  On villain turn, he Vast Following (I think that's the name), which grabbed the relic that powers up zombies and the the Chosen Disciple and put them back into play, which then grabs a zombie from trash and puts it into play, and then played a disciple that did H-2 of fire and H-2 of cold to all non-heroes).  Because of the +1 damage, my heroes actually took some damage.  But then on my turns, my heroes easily destroyed the cultists and zombies and everything else was smooth sailiing.

Villains usually win in 2 ways.  Heavy pressure and wins via damage, or prevents heroes from setting up, and then overwhelms heroes due to that fact.  Iron Legacy and Chairman usually wins via heavy pressure, where heroes can't keep up.  Citizen Dawn tends to win by trading back and forth with heroes, and then exploding all ongoings and equipment.  Omnitron (both versions) tend to do this as well.  A few villains win because they outlast you.  When I play against Akash'buta, I've lost just because she has SO MUCH HP that at some point, everything turns against you.  Like environments comboing with her stuff.

I feel Gloomweaver tends to try and outlast the heroes.  He doesn't really disrupt that often.  He forces some discard, but lots of it is optional (discard or take damage).  He doesn't have an ongoing where if heroes discard, he damages the heroes (that would be really sweet for him).  He has pins that deal damage, cultists that deal damage, and relics that disrupts, but none that swings crushes the heroes in one play.  The only card I really fear is Vast Follwing, because it brings back relics and cultists for a potential haymaker of a villan turn.

I've never had him flip on me before, but it still doesn't seem that terrible for heroes.  I did give up against him once when I destroyed 2 relics, and he drew out his deck while the 3rd relic was in play and reshuffled.  It took me a turn to realize I can't beat him via relics since the other 2 got shuffled back in.

Changes I would make with Gloomweave is either more pressure, or more disruption.  I think more disruption works for GW's theme better, more specifically, discarding (your hand is your mind and your options).  GW's villain card should have something like "when a hero discards a card, GW deals H-2 irreducible to that hero".  Since I haven't seen him flip before, I can't say how powerful he is when he does flip.  I haven't tried advanced yet, but I will soon.  (I find GW very boring to play against, so I start auto-piloting when I play against him).

19

I've really liked my current Gloomy remake, the key aspect is the relics are indestructible, and on his first side you really have to balance getting set up with pulling relics quick so you can destroy them.

His relics are so powerful, they really give him a nice difficulty if they can stay out, but normally that rarely happens.

We are playing against him right now ina  forum game, I'll post the rules here if it goes well.

 

I was hoping more people would post full alternate villain cards here, I love facing old fiends in new ways.

20

i'll check how the game goes. What I don't like about it is that theme wise having the heroes push forward the summoning doesn't make much sense (I know you established it's inevitable it'll happen). Having the fight be about him not getting into reality makes much more sense, Cthulhu-wise. Maybe the 'Once per turn' redirection ends up achieving something similar to being indestructible. In any case you need heroes that are good at hitting several targets at the same time. Making only GW indestructible seems sound, since then you have to kill him through Relics in discard if he doesn't flip.

Read that one of the reasons GW had a nerf was due to lack of space, which made me wonder. The Dreamer has a much smaller font (so I guess more text) than GW...