Visionary has the potential to be a tier-1 hero, but I don't think she actualizes that potential as well as Legacy (except maybe in Dark Visionary version, but I consider her "broken" rather than just good). Legacy always has access to Galvanize, which is his most important thing except for Inspiring Presence (which is just a second Galvanize plus healing). Visionary has quite a lot of most-important things, depending on what game you're in, but she's also clogged with several cards that are almost never exactly what you need - Mind Spike comes to mind, along with Mass Levitation (which, even if you're in a lot of danger from the Environment, is very seldom worth more as your one Power for the turn than Enlighten, let alone Foresight or Divergence). Brain Burn would be fine as a singleton, though two copies are annoying; one copy of Mass Levitation would be preferred as well, and frankly I'd take the Mind Spikes out altogether, or maybe fuse Mind Spike and Cerebral Hemorrhage into one card that deals 3 damage to 3 targets, so that Cerebral wouldn't look so much like a strictly-worse Psychic Maelstrom (it's not, given the existence of cards like Sonic Mine and Propulsion System, but it looks like it is until you know the game pretty well). Even TK Cocoon is only a good card in some matches. All told, Visionary is inconsistent enough, even if she hoards all her Enlighten uses herself, that I don't think she counts as being much better than other heroes (all of whom can excel if they get the right cards in the right order, just as is true of her). While Legacy unquestionably does; he doesn't need anything in particular to be worth his H slot in the vast majority of games, he can just stand there and make everyone else awesome, and probably add 10% to game win percentages even if he just plain never plays a card, or plays the top card of his deck every turn without a player actively controlling him (you'd have to have someone choose targets for his damaging one-shots, but for the most part he makes a pretty good robot).
The statistics don't reflect that at all. Sure, he's top of the win percentage list, but he isn't top of the G+ games. I put that down to the fact that Legacy's a very popular choice for beginner games, which are almost always easier villains, skewing his win percentage.
G+ games differ in that the vast majority of games are played with random characters. Legacy doesn't shine so much there, which says a lot.
Dark Visionary? Also not top of the win percentage table, so hardly broken, and we use the hell out of her base power. Unless the heroes who are above her are also broken.
I actually hold Legacy out of most games that aren't really tough.
His weakness is his draw and play are singles, he's got no pull and he has such a wide variety of cards. Apart from that he's still beastly in all but a few games.
I think the stats get skewed a lot by player choice, but even randomizing can't account for everything.
Stats are what stats are, they have value but in the end all they do is regurgitate the information that is input. Personal experience can give valuable insight, but breaking down their deck and really looking at what they do holds the most value to me.
That's what I tried to do in my rating system, but even that involved some personal "feel" of the character.
My B-i-L plays Legacy, but he gets bored playing him smartly, and ends up going berserker Legacy and going for doing damage, and while it is fun it is less effective than another gamer we have who isn't the cleverest, and just likes to play strong easy heroes that help the team win. He's not creative or interesting in play style, but he makes a damn good Legacy.
I can't even imagine Ronway playing Legacy.
Playing the best card from hand every round. If I don't have a best play for a round, I will play a card that will most likely help me later. Then use the power that will be the most beneficial for the round.
That more or less describes my strategy too. Not always the best card, sometimes I figure I should save it for a better moment (no sense using Fling Into Darkness to just deal 3 damage to an 80-HP villain, or for a Legacy-specific example, I might not want to bother playing Inspiring Presence if nobody needs the healing, although sometimes I might), but in general I make the correct play for the here and now, and let the future take care of itself. That's pretty much my entire life philosophy, actually....
Edwin, I think Ronway would always play Inspiring Presence since it is usually one of the best cards in hand, regardless of the healing. +1 damage is a lot more powerful than one heal for the team
That is a unique approach to Legacy.
How would you play someone like Wraith then?
Okay, so we're not quite the same. Good to know; I'd hate to wake up one morning, look in the mirror and find myself resembling a Cursed Acolyte.
EDIT - It occurs to me, as I play this Spite vs. the Sentinels game I've been discussing in other posts, it seems likely that I'd have done better if I'd resigned myself to just building up until Spite flips, as is usually required. But instead, I've fought tooth and nail to hurt him, and while I managed to get him as low as 55 HP, he regained 17 in just the single turn after acquiring his last Drug, and in retrospect I'd have been better off not even trying to fight him until he was about to flip. So in essence, my general philosophy toward the game, that of attacking as fast and hard as possible, is pretty much exactly why I don't like Spite, as he severely punishes you for trying to do this (even in a non-Advanced game; in an Advanced one there's really no point in even trying, which is why I'm not playing Advanced now, but it turns out I might as well have).
Basically, I try to do the same for all heroes. Though some heroes, such as Wraith, I prioritize future more so than the current, depending on the urgency of the current. Such as against Dawn, if I have Infrared Eyepiece and Razor Ordinance in hand, both are great, but Eyepiece is usually better for long run to avoid Devastating Auroras. However if Wraith really needs to do 3 damage to kill one of the nastier Citizens, then I would go with Razor Ordinance.
Oh geez.
5. Citizen Dawn. She just seems so angry. I've never seen her smile. And I love it. She has the determination that goes with being bad for a cause she deems worthy. Villain motivations mean something to me and I never liked the "He's bad just because." I want them to have something they're fighting for.
4. Baron Blade. Both the Vengeance version and his Lunar beam version. His pure insanity is only made scarier by the fact he actually has the means to execute his craziness. It reminds me of a quote from the Captain America movie between Tommy Lee Jones and the german scientist, Arnim Zola.
Dr. Arnim Zola: Only the world itself will satisfy him.
Col. Chester Phillips: Did you realize that's nuts, don't you?
Dr. Arnim Zola: The insanity of the plan is of no consequence.
Col. Chester Phillips: And why is that?
Dr. Arnim Zola: Because he can do it!
3. La Capitan. A time traveling bucaneer with a rag-tag crew of time-warped miscrients ranging from ronins to vikings? Need I say more?
2. The Chairman. An overlord who let's his minions do the dirty work for him. He's basically Earth's version of Voss; sitting idly behind the scenes while his plans are exectured by the scum beneath him. It's cruel and it's raw, yet refined and professional.
1. Iron Legacy. The story, the anger, the power. It's all so dark and intense; I always loved the Superman story lines where the human race realized, "Wait a minute...if this guy ever turned evil, we would all be royally screwed."
Honorable Mention: Apostate. Because sword.
No, I definitely didn't realize that! I read something (the box? boardgamegeek.com review? not sure) that described the game as being for 2-5 players, and while each player playing multiple heroes is pretty intuitive, we've just been playing with one hero each since that's what the rulebook describes.
Well, I'll give this to them – the game still plays really well with just two heroes. I'm sure the balance is off somewhat, but there's some variation in balance between 3, 4, and 5 heroes with each villain, too. I've played 4-5 5-player games and probably a couple dozen games with two heroes, and the two-player games never felt "wrong" compared to the 5-player games. The only thing that ever came up that felt actually broken was one of the ongoing cards in the Tomb of Anubis that required a hero to take H-2 damage to destroy it, which you can't do with only 2 heroes.
Well, with that caveat aside, I'll vote for my most and least favorite of the villains I've played against so far.
Best: Akash'Bhuta. She's not the most difficult villain, but the mix of flavor and mechanics is a grand slam. The interaction between the environment deck and the villain deck feels very appropriate for her, and her having high-hp minions that damage her when they die is both thematic and creates "feel good" moments. It's really satisfying to do big chunks of damage to her killing these elemental manifestations of limbs, and she's got enough hp that she can serve as a punching bag for a good long while.
Worst: Spite. Spite doesn't work for me on a flavor or mechanics level. First off, Spite is just creepy, and while I guess that works for something like a DC Vertigo kind of vibe, it doesn't really fit the feel of the rest of the game. I played him once and honestly quit before finishing because of the ick factor. Mechanically, being unable to do anything to the drugs once they come into play is also pretty unsatisfying. The safe house is a neat mechanical idea, but after Spite flipped the second Forced Entry of the game and killed every victim we'd saved to date, we stopped trying. Spite felt thematically unpleasant and mechanically oppressive, and produced the only genuine bad experience I'd had with SotM.
The Rook City villains tend to be pretty nasty - out of the four, I reckon Spite is actually the easiest, though Lilian can be a pushover if you get the right set-up, and Rat's not too bad either as long as you can outdamage him (he has no means to break your stuff but just pummels away at you with irreducible damage and then gets you to do the same to yourself/each other via Infections/Afflicted Frenzy). The Chairman was the hardest villain until Iron Legacy came along so...yeah.
All in all I think I find the Infernal Relics villains the most fun :).
In my book Chairman is still the hardest villain, Iron Legacy will pummel you faster but go down much easier
Nitpick at DanMarshall: "Ronin" is both a singular and plural word. (Also there's only one of each Crew.)
Yeah, Iron Legs is meaner than the Chairman, but that's actually a positive since it means the game takes less time to conclude (usually). He's more easily "solved" overall, because he has fewer different things going on. Against IL, you know you need ongoing removal, damage mitigation, and ideally some redirection; if you bring all those things, he's manageable. Almost nothing can be done to make the Chairman more manageable; he just wrecks you half the time regardless of what you try to do about it.
Being a chronic advanced player I never rely on damage reduction against Iron Legacy, but I once held him down for a few turns by repeated Offensive Transmutation.
"Mitigation" includes "villain cannot deal damage" just as much as it does "villain deals less damage" or "you take less damage". It can even include healing, though not even the Sentinels get enough healing to stay ahead of Iron Legs for long.
Damage reduction, damage immunity, deck manipulation, deck reshuffle, AoE, etc. Every villain can be made easy with the right team and the right cards.
Yeah, type-based protections (The Next Evolution, that Tempest card you would only ever use versus the Chairman, and the correct Plating) are huge in that match. He's also just after Dawn on the list of "Villains who get wrecked by Brain Burn even though it kills Visionary to do it". And, as with any mook master, area damage rocks his socks off. Plus, no good answers to Hero stuff buildup.
That said, he is strong against a great many strategies and approaches, and I really should face him more - once I do, he could well crack my list.
Damage immunity is pretty much useful against anyone (and almost impossible to gain), and DR is also good against IL unless he's Advanced. Deck manipulation is of very limited use against Chairman, given that his deck is 15 cards and gets depleted by the Operative. AoE might or might not be a good idea depending on what your target priorities are; usually I'd rather blast the Operative as much as possible, and not kill relatively harmless Thugs like the Enforcers or possibly the Thieves, since they'll just make us take retaliation damage. Brain Burn is a nice magic bullet against the Chairman, but I don't think even it will make him easy.
Tell me the "right team and the right cards" to make Chairman a cakewalk, I dare you.
I just told you, look at my post and use that brain of yours.