Gloomweaver houserule poll

Other Games SotM Game Engine
21

In the "Facing against Gloomweaver" thread arenson9 wrote, "Gloomweaver is a difficulty level 2 unless you let him flip, when he becomes difficulty level 4." That's what is supposed to make him a 3. That math works if he flips half the time. That's what I'd like. I'd like to see him flip around 50% of games. Rules 1, 2, and 4 make side A harder. (I'm not complaining about them, though, beacause I think Side A Gloomweaver is a level 1.)

What I want to know from the playtesters is how often rule 3 results in Gloomie flipping. Are there other ways to increase the chances he flips.

22

Rule 3 is quite thematic in the sense that when enough cultists gather, they sacrifice something or someone and bring forth a relic. I think that’s the atmosphere that the Gloomweaver deck will convey with rule 3.

23

Note also in the statistics, Gloomweaver has yet to Flip

 

here are his stats as of today

 

 

Gloomweaver - 9 games, 9 wins
5times advanced, 5 wins
1 time advanced side 1, 1 win
0 Flips
24

Does rule 3 get him to 50% flippage? A guess is fine. My guess is rule 3 gets him to flipping like 20% of the time. He's maybe at 1% without any house rules.

25

Would the proposed rules 3+4 mean, with 4 heroes, Gloomweaver would start with 1 cultist, 3 zombies, and one artifact after the first turn?  If so, I think it makes for a very varied game.  He starts with 4 cultists in play, 3 die immediately, become zombies, and a relic is summoned.

I like it.

As a general question, I want to make sure my understanding of the rules is correct - in the above example, Gloomweaver would get end of turn actions, as would one cultist (the survivor), the zombies, and then the relic (in that order).  Do I understand correctly?

Consider revising proposed rule 3 as follows:

"At end of villain turn, if there are 3 or more cultists in play, destroy the three with of the lowest HP . Reveal cards from the villain deck until a Relic is revealed, put it into play, shuffle the revealed cards."

I've yet to play Gloomweaver (just got IR, and am only beginning to get into it), and am still trying to absorb all the timing issues.

26

I played Gloomy a little while ago, and tried using the 3 cultists to relic rule, and having him flip as soon as two relics are in play.

Much better rate of flipping with those two changes.

We also tried having three cultists summon a relic, but only destroying one cultist.  That really caused him to flip, without the difficulty dip from the rule clearing all those cultists for you. We originally tried this alteration as a thematic change, a human sacrifice ritual instead of a suicide cult ritual, but I liked the way it changed the game.

I played around with having the relic summon when there are 6-(H) cultists, and killing one, since with 5 heroes it is nearly impossible for gloomy to keep cultists alive.  Still not hard to ruin the fight with Omnitron-X or Adept, but other than them it is a pretty decent fight.

27

I also like to start the game with the Zombie Ongoing card in play. The initial zombie attacks are pretty heafty that way and really put a clock on the game. Having a Relic on the bottom of his deck is a pain in the arse since it drags the game out and eventually you will lose that damage battle of attrition.

Edit: I wonder if Gloomweaver will see any changes in the reprint of Infernal Relics? Surely the >G guys know in their hearts that Gloomy is not a lvl3 difficulty villain in his current iteration. Might we see a slight change? A fan can hope.

28

While it is fun to houserule villains and heroes for a little change in the feel of a fight, the only deck in the game that is honestly not very good is Gloomweaver, it would be awesome if they fixed him.

29

It is unfortunate that I 100% agree. Thematically Gloom is far and away my favorite. I love Lovecraftian mythos and stories (Chthullu Wars anyone? So stoked). But I just have never had fun playing Gloomweaver. There is either A) never any real threat or B) the game takes upwards of 20 rounds because there is a relic on the bottom of his deck. It is usually a mixture of both of those aspects. I can recall epic games against every single villain in SotM except this guy, and its not due to a small sample size of games.

30

Most recently I tried playing him with the three relics, the zombie ongoing card and the familiar shuffled under his card.  Then I played one card from his deck and one card from beneath him for the first 5 turns. 

This way he flips some where between the beginning of turn 4 and 6 unless you target a relic as soon as it comes out and make it a priority to kill it as soon as it hits.  If you do focus like that you tend to get some voodoo pin or cultist build up so it can get rough.  Of course if you leave it he flips and things get rough then as well.  It worked out well, but we only tried it once so who knows if it would be consistently a good game.

I do like the cultists summon relics idea, that sounds fun mechanically and thematically.

 

31

I've not ever really had a bad experience playing Gloomweaver.  His deck is swingy, but not in the frustrating ways that The Matriarch, The Chairman, or Spite are (the difficulty of the individual game is highly dictated by how quickly The Matriarch gets her Cohorts out, or which Underboss/Drug cards are revealed in what order, and Prison Break/Darken The Skies/Forced Entry can completely invalidate any of your efforts).

My group has never had him flip, but I think his difficulty isn't that offensive.  You have a Cthuloid monstrocity trapped in another realm who is forced to rely on Zombies and Cultists assembling his infernal Relics (see what I did there?) and a few Voodoo Pins in the face of trained, dedicated, and sometimes supernaturally/technologically gifted superheroes with incredible powers.  The fact that he's kind of a pushover makes some sense to me.

If we want to face Gloomweaver when he's been unleashed, then just set him up on his flipped side.  I definitely think he could use an intense promo character card, but I'm definitely fond of his deck as-is.  Cutting down Cultists and Zombie hordes in a five player game is something that I just can't replicate in any other game in Sentinels.

32

I'm inclined to think all of these are excessive.  I found Gloomy to be a fairly credible threat in all three of my games against him; he's more like a 2 than a 3, but I'm fine with that.  The only thing that bugs me is the ability to attack him directly, instead of waiting for the relics; it makes him feel less like a Call of Cthulhu villain, since you generally can't beat those up directly.

33

I like 3 and 4, with an added special scenario where the relics are indestructable, but when they are reduced to 0 or fewer HP they are no longer targets, and have no game text besides the Relic keyword and the indestrucability clause.

34

If I were to pick one of these to actually try, I'd start with 2 just because it's the simplest.  However it probably doesn't actually address Gloomy's problems, and it certainly doesn't make him feel like a Call of Cthulhu villain, which I think ought to be the objective.

Frankly, I think I'd remove the Voodoo Pins entirely from his deck, replace them with more Cultists or more Zombies, or with a One-Shot besides Vast Following which can help him draw his Relics faster.  But if we're stuck with the deck he has now, I'd say the answer is to...hm, actually just had a neat idea, what about this?  It's more complex than I'd prefer, but still fairly sleek, once reduced to a single iteration of the several versions I'm tossing out.

5.  Delete the alternate win condition from Gloomy's side 1, and change his start-turn trigger to look in both play and in the trash.  This frees up a line on his front side, letting you implement one of ideas 6 or 7, or just add something about voodoo pins if you insist.  Meanwhile, his back side now has the "At start of turn, If he didn't flip this turn, and he has three relics, the heroes lose" text I suggested somewhere earlier, along with a way to gain a relic back from the trash every single turn without fail - thus, if you don't keep breaking them (and this should be easier than killing him directly), he will eventually reach three and win on his turn.

6.  Move Gloomy's side-A advanced text to standard text, and his advanced text becomes "immune to damage" or "whenever he takes damage, he gains that many HP" or somesuch (though really, it'd be tremendously out of flavor for the Smog in Time Cataclysm to make him more killable, it ought to have the opposite effect).

7.  As #6, except the damage immunity is standard text, and he has some completely other advanced effect.  This version simply can't be killed; you're stuck fighting his cult until all three Relics have exited the villain deck, at which point it's "go time".