I just got the Enhanced Core, Rock City and Infernal Relics game components for Christmas. I sat down with my wife and played a round and lost miserable. Why? I missed a part of the rules in that if there are two players there still needs to be at least three heroes. So, we played again and this time around, we added my son to bring us up to three heroes (Legacy, Fanatic and Absolute Zero) all against one villain (Baron Blade). We selected Baron Blade because his difficulty is only a one. However, I have to say that we barely managed a win. In the end my wife was incapacitated (Fanatic), my son was two points away from being incapacitated (Legacy) and I was actually doing well on HP but not doing much for damage. Anyway, it made me think that perhaps we were doing something wrong as the Villain and Environment decks seemed to be really kicking our butts. I realize that without a blow by blow or some kind of break down of how we played it would be hard to pinpoint what/if anything we did wrong.
So my question is what are some rookie mistakes that we might be doing when we play this game that we can avoid?
Sounds like you're doing typical first time games. My first advice is to read the card completely (I still misread and misuse cards occasionally).
The team you ran, Legacy, AZ, and Fanatic is a...tougher team to run with as well. Typically, Finest Legacy can be a burden on 3 person teams. AZ needs time to build up (he's awesome, by the way) and loathes the Baron Blade time limit and equipment destruction. Pairing Legacy with Fanatic was a great choice because Blade's damage reduction really ruins her day.
Don't underestimate the power of Villain and Environment deck control. Wraith and Visionary do this the best, try a game with them.
Also, Baron Blade is "easy"... but not when you are playing your first games ! Once you've gained some experience with the game, he becomes one of the easier villain to fight, but at first he can be overwhelming.
Well you may have been bruised and battered yet you still won! There are a lot of interesting card combinations not only in individual decks but across characters, many of which will become apparent the more you play, and making these work in your favour will improve your success rate. Even so, the game is nicely balanced in that victory is not always guaranteed so you can expect a few more stompings from the villains.
I would suggest trying different combinations of characters to see what you can learn about them, then varying the challenge with more complex villains. The combination of Villain and Environment makes a big difference to the difficulty of the challenge so if you are having trouble with a particular villain try changing the environment.
My favourite heroes when I first started playing were Wraith and Ra as they are easy to learn and have plenty of obvious plays that have an immediate impact, although they do not always have the truly impressive moments that other heroes can conjure up. Some of the others are a bit more subtle or take a while to get going, which can be a bit frustrating when you are unfamiliar with them or when facing a villain whose attacks keep putting their efforts back by destroying their cards.
Of course I am duty bound to make the obligatory plug for the online games, which you can find in the Events part of the forums here. Dropping in on a game or two is a great way to see experienced players do wonderful things with the most complex characters like Absolute Zero and Argent Adept.
Also, Baron Blade is "easy"... but not when you are playing your first games !
Yes, yes, yes. I found him not "easy" but as you mentioned this was my first games. I am having fun and that is all that matters. It is just nice to actually pummel the enemy while I am at it. :)
I can say that I don't any more. I sure did when I started. I don't want to say I expected it to be easy but I didn't expect my first game to have the Baron take 3 points of damage while we were destroyed (he kept getting that darn defense platform thing that made him immune to damage). But I will get the hang of it.
Speaking from far too much personal experience. Even as a player who has played SotM a lot, my biggest mistake is "Oh, I'm sure the rest of that text isn't important."
While leads to...
"When playing against Spite, I'm sure the Safe House gets shuffled into the deck at the beginning of the game."
That is a true story. But it was a while ago! Like, right after Rook City came out!
Hehe...for the first few games against Plague Rat, I kept forgetting to put his Plague Locus into play at the start of the game. Then I got into the habit of putting it at the top of the deck along with his character cards, like I do with every other villain who starts with something in play (such as Baron Blade or the Matriarch), so that I don't have to hunt through the deck for it at the start of the next game.
Played again yesterday. This time I got two of my kids to play, my wife and myself. So we had four heroes (Ra, Haka, Wraith and Tempest) against Baron Blade and we won. We did a very effective job of putting down the villian. In fact, my one daughter (who was playing for the first time) said it was easy. EASY?! I told her then she should have been helping the other day when we got our butts kicked. LOL!! But I think I am getting a better handle on how to at least play through the mechanics.
Sounds like you had a pretty good team for that one - Wraith and Tempest are good all-rounders, able to dish out plenty of damage and do some other stuff as well (such as destroying Ongoing/Environment cards or reducing damage). Ra and Haka are good to just kill everything, something which comes in useful against Blade's first phase when you need to kick his arse before the trash pile gets too big.
If you want a challenge, try someone really difficult, like the Chairman. Or Citizen Dawn when you don't have anyone who can destroy Ongoing cards. Or Plague Rat when you can't heal or redirect damage. Or anyone in Rook City :D.
I just played some online. We fought off Gloomweaver with Expatriot (me), Haka, Argent Adept and Fanatic. We beat Gloomweaver.
Then we played against the Ennead (sp?) with Ra (me), Nightmist (I think), Visonary and Elemental Absolute Zero. We won but lost EAZ. Had a lot of fun learning more about how to play.
Gaining experience and having a lot of fun. Now, I am sorry I missed the Kickstart and some of the cool promo stuff. I hope somehow those cards become available to obtain.
once you get the hang of it you can play harder villians, or start playing on Advanced Mode to increase the difficulty. In addition to what some people have said:
1. Try not to overkill too much. Doing 10 damage to a guy with 3 hp might be impressive, but it wastes a lot of potential. Try to kill enemies and not waste too much of your damage whenever possible.
2. The cards that stop the enemy from playing cards (takedown, mistbound) and stops the enemy from dealing damage (grease gun, ground pound, hypersonic assault, Heroic Interception to an extent) are extremely useful and should be played whenever the situation calls for it if at all possible. Don't forget some heroes can help allies pick cards out of the trash (Reclaim from the Deep, Vernal Sonata), use, abuse, and re-use these cards!
3. Start learning situational tactics. You don't need to kill everything all the time. In fact, often NOT destroying something is better than destroying it. You'll just have to figure this out for yourself, but just to give an example, it's often best to leave some of the Blade Battalions alive and at low hp rather than killing them when facing Baron Blade, that way he will have less cards in his trash.
4. It's often beneficial to have a player with a lot of Environment/Ongoing destruction in their deck go first. That way they can take out environment or ongoing threats so the rest of your team is not hampered by them. Tachyon is a good pick, so is Tempest and so is Fanatic.
