I am very new to the SotM scene, picked up not only almost all the physical card sets (still trying to get my hands on Shattered Timelines, grrr!), but also have been spending a lot of time in the Sentinels Digital game.
I'm trying to put together a fun and powerful combo of heroes. Let me state right up front that this is the very beginning for me, I have NOT experienced most villains or environments yet, been mostly playing with Baron Blade and Insula Primalis/Megalopolis/Ruins of Atlantis.
I've been starting to rotate through different heroes to get a feel for each deck, both in isolation and in combination with each other. For a while I was trying Tachyon, Legacy, Ra, Wraith, and Argent Adept(AA). Then I found out about variants and swapped to Team Leader Tachyon(TLT) and World's Greatest Legacy(WGL). Hearing about Dark Visionary's(DV) powers (and cards) has me subbing Ra out and DV in, which between Wraith and DV gave me TONS of control, but had a small damage output hit (naturally). Then I wondered: can I swap out Wraith entirely, leaving Visionary to do all the control solo, and put Ra back in for a lot more damage? I'm still testing that, but initial results are good.
My current quintuple is this (and in this order):
- TLT: Team Leader Tachyon (power: every player draws one card)
- WGL: World's Greatest Legacy (power: choose another hero, they get +1hp and can use a power)
- DV: Dark Visionary (power: choose any deck [even villain or environment], look at top 2 cards, put one on top of deck and one on bottom)
- Ra (power: deals 1 target 2 fire damage)
- AA: Argent Adept (power: activate a perform text)
There's just so much win in this team to me:
Massive Card Acquisition: TLT’s power means that whenever her turn comes around, every player draws a card. WGL’s power usually means tapping TLT so everyone can draw a card. And AA’s Inspiring Supertonic (one player may use a power now) means that, quite possibly TLT is *again* letting all the players draw – that’s 3 draws for everyone each turn! But we’re not done yet, TLT’s Fleet of Foot and WGL’s Bolster Allies will have all players draw cards TOO. (And because of all the card drawing, getting those cards is not hard.) Of course, many of the heroes have their own *individual* way to suck cards into their hands, most famously TLT again, with Pushing the Limits, Quick Insight, even Nimble Strike (and as I show below, even a +1 attack can be built really high with WGL and Ra on the job.) Even AA has Arcane Cadence and Instrumental Conjuration to search for what HE needs for his own non-trivial setup. Finally, even though DV’s power is mostly focused on controlling the villain and environment decks, it can be used in a pinch to rotate any hero’s deck that is getting really bad draws.
Shutting down the villain and the environment: OK, this part may be utterly, utterly wrong, since I’ve only been playing with one villain and three locations, but there *are* lots of great options to controlling what the villain and environment decks do, and especially being aware in both cases what card is coming next so you can prepare for it. Dark Visionary is the heavy hitter here, with Precognition and Prophetic Vision giving her the ability to look at the top three cards and place two on the bottom of the villain and environment deck respectively. If she only has one of those two cards in her hand, no problem, she can use her power to handle the other enemy deck. Controlling the villain deck is nice to prevent damage – with Baron Blade I keep giving him stuff like Mobile Platforms, Backlash, HP Boosts – whatever that doesn’t do damage on the villain turn that I can remove later. However, controlling the environment deck is even better – it seems that many environment decks have a *few* cards that are useful to heroes – Obsidian Field from Insula Primalis with its +1 to all damage, for example. Getting the hero-helpful environment cards out while skipping most of the hero-harmful ones really puts the villain in a bind.
Of course, controlling the villain and environment decks aren’t the only way we shut down the villain, Legacy has a few cards that prevent or redirect damage, or simply make the villain skip a turn, and Tachyon has Hypersonic Assault as well. Both DV and Tachyon also have cards to remove ongoing and environment cards when needed. And here’s the beauty part, Argent Adept’s tricks means that Legacy, Tachyon, and DV don’t have to use those options on *their own* turns. Instead, AA can call upon them as needed, reactively at the end of all the hero’s turns, using AA’s Best Combo™.
Argent Adept’s Best Combo: Which brings us to what I think is the most powerful use of AA – non-trivial to set up, but do-able given all the tools this team (and AA) has at their disposal. Four cards: Alacritous Subdominant (hereafter referred to as Subdom), Inspiring Supertonic (Superton), Inventive Preparation (I-Prep), and Telamon’s Lyra (Lyra). The use is this: use the Lyra power, which lets you activate the Perform of a Harmony card (Subdom or Superton) and the Accompany of a Rhythm card (I-Prep). This mean that by activating Lyra (with those four cards in play) you get to:
- Harmony Perform: Either activate Subdom to let any player (including AA) play any card now or activate Superton to let any player use a power now, then
- Rhythm Accompany: activate I-Prep which lets any player *except* AA play a card.
So for AA’s power, he can let two players each play cards (one even including himself), or he can let one player use a power and another (non-AA) play a card. Putting AA at the end of the hero line means that he gets to react to everything else – to what DV sees in either enemy deck, or to cards draws, or anything, it’s so darn flexible! You could even have AA trigger Tachyon using Hypersonic Assault right before the hero’s turns are done.
By the way, once AA is up and running, whenever AA wants to let another hero, say Tachyon, use a power, instead he has Legacy(WGL) use Legacy’s power to *then* have Tachyon go – that way Tachyon gets +1 HP by “laundering” it through WGL.
Even better, on Legacy’s turn when he wants to use his power to let Tachyon use hers, he instead sends it up to AA who gains +1hp, but more importantly can tap the Lyra to let Tachyon use her power and still permit another hero to play a card. Therefore each Legacy turn means via AA that either another 2 cards are being played, or a power and a card are being played – by whomever needs it most!
Here’s another fun combo: Let’s say Legacy has the Legacy Ring (Legacy can use an extra power) and Motivational Charge (does 2 damage and heals everyone for 1hp) in his hand, and nothing out except his character card. He can play the Ring, use his character power to trigger AA’s Lyra, AA can let Tachyon have everyone draw cards AND let Legacy play the Charge, and when it gets back to Legacy he still has the extra power use and now has a card to use it with! AA’s best combo is full of tricksy stuff like that!
Damage, damage, damage: It seems this team can also churn out a lot of damage. Ra is the main source, but Tachyon more than holds her own too, with AA and Legacy having some power in this area too. Let’s look at the damage buffing: Legacy’s Inspiring Presence (+1), Ra’s Imbued Fire (+1), and for Ra only, his Staff (+1). On top of that, a few environment card boost damage, such as Megalopolis’ Rooftop Combat or Cramped Quarters Combat. I’ve even had all 3 Obsidian Fields out, for +3 damage to every attack. And when you control the villain and environment decks, they don’t get to attack much. So you could easily be looking at +3 to +5/6 to each attack, which makes those piddly +1 damage attacks pretty strong. On top of that we have Ra himself, who can in one turn play Flame Spike (1 damage + use an extra power), Blazing Tornado (3 damage) and Pyre (2 damage). If there are +4 in boosts out there (the Staff, Legacy’s Inspiring Pres, Ra’s Imbue and one Obsidian Field), that’s 18 in damage total! (5/7/6).
And Tachyon can do a lot of damage too via her piddly attacks boosted by +3 or +4 sure, but mostly via Lightspeed Barrage, which does X damage where X is how bursts you have in your discards. I often get 8-14 damage from a single play of this card, between the discard burst count and the damage boosts. (And remember, that play doesn’t have to be on *her* turn thanks to Legacy and AA!) Even if she has played all her Barrages, you just have AA use a Vernal Sonata to not only heal everyone, but let each hero pull their favorite card (like the Barrage) from the discard pile and put it on their deck, ready to be drawn. The interactions get quite complex, but rewarding.
And since AA can have *any* hero use cards or powers, AA can call upon either Ra or Tachyon to bring the hurt. Likewise for Legacy, who can send it up to AA, who can then do the best combo. With all this power shuffling around, it’s not hard under the right conditions to come up with 25-40 points of damage or more in a single round of hero turns. In fact, with Baron Blade I usually make sure to finish one round with him only having a few hit points left, then when the next round begins, Tachyon takes him to zero and flips him, then she and the other heroes pile on the damage, easily overwhelming his measly 30 HP.
I’m still pretty new to Dark Visionary and still trying to master her strategies, one thing I haven’t been doing is trying to use Wrest the Mind to use enemy targets to attack each other, I’m looking forward to playing around with that.
Healing: We even have decent healing options with these five too: Legacy has a few ways, not only can several Legacy cards prevent damage, but his Inspirational Presence heals everyone, as does his WGL power, and his Motivational Charge does as well. AA’s Vernal Sonata brings healing, and AA also has Rhapsody of Vigor, which doesn’t synergize with his “best combo”™, but can be activated via his Flare or even via the Drum (that way after he heals the team he can activate I-Prep, permitting another player to play a card).
Of course, with pretty tight control over the enemy decks, we won’t be facing too much incoming damage. In fact, we’ll probably be damaging ourselves a fair bit, giving that when we play cards that incur damage, they still get that player damage boost, sadly. But they are usually worth it – and if not we play something else.
Conclusion: So that’s what I have been using and the overall strategies I have been trying to focus on. I’m curious what everybody thinks, and especially if a) there are strategies and synergies with these five that I’m not taking advantage of that I should, or b) if there is any consensus that some of hero should be swapped in and one of these five swapped out.
Thanks for letting me ramble, and I look forward to your thoughts.