Me and my brother are pretty experienced. We've beaten the Ennead, the Chairman and the Matriarch on Advanced Mode, and so far haven't lost to Citizen Dawn. We remembered Cosmic Omnitron as being pretty easy. It turns out, he's less easy on Advanced Mode in the Ruins of Atlantis. It took us four tries to beat him, and only after we dumped Nightmist, Tempest and Expatriette and replaced them with Haka, Legacy and Tachyon. (Our other person was Fanatic.)
Also notable about the game is that it's the first time I ever played Enduring Intercession, and it totally worked out. It kept Legacy undamaged for one Environment round during which he had played Heroic Interception, during which and then Omnitron blew it up. In fact, I kind of wished that it hadn't been blown up, because Legacy was in a lot of trouble.
Cosmic Omnitron isn't too hard if you have someone who can control his deck and absorb/redirect/immunize some of his damage. So Legacy + Wraith + anyone else can easily take him down. If you actually see all the cards in his deck, the presence of Sedative Flechettes + Technological Singularities + Electro-Pulse Explosives make it difficult to build up heroes before they get killed.
I haven't figured out if it's better to leave him in Cosmic Exterminator mode, and deal with whatever components he currently has for the 16+ rounds it'll take to destroy him while only doing 6 damage a round, or to let him flip to Dropship mode and deal with the double energy blasts. Both options are pretty horrible.
I've tried fighting him with some combination of AZ, Bunker, Fanatic, Ra, Tachyon, and Tempest (basic set heroes only), and he's a beast and a half. Though when I played Legacy + Wraith + Visionary + Fanatic + Tachyon against him in advanced mode, Wraith locked down his deck fairly effectively, Legacy tanked his energy attacks, and Visionary used Wrest the Mind on the EPE to do 44 damage (17 + 13 + 9 + 5, during a Close Quarters Combat and with his Dropship device damage bonus) and it was pretty much a cakewalk.
Yeah, Drone, Drone, Drone, EPE is a common cause of losses when you don't have someone to deal with the EPE.
I never found him hard at all, until I played him without Tachyon, Visionary, Fanatic or Nightmist. Which I think was the fifth or sixth time I played him. Before that I thought original Omnitron and Cosmitron were about as tough.
I find that my "dogs of the basic box" (Tempest, Absolute Zero, Bunker, and Ra) can deal with drones and EPE, but doing 10+ damage in a round to the EPE means they're mostly not hitting Cosmitron hard enough and there's another round to worry about disintegrator rays or a technological singularity or sedative flechettes knocking the team back to their base set up. If they had Visionary on the team to Wrest the EPE or Legacy to absorb the energy blasts (or even Wraith to make sure that nothing nasty showed up while they were dealing with the EPE), they'd be sitting pretty. Without them, it's a struggle.
I wonder if adding Fanatic to the mix would help. She doesn't have deck control or damage redirection, but End of Days might be enough.
Zealous Offense laughs at EPE's, as does Chastise, and yes End of Days too. I've even thrown Retribution on one before. Fanatic is just wicked. Throwing Drones into Omni or each other is also fun.
Legacy + Wraith + anyone else can take ANYTHING down. Legacy makes everyone better, and if Wraith can get out Infrared Eyepiece and protect it, then your losses should strictly be a result of (1) serious mistakes, or (2) playing on top of defiled Indian burial grounds. Controlling the villain's plays every turn should equate to victory in a game about overcoming the villain's plays with your own, no?
What does interest me is the implication that Tempest is an inferior choice against Cosmitron. I've only faced the Cosmic-Powered Exterminator once, but from that experience, don't the potential Drone chains make you need group damage much more badly than you would against normal Omnitron? And Lightning Slashes ain't noting for dropping Components, either. Am I missing something crucial?
Aye, unless you're playing against Omnitron, Cosmitron, La Capitan, Kismet, Spite, Citizen Dawn, The Dreamer, The Ennead, Skinweaver, The Chairman or The Matriarch, or unless the person you're playing destroys your Eyepiece, or unless they take to getting pairs of good cards…
Tempest is helpful for fighting against Cosmitron. Big hits, multi-target damage, healing, card recovery, ongoing destruction - there's always something helpful there. But he doesn't have anything equivalent to Haka's Ground Pound or a Rampage on the turn immediately after Cosmitron Terraformed 4 environmental cards and then chain drew 8 drones and 3 particle rays, nor does he have Legacy's Lead from the Front/Next Evolution or even a Heroic Intervention (that card rather hoses Cosmitron if Legacy is the low HP hero), nor can Tempest do the same kind of late game damage as Tachyon (15 damage with 1 card, yo!).
My experience is that Cosmitron hits hard out of the gate and is constantly knocking the heroes back to square one, so you need someone who can be a game-changer with an at most two card combo. Tempest isn't quite there.
I do acknowledge that my A-team is Haka, Legacy, Tachyon, Visionary, and Wraith, who are all top-tier heroes with lots of options and ability to control the environment and villain decks, while my B-team is Absolute Zero, Bunker, Fanatic, Ra, and Tempest, who are more at the mercy of the other decks. The A-team can beat Cosmitron, but it tends to be close; the B-team loses, sometimes with grace, sometimes without. I could swap Haka and Tachyon for Tempest and Ra and I think the two teams would play about the same. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and all that.
In fairness to Tempest, Into the Stratosphere is potentially very good against Cosmitron. But in general I find him inconsistent. His deck has so much stuff in it that I often think that whatever effect you're looking for is the effect you're not going to draw.
Legacy, TLT, Fanatic, Tempest, Adept is insane. Extra draws, extra plays, Legacy gets set up fast and Fanatic and Tempest get to go crazy. L. Hurricane/D. Focus with TLT and Legacy? Insane. Plus Fanatic can Embolden Tempest. Which is godly, even if the damage is boosted.
TLT and heroes who use cards are ridiculously sick together. On the rare occasions when my group uses her at all, we play her as having 22 HP (why they gave an older Tachyon with a better power more health, I may never know), and it's still a cakewalk unless Iron Legacy is threatening death on turn 2.
And I have had the exact opposite experience from Katsue regarding Tempest. If you are fighting in a game with multiple hostile targets (more Villains and Environments than not, therefore a strong majority of games), you will have a use for multi-target damage. Ongoing and Environment destruction come up rarely, so you cannot count on it, but "rarely" is still far ahead of most damage-based Heroes like Ra and Bunker, and Ball Lightning can just be played as Damage if you to, as well. And when only Heroes specifically focused on those things get armor, discard retrieval, healing, or card drawing as powerful as what Tempest gets as an afterthought, it's pretty tough to complain that you'll likely only see 1-2 of those things per game.
Visionary and The Argent Adept often leave me wishing I could draw the specific card to deal with this situation, but I always feel life Tempest (1) has answers, and (2) has answers which I can use without having to agonize over target priority.
The point of the "dogs of the basic set" team is that they don't have any deck control, damage reflection, or many immunities. I play them to see what a new villain and environment deck is supposed to do when it's not being shut down. Sometimes they win, mostly they lose, but I see more of the villain deck.
Still, it's funny to watch Akash'bhuta get buried under a Volcano eruption so that 10 of her limbs are destroyed and she's driven down to 1 HP just in time for a velociraptor pack come out and finish her off, while the heroes are all protected by Ra's Flesh of the Sun God. Doesn't happen often, but it's hilarious when it does. Legacy, Wraith, and Visionary are plenty powerful, but they can't quite achieve that kind of comedy gold.
Had a cool game the other day (against the Ennead) in which I played the Scholar and the other two characters were TLT and Young Legacy (play order was TLT, Scholar, Young Legacy). First turn I decided to Hold Fast, since I'd drawn that on TLT's turn I think (via either Fleet of Foot or her power, I forget) and decided I might as well get an early start in amassing a big hand for later on when I went all elemental and started power-healing myself to nuke the bad guys.
The following round, however, I had a copy of DDA in my hand, so I played it. By the round after that, I'd got hold of a second copy of DDA (can't remember whether it came out during my Draw phase or via TLT), so used it to get the first one out of my trash and onto my deck, where of course it came out in my Draw phase. That's all I did for the rest of the game (whilst continuing to enlarge my hand via TLT), having fun seeing what cards the others could put into play from the tops of their decks. I kept this chain going until the final round, in which I Turned Loose on Nephthys, finishing her off and leaving the lone survivor, Tefnut (I think) for Young Legacy to finish off. Fun times!
Stuff like this is why I think the game is so neat - there are often odd and fairly one-off strategies that come up for various heroes due to group synergies or just odd card draws. I had a game with Scholar the other day and just never got around to playing an Elemental Form card; played the various support cards and attack cards since I had them in abundance and didn't feel the need to start tanking up just yet.
I think it was the BoardGameGeek forum that had a thread about summarizing the various heroes up in four cards. I did not particularly care for it (and posted to that effect) since the heroes often have more flexibility than that and part of the art of the game was working out how to play the hero effectively when their primary "defining" cards were not coming up.
Mine is Wrathful Gaze. I long for the day when that will be my superstar card. Should try him against Apostate sometime, without Legacy or Fixer around.
Oooh - that's actually really cool. I think I should use such a team myself - I loved taking on Kismet with a team that lacked easy answers, I bet it could spice up a lot of other matches, too.
