Having recently discovered this game due to a friend of mine bringing it over when we get together to play board games I just had to get my own copy and I'm loving it to death. That being said I have yet to lose to a villain, mostly due to some very cheap shennanigans on the part of incapacitated heroes.
For example my friends and I decided to take on Iron Legacy expecting a tough fight or to get wrecked at the worst. Instead we were basically immortal. Once Bunker went down we just used his incapacitated ability to cycle Mr Fixer's Grease Gun card into his hand every time it went into the trash. We were completely from all damage, every single turn. Bunker was way more useful dead then alive. In fact as soon as an incredibly powerful card is drawn Bunker should immediately try and get himself killed. It's true that he could have never drawn the card, but The Scholar has a very similar one and realy once the card is drawn and used once Iron Legacy lost the fight, we couldnt be hurt by the environment or him at all. We didnt need to do anything but just sit back and wait for our better cards to come while we ignored everything every turn
By far the most rdiculous example though is in a recent fight against The Chairman. his minions had us on the ropes, we were completely unprepared having never fought him before. we all wnet down at about the same time aside from Mr Fixer. Then we noticed something, Tempest's ability made everyone immune to one type of damage for an entire round and aside from about 3 entire cards in The Chairman's deck he can only deal melee damage. So 1 hp fixer just beat the Chairman down from about full health to dead while being completely immune to anything The Chairman could do. Bunker was there so once again we could have infinitely cycled the "completely invincible for a turn" card but we didnt even need to.
I guess the point I'm getting at is that most heroes have a draw a card and play a card power along with one insanely powerful ability. Has anyone had similar experiences? Im considering house ruling something along the lines of only being able to use each incapacitated ability once
Team Leader Tachyon (Freedom 6 promo card) lets you shuffle a trash into a deck.
That lets you flip Akash'bhuta or The Matriarch at will.
There are some that really wreck certain games.
We have used a rule that you have to use each incap once before you can reuse one, so the really sick ones get limited to once every three rounds. It does pretty well.
Tempest, Bunker Engine of War, and Ra Incap with Wraith at 1 hp is how my gf and I beat Iron Legacy once. Because IL has only a few non melee damage and tempest has immune to one damage type, bunker destroys ongoing, and Ra destroys environment cards So yes. Incaps can be overly breaking of a game, but at that point you're already got at least one incapacitated hero, you're probably on the ropes.
yeah I am a aware of that. I was just mentioning it as a "why use these other two when I can make everyone immune to a certain type of damage for a turn" kind of way
An incapacitated hero doesn't play a card or use a power, so they are intentionally given extremely strong incap abilities, because that's all they're good for. It's true that some of them are VERY potent, but this just acts as a balancing factor in the game. If you haven't lost yet, just give it time. Even the most potent incap abilities are only sometimes the correct solution for the problem at hand.
If you think the villains are too easy, try fighting the Chairman (arguably even harder than Iron Legacy), the Advanced Ennead (about triple as hard as the non-Advanced version, and a heck of a lot of fun), The Dreamer with five heroes, or Advanced Citizen Dawn with three. Make sure that you're selecting heroes at least semi-randomly, rather than picking ones you know will be strong in the match (whether alive or dead). Among the less-strong heroes are Expatriette, Bunker, Haka and situationally Unity or Absolute Zero (those last two are "break the game in half" heroes if played to greatest effect, but can be a bit fragile; the others, except perhaps Haka, are simply a bit on the weak side); if too many of your games feature Legacy, Wraith, Nightmist, Scholar, or Omnitron-X (let alone several of these), who are the likeliest candidates for "tier 1" heroes, then you're probably performing a bit above average in general, though any hero is particularly strong if played against a villain whose weaknesses match what they can do. (Dead Tempest, for instance, is extremely strong against Iron Legacy in particular, since almost all of Tempest's damage is the same type...against Miss Information or Grand Warlord Voss, both of whom have two damage types on their own card and more on their minions, he's much less efficient.)
With experience, you'll see that the balance point is pretty close to where it ought to be. Sometimes you get utterly destroyed by a seemingly weak villain, sometimes you faceroll the tough guys. I doubt very much you'll stay undefeated for more than a dozen or so games.
Pretty much everything he said there is absolutely true. I recommend La Capitan -- she can really wreck your day, given the chance -- and the Vengeful 5, both on advanced. THAT will be a challenge for you.
Why the hell did I not think of Cappy when I was trying to think of an incredibly hard villain who wasn't officially a 4? I settled for Citizen Dawn, but Cappy is definitely harder, especially with only 3 heroes. (Try sinking the ship even WITH Legacy's help when you have only two teammates.)
Considering that I'm currently fighting her on this very forum, my failure to think of her in this context is deeply shameful.
To be fair La Capitain is the closest I've probably ever come to losing. We had five heroes and 3 of the people we played with were new to the game. We thought as difficulty 2 she would be a slight step up. Holy crap were we wrong. She just about steam rolled us with her crew and full healed at one point thanks to some insane combos but a combination of fanatic and Tachyon burst literally dropped over half of her HP in a single round. 15 damage from Tachyon twice plus Fanatic basically killing herself to do about 20 more damage. Still, La Capitan's crew might just be the strongest minions in the game. Her crew puts Voss' army to shame XD
also yeah we did fight The Chairman and again almost got steam rolled but once Tempest went down he just made Mister Fixer immune to melee damage and The Chariman could not hurt him, so he just pummeled him for six turns while at 1 hp. It was kind of sad really XD only like 3 cards in The Chairman's deck are non melee damage.
I had a terrible game against Matriarch last night. 4 heros all bit the dust on turn 3. Try her on advanced. Invincible Coherts and tons of ongoing destruction. Maybe I am missing the trick to her, but I almost never have an easy Matty game. Its always a brutal loss or a win by the skin of my teeth kinda thing.
The Dreamer in the Realm of Discord. Claustrophobic Delusions at the wrong time is really painful. Had a game a week ago that was cake walk in-the-bag until Claustrophobic hit the table followed by two Violent Nightmares (Dreamer was at 3 HP). That was pretty much a game-over when we couldnt get another distortion the next round (portal fiend).
I think most of the point of the original thread wasn't about villain difficulty so mach as Incaps being too powerful. I don't really know because the way my group plays we really try to keep everyone up (we just think its more fun for all players). If one person goes down, sometimes we just stop unless we are only a turn or two away from victory.
I do know that certain incaps really are ridiculous though. Any villain with one main damage type is a joke with incap Tempest.
Difficulty 2 for La Capitan is almost certainly a misprint; it's never been confirmed but anyone who has played her and Kismet can tell that the two ought to be switched. (Not that Kismet can't be devastating with the potential for huge bonuses to damage on both sides, but still, she has enough dead plays and little enough hero scaling that she compares very well to Plague Rat or Akash'bhuta. A difficulty-3 villain, excepting the also-mismeasured Gloomweaver, should be reliably dangerous, not just occasionally so.)
True but those cards are The Contract and Hired Gun, so you will almost certainly see them.
Matty is one of the easier "hard" villains, though; she's possible to "solve" without too much trouble. 2 points of DR will make you invincible against her unless she has the damage-boosting Cohort in play. If Scholar rocks double Flesh to Iron with Alchemical Redirection and the other heroes just play fodder to keep those in play (the Alchemical needs to keep getting replayed, but Scholar himself has recycling tech to help that happen), the Birds can be safely ignored, up until the moment they power a Grace Under Fire or a giant Get Out of the Way with Mortal Form to Energy. Plus of course Tachyon has lots of tech to use against her, and any hero with even one point of DR has a huge advantage. Tempest can set his Subwave to "projectile" and get down Otherworldly Resilience, that makes him immune to all but the cohort-boosted damage, though he has to refrain from Squalling. Overall, she is definitely less hard than Iron Legacy and the Chairman.
Wow, what did he used to do? (Someone once linked me to a spoiler of the original edition, and I foolishly didn't bookmark it…)
Fixer still puts an Equipment from the trash into play. Is this powerful? I don't believe I've ever played an incap turn as Fixer, usually the entire team dies when he's around.