Preface: This post got a lot longer than I was expecting it to. It started out as a simple question asking for strategy, then turned into a bit of analysis and possible houseruling. I hope it's worth the read.
Iron Legacy is maybe the most flavorful and compelling villain out there. Classic story of a hero turned bad, nearly every card referencing one of Legacy's classic cards, chock full of ongoings just like the original, flavor text that might just make you get a serious case of the feels . . .
But he's kind of broken.
If Iron Legacy was just hard, I could deal with it. What's the fun of a game like Sentinels if you never felt pushed to your absolute limits? My problem isn't just that he's difficult, it's that he's swingy. Basically, this is how every game of mine against him seems to go: Set up cards, draw heroes' hands. If he gets the wrong ongoings and you don't have proper destruction, you're going to be giblets on the sidewalk. If you get what you need right off the bat, his regime will be at an end rather speedily.
Of course, we're talking about a card game, so obviously randomness is always going to be a factor. But I can't shake the feeling when I'm playing him that I'm just playing out a foregone conclusion.
Here's a concrete example: Using Spiff's Randomizer, I ended up with a team of Absolute Zero, Bunker, and Wraith. All three are nemeses of the armored madman, so I already didn't have high hopes. IL draws two Armored Fortitude and one Final Evolution. None of the heroes end up with any ongoing destruction. That's pretty much game right there, but I ride it out. By the time Wraith gasped her last breath, I had only managed to destroy a single ongoing, and dealt 0 damage to Iron Legacy. Zero. Damage.
By contrast, in another game I had Tempest who had all the right things off the bat. Ball Lightning, an Into the Stratosphere or two, and Iron Legacy was locked down, rode hard, and put away wet.
I don't want this to turn into a thread about hero strengths and weaknesses. Obviously Bunker and AbZero are not "generally" considered top-tier heroes, and they both require a significant amount of setup that Iron Legacy will never let you have. Then again, I guess that might be a game design philosophy question: Theoretically, should any set of three to five heroes be able to defeat any villain? Even one who's a 4 difficulty? I don't know the answer to that.
From the stat sheets, Iron Legacy is far and away the most deadly of the villains. Only about a 50% win ratio. But again, that's not the problem for me. If every game was a hard-fought battle that only resulted in a win half of the time, I wouldn't mind that at all. It's the distinct feeling of inevitability one way or another.
What's the best way to deal with the issues I've laid out above? Obviously, starting him out with fewer ongoings would be a straight nerf and likely just result in a boring match. What about starting him with one less ongoing but doubling his hit points? Or starting him with a specific set of ongoings (damage increase, damage reduction, one other)? Or reducing his base power's damage and increasing his hitpoints so the game lasts longer?
What do you guys think? I'm definitely open to the idea that I'm just not playing well enough, or that I haven't played enough to get a good idea of how things really are. What are your experiences with Iron Legacy?