The Naturalist. One ofthe new heroes in Vengeance, he has a very versatile bag of tricks to bring to the table. He is unique among all heroes (so far at least) in the use of colorful icons on his cards which denote special-circumstances text, an innovation even greater than the "magic number" mechanic in Nightmist's deck (though not as consistent; several of his cards lack these symbols). I played him second out of the new heroes, having seen him in use once, and found that he was a lot harder to manage than I expected; three forms to choose from doesn't seem like a lot, but he has quite a bit of depth to consider, and in my first game with him, I botched the effort horribly, plummeting from an HP lead to being the first hero incapacitated. Having learned from my error, I took a more thoughtful approach the next time, and while I plunged as low as 4 HP at one point due to a painful miscalculation, I soon bounced back and contributed significantly to the team's victory. While I've nowhere near mastered him after these two games, I figure that this is a decent enough level of confidence that I can begin writing a guide to him.
Introduction
Some players who begin to dabble in SOTM may come to the conclusion that a lot of heroes are excessively linear, and don't give you enough meaningful choices to be very enjoyable. Tachyon always wants to fill her trash with Bursts, Expatriette wants to get out a Gun and shoot things with it, Wraith is usually going for Utility Belt + two Projectile weapons + Micro-Targeting Computer, and once these characters get their setup, they tend to do the same thing several times over until the villain is dead. Players who have developed such a concern ought to take a look at the Naturalist, because his Transform power means that you always have the ability to change your entire game on your turn; because he can shift from offensive to defensive to tricksy-Baggins mode almost at whim, the player always has a decision to make, whether to stick with the setup they currently have or to start off in another direction, setting things in motion for the next turn. Because nearly all of the Naturalist's cards will do something useful even if he's not in the Form which makes the card excel, the decision of whether to shift forms is generally not too obvious; sticking with a form while holding a lot of cards which match it can be an effective strategy, but it doesn't preclude the alternative, and so he can offer a fairly deep and rich experience for players that would like a bit more of a challenge, while still not being too difficult to comprehend.
To begin to understand what makes the Naturalist (henceforth "Natch") tick, let's start by looking at the breakdown of his deck:
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As you can see, I've broken the cards in Natch's deck down into five categories. The first group of cards have no icons on them, and function identically regardless of what Form you're in (including Human Form, which is denoted by the lack of a Form card). The last is for cards bearing all three icons, which do something different for each Form you might assume (and nothing at all if you're in Human Form). Lastly, there are cards specific to each Form (I've included the Form itself in these categories, though obviously there's a difference); these cards (excepting the actual Form) all have one basic effect, which is generally beneficial, and then an additional ability which is true if you're in the correct Form. Thusly, with his Transform power granting him the ability to switch forms each turn, he is obviously an incredibly versatile hero, with nearly all his cards doing something regardless of the form he's in (the triple-icon cards become ineffective if he's never able to keep a form in play until the start of his turn, and Environmental Allies is something of a special case, but otherwise all cards are at least somewhat playable for their "basic" effect even if you're stuck in the wrong Form, or none at all). So let's move on to a more in-depth look at each of the Forms, and the cards specific to it.
Reptile Tears: On Being a Crocodile
When the Naturalist's goal is to deal damage and lots of it, the Deadly Crocodile is the form he'll plan to spend most of his time in; it is the most one-note of his forms, but also the one which contributes most directly to winning most games. The innate power deals Melee damage, while most of the Crocodile "riders" on cards involve dealing Toxic (the only ones that stick with melee are Primal Charge and possibly Bestial Shift, I don't recall which type that one deals). If you're going up against Plague Rat or Grand Warlord Voss, your lack of access to more exotic damage types may be an issue; most of the time, though, the sheer quantity of hurt you can dish out will be the important factor, not especially caring about type.
Feral Fury is a potentially impressive damage card when in crocodile form, although it is of very limited use otherwise; with the Crocodile rider and the Form's innate bonus, it can deal a total of 6 damage to a target without damage reduction. It can also be used to kill two 3-HP targets, although for this purpose it is generally inferior to Crafty Assault, which hits three targets equally hard, unless you'd rather save that card for when there is a third target and/or some Ongoings to destroy as well. The Predator's Eye adds a further damage increase against a specific target (unfortunately difficult to combine with Feral Fury's two instances, though arranging such a double-whammy is certainly a productive use of Argent's turn); this bonus is shared with the rest of the team (and any Environment targets, and even villain self-damage - yeah, Vengeance Blade won't last terribly long against multiple copies of this card), so it's a great way of signalling "get 'im, boys!" (or "get 'er, girls!", or any combination thereof) when the rest of the team is set-up and it's time to start taking the villain apart. All that is true of the card all by itself, of course, but if you're in Crocodile form, the card plays one additional role. You deal at least 3 damage, counting the Crocodile bonus and that from Predator's Eye itself, and you can get that up to 5 if need be - but if you choose the lower number, this also gives you the only extra card-drawing you have access to while you're Crocodile-shaped.
Lastly, Cornered Beast is worthy of special consideration, despite being the least common of the Crocodile cards (an interesting note is that 8 cards in the deck have only crocodile "riders", while the icons for rhino and gazelle are both exclusive to just 7 cards; this is one reason to consider defaulting to Croc form in the absence of other choices, though that's not personally what I tend to do). Able to obliterate low-HP targets without resorting to damage, even if you're not a Crocodile, this card costs a Power to use in this way, but in the meantime, a Crocodile also gains an additional damage bonus from this card, contingent upon there being a lot of targets in play (or on most of the Heroes being incapacitated, of course). Not a card that you especially want to draw while playing alongside Unity or the Sentinels, obviously, and also not incredibly useful against Warlord Voss (though it can one-shot those annoying Guards), but potentially very good for taking down Citizen Dawn before she can flip, or the Operative, or a member of the Ennead - there are quite a few matchups this card is strong in. (There's also the Apostate loophole; being more generous in its choice of targets than Sucker Punch or Wrathful Gaze, this card can take out the Periapt of Woe after it's been just slightly scratched, but the real hilarity is being able to have Natch messily eat Apostate himself alive, no matter how many Relics are protecting him, without giving him any opportunity to flip and heal back up.) But against Plague Rat or Iron Legacy? The only way Cornered Beast will do very much in those matchups is if the Environment cooperates, providing many semi-friendly targets to join you in tearing apart the villain. (Thusly, this card is the indirect third member of the set with Environmental Allies and Blend Into the Pack.)
One of the few things Crocodile form is good for, besides dealing damage, is that if you Bestial Shift out of Crocodile form, you can Transform to one of the other two forms, and then immediately use its power during your Power Phase. Gazelle form shares this advantage, of course, but you don't always need the healing.
Crocodile form may be especially useful against these villains:
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Grand Warlord Voss. Don't ask me why you can deal Toxic damage to the ships, but you can. And between the Crocodile's bite and Cornered Beast, you can chew through Minions like popcorn, perhaps even if there are a couple Guards in play.
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Omnitron. A lot of heroes's best damage setup relies on Equipment, making them vulnerable to Technological Singularity. Crocodile Form is an Ongoing, and if Sedative Flechettes destroys it, you can just get it back.
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La Capitan. No matter what form he's in, Cappy will be a fairly miserable match for the Naturalist; there's a chance she'll steal one or more of his Forms and cripple him significantly. If they do end up crossing paths, however, Crocodile is probably the form you want to start out in, as you need to be able to kill the Paradoja fast in order to get the game under control.
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The Ennead / Vengeance Five: Both of these matches feature multiple relatively squishy targets, rather than a single high-HP villain with or without mooks, and get easier if you focus fire to take down the targets one at a time. Crocodile delivers a lot of damage which is excellent in these situations; Cornered Beast is likely to provide its extra bonus, especially against the Ennead, and then can finish them off even if you've been fighting through reduction (Proletariat in particular is likely to suffer against this card).
Crocodile form is perhaps not recommended in these matches:
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Plague Rat. Giving yourself a bonus to the damage you deal yourself when Infected is probably not a great idea. If you aren't Infected yet, of course, putting a Predator's Eye on the Rat is likely to turn out well, but between the ever-present Infection risk and the potential for Rat to be immune to all your Toxic damage, Natch is not the best choice for going aggro against this villain.
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Miss Information. It's pretty obvious, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway; against a villain who spends the first half of the game not being a target, and possibly not having any other targets in play, Crocodile is of very limited use. It can be handy for punching through the damage reduction on her flipped side, but it won't deal as much damage as you'd like to, and will trigger retaliation damage. You'd likely rather go Gazelle for the ongoing destruction in this match.
Get It Through Your Thick Skull: On Being a Rhinoceros
It's only fitting that the purpose of the Formidable Rhinoceros form would be straightforward; when in this shape, Natch's job is to be the party tank, shrugging off mighty amounts of damage and preventing attacks from reaching the squishier heroes. Of the three forms, Rhino is by a small margin the most desireable choice for Transforming into on your first turn; the passive damage reduction becomes useful immediately, while Crocodile's damage boost probably does not, and when the game is still in the process of gelling into its eventual form, the Rhino's innate power to draw 2 extra cards per turn, for just the price of a power (take that, Nightmist!), is hard to go wrong with. The only downside is that sometimes, being a rhino can be slightly dangerous (particularly if there happens to be irreducible damage flying around, or just absurdly large quantities of it); one of Rhino form's signature cards, Indomitable Force, carries the non-optional consequence of focusing all damage to hero targets on your armor-plated self (thusly, 3 damage to each hero target instead becomes 4 damage to you and you alone; 4 damage to each hero target becomes 8 to you, and the news gets worse from there). Bestial Shift is another card that can sometimes make you regret being a rhino, since it gives you more of what you already have, and doesn't grant you an extra power use as it does in either of the other forms.
Not many tanks are tankier than a fully-loaded Rhino; the combination of rhino form, Resilient Hide, and one of the two one-round buffs (Bestial Shift or Indomitable Force) can entirely negate any hit of up to 3 damage, and Natch heals a point at the start of his turn besides. Obviously keeping this many Ongoings in play can be tricky; against such villains as Citizen Dawn, La Capitan, Ermine or the Ennead, you're unlikely to be able to keep much of anything in play, and the very Ongoing-centric Rhino plan isn't the best one. But if you're able to keep this suite stable, you can soak up an incredible amount of damage virtually unharmed - and that's when the other half of the Rhino's shtick comes into play, as both Indomiatable Force and Threatening Stomp cause enemies (one or all, depending) to focus fire on your nigh-invulnerable self. This obviously can be precarious, and you want to be VERY sure that you don't switch out of Rhino form after a Threatening Stomp (Indomitable Force will take care of itself, since it's an Ongoing whose redirection effect depends on remaining a Rhino, but the Stomp's effect is duration-based, so it lasts even if the Form leaves play somehow), unless of course the Stomp killed whatever it was played upon, or that target doesn't deal damage in the first place (or at least not very much).
Resilient Hide is also worthy of note in that it can entirely stop irreducible damage, as long as the instance is just 1 point; against a non-advanced Plague Rat with his Locus destroyed, Naturalist will never even notice that he has an Infection as long as he keeps Resilient Hide out, whether he's a Rhino or not.
The Rhinoceros is especially likely to shine in these matches:
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Iron Legacy. You don't have a lot of time to get set up to defend yourself against Angry Paul's initial onslaught; playing Indomitable Force and then Transforming to Rhino will buy all the other heroes time that they desperately need, and after he flips, keeping IL's attention focused on you while you spam Bestial Shifts and heal with Natural Form's Power will protect the other heroes.
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The Matriarch. All those 1- and 2-damage instances are easily dispensed with by a single point of soak, and Natch is one of the very few heroes who can repeatedly ditch his protective Ongoings to Matty's punishment ability and still benefit from them when her turn rolls around (provided he's not first in the turn order).
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Vengeance Five. With crazy amounts of damage flying around from the various Nemesis targets, a little soak will go a long way. You probably don't want to be a Crocodile after Fright Train or the Baron have gone down for the count, so switching into Rhino form will help ensure that the game continues, even if some of your teammates have sacrificed themselves getting rid of some of the villains.
These matches may prove frustrating to a Rhino-form Naturalist:
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Citizen Dawn. As the most Ongoing-centric of Natch's forms (five of the seven Rhino cards are Ongoings, compared to only 2/7 Gazelle and 2/8 Crocodile cards), Rhino is uncomfortably fragile against the amount of Ongoing destruction which the Citizens of the Sun can deliver. You're generally better off either relying on the damage of Crocodile or using Hyperactive Senses as a Gazelle.
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Plague Rat. So much irreducible damage! Resilient Hide is great if you can draw it, but you don't need to be a Rhino to get the basic effect, and Rhino's innate reduction will be ineffective against Rat's A-side innate and the self-damage from Infection.
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Spite. It's strange…most heroes would rather pick up and replay their Ongoings or Equipments, as Spite's Compound Upsilon requires, instead of destroying them. But for Natch, when a Form goes to the trash, it takes only a Power to get it back, while from the hand it requires a card play, and Natch is good enough at getting extra powers that a play phase is likely a dearer cost. I mention this general fact under the Rhino heading for two reasons: as mentioned above, Rhino relies the most on keeping Ongoings in play, and it is the only animal form which can't get an extra power by playing Bestial Shift. Thusly, if Spite opens on Compound Upsilon and you keep putting The Formidable Rhinoceros back in your hand every round for the entire game, all you're probably doing on your turn is replaying Rhino, then using its Power to draw two cards. I haven't played out this scenario, but I picture it as being slightly more annoying than to perform a similar maneuver with the Gazelle.
How Do Uncle Get Married: On Being an Gazelle
"Antelope"…get it? Fortunately, while the role of the Nimble Gazelle form is harder to summarize than the other two, it has nothing whatsoever to do with making extremely lame jokes. Assuming this shape leaves Michael Conteh largely a noncombatant, but gives him quite a bit of utility, consisting primarily of the ability to heal himself and the ability to moderate the Environment's role in complicating the heroes' lives. Throw in some Ongoing destruction and a tiny bit of deck control, and it's clear that this particular Gazelle is more than just a lion's next meal; while there are risks associated with assuming this form, it can definitely pay off in some of the more complicated circumstances that heroes inevitably find themselves in.
Hyperactive Senses is one of the strangest cards in Natch's arsenal, as it allows you to manipulate decks; the two copies of the One-Shot are the only way for him to do this, so you can't really call it one of his shticks, the way you can with Visionary or even Nightmist. But uniquely, he does it to two decks at once, enabling him to help out both his allies in a three-player game, or more likely to simultaneously mess with both villain and environment decks; neither Visionary nor Nightmist (nor Parse, as far as I recall) is capable of that particular feat. Being a Gazelle is nowhere near strictly necessary to make this card effective; it offers a relatively minor, yet potentially critical, extra bonus…being able to ditch one of the two cards from each of the peeked-at decks. Just be sure you know whether you're activating this clause or not, when you put the cards back on top of their decks - the one you're okay with seeing should be second if you are discarding the other one, and on top if you're not.
Lastly, there's Environmental Allies, the single biggest reason for staying Gazelle, but also my personal least favorite card in Natch's deck (undoubtedly some awesome future game will change my mind there, at least in its immediate aftermath). While you're not a gazelle, this card may actually tend to cause problems for the team, protecting environment targets so it's difficult to keep them from occasionally munching on your head. (Exceptions exist, some more situational than others; whether you like the Kraken or the Dinosaurs will depend on who exactly they're targeting, but Dr. Tremata and Sherrif Pratt are always your friends, and so it's possible that you'll wish to have Natch protect these - not to mention keeping an Explosives Wagon from detonating at an awkward time). But as long as you can keep The Nimble Gazelle in play, any hits the Environment sends your way are ignored, and you can sit back and watch as the villains occasionally suffer the hit. (Excluding Chairman Pike, of course.) If you are going this route, Blend Into the Pack and Cornered Beast are also great options, and Rook City Wraith or Omnitron-X would be a good buddy to you. Just beware of abrupt Ongoing destruction!
A Gazelle is probably going to be at his best in these matches:
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Plague Rat. With lots of damage flying around, and much of it self-inflicted and/or irreducible, healing yourself is golden. Let others deal damage in this match; your job is to try to intercept Plague Rat's various one-shots by managing your HP total.
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Citizen Dawn. This is a rough match for any form, but Hyperactive Senses offers you the ability to spot That Card (Devastating Aurora, for those who haven't yet suffered it) before it happens and ensure that the team keeps their stuff, even if your Gazelle self remains vulnerable to Citizens Sweat and Autumn. Natural Form's Power lets you hand out cards to whoever's been hurt worst by Blinding Blast or Citizen Tears, and Primal Charge will ensure you're almost never caught with an empty hand yourself.
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The Chairman. Rook City is Yours, is it? Me and my Environmental Allies beg to differ. Though this match will never be easy, Natch as a Gazelle acts as a direct foil for one of Chairman Pike's biggest advantages. You can also draw a lot of cards in this form in order to keep the Enforcers off your back. Just beware of the Informant; if you're first in turn order, try to have Natural Form's Power on the table, so that you can switch to Crocodile and immediately eat her without playing a card, then switch back to Gazelle ASAP. Hyperactive Senses is again excellent here, letting you avoid Prison Breaks. Though there are no Ongoing cards to destroy and thus Crafty Assault isn't really a Gazelle card in this match, it is still always handy against this many targets.
These villains might well leave you feeling like a prey animal:
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The Matriarch. No Ongoings to destroy, widely distributed damage to the whole team, and a deck that's almost impossible to control with Hyperactive Senses. Not ideal.
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Akash'Bhuta. This is probably not a match in which you want to encourage Environment targets to come into play, even if you can make the heroes immune to their damage.
Something Something Something Chicken Something Egg
So, you're beginning a game. Having drawn four random cards off the Naturalist's deck, what exactly do you do? A special problem presents itself if you happen to draw one of the three Forms in your hand, as this is the one place (assuming you're not fighting La Capitan) that you can't obtain the card from while Transforming. You can use your card play to play the Form, but then you might not be able to usefully use your Power (if you play Gazelle this way and are at full hit points, or if you play Crocodile and there's nothing worth biting). The longer the Form remains in your hand, though, the more likely you are to end up regretting having it there; you might find yourself needing to switch to that form and being unable to do so (a particularly thorny issue when fighting in Megalopolis or Atlantis, where you have a better than 1/8th chance of being unable to play cards during any given turn).
When should you take the "draw 2 turn" in lieu of doing anything else? Probably not very often. While Natch wants a lot of cards in his hand to be able to pull all his various tricks (especially Shifter's Strength), he has numerous card-draw effects (a Bestial Shift the turn after going Gazelle results in far more card advantage than two turns of doing nothing, and Rhinoceros form can slowly but steadily accumulate a huge number of cards as well). Even if your current hand suggests not playing a card, also giving up your Power means not being prepared to act on your next turn, when you might very well be desperately needed. Therefore, it's usually best to rely on your card effects to supply extra draws, and not try to skip your Play and Power phases for merely one extra card. The rare exception is that if discards-from-hand and/or Ongoing destruction are thick on the ground in a certain match, Natch is probably going to want to build up a supply of cards that he can take advantage of when he gets the chance, so in that case you might spend your first turn or two skipping. In most situations, though, it's far wiser to start the game with a Transformation, possibly preceded by a card play.
I am Not a Rhino, I am a Human Being!
Once in a while, circumstances will configure themselves such that you simply can't manage to be in an animal form, and you have to make do with whatever abilities your cards offer you as a mere hyoo-mon (sorry, Ferengi moment there). Shifter's Strength is the one card which is always equally useful no matter what form you're in, though you do have to have at least one other card in your hand in order to get any benefit from it; it never costs you your card play (unless an Impulsion Beam is in play), but the ability it grants you is simply to exchange cards from your hand with cards off the top of your deck. While this can be handy for discarding Gazelle cards while you happen to be a Crocodile, in hopes of drawing Crocodile cards to replace them, it's potentially effective even without a Form in play, as you can ditch triple-icon cards which are currently useless to you, and then use whatever you draw to inform your choice of a future Transform.
Natural-Born Vigor also has nothing to do with any particular Form, although one of its best tricks is to let you Transform into a Form and then immediately use its innate Power; if you're somehow stuck in your native form for a long time, you can at least use NBV to gain 4 HP, at the start of the turn after you've played it. Lastly of the iconless cards, there's Blend Into the Pack, whose utility depends on the target-heaviness of your current Environment. While granting Natch potentially as much as 12 Soak (in the Final Wasteland) certainly has its charms, it isn't always worth letting the rest of the team get mauled by Kraken arms or Explosive Bubbles, especially if you being a non-Gazelle rules out the benefit of Environmental Allies (which actively becomes a liability if you're in any form other than Gazelle; I consider it the worst card in Natch's deck, with Blend Into the Pack being second-worst, as the two of them really only work well together, and then only if you stay in the overall least effective of his three Form cards).
Beyond that, the various cards with a single icon tend to still do useful things even if you're not in the proper animal form, although a lack of access to Ongoing destruction from being a non-Gazelle is likely to hurt seriously. Feral Fury still deals one instance of damage, without the Crocodile's boost and the second instance that also gains it; it's a tragic waste of potential, but sometimes THAT HAS TO DIE, and the option does exist. Crafty Assault is better, even if its Ongoing destruction potential is wasted - after all, not all villains use many Ongoings, though certainly several of the worst ones do.
Tragically, all of the cards with triple icons are useless when you're Formless (NFP can at least be laid down, assuming your Human-stuckness is temporary; the other two are One-Shots and simply can't be played to any effect). The immense versatility these cards offer you at other times must, after all, carry a price. Ra, certainly, isn't interested in hearing you complain about your lack of choices.
To Be (a Rhino) or Not to Be (a Crocodile), That is The Question
So the question is (see what I did there?), when do you stay in your current form, and when do you Transform? Experience has taught me this harsh lesson: it is not a good idea to shift forms just because you can. A lot of what makes Natch tick is the ability to plan ahead for a turn or more; because you Transform during your Power phase, you're setting up a card play for the subsequent round, and so you have to think a few steps ahead in order to make the best use of your resources (and of course you draw a new resource every turn, which might make you wish you could reconsider your choices).
Sometimes, you're just going to have to make hard choices when playing Natch; in the game I lost horribly, I had held onto a couple copies The Predator's Eye for several turns, wanting to save them until I could combine them with the Deadly Crocodile's bite, but kept deciding during my Power phase (I had Natural-Born Vigor in play) that I wanted to assume one of the other forms just so I could draw cards or heal, and so I kept sabotaging myself. Don't be the damned fool I was! While the tides of war shift constantly, and SOTM in general is a game that pushes you to adapt your gameplay to the situation, Naturalist's shapeshifting powers do not equate to making him one of the more random, constantly changeable heroes…you tend to want to pick a plan and stick with it, because you can't change course on a dime, it takes some effort to turn things around in order to suit a new direction which the circumstances might require. So Natch might be a good hero for SOTM players who are also into chess (assuming such individuals exist; I would assume there are a few, at least), because getting the most mileage out of him means playing to the long game, setting things in motion well before the critical hour arrives.
By Our Powers Combined, We Are Thinly Veiled Environmentalist Propaganda!
(Note: I happen to agree with said propaganda, so my little joke ought not to be regarded as a critcism.)
The Naturalist is one of the most power-heavy heroes in the game, with each of the Forms offering an innate Power (and Natch's character card of course giving him "one-click" access to all three of those options, unless they're stuck in his hand or something). On top of that, Natural Form's Power has a power (strangely enough), which grants you a different ability depending on which form you're in; with this card and NBV in play, either the Rhino or the Gazelle can both heal and draw card, while the Crocodile sticks to damage-dealing but can now hit multiple targets for small amounts of toxic damage, instead of one mighty wallop of melee. Cornered Beast also gives you a Power, albeit one slightly less useful (except for making Ra cry bitter tears from his Wrathful Gaze); all told, you definitely want to give the Staff of Ra to some other hero in your party, as Natch is pretty much always going to have uses for whatever number of per-turn Power usages that Argent and Fanatic can help him stockpile.
One Perfect Moment in the History of the (Natural) World
One special case bears mentioning. Players who have fought in the Time Cataclysm with Mr. Fixer may have noticed an amusing interaction with Fixed Point, a card which makes all other cards indestructible for a round. Thusly, "Slim" can get more than one of his usually-mutually-exclusive Styles into play (and ditto for Tools since "indestructible" is a somewhat imprecisely defined term in this game, but nevermind all that), and keep the both of them for as long as he refrains from switching again. Well, Natch happen to have an even more disproportionate fondness for Fixed Point; as crazy as Fixer could get because of its effects, Natch's ability to reap its rewards is absolutely absurd. First, unlike Fixer's reliance on the luck of the draw, Natch can always find a Form with his Transform power (unless he can't use Powers of course, but few villains inflict such a debility and the Time Cataclysm never does). Second and far more importantly, not only does assuming a pair of forms let you get the "rider" on twice as many of your cards, but on the triple-icon cards, you can get both effects - imagine a Rhino-Crocodile performing a Primal Charge to deal 3 and 4 melee damage to the same or different targets, or a Rhino-Gazelle repeatedly using Natural Form's Power('s Power) to both draw cards and heal…potentially healing from below 0 HP, thanks to Fixed Point.
If you have an incapacitated hero or The Argent Adept in the party, and they can grant you a power usage (or, rarely, a card play) in addition to your normal turn, you could potentially get all three Forms into play, and the result would be simply ungodly - as long as we're in Cloudcuckooland, imagine performing a Bestial Shift to activate two copies of Natural Form's Power in one turn, letting you regain a total of 7 HP while drawing 4 cards (or letting someone else do so), and dealing 4 instances of 2 damage and one that's even bigger, plus leaving you with an extra point of armor for a round. It probably will happen twice in about a thousand games, but just the faint possibility of it working is enough to make me positively drool. More realistically, the not-incredibly-difficult (given the search utility of Transform) triple-Form scenario lets you get the "rider" on every single card you play, and since it relies on you getting extra power usages