Rebuttal against Braithwhite - I will be excluding the promo villains, since I have at most two games against any of them and thus have little sense of how they differ from the normal versions. I also will ignore any consideration of the Environment boosting villains's damage, since my selections of a matchup are always informed by an awareness of how much danger the Environment adds to the Villain, and I play accordingly to that knowledge - I don't let Explosives Wagons stay out when fighting villains with lots of damage instances, etc. And to the best of my recollection, no Environment has any single card which adds more than +1 to damage, so only almost-5 instances become actually-5s unless you make almost no effort to manage the Environment.
Yeah okay, those (and OT's Automaton drones) hit for 5 damage - once when they enter play, and then they're easily killed. Not a significant enough threat to be worth having multiple cards specifically and exclusively defend against. Any time this is the case, I will consider that card to be no proof of the usefulness of "magic bullets" against such incidental threats. (If a card just happened to defend against the threat while doing other useful things, that would be different.)
devious disruption with any tech-heavy team
Keeping the Ongoing out will up the damage all heroes take from Devious disruption. Sometimes it might be worth it; this is certainly a meaningful threat, but it alone doesn't prove much.
slash and burn
Right, now at least we're talking. All three of these cards combined, Blade is definitely capable of triggering Shielding Winds (the most useful of these three cards by far since it protects the whole team). Still, he's a difficulty 1 villain, so why bother having special protections against him? I believe I've lost only one game out of seven against him; he's not much of a threat even with these. weapons.
Omnitron: Drones. Electropulse explosives. Sedative flechettes and singularities.Cosmitron: all of the above, plus dropship lasers!
The dropship lasers are H-1 IIRC, so only on Advanced would they be an issue, as OT has no other way of boosting his own damage. EPE is usually possible to kill or at least significantly weaken before it explodes, but still it poses a threat, as does Flechettes. Overall OT is one of the better arguments for these cards, but once again, is easy enough to defeat even without them.
Citizen Dawn: Depending on the lineup, it can be extremely helpful to have some sort of protection from Summer and Hammer, particularly if they have environment help or Citizen Dare. Or Citizen Assault.
Assault + Battery will not happen very often, and Summer+Dare or Hammer+Dare is still only 4 except on Advanced. (And I've played two H=5 advanced games against Citizen Dawn, that was three too many, it won't be happening again soon. In H=3 games, though, this might be a concern.)
The matriarch is horrific with both cohorts in a 5 player game, as she does 5 damage per bird.
Hm. Well Matty is tough, but I can't say as I recall seeing both cohorts stay out very often, and if they do, the reprisal damage is probably the least of my worries.
The Chairman: A single Hired Gun can get up to 8 damager per hero, particularly on advanced. And enforcers. And the Operative, or the Chairman himself! Basically, I always look for defensive setups when fighting them in a team.
The Chairman is the single hardest fight in the game, but again, SDH is as likely as not a wasted card you can't afford. Enforcers are a non-threat in most cases since you can discard and not take any damage; I only recall taking damage from them once, maybe twice. Hired Gun usually caps at about 3 damage. By the time the Chairman flips, all the Thugs and their corresponding Underbosses should be dead except maybe for Enforcers or Thieves, depending on which one concerns you more. If Prison break comes out, you just lose; Shielding Winds won't change that. And I've only even bothered to try the Advanced game once; it's not worth even trying to win that one IMO. Again, while SW will apply, it won't suffice by a long shot.
Plague Rat: Seriously, everything he does can hit the 5 point threshold, though some of it is irreducible.
He's another one where it's a significant concern, but still, he's fairly easy to beat, and most of his damage is 1-3 point irreducibles rather than 5+ blocks.
However, given that the heroes tend to have to damage themselves for using powers, having SdH, Undaunted, or Shielding winds can allow them to buff each other and avoid the self-damage repercussions.
An interesting consideration, but it has little to do with Spite (his damage-on-powers is NOT hero self-damage). And I've only fought Agent of Gloom once, so while I recognize the theoretical danger there, I haven't actualized it in practice (I believe in that game he died without flipping).
Apostate can amp his damage to ridiculous levels, much like Fanatic, if he has some buffs from the Environment or his own relics.
He gets +1 from one of his relics, and with that could be dealing as much as 4+4 damage to the highest-HP hero. 4+4 is not > or = 5 in SOTM math, however. Remorseless Provocation and Fallen Angel might be able to get up to 5, I can't remember offhand.
Entomb is a big hit
Which, if anyone fails to take damage, keeps happening, so you're better off just tossing in 5 HP each and getting rid of the thing. Yes, Shielding Winds will reduce the pain, but you need to make sure it isn't reduced entirely for anyone, or it will just be increased for everyone else. It's entirely possible that I once had Scholar and Tempest in the same game against her, and deliberately avoided playing SW rather than let it react badly with double-Flesh-to-Iron.
and if you are playing her on advanced, she does direct damage on the flip side that can get very ugly.
That's 3 points, and she has no built-in boosts.
Gloomweaver
Oh puh-leaze.
Skinwalker Gloomy: He DOES do tons of damage personally, and when he flips, he piles it on.
To himself far more than to the heroes. I've only fought him twice, but both times were easy wins. Admittedly I have yet to try the advanced version.
Iron Legacy: Seriously. Any size team, any environment.
True, very true.
The Dreamer: Her personal AoE can be a total party wipe to the unprepared, particularly with Dark Hero support. In fact, most of her projections can hit the threshold easily.
I'll definitely give you this one. Illusionary Demon gets there even without Dark Hero.
Kismet: Another edge case, but she can get to very high damage bonuses on either side- one for having lots of jinxes (and if you have a team that doesn't destroy ongoings, they pile up), and a variable hit on the other side based on the relic's health. and this is before Environment mods…
Not to mention a potential +3 to damage on advanced. Kismet is rarely seriously dangerous, but she's all about those rare occasions, so I'll give you this one too.
La Capitan: Most of her crew have fixed damage, but the Battle-forged is a monster with his prediliction for going after the weakest for H damage. I can't emphasize how enough how good it is to have some means of reducing that hit when it is for 5 or more damage. Which it usually is in a 5 player game. and he helps her play cards.
This one is more of an edge case than the others, but fine, I'll give you all four of the Shattered Timelines villains.
Miss Information: an edge case, where it will be mostly used as a sacrificial card. This is the one villain where I would be less likely to play it, even in a 5 player game. HOWEVER, once she flips, it is extremely useful as she has self-damage buffs and AoE damage.
She blows up her own damage buffs in order to deal damage at all; if you don't choose What Doesn't Kill You as the first Clue to remove, there's something wrong with you. Again, most of her damage is in numerous small instances.
Ambuscade
See above under Gloomweaver.
The V5:Fright train hits very, very, very hard.
Agreed. Vengeance 5 in general is one I'll give you.
Environments: Atlantis (Krakens)
Usually more likely to help the heroes by picking off minions. I should try fighting Plague Rat there sometime though.
Pike chemical (multi-vat explosions)
Very rarely seem to occur; I believe I've only had it happen once or twice. Usually the damage is 3 or 4.
The F5 tower (entry points amping villain damage)
That one could definitely be a big issue. Only played there once, and it will be turn 4 before more than a +1 bonus can accrue, but I see definite potential for disaster there.
Insula Primalis (Volcanoes, lava, obsidian fields, dinosaurs)
Insula is one of the friendliest and least dangerous environments in my experience. Obsidian fields are easily gotten rid of, velociraptors hit the lowest and seldom survive to pack up, the Volcano is a slow boil which seldom ever goes off without interference, and T-rexes are only an occasional threat. River of Lava is big, but avoidable with Equipment. This one could be an issue, but in general I find it pretty safe; I only remember one game where the Lava and Plant hits kept on coming and I was in serious peril the whole time.
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So, I recognize two environments and about eight villains (the four from Timelines, Vengeance Five, Omnitron, Plague Rat, Blade and I'll take your word on Matriarch) as having serious potential to pose a threat which these cards can avert; the Chairman is a lost cause, and the others are either unlikely to hit 5 or are not significantly dangerous even if they do. (I should even throw Omnitron and Blade in the not-significantly-dangerous category, but we'll consider them to be "going halvsies" with Ambuscade and Gloomweaver, both of which are dangerous so rarely that I take them even less seriously than the diff-1s. I may be regarding the diff-1s as being slightly more dangerous on average, specifically because I favor them for newbie-player games, in which I cannot count on the same level of teamwork effectiveness as in a game with my regular group, or of course a solo game.) Combining these two, we have 134 matches out of 266 - that's about a half chance of the situation having serious potential to occur. The fact that, in 121 games to date, I have perhaps seen Shielding Winds or SHD be useful twice should no longer come as any surprise. The cards do nothing else, and they can't be tutored on-demand, nor sacrificed for some inherent benefit (irrespective of the situation). They are very, very seldom the best use for your card play, or the best thing you could wish to have drawn.
