You think that’s bad? Take my word for it: NEVER let the matriarch go shopping.
Never Fight Gloomweaver "The Rotting God" in the Realm of Discord ever!
now the realm of discord is annoying but combine its Imbued Vitality card (ongoings and equipment now have 6 health).
with Gloomweavers flipped ability of dealing H damage to all targets then regaining 2hp everytime a target dies.
this led to him spiralling out of control twice now.
and the only thing i have actually had to ban when we play is surprisingly Legacy against the Vengeful 5,
The combination of Lead from the front (choose to redirect any villian damage to himself) and Next evolution (power: become immune to damage type of choice till start of turn) means seeing as the Vengeful 5 have about 80% melee damage he picks that and makes the game very boring, throw in his power ring and he plays like normal but no-one takes damage except for the occasional hit from friction or proletariat.
Take Down also screws over the V5 since none of them can play cards for a round.
The Vengeful 5 have enough hero ongoing destruction that maintaining the combo is not a sure thing. It does make the fight a lot easier so I can understand wanting to limit using him for the challenge, though. That combo neuters about 50% of villains anyway.
My favorite team combo on any villian that has lots of minions it Legacy, Ra & Tempest. Legacy uses Galvanize and inspiring presense. Ra uses IUmbue Fire, and the tempest uses Electricl storm? the one that damages everyone at the start of her turn. and then she uses her power to hit everyone for another 5 points. it is awesome against grand Lord Voss, or citizen Dawn, Keeps the minions at bay.
Something I noticed is that if you use Precognition or Prophetic Visions and then use SS Tachyon's Experiment on the villain/environment deck, you can get rid of really problematic cards that way (mostly things like Dawn's Devastating Aurora). Probably one of the more simple combos in SotM, but it's decent nonetheless.
Cant you also do that with, say, O-X's timeslip?
Yeah you can…it's easier that way, even, since you only need to worry about one card - to ditch them via Science Tachyon, you need both the revealed cards to share a keyword (and Dawn has very few one-shots compared to, say, Citizens). Timeshift would work really well with Parse's (otherwise useless) incap ability that lets her look at the top card of the villain deck but not do anything about it.
I've seen some nice combos above, but they all pale in comparison to the following.
Legacy + Visionary + Absolute Zero
Absolute Zero is the lynch pin. Eveyrone will make him better.
In Play:
AZ: Isothermic Transducer, Null-Point Cailbration Unit, Focused Apertures, and the absolute mandatory Thermal Shockwave
Legacy: Inspiring Presence
Visionary: Twist the Ether (on AZ)
Shockwave does 3 targets 1 cold + 1 Ins Pres + 1 Galvanize + 1 TtE = 4 damage to 3 targets = 12 Cold damage dealt
Shockwave deals himself 12 Cold (TtE converts from Fire) + 1 Ins Pres + 1 Gal + 1 TtE = Heal 15 damage
This gets better when AZ has Cryo Chamber (+1 Heal), Cold Snap (all targets 4 damage, +4 heal per target), and Impale (5 cold to one, heal 5 more per Impale). Dealing 20+ damage and healing to full is fairly easy. The only weak point in getting this combo out is Visionary. She only has 2 TtE, so you can go the entire game looking for it. Without TtE, you still dish out damage, but one Shockwave hit needs to come back at AZ for initial healing, to soak the Fire feedback, before the transducer heals him again. Getting too aggressive without TtE putting too many of AZ's Start of Turn damage cards into play may mean you can't Shockwave more than 1 enemy, but in that case he's still dumping out massive damage.
There are characters that can pour out some damage once in a while... by blowing up their equipment (O-X), or risking their own death (Fanatic). Or their stuff is fragile (O-X takes 5). Or discarding (Bunker) or finessing the kills to one character (Haka). Only AZ can dish this kind of damage every turn, round after round, and keep his HP at max.
Ra does not play nice with AZ. He can deal him Fire, but he must never play Imbued Fire, or Absolute Zero is completely shut down, since he can no longer heal. (Also hurts Knyfe who needs her damage to be melee and energy, while Fanatic needs her damage to be Radiant.) Flesh of the Sun God can cut off Shockwave's feedback damage and Thermodynamics' fire damage.
I have yet to mix Captain Oblivious... I mean Cosmic... into that team. I suspect he will only improve it, but I need closer examination.
Omnitron-X is, for certain, the single most powerful stand-alone deck in the game right now. (Ironic that he came with the weakest deck, Chrono-ranger.) Nothing swarms cards into play like he does. He can provide Unity with Equpment to sacrifice, group heals, irreducable damage that doesn't take a Power, and takes little to recover from disaster. I do not, however, see a power combo with him, yet.
Ra + AZ is risky, but powerful. Yes, Imbued Fire kills the healing, but it also ramps up the damage you deal. Imbued Fire turns Hoarfire from dealing 5 damage (6 if you forgo the healing) into 12 damage (albiet taking 4 damage). And if you're willing to take lots of damage, you can chain up the amount of damage you deal yourself: 2 fire damage to yourself, then deal 3 damage to yourself, then deal 4 damage to yourself, then deal 5 damage to yourself, then deal 6 damage to your opponent and use coolant blast to deal your opponent 15 damage.
And of course, if Visionary is around, AZ can have his cake and eat it, too.
Also, Chrono-Ranger is by no means the weakest deck. Once he starts getting damage magnification (By Any Means, Ultimate Target, Hunter and Hunted), his damage output goes through the roof.
Also keep in mind with Thermal Shockwave that if you are only dealing Fire Damage you only get one damage back from Thermal Shockwave since it's retaliatory damage is based on cold damage dealt.
Chrono Ranger a weak deck? Noooo, Jim's damage can get ridiculous if he gets outside buffs. Even without them he can do 3+3 damage to a target with a single power, which he can use multiple times in a round via Ultimate Target (wielding the Compounded Bow on a target affected by Ultimate Target and By Any Means). Get him Infected versus Plague Rat when the Locus is out and that's 5+5 (+1 for Nemesis bonus, +1 from the Locus when Infected). And that's before you factor in all the one-shots he's likely to play, with all their single-point plinks :D. The fact he can get hold of what he needs pretty easily with all his search cards means he can usually get set up with something within a couple of turns, even if it's not a particularly uber combo. I really like both Jim and Omni-10 and find them both fun to play :).
Setback can get infinite damage. It just takes time. And he can deal it out round after round. He just needs to heal or redirect 3+ damage a round for it.
Ameena, everyone gets outside buffs, so that's not a unique argument in favour of Chrono-ranger. Galvanize + Fanatic's innate power does 4 damage, for instance, but with Chrono-ranger does 2. And I showed you what AZ does with Legacy's buffs above. I have played Chrono-ranger a dozen times.. but he fails to come out far too often, and my probability analysis says that is never going to change. C-R is, quite simply, grossly underpowered.
Chrono-ranger has one theoretical power combo.
Tae Masadah + Hunter and Hunted + 6 Bounties on one villain = 14 damage to one target, Heal self 1 per turn, but he will take damage + 6...
The problem is that combo takes all 6 bounties in the deck, a specific equipment card, and a specific Ongoing he can't hunt his deck for with a tally of 8 cards. The most I ever got from that combo is 9 damage before external buffs. It simply takes far too long to get his power combo into play... the villain dies or wins first; meanwhile, others embarass him for total damage dealt. O-X is often dropping 4 irreducable without buffs by turn 6, or 8 buffed when C-R is dropping 3 buffed reducable. With the same buffs, AZ is soaking all the "highest HP" damage and laughing it off, while whittling the enemy down. Fanatic always deals 2x his innate damage, and heals, and can stop all villain damage, and... . Not to mention Wraith is doing 5 unbuffed in 2 cards. 5+3 with 4. Or Bunker doing 4+4+3. Or haka doing 5+5 and taking villain and environment cards out of play.
Chrono-ranger's inherent problem is an inability to get to his bounties. Sudden Contract and Ranger's Mark need to be combined to pull bounties from trash and deck. It is too easy to start with Ranger's Mark in your starting hand, and get Sudden Contract far too late to do any good. Chrono-ranger can, by times, come out as a B when his cards sort in the correct order (about a 1 in 4 chance of that happening), but he comes out F so often that I have to rate him there overall. He could be an A, but that power combo has to be as reliable as AZ's combo before it can happen.
Chrono-Ranger has multiple forms of draw accelleration, additional plays, equipment retrieval, bounty retrieval, search effects, and damage buffs within his deck without accounting for other heroes.
While that does not mean he is efficient in every single game (few heroes, if any, are), I think you may be grossly pigeon-holing his usefullness and assuming a rather narrow definition of strategy with his deck. It seems a lot of your comparisons or frustrations can be fixed by looking into different ways to play him.
And Absolute Zero is fun, but I find it strange that you find Chrono’s set up abilities to be lacking compared to Zero, considering Zero’s search cards are also divided between exclusively searching his deck or trash. I recommend looking into what can be done with one to two of Chrono-Ranger’s bounties in play rather than fixating on getting all six out. He rips through enemies with two or three cards on the field regardless of Legacy’s Galvinize being involved or not.
Galvanize and Exorcism deals 2 and 2. That is very different from dealing 4.
Chrono-Ranger isn't about massive damage. He's about consistent damage. Almost every card in his deck has a "Deal 1 projectile damage to..." rider attached.
By focusing only on large instances of damage, you are completely missing the joy that is Chrono-Ranger.
Chrono-Ranger's strength isn't in his ability to wail on villains with huge shots of damage (though he can do that on occasion), but in the massive number of small shots that he can do. All of his One-Shots (more than half of his deck) allow him to ping at least one target. Some of them let him play more cards. Get his hat out and he can play even more cards. All of his One-Shots other than Terrible Tech-Strike also help him to get the things that he needs (via search, recover from trash, or extra draw). Ultimate Target lets him use extra powers out of turn - even more instances of damage.
The more instances of damage you deal, the more you benefit from damage boosting. CR does so many little shots and if he gets a damage boost, they all get boosted. In addition to whatever his allies might do for him, he's got three sources of damage boost in his deck (By Any Means, Ultimate Target, Hunter and Hunted). With just a few cards in play (e.g. Ultimate Target, Jim's Hat, Compounded Bow), Chrono-Ranger can easily be dealing 7 instances of 2 damage each round to a single target. Add another +1 boost, and he's doing 21 damage per round. This is just with a couple of cards.
Is it possible to not draw the right cards? Sure, but that's the case for every hero and Chrono-Ranger happens to have a lot of tools to find the cards that will help him.
Also, imo you are focusing way too much on the idea of a "power combo" for each deck rating how good the deck is. You can't compare each deck like that because they perform different roles
To be fair, this is the "Killer Combo" thread.
In that case, Chrono-Ranger has all six bounties, Hunter and Hunted, Jim's Hat, Compounded Bow, and The Masadah in play. On his turn, he plays 4 Eye on the Prizes (4 x 9 damage) and 2 Terrible Tech-Strikes (2 x 9 + 2 x 10 damage), then uses Compounded Bow to deal 2 x 9 damage. If the villain does him any damage as a result of that, he gets to use Masadah to deal another 14 damage. Total 106 damage in one turn. Even more if there are other boosts and plenty more if the villain does damage during other heroes' turns.