Today, I came back to the SotM ring after a very, very long time, and I decided to go in easy. I pulled out Legacy and Tachyon at random, picked out Omnitron as a suitable "welcome back to the game, here's an easy one" villain, and of course NightMist, my favorite hero thus far.
NOT. AN. EASY. GAME.
Omni played Electro-Pulse Explosive on his first turn, rapidly bringing out another a turn or two later. Legacy went down hard, and Tachyon clung on to dear life at 1 HP, and all seemed lost. I was very much tempted to just remake the game, when I decided to just wing it and see.
Thank God I did. NightMist is the best.
With a combination of Mist-Fueled Recovery, Amulet, Necklace, and a whoooole lot of Mistbinding and Planar Banishment, I was able to win. Whoa. It was basically NightMist vs. Omni, one on one (with a liiiiiittle bit of support from dead Legacy and barely there Tachyon), and after a while, NM's HP never went below 20. It was glorious.
And I know that this is very much off-character for old NM, but this is the first thing I imagined when I played that last Oblivion.
YES. I actually think that if there is any one character who is 'broken' it is NightMist. She, more than any other hero, seems to have the ability to win a game all on her own -- massive healing, redirection, and immunity abilities.
She was the party tank against Spite in my Rook City "Ladies of the Evening" theme game - went into Misform and just sat there making dirty faces against him for several turns. Had I not gotten bored and dropped out, he'd have been permanently neutered; even so I easily mopped the floor with him.
Maybe, but only if you really get her rolling. She needs to get a lot of cards in her hand as soon as possible, which usually means dealing yourself some hefty damage in the beginning. I've been steamrolled as Nightmist far too many times due to some terrible startups which involve unlucky draws by me and some very very lucky draws by the villain/environments that completely shut us down within the first few turns. When you fall so far behind in the early game, its hard to gain steam to come back. Especially with heroes like Nightmist.
My first game with her was against Spite - she put down Mistform on like turn 2, and she was the party tank, just standing there making faces at Spite while he flailed ineffectually at her. (I think he still gains HP even if he doesn't connect, but still, it turned him into a total punk and he died without ever flipping.) I eventually dropped out of it when bored and started using the Amulet to redirect, but either way, she does the "invincibility" thing better than anyone except maybe Legacy, and even he can't completely shrug off damage like she can (though he is more reliably able to prevent some of it, and is the best there is at taking hits for other people).
(And now I notice that I already told this story. Sigh, I'm getting old and forgetful.)
Envisioner - Spite only lifetaps back damage dealt. If the target's hp didn't go down, he doesn't get to heal anything, just as if they managed to soak some of the damage, he only lifetaps back the total dealt (so if he tried to hit Legacy for two points but Fortitude was out, he'd only deal one damage and thus only restore 1hp).
I think Visionary is the only other character who can make themselves invincible, though unlike Mist Form, TK Cocoon doesn't let her draw an extra card during her Draw phase (so after the turn in which she plays the Cocoon, she only gets to draw two cards a turn, whereas Nightmist in Mist Form or Bunker in Recharge Mode would draw three). The Scholar also has a card (whose name I've forgotten) which reduces all his received damage to zero for a round…but I believe it does say it "reduces" damage so wouldn't be much use against, say, Plague Rat. Plus it goes away at the start of his next turn. But it's a whole round of invincibility in most circumstances :).
Last game I played as Nightmist was against Iron Legacy - I played Planar Banishment in turn one and managed to draw a four-card from it, thus enabling me to take out three-out-of-four of his current ongoings (two of his starting ones, plus the one he'd put out on his first turn - the other card was a copy of Galvanised). I generally spent most of the game (which only lasted about three or four rounds anyway, it being Iron Legacy we were fighting) dealing a load of damage (mostly to myself) and ended the game on 1hp. We finished the battle via Fanatic playing a Wrathful Retribution after we'd made sure we'd knocked Iron Legacy low enough that it would one-shot him (since we didn't want to risk another round to get Fanatic's hp lower in case Iron Legacy put out something really horrible on his turn).
It would be. If she was rolling along and got hit with them after she was set up, I suspect your game would have gone much different.
I'd think the Spite drug that forces two ongoings/equipment back into play or whatever, would also give NM a hard time if she was the only hero in play.
I think it's H-2 ongoings/equipment cards back into your hand (because we play with three people and only have to return one card in total). Yeah, I can see that being very annoying if you're the only hero playing, because you'd have to keep spending your Play phase re-playing the same card over and over again :(.
Last month I was able to introduce some old friends to the game. I told them that I was going to choose one of the easiest villains (Omnitron). The Team was Tachyon, Legacy, MrFixer and Wraith (I let them choose quite freely). The environment was "Marx Base". (btw, I never know which enviroment I should choose, so I always end picking at random).
Omnitro n played Electro-pulse explosive the first turn, and we were not able to do much damage (not the right team for damage in the first turn…). The guy who was playing fixer was very pleased to be able to "save the day" with a very convenient "grease gun" in his starting hand. And then we got to the Environment turn and the first card played was "pervasive red dust". Bye bye grease gun. Hello 13 points of damage for everyone on the second villain turn.
We lost, but they loved the game anyway. And they would like to buy it, if only it was possible to do so in Spain right now… and they were really wondering about how the "difficult Villains" would be, too.
You should always choose Realm of Discord, or Ruins of Atlantis if you don't have IR. The most epic games happen there.
But seriously, the environments are very distinct; once you get a feel for them, you'll be able to pick the ones you want for each game. The Block is very orderly and restrained, as appropriate for a prison; when I'm fighting a villain I'm very scared of, I tend to do it there, as it's more likely to help me than hurt me. Conversely, I use Rook City or Time Cataclysm when I have a villain that's kind of a putz and want to buff them. Megalopolis can deny you all three phases of your turn, but it also has a card which entirely stops new environment plays for a turn or more, so I like it as a place for games that introduce a new player…it gives them the ability to kind of ignore the environment while they're still learning how heroes and villains work. Wagner Mars has Meteor Storm, so if you're fighting a villain that can't destroy stuff but just does damage (eg Plague Rat), it's a walk in the park. And Pike Industrial is a very violent place, but if you have Legacy or a dead Tempest in the party, you can make everyone immune to toxic damage and watch as the villains wither before the waves of radiation and exploding checmicals. Insula Primalis is another one that tends to help the heroes more often than hurt them, especially if you have Ra around to negate all fire damage, but less so if Unity and her squishy bots are in the game. The Final Wasteland is almost nothing but Targets, so games against Kismet or Akash'Bhuta or the like get "interesting" there. Silver Gulch has periods of inactivity ("oh look, a cactus came out, let's put it next to the water trough") punctuated by explosions of ultraviolence ("Agh that sniper just killed me out of nowhere" or "the guy with the gatling gun is mowing us all down in our tracks"), with the threat of an early (or post-reshuffle) Lost in the Past being able to entirely take over the game before you're ready to deal with it (the same can happen on Wagner Mars, but at least there you don't have two cards which can tutor for the alt-loss card, and have a 2/3 chance of instead blasting everyone). And Tomb of Anubis is unique in its ability to grant the heroes additional Powers, so it's great for heroes that are a little lacking in that department, such as Tachyon or Mr. Fixer.
Whew, did I miss any?
and they were really wondering about how the "difficult Villains" would be, too.
Very. Don't even try to take on The Chairman without a team specifically tailored to beat him. He is absurdly brutal, and Matriarch is also quite rough. Iron Legacy has the "advantage" of games ending with ridiculous quickness, one way or another - he has only 32 HP, but dishes out a minimum of 3 damage per turn to all heroes (until he flips, when it becomes I think 2-5 damage to the single weakest hero, plus 4-7 healing), and has tons of damaging one-shots on top of it.
Similarly with AZ. I've seen him essentially take down the Matriarch by himself in the tomb of anubis once he got set up. Once he's set up he can heal and damage a suprising amount in one turn. If you are lucky enough that anything else is dealing cold or fire damage too then you really rock.
Its definitely a fun time playing heroes that involve some risky set-up. Though it can for sure backfire if shutdown by a lucky environment/villain. My first few games with interesting heroes like Nightmist, Argent Adept, Absolute Zero, and Unity, I got completely shut down and it turned me away from playing as them again for a while. I learned a valuable lesson about the Realm of Discord; do NOT play heroes for the first time in this environment. So many cards screw with the rules and make it incredibly difficult to play a proper match (like the Distortion card that gives all your Ongoing/Equipment cards 6 HP, essentially turning them into cannon fodder for the Matriarch and the Chairman).
But since then, those four heroes have become my favorite because they always make the game really interesting, and there is something incredibly fun about getting a high skill hero rolling.
Imbued Vitality (the one that gives all ongoings and equpment 6hp) can be a somewhat unexpected bonus if the villain has any really horrible ongoings currently in play, especially if you have no ordinary means of getting rid of them. Suddenly Imbued Vitality comes out and they have 6hp and become viable targets for a savage pummelling :). We did that to an Apocalypse a week or so ago, which was quite satisfying :).
Guess where I decided to host my battle between Mr. Fixer (with aid from Tachyon and Absolute Zero) and the Chairman? Yeah, that didn't go too smoothly. My seventh game ever, and I haven't dared go after Mr. Pike again since.
Yeah, RoD can really screw with the rules, which makes it a harsh yet kind of chaotic fun place to battle. One recent game against Akash, I was getting absolutely beaten down for the entire game, until all my heroes were down to 1 HP, with the exception of Nightmist who had a tiny bit more HP than Akash. Nightmist uses Astral Projection to scry the environment, puts Portal Fiend on top (1 of the last two cards in the env. deck). 13 cards in the environment trash, so Portal Fiend came out and dealt Akash (target with 2nd highest HP) 13 damage for the win.
I have a love/hate relationship with RoD, but whenever you want the match to be incredibly interesting, that is my go-to environment.
