Most Fun Villains

We talk a lot about the hardest villains and fights (Iron Legacy, Advanced Matriarch, the Chairman), the easier enemies (Omnitron, Baron Blade, and Ambuscade), and even the least fun (Wager Master, Spite), but who are the most fun?  Here's my list (in no particular order), what's yours?

1. Deadline - He makes the enviornment matter, which gives him a wildly different experience depending on where you fight him.  Deadline feels like a better variant of core, advanced Baron Blade.  Great design, and that he has such an incredible story only makes him better.

2. Kaagra Warfang - Two newer villains right at the top.  I really love how different the game feels agains Kaagram as the plays and priorities really change.

3. A'Kash - Not the toughest match, usually, but a pure war of attrition.  Sometimes I just want to take a bunch of damage dealers and crazy combos and go to town.  A'Kash is my favorite for that.

4. The Ennead - They do a lot, can be easy or hard, and, as is big for me, can often feel really different.  Their only downside is that they are a LOT to keep track of.  I'm looking forward to them being available for the APP.

5. Grand Warlord Voss or Citizen Dawn - I love these big strategic wars against enemies with huge armies.  If I feel like packing control, I prefer Dawn, if I want hero combos, I go Voss, but it can go either way as to which I enjoy more.

With the exception of Spite, I love playing the RC villains.  Games against the Matriarch, Plague Rat, and The Chairman can all be intense for different reasons.  

Voss is, hands down, my favorite base game villain. I'm partial to Ambuscade as a fun battle if only because I'm so often playing with rookies and/or younger players, and he highlights a number of mechanics (especially because younger players often gravitate toward high-HP characters since they "don't want to die.")

I've enjoyed Akash'bhuta the few times I've been able to play a game against her, as I can picture a lot of what happens in my head.

I think, though, that the environments jazz me more than the villains. I love Insula Primalis, Silver Gulch, and the Block. The Realm of Discord's ever-changing nature. Freedom Tower tends to be good for when I want "easy mode." (At BGG, I seem to be alone in that assessment - or at least, I've been vociferously disagreed with by he who shall remain nameless.) I'm looking foward to trying some of the others, but I'm almost insanely busy until the end of May or so.

I find fights against the Dreamer to be fun and always have a built in clock if you have environment stuff that does damage.  I really enjoy the manic pace of Infinitor.  My all time favorite fights are still The Ennead and Voss

My top 5 for most fun:

5.  Grand Warlord Voss:  No villain is as good for getting the most out of your heroes, and yet he can still beat you and rarely does a match seem like you had it in the bag the whole time.

4.  La Capitan:  So much variety, and so many possibilities with each card play, the strategies that come out of her games are really great.

3.  The Chairman:  so little destruction, so much difficulty.  And tons of shenanigans waiting to happen.

2.  Omnitron:  So much going on, so hard to shut down, the best strategy is just go at him full tilt and deal with the crap when it hits you.  His advanced mode is one of the coolest in the game.

1.  Kaargra Warfang:  So much Chaos and overpowered heroes being the natural result of the game, I love it.  It is one game where I never feel cheap throwing down the most powerful heroes.  Also Fanatic and Fixer are 2 of my favorite heroes and they CRUSH the arena.

 

Honorable Mention:  Vengeance format has a few that are going to be really fun once we get more variety.

How excited are you for the 4 new ones?

I have literally bounced up and down I get so excited thinking about them.  Zhu Longs Palace and the Vampire castle?  It is too much.  I freaking love it.

My favorite Environments right now are Dok Thorok, Ruins of Atlantis and Tomb of Anubis.

I love Tomb of Anubis so much.

I have villains that I like, but I'm not sure I can really rank them.

WOTC: Deadline and Progeny are my two favorites here. They're difficult, but not in a way that makes me bored or want to pull my hair out in frustration. While I do like Kaagra, my attempts at soloing her deck have ended up in me giving up because there was just too much stuff to keep track of.

Shattered Timelines: Iron Legacy is short and bruta, with exceptions, and I like his concept. I like the dreamer as well, though I'm not fond of fighting her with a team of five. Kismet, while easy, is also enjoyable.

Infernal Relics: I like pretty much all the villains in this set. They're interesting and unique. Gloomweaver, while easy, feels a little like a D&D game with your buds where you're dungeon crawling and have to take out the zombies and other minions before finishing off the big bad.

Rook City: Not my favorite expansion. I've had fun fighting all the villains, but I'm not really sure I'd fight any of them outside of a randomizer.

Core Game: Just like Infernal Relics, I don't dislike any of the vilains. Dawn and Voss are probably the stand outs, but Baron Blade probably has one of the most interesting Advanced modes out of all the villains.

I don't know if I have any "favourite" villains as such. From the base game, all four villains can be kind of annoying - Voss can be tough with all the Minion damage, Dawn and Blade both have a "That Card", a one-shot that can really destroy you depending on how much stuff you have out, and Omnitron has several really horrible cards - again, stuff destruction and also the EPEs if you're not set up to deal with them.

I'm less keen on the Rook City ones in general because they tend to be pretty difficult - Rat is probably my favourite, and if Chrono Ranger is about then games against him are actually pretty fun because of all the ridiculous amounts of damage getting flung his way. It's rare that I play Jim against Rat and come out incapacitated. Lilian can be a pain in the arse with many many birds coming out over and over again, but sometimes she's not that bad. Spite can be a bit annoying with the lifetap thing but he can be easily dealt with if you can nerf his damage enough…but his promo version is much worse and totally destroyed us last time we fought him. The Chairman…is the Chairman :P.

The villains of Infernal Relics are probably among my favourites. We've only lost to Apostate once or twice and we've never had him flip, and one day I'd love to actually manage the use-an-insta-kill-ability-to-get-around-his-flip-mechanic thing, just because :D. The Ennead are usually quite fun, and if Tempest is around and manages to get the Shackles out then games against them are pretty short as well >:). Gloomweaver makes for a more "relaxed" game because he's not particularly difficult, and I do enjoy games against his promo version because they always seem to be challenging in a fun way (we've done him maybe three or four times). Akash'Bhuta I like as well - we don't really find her particularly difficult but things can start to feel a bit frantic if she gets a whole bunch of limbs out, which can easily happen if she chains Primeval Eruptions, and gives us plenty of stuff to destroy.

Shattered Timelines has…well, Iron Legacy, who can be described simply as "Ouch" or similar ;). The Dreamer is fun, bringing a different kind of fight since you're attacking everything except the main villain. Kismet is mostly horrible and nearly always kills us. Same for La Capitan.

The Vengeance villains we've only done a couple of times, due to either not rolling them (villains are determined via die roll) or rolling them and deciding we're not in the mood for the added complexities of fighting them at that particular time.

The villains of Wrath of the Cosmos we're only fought once each (well, we've done Deadline and Kaargra a couple of times at London meets, but those aren't our "normal" games as we have more people and stuff), and that was yesterday. They all beat us except Deadline, but as that was our first proper go against 'em things might go better once we've learned their decks a bit. I was looking forward to fighting Kaargra (she was fun at the London games) but found it really complicated trying to keep track of everything since I kept forgetting stuff such as when heroes/villains get points or when titles are given out…but again, that's just down to not knowing the deck yet. Maybe one day we'll mess around with including titles in other games, just to add a bit of extra…stuff. For the fun ;).

And that leaves promo villains…let's see…Ambuscade. He's a good one for a quick and fairly easy game, unless he just spams Explosive Launchers because they kind of hurt :P. Very rarely do his traps go off. Miss Information is fine - she's probably beaten us once, but generally we don't have a problem with her even if the constant stuff-destruction can get kind of annoying, but at least we don't usually have to wait too long to be able to stop it. Wager Master is…interesting. We've only fought him once since I got hold of the decks myself (we did him once in London as well, before the release) and we won, but I can see how games versus him could be really annoying, ridiculously easy, and/or incredibly short ;).

Cursed Acolyte is the most fun villain, because I get to play with him and sometimes, if I'm really lucky, see him destroy "himself".

I'm really intrigued by the look of all of the new environments except Magamaria. The Carnival gives me a bit of a Ray Bradbury vibe, and the name for the Celestial Tribunal provokes all sorts of questions about Fanatic & Apostate (some of which has been speculated on elsewhere).

Somebody asked if the Court of Blood was an unlocked stretch goal from one of the kickstarter campaigns. Without going back to try to look them up, How many stretch goals haven't been unlocked across all the kickstarter campaigns? Does anybody who's "in town" right now know the answer?

I kinda like magmaria as it answers the underground hostile civilization trope notably the Molemen from marvel.

I'm pretty sure the only named strech goal in all of their campaigns was the promo environment from IR/EE.  Everything else was either reached during the campaign, given later (Mad Bomber BB) or never specifically named

The Ennead are by far my favorite Villian to play against. Everybody plays a part in the battle from my experience, and the battle never feels to drawn out, because crazy things always happen. I enjoy haw diverse they are and how different every fight with them is.

1. The Ennead. It's a process of elimination from the start, which I like. No revival/recycle shenanigans like Darken the Skies/Prison Break/Forced Deployment. It's just a fight of 3-9 ancient gods with a varied game length. Their incapped sides also hurt or help you, depending on who goes down. It's just an intimidating looking game that can end up being a lot of fun.

2. The Chairman. Takes a lot of strategy and planning, and the order you take enemies out matters a LOT. It can snowball out of control sometimes, but it's never too ridiculous in my past experiences.

3. Kaargra Warfang. Changes the way you fight villians a lot, and allows you to stack amazing effects in your favor.

4. Either Voss or Inifinitor. Both of these provide a challenging but manageable experience without overwhelming you with any certain setup (except possibly an ill-timed Forced Deployment).

Core:  Voss.  His minions are interesting without being too brutal, and there is a lot of strategy to play with when "Forced Depoloyment" hits the board.  His ships are vicious, but other than that I usually have a great time with him.

Rook City:  Plague Rat.  Rip chunks out of the Rat before you rip apart yourselves.  His deck is very straight forward while still being an intense fight.

Infernal Relics:  Gloomweaver.  I like them all, but Gloomweaver allows a lot of experimentation and teamwork to be implemented in his games.  And a first turn Strength from the Grave?  Yikes!

Shattered Timelines:  Kismet.  Her flip mechanic is fun.  Brutal ongoings that have a built-in destruction mechanic and a shiny new toy for the heroes to play with when she flips.

Vengeance:  Fright Train.  He hits hard and you hit him hard back.  There's a solid balance of damage while still not being overwhelming.  Very cool.

Wrath of the Cosmos:  Deadline.  He has a timeclock that doesn't allow much fooling around but there isn't a limitation on teamwork and options.  I'm always up for a game against this guy.

I'm surprised by all the Deadline love here. He's cool, but I've found him to be boringly easy. As for me:

Apostate: He feels almost like a hero with the way he's trying to build up a big combo to take you down. Every single one of his Relics (except that book, still don't see the point of it) combines well with the others, and he's just a blast to fight overall. For a while, the only problem with him was that he didn't have a real Advanced Mode, since that book is basically useless and he almost never flips, but Challenge Mode dealt with that issue quite nicely.

Kismet: She simply exudes an aura of cool, and her theme and sense of style combine well with her gameplay. Usually pretty easy, but once in a while can put out some serious hurt. I find that she's actually my favorite villain to lose to, because she always makes it interesting.

The Ennead (Advanced): I liked them enough to write a guide on them, and I still find them to be one of the most enjoyable fights. It's kind of a pain to deal with all the shuffling entailed by their incapacitated powers, especially solo, but there's just so much depth to the fight, and it's still a lot less maintenance than that other team of villains (who are also fun, just not at the top of my rankings).

Ambuscade: I actually just ordered him a week ago, and fought him for the first time yesterday, on Challenge Mode. Wow. He really feels like an invisible stalker hunting the heroes down. His gadgets, cloaking device, and traps make it really tough to get a bead on him. My first fight against him ended in a loss, and Ambuscade was still at full health. You absolutely have to play on Challenge Mode to make the fight work at its best, though.

Citizen Dawn: Good synergies, plenty of variety, and her big "gotcha" card can be played around, making it a lot more interesting than stuff like Raiding Party. Five large expansions and three mini-expansions later, I think she's still the best villain in the game.

I like all the new villains from WotC.  Deadline out of that set has the most interesting alternate win condition and he only becomes very easy if your team can destroy his Ongoings regularly. 

I do have to say that I love fighting deadline. We have had fights where we kill him in the first few rounds, and fights where there was only one environment cards and two catastropies in play when we beat him.

I guess I'm in the minority here. I really don't like Deadline that much. Seems way too much of a timebomb for me, unless you have reliable and constant ongoing destruction.

I enjoy Deadline a lot myself, and his advanced mode. Woof. Its pretty close to a no win scenario.