I only have access to the game app and those villains, so I'll limit my comments to those.
I think each villain appeals to me for different reasons at different times. When I'm looking for an easy win, I'll go for Ambuscade or Baron Blade. When I'm looking for a quickie game, MBB fills the bill. The Omnitrons are fun when I want to whomp on something. Voss is highly satisfying when he goes down, especially on advanced.
And then there's Citizen Dawn. I find Dawn's games are more of a chess match than any of the other villains, and I generally like that. So I guess she's my favorite for now.
I haven't gotten to play WotC yet....just popped into my mailbox last night so those 4 are excluded.
Iron Legacy is just fun to me. It really feels like an "against impossible odds" type of match since he can be/is very brutal. He was actually the villian I first played against over a year ago and my friend told me "If you can deal with this you can probably deal with the rest of this game." We lost but I had fun.
I also enjoy La Capitan, not because she is hard....because she isn't really....but I've had a lot of games where she gets the right draws and can flood the field with minions making games more of a slugfest.
Citizen Dawn is also a blast, a lot of good synergies. Still like playing her even after all the expacs....though like I said haven't tried WotC yet.
Right now, I'm not sure who is my favorite villain to battle. I always enjoy fighting Voss, Dawn is a potent challenge, and Cosmic Omnitron is always fun. I know my favorites do not include Miss Information (freaking delaying tactics!) and Infinitor (when his "I play ALL manifestations!" engine starts working, I start to get frustrated).
Core: Dawn and Voss are both inconsistent, but I they are still some of my favorites.
RC: Plague Rat is my favorite from this set and requires some unusual tactics with all of his irreducible damage and heroes hurt themselves effects.
IR: Appostate is fun for a fairly short game if you bring a decent team for him, or a long game if you take a bad team for him. Ennead is fun in a lot of ways, and has good variety, but I wish it had less shuffling.
ST: None I especially favored. The Dreamer isn’t bad but has a lot of disruptive effects and plays many cards that can take a while to manage.
WC: Kaagra offers unique gameplay. Infinitor can be good, though I prefer playing him on a hard environment than playing him on Advanced. Undecided about Progeny.
I’m not one of the Deadline fans. I’ve faced him twice, and beat him with damage both times. I didn’t use all of the ongoing destruction that I had. He blew up all of the threatening environment cards. My group and I find him fairly bland from a game play perspective.
Vengeance-style I’m undecided, pending additional villains. All the shuffling and management is a bit tedious do far though. I kind of like it but prefer normal games so far.
I'd give Deadline advanced a try. It is a much more complelling fight, to my eyes. I like normal, and hes been added to my rotation of villains for new players, but you are right, he isn't super challenging.
I'm not really a fan of the Advanced and Challenge modes that are just DR and extra damage. They make the fight more difficult but in a way that in my opinion is kind of boring. Both Barons have great advanced modes, and even though I haven't tried it yet, I really like the concept of regular Baron's challenge mode.
I don't understand the shade being thrown at Deadline. Am I the only one who only plays randomized games? You might win games against him sure, but you likely were 1 turn away from the alternate loss condition. Not sure if people feel that pressure of the clock. I know It spooks me every game.
Advanced Ennead is one of the best fights in-game for my money.
Dawn is always a challenge. LaCapitain is great when you want a lot of targets to mow down.
Plauge Rat is fantastic on Advnaced for a quick beatdown when you're tired of Iron Legacy destroying your soul.
Not a lot of love for the Vengeful Five going on. I understand that running that many villains can be a drag, especially solo or with new players, but I love the team dynamic and the tactical choices you have to make. Do you destroy Friction and Baron's stuff, so they start hurting themselves? Who do you focus on first? Should you deal with the mini-nemeses before they get overwhelming or go for the kill? (For extra fun, leave mini-nemeses in play when their V5 boss becomes incapacitated)
Sure, if you min-max your team *coughLegacycough* then the V5 can be pushovers. But with an increased randomness factor over one-deck villains, the V5 brings something new to every battle. So I'm really looking forward to all the combinations that will be possible with 15 team-villain decks.
(Also, I agree; fighting the Ennead is always fun)
I like the V5 and i feel the best way to make Ambuscade fun to play against is to add one or 2 V5 members instead of increasing his h beyond 3 in 4 or 5 player games. I can't wait to see the 10 new decks as they will bonify the V5 experience. In the end, I play an almost pure random and love most villains with a few that fall short.
You're right and I think the reason is exactly what you said, just a drag to play that many villians.
Though I agree with all your points as to why they are fun to play, I just don't like to keep up with all of them which makes them not fun to me. Also Legacy, who seems to make his way into every game I play, makes the V5 seem pretty easy…maybe I should just ban Legacy and try the V5 more.
My biggest issue with the V5 is not so much that it is a drag, as much as it is that the variety feels lower. It is one reason I am excited to get Villains in hand, I think it'll create a lot more variety for that mode and breath new life in to it.
Also, I love the idea of adding Vengeance villains in to add more difficulty. I'll pitch that to my friend and we will give it a go.
I actually really like the concept for the V5. It's just not something you can play a lot. During a night of Sentinels, you're probably only going to do one, maybe two vengeance games.
I like to play him on Normal mode and just add 40 more HP. For many villains that would just drag out the game, but for Deadline he will use that time to eat the environment so there is great tension.
That COULD work, hrm, but most of our Deadline games already come close to his alt victory, so I'm not sure the HP increase would work for us.
What I love about his advanced mode is that it alters the way to win. Suddenly, destroying Ongoings is a "ONLY FOR SUPER BIG HUGEO EMERGENCIES" rather then the default proper action. His flip side advanced is interesting too, since it imperils you further if you choose to ignore the enviroment and assume he will deal with it for you. It really is one of my favorite advanced modes, simply for how elegently it increases the challenge. It doesn't simply crank him up to 11, it takes the easiest paths to victory and floods them with magma and tears.
Citizen Dawn still ranks as my favorite villain to play against, by a good stretch.
Games against her always seem to come out...epically. They can have huge swings between villain and hero advantage - and that makes for some of the most exciting, fist-pumping games possible. Dawn has a great combination of minions, one-shots, and ongoings; though her flip mechanic is straightforward, it can really throw the game in a different direction; and the way her minions play off each other makes them more than the sum of their parts. I find that there's always something for the various hero types to do, everyone is always busy, and the balance of the game could swing at any time. Most fun of all is how, with the variety in her deck, it's really easy to interpret her plays as thematically relevant to what's going on in the game. It's almost like there's another human behind her. One time we played her in Silver Gulch, and drew Lost in Time. Dawn did not like that. Aurora.
Voss and La Capitan are good for similar reasons, and even Baron Blade captures that feel somewhat, but they just aren't quite Dawn caliber.
Still, even if I turn out not to like a villain after a few plays, nothing really beats playing a villain for the first time, without looking at their deck. We played Deadline like that - without reading anything on the backside of his card - and when things proceeded straightforwardly at first, we quickly found ourselves shouting "Augh! WHAT IS HE DOING? Oh, nooooooooo!" and reacting in real-time to the discovery that he was just going to burn the environment down around us. We pulled it out of the fire at the very end, one flip away from losing.
I guess my point is: the best Sentinels villains - heck, the best Sentinels games - are the ones that make me shout.
