I really appreciated the chart in the EE rulebook that listed the difficulty level of the villains and the complexity of the heroes. On a scale of 1 to 4 how challenging do you find the environments.
I'll start off by noting the obvious. Rook City is a 4. The Odyssey Space Station on Spiff's www.spiffworld.com/sotm/ page is a 1.
I would say for the origional 4 Enviornments:
Insula Primalis is at a 1. Most of the cards affect least hp targets, which will most likely be the villain's henchmen, and has a global damage buff. Some annoyances do arise, but not too bad. The Starter of Environments.
Megalopolis is at a 3. Some helpful stuff, like a damage buff, but the cards that can come off of that deck can be challenging (can't play hero cards?!?!?), but it isn't too bad. On the 3 scale, it's a little lower on there, just for the occasional filibuster factor. Might even be a two, but I don't think so
Ruins of Atlantis is also at a 2. There are more helpful things out there, but Room Leak and Pillars of Hercules can swing the game in the villians favor very easily. However, the Kracken is a good friend of the heros not named unity, so it's a give and take. Solid two.
Wagner Mars base is a 3. Not a whole lot of helpful stuff, but when stuff happens, it really happens. Expect to skip turns to prevent the base from blowing up and to be able to damage heros again. Luckily, the effects are easily dealt with. Proabably the weakest of the threes, but a three for the same reason Megalopolis is.
Rook City Enviornments:
Rook city is a 4. I haven't even played it yet, I'm so scared to. Very little of the cards help you, and even help the villian. I don't know how Wraith does it...
Pike Industrial Complex is a 3. While some of the vats can help you, like the Irridiated Cyclohexane Vat, some are just no good, like the supercolled trisolvent vat, and the biomemic plasma vat, and when they explode, man! that can be the end for heros. Rats can also be annoying. Definatly raised to a 4 if you are Unity or regular Absolute Zero.
Infernal Relics Enviornments:
Realm of Discord is a solid 2. Some of the stuff help you, but some of the stuff hurts you. It's a little better that the effects dissapear when another distortion comes in, so it's deal-with able, especially if you're Nightmist and can take that damage nullification. Also gets a bonus for perhaps the best flavor text in the set (Imbued Vitality)
Tomb of Anubis is also a 2, or maybe even a 1. My favorite enviornment, a lot of the cards hit everybody and play more cards of the enviroment deck. swarm villians will most likely be foiled by this enviroment for sure. However, since the enviorment gets very card-heavly, any villian that can take advatage of it (The Ennead, Omnitron, Spite, ect.) can ruin your day. An Easy environment, but don't get too comfortable.
Hope that helps, and I wonder if anybody has any other opinions about the enviroments.
Loads of 'em. Assuming that the 1-4 scale still applies to environments, here goes my relative difficulty order. Really, the things that can play extra villain cards are the ones I find nastiest.
4 - Rook City. What can I say, those cards are nasty.
3 - Atlantis. I hold this is the hardest of the base environments. The Krakens can be nice for minion control, but they are vicious if they catch you without minions. Mystical Defenses and Hallway Collapse often hit the heroes harder than the villains. Both Atlantean Font of Power and Pillars of Hercules allow for the villain to get extra plays, at START of turn. And Leaking Rooms suck.
3 - Realm of Discord. Potential for extra villain plays in Time Flies. Claustrophobic Delusion is brutal. This environment is wily. Ethereal Bonds suck, too.
2 - Tomb of Anubis. Lots of damage and lots of things to kill. You can't ignore this environment. I hate Urshe the most.
2 - Wagner Mars Base. Well, it kills your stuff. It can give it back to you pretty quickly, though. The thing with this environment is that it does very little damage, and most of the cards are easy to kill. Meteor Storm has been critical to my survival more times than I can count.
2 - Pike Industrial Complex. Those vats can be game-changing, but keep your environment destruction handy, and be prepared for Checmical Explosions. For all the nasty Rook City association, this one never really struck me as all that bad.
1 - Megalopolis. Very little damage, but Hostage Situation and Paparazzi are not friendly cards. Those are pretty much the worst it has, though.
1 - Insula Primalis. Just damage. It can be contained.
The ones in the middle are fairly interchangeable to me, but I stand by Rook City, Ruins of Atlantis... Megalopolis, Insula Primalis.
Flamethrower, you labeled Mars a 3 and then said a bunch of nice things about it. Did you mean it to be a 2? I agree about Atlantis. At the very best Pillars of Hercules lets the villain play two extra cards.
Yeah. Yeah I did. I also moved it under Tomb.
Well, at the very best, Pillars of Hercules flips when Take Down/Mistbound has been played, and the Heroes get a ton of benefit from it. But generally, it's pretty horrible. Also, it has this bad habit when you leave it alone of playing Rook City is Mine -> Leaking Room or Terraforming.
Well, I mean I agree that these are generally true... but it depends on the villian.
For example, RC is really tough, but easily playable against Akash-Bhuta. Why? Not many targets. Only 3 in the whole deck, so sure, RC might play some extra cards for AB, but it balances out with AB playing less cards from environment targets. RC is also very playable against Spite (actually, just about any environment makes very little difference against Spite).
You know where you DONT want to be against A-B? Industrial Complex. An experimental mutagen at the wrong time and... game over man, you're dead. You've very very dead. But not too bad against Voss (or others) because Pike doesnt punish you for having stuff, or take away your stuff, so you can build up a nasty doom setup of death.
Dawn and Omnitron can both be rough on Mars, as their penchant for destroying stuff comboes with Mars, and you never are able to get much out. But Mars isn't so bad against a host of other villians, so long as you can deal with Red Dust.
Well, similarly the difficulty of the villain depends on the environment, but the numbers in the EE rules are just guidelines. That's what I was looking for. They don't even have to be right. I've never lost to Gloomweaver and they say he's a 3.
Gloomweaver apparently was harder during testing and got overnerfed. Do a search on the forums, there are some modifications you can make to make Gloomweaver suitably dangerous.
As for tough environments, the toughest I played was a 3 hero game vs AB in the tomb of Anubis. Anubis came out three times in one cycle of the environment deck, healing AB to full every time. Absolutely brutal.