Hello forum community! Me and a gaming group of mine have decided to order SotM and a few of the expansions, and one of the members and I are going to play a a few games tomorrow and was wondering where a good place was to start both with heroes, what villian, and what environment to use. From what I've found, Baron Blade is the least difficult villian, and metropolise (sp?) is the most forgiving environment, so we were going to start with those unless someone else had a suggestion.
My real question comes down to the heroes. There will be only two of us, so we both are willing to play two heroes just to get a look at as many as we could in a shorter period of time. Should we avoid the more difficult heroes when doing this or would it help to have one or two in there? Is there a good starting group to use? We both are seasoned vets when it comes to card games, but this is a bit different, and was just looking for a few tips!
Thanks,
'
We have the second edition SotM box, along with shattered timelines and the rook city/other expansion box set for card references.
Megaopolise is certainly *not* the most forgiving. Not by a longshot.
Play against Baron Blade in Insula Primus (the Dino land).
As for heros, since you are both vets at card games, you can't go wrong picking anyone. Maybe hold off on AbZero for the first game just because he can be a table flipper if his setup never comes.
What expansions do you have access to besides core?
I think for your first game and without having any experienced players to lead you through it is recommend starting with heroes from Enhanced Edition... except Absolute Zero (I love him, but he can be complicated)
I think something like:
Legacy/Tempest for player 1 and Wraith/Ra for player 2 would be a good introand not too difficult to manage.
With that convo I think you can go up against any villain/environment combo. Personally, I'd do Omnitron/Megalopolis
Megalopolis is not the place you want to start. There are so many *heros cant play cards* and *heros cant use powers* that it really disrupts learning the game if its your first time.
Megalopis isn't too painful, but I am not a big fan of it as it stops so many card plays, draws, and power uses. Insula Primalis, Ruins of Atlantis, or The Block would be my recommendations. Possibly Pike Industrial Complex.
Not sure how big your group is, but this is a team I would suggest for five players. Tempest, Ra, Haka, Fanatic, and Wraith fighting in Insula Primalis against Baron Blade. Though if you have less, removing any of those is also fine.
Heroes to avoid for a few games; Absolute Zero, NightMist, Argent Adept, and Omnitron-X.
Edit: For a second game, I recommend Voss. Using any hero aside for the four I mentioned to avoid. Environments to not use for it would be Megalopolis, Wagner Mars Base, Rook City, Realm of Discord, Tomb of Anubis, and Time Cataclysm. Wow... I could of listed which ones to use to make a smaller list.
For a third game, you now have enough experience that you all fully understand most ins and outs of the game, make very little errors! Now play any hero, villain, environment that appeals the most. Though probably still avoid using those four heroes.
I can see that point; in fact, I got my backside handed to me by Omnitron in Megalopolis for my first game… but that really got me more excited to play it again and best them!! And thematically I felt it was a better debut mission for the heroes.
For hero selection: I heartily endorse use of the Freedom Four as an opening team. They've got built-in story connection, and most of them are extremely straightforward to play.
For hero selection, I recommend using the complexity table in the rulebook. Definitely stick to level 1 and level 2 heroes for your first few games. Stick to the core set for the beginning unless you have Chrono Ranger. He is another good hero to start off with.
For environment deck, start with Isula Primalis. Everyone loves dinosaurs.
For villian deck, Baron Blade is a good start. Then either Omnitron or Grand Warlord Voss. Akash'Bhuta is also a good 2nd game to choose from.
@ foote - We have access to the Rook City, Shattered Timelines, and Infernal Relics.
And my first thought was to play the freedom 5 (Minus AZ). Our group normally consists of 5 or more people sometimes, but 5 normally. We picked this game up because it isn't easy to win at all the time. There are nice levels of difficulty to it (from research and reading). We have played other coop games in the past with very little trouble, so we would like to see something that we can win at and possibly lose at.
We are going to stay away from the "3" difficulty heroes for awhile, only because they do have special mechanics to them and they will probably be the ones we will play with the most later just for the challenge. (I personally would love to play as The Sentinels, but Vengence is all sold out!)
But I do think for the first game we are trying to keep it simple before we ramp things up in the next few games.
I will post how the games go when we play tomorrow!
Playing two heroes makes it harder to get each one down your first game.
I would definitely suggest each of you grabbing a lvl 1 hero, like Legacy or Haka.
Wraith and Tachyon are also pretty easy to figure out while playing a second hero.
It is easy to miss some of the less obvious interactions when playing two heroes each.
Legacy, Wraith, Tachyon, Haka are great first game heroes as you get a good variety of mechanics wihtout anything being complicated enough that you'd have trouble playing them first game with another hero.
After that, you should have a pretty decent grasp of the fundamentals, then do whatever, I'd suggest Voss as a second villain, some of them get pretty complex pretty quick, and Voss is a totally different experience from Blade, they are polar opposites.
I'd suggest Blade Primalis, then Voss Megalopolis. That should give you a pretty good start.
Hardest Villain/Environment combos are these generally. But it can change depending on your hero setup. Going against Iron Legacy with a team void of any Ongoing destruction is going to be very hard regardless of where you fight for instance.
Ennead of Advanced is also one of the most constantly challenging fights as well regardless of Enviro.
I would offer a few pointers on what to avoid for your first few games. Absolute Zero, Argent Adept, The Ennead, Megalopolis, and Nightmist. The heroes are a bit more complicated and would not be ideal for getting the basic rules down and getting a feel for the game in general. Megalopolis has a few cards that prevent you from playing parts of the game, and also is counter productive to learning the game. The Ennead are problably the most complicated villain to run (imo) as they have various triggers that could trigger more triggers, so again not good when you are trying to get started. All of those mentioned are fun and can be a delightful challenge, just not something for people trying to learn the basics. All of this is IMHO, of course.
Vengence is not sold out. That is left over in the online store here because it was available for preorder some months ago. Vengence is in the process of being released so they are sending out shipments to the kickstarter backers, pre orders and distrubitor/suppliers for sale. After that Vengence will be available from the online store here as well as retailers that sell it. I wouldnt care to guess an exact time frame, maybe somebody else has more information, but it should be available soon (within a few weeks).
Yeah, but if you're new to the game and still getting the hang of the different turn phases and stuff, suddenly finding that you're not allowed to do one of them for a round can interfere with the ease of learning. I support Insula Primalis as a good starting place :).
