Newbie doing something wrong?

Other Games SotM Game Engine
1

Hi all,

I now own SotM, Shattered Timelines, and the combined Rook City and Infernal Relics expansion; and I'm trying to get my friends and family into playing it. I read through a few posts here on the forums about recommended characters and villains to start with, but we are all getting badly whipped to shreds.

Example: Our last game was against Warlord Voss (nice, straighforward play mechanic, but hard). Three of us played Wraith, Haka, and Nightmist, and we barely got Voss down below 50 hp before we all bit it. Nightmist was out quite a bit sooner (which was sad, as the player had used Nightmist before and seemed to know what he was doing). 

Example 2: Again against Voss, with Chrono-Ranger, Nightmist, and Tempest. We actually won! But Tempest died fast (that dang heal card never came up, and it's frustrating for someone to die and no longer be involved for the rest of the game), Nightmist kept healing herself, and Chrono-Ranger was LITERALLY at ONE hp when Voss died.

Example 3: La Capitan. We all died and everyone hated everything. Kept getting all of our ongoing cards taken away and couldn't build up our power.

I could come up with more, but hopefully you can see my point. We're losing most of our games unless we all play difficulty 1 heroes and villains. We've also tried different environments for each setup (this last game, with the Mars Base, the players decided to just let it self-destruct to put the surviving players out of their misery). 

Are we doing something wrong? It seems like every round when an environment card or villain card is played we just dread it. Voss, with his minions was doing so much damage against us that we couldn't recover. Other villains and environments either take away our stuff while we're trying to build up, or negate a bunch of our onsey-twosey damage. I read posts where people said they got up to do doing like 5 to 15 damage per TURN... how?!?! Most of our damage is "hit for one" or two, and a lot of the cards in our decks that would enhance that are all "limited" (which, as I understand it, means only one of that type can be in play at a time). Haka was able to take out a bunch of Voss' minions at once, but then the next villain card brought them (and all the ones from the trash) back into play.

Does anyone have some advice? I really love the theme of this game, but can't seem to get a grasp on the strategies involved.

 

2

Voss in particular is harder for 3 heroes than for more. I believe he hardly uses the H mechanic. He also has no destruction in his deck, so if you can survive until you get set up then you can often take him out in short order. Because of the lack of destruction, it's worth prioritizing long-term development over one-shots if there aren't super-damaging minions out. If you take a look at almost any heroes deck (especially Chrono-Ranger's), you can easily come up with combinations that lead to massive amounts of damage with just a few cards out.

Villain deck manipulation is also key, to avoid cards like Forced Deployment (or else get them out early when they aren't so damaging).

Was Tempest not using his Incapacitated powers? He has one of the best such powers in the game, although I guess it's less useful against Voss than many other villains.

You'll also get better about seeing synergies between different decks as you play more. You may want to browse some of the play-by-forum games here; the level of play is pretty high there, and think about why people played the way they did.

EDIT: Also, Flamethrower has some good strategy guides: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/flamethrower49s-strategy

3

 

You know that incapacitated heroes get to use an incapacitated power on their turn, right?

 

You're playing with three heroes. Though the game has the 'H' scaling mechanic, it only goes so far. Most of the villains are considerably harder with only three heroes. Try having someone place two heroes so you can have four.

 

Voss' big gotcha is Forced Deployment. You may be able to play for the eventuality that it's coming.

 

La Capitan is swingy. In some games she gets a ton of minions out. In others, not as many.

 

Try this team against Voss: Legacy, Wraith, Ra, Tempest. If Wraith gets the Infrared eyepiece, use it to try to control Voss' deck to bury Forced Deployment and the ships. Hopefully Legacy and Ra will be able to boost Tempest so that Tempests' base power can kill all the minions.

 

4

Everyone has mentioned the incapacitated powers, but I figured it was worth checking that you know the Nemesis bonus stuff relates only to damage directly from Voss (i.e. only those with the icon). Obviously, I'm not saying you did get that wrong (hell, first time. I tripped up on the 'Minion' stuff and factored in Thorathians…though, that just made me extra cautious), but best to cover all the angles

5

HOLY CRAP!!!  Thank you! I just figured it out!

Reading some of the play-by-play forum posts, as well as the strategy guides… we were only allowing ourselves one "Equipment, Limited" or one "Ongoing, Limited" card per player. Apparently, we misunderstood the rules! You can have many "Whatever, Limited" cards out, but only one of each specific card.

So, Wraith could have multiple "Equipment, Limited" cards in play (and actually use two attack powers if one of them is the "Utility Belt"). We were playing that she could only have one "Equipment, Limited" card in play (so I kept having to swap the cards in order to use anything different).

UGH!!!

 

…oh, and yes, when a hero was incapacitated, we used their incapacitated powers… it's just that the table basically decided what to do, and the player of that hero was generally left to go eat snacks.

 

6

Yeah, that'd nerf a bunch of heros pretty badly.  Ouch.

7

Yeah, that'll do it.

8

Glad we could help you figure it out!

9

Wow, Wraith would really suck, no wonder you lost.  I'm honestly surprised you got as far as you did.

10

Highly recommend you not play it this way. Let the player decide what his character does, just like they would on their turn. That way the person is still involved. (And you know they only get to use one of the powers on their turn, right? Just want to make sure - I've seen folks try to use all of them…)

11

Interesting quasi-variant you stumbled upon there, Elias.  Don't feel bad about the mistake; it's all but a law of science that when SOTM is played, someone will do something wrong, usually just a math error, but what you had was much more interesting (if deadly - especially the La Capitan game, oof!).  I hope you'll find that the game is quite fair most of the time; you're definitely within your rights to stick to non-advanced games against some of the difficulty 2 villains (excepting La Capitan, but including Gloomweaver and arguably Kismet, in spite of whatever numbers are printed for these characters), get a few victories under your belt, and THEN go up against some tougher guys once you have the necessary experience.

(Win rate in my games is extremely high, but this probably has a lot to do with me being very experienced and more than a little bossy.  I haven't had any players outright complain that I'm playing their turn for them, but it is probably something I should learn to do less of, even if it means the win percentage goes down.  Not against the effing Chairman, though; I was completely justified in micromanaging that game.)

12

 

Reading your post I wondered if that was what was happening (I've been in self-exile to avoid vengeance spoilers so I couldn't respond sooner). I've introduced the game to a few family members and explaining what "limited" meant was always something I had to do at least twice before they got that. Hopefully now you can grudge match Voss and crush under your heel  :smiling_imp:

13

The rules that I always have to explain at least twice in every game:

1.  Play, Power, Draw.

2.  No, there isn't a hand limit.

3.  There's another one on the same level as #2 but it's late and I'm spacing on it.

The Limited thing, some players don't notice it, but nobody has been as overzealous about it as Elias.  Again, I congratulate him on being innovative.  (Not sarcastic at all, I really think this is a neat way of getting it "wrong".)

14

"You can't use the same instance of a power twice in your power phase, even if you are allowed two powers" is one that I try to emphasise when I've explained the game to people as I've seen new people not understand it and overstate their abilities.

As for "Power, play, draw" I found it helpful to put the back of the EE instructions out somewhere visible for people playing their first few games, until they get used to the turn structure.

15

facepalm

I'm sure that was just a typo, but just to be certain you'd better take another quick glance at the back of the rulebook yourself.

16

Face palm indeed, that was just a typo. I do know it's Play, Power, Draw. ;)

17

Soooo... I called an "emergency gaming session" with everyone who I've played with thus far and let them know our mistake in interpreting the rules. 5 of us played again against Voss: Wraith, Haka, Nightmist, Tempest, and even someone who decided to play Absolute Zero. Not only did we lock him down for half the game into causing nearly no damage to us (with Nightmist going "Immune to damage" and Wraith redirecting villain damage from lowest HP to highest - which was Nightmist after Haka took a beating), but we severely whomped on him!

Wraith was actually incredibly fun to play with all of her equipment out and being able to use multiple powers (what? I can control the top two cards of the villain deck AND deal several damage? Nice!). Tempest became a force to be reckoned with. Haka, well, smashed. Nightmist was our group shield until she went and Oblivioned all over his minions. Absolute Zero didn't suck. And the final move against voss was Wraith playing her equipment barrage card with all possible equipment (and equipment, limited) cards out, doing a grand 14+ damage (with some modifiers) against Voss (and if I wasn't supposed to include the "equipment, limited" cards in that barrage, I don't want to hear it - it was awesome). We had a great time.

Phew... thanks everyone for saving us from ourselves!

 

18

Yeah, that sounds a bit better. That's a great team, and that sounds like a fun game. Glad you got it sorted out!

19

Glad you had a great time! "Equipment, Limited" cards do indeed count as "Equipment" cards, so you played that right!

20

"Equipment" and "Limited" are two separate keywords - anything with the "Equipment" keyword is equipment, and anything with the "Limited" keyword can only have one copy of itself out.

It sounds like you had a pretty good game there :). Now try fighting Dawn when you have no means of deck manipulation, get all set up with a million cards out each, and wait for her to play That Card...>:).