Our first run at the game

General GTG General Discussion
1

So i picked this up earlier this week and was quite excited to get it to the table last night.  We played a couple other games and went and saw Skyfall at some point, but it was a pretty big hit.  Just wanted to mention our general experience and ask, how the hell do you beat Citizen Dawn?

None of us had played before (except I tried out a couple turns in practice to learn the rules) so we all jsut picked charecters based on appearance and maybe a look at their backstories.

So first match we did Baron Blade vs. Haka, Wrath, Fanatic, Legacy, and Visionary

This was a joke.  We flipped him over by I beleive the third turn.  This was helped by Wrath drawing 2 of that broken Impromptu Invention card in the first 3 turns and legacy just pumping everyones damage every turn.  We destroyed him shortly afterwards.  i think he did maybe 15 damage to the group total.

Second match, everyoen was complaining about the easyness of the game, so i went and grabbed the villian who most interested me thematically:  the Ennead.  For theme we played in the Anubis tomb.  Ennead vs. ExPatriette, Ra, Bunker, and Argent Adept.

Early on we got worried when one card flip triggered like 3 powers.  First guy we killed was Osiris, and after flipping him realised he was goign to destroy anything remotely dangerous from the enviorment automatically.  Anubis himself was killed by it that round.  Ended up not having any real problems, only one more enemy got added by the time we won, with everyone at around 10-12 HP.  Argent Adept was doing like 20 things a round, but the player had a few drinks in him at this point so I've no idea if he was being played correctly.

Third Match, after anouther fairly easy win I decided to grab Citizen Dawn, one who I had seen in looking up info on the game before purchasing as being a particular buster of balls.  Dawn vs. Mr. Fixer, Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Ardent Adept in Rook City

3 starting citizens, Summer, Assault, and Battery.  First enemy turn Dawn does 2 damage, summer does 6, assault does 8, and battery does 5.  21 damage before the players even get a turn, that was more than Baron von Teapot did the entire game.  We were just happy the drawn card was healing light or whatever.  Tachyon apparently cant do much for a while, so she starts drawing and disarding.  Fixit Felix takes out a few citizens with a tire iron or something, and the other two start building up cards so they can do... anything.

After like 3 turns magic light shows up and stomps all over Zero and Adept destroying everything.    This happens again 2 turns later.  Eventually Dawn goes Dark Pheonix mode or whatever.  I think 20 damage had been done to her total at this point.  An enviorment card that gives an extra villain card pops up, and an ongoign that gives more villain cards from her deck pops too.  4 villian card draws.

After about 2 turns we were inundated by I think 7 citizens, one of whom made them all immortal, and no ability to deal damage on the hero side as the light spell kept getting reshuffled and showing up destroying everything.  Game ended with her at 71, a horde of citizens, and all of us left scratching our heads.

It will definitely be interesting to see when this one hits the table again.  Everyone but myself was pretty frustrated with the last entirely futile game, though that may have been in part because it was quite late at that point.  Tachyon in partcular went and riffled through her entire deck afterwards trying to figure out what the charetcer could actually possibly do and realised that there were a small number of great cards that they just never actually drew.

Haveto say, I greatly enjoyed the game.  Once everyones recuperated next week i'll see what other\ opinions are.

2

Baron Blade is usually easy, especially with five players.  I recommend taking a look at the advanced mode for him, or at least playing him in a rough environment, like Rook City.  Advanced will definitely bring the urgency with five players.

The Ennead can chain well, depending entirely on who they have and what they draw.  I can't recommend their advanced mode, as they are quite lethal.  You thought you had an issue against Dawn, wait until you consider what they can do.

Dawn is great.  That game, you had the perfect storm of slow-setup heroes and high-damage start.  Devastating Aurora is horrible, but at least she only has two of them.  Ongoing destruction to zap Channel the Eclipse and Return with the Dawn is imperative.  Give it another shot, probably with some different heroes, and not all games will be that bad.  Also, you were in Rook City.  I'd suggest relocating, at least until you get your bearings and see that Dawn is not unbeatable.

Tachyon is great, by the way.  No, she doesn't do consistent damage, but her utility is superb, and her Lightspeed Barrages are one of the best finishing moves.

Welcome to the circus!  We hope you stay a while!

3

Welcome! Always good to hear of new people getting into the game.

So, your first match vs Baron Blade, with 5 characters. It's not at all surprising you found him easy with that setup, regardless of which environment you were in. The Baron is definitely the easiest villain, and his main threat comes from his starting side, with the alternate victory condition. When you start with Haka, Fanatic and Legacy, you've got an easy 7 points of damage per round with just base powers, so you're well equipped to thrash him. He's harder if you bring characters that need a couple turns to get going, like Absolute Zero, Mister Fixer, Argent Adept.

Second match vs The Ennead - the difficulty of these guys varies a lot depending on their card draw. If you get a couple extra guys come out early, they're really dangerous (hence advanced ennead being one of the toughest fights in the game right now). Sounds like this one worked out okay for you.

Dawn is just... Hard. She's by far the hardest villain in the base game, and holds her own with everything released since. On top of that, you fought her in rook city, which is the hardest environment. To make it even harder on yourself, you have AZ and Argent Adept, who both need several turns to get going, Mister Fixer isn't much better. Plus, sounds like you got a rough draw.

the trick to beating Dawn is Citizen control. If you let them get out of hand, they'll overrun you quickly. This usually means having enough damage early to be able to put down the starting draw, and then managing them as they come out. Now youve played her once and seen what she does, you'll have a better idea of what to look out for next time. I've beaten her a couple times, but only when I built a team to do it. The creators claim they can beat any villain on advanced mode with any three heroes, but I think that depends an awful lot on card draw.

4

Honestly, I'm not surprised by how your third game turned out. Rook City is (from what I've heard) the hardest environment, Zero and Adept are both fairly difficult to play for the first time (especially if you don't understand the main strategy of each deck before playing them), and none of the heroes you played were particularly geared towards repeatedly doing decent amounts of damage to single targets. Personally, I would have used Ra, Tempest or Fanatic instead of Absolute Zero, or possibly use Legacy so that Tachyon could deal massive amounts of damage with her burst cards.

5

My strategy for Tachyon - work on getting Burst cards into your trash. Meanwhile, stockpile all three copies of Lightspeed Barrage and at least one Lightning Reflexes in your hand. Once you have these, wait till you have as many cards as possible in your trash - you don't want your reck to run out so that you need to reshuffle. You want as many Burst cards as possible in your trash (there's about 23, I think, in total). At this point, you can kick some serious arse. First play a Lighting Reflexes - this lets you play two cards immediately. First card, a Lightspeed Barrage (attacks a single target with damage equal to the number of Burst cards in your trash). Second card, Lightning Reflexes again. So you can now play two more cards. So you play both your remaining Lightspeed Barrages. If you have your HUD Goggles equipped, you can also play another card during this round. And another one if you have Pushing the Limits in play. If the main villain isn't dead by then, they should be close enough for someone else to mop up the mess after the resounding thrashing you've just dealt out :).

Another good thing about Tachyon is she's barely affected by carsd that destroy Ongoings or Equipment - you can get by with no Ongoings in play and she has three copies of the HUD Goggles in her deck. Easy enough to get hold of, given how fast she can burn through her cards :).

One thing to perhaps consider when facing a villain such as Citizen Dawn (who has some cards that you just really don't want to come out) is deck control. Heroes good at this are the Wraith (Infra-Red Eyepiece), Visionary (most of her deck), and Nightmist (Astral Premonition and Mistbound). This way you can have some say in which card is gonna come up next, and take steps to avoid it if it's unavoidably nasty.

One suggestion of a really, really epic team (in my opinion) is Legacy and Ra in Insula Primalis. Both characters and the environment have stuff which buffs damage. Earlier today we played a game versus Akash'Bhuta under these conditions and totally kicked her arse - at one point we had a total of +2 damage from Legacy (Galvanise and Inspiring Presence, plus he had his self-only damage buff up too), +3 from the Environment (3x Obsidian Field), and +1 from Ra (Imbued Fire). Ra (played by me) also had +2 self-only from Solar Flare and +1 from his Staff. I was doing about nine damage from an attack that would normally only do one point of damage :D. I suppose adding in someone like Fanatic and/or Tempest to this equation would push the overall damage-per-round through the roof!

6

Against Baron Blade, his first card draw was some elemental redirector amor.  With a group of Haka, Wrath, Fanatic, Legacy, and Visionary, it didn't seam to matter to any of us and we completely ignored it all game.  I think we fought him in Megaopolis.

I seam to remember something about the Tachyon player talking about having to get rid of certain combo cards they were saving, like when we got hit by 2 blinding lights (so x4 discard) in one turn.

Apparently rook city was a bad choice.  With neither of the first enviorments really mattering at all I just went for a 'city' themed one becuase of the villian.  Someone mentioned  Insula Primalis, which is what I used in my practice rounds.  With a turn 1 volcano in my testing I was skeptical about using it again, but maybe that would have helped clear out some citizens.

I am still curious about the Innead.  Their advanced does seam extremely diffiult but base I don't see how they could be much worse outside of a very unlucky draw of a bunch fo spawning cards really fast, which amounts to the about same thign as the advanced overall.  I think we also might have lucked out with the ones we got though, as none of their incapacitated powers were that bad at all.

7

Tachyon shouldn't have any trouble storing her combo cards unless something forces you to discard stuff from your hand - like I said, you only need four cards to pull it off - all three Lightspeed Barrage cards, and one of your two Lightning Reflexes. Any extra "play card" cards are a bonus in order to play other stuff (such as to play one final Burst card before you start the combo, in order to get that card into the trash and thereby add one to each Barrage hit). If you are forced to discard stuff…well, I suppose you'd just better hope you have some random other cards sitting around that you can get rid of. Fortunately having a handful of cards isn't too much of a problem for Tachyon, since she can usually draw them almost as fast as she can play them :).

Regarding Insula Primalis, Legacy is immune to the volcano (there's only one in the whole deck) once he has Danger Sense out (makes him immune to all Environment damage). If Ra can get Flesh of the Sun God out, he can make everyone else immune to fire damage by using its power (the base effect of the card makes Ra immune to fire - the power makes all heroes immune). Then you can just sit back and watch everything else burn to death >:).