So having just got Shattered Timelines today I simply had to get to grips with my new cards so I started out against Kismet no biggy so I tired out La Capitan and that went not so well, later I tired my hand at The Dreamer and while tight I still pulled a win.
Which brings to the big man himself after hearing so much horror about him I was unsure about facing Iron Legacy but I thought what the hell. Having just taken down The Dreamer in Silver Gulch I figured why leave but who could possilbly face down the might Ironclad Tyrant?
In the end I settled on Legacy, The Scholar, Chrono-Ranger and The Wraith which sounded like a great team however I was soon proven wrong with Legacy, Chrono-Ranger and The Wraith all going down on the same turn I thought for sure that it was over after all how could one man side against the full power of Iron Legacy?
Well it turns out pretty well as the Scholar had his three forms out he managed to play the long game and heal and hand out damage in equal amounts more than The Tyrant could deal or heal until the old hermit snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
This was the most down to the wire game I've played and I can't even begin to describe how magic it was. I love this game!
So I'm very keen to hear other peoples tips, tricks and tactics for toppling Iron Legacy or even just about games like the above one where you pulled through at the last minute to save the Earth and send another evil villian to the block.
In one of the few G+ hangout games I was at, we used Meteor Showers from Mars Base to stall IL until Bunker (played by myself) had enough cards under Omni-Cannon kill him outright. Without abusing Showers the way we did, theres no way we woulda pulled a win out.
Iron Legacy pretty much has a "soft enrage" as I like to say. In other words, you are on a timer. If you arn't kinda close to a flat out kill by the start of round 3 (if you even lived that long to begin with), you are in serious trouble. Unlike other villains which need to be attacked in a "marathon" mindset (like AkashB or Chairman), IL is a "sprint". There is little time for hero setup. You need to go for the throat immediatley or be crushed.
Yup, Iron Legacy games tend to be short and extremely damage-heavy, regardless of who wins (the fact he gets a Nemesis bonus against six whole heroes doesn't help matters much if you play using any of those). Plus once you flip him it's a case of "yay the environment can hurt him now" countered pretty heavily by "oh crap, he's got soak and is now healing a whole load of hp every turn". I believe a common tactic is to either more or less one-shot him (as in, kill him in one shot, not kill him with a card that is of the type "one shot" ;)), in which case stuff like Wrathful Retribution or the Omnicannon are quite popular choices. Alternatively, hold off on flipping him for as long as possible while you build up and then try to pummel him down with uber damage. And all the while he's beating the crap out of everyone and occasionally forcing discards and/or breaking your stuff.
Out of curiosity, how did you manage to beat him as the Scholar? Did you manage to get enough extra draw from your incapped allies that you could maintain a Flesh-to-Iron or two whilst building up your hand in order to Turn Loose? That's about the only means the Scholar has of dealing huge damage in one go (apart from a nice blast of Grace Under Fire whilst fighting somewhere with a million targets) so I was just wondering how you were keeping up with all the healing and soak that Angry Paul has.
I had one copy of each of his forms out and with the incap abilities of the other heroes I was able to heal heaps while dealing damage, I also spent my first two turns after the others fell either immune to damage or with IL unable to deal damage which bought me time to heal up so I could soak up more damage. I was fortunate enough to heal as much or more than the damage I was taking and deal more damage than he could heal.
Was he doing enough damage to you through Iron's DR? If you are not taking enough damage you will heal to full health quickly, and overhealing does not translate into damage through Energy forms (health must be recovered). IL consistently deals instances of 3+ damage, but I'd like to know how it worked for you.
Scholar is probably the one hero I have a complete understanding of, but I rarely have ever found myself using 1 of each form, since if I can sustain 3 forms anyway, I'm always going to run the Liquid Energy Engine (Water + 2x Energy) style and blow everything up. But I can see the rational behind going 1x1x1 in this case, especailly when you know ongoing destruction is right around the corner.
I've actually run several games where I have had mixed Iron and Energy. Using Liquid instead of Iron, I would of easily died.
One of the games I remember was against the Advanced Ennead in Insula Primalis, all the heroes aside from Scholar had a very painful death, Scholar was left alone in single Digits. He went into full on Iron mode, smacking things with Truth Seeker. Most the the incapped heroes allowed Scholar to use powers, so more Truth Seeking. From the Environment, there were 2 Obsidian Fields. Leaving the only damage The Ennead could do was when they did (H)-1, in this case it equaled 4, +3, to 7 points of damage. But with 3 Iron Forms, it went down to 1 no problem. After Scholar finally had gained 2 Keep Movings and a Mortal Form to Energy, it was time to unleash tons of healing. Over the course of the next 2 rounds, Scholar maintained 3 Irons and 3 Energies. He was barely taking any damage, but since he was still in single digits, he had a lot of breathing space. Note that with 2 Obsidian Fields and 3 Energies, whenever he regained a single hit point, he would deal 3 damage 3 times. On the round where he was probably going to have to toss some forms as the maintaining them was becoming an issue, the Environment had played Volcanic Eruption. So he tossed the Iron Forms, played Expect the Worst and got the remaining Ennead to Volcano killing range.
In our one game against Iron Legacy so far, we managed to sneak out a close victory---surprisingly though, once we recovered from the initial burst, we stemmed the tide and made it more of a marathon in our favor. I think our team was Omnitron-X, Nightmist, Wraith, and Legacy. We were playing in Freedom Tower, which we though would give us a bit better shot, given that it was our first time against him and we figured we had a decent chance of being slaughtered regardless---overall, I'm sure it helped, but it backfired early on when something like cards 2 and 4 from the environment were both Entry Points on top of new Rooms, so the initial damage surge was just awful.
Wraith ended up being practically a non-factor, she went down so fast---and while I hated to lose her, her incapacitated powers were a pretty good fit for what we needed, I think. The real standout of the team ended up being Omnitron-X, who was reducing quite a lot of melee damage thanks to his Ablative Coating, and Legacy took some of it for him, too, which let Omnitron keep a big set of components out much longer than I expected. The rest of our heroes were pretty near death, too, but we managed to get Iron Legacy flipped and then Omnitron-X had a mix of Innervation Rays and his irreducible fire damage (buffed by Legacy), plus Legacy's own bit of healing and maybe some of Wraith's incap ability, to keep Iron Legacy's health low enough while we also slowly built ourselves back up. Nightmist did as much damage as she could, including some redirected damage from Iron Legacy himself I think, and obviously she and Omnitron-X (plus Wraith) were getting rid of whatever ongoings they could.
Omnitron-X was definitely the MVP of that game---with an Ablative Coating out to keep damage low enough for his components, he brought ongoing destruction, healing, irreducible damage. He also brought a couple decent hits, but no one on our team was really capable of a one-shot kill, so we just desperately flipped him onto his healing side and just slowly wore him down over a long slog. It sounds from others' posts like that's not the usual way, which I hadn't realized---I would not be surprised if a lot about our game went unusually, so it will be interesting to see how differently our second game against him plays.
Yeah, Scholar is one of the better choices for taking on Iron Legacy. One time he had Incapacitated Tempest (who is another super-star against IL; immunity to melee stops 90% of his damage) constantly recycling both Expect the Worsts to keep him immune to damage forever (obviously this doesn't work against the Advanced Iron Tyrant). The only reason the game wasn't inevitably going to result in a lethal Know When to Turn Loose was that eventually, Scholar would have to reshuffle his trash and become vulnerable for a short time, which wouldn't be short enough while IL had +4 to damage.
The last time I actually beat Legs, though, it was with Nightmist. She had a backup Mist Form for when the first one was destroyed, and played Mist-Fueled Recovery out of turn to regain HP during the pause between, so she was eventually able to drop out again and deal some damage before IL could heal over 25 and regain his Environment immunity. It was really the Mongolian Death Worm that won that game, but Dead Setback actually helped set this up by discarding other Enviro cards, luckily leaving the Death Worm as the last card, so it would keep shuffling back in and being replayed. This neatly counteracted Legs's healing, and occasional blows from a Jersey Devil, a Snowman, or a briefly de-misted Nightmist eventually wore him down. For special hilarity, he was dragged off into the Unforgiving Wasteland - and this was after the other two heroes in the game had been eaten by Chupacabras (fortunately no Unforgiving at the time), so the Final Wasteland was responsible for all the kills that game.
Afraid not. My Nightmist game was about 17 rounds.
Iron Legacy has the record for my quickest game one round and a half he was dishing out wacky amounts of damage wich turn agains him as he got a wrathful retrebution of 24 if I remember well with the team gaping the rest just before. Fanatic has to be one of the strongest heroes to take him down classic ongoing destruction, end of days and a potent finisher that works on taking damage in heaps wich he dishes out... If that plan backfires you can give extra card plays to other heroes on incap.
Whenever I fight Iron Legacy, my girl Nightmist not always seems to have a Planar Banishment right in the starting hand, but she always seems to play it to it's maximum power, wiping all or nearly all of Iron Legacy's ongoings away from round 1. It's kinda nuts and thematic. The fact that he's still a hard right regardless just speaks to how much damage he can dish out.
I also remember one time my friend, while playing Naturalist, did threatening stomp to get Iron Legacy's attention. We were kinda iffy about that decision, him trying to soak all that damage for us. Fortunately when Iron Legacy killed Naturalist immediately afterwards our doubts were replaced with comforting certainty. :(