So the description for Ra’s “Drawn to the Flame” card says, “Power:Ra deals each non-hero target 1 fire damage for each Villain Ongoing card in play.”
Now, it’s my general understanding that when a card says something like “1 damage for each something” versus “X damage, where X = 1 [sup]x[/sup] number of something in play,” increased damage has a sort of multiplying effect rather than an adding to the total effect. So for instance, if there are 2 Villain Ongoings, and Ra gets Galvanized, the damage is raised from (1) + (1) = 2 to (1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1[/glow]) + (1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1[/glow]) = 4, not (1) + (1) [glow=red,2,300]+ 1[/glow] = 3.
I’m asking this because, well, there are currently 4 Villain Ongoings, and in the next round Ra will have his Staff, be Galvanized AND Inspired by Legacy’s Presence, while standing in an Obsidian Field. That’s…
(1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1[/glow]) + (1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1[/glow]) + (1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1[/glow]) + (1 [glow=red,2,300]+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1[/glow]) = 20 fire damage, to EVERY non-hero target, EVERY round! :o Am I allowed to have this much fun? As much as I hate Citizen Dawn, I want to make sure this is a fair move!
hm… well I never thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right, it does seem to be a multi-attack card. However:
Ongoing cards are pretty nasty most of the time. Most villans dont have a lot of them out at once, or you endeavor to destroy them quickly. Dawn has a higher number of Ongoing cards in her deck than most other villans do.
+3 from galvanize/inspirational/obsidian is simply great for multiattacks. To say nothing of Ra’s own buffs. And let me reiterate, you practically never have 4 ongoings in play at the same time. In fact, Drawn to the Flame is usually a fairly weak card, IMO, when you consider other things in Ra’s repritoire. However, you seem to have found a pretty good niche for it.
This does seem, however, like it would be REDICULOUSLY op vs plague rat, who will have 4 ongoings out by like the 3rd round.
Ah, so this is more like a not-very-likely-but-really-awesome-when-it-does-happen sort of thing? Wheee!
Oh, so you’ve decided to Channel the Eclipse, pull Citizens from your trash, AND give everyone 2 extra HP? Well I DON’T CARE. [glow=red,2,300]F[/glow][glow=orange,2,300]W[/glow][glow=yellow,200,0]OO[/glow][glow=orange,2,300]S[/glow][glow=red,2,300]H.[/glow]
Can you use DttF with 0 enemy ongoings in play? I had always played that you could, but that makes sense if it is NOT a multiattack, as you would deal a base 0 damage, 1 time. Treading on uncertain ground here, but it seems to me that in the case of multiattacks, you would deal 0 base damage, 0 times, thereby rendering the card inert if there are no villan ongoings in play, regardless of other buffs.
Compare to similar cards such as Vicious Cyclone. the equivalent here would be to allow tempest to discard 0 cards, and get damage in for any buffs he has, like Genebound Shackles, or Galvanize, etc. This seems wrong, but would follow the same logic as allowing Ra to deal damage with 0 villan ongoings in play.
I wouldn’t think so. Can’t be drawn to the flames if there’s nothing to draw them to to begin with.
After all, it’s an increase in damage we’re dealing with, not an addition of damage.
For the Enhanced Edition it seems to use X so that will fix that, but Vicious Cyclone still deals 1 damage for each card, unless it gets changed before being sent to the printer.
Back during the core set Indianapoiis demoes (back in November) Chris stated that, as long as you were consistant, you could treat the “for each” cards as multiple instances of damage (each one buffed or debuffed as necessary), or add them all up and deal a single instance of damage (only buffed or debuffed one time), so long as you treated all “for each” cards the same thoughout the game. He also stated that he was going simplify this in the future, and it appears in most cases he is replacing most of the “for each” cards with text that utilizes algebra to come up with a single instance of damage.
Every time you’re up against Plague Rat, for starters… although its value as a sweeper is obviously not being utilized there.
But yeah, it can be pretty rare. It’s a completely dead card against Voss (unless you want to count Forced Deployment), Matriarch, and The Organization, and of limited usefulness at best against Spite.
So, um… we just lost. Fighting Dawn with just three heroes( Fanatic was the third one, if you’re curious) was kind of risky to begin with, and I made a couple dumb mistakes. I just couldn’t put all the cards I needed in play fast enough. If only I had included a fourth hero…
