Hey folks. I always felt bad for Ambuscade. Not only does his nemesis turn of his main mechanic (NO! Stop eating my cloaking device, Haka!), but he feels very weak overall. Even his advanced mode feels easier than most other villains baseline.
Here are a few things we've done to turn him into a scary guy to run into. Some of these were suggested elsewhere, I'm just compiling them for folks to find easily. Feel free to add your own:
Traps play a new card
Poor Ambuscade likes to set traps, but it's so time consuming. It often takes up most of his turn! Well now he preps them before he begins the hunt. Traps play the top card of the villain deck as they are set.
A lot of his cards already play the next. Adding this in makes him run through a lot more cards than before. It's a good uptick in his difficulty but not a signifigant increase.
Ambuscade wins if he incaps 1 hero.
Ambuscade loves hunting things. And people. And one of his favorite parts after the hunt is taking his prize. His trophy. Once he has taken his trophy, he doesn't need to continue the hunt for their undoubtedly vengeful allies. He's got the trophy and he's won this hunt. So long suckers!
This makes the fight against him play out very differently. Unless you have someone to redirct, someone is going to get low. And when Ambuscade is hiding, he's going to hit that low person. As you can imagine this makes him a lot more challenging. It makes you always have to keep an eye on your weakest ally. It makes the fight feel a lot different but still fits his theme very well. This combined with fast traps and advanced mode makes him feel like a real threat. Even ridiculous at some enviroments like Rook City.
Personal Cloaking Device is Indestructable until it has taken 9 damage
Have you every tried to manipulate one of them? Just finding them is hard enough. Mostly you attack and hope it breaks.
This isn't a big change, but it does stop some shenanigans. Tempest and Omni forcing Ambuscade to flip to his front side with the cloak out for example. But it also means he can hide out during the End of Days and other things. Not too much of a difficulty increase overall.
I agree Amby needs a bit of souping-up, and I really love the "incap one hero for a win" idea, but adding both that AND replacement of traps is probably overkill. Personally I don't really like the trap mechanic at all, it feels very gimmicky. (I do like the cards on a conceptual basis; besides being a transparent Kraven the Hunter ripoff, 'Cade also has the powers of Gambit!) And it always bugs me that you can attack his cloaking device, which is way too fragile to protect him for any length of time…him Vanishing is just a nuisance. Also his advanced text on cloaked side is irrelevant in many games, unless you have someone like Bunker or Scholar in the game. And it's very weird that he can hurt himself with Charged Attacks.
Needs more salt.
I had a match where Ambuscade played well, he was fast and crazy. I used the traps play the top card rule and hit a ton of play top card cards. I hit two traps in a row at one point. Still won handily but the pace was actually fun and he felt way more challenging than his normal boring self.
The best I've done with him (and I might get to use it in our forum campign if things go a certain way) is giving him a dog target that has hp and the first hero damaged by him each round has to either discard or destroy a total of (H)-2 cards or lose their next turn. I use that and the traps play the top card rule. He has an incap side that puts items in play or has a chance to flip and recover. It sounds more complex than it is, I really enjoy the mechanic.
It gives him something that tries to stop the heroes from setting up. It actually doesn't make him really hard, I haven't found a way to do that other than more damage increases and playing multiple cards, and those mechanics are already used by other villains to be tough, and I don't like to ruin the unique feel of each villain.
though I haven't played it I'd say Spiff's version looks sound, gonna try it when I play again.
Another thing I liked (someone posted it somwhere and I tried it) was instead of putting the trap card face up rotating it 180 degrees (and having all the other cards vertically aligned) so when you are shuffling it's easier to avoid not looking at it.
Phantaskippy's Dog Campanion idea:
> I worked on the Dog for Ambuscade, and went through a bunch of versions, but I like this one best:
Rover, Supercanine Attack Dog. 15hp
The first time each round that Ambuscade deals damage to a hero that hero must discard/destroy two of their cards or skip their next turn.
Incap side:
Faithful Companion.
At the start of the villain turn if there are two or more cards under this card, flip this card and restore to 15hp.
At the end of the villain turn shuffle the villain trash and reveal cards until a target is revealed, if their is no target in the villain trash reveal the top card of the villain deck. A hero must put the top card of their deck under this card or the revealed card enters play.
The art would be Lassie-esque, to play off his movie star back story. The first side hits you right off the bat, making someone discard two cards or skip their turn. When you flip it you get to choose between flipping it back or more cards in play. It is fun, and gives a very different feel to the game depending on which side it is on, and doesn't feel too much like a different villain. We still used the when a trap card is shuffled in play the top card rule.
I really can't emphasize how much I enjoyed the Ambuscade one, he went from being really boring to being quite a bit of fun.
I need to update that, I've found it to be way too powerful in a three hero game, if the heroes don't have card pull they can be run out of cards or get stuck skipping turns for a while and that is no fun.
I settled on (H)-2 destroy/discard because three players can manage that, and 5 hero games they can much better afford to lose one hero's turn.