Sentinels Endurance Test!

General GTG General Discussion
1

So, this is something I want to try, but I haven't really thought about the nitty gritty details.  Ever play Boss Rush mode in various video games?  Typically you fight the bosses in order, starting the next boss with the exact health/items you left off with.  I want to do something similar with Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Rules start as such.

  1. Start a normal game of SotM with a carefully picked 5 man team.
  2. Once the game is won, leave the heroes exactly as they are (current HP, current equip/ongoings, current hand, current deck, current trash)
  3. Remove the villain from the playing field (cards such as Twist the Ether or Bounty Cards would obviously go to the appropriate trash)
  4. Grab another villain, set them up.  That villain now kicks off a new game.
  5. See how long your team can last.

Sound fun?  Well, it sounds fun to me at least.  I haven't playtested it yet, so I'm still considering a few things.  Some stuff to consider:

  • Team selection is essential.  Since this is an endurance test, a hero with capable team healing would be necessary.  But pure damage shouldn't be overlooked.
  • Once every hero on the team has their set-up, potential for damage in a single round is ridiculous.  They could very well kill off a new villain in a single round.
  • The disadvantage for the heroes is the time it takes getting fully set-up, which may take a game or two
  • Therefore, starting off against easier villains would be a good idea, to ensure longevity.  Kick off against vanilla Gloomweaver to make sure your team gets nice and beefy while taking minimal damage.
  • HP will be tough to stabalize against harder hitting villains.  This is why I'm considering Absolute Zero and/or Scholar, since they have damage and sustenance nearly built into one package.
  • Obviously, Villains will have sheer overwhelming numbers to their advantage.
  • Most will drop like flies once entering a new game against a fully set-up team of heroes, but even if they manage to do a good few rounds of damage before falling off, that could be enough to end it.

My initial questions:

- Should the environment change between villains too?  Or every 5 villains?  The same environment for the entire duration might get a little stale, and switching it up would lead to some varying difficulty.

- If the heroes get wiped out too fast, perhaps having 5 more "benched" team members would be a good idea?    Instead of flipping a hero to their incapped side, you could just switch them out with a new hero, draw 4 cards and go.  Endurance Mode would end if all 10 heroes get taken out.  A benched hero obviously has the disadvantage of coming into the game with no gear set-up, but the advantage of having strong teammates to help them get their rig out.

- Who would make the cut for your team of 5 (or 10)?

2

Something like this got done for Rook City only over at BGG. I don't remember exactly what house rules they used, but they flipped from the Industrial complex to Rook City itself halfway through.

3

I like this idea so I'm just gonna jump in.

Teambuilding for Endurance:

To begin building the perfect team to take on multiple villain encounters, we need a cornerstone, someone who can take punishment, deal punishment out, and has the tools to keep themselvs and possibly others sustained through multiple rough patches. For the cornerstone of my team, no one really fits the bill as completely as Scholar. His elemental forms provide DR and heavy team tanking through redirection, massive self healing with utility team heals, the tools to prevent damage through Offensive Trans, and the ability to deal mass damage once set up through Energy forms. His out of turn plays will help during occasional board wipes. Scholar makes a perfect cornerstone to build an endurance team around.

1. Scholar

Now that we have identified the perfect cornerstone for a survivability team, lets start plugging holes. If there is one essentail component that Scholar is missing, its the lack of Ongoing destruction and general Villain deck Shenanigans. There are tons of great options here, from Nightmist to Argent to Visionary to Wraith, the list goes on. Parse, though, seems like a great fit. Her ability to screw with the villain deck and dictate what the villain plays is unrivaled, even by the previous queen of utility Dark Visionary. Parse brings the manipulation of DVis, while being able to deal more damage than her on average and can be the saving grace to Scholars major other weakness, DR, which her nack for Irreducible damage. They compliment each others weaknesses incredibly well and they form the "core" of the teams strategy.

1. Scholar

2. Parse

Now that the core of our team is built, we can start adding the bells and whistles that will make our core better and more efficient. We have two heros are are pretty such specializing in what they do. Scholar as the main Tank with benefits and Parse as our Utility queen, if ANY of them can't perform their job, for whatever reason, everything can fall apart. In competitive Pokemon team building, there is the notion of the "pivot" attacker, or in Baseball we call them pitch hitters. We need someone that can fill multiple roles and do it well in case someone falters. The Naturalist instalty jumps out to me as the perfect pivot for an endurance team. He can flip the switch to the DPS/Tank/Utility role on a whim and has his own fantastic ways of healing, redirecting, and even taking the Environment out of the equasion when it all becomes too much withstand.

1. Scholar

2. Parse

3. Naturalist

We are coming down to the wire, and with only 2 spots left, the competition gets tough. Back to the Pokemon teambuilding metaphor, the team lacks a definitive "Sweeper", the guy that comes it and cleans up the board through sheer speed and power. When the name of the game is Endurance, most of our heavy hitting heros are pretty frail and counter to our goals. Also, the team up to this point is very ONGOING heavy. But if we can ignore equipment destruction it leaves more room for Parse to be even more selective with her deck manipulation shenanigans. Tempest has the makings of of a great endurance style damage dealer. He not only has some of the best teamhealing, but his access to AoE and strong one-shots and enviro destruction makes him attractive. Haka is another prospect, where his bulky HP, healing, Ground Pound, and particularly Savage Mana could be very strong together and make a lot of sense. But there is another option that might not be very obvious. The Sentinels. They require very little setup, Medico can spot heal Parse or Scholar, they can team wide heal, have access to their own DR, can belt out a considerable amount of damage per turn (AoE and single target), and Writhes signature card can be used and abused. They can revive themselvs in case something goes horribly wrong as well, and when the name of the game is endurance, well, Battle Rez's have always been invaluable.

1. Scholar

2. Parse

3. Naturalist

4. Sentinels

You can't just throw the Sentinels into a team built for endurance without taking note of their largest flaw, low HP. Thats a challenge buster right there, and if they go down early to AoE or are targeted by constant lowest HP effects, the entire team will follow shortly. The healing/damage brought by the Sentinels is of key importance which is why they were chosen over some other more bulky options, so they need to be protected. Wraiths Smoke Bombs would be a great choice, but would be counter productive since the team works best staying as Ongoing heavy as possible. The best way to protect the Sentinels from a constant barrage of damage is to produce alternative low HP targets, and really, there is only one way to go. Unity is neither heavy Ongoing or Equipment dependant as she will blow the equipment up herself anyway to fuel her Golems. An arsenal of Golems, if protected by Scholar/Naturalist and healed by Unity/Sentinels, can provide buffers for the Sentinels low HP while also providing excellent damage. Raptor Bots and the best Smoke Bomb alternative in the game, Stealth Bot, will be huge assets. The synergy here will be hard to combat if the team can make it through game #1 all setup.

1. Scholar

2. Parse

3. Naturalist

4. Sentinels

5. Unity

4

I've played this variant, with the rule that the environment deck changes whenever the current environment deck is out of cards.

It isn't a very challenging variant. If you get past the first villain in decent shape, it's easy to steamroller subsequent villains. Unity with a good set up can do 40+ damage a round with just her golems, so villains like Dawn or Grand Warlord Voss die just about as soon as they hit the table. Or Legacy with Inspiring Presence + Galvanize + Inspiring Charge and Tempest with Electrical Storm + Hurricane + whatever his other damage booster is - it's very possible for Tempest to be doing 4 + 5 damage to every non-hero target on the board, every turn, in addition to whatever cards he's playing while Legacy is healing everyone for 1 hit a turn. Bad guys just fall down, go boom. You still sometimes hit a nasty card like Devastating Aurora and have to rebuild, but the villains go down so quickly that they don't get to cycle through much of their decks.

Give it a try, but I expect you'll find it easier that you thought it would be.

5

You could try giving the villians incap abilities that stick around after you defeat them and accumulate.  That'd ramp up the difficulty pretty quickly.

6

My experience has been that most games end with the heroes at single-digit HP (zero is of course a digit).  So this strikes me as pure suicide.

7

If you have a good healer and a good tank it's easy to stay pretty high.  Good healers and tanks make up about half of the team featured above.  The only way to make them more tank heavy would be to switch in Nightmist for Parse or Unity.

8

What mlangsdorf said. I had Scholar, Legacy, I think Team Leader Tachyon and Tempest, and one other (possibly OX?). With the healing Tempest and Legacy (and OX?) had, we were pretty much constantly at full health and steamrolling villain after villain. Miss Info, normally my most hated villain, was actually a fun change of pace because I couldn't simply stomp on her face.

Maybe don't start with an easy villain, or at least ramp the difficulty up quickly to keep it challenging. Alternately, don't take anyone with reliable healing.

9

Most Villains expend the majority of their threat in the first salvos of the game, when heroes are not equipped to handle them yet.  Having heroes all set up makes it a very different game, if you start with an easier villain the heroes can very easily be set up enough to roll through follow-up matches.  If you face a tough one first that fight ends up being 90% of the challenge.