Spite is just the worst

Other Games SotM Game Engine
#1

Spite has long been my least-favorite Villain.  He isn't (necessarily) the *hardest*, but he's the least fun.  He's for all practical purposes immune to damage until he flips, and he will have done a lot of damage to the heroes before that happens.  The only viable general strategy seems to be to try and get as many Victims into the Safehouse as possible, then burn him down fast after he takes the hit from flipping.

Today, while beta testing the App, I found a new reason to hate Spite.  When he flipped, with 8 Victims saved, he took no damage.  I thought it was a bug at first, but then I realized the awful truth.  Technically, it's not the Safehouse doing the damage, but Spite damaging *himself*, and I had hit him with a Throat Jab.  Argh!!!!!

#2

Yeah.  You'll find other threads around here declaiming a dislike of Spite's gameplay.

 

By the way, congrats on saving 8 Victims.  That's pretty impressive.  Did you never get a Forced Entry?

#3

Grrr! I detest Forced Entry with a burning passion! It comes up so often with Spite's accelerated cardplay that saving victims seems almost counterproductive. 

#4

I gotta say, it's almost not even worth it to save the victims. And that's sad.

#5

You should read this thread on BGG for a unique perspective on whether to save a victim or not!

#6

Correct.  It was mostly luck.  Happened to get many Victim draws and no Forced Entries.

#7

Eh, the cost for saving victims is not so high. When we played him we saved as many as we could except, of coure, the Doomed Sidekick (I know the card isn't really called like that)

That being said we only played Spite 2 times, both advanced, before declaring him the easiest and most boring and villain in the entire game.

#8

Yeah. Really, all the villains in Rook City rank low for me, and the environments as well. The closest I come to enjoying a Rook City villain is the Chairman. Spite and the Matriarch I outright dislike.

Doing the expansions in order makes sense, but considering how much more I like Infernal Relics and Shattered Timelines, it was a bummer to hear the app would follow the official release order up until Vengeance (which gets skipped for Wrath).

Edit: I'm hoping the app makes Matriarch more fun, because I won't have to flip all eleventy-seven birds and resolve their attacks.

#9

So, what's the solution for fixing Spite? If there's a new set of villain card rules I could put on an alt version villain card on my site, I would, just like I have for Gloomweaver and Ambuscarde. 

#10

I think Gloom Spite fixes him pretty well. 

#11

Phantaskippy had a good suggestion in another thread:

So, perhaps an add-on card for the safehouse that  replaces the second paragraph with:

"At the end of the villain turn, move the top card from beneath the Safe House out of play. When Spite flips to his "Drug-Wracked Monstrosity" side, he deals himself X toxic damage, where X = the number of Spite's cards out of play times 5." 

Spite's entire deck is about two things: drugs and victims. If either of those gimmicks doesn't play well… well, then we get a thread with a title like this.

#12

Also/alternatively, you could put a rider on the Safe House that gave the heroes some immediate benefit for saving victims. Perhaps something like:

"Whenever a card is placed under the Safe House, each hero may choose to regain 1 HP or draw 1 card."

Yeah, Agent of Gloom does seem to work quite a bit better, but it would be nice if it were possible to preserve the original intent of "one-winged angel" Spite.

#13

When we play Spite, I'll quite often use the Wraith just so I can get out the double-Stun-Bolt combo on him and nerf pretty much all of his damage (thus preventing his healing on his front side) :D.

#14

Stun Bolt crushes him, actually pretty easy to beat him before he flips with the right team comp

#15

Yeah, we've beaten him a couple of times pre-flip. We tend to save some Victims but never bother with the Good Samaritans. Usually we've got two or three under the Safehouse when he flips, so he doesn't do that much damage to himself relative to his max hp.

#16

 

I made an alternate version which gives players real incentives to save victims.

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/31875/two-rook-city-variants

You are welcome to host a version on your site, provided you credit me.

#17

We just played a game against Spite, and found it almost shocking how effectively Wraith shuts him down.  Granted, it helped that Tempest kept giving her back copies of Throat Jab, but even aside from that, the Stun Bolts vastly reduced the amount of damage he dealt out.

 

I still can't see us playing him often, though.

#18

I do that against him pretty often too - Wraith with double Stun Bolts. Have the lowest hp and get out the Smoke Bombs and you don't even need to worry about Nemesis damage getting through if he targets you. This is with H as three...i think some of his damage is H-determined so it might not work quite as well if you have a higher number of heroes.

#19

Cool, I'll take a look.

#20

P.D. - the card says 80 hp, but the text says 60 hp.  Which is the correct value?