Spite is just the worst

Other Games SotM Game Engine
81

I may be joining this late.  I play on the app, randomly generated games, but usually avoid like the plague any random game with Spite as villain.  I agree with the commentators who say that he's simply frustrating, rather than fun/challenging.  So, whenever I get P.O.ed and really want to whip him, I put together this team, custom-designed to beat Spite:  Dark Visionary, Legacy, Wraith, Tempest.  If I'm feeling really malignant, I add AA, Nightmist, Tachyon, or DW Fixer.

 

Spite's two big weaknesses are (1) that he doesn't have any minons/devices/other targets to help him cause damage, so if he can't cause damage or play cards, he's in trouble; and (2) one of his drugs kills the environment cards that would otherwise be damaging the heroes.  So, the purpose of this team is to (a) manipulate/play Spite's deck like a bass fiddle, all the while (b) preventing him from doing damage, while leisurely setting up damage combos.  

 

First, it sounds awful, but don't worry about the victims.  They are there to distract you, and to make you spend HP and cards that you should be saving.  Besides, with the method below, you'll be able to manipulate Spite's deck enough that he won't be able to pull the Forced Entries/On the Prowls necessary to kill them, and if you're feeling really squeamish, use Suggestion to pull them out of the trash and save them.   

 

(a) Deck Manipulation.  Look at all of the ways you have to manipulate poor Spite:  Dark Visionary's base power, her Precognition and Suggestion cards, Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece(s), Legacy's Take Downs, and Tempest's Into the Stratosphere.  From the very first play, these characters have infinite ways to stop Spite from drawing, push bad cards to the bottom of Spite's deck, and bring back destroyed victims.  Spite's double-draws don't make it a 100% sure proposition, but you can generally avoid the worst cards and put them all on the bottom of his deck, or if that fails, at least know that they're coming and prepare for them.   Once you have out Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece, you can peek at Spite's deck twice every round and send Omicron/Upsilon/Lab Raid/whatever cards to the bottom.  

 

(b) Damage Reduction.  Getting a Twist the Ether on Spite itself just about seals his fate -- reduce *every* damage he deals by 1.  Combine that with Smoke Bombs, Stealth, Throat Jab, Fortitude, Unearthly Resilience, Decoy Projection, (even Telekinetic Cocoon, if you're really desperate), Heroic Interruption, Stun Bolts....Spite isn't hurting any of your team members.  Put a Next Evolution/Lead from the Front on Legacy, and he will eat most of Spite's damage and laugh at it.  Add a Twist the Ether, and now Spite cannot deal a single point of damage to any of your players--he has NO cards that do damage by themselves (they all say "...Spite deals X damage...").  If things turn really dire, send all of the damage you can to Tempest -- his incap power makes all heroes immune to one type of damage.  Use that on whatever form of damage is making it through your Stun Bolts/Smoke Bombs, and the like.  Since he'll be killing most of the environment cards if you let him play the Mind-Phyre drug, the environment won't be hurting the heroes much either.  (In that vein, though, between Grappling Hook, Flash Flood, Dark Visionary's innate power/Prophetic Vision to manipulate the environment deck, her Mass Levitation to stop its damage, and Tempest's Reclaim from the Deep to bring back/spam your anti-environment cards, the environment won't be much of a problem in any event.)

 

Once you've accomplished (a) and (b), which should be reasonably painless with these heroes and their decks, Spite will not be able to (a) pull out his nasty drug cards, or (b) heal (since he can't deal damage), and you can start wiping the floor with him.  Keep having Legacy and DV use their powers every turn to tank Spite's damage and control his deck (and occasionally throw in a bit of damage or buffs themselves), while Wraith and Tempest hit him with buffed Razor Ordinance, Gene-Bound Shackles, Lightning Strikes, Chain Lightnings, Ball Lightnings, Localized Hurricanes.  Getting a Legacy Ring and/or Inspiring Presence only makes things faster.   At this point, you can even let him bring out drugs; since he can't hurt you, he can't heal, and you should have out enough cards to be able to withstand his "return equips/ongoings to your hand" drug.  Just keep beating on him, and you should be able to kill him before he flips.

 

If you're feeling particularly malignant, add in:

Argent Adept -- being able to play 2-3 (or more) extra cards every round lets you find and play your deck manipulation and damage reduction cards that much quicker.  If Spite should happen to get out the "everybody discard 5 cards when they use a power" drug, AA has four Vernal Sonatas in his deck, as well as 4 Arcane Cadences to allow you to get teh him to access them.  

Nightmist -- Enlightenment gives your heroes extra draws to get to their combo cards, Mistbound completely shuts down Spite's deck, the Amulet of the Elder Gods can redirect his damage right back to him, and Nightmist's versatile healing powers give her a variety of ways to heal herself every round and serve as a tank.  Or, put her in MistForm and make her the ultimate tank.  

Tachyon -- adds additional damage elimination/redirection with Hypersonic Assault/Synaptic Interruption, and her ability to auto-churn her own deck means that she'll almost assuredly get to those cards quickly, while she waits to for the chance to use some 15-20-point Lightspeed Barrages.

DW Fixer -- particularly helpful when Spite has managed to get the DR drug (Omicron whatever) into play despite your best-laid plans.  Unlike regular Fixer, he can play Riveting Crane/Alternating Tiger Crane as 3-pt one-shots that should break through Spite's defenses and/or leave him vulnerable to your heroes.  Grease Gun gives all of your heroes a round (more, if Tempest brings it back with Reclaim from the Deep, or Fix himself brings it back with Salvage Yard) of near-total immunity from and the environment.  Driving Mantis makes him a damage soak, particularly in conjunction with Pipe Wrench, Smoke Bombs, and/or Stun Bolts.  If you get a good enough draw, and can get him set up with Grease Monkey Fist/Harmony/Pipe Wrench or Dual Crowbars, he becomes a damage fiend.  The "discard 5 cards when you use a power" drugis just fodder for Salvage Yard -- build up a trash of 10-15 cards, then use Salvage Yard and bring *every* equipment in the trash not just to your deck, but into your hand.  The "return ongoings/equipment to your hand" doesn't matter much to him, since he can do three damage whenever he wants just by burning the card with a Bitter Strike, so build him up with ongoings and make him an early target for that drug while your other heroes play their cards.   (Also, it's just mean; I have to confess to taking great joy at the idea of Mr. Fixer bludgeoning Spite to death with a crowbar.  "Transhuman killer, huh"?" (WHACK!)  "Drug-wracked monstrosity, eh?" (CRUNCH!))

82

I have recently come up with my own way to change Spite in such a way that rescuing victims as soon as they come into play actually makes sense. It is a small change with major impact. 

Change the text of 'Forced Entry' to: Put 1 card under the Safe House card into play, chosen randomly. Play the top card of the Villain deck.

By doing this, several things happen:

1. Saving victims (put them undern the safe house) is more useful, as the moment when 2 victims are saved, 1 still remains in the safe house after the Forced Entry. Therefore the players will be more eager to save as many victims as soon as they appear.

2. It gives the correct feeling about Spite and his (its?) victims. When the victims are under the safe house, they are safe(ish). As soon as they are in play, they have a change to be killed of. With the removal of 'destroy a victim', and the addition of  'play the top card' on my proposed Forced Entry, there is still a possibility that the recently forced-entried victim is killed of, rather than it is happening automatically because of the same card that puts them back into play. This extra moment of chance is more working the nerves of the players IMO: Forced Entry is still a aweful card.

3. Spite plays his cards faster. There are 2 Forced Entry's in his deck, meaning he will play max. 2 more cards faster. This helps him to get all his drugs into play faster, something that at least I have the experience which is happening too slow. Most of my games I have 3 or 4 drugs out, waiting for the 5th drug to be played so Spite will flip and I can damage him. 

But generally speaking: I am probably one of the few that does like playing against Spite. His mechanics and game-play means that you know how the fight will progress, something that I find a positve change from all the other villains. If I feel like a difficult, frustrating fight: Spite it is. 

83

My BIGGEST change would be to change the drug that destroys all environment cards to something else. He makes all environments practically useless. Change it to something like

 
"At the end of Spite's turn, destroy AN environment card. if it was a target he regains HP equal to the HP of the environment target. If it isn't a target, then deal each Hero 2 (or something) damage."
 
--
 
This makes environments useful, and does something ultimately unique.
 
 
84

Forced Entry is currently a terrible card that makes you unwilling to save victims until right before Spite flips. I like your version of Forced Entry better.

There are a number of Spite mechanics I don't really agree with. The first time I played Spite, I had the impression there were more than 5 Drugs, but as soon as you got a fifth Drug you were stuck with what you had. Having only five Drugs means every flipped Spite game plays the exact same way. Maybe if there were 10 Drugs, you could then have more variable games with Spite, but this means fewer non-Drug cards unless we up the number of cards in Spite's deck beyond 25.

I also dislike Agent of Gloom Spite because his Drug flipping mechanic just doesn't work. With 3 heroes you can never flip a drug back face-down. With 4 heroes you have only one chance to do it (at the end of the second Spite turn), otherwise you can never flip a drug face-down. Maybe that's the intention, but it's still annoying to be presented with text alluding to the possibility of flipping drugs face-down only for it to not be possible beyond sometimes the second turn.

85

And only with extremely good luck and/or specific heroes that can play from Spite's deck.

86

Spite's Advanced and Challenge modes are bunk, too.  They just make it harder to fight him during the more interesting part of the battle.  Spite on Ultimate is basically always the same game: tank until he flips, setting up a situation whereby when he does flip, you can reduce the damage he deals to nothing or almost nothing while you whittle away at him.  Whenever I play him on tabletop, as soon as he flips, we play one round just to make sure it plays out as intended, then call ourselves the winners.

1 Like
87

Spite' s gameplay is not that bad buddy. I don't think the same.

88

Rook City is definitely what I would call “primitive” design. I believe it came out before the Enhanced Edition, which means it was a direct sequel to the original Sentinels of the Multiverse (which had non-illustrated Environment cards, and the rules allowed targets to change their max HP value in a way that had to be tracked separately from their current HP, and of course the heroes and their cards had a lot of different art, like Savage Mana showing a defeated Hippo instead of the Matriarch’s birds). So, since it was never likewise updated, it stands out as not really being balanced with the rest of the game.

I hate the Chairman more than the Matriarch, but I agree Spite is the worst. I take it from your wording that you have a middling opinion of Plague Rat, who IMO is the best of the four by far; his mechanics are a little wonky, but he actually creates some really fun and interesting game states, granting the heroes new powers when they’re all Infected and stuff like that. (There are some wonky interactions with the Wagner Mars Base and so forth, but those are as much an issue with those old Environments as with him.)

On a similar topic, I’ve definitely found that the app has enhanced my enjoyment for some of the really fiddly decks, notably Lifeline. He has so many moving parts that I never really quite “got” him, but the app does an excellent job of showcasing everything. You play Repair Life-Line, and the app just automatically shows you all the cards that were just discarded, which you are now choosing one of to put into play. La Commodora is a similar beneficiary, and Luminary might be the best example of all. My enjoyment of all of these heroes has gone up a lot from playing them digitally (while Harpy stayed about the same, and my initial favorite Akash’Thriya has probably gone down, because it’s now more apparent how hard she needs to work to accomplish anything - I wonder if I was playing her wrong before, putting the Seeds back into the Enviro trash when I wasn’t supposed to or something, so that I thought she was better than she was).

And naturally, I would never even have played OblivAeon if not for the app, with how astonishingly fiddly HE gets.