The mechanics are slick; the characters are fun and co-operative is always better when your kick @$$ with super powers.
Here's the problem: I've been playing with a friend and we keep losing. Currently, we have one a single game against Baron Blade and the only other games we've won have been when we've had more friends over and therefore more heroes on the field.
We've tried different character combinations, tactics and checked out the forums for dirty tricks. Now, SoM, says 2+ players so I'm hoping that there's a rule we overlooked, or something we've forgotten because we are consistenly getting crushed.
So, what is the best way to pit against two heroes against one villain with a chance of victory?
With only 2 players, it's advised that each plays 2 heroes (or a third hero is played jointly) but 2 heroes is tough and not supported by the H mechanic where a lot of the damage is H-2 which breaks with 2 heroes.
I've been playing with only two players (see my "New member" thread in the erm, off-topic forum, I think…though I probably posted it in the wrong place as it does takl about the game quite a lot) and we had a similiar problem - that we were getting beaten a lot. We'd beaten Baron Blade and Apostate 100% of the time we'd faced them (twice each) but I think everyone else basically kicked our arses…some faster than others - we lasted barely ten minutes against Voss in one fight, I believe.
Anyway, yeah, you're technically supposed to play with at least three heroes. If there's only two players then either or both of you should play an extra hero. We tried that in our first two-player game but I found it a bit awkward to keep looking between two heroes in terms of deciding which cards it'd be best for each to use. Plus the table we were using wasn't exactly huge…and my two characters were Wraith and Tachyon, lol. So after that weekend, I went on (and eventually joined) this forum, in which I read a thread about people who'd tried t play as two characters. We tried one suggestion I'd found when we played last Sunday and we did actually win more games (lost the last one versus Omnitron…think we had a bad hero combination though). The idea is that both players get an extra turn after the Enviroment's turn. So instead of going Villain-Hero-Hero-Environment each round, it goes Villain-Hero-Hero-Environmet-Hero-Hero before cycling back round to the Villain's turn. It gve us an extra turn each in which to do stuff such as nullify threats from the Villain or Environment. Our Ra-and-Legacy combo versus the Matriarch kicked her arse!
There's a thread over at BGG discussing exactly this. Managing 2 Heroes each in a 2 player game is quite some management, especially if you are rather new and not too familiar with all the abilities of the all the cards.
Here's a solution that was posted: in a 2 player game, each player plays 1 Hero (full hero with all the bells and whistles) and 1 Sidekick (hero that is incapacitated: card is turned over, as if he was defeated). It's a lot less management, since the Sidekick doesn't have a whole lot of management, but still has some interesting simple but powerful things to add to the play. The turn sequence is: Villain - Hero 1 - Sidekick 1 - Hero 2 - Sidekick 2 - Environment. Some people are currently play testing this, and it's looking good. So you might want to give this a try as well.
There's also a variant being tested to play the game solo: you take 2 heroes and 1 Sidekick. Out of sheer curiosity I tried this. It's challenging, but in essence it seems to work. Still a lot of management, but I think that if you know the game well enough, it's going to be doable to keep track of everything on your own.
