Understanding Ra's Balance Point

Other Games SotM Game Engine
1

I understand that some characters have the ability to nova: Haka with his Savage Mana, or Bunker with his Omnicannon. Those are one-ofs, though, and Ra seems to be able to consistently output ~crazy~ amounts of damage in even the early half of the game.

Here was Ra’s table, mid-game last night (it was endgame when his turn came up… but we were still under 9 turns, I think):

[list]
[]Flesh of the Sun God – Ra is immune to Fire damage[/]
[]Imbued Fire – All fire damage is increased by 1. || Change the damage type of damage dealt by the heroes to fire.[/]
[]Solar Flare – (x2) Increase fire damage dealt by Ra by 2. || At the end of your turn, either Ra deals himself 4 pyshic damage or this card is destroyed.[/]
[]Blazing Tornado – Ra deals 1 target 3 fire damage.[/]
[]Living Conflagration – Ra deals 1 target 1 fire damage. || You may draw a card.[/][/list]

Ra’s turn comes up and he plays Flame Spike (Ra deals 1 target 1 fire damage. || You may use an additional power this turn.) and wins the game using Tornado and Conflagration.

Here’s how the math came out:
Spike = 1 (card) + 1 (Imbued) + 4 (2x Solar Flare) = 6
Tornado = 3 (card) + 1 (Imbued) + 4 (2x solar flare) = 8
Conflagration = 1 (card) + 1 (Imbued) + 4 (2x Solar Flare) = 6

And he can drop that 20 points of damage in 1 turn, 3 times in a game (at least - this was one specific case last night). That seems a lot, compared to how long it takes Haka and Bunker to get off their one-shot novas. It just seems Ra’s damage scales a lot faster and a lot more consistently than anyone else’s (in the core game, I haven’t bought the expansion yet). Is something like this by design? Or was this just a result of synergies that all landed on the table at the right time?

Now… For a series of questions about a number of those cards, that I’m not clear on, if you have the patience.

(1) Does Solar Flare stack, since it’s not limited, and it’s not a “power” to activate? The “duplicate powers” section in the errata deals with things that activate, and not passives like SF, here.

(2) Is Ra, after applying Flesh of the Sun God, immune to Solar Flare? I see one of three ways this works: The psychic damage turns into fire damage, and Ra is immune to it, so it stays, OR the psychic damage turns to fire, Ra is immune, but the card checks for, “Did it do psychic damage? No?” and then disappears because the condition of dealing psychic damage was not met, OR the psychic damage turns to fire, Ra is immune, and since no damage is dealt the card disappears.

(If it’s the last case, I have another topic open about how the immunity rule works, and this will be solved when that gets answered.)

(3) Imbued Fire states (and even italicizes) that the damage dealt by heroes becomes fire damage. Does this mean “all hero cards,” or does it mean “all hero character cards?” I only ask because the distinction between “villain cards” and “villain character cards” was addressed in the errata for Visionary’s Wrest the Mind.

2

I don’t think anything you said in the initial combo is wrong. We’ve pulled off the Flesh of the Sun God/Solar Flare/Imbue Fire several times in our previous games. Granted, getting both Solar Flares out is fairly fortuitous, but the rest is fairly standard. You didn’t even have Staff of Ra out, which would have added another +1. I think the only thing that you’re missing is the likelihood of this happening. Ra has only 3 copies of Flesh of the Sun God, and only 2 copies each of Imbue Fire and Solar Flare. The odds of drawing those from a 40 card deck are really not that high.

Compare that (as you did) to Bunker or Haka. Sure they only have 2 copies each of Omnicannon and Savage Mana, but that’s the only card they need for the card to work. They don’t need to combo it with 2 other cards that also have a low chance of coming out. In fact, I’ve seen a couple of games with a buddy of mine where he put down the Omnicannon, went into Recharge Mode, and that’s all he did the whole game, eventually blasting the boss for 40+ damage in one shot. He only played 2 cards TOTAL!

I can certainly testify that one person in our group LOVES to play Ra, but she only gets the Flesh/Solar/Imbue combo out about once every 3 to 4 games. Also, in games against Omnitron, unless there’s good Ongoing destruction, Adaptive Armor Plating makes Imbue Fire pointless, and if Absolute Zero is in your group, it sucks even worse.

Also, keep in mind… that’s all Ra does. He doesn’t have ongoing destruction, he doesn’t pull off neat tricks to redirect damage or stack the villain deck. He’s DPS (mmo term), that’s it.

Overall, what I guess I’m saying is, sure, that particular combo is powerful; it’s awesome in fact, but it’s not “broken”. It’s still completely wiped out by a Devastating Aurora or Sedative Flechettes. And besides, isn’t being “awesome” what this game is all about :slight_smile:

3

Let me answer all 3 of your bolded questions in one sentence: The way you played was correct. [Solar flare does stack, Flesh does make you immune to Solar Flare, IF you have Imbued Fire in play. With Imbued Fire, all damage dealt by heroes is fire damage, including Wrest the Mind and One-Shots]

But I don’t entirely agree with the general thrust of your argument.

I’ve played a lot of Ra, and that particular ultimate setup is not exactly easy to come by. Ra has a reasonable amount of card drawing, but you still need 3 very specific cards to make Imbued Fire/FotSG/Solar Flare combo work. And he has to play them one at a time, and they are all vulnerable to ongoing destruction.

Compare to Haka or bunker: Each character ALSO has a lot of card draw, between Haka of X and Dominion and Initialize/Ammo Drop/Recharge Mode, but their nova only takes 1 card, so only absorbs your play for 1 turn, unlike Ra, whose plays are absorbed for a minumum of 3 (and 6 to get the setup you described). Both are vulnerable to destruction as well, so equal ground there.

Not all chracters roles are the same. Ra deals fire damage. It’s what he does. Occasionally he draws some cards. He doesn’t do much else. Imbued Fire aside, he’s not a particlarly great team player, he has a lot of HP, but he’s not a tank, he doesn’t have environment control, he doesn’t have ongoing destruction, he doesn’t get to mess with the Villan deck, he just deals some fire damage. So when it comes to dealing fire damage, naturally Ra is your go-to-guy. But Haka and Bunker both can do things that Ra can’t do, so comparing the characters purely in terms of damage output is unfair.

One more thing about Savage Mana, the thing that makes Savage Mana actually good is NOT the damage it deals, it’s the ability to hide the dead villan cards away where they won’t be able to get pulled out of the trash. Even if Savage Mana couldn’t deal any damage, I’d still consider it to be one of the best cards in the game.

[ninja’d by broccoli. Oh well, I’m posting this anyway.]

4

Fair enough. That’s why I asked about where his balance point should be, and didn’t just point the finger and say, “Broken! J’accuse!”

Also, since you bring up Absolute Zero… He is absolutely worthless at the same table Ra is being played at. I’ve seen it happen 3 or 4 times now, and the poor guy playing Zero just sits there and draws, unable to do anything. But that was part of why I brought up the “hero cards” versus “hero character cards” question. It would make a difference if only Zero’s character card was forced to deal fire damage, while his other ongoings and equipments were able to still hand out cold.

Unless all of Zero’s cards say, “Zero deals…” in which case it all really does become fire, and he really does become… terrain.

(I don’t have cards in front of me, just what I copied down from last night so I could post here today.)

5

Zero is absolutely useless a lot of the time (ok, so thats my bias coming out, I don’t like Zero.)

However, there are 3 things you can do here.

  1. Don’t play Zero.

…at the same table as Ra. Hah. See what I did there?

  1. If Zero’s in the game, dont play Imbued Fire. Easy, right.

  2. Have Zero play Coolant Blast and then burninate the poop out of him. You can direct all your fire damage to Zero, who will take damage and then deal damage with his Isothermic Transducer. Then just don’t quite kill him and he can get off a seriously epic Coolant blast. And then he’ll die. C’est la vie.

6

Ya, like awp832 said, the key is to NOT play Imbue Fire at the same table with AZ. If you don’t do that, you can do some seriously nice things. For instance, if AZ has both of his modules out and Coolant Blast (not TOO hard, since he has a bunch cards that let him search for modules), you can blast him for X. He takes the first damage, then deals X cold damage to himself, so he takes no damage. BUT, now he can Coolant Blast for X. Granted, this doesn’t do anymore damage than Ra doing it himself, but it did change the type, AND if AZ just eats the initial fire damage without healing himself, you just doubled your damage. Not to mention how this explodes like mad once you add in Focused Actuators, Inspiring Presence, Galvanize, Obsidian Fields, etc.

The two CAN actually work really well together… just not with Imbue Fire out. Oh, and if you REALLY want to play Imbue Fire, just have Visionary put Twist the Ether on AZ AFTER you play Imbue Fire. Then it goes through a 2-pass filter and comes out as whatever type of damage you want.

7

There really is no need to distinguish much between hero character cards and other hero cards, as most other hero cards that deal damage actually specify the hero character as the source of that damage.