Villain Player

Has anyone ever tried to play this with the someone running the villain deck like a regular deck? Still following teh rules stated on the cards but pretty muhc picking deployment and such?

just curious.

Someone posted some variant about a month ago. 

 

Basically they killed the heroes. Not surprising in my opinion. 

 

Actually, that 'someone' was me.  I wrote up a variant for 6 players, wherein one player takes over the Villain Deck and the other 5 play Heroes as normal.

My first attempts were, as youperguy mentions, kind of a failure, as things were imbalanced heavily in favor of the Villain.  However, after some testing and experimentation, my group found a pretty ideal middle ground:

 

1) When the Villain's turn comes up, he may do one of two things:

a--he may draw 3 cards from the Villain Deck.  The villain player then puts one of these cards are put into play, one is kept in the Villain's hand, and one is put on the bottom of the Villain Deck

b--he may play a card directly from his hand.

2) All Villain targets (minions, relics, etc.) have their base HP increased by 1.

3) Cards that "lock" the Villain deck (Mistbound, Take Down, etc.) prevent the villain player from playing cards through either method a) or b).  No villain cards are drawn or played, if such a card is in play.

4) The environment is played precisely as it is in base SotM.

 

This variant does increase the challenge significantly, primarily through the fact that the villain player now has options to cycle through.  Further, the variant also slightly devalues powers that stack the Villain deck, as the Villain will almost always have the ability to choose between 3 cards.  

If you're looking for a way to up the game's difficulty, particularly when 5 players are pounding the villain into hamburger, this is a fun way to do it.  I don't know that I'd ever want to face down The Matriarch with this variant (she'd be kind of boring, truth be told, due to the way her deck works), but the last time we played with this variant, we beat Apostate handily, took down Citizen Dawn in an exhilarating match, and barely lost to The Chairman.  

One item that may be of note, though:  my group always picks their own characters, rather than leaving it up to random chance.  We rarely think "tactically" about our choices any more than "I played a damage dealer last time, I want to be a buff-bot this time" or similar.  I could imagine that random character draws might suffer a little more in this variant than in the base game.

Warlock, what happens when the players using the Villain deck just plays it as semi-normal? As in, Villain Player draws 4 cards as an opening hand, plays one card, then draws one card at the end of his turn, and the rest plays as normal, i.e. if a card played by the VP says "play the top card of the deck" then there, you play the top card of the deck, etc. Less cycling, less likely for the VP to get all the good cards immediately, a purer, er, intellectual buff to the villain.

 

My worry with that change, Drako, is that the villain's options become massive at that point.  Starting their hand from essentially nothing allows them to store up one or two hateful options, but to have up to 4 of those in hand?  Yeesh...

If each villain deck were the same size as a hero deck--40 cards--I could see the possibility to run the villain identically to the heroes.  But, since they have almost half the potential options, being able to hold 1/5 of your options in hand at any given time gives the villain way too much of an advantage.

Plus, the way that I've structured the above variant, the villain player has several degrees of choice:  of the three options, which is worth keeping for later?  Which is worth burying?  Which has the most impact right now?   Normal play touches on that, but when you're able to keep 3 cards in your hand, the choice to keep a card become less important from a player perspective, while simultaneously overpowering the heroes.

Your version doesn't solve the problem of having 1/5th of your options available unless your game somehow ends on round 1. And on Round 8, you can have literally half the deck at your disposal.

 

Counting again, your argument has a good deal of merit.  

In my variant, after turn 1, you've seen 3/25 of the villain deck.  This increases by 3/25 each round that you don't play a card from your hand, until you hit 24/25 cards after turn 8.  At that point, you've played at least 8 cards, you have 8 cards in your hand, and you've buried 8 cards (leaving up to 9 total in the villain deck remaining, discounting any villain cards that make you play another villain card).  The drawback here is the fact that each round you "draw 3, play 1, keep 1, toss 1", you're not making use of the resources you're stockpiling--you're hoping something good comes out in the flop.  Each round spend playing out of hand is essentially a null round--it exposes no new cards (outside of playing a card that flips the next villain card).  

in the one Drako provided, you end turn 1 having seen 1/5 (5/25) of the villain deck.  This increases linearly, adding one card each turn.  By turn 8, you've seen 12/25 of the villain deck.  This pattern continues ad nauseum, but gives you the advantage of being able to strategize out of hand, with no "start up".  Where it would take my variant 4 turns to get to a hand of 4 cards to choose from, this one gets that advantage from the get-go.  

I see where I was erroneous earlier--while my variant has the does have the potential to go through the deck faster, Drako's variant will allow for more options at any given time unless you spend at least 4 turns using the "draw 3 option".  And, the instant that you utilize one of those options in my variant, that's a turn you have to "make up" to get to the Drako-default of 4 options.

While our game night tonight is looking kind of sparse--we're down to 4 of our usual 7--I might have to give this a run sometime soon and see how it compares.  

It seems like allowing the villain to have a hand of cards and/or draw more than one really minimizes the usefulness of things like Wraith's Infra-Red Eyepiece, Visionary's Precognition and Suggestion, etc. I'd be curious to know if those situations come up in your games, and if so how much of an impact they had.

What about something like... play the top card of the villain deck like normal, but whenever a villain card (character or otherwise) would deal damage to the hero (or nonvillain or whatever) target with the highest or lowest HP, you can redirect it but you deal 1 less damage?

 

So, you still have choices to make, but not so many that you become an almost unbeatable challenge.