Villian Varient for Variety's Sake

In my mind, the villains we have in Sentinels are the big-bads of the Sentinels Comic universe, not piddling villains that writers come up with to fill the time. That means that they keep coming back, each time with a new plan or goal (Like of course Mad Bomber Blade and Cosmic Omnitron.) I wanted to start a thread for house rules/ variations/ whatever of villains. Not necessarily because they need "fixing" but because our heroes are on to their wily schemes and aren't going to fall for that any more.

 

Here's my first: Relic-Hunter Apostate.

After the last time he tried to plunge Earth into darkness, the Sentinels got wise and stole all his relics while he was still banished. Now he wants them back.

 

Set up- remove all relics, including Condemnation, and all profane summons cards from the deck. Deal out H relic cards to the heroes. These are neither in their hand nor in play. They're just keeping them.

 

The villain deck, aside from starting with condemnation, reads the same. And the first time Apostate does H damage to a hero, their stolen relic gets shuffled into the deck. Relics have no HP and cannot be destroyed by hero targets.. Apostate's flip conditions are the same.

 

I've played it out with 3 and with 5. With 3, you're really just looking for those Fallen Angel cards. With 5, you give up a relic almost every turn, but because they're being shuffled into the deck, you still have a chance to powr through him first. The basic flow I was going for was, take him out quick or suffer through a lot of flips if you can't.

 

Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Concerns?

It seems like this variant would make the boss less difficult.  Is that the case?  Does the +fun compensate for the -difficulty?

I am a big fan of this kind of thing.  I made a bunch of alts of villains when I first started playing, but when I actually tried them out, it turned out that my cool ideas were more problematic than I'd anticipated, and my gaming group didn't have much patience for playtesting my half-baked villains. So that was the end of that. :)

Since you can't get rid of the relics at all, until Apostate eats it, it can be harder. And also, you're more likely to get demons and Apocalypses, so it's kinda a race with a fair amount of damage. (and if you end up with, say the gauntlet as one of the relics, that's.. mean)

 

I think it depends on whether you want to have a massive slug fest between you and Apostate for a few turns. I wouldn't play this way every time I drew Apostate, but it can be a palate cleanser. He basically turns into a nastier version of Ambuscade, difficulty-wise

So Apostate has to deal H damage to a target to get a relic back. Now is that overall damage, in a turn, or a single instance?

I've been playing it in a single turn, every source. Otherwise, there would be some environment combos where a 3 player game would never ever get a relic out

 

EDIT: I said any, but I meant every (or each? either way, combined totals to one target)