Fairly new to the game, but I first want to thank Greater than Games for putting out such an awesome product!
My question is this: Isn't it always easier to first destroy all of Apostate's relics before delivering the final blow to Apostate himself? Sure, he's dealing a little less damage on his flipped side, but it's being dealt to the lowest HP hero. On top of this, he's healing at a pretty ridiculous rate!
My first play with my siblings vs. him was pretty hilarious since we chose not to look at what Apostate does on his flipped side. We focussed fired him, then as soon as he flipped we realized it was a mistake to not destroy the relics first. So, we decided our best chance was to focus fire him again until he flipped, destroy all the relics, then finish him. We managed (after a very drawn out game!) to pull it off but I think it would have been much easier to not have him flip at all.
yeah, that's the point. You're NOT supposed to let him flip. If you try and kill him straight out of the gate, the fight will never end. It's a counter-measure to balance out his low hp.
I feel like generally the objective is to manage the Relics while plinking Apostate, and then nuke him hard to finish him as soon as you've cleared the board. Sometimes this can be really hard to do, though. If you have Runes of Malediction in play, for example, and you don't have a way to spike damage high enough to cut through the damage reduction you might not have any other choice. Also, if you make him flip once, generally the plan is try to make him flip again (or just finish him) ASAP. Sitting there on his B side healing for several turns is the last thing you want.
Last time I played against him we actually got kinda nervous towards the end of the game that we were going to wreck him with Ongoing AoEs before we could finish his last Relic.
This. We had a team of low damage heroes and the Runes were completely compromising our ability to break his toys. We reduced him to zero, blew up the Runes, and managed to break the rest of his Relics and defeat him. It only came up once, but it was an immense help. If anything, 99 times out of 100, it will be nothing but a benefit to the players. It's hard to accidentally flip Apostate.
Flipping works very differently between different villains. In some, you have to flip them, in some you want to flip them, some you try to avoid having them flip and some just do. And then there's [Redacted]...
Whenever we've fought Apostate, we've never had him flip, and we've never lost to him. Mr Fixer is good for smashing the relics, if you can get out Alternating Tiger Claw which makes all his damage irreducible. Then it doesn't matter how much soak the relics have (Condemnation, Runes of Malediction, Periapt of Woe, none of their soak matters), since Fixer will always do max damage to them. And the Runes only have 6hp, while the Periapt has only 4hp. If you have, say, a Pipe Wrench out (+1 damage, +1 soak) and Harmony to go with your Tiger Claw, that's three points of damage in a single hit even if you don't have stuff like Charge, Overdrive, Bloody Knuckles, or buffs from someone like Legacy letting you do more damage in a turn. Riveting Crane Style could be good too, since when you hit something with it, all damage to that target is irreducible for a turn. However, you need to actually get through the soak in the first place in order to deal at least one point of damage and remove the soak, so it's less reliable than tiger Claw, even if it means everyone can freely hit the thing.
In general, we've never had any major problems with Apostate. The ones who give us the most hassle tend to be Plague Rat and the Matriarch (both of whom kicked our arses this weekend, though in the case of the Matriarch it wasn't helped by the environment, which played two Mystical Defenses, then later two Leaking Rooms in a row which was the real bugger, then later had all three Krakens out as well). Citizen Dawn can be a bit of a bugger too, but only really because of That One Sodding Card :P.
I've played everyone. A lot. The last few times we've fought the Chairman, we kicked his arse. We have more trouble with Plague Rat (stupid irreducible damage :P) and the Matriarch (arrrgh the cards, they don't stay dead and they hurt when they die!). The Chairman's deck can be painful if you get all the damage-dealers out early on, but otherwise we can usually stay on top of it. It was very fun when I played Haka and got Savage Mana out on the first turn. Fortunately I remembered after killing two Underbosses that I needed to leave the last three (at least till the Chairman flipped) :). I think Ab'Zero could be a useful guy to use against the Chairman, if he can get Subzero Atmosphere out - that way, Underbosses won't bring Thugs out on the turn that they themselves enter play, so you have a turn in which to stop them from doing so (by kicking their arses) :).
Played apostate for the first time today...I would honestly say he's been the hardest villain fight I've encountered (as a rule we play on advanced)...before the first heroes turn was over he had all but 2 of his relics out... Maybe it was the worst draw ever, but it was a horror show
We just got SotM (EE and both expansions) last week and I've been playing with my wife and daughter. Wife and I played with Tachyon, Tempest, Nightmist and Legacy against Apostate and he had all of his relics out by the end of his 3rd turn and was doing 19 damage per turn. We won, primarily due to lots of Fleet of Foot and Nightmist having her damage redirection out very early. We had 3 heroes at 4 HP or less by the time the fight was over. That was all without him flipping as well.
sometimes you don't have a choice. When he has Runes of Malediction, corrupted effagy, the sword and both gauntlets in play, you cannot deal enough damage to destroy the relics. You /have/ to flip him and use his flip mechanic to destroy the Malediction and hope you can pile on enough damage to take out the effagy (or flip him again, cause he'd just pop a relic instead of dying) to get past the damage reduction and healing and junk.
that happened to us last week. Naasty game, but a lot of fun!