Most Hated Villain?

After having played SotM for a few months now, and becoming a big fan, I've come to a conclusion:

I really, really hate Spite.

Note, I don't mean in the sense of finding him hard, or disliking his fluff.  Rather, playing against him is just aggressively unfun.  The first half of the game is almost always a waiting game for him to flip, given how much he regenerates.  The second half is boring, because there's no variation:  he always has the same drugs, and always does the same things, with no card play at all.  What's more, the "suffer damage every time you use a power" is just masochistic.  In almost every way, Spite feels like an experiment in how to design a villain that, ahem, spites the players for wanting to play the game.

Does anyone else have any villains they really, really hate playing against, for whatever reason?

Spite.  Miss Information is a close second.  I will agree with the consesus that the promo Spite at least fixes the monotony issues, if not the drugs having un-fun mechanics.

I dont *hate* IL, but there are times I am annoyed at having taken the time to shuffle and setup a game that ends in 2 rounds

Ambuscade. The constant shuffling means you don't actually go anywhere. With all other characters, as cards are played, you know more about what will come (for good or bad). The constant shuffling of Ambuscade means that there is always a chance that any card will show up. It makes the beginning, middle, and end all feel the same.

Spite, Matriarch, Chairman, Miss Information. With the first three it just feels very samey. Their cards come out and if you can break them then you’ll get hurt and they’ll probably just come back out again anyway regardless of (H) scaling or chance. Miss Information feels like she gets a head start while the heroes patiently wait for their cue to figure out that the reason they’re burning to death while standing stupidly in a burning building that their secretary lit the building on fire. It doesn’t feel terribly heroic, and I feel like it’s an old episode of The Superfriends. Corny and poorly paced.

Voss. >.< I play most games on advanced, and it sucks randomly losing to an ill timed Forced Redeployment. Outside of that..... uh... Chairman, probably, for a similar reason ala Jail Break.

Spite and Miss Information are mine. Just waiting for them to flip becomes such a drag, even more so with Miss Information, since with Spite you can pretend to be doing something. GloomWeaver as well, but only because I have only lost to him once and that was because Tomb of Anubis was just rough that game.

I think the most groan-worthy villains we ever turn up are Kismet and La Capitan, just because of the amount of times they tend to beat us. The Chairman too, actually, though he doesn't seem to come up very often. At least if Iron Legacy's gonna beat us he'll do it in a couple of rounds, rather than dragging out over many and with loads of horrible minions and stuff :P.

Miss Information and Iron Legacy.  The former keeps you from doing anything fun and the latter is either a face-stomping or villain-crushing depending on your luck, neither of which is particularly interesting to my group.

Gloomweaver.

I can handle most game results, what I can't handle is knowing that a game is going to take a long time, and unless I really screw up or get insanely unlucky there will be nothing interesting happenning in the game.

Spite and Miss Information. I don't see this having anything to do with difficulty; they both force you to spend a fair amount of time waiting. If you're lucky, you have some deck manipulation and you can use this to draw them out a little faster, but generally you just have to wait.

I also get annoyed by Spite's drugs. On PL626, I can see taking damage for using powers, but the discarding gets old very fast. Then, in this single-target game, Mynd-Phyre takes out most environment effects, which could help to add some variability.

I like both of them conceptually; I just don't find the fights very engaging.

Spite is unfun, though I like the variant fine. I rarely have fun with Plague Rat, but then I tend to pack at least 2 heroes with ongoing hate. Gloomweaver can be tedius. I really like Aposttate and Akash, as they come out guns blazing, meaning my newer friends feel like we’re going to lose, as we plan.

I've never found spite boring or unfun (but I also play a lot less than most forumites) I do find that he is one of the few villians I never play correctly though. I'm constantly realizing I've been ignoring his healing or card play for half the match, which invalidates everything.

Currently I hate Cosmic Omnitron, digital game allowed me to play him for the first time with H=5 (random draw). Both games started with Railgun, disintegration, interpolation follwed by sedative fletchettes with an EMP within the first 2 rounds. Hard to get ahead of all that damage. I've yet to try round three but this time I'll pick my team.

If only Spite had a sixth or seventh drug so there was some variety, that would make him more playable to me. (He would still flip at 5)

Ms. Information is easily number 1 for me. Because of her destruction effects, you can't do any set up with anybody. You can't actually do anything till she flips. She's challenging in a way that's boring.

Strange to see so many people disliking Miss Information - I don't mind her. We don't usually have too much trouble against her. Maybe because we only play with three heroes so it's easier?

Ive just played a game against Miss Info on Challenge mode, she flipped on the first turn. Im finding a lot of the Challege modes are "fixing" some of the issues I had with certain villains. *cough* Ambuscade *cough* Gloomweaver

I'm going to jump on the Miss Information and Spite bandwagon too.

I actually don't mind Miss Information very occasionally, but I certainly don't complain that we veto her in G+ games. Her games just feel very samey to me - sit around having her wreck your stuff being unable to do much until she finally flips (and that can take ages since it's entirely based on where the Clue cards are sitting in the deck) which is dull, and then actually being able to play the game afterwards.

And Spite. He's another one where you sit around not doing much until the right cards come out for him to flip, and then you can start actually playing. And when he does flip it's essentially the exact same game every time because he has the same five drugs, and he removes any variation you might have got from the environment. Boring. I'm with Matchstickman, a couple more drug cards so you need 5/7 would help a lot.

Wager Master did not go over well with my group...

At one point Haka reduced him to 0 hp so we would lose; because the player was bored and wanted to play a "real game" of Sentinels.

She is much more manageabe with three heroes. She's also a lot easier if you take Omni-X or Dark Visionary with you.

I don't mind Miss Information, but I prefer to have some deck manipulation when playing against her so that I can feel like I have some form of player agency rather than simply weathering the storm until the flip then hammering down as hard as possible.

Spite is annoying, but not to the point I'll pass on a game against him. The Matriarch is the only one that I actively avoid playing against as it's just a hassle to deal with all the upkeep.

Yep all aboard the Spite hate train. Its the exact same game every time waiting for him to flip. Flipping him not only makes him stop playing his own deck but his drugs that destroy the environment every turn basically means those two decks dont see any play at all. Very boring to fight against, worse yet I brought Sentinels to a friends place, there were like 7 or 8 people there so we split into two groups and the group I wasn't in decided to play against Spite. The new players pretty much came away from their game thinking it was a stupid game.

Tried to tell them otherwise but it was too late. I'm not even keeping Spite with the rest of my set anymore, he's a liability to new players.

Just hide the original Spite, and claim that GloomSpite is the only Spite!

(I haven't actually played against GloomSpite yet, so I don't know what he's like)

GloomSpite is somewhat questionable thematically (in that saving victims actually hurts you) but certainly reduces the sameyness feel that the original has.

I don't mind GloomSpite.

We once had 6 players and so I volunteered to run the villain and environment (that actually didn't happen because the people who were actually playing kept jumping in and doing villain/environment things, leaving me with absolutely nothing to do, but that's another story). Two people were new, one inexperienced, one moderately experienced. We randomised Spite.

It didn't go well. The game dragged on forever, with the newer players entirely confused by all the triggers and effects and by having to basically weather the storm waiting for the drugs to turn up and trying not to die. I completely lost interest and although the players politely played on it was obvious no-one was having fun.

it's a shame, because I think Spite's thematically very interesting. Unfortunately he's mechanically somewhat dull.

I completely agree Silverleaf and I think it also has to do with the fact that even rescuing the Victims, literally the one major interaction his deck has is rendered completely irrelevent by forced entry. Sure you could save them, but he busts into the safe house and everyone is immediately back on the field. So whats the point? He's going to kill them anyway, cant feasibly stop em. 

I wish Spite was more interesting to fight, because yeah hes got a cool theme, but my god is it boring to fight.

Nothing against folks who don't mind Miss Information, but it seems like there are a lot of asterisks attached to a fun game against her.  Three hero game with deck manipulation practically guarantees a team with Parse, Wraith, Visionary, etc.

Possibly all three at once, in fact...

Maybe forced entry could be houseruled and modified to include a cruel choice for heroes. Simenon like immediately destroy/discard this card if all heroes discard their hands. (Big damage or non caracter card destruction would also be options that could be considered.

Wager Master is awesome thematically, but I don't see myself running against him very often.  And the biggest reason is that WM introduces the most randomness out of any other Sentinels villain, and I personally don't find pure randomness too fun.  Does it have an amazing theme, though?  Absolutely.

LaCapitan is a kind of a hit or miss for me. I had two or three games in a row that ended with the boat out, her entire crew out, and her at full HP. We kept killing things only to have them brought back the next turn. I've mellowed out against her, but it was hard not to hate her for a bit.

Well, I prefer to have some deck manipulation but does it matter either way? When I play Akash Bhuta I like to take along heroes that have a long setup as it gives me time to explore those decks more fully and simply pummelling her with Ra and Knyfe is effective but monotonous. Similar to taking on Iron Legacy without any access to Ongoing destruction, there's nothing inherently wrong without it but the game is more fun, more engaging, if you bring some along with you. Many villains provide a beter playing experience with a particular spectrum of heroes, some moreso than others.

If you only ever played Miss Information with deck manipulation but in doing so you enjoyed the game against her, would that really be a problem?

I would say that it seems like there are a lot of asterisks attached to a fun game against her.

By all means people should play the game how they want to play it.  I'm not making any claims about something being good or bad.  It just isn't something I would personally enjoy.  But in my experience playing with deck manipulation against Miss Information doesn't make the game fun, but functional.  It actually gives the players something to do rather than wait for her to flip and endure her damage and destruction in the meantime.

I am definitely not saying that people who enjoy a game against her in any way, shape, or form are causing any sort of problem.  I'm saying that she is one of my least favorite villains to play, as even when I am part of a team that can meaningfully effect her front side I still find it to be a rather tedious and frustrating prospect.  Honestly I'm glad someone can even stand her deck, let alone find some joy in playing it.  That someone, however, is not me.  But it would be pretty lame if I said that it was a problem that someone appreciated something in this game that doesn't adhere to my aesthetic or preference.  Who knows?  Maybe with a solid team I'd have a blast against her.  But when my friends and I have an evening free together we don't want to risk our limited free time with a game that will most likely not be one we'll enjoy.

I prefer to play random. That way there's no stacking the "best" decks against the villain.

I totally understand your point, and I'll refer you back to what I think is the more significant part of my post:

It's not about stacking the "best" decks, it's about building a game that looks like it will be enjoyable at the time. If a randomiser gave you a setup that you just weren't feeling in the mood to play would you still go ahead and spend your time on it, or would you randomise again? Or would you maybe think "that setup is okay but I feel like playing Tempest today so I'll just switch one of the other heroes out"? It's been far too long since I was available to G+ but that was always the way it went down, basically using the randomiser to initially set the game up but then tweaking a little bit here and there if needed until it felt right for everybody.

I'm semi-random in that I don't use a randomiser but I also don't consider what particular team ought to be pitted against any given villain. In group games we randomly shuffle a villain into play then just pull whatever we fancy from the box and see what happens; when there are a lot of new players at the table I let them choose first, then I grab either a support hero or someone that I think will be particularly useful against the villain in case we start to flounder and the game stops being fun for them (all bets are off in subsequent games though). On the occasions that I solo I just go with whatever I feel like at the time, which is the more holistic approach I was getting at earlier; do I fancy a game with Visionary/Parse and a couple of others going up against Miss Information? Do I want to play AZ, Bunker and AN other against Akash Bhuta? Or maybe just a damage-centric beatdown on somebody? These are the kind of games that we don't indulge in during group play but are still a valid part of what Sentinels has to offer. Some villains just have a smaller spectrum of heroes that make the game 'work' than others.

All in all the great thing about this game, mentioned so many times before, is that there is something for everyone here and nobody has to like all of what it has to offer all of the time

I've never had a problem with Spite because I've always managed to save enough people that when he flips he practically kills himself with the damage he takes. (But maybe I'm playing him wrong or I always get lucky card draws) That being said I usually don't play him just because there are other villains I would rather play. But I absolutely hate playing Plague Rat so I always try to avoid him, and I also dislike the Chairman but that's just because I've only ever one like once against him. Difficulty of 4, more like 5 or 6.

Weirdly enough I dont hate Iron Legacy, but I do use him as a threat during game night.

I don't know that I hate playing against any villain.  All of them have some setups or combos that'll frustrate a team normal or advanced.   

As printed, Gloomweaver. I only ever play him with variants to make it more of a challenge.

Miss Information is much harder with 5 than with 3 (same with The Dreamer).

Advanced Dawn also strikes me as nastier with 5, more firepower can turn against you as you run out of gentle citizens quicly and will need heavy gymnastics if she flips.

I don't know about Dawn. It really depends on the team. A 5 with enough damage or ongoing control doesn't care too much.  I can usually whittle her down then alpha strike her to death either right before she's going to turn or right after I turn her back.  The deck controllers (Wraith, Visionary, Parse, sometimes Legacy and Nightmist) make it too easy and less fun, though.  I generally prefer advanced Voss, though, for his lack of destroying all my stuff.

Dawn is only scary if you rely on equipments and ongoings. Parse's Buffer Overflow helps keep her Devastating Aurora at bay (her main trump card), and so does deck manipulation with Wraith and Visionary.

In a weird way, I prefer Aurora sometimes to Truth. I tend to leave Anvil alone and Truth can be a nightmare for the wrong team.

I want to like Wager Master, but my second game against him was just horrible. A waste of setup time. He came out with "even hp wins" on the table, and flopped reducing him to 0 loses the game on turn two. So I gave up, set up for a turn 3 even hp win, and walked away feeling like I'd wasted my time playing today.

Interesting.  That was basically my last game against Wager Master as well (those two conditions, I mean) but it went over really well with the group I played him with (first time they saw him).  For us it was actually something we had to plan out how to achieve that.  We had Captain Cosmic with damage reduction, Tempest with damage increase, the Sentinels (damage reduction on Mainstay, Idealist was nearly incapped by turn 2), and two standard heroes.  We were going to plan on getting him low enough to use Fling Into Darkness to destroy him without reducing him to 0 hp, but we rather enjoyed the challenge of getting 10 different targets to even values of HP (but less than max, since that's also part of the condition) given the different damage modifiers and limited health range of constructs & the Sentinels team.  And yes, I enjoyed hitting my friends to help drop them into beneficial HP values

I had also warned them ahead of time that he would not play like a standard villain, and it was the last game of the night so we didn't mind a quick wrap-up, so I'm sure those both helped.

We (as in my group... not the royal "We") HATE HATE want to burn the deck HATE Wager MAster...

What a pain in the ass to play against and to play.
 

I might have felt differently about that game if hitting the win condition hadn't been a joke. He also had damage me on even hp out, and two wagelings. So the win was literally kill both wagelings in round 1, so that one could hit me on round 2 and make all my odd heroes even. The only tricky part was handling Insula Primalis, which had a velociraptor pack out and who knows what coming. So I put out bee bot to take the hit and destroy the 2nd environment card.

Wager Master failed to flop anything that took me off even hit points on round 3's play, so the game was over.

Wager Master could probably have been tweaked a bit to prevent quick games, but I wouldn’t know how without sitting down to study him more. Basically, I wish his conditions werent so immediate. At least Voss checks at the start of his turns to see if the heroes lose.

How did you make Bee Bot be the thing with the second-highest hp (to get hit by the T-Rex) if all the players were at even numbers and therefore had at least 2hp?

By mistyping velociraptor :) Their damage wasn't really the problem, bee bot was out as a hedge to destroy any other card that could come out and mess up my hit points. I think whatever flopped wasn't going to take me to odd anyhow (I think it was river of lava), but I was worried about something like obsidian field.

Edit: corrected my above post.

WM's quick games are by design, I specifically asked about that idea during playtesting and was told he was designed to be "Gimicky"... which is fine if you know what he is going into the fight.

I don’t know were all this Spite hate is coming from when Miss Information exists. What an awful experience. Not only can you not damage her for half the battle, but you can’t even set up! No wonder she came with the Final Wasteland, since that and Enclave are the only places even almost remotely fun to play against!

Spite, Miss Information, and the Organization. At least with Iron Legacy if things go badly it’s over quick…

Voss doesn’t bother me. Because of him and Ambuscade not having much hero ongoing/item destruction (pre-DE, that is), I used them to teach new players the game or test out new combos in digital.

I always liked Chairman. And yeah, why are people annoyed by Voss?

I can see points of frustration, mostly with the different immunities the minions have, and the varied damage types nerfing some counters (Legacy or Omni-X), and there’s enough multi-target or all hero target things to make minion maker heroes like Captain Cosmic and Unity (or Southwest Sentinels, in a way) annoying. Not to mention the “If X minions in play” alternate loss condition.

But, conversely, I actually used Voss’ relative (and brutal) simplicity to explain the game style to some friends. They had played WoW back in the day, and we had some overlap in play during the Wrath expansion. So I said “think of it like Patchwerk’s DPS check.”

If a part of the hate for some villains is DE, I won’t get it. I only have EE.