I'm normally fine playing whatever heroes & villains the randomizer assigns, but my 11yo daughter is much happier when we win. Because of that, she's resisted playing against some of the games tougher villains. So, what are your recommendations for the best hero teams to use against Iron Legacy, The Matriarch, The Chairman, or Kaargra Warfang?
Iron Legacy –> Any hero team with A LOT of ongoing destruction
Matriarch —> Bring heros like Tachyon Fixer and Haka who can totally shut down incoming damage for whole turns to clear birds painlessly
Chairman —> Bring a beefy high health tank and lots of strong AoE
Kaargra —> This is tougher to game the system, but bring heros who can easily score you a bunch of points
Haka, Tempest and Fanatic tend to snatch up titles quickly.
For any high-end traditional villain (not the Vengeful Five-style villains), my first two picks are Team Leader Tachyon and Dark Visionary. After that, it depends on the villain, but Legacy or Greatest Legacy are usually my third pick, followed by Tempest, Wraith, or Haka as the situation calls for it. Or, if it's a villain without many targets in their deck, Chrono Ranger is definitely a great pick- he can make Spite and his promo go down rapidly, proves to be surprisingly viable against Iron Legacy.
Though I think Iron Legacy's best counter is Redeemer Fanatic- between her extra draw power and Team Leader Tachyon, she can easily get out Wrathful Retribution, which if timed right, can almost KO Iron Legacy in and of itself- just make sure you never flip Iron Legacy, you'll regret it if you do. Try and get him down to that 21 HP and keep him there until you're ready to finish him- between Fanatic and Team Leader Tachyon, you should be able to take him pretty easily if you managed to get any Light Speed Barrages in the turns building up to the final punch.
That being said... I probably shouldn't be saying anything since I don't have any kids of my own, but isn't teaching her how to lose and learn from it an important life lesson?
That's a fair point. She actually handles loss ok (and doen't get upset about losting in competitive games), but I've noticed that she never wants to try level 4 villains. So I want to help her pick a good team to get a win or two under her belt, and then she'll be more open to trying to take them on with less-optimal heroes.
For Iron Legacy I've always found Fanatic (or the Redeemer version, if you prefer) to be incredibly useful - a first-turn End of Days, if you can manage it, can do wonders for getting rid of Angry Paul's starting ongoings (as long as none of them are Galvanised, of course ;)), and Wrathful Retrubution can finish the game even if Iron Legacy's only taken a few points of damage, as long as Fanatic's been knocked down to a suitably low hp total (not too difficult even if you're not against someone who's constantly hitting everyone for massive whacks of damage ;)).
For Lilian, anyone who can either nerf damage or redirect it or tank it or whatever works…Haka's good because he can nerf damage via Ground Pound but also eat all the birdies and the Mask via Savage Mana. Heroes like Mr Fixer or the Wraith, who can reduce incoming damage and/or redirect it (Smoke Bombs, Pipe Wrench, Driving Mantis) are good, or someone like the Naturalist or the Scholar who can tank and heal themselves as well as redirecting stuff to them. Fighting Lilian in the Final Wasteland is good too, if Unforgiving Wasteland comes out. Even more so if a Horrid Skunk Ape comes out as well - then just let all the birds get perma-killed and enjoy the stomping you can deal out at your leisure :D.
For the Chairman…urgh…well, again, Haka can be good with his Savage Mana - just make sure you let three Underbosses go to the trash so that Mr Pike actually flips over. I suppose again, tanking and mass death to everything is a good thing here ;).
Can't say much for Kaargra since we've only fought her once since my copy of Wrath arrived (and we lost :P), but I'd say AE damage is good, so heroes like Tempest who can easily dish out hits to multiple targets should be pretty useful when it comes to gaining you points :).
Sky-Scraper was a HUGE asset in my fight against Kaargra. 3 of my first five cards were Thoratian Monolith...
Chairman I like Fanatic a lot, ZO or chastise on hired gun takes away his big hitter, and any retribution is huge.
Matriarch I find Bunker really strong, with either maintenance and plating or plating and recharge crushing her damage. Any damage reduction is huge for Matriarch. Scholars works well too.
One of the players in my group loves to use Argent Adept when it comes to needing ongoing destruction.
Yeah, double Sarabande with the Pipes is super-useful :D.
Thanks for the tips folks. We fought The Matriarch in the Tomb of Anubis last night using Wraith, PW Haka, Sky-Scraper, DW Visionary, and Grandpa Legacy. That team of heroes trounced her and the match wasn't even close. Of course, her deck helped us by putting 2 Darken the Skies in her first 5 cards.
For Chairman, if you have Parse, she can be very helpful. Extrasensory Awareness can dump Prison Break into the discard pile, which effectively neuters Pike's big trick.
If you want to completely maul lillian try Sentinels with any other two heroes, block every turn, you get no reactionary dmg, with
Tempest it's even crazier, although most birds won't do dmg anyways.
For Kaargra, you really want to bring along along a good tank, like Legacy or the Naturalist. Scoring 20 Favour and beating her up isn't the hard part. Preventing her from getting 20 Favour is.
Chrono Ranger is ridiculous against The Chairman (well, specifically against The Operative). It's also very handy to have some way of dealing with the Hired Gun out of turn before it kills everyone, like Hairtrigger Reflexes, The Amulet of the Elder Gods, Bee Bot or some of Captain Cosmic's cards. I guess you could use Parse and just prevent the Prison Break ever happening.
Against The Matriarch, I think The Wraith and Bunker are pretty strong, though Fanatic does get to use End of Days shenanigans. Damage reduction is your friend, and the best damage reduction comes from Equipment, since the Matriarch is better at blowing up Ongoings.
Against Iron Legacy, it's hard to go wrong with Fanatic and Absolute Zero. I imagine Skyscraper can do pretty well too, though I haven't tried it.
I find a great four hero team that takes card of damage and heals like a tank and destroys ongoing and goes through reduction Is the scholar who can use the nymbers of most villains agains them and is pretty good at healing and spporting his team, another friend in tgese fights is the naturalist with environmental allie in gazelle form makes the environment work with you plus he can heal himself and be a tank for the team with the scholar, the third one is omnitron-x who brings all his components that heal anyone and do damage for free and his plating to protect him from the villain since the enviroment is under control giving him the timeshift freed to use on the heros around you, and finally the queen of support and irriducible damage parse will take care of most of the problem that the other heros cant handle. And set up doesnt take that much time for any of them since all of these heros help their friend with giving eachother plays draws and heals. Great for any enemy you’ll face.
Iron Legacy…ugh. Your first priority is Ongoing destruction, and your second priority is damage mitigation. The Naturalist, Tachyon, and the Wraith have good options for both. Chrono-Ranger does too, but his ping can make him a liability while you wait to get out enough Bounty cards to matter. Try to pick an easy-going environment, like the Mobile Defense Platform.
The Matriarch, I’ve discovered, is absolute easy mode with H=3 and Unity. Do whatever it takes to get Stealth-Bot into play and just sit there laughing. Legacy is a good back-up, but it’s hard to get his combination of “Lead from the Front” + “Fortitude” and/or “Next Evolution” into play, so don’t rely on it. Anyone else who can get armor is great.
The Chairman doesn’t tend to give me much trouble. Despite their low HP and how much damage can be put out quite quickly, I’ve found the Sentinels, with their basically unparalleled damage output, can completely ruin the Chairman’s day. Major damage output is your primary concern, so consider Haka, KNYFE, Ra, and Tempest; Haka in particular is a rotten cheater with his “Savage Mana.” I generally try to have either Parse or the Visionary in my team to control when those bloody “Prison Break” cards come out, preferring Parse because she has more options to just discard them. I also recommend ignoring the Operative as much as possible until the Chairman himself is dead. You don’t need her flipping and giving him a damage boost.
If you’re still having trouble with the Chairman, consider replacing one of your damage-dealers with Legacy. “Lead from the Front” + “Next Evolution” makes me feel kind of embarrassed to win, like I turned on a godmode cheat.
Kaargra Bloodfang…ugh. She gives me crap and I haven’t figured out a reliable strategy. You need lots of damage, so Haka and KNYFE are good to have. Never hurts to have Tachyon around to turn off enemy damage for for a round or two. I’ve had good luck with Mister Fixer, though it should be noted I play with the unofficial rule that his damage gets bumped by one in the same round he plays a Style or Tool card; but even without that rule, “Jack Handle” + “Grease Monkey Style” or “Driving Mantis Style” can be quite useful.
Ideally you build a team to handle the specific villian. But that's more specific than OP originally asked.
If you just want an all around best team I feel like there are two schools of thought:
1. The ramp up and win team
Combines a lot of card draw, play cards effect and using additional powers to just build up an overwhelming advantage.
The best for these are Team Leader or super Science Tach, Omni X, Kvothe or prime warden Argent, Greatest legacy, and Prime warden Tempest for enablers
The best heroes to target with ramp I feel are Legacy, Tempest, Sentinels, and Wraith.
2. The silver bullet team
A flexible team that can shut down a lot of decks using specific cards/powers for example visionary can brain burn to shut down voss or chairman or levitate to shut down all the environment damage.
strong cards for this are Dark or reg Visionary, All the legacies, Wraith, Scholar, Parse, Engine of War bunker, Haka's savage mana
The key is coming up with the best version of each strategy and then deciding which one would have better wining percentages in the long run. I don't think I've played enough to really say myself.
1) Iron Legacy
This fight is over in 4 rounds, win or lose, so no slow-build characters. That means Argent Adept and Absolute Zero are poor selections. Ongoing destruction is absolutely necessary, and ideally all 5 decks have some. IL will do lots of damage, so Omnitron-X can't maintain Components and is a poor choice, unless you pray for a melee damage reduction to open with. Damage Redirection is a great choice. You need to overcome damage reduction, so Legacy is a good choice to help everyone else. Characters with big One-shots (Ra, Tempest) do well. Damage Reduction and Healing work, which spells Nightmist, but I have not tried her on him.
2) The Matriarch
Damage reduction works nicely. This deck does a lot of 1 and 2 hits. Bunker, Legacy, Tempest are great. Wraith is great for manipulating the villain deck and damage reduction on Matriarch. Visionary is great for TTE on Matriarch. Nightmist is a survivor in this fight, but doesn't do much damage. Sudden Mana (Haka) Huginn and Muninn, Domains, and the Mask, but no more than that. Too many fowl under SM means Matriarch plays Ongoing destruction too fast to deal with, then SM is gone. Legacy for NE and LFTF are a definite plus. Tachyon is actually a very good choice, despite Nemesis penalty.
3) The Chairman
Haka to Sudden Mana all of the Thugs, then the Underbosses after Chairman flips. Legacy for LFTF and NE. Again, lots of small damage from this deck, so damage reduction is highly desired. Ongoing destruction doe snot come from one-shots, so SM is safe.
4) Kaargra Warfang
I have no standard for beating this deck, yet, but my current philosophy is to concentrate on generating favor fast on damage instead of destruction of targets or grabbing Titles. Wraith is self-supporting and can pop out 2 favor per round by Turn 2 often, or can churn away Fickle fans to protect favor. Haka is self-supporting, and can rampage a lot of favor. Legacy boosts a lot of 3 damage single target powers to 4 (Bunker, Ra, Naturalist, Fanatic), and 1 damage multi-target powers to 2 (Tempest), to help others produce favor. With good card draw, you can win Turn 3, but you want to go for reliable favor. If you take Haka, then cherry pick the villains that generate a lot of favor for Sudden Mana, but don't take all gladiators or you'll see Fickle fans spoiling the game.
I know the team I used to fight advanced iron legacy was tempest, legacy, and Haka. Haka built up cards for haka of battle, so we didnt have to worry about him flipping, tempest kept everyone healed and the ongoings in check, and Legacy also helped with the healing, and of course the damage buffs. Other good cards to use against both iron legacy and the matriarch are cards like hypersonic assault, that prevent the villian from damaging anybody. Hypersonic assault works especially well with the matriarch, because it stops her from damaging, AND kills all the birds.
Team Leader Tachyon, Old Man Legacy, Wraith, Scholar, Nightmist.... never lose.