Visionary: Queen of Rook City

Visionary has always beenn a favorite, but she just absolutely owns the Rook City villains and enviornments.

Mass Levitation takes a lot of sting out of Pike Industrial and Rook City itself. They go from brutal to heroes to fairly neutral. I almost never bothered with that card before, but here it’s nuts.

Chairman with Brain Burn is, of course, just huge, but add in Suggestion and it gets silly. And Suggestion on Matriarch can just stunt her whole ability and put a hurting on the Cohorts. Twist wrecks both of their damage output too.

For Spite, she digs for his drugs fast while also being able to give him less damage with Twist.

She’s less useful against the Rat, but even there her constant ongoing destruction or going into a coccoon to soak an infection is at worst solid.

So, yeah, if you didnt love Vis with the original villains (she isnt great against Blade or Ambuscade), time to look again.

She is useful against Plague Rat. If you've got AZ on the team, TtE AZ and now the Infected damage is Cold or Fire. She can also Telekinetic Cocoon, and become immune to the Infected and Irreducible damage. Sitting there soaking Highest HP damage and for some Heroes after PR flips, letting them target her to heal 3 when PR is flipped. That often does not work out well, but it is an option. TtE on PR can also make all his damage splash off Legacy's LFtF and NE.

But I do not like Visionary in general, because Wrest the Mind is horribly useless and too common in the deck. In a few rare instances, she can redirect 5 to take 3 and deal the mook 3, but after Silver Gulch, that much damage from one environment card is extremely rare. They're dealing 3 max, which makes WtM a highly questionable play. If you can get her cocooned, WtM works better. But in most games, WtM goes unplayed because she cannot handle that feedback damage. She is good support for Legacy, putting his Ongoings back, and good against single target villains who tend to have Ongoings. But her damage is rare. I would like to see her environment deck manipulation removed and something more substantial added.

Her non-damage stuff is fun, and combos interestingly, but a lot of that is rare in the deck and can never hit her hand. Since you do not play her for damage reasons, her damage cards are clogs in the deck, stalling her more interesting cards.

Wrest the Mind is more situational than most cards.  But I'd hardly call it 'horribly useless'.  If nothing else, it allows you to deal up to 45 damage to Omnitron when dropped on an Electropulse Explosive, which is usually worth the 15 damage Vis takes.  More generally, if the wrested target dies from the 3 damage to it, then Vis won't take her damage, so it's easy to come out ahead.  Take, for example, Baron Blade's Powered Remote Turret (7 Hp, 2 damage to all hero targets @ EoT).  Wrest the Mind the damage at Blade, and instead of each hero taking 2 (6-10 damage total) Blade will take 6, Vis will take 6, and the turret will be destroyed.  That's 13 damage to the villain team, at the cost of 6 damage that the heros were going to take anyways.  On Citizen Summer, there's a 13 point swing (6 redirected to the villains, 4 to kill Summer, and 6-3=3 damage saved from the heroes)  Taking out Summer by convential damage is only a 6 point swing (because that damage is headed towards the villains anyways, so the only benefit is the prevented damage to the heroes).

I appreciated Wrest the Mind when Baron Blade had backlash field and Blade Battalion out. It wasn't strictly necessary but it was fun.

It's even more fun on Ambuscade's Reactive Plating!

In the app I seem to recall a redirection from a mine to Ambuscade with reactive plating out caused a massive loop. Did that with Tachyon's redirection, though.

Any case where you can redirect a villain's damage to themselves so that their retaliation kicks in and they hit themselves again is cool - Blade and his Backlash Field, the Chairman (with added Nemesis bonus if he hits the Operative), etc. Somehow it's even more satisfying than the hero dealing the damage themselves :D.

If you let the Mine hit Visionary first, she won't be able to deal damage, then she can redirect everything else for free.

Besides the obvious uses when you have a big target, I use Wrest the Mind in many other ways. It is like a Mind Spike that will penalize you for not killing the target, but you get to through other damage somewhere. 

If the target has more than 3 health, you can always redirect the attack back at them for a bigger attack. If the target has a 2 damage attack, suddenly Wrest the Mind is dealing 5 damage, that's Lightning Slash and Fire Blast territory. also, If the target deals damage based on it's health, it will instantly kill them.

I also really like to for killing/hurting things that just come out on the villain's turn. Let's say you are against Voss, and one of the three damage villain are there. Play Wrest the Mind on that target, instead of dealing straight damage. Now, at the end-of-the-villain's turn, a new minion will probably come out. Redirect the damagefrom the first minion with Wrest the Mind, killing the new minion before it deals damage, then Visionary kills the first minion. Wrest the Mind just dealt 6 damage, and saved a lot of damage.

If Visionary has trouble drawing cards, why not just use her power to get more and discard anything you consider useless? Often her power is useful to use on other heroes, but there’s no reason not to take a long view of her own deck and be selfish.

I really like her ability to control the villain deck, but after Parse gained that ability in a power, I kind of wish Visionary had it in a power or ongoing, too, instead of just one-shots.

Dark Visionary.

Wait, what? That sounds like a bug… I mean, I know they both have the same nemesis symbol, but if that's how things are supposed to work, shouldn't any villain- or hero for that matter- get the nemesis damage bonus when they target themselves?

That is how it works. Any different card withthe same nemesis symbol counts as a nemesis.

So the Operative and Chairman Pike, the entire Ennead, but you never get it against yourself.

No, the nemesis bonus only applies to damage dealt by cards other than the one damaging it, so no bonus for The Chairman hitting The Chairman but bonus damage for The Operative hitting The Chairman!

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/11786#comment-11786

EDIT: Man I worded that badly, but you get the idea.

Just don't WtM on Ambuscade's explosives launcher, it is really disappointing.

Wrest on Monorail is epic, as well as using it for Kraken Insurance, just in case a second one comes out and you have only one target to feed it.

My favorite is Enforcers on Chairman Advanced.  It's a sick amount of damage, and you can just discard to keep them around to kill the Contract before he pulls Hired Gun.

Which means that the Sentinels also get a bonus, which is important once you get Hippocratic Oath out and are healing the damage you deal.

Actually the sentinels have different nemesis symbols, that combine for La Capitan. Look at the cards, each one is different

I hadn't thought of that. Thank you.

Really? They all look the same to me.

A Throat Jabbed Visionary with Wrest the Mind on an Electro-Pulse Explosive is a thing of terrible beauty.

Those Sentinels cards are simply gorgeous. Hats off to Adam Rebottaro.

Vis is tricky for us. Either she goes gangbusters, or flops. Very rarely is she 'useful, but not great'. I'm still learning all the little ins and outs, but it's taking some time. I try to add her into the lineup on the app whenever I can, just for practice. My main gaming buddy used her once, and hated her. And he's the one who usually uses Blue decks in Magic!  I really like that Enforcers/Chairman combo mentioned above, can't wait to try it.

As an aside, where are those Sentinels character cards from? They look amazing!

-Brian

They're the new promos that come with the [url= https://greaterthangames.com/content/promos-and-oversized-cards-and-more ]Villains preorder[/url]

Awesome. Even happier now about deciding to get in on the pre-order. Thanks!

-Brian