Chokepoint: The first 0 difficulty villain?

So my group of regular players has fought her twice now in 5 player games, one normal, one on advanced. Both times we absolutely smoked her, it wasn't even competitive. We even avoided KOing her the second game because she was finally due to flip and we wanted to see if she got any scarier. 

She did not. 

Stealing cards is scarier when La Capitan does it, even in her VotM version. Chokepoint never threatened anyone with serious harm, I'm not even sure she took any of us below 20hp.

Now, I don't have her deck handy or I'd go into more detail but am I wrong in this finding? Has anyone else had a fun and competitive game against her or did we just have two extremely unfavorable matchups/draws for her?

She is an easier villain, and is easier with 5 heroes.

I have yet to lose to her in 3 player game, she is still pretty easy, but at least puts on a good show.

My group fought her with Termi-nation AZ, Unity, Bunker and I think Santa Guise. We were able to beat her, despite half of our team unable to get going.

I had the exact same experience, the holiday promos vs Chokepoint was no contest at all. Termi-nation Absolute Zero had a LOT to do with that though.

Same result here. Two 5-player games vs Chokepoint. Both were over so quick.

What does she need to make her more of a challenge?  Anyone have any house rules that seem to give her some pep?

The reason I ask is because I have some altered versions of villains on my site (Ambuscade, Gloomweaver) which have been house ruled to be more interesting, and if there's a good change to Chokepoint, I'd love to include it in that pack.

I would make all her single-target attacks hit all hero targets instead.

Edit:  And/or increase how much she reduces and increases damage on her flip side for each hero who's cards are face-down in her play area.   Probably go for both, as she's apparently too easy before the flip.

When I want to make villains harder, I generally pick an environment that either gives them extra plays, such as Rook City or Atlantis, or that has some kind of combo with them or makes up for their weaknesses.  Some minionless villains are better off with minion-heavy environments.

I actually haven't found a good combination of Chokepoint + environment yet.  My next attempt will will probably be advanced + Rook City.

EDIT: Ignore me.  My brain is malfunctionging

When the Villain uses H for cards, it gets harder with 5 players. When it uses it for damage, it gets harder with 3 Heroes.

Pity to read that even in Advance she is not much of a Challenge. Still have to play against her though. But looks like Mini Villain Expansions are not made tough enough.

Eh, I'm not sure about that. It depends on the villain and how often the H is used. Voss, for instance, can be easier when he's starting with only three minions and doing 2 and 1 damage on his flipped side, as opposed to starting with 5 and doing 4 and 3. The Ennead, too – Stealth Bot can nearly shut them down single-handedly in a 3-hero game.

looks like Mini Villain Expansions are not made tough enough.

That’s why everyone always makes fun of how easy Miss Information is.

I’ve never lost against Voss…And I don’t exactly consider him a 0-difficulty villain.

I also found the two games I've played against chokepoint very easy.  I played once with my sister and once with my gaming group and both times the reaction was "thats it."  Then again, my first 2 games against Wager Master both ended with easy wins on turn 2 but he proved harder in later games.  I need a larger sample size before I call her a 0 but yeah it seems she is one on the weaker villains.

Voss doesn't kill you by dealing damage, he kills you with Forced Deployment (and sometimes the ships). 5 Heroes have less trouble dealing with it (usually) than 3 since they have more tools they can combine against it.

The Ennead usually doesn't use H for dealing damage. Some cards do, but most of their damage comes from their Character Cards. They use H most for card destruction. I'd say Ennead is fairly balanced all along, just a tad easier with 5 in Advance than with 3, but still so hard in both that it's irrelevant.

Well, I should have completed my statement with "or frustrating to play against". Ambuscade and Chokepoint on one side, Miss Information and Wager Master on the other. I don't mind though, I play my own Ambuscade variant, but prefer mean ugly Villains =)

Edit: I don't know what's your point Trajector though. That never losing to a Villain doesn't tell if it's a hard one or not?

You start with fewer minions – which means fewer minions on whatever turn Forced Deployment comes out and it means you can start attacking Voss directly much earlier and at lesser risk.

When I play against Voss with 5 heroes, my strategy is to keep a minion alive so he doesn't flip, build up, then go after him once I've got powers and such to deal with his much heftier damage.

With 3 heroes, the strategy is to wipe his board ASAP and just pound on him from the start – it ends up making for a much quicker game. More or less, I've seen the Forced Deployments and ships much more often in 5-hero games than 3.

The Ennead usually doesn't use H for dealing damage. Some cards do, but most of their damage comes from their Character Cards. They use H most for card destruction. I'd say Ennead is fairly balanced all along, just a tad easier with 5 in Advance than with 3, but still so hard in both that it's irrelevant.
They do, in fact – a lot of their fire attacks, including one that hits everyone, do H-based damage, usually H-2. Ancient Magics, Blast of Flame, Death's Grasp, Mass Overheating and Sun's Fury all do H-based damage, all but Blast of Flame and Death's Grasp hitting multiple targets. Keeping Unity as an example, a 3H game means Stealth Bot tanks everything, a 5H game means her board is getting wiped early and often.

Also, a 3-hero game means much less chance of something like Set and Atum both coming out at once.

I guess there are different ways to measure “hard.” Is it win percentage? State of the heroes at game end?

If you have some dire situation that you know will lose you the game (e.g. Forced Deployment) but you figure out a clever way to avert it and win in the end, was that game “hard?”

I’ve also only played two games against Chokepoint, and won both times. Once she didn’t even flip over. While not terribly exciting, and not really “hard” in any sense, I’m looking forward to playing more games against her (especially with equipment-heavy heroes) to see how she holds up. Maybe she will, maybe not. Anyway, my point is that I’m happy to class her with the other 2-difficulty villains like Apostate, Kismet, etc. I always win against them, too, and I think 2 is a reasonable level for them. A perfect record against a villain doesn’t define their level in my mind.

I don't have much experience (yet) with Chokepoint, but she was an easy fight both time. Granted, Chrono-ranger can be very effective against her.

However, I like the way she plays, especially once flipped. It's not the hardest of puzzles, but I find it interesting. But, well, I alos like fights against Ambuscade and Gloomweaver, even if they are easy, because they let you experiment without too much stress. And sometimes win - Gloomweaver utterly destroyed Dark Watch in a game today.

Yes I would have liked her to be more challenging that I find her right now, but more variety in "easy" villain is a good thing for beginners.

If you find Chokepoint too easy, I'd suggest changing all her single target damage to H-2 or H-1 targets.

Voss:  I don't know exactly what's your point? Voss uses H for setup (harder for 5), deals damage on his flip side (would be harder for 3 Heroes, but it's 2 instances of H so, not that much) and all their minions deal fixed damage values (harder for 3), his ships uses fixed values for destruction and card play so it slighly benefits 5 Heroes again. I do think overall it favors 5 Heroes than 3. And in any case, I still think that the real kicker is how well your team can deal with Forced Deployment.

Ennead: Well, you mentioned all cards that deal damage. I consider that most of their damage is not dealt with cards but with their character cards. But yeah, when H is used to deal damage to ALL Hero Targets instead of just one it's worse with more players than with less.

In any case, my statement is generic and there are always exceptions. The basis for that is that a Villain play is worth more than a Hero play, so when H scales like that it benefits Villains. When H is used for damage, the net total of having more Heroes ends up giving you more plays and HP despite the higher damage. Other factors of course messes it all up.

I've only played against her twice. The first time I foolishly only used the three Termi-Nation promos and got demolished. The second time was with my brother who had two major damage dealers (I can't remember who exactly), and I had Legacy and Visionary. Even with purposely stacking Chokepoint's deck using Visionary's powers we won handily. 

My point was that 3 heroes have less to deal with early on, and Voss himself is much less of a threat, since DR or a Stun Bolt effectively neuter his personal threat. With fewer minions and less personal threat from Voss, you can get on with hitting him directly much sooner, shortening the game and making his ships and Forced Deployment less likely to turn up.

Ennead: Well, you mentioned all cards that deal damage. I consider that most of their damage is not dealt with cards but with their character cards. But yeah, when H is used to deal damage to ALL Hero Targets instead of just one it's worse with more players than with less.

Honestly I tend to only see the symbol effects that make you discard or make the Ennead play extra cards as a real threat when facing them. Most of their damage effects either only hit one or two for fixed damage, or 1 for everyone, which are easily countered. In a 5-hero game, it's those 3 HP board attacks that will do the most damage, especially if you've got someone like Unity or Captain Cosmic on the team.

Also, I'd rather have several Ennead out who do damage with their symbol powers than have Atum or Set unexpectedly pull out ongoing or equipment destruction, and a 3-hero game makes it much less likely they'll show up.

In any case, my statement is generic and there are always exceptions. The basis for that is that a Villain play is worth more than a Hero play, so when H scales like that it benefits Villains. When H is used for damage, the net total of having more Heroes ends up giving you more plays and HP despite the higher damage. Other factors of course messes it all up.
Yeah, I guess it's a preference/playstyle thing.

Back on topic, I played Advance Chokepoint in Enclave of the Endings with Sentinels, SkyScrapper and Zero. Despite shuffling her deck (and verified after the game it was shuffled) she opened with 3 Ireful Grasp. I found it highly thematic that she almost incap The Sentinels in no time. Despite that opening and her flipping on turn 3, no Sentinel was Incapped and the game was won. SkyScrapper and Zero were both around 5 HP each and the victory pretty much came beacause SkyScrapper cycled Rebound Debilitiator on her plus a Thorathian Monolith and also was able to twist the Endlings to hit Choke instead of the heroes.

So I guess that Advance Chokepoint is fine for 3 Hero teams, though she is on the easy side. On her front side, she only flipped because of the Advance text. Advance text didn't trigger at all on her flip side.* But her flipping on H cards makes her much easier with 5 players beacuse it takes her a lot longer to flip if she doesn't get her cards that put cards face down for all Heroes.

To make her harder, I would haver her flip on H-2 face down cards (with Advance text included) and Increase her damage to each Hero with a face down card in her play area by X, where X is the number of face down cards of that hero. I wouldn't touch the damage reduction because it can make games impossible for some heroes if she keeps adding face down cards.

I really liked that Cokepoint is a metal bender, or more like a techonology bender. I wish they had done more with face down cards though.

* To confirm ruling. The text says 'discard', not leaves play like Kinetic Looter. That means that it only triggers if it goes from your hand to your trash, right? One Shots are not considered discard.

Haven't actually played her yet, but is she easier than Gloomweaver? I don't think I've ever actually lost to Gloomweaver, even on Advanced (though really, on his starting side, at worst, his Advanced rule just means kill him by his relics).

I've played several games against Chokepoint. Once was with the Termi-Nation. I remember Unity's bots having nearly free reign over the field since only a few cards in her deck hurt them. Ireful Grasp always got diverted to Stealth Bot to take her to 1hp and I kept doing fun things to restore or replay Stealth Bot. Absolute Zero of course also chipped in a lot in terms of damage.

My most recent game was with the Darkwatch team in Megalopolis. Between Grease Guns and Mistbounds, her deck was shut down while Setback was free to beat her up with Looking Up and High Risk Behavior (he ended with 16 tokens in his unlucky pool). Expat ended up being the hero with all the cards in Chokepoint's play area so the other heroes didn't have to deal with the extra damage and DR. They all ended the game with double-digit hp.

It seems that on advanced, her mechanics work against one another. One card siphoned away from the hero with the most cards in hand tends to even out the handsizes for a devestating Newfound Power...but it also tends to make her flip faster so she stops taking cards from the hand. Her flip side on advanced is trivial; the only thing that pairs with that ability is Newfound Power. The other thing that hurts her is that her end of turn damage on her flipped side comes after destroying a facedown card. If the highest only has one card in her play area, just destroy that one and dodge the +1 damage.

Because she tends to hurt only the highest, Setback and Chrono-ranger can play their glass-cannon cards almost with impunity. And because there are only a few cards in her deck that do meaningful damage one way or the other, she's very susceptible to deck control. Stripped Resources is easily the weakest card in her deck, and probably the weakest card in any villain deck; destroying all environment cards is usually a good thing, and the only benefit garnered from it is that she doesn't get hurt as much by the environment (and she flips quicker or stays flipped, but I honestly prefer her flipped side to avoid the card discard).

I wouldn't mind adding some house rules to her abilities in the future, because I never felt remotely threatened by her. Quite unfortunate too, considering she's supposedly strong enough to do what La Capitan couldn't.

I haven’t played her and didn’t get a chance to playtest her so it’s quite saddening to hear she’s so simple. One to stay in the box then, as the game didn’t really need someone easier than Ambuscade.
It’s a shame as she has a pretty cool design.

I'm kind of surprised by this. I mean, I haven't lost to her yet, but I have played a game or two on Standard that I feel like I might've lost if I was playing on Advanced. I'm not saying Chokepoint is difficult, but I wouldn't call her a 0.

As far as I'm concerned, the only difficulty 0 villain in the game is Deadline.

But Deadline is at lease intersting. He REMOVES the enviroment. I remeber planing him and seeing 3 cards left. I saw an Indian Cry off a highway some where. I feel the burn, even if it is not there. I did have some close games where the last player won the game before he went and removed everything.

But Chockpoint, oh i was looking foward to you so much. An interesting machanic but the flip side only give her a +1 or -1 or only some heroes. I wish she did more with this. the cards do have high single target damage but not the AOE damge like Iron Legacy. And not much in the way of defences, other target other than the animated equpment.

So here are my ideas to make her harder. Anyone else go some.

-So I was thinking if when she flips she did 1 Irriducable dame at the end of turn. 

- Or have a 3 to all but the lowest at the end of turn.

I also like.

To make her harder, I would haver her flip on H-2 face down cards (with Advance text included) and Increase her damage to each Hero with a face down card in her play area by X, where X is the number of face down cards of that hero. I wouldn't touch the damage reduction because it can make games impossible for some heroes if she keeps adding face down cards. 

PePe QuiCoSE

Yeah, Deadline isn't out to destroy the heroes - he's out to destroy the environment. And like the otherwise relatively easy Baron Blade, that puts a timer on the heroes' efforts. I remember the first time we played him we did it sight unseen, without reading his flipside or deck. We got so desperate when we realized what he was doing, and we only just managed to stop him in time.

Chokepoint also doesn't seem so much out to destroy the heroes as she is out to take their stuff. Still, she didn't win (though, again, I'm happy to put her in the same class as the other "2" difficulty villains). Next time I play her, I should do it with standard Absolute Zero, Bunker, and Unity, and see if she roughs them up. Maybe there's a reason the Termi-Nation ones wreck her!

Deadline's problems stem from the fact that his Catastrophes are very low-impact. They don't do anything on the turn he plays them, and they'll usually go away the turn after. About one third of them won't even get to have an effect, since he'll blow them up right after. So, with the bulk of his deck being comprised of what are basically really weak one-shots that the heroes have the luxury of being able to play around, destroying the environment does seem like his main way to win.

Only, he goes about that very slowly, too. On average, it'll take Deadline two turns to destroy three environment cards: one turn building up, the next one destroying. This means that it will take ten rounds for him to win the game. Since he gets the first turn, the heroes get nine rounds to stop him. Nine rounds to do 80 damage means that on average, in a three-hero game, each hero has to do 3 damage a turn to win. That's easy. Even the Visionary is capable of doing that, or at least adding enough to other heroes' damage with Twist the Aether to do her part in the damage race. And this is assuming that the Environment never does any damage to Deadline, or that the heroes aren't destroying his Catastrophes.

I think the big difference between Deadline and Advanced Blade is that Blade is a little less predictable. You get a rough estimate of how many turns you have to stop him, but he can turn up that clock without warning. And while regular Blade is easier than Deadline, Advanced Deadline really doesn't do much to change the dynamic of the fight. You still get nine rounds, which is usually more than enough, and if it's not for some reason, you can eat a bit of damage to extend your clock by a turn or two.

Chokepoint is like Blade, in that she might be easy, but she's capable of comboing off and putting the heroes on the back foot once in a while. Deadline is just too predictable to make that possible. And unlike with easy villains like Ambuscade, adding a mini-villain to the mix probably won't help him all that much, since they'll be trying to win in different ways.

Adding a mini-villain to the Chokepoint fight could help, though.

It feels like she should destroy more cards than she currently does. But seeing how disliked Miss Information is they may of held back some.

Any difficulty she could have is dependent on her flipping, so she either needs more defense before flipping or needs to flip faster. My 2 ideas for this are start with an Augmented Energy Field in play and/or have her play an extra card per turn on her Ferro-Kineticist side. And the flipping requirement should be at a fixed 3 or 4 cards, having it scale with H makes her easier with more players.

Also think she could do with some more damage. Having her Armored Animus side hit the 2 highest health targets may be enough. Other idea is have her Ferro-Kineticist side deal 2 damage to a hero when she one of their cards face down in front of her.

Just some simple changes I thought of.

I've played about a dozen games now with the Termi-Nation team (TN Bunker, TN Unity, and TN Ansolute Zero) against Chokepoint.  I lost the first few game until I learned how to play the TN heroes.  I would say that I win about 60% - 70% of the time now with them.  Chokepoint is a threat to heroes relying on equipment cards and others, not so much.

All three heroes have to set up and if they fail to draw certain key cards then it is game over for that hero.  In one game TN Bunker kept drawing mode cards and ammo drops, and didn't get a weapon or maintenance unit until it was too late.  Similarly, TM Absolute Zero has to deploy his modules and then actually draw some attack cards.  Coolant Blast, Cryro Chamber, Modular Realignment, and Sub-Zero Atmosphere usually have TN AZ just sitting on his hands.  TN Unity plays the best of the three, but not having any ability to heal usually means that her health is on a one-way slide.  If TN Unity can play Stealth Bot then her Reconfigure power can usually keep it in the game, protecting herself and TN AZ (who can then use his Violent Shivers power confidently).  Even so, many of the 'bots are low strength and when Chokepoint plays Empowered Self-Repair she is almost guaranteed to recover 15 hit points, and there are three of those in her deck.

The Deadline game was my first time too, and we utterly failed. Also, Chokepoint can kill the non termination promo heroes by round 2 easy. Unless the decks just hate me (very possible)

Playing her nemeses, and only her nemeses, against Chokepoint is about the only way I've found to make her difficult. I mean, you get the one-two punch of extra damage plus low H, which is almost always harder.

It all depends on how quickly she can amass cards in my opinion. I've had games where she pulls six on the first turn, and others where she only ever gets out a total of three.

Her Newfound Power(s) into augmented energy fields are the worst starts I’ve had on her. She flips next turn, and has 2 damage reduction vs anybody, with few cards in hand, and it will take 20 or so turns for her to destroy all those cards she stole from you.

But besides that rare start, I do think she gets much harder with just a little more time. I think a 20hp buff to her starting health could help a lot. Those 5-6 hp hits on her flip side really start to add up, and it feels more challenging when she has more time to get damage reduction and build up stolen cards. Like Voss, who is also at 90hp to start.

Could house rule that she heals each time she picks up a card from the heroes or something like that? Same end result (increase in HP needed to take her out). She's just not as "big" of a villain as Voss or other villains with that many HP, thematically. Know what I mean?