Ranking the Rank 4s

I'm curious what people think about the relative difficulty of the four tier-4 villains, The Chairman, The Matriarch, Iron Legacy and Progeny, and which of them is the most consistently difficulty and which is relatively easy.

Naturally, the luck of the cards has a lot to do with it, but after playing a few games with them, I tend to rank them, from hardest to easiest:

Chairman - The amount of cards he gets out a round is just punishing and unless I'm set up with a fairly specific set of heroes (almost always involving Legacy to buff everyone and tank either Melee or Projectile), I tend to get overwhelmed very quickly. Adding to the difficulty is how truncated the Chairman's deck is -- with 10 cards starting in the trash and 5 of the others automatically picked, that leaves you with a very high chance of either taking heavy damage from Chairman and Operative, or having all the Underbosses brought back out of the trash. I almost never fight the Chairman because he's so often a one-way trip to frustration.

Matriarch - She's a little swingier, but like the Chairman, her deck guarantees that you'll see her nastiest cards every game. She at least tends to give you a round to prepare for the huge hits, and if you can spread around damage reduction (like with Argent Adept or Captain Cosmic), you can all but ignore the birds in favor of hitting her directly. I tend to have a little more success against her with a wider variety of heroes, but she can become pretty overwhelming nonetheless.

Iron Legacy - Paul would rank higher on the list if his HP was higher, but at the same time, you rarely need a strategy more specific than "get ongoing destruction out ASAP, then whack him before he whacks you." A good opening draw can let you wipe him in the first round, and he's mostly unable to play more than one card at a time, so basic deck control makes him fairly straightforward to deal with. And as a single target, anyone who can prevent damage (Wraith, Tachyon, Scholar) or debuff reliably (Wraith, Chrono Ranger, Expatriette, Mr. Fixer) can seriously hamper him. Of the four, he's the only one who I've accidentally beaten when I was trying to lose, in Rook City no less.

Progeny - He's the swingiest of the bunch -- I find his difficulty is directly related to whether or not he opens with Scion of the Storm, and if he gets two out, you're probably in trouble. And don't get me wrong, his ability to prevent card plays is nasty, but his front side's damage is fixed at 2, and his one-shots do 1, making him even more manageable and vulnerable to debuffs than Iron Legacy. Or you can bring Captain Cosmic along, get the Cosmic Crest out, sit back and laugh while you spam constructs that Progeny can't touch -- and when one of his other damage types gets through, laugh some more as he triggers Dynamic Syphons and Vitality Conduits. Also like Iron Legacy, deck control works wonders, provided you're lucky enough to avoid Scion of the Storm.

What are you guys' thoughts?

This is what I'd rank them from playing random teams highest to lowest:

Iron Legacy

The Chairman

The Matriarch

Progeny

Iron Legacy without a team setup to beat him can get pounded really quick.   It feels like I often end up with him starting with one or more Galvanized cards.  The Chairman is always a rough matchup and ill timed Prison Breaks can make a game in hand go south real quick.   The Matriarch I find the most difficult games are ones where I'm not able to consistently destroy the Mask.  With Progeny the whole team ends up at low health quickly and if he gets Scion of Frost out there are some team combinations it isn't worthwhile to hit him until it's destroyed.   

That would be my order as well for largely the same reasons. Though at (H)=3 I might flip Progeny and Matriarch and at (H)=5 I'd put down The Dreamer as the hardest villain.

I feel like I have to agree with the OP. I'd much rather play against Iron Legs than Chairman or Matriarch, because they have a way of dragging things out interminably until you finally crawl into a loss. The retaliation damage means that if you don't have Haka, Fixer or Tachyon, you're probably going to lose.

Progeny is definitely the easiest of the four. He gets a major buff from his Advanced rules though!

The retaliation damage is a minor issue in my mind and if they didn't have it those games would not be very threatening with their current decks.  With the Matriarch for me the retaliation damage is only a concern if she has both cohorts out and I can't deal with them for a while.  

I agree Progeny gets a major boost on advanced out of them all.   

I play 3 heroes and advanced against Chairman, and almost all my losses come from a really badly timed Contract.  I win well over half, close to 2/3 of games against the Organization.

If we pick the team we almost never lose, random we lose a lot more.

So many heroes have ways to crush the Organization.

Iron Legacy is actually not that bad vs. three heroes, he is brutal against 5.  I find you need one counter-pick (someone that can prevent his damage for a round) to really swing the game in your favor.

Matriarch you just need a tank.  If you have a tank she's largely a cake walk.

Progeny is the one I struggle most with, maybe he's less hard with more heroes, but with 3 heroes he's a nightmare for us.  We almost never get anywhere against him and he just crushes us.

So for us, rolling 3 heroes I'd rank them:

1.  Progeny (by far)
2.  Iron Legacy
3.  The Chairman
4.  The Matriarch.

And this thread illustrates in six posts why ranking villain difficulties is almost as impossible as ranking hero strengths. It depends on the number of heroes. It depends on which heroes are used. It depends on whether advanced mode is on. It even matters which environment you are in, to an extent. And there’s randomness beyond all of those.

And there are multiple different types of difficulty. There are consistently difficult villains, and there are swingy ones. There are fast ones and slow ones. Judging between then will always be a matter of opinion as much as fact.

And different play styles…

I just realized something potentially interesting, that plays into playstyle for difficulty.

Chairmand and MAtriarch both have a lot of targets hitting the board.

Progeny and Iron Legacy have no other targets they can bring to bear, they just increase their own strength.

So, if your table is better at prioritizing enemies in a mass firefight situation and compared to a table better at dealing with a single large threat, that makes a difference I'd imagine.

I've noticed my own inclination is to try and clear the board, even when I don't neccessarily "have to" because I like having fewer threats on the table, so the Chairman and MAtriarch have a much easeir time overwhelming me with things to hit so that I don;t always prioritize the correct targets

...but if you have Haka then a lot of targets can be a good thing, because he can get Savage Mana out and eat them, and then vomit them all back up later on for a killing blow >:). Similarly, the Final Wasteland can be helpful (totally wrecked the Matriarch there once), but against the Chairman you would need to make sure you didn't perma-lose more than two Underbosses pre-flip or you'd have yourself an unwinnable game ;).

Good point. Me too on the inclination to clear the board.

Heh, yeah – we've "butted heads" (as much as you and I will butt heads  ) on this, before. 

"So many heroes have ways to crush the Organization."

I'd love to hear about this!

A well constructed 5 person team will destroy the chairman no problem.

For example  a team i like is Legacy Chrono Ranger SS Tachyon Tempest and Skyscraper (Sometimes I replace Chrono with Knyfe) . 

With a good starting hand, the operative can be killed before the chairman man flips, and like himself will generally go down in 2 rounds. 

In my opinion the chairman's weakness is wide area damage, if you have enough , you can save your big hits for Sophia while ensuring the bosses don't last longer than a round.

Dark Visionary is a great start, in any case. Her ability to manipulate the villain deck is wonderful, plus Brain Burn outright stops the thugs from coming out to play. 

I see. Ok.  I only have Base heroes, plus Rook City, Infernal Relics, Scholar, and Unity.  :/  I do have all the foil cards, though.

This thread lead me to try out Haka, Legacy, Visionary and AA against The Chairman. 

The unpleasant surprise of launching a savage mana to kill the operative with the magic sack being full of villain cards. I made poor life choices. 

Well yes, Savage Mana usually ends up full of Villain cards, especially if you're up against a target-heavy villain ;). Just make sure vomiting them back up again is enough to give you the killing blow, or at least leaves it close enough that any Heroes yet to act in the round can finish it off instead >:).

Yeah, Savage Mana against The Chairman is especially useful -- but save the damage until the end, when you can take him out as the final shot. Also, don't accidentally collect too many Underbosses before he flips! 

Not that I have any personal experience with that... 

Hehe I came close once...had been eating various Thugs and Underbosses before we realised we mustn't accidentally eat three of the latter - fortunately we'd only eaten two of them at that point so we happily carried on and waited for him to flip whilst clearing out his deck of all the other targets >:).

I would probably rate them as follows from Hardest to easiest:

- Chairman: a really tough game at the best of times. A well set up Legacy ‘can’ be a cure, but it’s an extremely hard encounter without a well constructed team, and it’s fairly easy for it to spiral out of control.

- Iron Legacy: Ongoing destruction is vital, but it can be extremely hard even with the right team since he can hit so hard.

- Prodgeny: can be difficult to deal with in terms of the wrong Scion combos, and has some very nasty cards that break your rhythm.

- Mariarch: I’ve had some really hard games against her, and with a random draw of heroes she might be harder than Prodgeny, but I think she can be shut down much more easily by certain heroes, which means I tend to rate her as a little easier.

My list starting with the one I find easiest.

The Matriarch I don't tend to have a lot of issues with. Reducing the damage she deals to the highest and being able to consistantly take out the birds shuts her damage output by quite a lot. Also a team focused on damage can typically damage rush for a victory.

Progeny doesn't really have any cards I hate seeing besides Frost and Blight, but other Scions frequently come in to replace them after a round or two. His damage also isn't so great when he flips. With him being a single target it can be fairly easy to also shut his damage down.

The Chairman's only cards I don't dislike are his non-Prison Break one-shots. Everything else tends to be a minor to huge pain when they show up. He's also not forgiving if a mistake is made and can punish the heroes for it. Unlike the previous two rank 4 villains, there aren't too many teams that can be made that actually make this guy easy.

Iron Legacy, his difficulty mostly stems from the speed in which he can incapacitate the heroes. Partnered up with all his ways of protecting his own HP makes him a difficult fight. There's also no hero team that I feel like i'm going to win for sure. 

[quote="Eric V"]

I see. Ok.  I only have Base heroes, plus Rook City, Infernal Relics, Scholar, and Unity.  :/  I do have all the foil cards, though.

[/quote]

Out of that crew, the best Chairman-killers are probably Legacy, Argent Adept, Haka, Tachyon, and Wraith.

Legacy can make himself immune to projectile damage and cover everyone else. Argent Adept can give him immunity to melee damage too, by giving extra power uses. That shuts down most of the Chairman's damage. Haka can eat the minions, Tachyon provides card draw and blocks people, and Wraith provides damage reduction and deck control. 

Interesting. Of them all I'd probably rate the Matriarch as being the nastiest (we've been pecked to death by her crew of @?29179! birds more times than I care to count). What sort of strategies have people found work well against her?

Anything that will consistently reduce her damage is my dominant strategy. I favour Fort Adamant Idealist, but there are other options. Mass target damage helps, obviously, and any damage reduction/redirection you can get.

Yup, any soak is good against her - for example, Legacy with Fortitude and Lead from the Front so he can just redirect all the pecking to himself. Scholar with Alchemical Redirection and Flesh-to-Iron is another possibility. Nerfing Lilian's damage via, say, Stun Bolt is good to avoid her hitting you for killing the birdies. You can also just get Haka to eat them all...or play in the Final Wasteland, wait for Unforgiving Wasteland to come out, and laugh as one Horrid Skunk Ape perma-kills the entire flock with no repercussions (since they're being removed from the game rather than destroyed, so Lilian and the Carrion Fields don't get to react) >:). I have done the latter. It was fantastic :D.

Does it really work like that?

Yup. Unforgiving Wastelands states that any time something would be destroyed by an environment target, you remove it from the game instead. Lilian's text and that of the Carrion Fields state that then a Fowl is destroyed, they deal their damage. So when a Fowl is destroyed by an environment target (Ape in this example), all three of those destruction triggers (or four, if both Carrion Fields are out) are trying to occur at once, which means the players get to choose the order in which they occur. So we pick the Unforgiving Wasteland first and suddenly that Fowl that got Aped is no longer being destroyed, it's removed from the game instead, which means Lilian and the Fields don't get to do anything. In the case of the Ape, repeat for all Fowl >:).

Right after Shattered Timelines came out, I deliberately played a game against her in the Unforgiving Wasteland just to see if we could have that happen and we had absoutely the best line of cards come out - I think we had the Ape first, the Unforgiving Wasteland, then the next two were the Library and the Bunker (I forget which way round they came but it's not particularly relevant). By that time we were pretty much done - I think maybe an Abominable Snowman might've shown up on the environment's final turn or something but by the end of the game the only target in Lilian's deck was a Carrion Fields that we'd destroyed earlier in the game. Every other target in her deck was sitting in a pile off to the side since we'd made sure the environment ate them all.

That was a good game :D.

I like all that’s being said on Matriarch here. But for me personally, wins and losses against her come down to how you deal with Huggin/Munnin. If your team roster doesn’t have ways to efficiently take both down together through the DR then you’ve likely already lost. 

Unless you get lucky or do good deck control and you can beat the Matriarch down before they hit the table.  Or if you manage to deck control the second one straight into the trash, or remove one of them from play entirely (Savage Mana, Unforgiving Wasteland). 

I think those things still count as “how you deal with Huggin/Munnin.”

I agree with a lot of the posters above. 

The hardest overall is the Chairman. When certain cards hit the table, suddenly his entire criminal empire is in play, and victory is all but impossible.

Next hardest is Iron Legacy, whose difficulty partially depends on how well your team can deal with ongoing cards, and if they can do enough damage in single turn to make a dent.

The next hardest isn't in your list: Kaarga Warfang. Part of her difficulty is just the random swing from cards that 'remove x points from one team and give them to the other'. It makes the fight pretty random, but since you can't win if Kaarga's on the field, it's definitely in her favor.

Matriarch is next. Having a tank is important, but so is deck control (need to keep her 2 minions out of play!), and target priority. I've found that you should only rarely attack her birds. Focus most of your attacks on her directly, and her mask. Just accept the bird inflicted damage each round.

I don't consider Scion to be tier 4. I put him behind both Infinitor and the Dreamer in difficulty, possibly even La Capitan too. (Scion's advanced mode is indeed INCREDIBLY hard though)

I think Progeny is a hard fight. In my experience he is way more consistently challenging than Capitan (who’s games range from Ambuscade easy to Chairman hard) or Dreamer (far too easy to out-game the system when her major damage bomb is both predictable and easy to work around). Progeny has more ways to punish more team comps and in the mid-late game just throws haymakers at low health heroes which can be challenging to answer. 

With that said, I have a hard time lumping Progeny with the likes of Leggy, Matty and Chair...y. Those you almost have to hand select specific heroes to bring to win more consistently, but Progeny is just nasty to all equally. I’d throw Progeny in as a really high 3 low 4. Progeny gets noticeably easier with any villain deck control however. Let’s you control his scion forms and can prevent double frost or double card play 

That's probably why he doesn't seem quite as hard to me. Whenever we play against a difficult villain, if no one else is playing a character with consistent villain deck control, then I'm immediately picking up either Wraith or Dark Visionary.

Why not Parse?

Maybe they want to keep things challenging, which would mean not using the bestest hero ever in the entire multiverse?

I like Parse, she's a great support character, but her ability to control the enemy deck really depends on drawing 1 of 4 cards in her deck: either 1 of the Buffer Overflows, or 1 of the Extrasensory awarenesses (the best 'villain deck control' card in the entire game). It's basically a 50/50 shot whether you get one of these cards in the first few turns or not.

With Wraith the odds are almost double to get an infrared eyepiece (if you count the impromptu inventions and trust fund) and even better if you use Freedom Five Wraith. Dark Visionary gets it as her main power, even though it's not quite as effective as Parse or Wraith's version.

Parse is a very useful character to have on a team, but personally, when up against a really tough foe, I want the villain deck control to be a little more certain.