Good team or just good luck?

I'm new to Sentinels but have quickly become immersed in it. I started on the app to try it out but soon bought the cards for the base game and then got Rook City/Infernal Relics for my birthday recently. I have played quite a few games in a short span but I am far from understanding the complexities of the game. Especially how certain decks work together which leads me to my question. 

Tonight I played with two friends who have played twice before, experiencing one easy win and one nervous but ultimately solid win. I kind of wanted them to experience a loss so they could feel the desire for revenge that I get when I lose so when they chose Plague Rat in Rook City (first time seeing both) I thought there was a high chance of that. Being familiar with lynkfox's data I chose Absolute Zero because I knew his ranking was rather low. The other two heroes were Argent Adept and Tachyon (we played in that order). We won the game with AZ at 7 hp, AA at 9, and T at 4 but other than Tachyon no one ever seemed threatened to incap. Rook City didn't seem to be as nasty to us as I expected. After the game I used the mindwanderer calculator to learn we had a 33% of winning. It felt far more certain than that. My question is did we just get lucky with our draws or is this a good team in this situation?

Possible factors?

• I did get AZ modded up rather quickly and had Impale in play the entire game with Focused Apertures soon after.
• A timely Hypersonic Assault spared us a lot of damage one round.
• Neither Plague Rat nor Rook City destroyed ongoing or equipment cards so AA and AZ never had to rebuild.
• We incorrectly administered some aspect of the game. (Though I don't feel we did. It played out rather simply.)
• The synergy of these three heroes belies their "calculated" chances.

Neither Plague Rat nor Rook City cause any equipment/Ongoing destruction at all which is good for a hero like Absolute Zero who does better when he can keep his Modules out all game.   Rook City's challenge is that it's card mostly are helpful to the villain but if you didn't run into Blighted Streets or Scum and Villainy you're better off especially against Plague Rat.  Argent Adept depending upon what you get can help Absolute Zero speed up his setup and damage prevention is extremely useful against Plague Rat.  It doesn't sound like anything was done wrong just that you got the cards you needed to win.  

I had a whole long post I wrote up but it got deleted. Opps! Oh well.

Welcome MoeMoa!

Don't worry too much about potential botched rules/effects while playing live. It doesn't increase the fun factor for the table. Trust me, I know from experience!

There are a lot of villains I don't play without Advanced Mode rules active, and select villains where I only use the Advanced Mode on one side. I believe Plauge Rat falls into that catagory, at least for me personally. Playing with Advanced Mode on his front side, but ignoring it for his flip side, puts the Rat at the absolute perfect spot for my tastes and enjoyment. I highly recomend playing around with aspects like this in your games. It gives quite a lot of villains brand new life after they have passed the "this guys too easy and I want to feel like I might loose" barrier.

For your expansions and base set:

Ennead with Advanced Mode on front side is a MUST. Never play Ennead without it!!! Use the flip side advanced at your own discretion and perril.

Rat with Advanced on front I prefer very much. YMMV.

Chairman/Matriarch are difficult enough as is.

Apostate Advanced Mode (front and back) have exactly 0% influence or impact on the game, so might as well use them.

Gloomweaver is a difficulty .5 so anything you can do to increase difficulty to a 1 is good.

Akash Butah is fantastic with Advanced Modes active. It's a slog of a fight and pretty difficult, but I personally find it much more satisfying since without it she tends to fall into the trap of being a snooze fest.

Baron Blade I absolutely keep his flip side Advanced Mode on. I'll do his front side when we really want to up the annte

Omnitron I always keep Advanced Modes on both sides.

Voss I also always keep Advanced Modes on.

Dawn can go either way. I think she plays just fine without Advanced Mode for sure and is always one of those villains that produces great games consistently. Turn up the heat when you want to really test the limits of you game maniplulation skills.

Sounds like you had a fairly lucky time of it against Rat - it's true that he can't break your stuff, but he can wreck you with damage fairly fast (and have you wreck yourselves via his Infections and Afflicted Frenzy, the latter of which seems somehow worse when it's making an incapped hero hit people :P). It's largely a damage race against him, I feel, and I do enjoy playing Jim* against him because those two really do just utterly beat/shoot the crap out of each other. And if Jim goes down you can generally be sure that he will have done at least a fairly decent amount of damage to Rat beforehand.

If you want a tricky game that can screw you over and have you vowing for revenge, maybe try Citizen Dawn? Mainly because of the card in her deck (of which she has two copies) which you may see referred to around here as simply "That Card". If you ever see it come up in a game, you will immediately know which card it is I'm talking about. That Card. Ugh. Parse is pretty much the only one who can deal with it, and you have to have set yourself up to do so before it shows up. Unless you get lucky and she never manages to play it :D.

Alternatively, if you only have the decks as far as Infernal Relics (so no Shattered Timelines), try the Chairman. It will hurt. A lot. If you get hold of Sahttered Timelines, try your luck against Iron Legacy - it will be a short game (maybe ten minutes, give or take), whatever happens. And meanwhile Wrath of the Cosmos has the wonderful Progeny, who totally won't beat you to a pulp or anything. Nope. Definitely not.

For difficult environments, Rook City is indeed generally horrible because of the way it tends more toward buffing/supporting the villains and doing nasty things to the heroes. Other tough environments include Megalopolis (can prevent you from doing stuff in the various phases of your turn) and Atlantis (quite damaging and has one card which gives the villain more card plays while another stops hero card plays). Mars has a couple of copies of a card which is a pain in the arse for any heroes who like to get set up with lots of equipment.

Or you could try setting up the same game against Rat (ie, same decks) and see how likely it was that your last game was just down to luck ;).

Oh yeah, also, welcome to the forum :D.

*Chrono Ranger, in case you weren't aware ;)

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome.  Plague Rat isn't too bad on AZ, nor is Rook City.  Adept does really well against Rook City, can get beat up against Rat.  Tachyon is just a fantastic character, versatile and powerful, and Hypersonic is an amazing card when enemies don't have reduction.

Probably more lucky with the villain cards than anything, you will find that deck luck gives you a lot of variance in fights, but overall, great fight, good job taming the rat and keep saving the multi-verse.

And really, don't worry too much about the odds, there will be plenty of horrible losses in your future.

Thank you all for the welcome and the feedback.

As a math teacher, the odds call to me! I don't put too much stake in them though. And I have had my share of horrible losses already! (Like the first time the app randomized Cosmic Omnitron and I didn't realize it until I was dying quickly.) I actually like losing the first time because I get that sense of revenge going.

One of the great things about tabletop, and co-op games specifically, is that you have a lot of latitude to turn certain balance nobs to fit you and your groups preferences for what kind of experience you want when you all sit down and play.

But take my word on this one. Never play Ennead without using the Advanced text on the front side. If you take anything away from this forum, please take that haha. It's a life changing moment.

Or Challenge Mode.  That adds quite a bit of challenge as well–makes drawing specific icons less swingy, but boosts single-icon villains much more than "X or Y" icon ones, and places a lot more variability on whether additional members get put in play.

I have a friend who's kid only plays Ennead on non-advanced. It might help to explain he only plays Ennead whileon the video game in the middle of a lesson, so he can rack up wins and do well in school at the same time, because he has to devote 0% of his focus/energy to the game.  It's crazy.

Yeah, the short answer is, those characters are an AMAZING team against that situation.  Of note, the Adept has a low ranking because he is highly vulnerable to both Ongoing and Equipment hate - he's really good in games where neither occurs, which is what this is.  Tachyon is all-around solid, but far better when (1) armor is scarce, or (2) damage boosts are available, which both apply here.  And poor AZ will often struggle, but damage manipulation and a lack of stuff destruction are his best-case scenario, too.

Also, as someone who thinks about math playing with people who have some past experience with board games, you can generally expect to beat the odds a bit.  That's been my experience, anyway.