Spite: Agent of Gloom [Math Rant]

So, a random game the other game pulled up my least-favorite villain, and I played him anyway, and then I got to thinking. Mostly, I love Sentinels; it's a wonderful game, and the villains are interesting to fight, just varied enough to require shifting tactics, and cool and thematic.

Spite: Agent of Gloom is the absolute worst.

What I did not realize until this week is how badly his math is broken. I thought it was just that I was having bad luck with him, but it's not. He doesn't do the things he should do.

So... the thing is, the theory behind the Agent, AIUI, is that he has two modes. First, you fight him to slow down his power, putting victims into the Safe House to prevent his Drugs from flipping, and then he flips and becomes a killing machine, and you have to pull the victims back out again to slow him down and fight him off.

But in practice, neither of those things happen. It is functionally impossible to ever flip one of Spite's drugs face-down, and if you save enough victims for him to flip he will instantly obliterate you.

The problem is that the drugs flip at the start of the turn, the Victims check at the end of the turn, and Spite only plays one card per turn in this variant. Spite starts the game with a single Victim in play, and then flips his first drug. Then he plays one card. 

On Spite's second turn, he flips a second drug. Then, if there are not three Victims in the safe house at the end of the turn, his two drugs stay face-up. But to get three Victims into the Safe House by the end of the second turn, you need one of two things: Either for Spite to play a Victim, and for the Samaritan to be one of the two Victims out, and for the Samaritan to play another Samaritan off the top of his deck, and for THAT Samaritan to not play a Victim-destroying card (for those who are curious, the chance of this happening is about 1.6%), or to play one of the three heroes who can force plays off of the villain deck (Omnitron-X, Rogue Agent KNYFE, and Dark Conductor Argent Adept) and then get lucky in playing just victims and also not having the Samaritan kill himself (technically a much better but still real low chance, at 11.5% with one of those heroes).

If you can't get three Victims into the safe house at the end of Turn 1, it becomes impossible, because a new drug flips every turn, Spite only puts one card out per turn, and the chance of that card being one that kills Victims or empties the safe house increases substantially each turn. And you can't get H victims into the safe house until after Spite has that many drugs out, which means if there are four or five heroes his whole suite is out to mess you up.

And then when he flips, he instantly deals 2H+2 damage to everyone - more with a lab raid - plus H+3 damage to the weakest player. In a 4-hero game, that means 12 damage to each hero and then 7 to the weakest before you can respond. And if you respond by pulling all the victims out, he eats them and hits everyone again.  

The math is a nightmare. 

You're not wrong. I'm usually inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, but general consensus is that Agent of Gloom is not well designed, and that neither version of Spite is all that fun to actually play against.

Hmm...Got any ideas for set-up changes one can make to have this be a bit more... Balanced?

Having the victims-under-safehouse check at the start of the turn instead of the end. Or have Spite still play two cards on his turn.

I'd do something like:

Start of turn flip a drug face up, then if there is at least 1 victim card in the safehouse, flip a drug face down.  Any player may then discard a card to remove a victim card under the safehouse from the game.

When Spite destroys a victim card, flip a drug card face up.

If all drugs are face up flip Spite.

End of turn if no victim card is in play play top card of Spite's deck.

I think my immediate gut for a 'fast fix' would be to just do three things:

Fix #1 - Instead of the victims checking face-up drugs, have them check face-down drugs. If, at the end of the turn, there are more victims in the Safe House than there are face-down Drug cards, flip a random Drug card face-down. 

Fix #2 - Killing victims places them below Spite. Spite flips when the total of victims in the safe house and victims beneath Spite is H+2. 

Fix #3 - Once flipped, all victims under Spite are placed in the trash. If there are no victims in the Safe House, Spite deals +1 damage. If there are no Victims in play, Spite takes -1 damage. At the end of each Villain turn, place a random Victim from the Safe House into play.

That keeps the basic premise of Spite, but creates a constant pressure between saving people and using them as bait. Putting people into the safe house helps keep the drugs from getting totally out of hand, but pushes you towards Spite's flip. And he is much more likely to eventually flip. Once he does, pulling victims out gives you actions and stops his damage reduction, but gives him targets to kill to heal and hurt others, and pulling everyone out makes him stronger.

It's possible to lock him into a loop of flipping the same drug back and forth, but only if A) you can chain at least two Good Samaritans on the environment turn, and B) you can keep him from playing Forced Entry.

Basically, if you want to fight him the way he's meant to be fought, you need deck control. I just ignore his victims and let the drugs flip up. He's less boring than regular Spite that way, at least.

But you're not wrong about the "instant obliteration on the flip side" thing. <.< Another reason I don't bother saving victims.

I’ve achieved the loop before when fighting him, but I really think I must have lucked into it to some extent as, on repeated attempts at the Halloween weekly challenge on the video game I have failed to get ahead of the drugs, despite the huge deck manipulation available between that team…

I just beat it today by ignoring that condition (although I did use deck manipulation to prevent him from killing hostages as much as possible so as to stop him healing, and having memorised the order of the drugs was pretty key to stop his -3 damage card just screwing the whole thing…

I think I prefer the other version of Spite, but he’s still a massive pain to deal with, which is a shame as I kind of like his back story…

AoG Spite at least doesn't have the problem where he flips and then every single round is exactly the same. If you can't flip him, leave him on his front side, he'll still at least play cards to keep things interesting.

See, Flipped base Spite I like thematically, because it represents him just losing all control and flailing wildly without regard for tactics or the environment. To me, it really fits as one of those, "He's going crazy, we have to put him down fast before he destroys everything!" fights.

Except every time I play against him, I end up with, “He’s going crazy, let’s slowly and methodically neutralize everything he can do and wear down the eight billion hit points he accrued on his front side over the next thirty turns.”

For me Spite games revolve aroung getting as much set up as I can and getting the Wraith into double Stun Bolts as quickly as possible. There is no real variation to that plan. Spite is a much less interesting and less fun Plague Rat. He neuters whatever environment you play him in and it becomes a slog of keep him in check and wear him down. He's not a hard "make you think" game. He's not a fun try something new game. He is a this is what works, do this and get it done game. Not the most fun thing to do.

Honestly, if I were rewriting Spite from the ground up – both original flavor and Agent of Gloom – the first thing I'd do is give each drug a unique removal method that reshuffles them into the deck, which goes away when he flips. For AoG Spite, strike all the text about flipping drugs face down based on the number in the safe house, and instead just say if a drug would be reshuffled, it's instead flipped face down.

Obviously this would require reworking his whole deck quite a bit – he'd need a more aggressive way to get them out than the odd Lab Raid, since you could theoretically put off his flip forever (in the classic version).  I'd probably rework Myndphyre so it does damage based on the number of environment cards in play, and then destroys one, so he's destructive but the environment still matters once that card is out.

Are you talking about Challenge Mode?  He can't go over his starting 80 normally, so I just treat him as if he's immune to damage until he flips.

I've actually killed him on his front side. Can't remember how, though.

Oh, yeah, somehow I got it in my head we were already talking about Challenge/Ultimate mode.

Easiest way to beat him on his front side is if Mind-Phyre doesn't come out and Unhallowed Halls does.  Without Compound Omicron, it's then not too hard to just beat him down, and Tachyon (especially F5) is a juggernaut with Compound Xi out.  Deck control that moves cards to the bottom of his deck works just fine, too.

My favorite way to take him out on his front side is to take TL Tachyon, Visionary, Chrono Ranger, Wraith and Greatest Legacy

My strategy is to hit Spite with a bunch of instances of -1s to his damage so that he basically can't deal any and therefore can't heal.