Let's gush about the new heroes!

So we played our first game with the OblivAeon heroes tonight. I was La Comodora, because I’ve been curious about her character design for a long time.

Yegads.

Every turn was total chaos, but in such a controlled way! I loved it. A few turns into the game, I had the Concordant Helm and Chronological Sweetspot in play, with Harnessed Anomaly in the trash. For the next three turns, I:

1. Destroyed something inconsequential at the start

2. Used La Comodora’s power to shuffle her deck and stick Harnessed Anomaly under the top card

3. Drew a card

4. Played a card

5. Sweetspot tried to play all the hero decks, and oh, look, I found a Harnessed Anomaly!

Needless to say, Stuntman was very happy.

If your draw phase comes first, then you have not yet played a card or used a power.  Meaning, as it does for all heroes, that you get to draw two cards!

I'm not a fan of DW Fixer, but Stuntman works well with him. Benchmark, too, if you are going to lose Software anyway....

Don’t forget Mainstay.   All of his stuff does things upon destruction. 

La Commadora is amazing as long as you don't run out of cards. She really needs to get her wheel into play, so she can draw first, and draw 2 cards each turn. Having an ally that allows her to draw extra cards helps too. 

Akash is amazingly good, but takes a little while before her seeds start sprouting from the environment. Luckily she has 50 hit points to last her until then, and her non-seed cards are still quite good, so she's not entirely dependent on the seeds sprouting.

Writhe is my other favorite new character, especially with his Cosmic Inventor alternate. Don't worry, you'll get plenty of cards that'll retrieve his shadow cloak for you. His base power will not only load you up with cards, but protect your allies.

Writhe wasn't clicking for me until I played Cosmic Inventor, and now I don't think I want to go back to his base power.  Cosmic Inventor just opens up so many more power options for you.

It also allows for some great combos.  Protect the target who would get hit by the Operative or the Matriarch so the team can take out one target for free per round.  Protect Scholar of the Infinite so he can use his base power without hurting himself.  Protect Akash'Thriya or Nightmist from their own self-damage...

I'm loving pretty much all the new heroes.  Luminary feels just perfect, where all he wants to do is throw out devices, then blow them up.  La Comodora is fantastic and may eventually slip into my favorite character slot.  Idealist is crazy good.  I used her karate robot to take down Ultimate Iron Legacy.

I’m still a bigger fan of base Writhe as I like the guarantee to use the extra Cloak affects.   Though I certainly understand the appeal of the variant.  

I still love Suntman because he does so much. He plays fast, and doesn’t feel useless or boring on other turns. Legacy and Ra, as good as they are, can get boring to play.

Not Stuntman!

[quote=Better Believe It's Andrew]  Luminary feels just perfect, where all he wants to do is throw out devices, then blow them up

[/quote]

There a certain zen to his playstyle.   All According To Plan makes him even more glad to see his Devices get blown up.  

This is my favorite part about Luminary, at least the basic Luminary. When other heroes get their equipment/ongoings/constructs/etc blown up it feels like a major setback. When Luminary loses his, you just fold your fingers together, smile, and say "All According to Plan!"

I never thought Baron Blade would be the most calming character to play.

We had our first game with new heroes last night. Akash’Thyria, Mainstay, and the Harpy, base versions all.

i was Mainstay, never got the Redirect Damage card, but did ok on the “destroy my own stuff for fun shenanigans” part. 

Friend played Akash, had fun seeding the Environment, and we even got a few uses out of the Tree.

Wife played Harpy, and unfortunately we had a lot of DR to get through at the start, but by the time she had 4-5 ongoing out, and the DR was dealt with, Harpy just exploded with rapid-fire damage. 

Overall, fun time, and looking forward to learning more!

I haven't played all of them yet.  My friend played Lifeline and Akash'Thriya but didn't get much mileage out of either.  I had a tough time "balancing" Harpy and ended up just going full bird mode and letting her be a machine gun--effective but off-flavor.  La Comodora worked nicely but I didn't get any incredible combos going.

Mainstay and The Idealist, on the other hand, wow.  I started the game with two Drop the Hammers in hand and drew a third early on, not what you want at the beginning.  But my other cards were generally useful and my damage output was always consistent, even when doing some ongoing or environment control.  But by the end, thanks to La Capitan, I ended up with a couple of Void Belters and Durasteel Vests in my trash.  So finally (and under a Targeting Arrow) I got to do Drop the Hammer, Drop the Hammer, Drop the Hammer, play and use Void Belter, destroy the Void Belter.  Not even close to ideal but it did work out to something like 36 damage.

Idealist did require a lot of forethought, moving fragments around to keep Strained Superego from destroying things.  That was kind of annoying.  But Karate Robot is just ridiculous.  I did need the Super Sentai power to shut off an opening-hand Monster of Id, but otherwise it was just Stabby Knives and Karate chops all day.  So much damage, and it's consistent damage, too, not giant nova rounds like so many other heroes.

My wife and I tried out the Void Guard this morning, and we agree:
We love the Void Guard.
Voss is still crying. “But I wanted to invade the Nexus of the Void and usurp all it’s power for myself! Stupid Void Guard!”

That’s not off-flavor. She was intentionally designed to have 3 distinct, equally viable strategies: full bird, full magic, or balance.

Writhe (basic) is one of my favorite heroes to play. It amuses me to no end that the hero with BY FAR the fewest hp is the strongest tank in the game.

And Umbral Siphon is great for taking down villains that heal a lot: La Capitan (of course), Iron Legacy, The Ennead, Skinwalker Gloomweaver, Spite…

I haven't played as Harpy myself yet, but two of my friends have and each found her underwhelming. They complained that it was a lot of finnicky stuff to do very little damage. Any tips for how to get the most out of her? Any cards I should tell people to be on the lookout for in the future?

Out of curiousity, what is the full-bird strategy? I could see full arcane, and I've had GREAT luck with balance (including keeping both Conjured Aura and Uncontrollable Flocks out and flipping tokens back and forth non-stop), but it doesn't seem like she has enough bird cards in her deck for full-bird to be an option.

She's got… Uncontrollable Flock (with payment of course), Gathering the Flock, and Directed Strike… What else goes heavily for the bird cards? Most of the others would be penalties.

The high bird strategy centers around taking advantage of Huginn and Muninn's damage boost to get the most out of The Harpy's projectile damage cards and changing The Flock's Care from a defensive card to an offensive one.

Played my first game as Doctor Medico with a physical deck yesterday (Mmmmmmm, new game smell), managed to get the "god combo" for him.

Second Opinion, Experimental Medicine, Healing Pulse and Regeneration. There were so many powers being handed out, it was amazing!

Playing a random game against The Dreamer last night I came across a nice find that hadn't occured to me before: Luminary's Terralunar Translocator is simply phenomenal against her flip side. Being able to easily wipe out 7+ projections in one go effectively wins the game.

in unlocking Supply and Demand last night I really got Benchmark going. Holy *@#$! when he gets going he is a beast. Healing 3 or 4 hp a turn, had a nice run where he got 6 or 7 cards under the missiles and had 2 oppertunities to self damage boost with the HUD that was ridiculous.

I loved harpy in Playtesting, I didn't play the last few versions of her so I am super excited for my copy to arrive and get her to the table

Haha yes, Matchstickman, that Medico game was fairly ridiculous :D.

Ironic Fist - I've had similar fun with Luminary against Akash'Bhuta's Limbs (took out about five of them in one go) >:).

Luminary's Orbital Cannon is friggin amazing late game. Kismet had no idea what hit her.

My wife was loving LaCommodora. I don't think she even scratched the surface of her potential either. Still getting one shots played from every deck was pretty great. We had some great combos trigger from that.

Akash-Thriya was very interesting, although I completely messed up how her seeds work. (I was discarding them to the environment trash). I can see a ton of potential with her.

Harpy was a loose cannon. She reminded me very much of Nightmist, but with even more damage potential. I think my wife managed to hit everyone on the table for 5 damage as a one shot (unintentionally I might add). I can't wait to try her out.

It felt off-flavor to me because I was trying to adopt the balanced strategy, but my cards keps pushing me over to the bird side despite my efforts to flip them back.  And dealing multiple instances of plink projectile damage a round, while effective, made me feel more like Bunker than like Nightmist.  Obviously this was just one game and may not be representative of her play, but that was my impression.

Struggling against the temptation to give in to the power of the birds? Lots of bird powers and cards that deal small plinks of damage?
Sounds pretty much on flavor to me…

To me the key to Harpy is managing and setting up swings between Arcane and Avian tokens.  Don't just sit on one side until you run out of cards for that style and then not be able to swing to the other side.  Your cards that flip tokens are huge, use them wisely and often holding onto them until it is time to switch sides is key.

Pay attention to when thigs happen.  Conjured Aura checks for destruction at the start of your turn, you need 3 arcane tokens at the start of your turn.  At the end of your turn H&M can set up your nest turn with a flip.  Uncontrolled Flock needs at least 1 Arcane token at the start of your turn or you lose it.

Darkwatch Harpy is much faster at swinging between Avian and Arcane.  You can flip a lot of tokens with that power and a second card play.  With DW Harpy you really need to strategically use your cards that flip tokens.  To get the most out of DW Harpy you need to plan out several potential turns that allow you to do different things and then when your turn comes up do the one that fits best.

Original Harpy is amazing with Applied Numerology, and your main power drives your deck.  With less token flipping you will often just sit on one side of the token spectrum, and won't bounce back and forth quite as much.  This one is less complex than DW, simply because Harpy will often feel like you don't have anything to do even though you have a ton of cards, if you aren't thinking ahead and setting up big swings and turns.

Also worth noting that you can go a couple rounds of spells first, before getting the cards you need to go bird mode for most of the game. She is not an easy hero to play, you have to be very reactive to the game state (in this turn and future turns, will you need AOE spells more or machine gun birds more? do you prioritize utility or damage?  etc…) and the cards she draws. She also has a significant "get out all my ongoings and combo" that allows her to be a build-up hero when you need it.  

Both versions of Writhe work great. His base form/power is just more aggro, and his cosmic scientist variant is more support. What I've found is the original version has more effect on the villains, but you have less choice in what you do. The CS variant gives up some power for great versatility and ally support.

The problem with Harpy is in order to have choice in what strategy you use, you need cards. Lots and lots of cards. If another hero can give you those cards, great! But if they can't, then you don't get to choose which strategy you use. I wish either of her powers (normal or variant) drew her more cards. As it stands, she's certainly not bad, but Nightmist and Visionary are similar and probably better. 

Idealist has a similar problem, but at least has more ways to draw cards, and get to those concepts. If they're all on the bottom of your deck, however, you're in trouble (similar to Unity's problem). Ultimately, karate robot is only 2 cards in the deck, with 3 additional cards to search for any concept in your deck. That's only about a 1 in 8 chance with each card drawn. Either things go really well, or really badly.

Dr. Medico is capable of a lot, but can't do damage well (malpractice variant is not good), and can't deal with environment/ongoing cards like the other support characters can. He's a great character in a team that already has 1 support character. I'd avoid him in 3 player games.

I love Akash, but I wouldn't use her in Oblivaeon games. The environment has a habit of disappearing, making her efforts far less meaningful. Still a really great character.

Luminary I'm still not sure about. I started out negative on him, but I'm beginning to turn around. I need to play him more in non-Oblivaeon games.

Mainstay is fantastic, and so is La Commadora. Although the latter makes me smirk a little. Why? Don't know, her character concept and game mechanics just seem a bit familiar. *CoughCough Cauldron's "Echelon" google it CoughCough*. 

Idealist is somewhat dependent on cards, but can usually get what she needs.  I've only had one game where she couldn't get set up to do something effective, and that was a game against Ultimate Ambuscade where he took everyone out too quickly.  She has multiple card draw abilities, some search cards, and damage-dealing one-shots if she can't get anything else.

Dr. Medico is capable of a lot, but can't do damage well (malpractice variant is not good), and can't deal with environment/ongoing cards like the other support characters can. He's a great character in a team that already has 1 support character. I'd avoid him in 3 player games.

I used Malpractice Medico and his card "Regeneration" to great effect in a Vengeance game.  He's definitely an interesting variant, who thoroughly changes his play style based on that base power.  I'm going to try him some more and see if he's effective elsewhere.

I love Akash, but I wouldn't use her in Oblivaeon games. The environment has a habit of disappearing, making her efforts far less meaningful. Still a really great character.

Akash saved me one time against the Oblivaeon shield that requires environment cards to be in play, and I've also used her a few times when I wanted someone to sit in play just a little bit longer to get or set up rewards, due to her high health pool.  Otherwise, I agree that heroes and environments don't usually stay in play long enough for her to be useful against Oblivaeon.

Luminary I'm still not sure about. I started out negative on him, but I'm beginning to turn around. I need to play him more in non-Oblivaeon games.

Definitely try Luminary outside of Oblivaeon.  He's pretty great.  I wiped Skinwalker Gloomweaver's board with his Terralunar Translocator, and hit mulitple villains for huge hits with the orbital laser, including dealing the damage to activate Shattering Blow against Oblivaeon.  He also tends to be fairly durable due to his disposable defenders.  I think the  Translocator  could even take out active Bloodsworn Title cards, although I wouldn't swear on that rule interpretation.

Well…  That's the odds of drawing it for the first card you card into your opening hand. Each draw after that has a higher chance (until you draw one). For example, after you draw your card at the end of the first turn, if you haven't drawn one yet, you're now at a 1-in-7 chance for your next draw (as you're down to 45 cards in the deck). 

And she has so much card draw, I've never seen her (in the final version) have any issues getting a construct by third turn. That's just our games, though – I'm sure others have different experiences. 

Shes quite capable without Concepts and has a decent amount of draw power to get them.   With Video Game Beta testing I’ve played her even more and I’ve rarely had issues getting a Concept to use.   Sure Karate Robot is the big source of damage but it’s not a necessity to get.   Giant Floaty Head by itself can likely draw you into what you want while dealing with other Ongoing / Environment concerns  

Dr. Medico is capable of a lot, but can't do damage well (malpractice variant is not good), and can't deal with environment/ongoing cards like the other support characters can. He's a great character in a team that already has 1 support character. I'd avoid him in 3 player games.

Base Medico is not there for damage really just healing and power uses.  Malpractice on the other hand deals a good chunk of damage and plays like AZ in a way you just need to balance between recovery and having healing turn into damage.   He does fine on any team size and even as the sole support type hero.   The biggest concern for him is encountering things that prevent healing otherwise he’s very solid at keeping the team up.  Not every support hero or all heroes altogether have Ongoing/Environment destruction available to them you just have to work around it. 

I've only played one game with her, but it was about 5 or 6 rounds, and I'd drawn 6 of her 7 concepts and had two more search cards in hand by the end.  Took until round 3 to get Karate Robot, but she had Flying Stabby Knives to tide her over.  She was plenty effective.

That's surprising.  On paper it looks like a lot of damage, and Malpractice Medico was the one variant a lot of playtesters seemed to think was powerful to the point of being broken.  Possibly he needs to be paired with other heroes with healing, but I'm very eager to try him out and see.

Yeah, on paper, it sure looks like Malpractice would turn Motivational Charge into a punch-fest and Absolute Zero into a slow-fuse bomb.

Just played my first Luminary game (vs. Voss) and thoroughly enjoyed firing the Orbital Laser.

My wife had La Comodora, and we were having trouble figuring out what to do with the Rudder in the Time-Stream. She put a limited equipment with a power from someone else’s deck on the bottom of hers, and later played Weigh Anchor. Does this go into La Comodora’s play area? (But the power uses the original hero’s name, of course.)

We were also trying to figure out the best way for Shipshape to be useful. I have to say, one thing I don’t really like about these new heroes is their tendency to amplify some of the fiddlyness of the game. They tend to rely on particular rules that have evolved in importance over time - not sure whether that’s because the game evolved, or as more heroes entered the fray those rules became more relevant/got more of a focus. The best example is Benchmark (and I suspect Shipshape works like this, too): used to be that we’d treat it as players’ choice which order to activate the end of turn effects. This might have just been because cases where it actually mattered were few and far between for the core game and the first few expansions. Benchmark, though, RELIES ON effects occurring in the order the cards were played. It’s kind of neat how you have to set him up as a program to execute, but it involves the player keeping track of an element of the game that they don’t usually have to pay much attention to. (Now that I write it out, though, I see more value in him as adding something new to the game.)

That’s a common misreading of how the card works. You actually put each card on the bottom of their own, respective decks. It took me a couple of reads to figure it out myself.

Yeah, there’s definitely a few heroes in this set that make me glad I only play the digital game (and same for Oblivaeon mode as well I think - a lot of these elements look fun, but I’m glad I’ll have the game doing the heavy lifting instead of trying to remember everything myself).

I forgot to mention, in Oblivaeon games, Idealist goes from 'strong performer with some consistency issues' to potentially 'strongest hero in the game'.

So far I've played 6 games of Oblivaeon, and the Idealist, when paired with the mission reward from 'Form the MechaKnight', is the most powerful weapon in the hero's arsenel.

Even in the hands of another hero, the reward combines with damage boosting effects to do upwards of 11-16 damage per power use. In the hands of the Idealist, it allows her to hit multiple targets, potentially wiping out Scions as well as Oblivaeon. 

If you really want to cheese things out, you can also make sure the first hero everyone plays as each game have 'one hero may use a power' as one of their incapacitated abilities. Then, when Idealist has formed the Mechaknight, you can use your beginning of turn bonus action (the ones on the Hero Reminder Card) to use the incapacitated ability to allow Idealist to use her power.

Last game we had Idealist activating the MechaKnight power every hero turn, along with Legacy's galvanize and a +1 to all damage environment effect, to do 16 damage x 5 hero turns = 80 damage to multiple targets each round. 

If you really, really want to cheese things out, make sure one of those heroes is Xtreme Prime Wardens Fanatic and redirect all Hero damage to Oblivaeon.  Then, when Idealist is dealing massive damage to tons of targets, she instead deals all of that damage, added up, to Oblivaeon!

And if you can couple that with an Oblivaeon shard, well, just forget about him, Idealist is the Omniversal threat now.

I LOVE the heroes in this set. My favorites are Akash, Lifeline, and Idealist. And Stuntman (of course).

I think Christopher is still at the top of his game in designing interesting hero decks. It seems like some of the comments are along the lines of - heroes are good if they are more powerful, and bad if they are less powerful. I very much disagree, the game is super boring when you win too easily / all the time. I much prefer heroes that are interesting to play and lead to good back-and-forth games against the villains (not a steamroll either way).

Seperately, I think Malpractice Medico is a fair design, not over or underpowered. While some testers thought he was OP, I thought he was less powerful than the base version 80% of the time (but he can pull off insane damage). 

Even when it works right, it just seems 'okay', considering that you're giving up healing in order to inflict the damage.

Also, if I'm interpreting the rules correctly, a hero would only heal damage if they're not currently at full health, and even then would only heal the amount needed to get them back to full health. So Malpractice Medico's ability would only take effect if the hero target wasn't at full health, right?

It works just like Scholar with Mortal Form To Energy in that it’s capped by what could be healed.   In Malpractice’s case though since the healing is prevented to deal damage instead you don’t have the Scholar’s issue where he needs other heroes to hit him for more damage. 

I was hoping to read more about Lifeline as I am interested in his aggressive playstyle. 

The other decks are probably more interesting to talk about as they offer more unique mechanics (doomsday devices, environment deck manipulation, bird/magic tokens and so on) or in La Comodoras case the discussion about strategies/function of some cards. 

Most of his aggressive play comes from whether you want to use Cosmic Immolation or not.   Really I just want have a turn where I kill all of Matriarch’s Birds through Unleash Energy then play Unnatural Upheaval to hit her for damage equal to the amount of birds destroyed that turn. 

Well, they shouldn't be too powerful, but they also shouldn't be notably weaker than other heroes.  If they aren't close to as good as the best existing heroes, people just aren't going to choose them as much.  If they're harder to win with, they'll need to be incredibly fun to make up for it.

I’m sure over time the stats page will show us whether some heroes are more potent than others.  Really it just comes down to a fun factor.  Do each of these new heroes offer something that make you want to continue playing and trying to master what they can accomplish.  Sometimes that even comes down to just the variant used for the same deck.  

Quick La Commodora question: what is the real benefit of the last part of Shipshape (that you can take an ongoing/equipment in your play area, put it on top of your deck, and play it). I could see this being useful if you destroyed it and put it on top of your deck--proccing the equipment destruction effects--or if it let you get around paying upkeep costs, but it doesn't seem to do any of those things. It seems to just be moving a card to your deck and playing it, with none of the possible cards having "on play effects", and so represent pure fiddliness for fidliness's own sake. So I've got to be missing something here: where can doing this become beneficial? Is it a combo I'm missing, or am I just misunderstanding the card?

From https://greaterthangames.com/comment/194256#comment-194256 which I feel covers it fairly well

It allows you to reorder your end of turn effects since end of turn effects trigger in the order the cards entered play. This is useful since one of the best ways to speed up La Comodora’s build up is by using blind plays from Weigh Anchor and Harnessed Anomaly.

Additionally it’s a good way to get Paradoja Figurehead back to your own play area.

This is the criticism I was trying to level earlier: not before Benchmark and La Comodora have we seen heroes for whom it really seriously drastically mattered what order your cards appeared in play, and those heroes jumped all the way to DEPENDING on the specific order of start/end of turn effects. It does seem like a situation approaching, as Infinite Jester called it, fiddlyness for fiddlyness’ own sake.

In Benchmark’s case it might be a good thing, as it feels like a hero deck that explores a previously unexplored area of the rules. But La Comodora feels a little strange to me. Like, if she has Shipshape, why doesn’t Omnitron-X have a card to reorder all its start of turn effects? Or Unity have a card to reorder her bots? I would rather have seen some slight redesign of La Comodora to remove her sensitivity to the few cases Dandolo mentioned.

Because La Commodora knows and manipulates time to a very fine level of detail. She's been doing this for… ever? Thematically, the idea of her being able to reorder the timing of her triggers seems completely appropriate, to me. 

We've actually seen other heroes where the timing mattered – they just didn't have a way to deal with it. 

But don't we usually get new things with each new set? 

Just to chime in on some Doctor Medico chat, he was my favorite during the stages of playtesting I was actually a part of. I was also a big advocate on him being quite powerful. One thing from playtesting that I am so happy eventually got dropped was him having an Ongoing that gave him an additional power use on his power phase. The dude hands out power uses like candy, having an additional power for himself made it that much easier. The last few changes to him certainly made him within an acceptable range of power, in my opinion. Though he is still capable of keeping my playstyle of Absolute Zero alive, so that's kind of scary.

Now about Malpractice, this one I am still having trouble gauging where I feel he falls in how good it is. He's either perfect or slightly on the too powerful side. At least when I play him I have found he's a little energy ball of absolute murder. Such as tonight against CItizen Dawn in the Ruins of Atlantis. The Chamber was in play, Doctor Medico had Experimental Medice, Healing Pulse, Universal Donor, Second Opinion, and Regeneration in play. At the end of every turn he would try to heal himself 4, instead he used a power and used Healing Pulse so he would attempt to heal his 3 allies for 4 which of course is 12 damage to Dawn instead. Also Universal Donor meant he tried to heal someone for 3, which was Writhe that had Umbral Siphon and would deal 3 and 3 damage to Dawn. So at the end of every turn Dawn was being dealt 18 damage. That was definitely a situation where Doctor Medico Malpractice is on the scarier side and it didn't really need other heroes other than them being there, heck using Writhe's power only increased it by 2, going with just Doctor Medico it would have had enough damage to take her out after 5 turns if she was at full HP.

I could be wrong, but I don't think any of the new heroes are notably weaker than the others, and in fact I think there was a fair amount of hero power creep in this set. 

That’s been our experience so far. The heroes are sometimes a little difficult to get used too but for the most part feel very powerful. We’ve had some of our group suggest we don’t play games with only the new heroes because of it being too easy.

I did some testing with the heroes after they were finalised, comparing them to the base set heroes released by GTG*, I found that while it seemed they were more powerful than the older heroes, they were actually doing more fiddly stuff and taking longer to get to the same point. I'll try to find the stats I recorded of my tests.

*I think it was them, it was a long time ago!

You realise that Concept cards don't need to be in Idealists play area for her to add figments to them, just in the same battlezone, same with Expatriette and her ammo.

Oh my gosh, I didn't realize this at all.  This changes everything!

Just be careful with loading cards under Mecha Knight Ultra Strike, it doesn’t say upto X targets so if you run out of villain and environment targets you can end up being forced to hit heroes.

Though ID and Superego can help you control the number of cards under MKUS.

Actually no, I was not aware of that. I thought they had to be in their own play area. In that case, you just need the Idealist/Expatriette in the same battle zone, and you're good to go!

In all the Oblivaeon games where we won, we got one of three mission rewards into play, which really swung things in our favor. Either: Mekaknight, Chekov's Hairdryer, or Expatriette's gun. I'm not saying having one is required, but when Oblivaeon reaches his final form, damage output becomes crucial. 

When we played at GenCon, we actually didn't have any of those three.  However, we did end the game with two Lightspeed Barrages, and a good series from Ra (Scorched Earth, then a Flame Spike/Blazing Tornado/Pyre combo).

We did have a number of the alternate reality heroes, however.  Cursor was particularly helpful, as was Seraph.

I had a crushing victory over Oblivaeon in one game.  One hero got the Oblivaeon shard, then switched to Termi-Nation Bunker, then Freedom Five Tachyon.  On one round, they reclaimed and played the shard.  Next round, they put their trash into their discard pile, then used the shard's ability with 6 devastation tokens out, then used FF Tachyon's base power.  22 x 7 damage = Phase 3 Oblivaeon dropped in one turn.

Thanks to Powerhound_2000 I found my posts on powercreep (which would be a pretty great name for a villain... just saying).

> I did some testing!

20 four-hero games vs Advanced Baron Blade in Insula Primalis, 10 games with just heroes from the base set and then 10 games with OblivAeon & Mini-Expansion heroes (no variants for either set).

On average they both took 5 turns to win.

The Base heroes did a tiny bit more damage than the OblivAeon heroes, but you would expect them to do roughly the same damage if pitted against the same deck again and again.

The OblivAeon heroes played roughly 100 more cards than the base heroes, and drew about 100 more cards too (311/210 and 300/198 respectively).

The OblivAeon heroes handed out almost 3 times as many powers to their friends (71/24).

Base heroes lost 2 games, OblivAeon heroes lost 1.

Counting losses as 4 heroes at 0HP the base heroes lost 9 members of their team over the 10 games and the OblivAeon heroes lost 6 heroes but the base heroes generally ended on higher HP when they won.

What does this mean?

Well, it appears to me that the OblivAeon heroes are doing more things, but the things they are doing are not more effective than the smaller number of things the base heroes are doing. It would appear the OP-ness is all in the mind (or I'm misinterpreting the data or the sample size is too small to draw any conclusions).

Google Doc with raw data if you want to see actual numbers.

Someone asked why I used this particular set up

> I wanted to compare a "pure" base set untainted by possible power creep from other expansions. The specifics choices were because Insula doesn't stop any action (draw, power etc) and Blade doesn't destroy your stuff so it's a pretty "friendly" combination for heroes to get set up. Blade still provides a time crunch on his front and a guaranteed DR on his back so you have to deal with both.

And that same someone suggested more testing against The Dreamer, Miss Information and Omnitron.

> The Dreamer (Standard) in Insula Primalis

Google Doc

I remember why I don't play The Dreamer much. Brutal openings and having to manage when to destroy targets so you don't lose your best stuff is brain draining when you're not trying to track everything too!

Both teams won more games than they lost, but the base heroes won more games overall and sacrificed themselves more often to accomplish it, guess that's why they're stalwalt heroes and the other lot are reforming villains.

More cycling of decks, more power granted and more cards played by the OblivAeon lot, but less damage overall (destruction of targets via e.g. Sucker Punch was counted as damage equal to the HP of the projection), so a similar lot of data to the first set.

When OblivAeon heroes did win, they were, on average, faster at it then base heroes. I don't know if that means that base heroes are more tanky and can survive earlier blitzs or if it means OblivAeon heroes can generate a lot more damage early if they get the right conditions, or both.

The last game however made up for all the pain I suffered playing and recording this match up. Luminary was "Hero" of the match, destroying all neccessary projections on The Dreamer's flip side with 2 Triple Crosses and finishing off with a Terralunar Translocator. Never has smashing a piece of the moon into a little girl been so satisfying.

I thought I did the Miss Information test too, but I can't find a spreadsheet on my HD, if I find it I'll edit this post with more thoughts and a link.

That's a cool comparison. It will be interesting to see how the statistics project eventually ranks the new heroes - but you've gone beyond that in tallying cards played and extra powers granted. I guess this data does feed into the idea that the new heroes are more complicated in that they have to set up more stuff in order to achieve the same effects.

I played another La Comodora game last night. "Shipshape" is definitely going into my default pile of cards to discard to keep her other equipment alive. I still can't see playing it: I realized that if I have equipment in the "wrong" order, playing "Shipshape" to reorder that equipment would force me to pay the upkeep twice on the reordered card. It's more efficient to just let some equipment vanish and play another copy of that same equipment. There just aren't enough copies of it in the deck for it to matter too much, though, so I can ignore my complaints.

What I find really interesting about La Comodora is how it doesn't feel like she's directly engaged in the battle. She's off behind the lines, providing direction and supporting effects. That's an awesome thing to come through in the mechanics for a ship captain! Man, can it feel like she has to sit through some turns of not doing much, though, as she gets set up. I suspect the only antidote to that feeling would be if you can play the Future-Tech Deck Gun on the first turn, so that she has a power she can use right away that doesn't rely on heroes having cards in their trash.

I think my wife and I both think Luminary is the most fun of the new heroes. (Stuntman is a close second, and I was surprised how much fun I found Mainstay.) He captures the mad scientist feel very well, and the doomsday device mechanic is awesome - unlike playing any of the other heroes who deploy targets, I have the most disposable attitude towards Luminary's devices. It really brings out the Ramonat in both of us. >:-D

While I am enjoying all of the new heroes, the one I’m having far more fun with than I thought I would is Lifeline.

I’ll confess, as the nes heroes were announced, I hadn’t given Lifeline much thought (having been most looking forward to Luminary, Akash’thriya and the Idealist. But, and for no reason I can really put my finger on, I’m finding Lifeline really enjoyable.

Any other pleasant surprises for anyone?

 I’d say all of the Void Guard.  I wasn’t sure how that would go but they each bring something interesting to the table.   

I enjoyed playing Writhe during playtesting, but something just clicked with him when I put his finalized version to the table this weekend.

Probably now in my top 3 heroes, along with Stuntman and Tachyon.

Something I've been thinking about for a whlie and never got round to asking about on here - cards remain in play during their own destruction, right? Like the Explosives Wagon buffing itself when it blows up. So when Stuntman has his Stylish Armour or Dramatic Cliffhanger destroyed, he can't use their effects to play another copy of themselves, can he? Because they still count as being in play?

That is correct.  You can’t play another Dramatic Cliffhanger through Dramatic Cliffhanger and same with Stylish Armour. 

Actually, it was because of this issue that Focused Conduit Blade was changed in the video game to be allowed to play itself.

Cool, just wanted to make sure I was doing it right and there hadn't been some Dual-Crowbars-style alteration to the rules that I'd missed :). Because chaining Dramatic Cliffhanger would just be ridiculous (well, I suppose this is Stuntman we're talking about here...) :D.

Though that didn’t come into affect for a bit and for a while you couldn’t play another Blade after you destroyed a different one.  

That's exactly what I did in my first game against OblivAeon!  With only one round left to flip OblivAeon to his third side, Idealist used Mecha-Knight Ultra-Strike with 3 cards under it boosted by the OblivAeon Shard (and Monster of Id and an Obsidian Field) to deal 40 damage* to 4 targets, taking out 3 Scions and flipping OblivAeon!

*Technically it was slightly less, because as I destroyed Scions, that removed devastation tokens, which lowered her damage boost.  At least I assume that's the right way to play it, rather than just basing it off of the number of devastation tokens when the OblivAeon Shard is activated.

I'm not sure how you were playing on the tabletop, but it has always been the case that start/end of turn effects occur in the order that the cards entered play. Originally, that was the rule for all effects, but in 2013 Christopher relaxed the rule so that it only applies to start/end of turn effects, not other effects: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/timing-and-order-of-operations-4347

I think he meant that that's just how he played it at his table because it was expedient, not because that was strictly according to the rules.  A lot of other folks have posted, here and on Reddit, that they did the same.  Until Benchmark and La Comodora, it didn't make a whole lot of difference.  Some, but not enough to really worry about.

Yeah, what MindWanderer said. It only mattered in some edge cases, and so at the table we just used the tie = players’ choice principle.

I know that’s not the official rule, and I know that’s not how it happens in the video game, but like I said, it rarely mattered very much.

Anyway, I’m over it; Benchmark is an interesting mechanism to play with and a discard-fueled character doesn’t suffer for having an Enduring Intercession in her deck.