Maia Montgomery, YOU WILL NOT DIE THIS DAY

Played a 3-player multiplayer online: Wraith, Naturalist (me), and …uh…maybe KYFE?..against Spite in…I think it was Pike Industrial [edit: Tomb of Anubis, now I remember!].  I forgot to get a screenie.

Because Spite is Waith's nemesis, he did extra damage to her.  Really fast.  Wraith didn't get any Suture Selfs into play, and was too busy using Infrared Eyepieces to fish for Spite's drugs to use Stealth much, so her hit points were in free fall.  Surprisingly soon, she was down to 1 hit point.  Seeing the end coming, Wraith heroically played Inventory Barrage and did a lot of damage…but far from finishing Spite off.

The Wraith player calmly admitted she was doomed.  "Wait a moment," I typed, "I can tank a bit."  The Naturalist had been drawing a lot of cards with my second power use each turn (since we were trying to let Spite get all his drugs into play and flip, I'd been sort of biding my time) and had 18 cards in hand.  Amng them was Indomitable Force, his "redirect all damage to me" card.  So I could draw everything (even envoro damage) down onto my own head to save Wraith for a turn.

But I also had Shifter's Strength – lets Naturalist discard (unlimited) to draw an equal number of cards.  AND then play one – this is key.

So I played it and discarded everything but Indomitable Force and a second Shifter's Strength.  Then I played Indomitable Force.

By cycling so many cards each turn, and ignoring everything else, I was able to keep ending up with at least one Indomitable Force and one Shifter's Strength every turn, and all the damage directed at heroes bounced off Naturalist's awesome defenses.  Wraith spent the rest of the game fighting her nemesis with a single hit point showing, and we beat him down.  I didn't do any damage until the last turn, when I threw a Threatening Stomp as part of finishing Spite off.

At the very end, Wraith got a Smoke Bombs into play.  I loved the mental image of an exhausted and confused Spite searching for his archenemy, while an enraged rhinoceros kept appearing and disappearing in the dense smoke.

When playing Naturalist, I tend to stick with Croc or Gazelle, for board control, but Rhino Naturalist really is one of the best tanks you can ask for. :D

I actually find the best tank to be the Sentinels. Human Shield for permanant redirect, with the Durasteel Chains and Block giving 2 damage reduction, and for the occasional big hit, Hippocratic Oath. I've had Mainstay completely block out a double Explosive Wagon death.

It's costly, though -- keeping Human Shield out means two discards a round, and I'm always reluctant to use as a tank someone who only has 14 HP to start with.

The selectivity of Human Shield is a point in its favor, though. I mean, if Captain Cosmic's immune to energy damage, you might as well let that 3 energy through to him, right?

…and The Naturalist in Rhino Form with Indomitable Force has the same -2 DR.  Add a Resilient Hide and he auto-heals every round.  Nice thing about Human Shield is that it stays round after round, rather than being a disappearing Ongoing 

 To be fair, my most favorite tank is Scholar with two Flesh to Irons and a Take What You Need out.  A massive -4 DR, plus all the card draw necessary to fuel the Flesh to Irons, will usually be the highest-hero HP (so will soak up the damage intended for highest-HP heroes), and enough card-draw/deck-shuffling options to be able to find/use/re-use his damage-redirect cards.

This is one of the things I love about this game! 3 VERY different takes on the best for a role, and they all have enough pro/con that none of them are objectively best.

The 2 cards hurt, but Sentinels have rediculous card draw. Plus, you still have your card play, with Naturalist or Scholar you're using your play phase to resetup your tank. Sentinels get to tank and attack

I find Wraith is good against Spite (if H=3) if you can get out the Utility Belt and two Stun Bolts. Then his damage is completely nerfed except for when he would be aiming a two-point hit at the Wraith (increased to three thanks to the Nemesis bonus). But as soon as the Wraith has the lowest hp out of the heroes all you need to do is make sure you have Smoke Bombs out and you can ignore that too :D.

Agree on Naturalist being a great tank - note also that Resilient Hide isn't Limited, so you can get both copies out for 2hp healing every turn in addition to whatever else you want to do - possibly more healing if you're playing the promo version and use your power to activate Gazelle stuff while you have Rhino Form out as your actual form (for the soak).

Also agree on the Scholar - if he can keep up with the draw requirements he's pretty epic. Had a game as him the other day, in fact, in which I managed to get out two Energy forms and one Liquid very early on (thanks to a couple of Keep Movings, I believe). The hero preceding me in turn order was Freedom Five Legacy, whose base power is to either put an environment card in play to the bottom of the deck or let one hero play a card. So that let me play a whole load of Hold Fasts to top up my hand. Once Legacy managed to get Inspiring Presence out later in the game (we were aginst Skinwalker Gloomy so it went on a while) it got ridiculous - I could play Transmutative Recovery, get back 3hp and then deal two lots of four damage to stuff. The biggest problem I had in that game was that I kept being at max health so couldn't heal to deal damage :D.

With Scholar, remember you can have teammates damage you if you need to lower your health a bit to do damage. This is a great use for "leftover" attacks that would go unused (say, the second hit of Haka's Taiaha, or if Fixer has Dual Crowbars and only one villain target).  If your damage reduction is too high, you can always let an Iron Skin go.

Speaking of Legacy, let's not forget the game's original tank!  While he can't redirect environment damage, "only" villain, he can do it at will, or skip it if it would be better.  Once he has the right cards out, and with the ability to become immune to one or two types of damage, he can be spectacularly tough.

One of my favorite tricks along these lines is to deck him with Motivational Charge.

Ooh that's a good idea :D. Punch him and then immediately heal him so he can do stuff. I'd never thought of that...mind you, in the game I mentioned above we were against Skinwalker Gloomy and he'd managed to get quite a few things out (pins, cultists, zombies...that sodding cultist who brings the zombies back again...:P) so we sort of had to have everyone beating up as many of the Bad Things as possible so we didn't get overwhelmed - the other two heroes were really only good at single-target damage (F5 Legacy and Tango One, a Cauldron heroine). But yeah, punching the Scholar on purpose is certainly something I'm aware of...I'd just never specifically considered the results of doing so via Motivational Charge.

Great writeup! Love the vision of Spite searching for Wraith in the mists only to keep getting hit by a rhino.

I just imagine Spite wondering whether he grabbed the wrong set of drugs this time.

Also, I put normal Mainstay with the Adamant Sentinels. Block with TK Jab is awesome! Plus, any out of turn powers lets you block/jab again, being extra tanky. Aura of Vision lets you draw a card at the start of your turn, so you aren’t discarding as fast, and if you use Regenerate, you can draw again, keeping you even!