New To The Game

I just got my copy of the core game yesterday and after sleeving all 578 cards it was played throughout last night and most of today. While the game was in transit I was reading a lot of the forum posts and was getting more excited as the days passed. I was expecting Citizen Dawn to destroy us the same with Voss. I love a good challenge but so far my group and I have only had 2 games that I feel were challenging (Baron Blade in Atlantis and Citizen Dawn in as we call it Jurassic Park) and we still have not lost to the villains. Is this normal? Are we playing wrong? Are we just amazingly lucky? Or despite our lack of experience have we found the right combination to give us the slight advantage?

Have you tried Advanced mode? Our group felt like it was easy until then. Also try Omnitron. I feel like her and Voss are the toughest in core.

We haven’t done Advanced Mode yet my group isn’t as challenge seeking as I am, for now anyway. Omnitron actually has given us the least trouble as we are able to keep his drones in check and beyond that it’s a damage race. I would love to try Advanced Mode with my group but they dont feel confident enough to take that leap because they “dont know the hero decks well enough yet”

Honestly luck is a big part of the challenge if your not playing advanced modes. The challenge with Dawn is what Citizens she comes out with, Baron Blade can get multiple Defense Platforms, ect. The environments have some to do with it as well, but not as much. Personally, I feel like Wagner Mars Base and Insuals Primalis (Jurrasic Park) are the hardest. If you want a challenge, play Bunker, Wraith, and Absolute Zero with Wagner Mars Base.

Just ask for one game in advanced mode. Worse case scenario is you lose and get a feeling for your readiness. If you can get your hands on Rook City, the Villains and Environments are much harder. Chairman is easily the hardest villain of the two sets, and you try fighting Plague Rat in the Pike Industrial Complex

We have always played with 4 players and from what I’ve read about the core game is that it doesn’t scale well until they bring the H mechanic from Rook City to it in the Enhanced Edition. The team comp usually has Fanatic (my gf’s favorite), Legacy (my favorite), Haka or Bunker (my brother’s favorites) and Wraith (my friend’s favorite). The games there were the most challenging did not have this team comp like tonight Citizen Dawn at Insualis Primalis was Fanatic, AZ, Bunker and Visionary. I want to play everyone so I get a feel for how they all play in case we decide to pick by dice rolls but I dont want to tell my group that they can’t play their favorite heroes just because I want to have more of a challenge. And I have heard about the villains in Rook City, my brother and I were a part of the kickstarter for IR and got both expansions. So I’m hoping for the difficulty to escalate. I really want to deal The Chairman a loss just based on what I’ve read his demise would bring vengeance to most if not all the players of the game. I will definitely have to try just playing one on Advanced Mode, maybe Baron Blade, like you said to test our readiness.

That’s a pretty good winning combination right there. Though if anything wipes out Equipment cards it will render Bunker and Wraith next to useless. But Bunker can dig through cards so quickly he will get built back up in no time at all, and Wraith has ways to get equipment back. With Legacy able to galvanize with Fanatic and Haka in play though it’ll make up a lot of damage while Wraith is able to get set up again.

Well, you see the varying opinions we have here about what’s hard and what’s not. My personal opinion is that Advanced Voss is the hardest of the base villains, and Atlantis the hardest of the base environments as long as your characters don’t rely on equipment. If your characters do rely on equipment, then Mars is the hardest environment. People say Megalopolis and Omnitron are easy, but the wrong draw in Megalopolis can really mess you up, and Omnitron is perhaps the most unpredictable villain. Which is odd, since he’s a robot and all.

Anyway, advanced mode is exactly what you’re looking for. It seems to me that Baron Blade almost has to be advanced to prove any challenge, especially to four. I always play advanced mode if I’m playing solo. In a group, I try to set up the game to suit the tastes of the players. In other words, I want a challenge, but I want them to want to play with me. My roommate practically pitches a fit when I suggest advanced mode, because the designers say that the play isn’t necessarily “balanced”. Which is true. But when you have five heroes whomping the hell out of a villain who can’t fight back, that’s not particularly balanced either.

I played Plague Rat on advanced mode at the industrial complex, using the Freedom Five.

I killed him twice, then brought him down to 36 health before he managed to wipe us out.
I also played Spite on advanced in Rook City with the same team, and I managed to get him in an infinite loop. Wraith’s deck/trash consisted of 2 impromptu inventions and a throat jab. Spite’s drug made Tachyon just dump cards into her trash, so by the time I got bored and quit (after dealing enough damage to kill him over 7 times) Tachyon’s trash had over 80 burst cards in it.
I played the Chairman on advanced at Rook City, and they were easy too.

So difficulty is all subjective; even the hard bosses can be easy if you use the right team (the Freedom Five is good, for instance) and you draw, say, all 3 fleet of foots and impromptu inventions on your first turn.

On the other hand, even easy bosses like Omnitron or Blade can be hard if you just don’t draw well. Like, for instance, if his first 2 turns consist of him playing 2 Sedative Flechettes and a Technological Singularity, or 2 defense platforms and hasten doom.

Well, McBehrer… you’re playing with 5. The game is really best balanced for 4. 5 is kind of on the easy side. 3 is kind of on the hard side.

Tachyons trash cant have 80 burst cards in it, as she only has like 20 in her deck… what were you doing?

Thank you for asking my question for me.

in addition to the 80 burst card question…

You had all of your cards in your hand or in play? The number of turns it would take for that to happen is simply mind-boggling, how did you weather his attacks & 2 cards per turn?

Well, Spite/Wraith is pretty well documented. I imagine he just Stun-bolted him.

Ah yes, I was thinking of Combat stance, not throat jab

Well, what my friends have always done is kept a counter of how many bursts Tachyon has so when her trash is shuffled into her deck she won’t lose them.

And yes, the game is normally balanced for 4, but I was on advanced rules, and the (H) thing helps it scale in difficulty.

And I had all of Wraith’s cards in her hand. Each turn I would just keep playing impromptu inventions until I got Throat jab, then use it, so Spite couldn’t do any damage.

Ok, you play with house rules, nothing wrong with that if you’re enjoying yourself

So long as he knows he’s playing with house rules. If folks think they’re playing by the actual rules and show up to play with other folks, they might be in a for a rude awakening… :-\

Yeah… you cant really play with 5 heroes, and Wraith against the villan shes absolutely best at, and Tachyon-with-never-losing-burst-cards, and then complain about how easy the game is…

While H does help scale in difficulty, it does only that… help. And it also scales down better than it scales up; IE, H makes things a bit more appropriate in a 3 player game, but probably doesnt increase difficulty enough to cope with 5+.

So my brother, friend and I (Haka,Wraith, Legacy) played this afternoon and were able to defeat Blade (Megalopolis) and Omnitron (Atlantis) on Advanced Mode without much difficulty. Blade had 14 cards in his trash before he flipped so that was fun to be that close to a defeat. Later we will attempt Voss (Advanced) at Primalis and hopefully one of my other friends will be available. But still having a good time I just want to lose some because I lose interest in a game that I win every time.

Good lord, never again.

Here’s something funny. The second game with RC that my boyfriend and I played was a 2P game as Legacy and ExPatriette against Plague Rat at Pike. We must have really had the luck of the draw in that game, because we wiped the floor with him. Imagine our surprise when we convinced his roommate to try it with us, with the same setup. Gods…

I don’t recall ever complaining about the game being easy.

Complain would be the wrong word, ‘state with (false) authority (deriving from playing with house rules)’ would be more accurate

For example

I agree with the essence of the quote but you are having an easier time of it than most with your house rules, and thus lose some impact when speaking of it in broad terms.

Again, not that there’s anything wrong with playing with house rules if you are enjoying the game.

House rules can be fun, however if you feel they are making the game to easier, you might what to thank about reworking them, Also, remember that if you play in an official game or tournament these are not allowed. However, sometimes house rules make into official tournaments, i.e. Euchre there are tournaments that allow the rules screw the dealer, going alone and partner’s best. Again, if your having fun more power to you.

Wait, there’s official games and tournaments? Where? When?

Not yet - they’re working on some ideas for conventions, though.

I think it’s more of an issue of showing up at a place where other folks are playing, such as at a game store - especially if you’re lucky enough to have one of the >G folks show up in your area.

I think the core game was balanced so that folks who don’t play a lot of card based strategy games win like 60-75% of the time - so for advanced players (people like… well, most of us who played Magic or other complex strategy type games) that balance will probably end up being more like 85-90% wins. That’s why they have an advanced mode - to bring that win percentage back down, but it’s still close to 75% for advanced players.

Rook City is balanced closer to 50-60% for beginers and 60-75% for advanced players on regular mode and I think that they are shifting things (with new rules and slightly changed cards) in the new edition of the core game to shift the balance there too.

I think one of the strengths of the game is that due to luck of the draw, you could play the same set of heros against the same villian in the same environment and have very very different outcomes each time you played.

^^^ This.

Agreed - another is that there are so many permutations available to play. You can play any combination of heroes against any villain in any environment, and odds are good you haven’t played that particular combination before. (Especially if you use a random generator… )

Yeah, luck is a big factor. Me and my friend Tom played the other day using 2 heroes each against Voss and we got slaughtered. We are both veterans of everything from MTG through D&D and Arkham Horror. That said Voss and the enviroment (Rook City) teamed up to just crush us, and my other character (Absolute Zero) just never picked up any speed.

Wow. And neither Voss nor RC have cards that specifically mess with AZ’s stuff, too. That was just unfortunate. I generally love whenever I have an equipment-oriented character and we randomly pull out Voss.

Yup… but then compare it to MAGIC THE GATHERING where every other game has you mana stalled… Sentinels lack of a resource system makes bad luck not nearly as painful or relevant. The only problem is with Absolute Zero specifically… he is great with the right equipment and a self injuring mess without it.

If you’re mana stalled in MTG every other game then you’re building your decks wrong, but that’s not a discussion for here.

Standard 40/20, usually with a few sources of mana besides land.

if I ever get “too good at champions” I think it would be easy to give the villain 1 more “advanced modifier” style card, either homebrew or made by the designers. Stuff like a “death ray” that fires every other turn, a reality warping artifact, a powerful ally that hurts heroes each turn, etc. I’m satisfied with the standard difficulty but I think there is room to grow in increasing the stakes, which is good, lots to look foward to.