Almost cheating

I enjoy a well-fought fight as much as the next person, but sometimes I like to pull a Batman and come into a fight fully prepared. Have you ever had a game where you just hit the villain's weaknesses SO well that you basically rendered them ineffective, so that it feels like you practically cheated?

Examples: using Meteor Storm against Iron Legacy (I have discussed this one before); using a DR/ next evolution combo on the Matriarch (she's so regular with her damage that NE is like the easiest thing ever); Imbued fire/ flesh of the sun god versus Plague Rat

Any others?

There is, of course, the perennial End of Days against Akash. Can you say, self destruct?

End of Days can also be GREAT against the Dreamer, either to force the flip or win the game.

Little girls having nightmares like to see angels. Who knew?

Using Haka against anyone with minions while having Savage Mana in play is an excellent combo, as it can screw the villian up pretty badly. Just have to watch out for Ongoing destruction.

With the introduction of Final Wasteland it can do it much better than Haka can as those pesky villains will be gone forever!

Edit: That's one reason why I play random, so that way I don't get tempted to stack my heroes in such a way that I could win any game.

Depends on the kind of game I want to play. Again, I love a good knock-down, drag out fight as much as the next person. But sometimes it's fun to come in and go as far as you possibly can against a villain.

I usually do this after the villain beat me badly recently. I am not above revenge.

1st edition Wraith against Spite. Stun Bolts used to reduce damage by 2, so he just didn't get to do damage after he flipped. It's still really good, but the backlash damage kills Wraith fast enough now that it doesn't feel like cheating anymore, it just feels like a strong counter.

Visionary + AZ against Apostate. Twist the Ether means all Apostate does is heal AZ and everybody else is free to break his toys at their leisure.

One time I used Team Leader Tachyon. It didn't counter the villain or anything, but it sure felt like cheating.

Brainburning the chairman on the first turn always makes me feel like a bit of a cheater

The joke in our house is that using Legacy in any form is cheating :-p

When my group gets really beaten down by a villain, we'll put together a rescue team that's tailored against the villain (we usually do random champs the first time through).

Twist the Ether in general feels like cheating.

Brainburn less so because you defintely pay a price for that card

First time poster here.  I play with Belteshazzar and Sefirit.  They have usually already posted anything I would have to say by the time I get to the forums, so I've been slow to get my account created.  ;)

Man.  This here.  We had this exact scenario last night for the first time.  Visionary had an opening hand Twist the Ether, and AZ was just waiting on his gear to make use of it.  A slew of relics out?  Pfft, no problem.  Scholar was along for the ride and trying to figure out what the heck to do since he couldn't be the highest HP character and didn't need any of his elementals out. He basically just drew cards and let people flip over the top of their decks.  He played a lot like the art on his one card where he's in his lawn chair with a drink just kicking back and relaxing.

Just last night I had a game where all decks were generated randomly and it gave us DV and AZ against Apostate.  Well DV had a turn 1 twits to put on Apostate and that was that.

We once purposely attacked and killed Tempest so that we could use his incapacitated side immunity effect together with Next Evolution.

I feel really guilty when I let Tempest die, as that immunity wins most games where it happens.  The only thing I flat out refuse to play, though, is Fanatic against Akash'Bhuta.  It was fun the first three times, but after that, I realized it's a bit of a foregone conclusion.

Playing Smoke Bombs with Recharge Mode Bunker in Heavy Playing and all heroes at the same hp qualifies cheating for me. Same can be done with Flesh to Iron.

It's a longshot getting all these out, but Legacy with 2 Next Evolutions, Lead from the Front, and Legacy Ring against the Chairman (and actually, just about every villain), and you can just pack it up. You're done, son.

Until Devastating Aurora.

I'm not sure I want to play against The Chairman if he gets Devastating Aurora…

.....every Villain except Dawn. Or in some cases, Apostate. Still good against them while it lasts though :P

Omnitronks feels like cheating. I've had turns where it put 4 cards into play. If the villain had some kind of AI, Omnitron-X would be breakable, but otherwise it's a beast.

This exactly thing actually happened to our group a while ago. Visionary, Grandpappy Legacy, and Haka against the Chairman. Everyone was ~1-5 HP when Visionary died, then Legacy got his second Next Evolution, activated NE and his base to allow him to heal a point and activate the second NE, and we didn't take another point of damage from the villain (Legacy also had environment immunity, and Haka played a Restoration, so he probably took a couple stray points from the environment, but we ended with Haka near full health and Legacy creeping up one point a turn :-p).

Scholar + Wraith is feeling pretty cheaty. Smoke Bombs + Flesh to Iron is a hell of a lot of damage reduction.

Could someone confirm if this is a viable win condition assistance please.

Haka vs Dreamer (pre flip), Haka places destroyed projection targets under Savage Mana.

Dreamer flips

Haka uses savage mana 'destroy all cards beneath this card.' Dreamer states 'whenever a projection card is destroyed put it under this card.' So cards go straight toward win condition.

I decided to continue playing to see how many projections I could kill but I was wondering if that would be a shortcut to defeating the dreamer?

I think you could do that. The Dreamer's rules on the front state that there can't be any projections in play, if they are under Savage Mana, they are not in play. You could then use Savage Mana to destroy them and put them under the Dreamer's character card.

But don't cards under Savage Mana have no text? They only qualify as "villain cards" (or "cards belonging to the Dreamer's deck"), not as Projections because that's a keyword, ie card text. So destroying them would probably just put them into the trash, I think.

Yep.

Ninjaed.

Really? Was there a ruling for that?

Yes, for stuff like the Matriarch's Fowl when under Savage Mana - they have no "Fowl" keyword so you don't get nuked by Lilian for vomiting them all back up in her face ;). I think the only times you can benefit from destroying cards under other cards are Bunker with Ammo Drop for every villain card re-destroyed by Savage Mana (because they are still villain cards - I think Haka's Dominion would work for environment cards in the same way but can't remember, off the top of my head, whether that only works on targets), and Freedom-6 Tempest destroying his own cards when they've been stolen by La Capitan (they are still his cards so he can destroy them from there).

Also I believe cards under Savage Mana are in play, otherwise they would not be able to be destroyed.  I believe only Vengeful Baron Blade designates that cards underneath it are considered not in play.

Pretty certain that (with Savage Mana) Anubis would trigger, and the Operative, as they refer to the cards themselves and not keywords on cards.

Lady Luck however, would cause horrible card draw/play issues if you tried to use Savage Mana (only really possible if Imbued Vitality had been around).

On a related note, think what would gappen if the Final Wasteland ate one of Gloomy’s relics.

Game Over man, Game Over.

In all honesty you'd just kill Gloomy.  He can't flip and you can't win by three relics in trash, you'd just have to damage him.

You would have a very long game on your hands

That would be an interesting challenge. Fight Gloomy on advanced in the Final Wasteland with characters that primarily do melee and projectile damage.

One day at Arsenal we did just that (well, except for the Final Wasteland part).  The obvious goal was to try to pull the relics out.  However, only two relics were ever played as we had handily won by defeating GloomWeaver. The Wraith tended to stick to deck manipulation, while Expatriatte focused on minion cleanup, with the exception of the few ammo cards allowing damage to GloomWeaver.  Haka managed zombie control with Savage Mana, and that paired with Haka of Battle caused him to steal the win away from me (a trend for that player that night).  I can't really remember what Bunker did, but I do remember some Ammo Drops and Adhesive Foam Grenades.  Mister Fixer was definately the champion of that game, with a first turn Meditation to pull a Grease Monkey Fist.  I think at some time I did lose the card, but was able to get it back again quickly enough.

As far as I know, those are the only 5 heroes released thus far which are most restricted Melee/Projectile, in order from most restricted to least restricted as The Wraith, Bunker, Haka, Expatriette, and Mister Fixer.

I'd put in Legacy instead of Mr. Fixer. Mr. Fixer has Grease Monkey which lets him use any damage type, whereas Legacy does only Projectile and Melee with no mechanic in his deck that lets him change his damage type.

2 out of 3 times I've fought Gloomweaver, I killed him directly (and I still think that shouldn't even be possible).  Game 1 I had Scholar, Nightmist and Argent, so dealing non-physical damage was easy enough; game 2 I had Mr. Fixer and he did indeed get Grease Monkey fist, so even thought Wraith was relic-hunting as hard as she could, and could never hurt Gloomy directly, he still died just as the third relic came into play, it being easier to kill him than it.

I had been saving his second side to surprise myself with, but after that game I finally got impatient and peeked at it.  It...really didn't strike me as being worth how unlikely it is to come up.  I was expecting something on the order of "At the start of the villain turn, if Gloomweaver did not flip this turn, the heroes lose the game".  Paired with him being immune to all damage on his first side, that would really make him feel like a Call of Cthulhu villain - you simply do not "fight" such beings, you either thwart their cults or you roll up a new campaign world.  Very occasionally you can manage to dynamite the mine shaft that they're about to emerge from or something, hence the 1-turn grace period.

If he were to auto-win at the start of his turn, he'd auto-win the moment he flipped, because that's also a start-of-turn action (just like Dawn can flip and immediately flip straight back if enough Citizens, including herself, are already in play). Mind you, if it was an end-of-turn action you'd still be buggered, just a few zombies or whatever might get to hit you first, lol.

Ahh oops, missed that, lol.

Envisioner, if you could whip up a variant for Gloomy along those lines, I would be very interested... I kind of agree with you that killing Gloomy when he/she/it isn't even on this plane of existence is pretty silly, and with Gloomy being a demi-god of chaos and death and aaaaall that trouble to bring him/her/it into the world, that it should be pretty much one turn kill after a flip :O

What about simply adding "At the start of the game, reveal cards until one Relic and Ophidia the Deceiver are revealed.  Put those two cards into play"?

That way, Gloomweaver has a force to be reckoned with already out to start the game, and it's more likely for him to hit the 3-Relic Ante. 

I have to try this out, but I had this idea. Add the following line to Gloomy's card:

At the start-of-the-villain-turn put the X non-Zombie targets with the lowest hp from the villain trash into play. X = the number of relics in the villain trash.

Wouldn't that just pull zombies?

I would like to see Grave Beckons (is that the right name? the zombie ongoing is what I am going for) become indestructable or something. THAT would be real scary…

Yay, which is why I changed it. Even putting the Zombies hp ranged out of standard AoE damage range would make it significanlty harder.

EDIT: I was changing it as you posted. I was hoping nobody would see…

The idea is that Gloomy is trying to get them back. Also, each destroyed relic would automatically add an extra card play to his turn, and taking out the cultist from the trash would give vast following a greater chance of bringing back a relic.

Ah! That would certainly give Gloomweaver more teeth. It also would actually make going for the alternative win condition a choice instead of a foregone conclusion. (Why would you ever waste time and damage on Gloomweaver when you can focus it elsewhere and still win?)

I think that's part of the problem.

Going after Relics vs Gloomy

75 hp vs 90 hp

Destroys cards with effects vs doesn't remove any effects

While the cards can come back, there seems to be more pros with taking out the relics. Furthermore, advance mode encourages this strategy by making Gloomy harder to hit. Maybe advanced mode should have said that relics (and maybe zombies) are immmune to melee and projectile damage instead.

Strength of the Grave is the zombie buff. I think "The Grave Beckons" is that one in the Ennead's deck which insta-kills targets with fewer than 3hp.

I was actually thinking along the lines of a *major-ish* change of its card. I think we've derailed this enough though, so I'll try to go and make a new topic? :)

I do a Gloomy variant with a second character in play

First side is a voodoo priest that throws voodoo pins at the heroes from the trash, or plays the top card if no pins are in the trash.  He also causes a hero with a pin attached to do -1 damage.

The Priest has 10 health, when he hits 0 health he flips to zombie lord side.

Zombie Lord side he reveals the trash and puts either strength of the grave or a zombie into play.  Strength of the grave is indestructible on that side.

Each side is nasty, and it adds to the game the strategy of when to flip the priest.

I think a far more relevant issue than either of those is Gloomy's "always exists to be beaten on" vs. the relics's "only available if you happen to draw them".  In two of my three games against him, he was well below 25 HP by the time the third relic showed up.  In one case, Wraith was even devoted wholeheartedly to fishing out his relics with Infrared Eyepiece (first she had to draw IREP, so she was playing a lot of Trust Funds and before that skipping her turn to draw 2), and she still didn't manage to find the third one before Gloomy was in pieces all over the floor.

Actually, I don't think that matters at all.

SotM is all about dividing your resources. You need to kill the villain to win, but they stop you by throwing out distractions. You need to destroy Omnitron, but you will need to divert your resources and deal with the Electro Pulse Explosive. There are many different ways that the villain "distracts" you. For example, adding on DR, making you lose cards, hurting you etc. This is often done with different minions, Ongoings, etc. I am not going to go into all of the ways now, but for simplicity, when you attack the villain directly, you are trying to win the game, while attacking anything else is preventing you from losing the game. Often this is done by giving you more rounds to hurt the villain. If you know you can kill the villain before you lose, then there is no reason to deal with the distractions.

This is one of the reasons why Tempest is very powerful. With Squall and Gene-Bound Shackles, he can use his Play and Power phase to deal with distractions, while still hitting the villain. Tempest doesn't really need to divide his resources.

This is also one of the reason why Baron Blade is so easy. His additional lose condition forces you to attack him directly and avoid the distractions. Essentially, by hitting him you are fulfilling both "win the game" and "don't lose the game." This prioritizes your resources, and you often you can kill him before you lose.

Now let's take a look at Gloomweaver. As soon as a relic hits the table, were is your priory? Let's look at what happens if you attack the relic:

1) All the relics have a nasty effect, and removing that effect can help you not lose. This alone won't prioritize the target, but it just acts like any other cards.

2) Destroying the relic prevents Gloomweaver from flipping.  Since his flip side is harder than his setup, by destroying the relic, you are giving yourself even more chances not to lose.

3) Gloomweaver's flip side heals him. So, there is very little to prioritize Gloomweaver over the relic. If you focus on him, and the third relic hits the board, you just undid everything you were trying to do.

4) In addition to all of those things that will help you not lose, you have an explicit win condition.

5) The explicit win condition has a total hp less than Gloomweaver himself.

There are many reasons to take out the relic first that it should be your main priority, and there are very little reason to divide out your resources. Now, there is a way for them to come back, so in addition to taking them out, you also need to kill cultists so that the relic is buried in the trash. This puts hitting Gloomweaver himself at a very low priority (and his advance mode can take that away completely).

The only time it is worth to hit Gloomweaver himself is when there are no higher priority targets. If there are no higher priority targets, then by all means hit him. Now, it is true that you might now get all of the relics and win that way, but it doesn't change the fact that this is the best strategy against him in most situations, and the relics are the first thing going down.

In order to "fix" Gloomweaver, I think it is worth finding out why he is so easy.

Thanks, Pydro!  That was a very insightful analysis of Gloomweaver an Baron Blade!

I've tried dealing with that issue by making Gloomy and the Relics indestructible and forcing him to flip, but that really ruins the feel of trying to stop him from coming into the world, and makes the first side either a hunt for relics (why would the heroes be hunting for the relics?) or a really slow grind to set up for a flip->win.

Patience.

What are those? 

Interesting.  Perhaps the RCIR box contains functional changes to a few cards, and Gloomweaver is one of them?  Slightly defeats the purpose of a "reprint", but not unprecedented with the EE.  Alternatively, perhaps a yet-to-be-announced promo villain accompanying the release?  (Alas, the other one who needs this treatment is Ambuscade and he probably wouldn't be included in the same release.)

Back on the original topic, the forum crew including myself just finished walking all over Akash'Bhuta in the Final Wasteland, a combination that you expect to be heinous…but we brought Bunker and his Adhesive Foam grenades, along with a combo of Visionary's Mental Divergence and Legacy's Take Down which could have canceled every second villain turn (including bonus environment plays).  I'd definitely say that fits with the theme of this thread.  In general, I've found that five-hero games with Visionary and/or Legacy in them are disproportionately easy.

Dr. Medico MD to go insane (much along the lines of Iron Legacy) and have "patience" like Spite's victims, confirmed!

Yeah yeah, not spelled the same

Ambuscade does not need an overhaul. His normal mode is a bit of a cakewalk, but his advanced mode makes for a very well put together encounter and is a pretty fantastic fight

I still find him fairly easy…his flipside's advanced text doesn't matter at all unless you're doing heavy reduction, which I find seldom proves effective except with Scholar, Lead from the Front Legacy, or occasionally a hibernating Bunker.  Turning off Haka's Ta Moko is not that huge a deal, even for his nemesis, since he has HP to burn and Haka can just not play the Ta Moko and discard it to a Haka of Battle (I never use Haka of Shielding for more than 1 card anyway, there's just not much point since it applies to only a single instance).  Meanwhile, the reduced damage to devices is a nuisance, but the devices aren't powerful enough to really be worth worrying about, except for the singleton rocket launcher.  And he still has multiple turns in an average game when he does nothing except flip up a Trap card which has no immediate effect.

Besides which, some of the suggested fixes for Ambuscade not only make him more dangerous, but just plain more interesting, and I think he could use help in that regard.  I really like Spiff's suggestion of having one incapped hero be a game over with him, although I don't think that's quite enough of a change all by itself - but I think Spiff's fix throws in too many other things, as I don't like too sweeping an overhaul either.  I have my own homebrew version, but it doesn't yet live up to my own standards…I want something elegant but functional, and haven't managed to fulfill both of those demands yet.

I enjoy playing against Ambuscade.  I've gone into several games with him thinking it would be a cakewalk, and he would proceed to get string after string of his "play a card, shuffle, play another card" turns, or get the ongoing that punishes you when you kill devices, or stay hidden for extended periods.  It made for surprisingly tense games.

Personally I regard excess shuffling as an annoyance (this being just about the only thing I don't like about playing Omnitron-X).

or get the ongoing that punishes you when you kill devices

Which also damages him.  When he gets that card out, I tend to think of him as Ted Sprague, and try to make him self-destruct in the most spectacular way possible.  Admittedly I did almost kill all my heroes by doing this one game, and that was I believe the only time he's actually managed to incap one hero (which would be game over with Spiff's version).  Still, with his low HP, anything that makes it easier to kill him is probably in the heroes' favor, as he's not terribly good at hurting them enough that they couldn't afford to "play chicken" with him.

or stay hidden for extended periods.

Another mechanic I find more of a nuisance than anything - his cloak has only 9 HP, so I usually get it destroyed on like the second hero turn, and then have to sit around twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the round because there's nothing to attack.

No he doesn't have many single cards that are terrifying. But thats not the point really. What the Advanced Mode does is drag out the game, thats the point of the DR. Combine that with one or two Reactive Platings, and both he and his stuff becomes very hard to kill in a timely manner.

Trap cards are not "free rounds" for the heros in advanced mode.  With the game pushing into more rounds, that provides the time needed to start filling the deck with face up traps, which will eventually all find their way to the top and probably toward the end of the game.  

And irreducible damage is always matters. With the game going longer and Ambuscade having more time to deal you damage, for him to get around all of your damage mitigation is a huge deal. 

But of course thats all just my opinion. The fact is though, that his deck works with itself and doesn't fight against itself. Gloomweaver feels like his deck works against him in many ways. I would not lump Ambuscade in with Gloomweaver. 

I agree with a lot of what Pydro said about Gloomweaver.  However I find that we almost always still win by killing him directly.  This is because you can usually do it well before the last relic hits play.  I think we do prioritize killing relics over killing Gloomy, but even so he is at 0 Hp before that third relic dies. 

I think to really make the relics a priority you have to accelerate how often they come out.  I've noticed that most variants do this.  Either by increasing his card draw, having a trigger to search them, or some other method.

I like a few ideas that people have discussed where you lose automatically within a few turns of his flipping, very thematic.  However these usually still include relic acceleration because people have reported that they have never seen him flip (including myself except for variant versions.)

Promo Gloomweaver? YES PLEASE

One wrinkle to the idea of attacking Gloomy directly is that when he flips, he regains Hx10 HP.  So if he does manage to get relics into play, you probably want to kill them, rather than beat on him and risk the other Relics coming out.

Vast Following is the most frightening card in his deck, but not incredibly effective...it's too easy for the villain trash to contain enough cards, particularly in an H=3 game, that the trash contains Relics and Cultists but none are actually brought back.  I feel like he has too many distractions for a standard 25-card deck - he should have lost either the Cultists, the Zombies, the Relics and Familiar, or the Voodoo Pins, and he'd still have rather a lot going on with just three categories of stuff.  I was also puzzled by how big of a deal the Voodoo Pins are on his second side.  He just pulls in too many directions, trying to be this giant sweeping conspiracy of dark magic, but still only getting one card play per turn, so he's just not effective at it at all.

Mind you, I have had games where he dished out a respectable amount of damage, and incapped heroes or came close to doing so; he's not a complete pushover, but he's definitely a severe waste of potential.

I definitely have to say this game fit the topic of this thread.  I swear I did shuffle the decks legitimately, but they somehow turned out absolutely perfect…the Matriarch played only six birds the whole game, two of them on her final turn, and two of the ones she did play were lost to Unforgiving Wasteland, along with one Cohort.  This level of luck is pretty much the only way I ever beat Matriarch, but the last time I had five heroes, so it didn't seem quite as unfair for them to utterly crush her with barely any effort, as her HP doesn't scale with the number of heroes working to deplete it.  Having just three heroes, including her Lightspeed-Barraging sister and a "Damn the Torpedoes" edition of Ra (he paid the HP tax to hang onto Solar Flare twice, though it turned out he needn't have bothered the second time, Lilian was down to 20-some HP by then, and it had been clear she was doomed for quite a while already, with a Barrage for 14 sealing the deal).  It was kind of sad to see a normally-tough villain so utterly obliterated, but then she's a teenage brat with a godly artifact on her face, so it makes sense that all her games would either be overwhelming victories or completely crushing defeats.

Note - Tachyon is Lilian's cousin, not her sister ;).

Probably our most satisfying battle against her was soon after getting Shattered Timelines, when we deliberately decided to fight her in the Final Wasteland in the hopes that it'd eat all her stuff. First environment card - Horrid Skunk Ape. Second - Unforgiving Wasteland. Third and fourth were the Library and the Bunker (can't remember which way round), just to make things even nicer on us :). Lilian ended up with just one target in her entire deck, a Carrion Field we'd destroyed at some point so it had missed being nommed by the environment.

Ah, well that would explain the last names.

Lilian ended up with just one target in her entire deck, a Carrion Field we'd destroyed at some point so it had missed being nommed by the environment.

Right, so Darken the Sky, Horrid Cacophony, Darken the Sky, Horrid Cacophony, Darken the Sky, reshuffle and flip, Loop.  I hope you plinked her to death for the next 70 turns just to maximize the experience.

Hehe...well, the only thing causing us any damage after all the targets were gone was the sonic damage in Horrid Cacophany. I don't think those had much time to come out by the time all the birds had been removed because we'd been working on Lilian throughout the game anyway - having those particular first two cards come out from the environment was just epic. It meant that Lilian would play Fowl cards on her turn, then after our turns the environment would act and the Ape would kill every single bird, resulting in zero damage to us (since they're removed from the game instead of being destroyed). We made sure that we damaged the Mask, Huginn, Muninn, and that one Carrion Field enough that the environment would be the thing to finish them off. The latter part of the game basically consisted in us giving Lilian the finger as we battered her to death with whatever attacks we had (I can't remember which heroes were in the game) while she did absolutely nothing to stop us.

Having fought Matriarch twice this week, I find myself wondering if there was a stage in playtest where Horrid Cacophony dealt 1 damage for each Fowl in play.  It seems like that would be more flavorfully fitting, even if it would be less functional in game terms (hideously crushing in games where you were already losing, but useless in the situation you described).

That would be incredibly horrible - if there were a lot of Fowl out, you'd first take a lot of damage from them, then a load more from Cacophony. And if you tried to get rid of the birds, you'd take damage from Lilian. I suppose if you nerfed her damage you could take birds out freely and not have to worry about Cacophony (apart from the ongoing desctruction part) or a penalty for nuking birdies.

Since there is a lot of Gloomweaver gloom in this topic, I thought I'd add another "cheating" (and hilariously underwhelming) scenario I've had against him.  It basically involved an incredibly lucky draw with Argent Adept, getting 2 Instrumental Conjurations and his Cedinistic Dissonant song.

I basically did not deal a single point of damage to Gloomy or his relics (I'd attack zombies/cultists though).  Any time a relic would make an appearance, I'd sacrifice an instrument and zap it.  I basically laughed in his face, daring him to bring out his spooky relics only for them to be smited from his boney hands the second he held them.

I had another game last night that felt almost cheating, but definitely wasn't.  It just happened to end within 10 minutes.  I decided to do a Rook City theme with the new promo cards, trying out DW Mr. Fixer and DW Ex-Patriette against Spite (non-promo) in Pike Industrial Complex.  Well, as it turns out, DW Mr. Fixer works reeeeally well with DW Ex-Pat considering she has so many ways to play extra cards and can get out less useful ammo cards (shock rounds) for Fixer to use as fuel for his Bitter Strike.  In addition, Wraith joined the team to complete the Rook City feel as well as Chrono Ranger because every game is better with Chrono Ranger.

CR got out the Ultimate Target bounty right away as well as his compound bow, so Spite was filled with arrows (or whatever his bow shoots) during his End of Turn phase, usually completely negating his healing.  Combined with some helpful chemicals from the environments, we basically flat out destroyed him with pure damage after only 5 turns.  Not exactly "cheating" but it just felt like we steam rolled him.  No trickery or deck manipulation; just pure straight up attack power.

Omnitron-X is probably my favorite character in the game.  A base power that allows you to manipulate ANY DECK IN THE GAME is playing on a different level than everyone else.

Except that he has the second lowest base HP, and all of his toys breaks if you take 5 damage in a turn. (It doesn't even have to be in one hit; 5 1-point hits will do the trick.) Coupled with his awesome, but limited shields, and if you're going against someone like Apostate, Dawn, Spite, La Capitan, Miss Information (God forbid), or the Matriarch, who have a tendency to throw out multiple types of damage -- sometimes irreducible -- you can have a hard time setting up.

Not at all saying he's bad; he's among my favorites as well, but he's not OP. He has his weaknesses, like any other hero.

Another weakness is that a lot of his toys don't do anything until the start of the next turn (unless played DURING start-of-turn by an EDU), and so a very vicious villain can put the team under such pressure that no time can be spared.  Plus the ability to "manipulate" the villain or environment decks with Timeshift is pretty limited...if he could put the card back, he'd be OP, but as it is, any nasty card he vetoes might just be replaced by an equally nasty one that was beneath it.  Honestly, I mostly only use Timeshift on hero decks...as with Visionary's Enlighten, I have to fight the temptation to always use it on myself, and sometimes share with the rest of the team.  Occasionally it can hack villain mechanics, such as fishing for Clues against Miss Information or for Victims against GloomSpite.  Which is neat; it's like he's hopping through time and playing detective.

I tend to Timeshift myself to help speed up my set up, but one time I did randomly Timeshift Gloomy once during a game to see if I could get his last Relic out and dump it straight into the trash…and it worked :D.

Any ability that lets you look at the top (or top two) card(s) of a deck isn't infallible, since you might always turn up horrible cards. Like Turmoil or an Infra-Red Eyepiece might turn up both copies of That Sodding Card in Citizen Dawn's deck, or EPEs in Omnitron's (though admittedly the latter can be dealt with if you have enough damage or something like Hypersonic Assault to nullify it while you work on destroying it). If no-one else after you has any means of manipulating the top card(s) of the deck, you're probably gonna be stuck knowing exactly what's about to come out and being unable to do anything about it.

So it doesn't matter which deck-checking ability you're using, you always have the risk that horrible cards will come out…unless they've already been, I suppose.

True, but if you Timeshift Dawn's deck, you are no more likely to turn up That Card than to remove the top card from a deck in which That Card was second.  And the odds of both That Cards being right next to each other are slim, though of course enough decks are being shuffled out there that improbably things happen now and again.

Even if you can't stop what's about to happen, knowing it can make a huge difference; players who know they're about to get wiped can choose to not play more cards, or skip and fill their hands so they have more hope of rebuilding.

Knowing an Aurora is about to come out won't help at all if you've all got all your stuff out and no way to quickly get it back again before you get your arsse kicked :P.

Omnitron-X with Unity?

Damn, we just demoslished the enemy. 

I'm guessing the enemy was not Iron Legacy.  Those low HP numbers would have made rather a big difference in his case, not to mention the hitting-all-hero-targets-including-bots, or the extreme amounts of damage breaking Components.

No no. Not "Iron legacy" 

Unity is still to slow and flismy then to face him. We faced ones that weren't THAT difficult.

You might be surprised how effective Unity can be against IL.  You have to change her playstyle (bee bots and platform bots are great), but you can be staggeringly effective once you get into the mindset of the "right bot" as opposed to a swarm of them. Since he also tends to smack around the lowest, you can have a lot of fun with volatile parts and robot bombs.

None of this is to imply that its easy! 

On the other hand, Unity is phenomenally good against Dawn.  She doesn't even flinch when That Card comes out, and she's got enough card draw and bot reclamation that Blinding Blast doesn't hurt much either.  Unity ends up mopping the floor with her almost every time they meet.

Had an interesting "Unity Experience" tonight.  Solo game pitting Mr Fixer, Unit, and Team Leader Tachyon vs. Advanced Baron Blade on Wagner Mars Base.

My experience with Mr Fixer so far has been sort of poor, so I was mildly worried I'd have issue getting the necessary damage to flip BB in time.  Turns out that Fixer got Dual Crowbar, a good style, and Harmony out quickly and was gleefully pounding away at BB's devices and minions.  Unity got a few bots out, a few more, and then lost a few to a Fire in the Biosphere and accumulating damage.  TLT facilitated card draws, played out burst cards, and eventually flipped BB with a well-timed Lightspeed Barrage.  This was also the first time I ever saw BB get all three MDPs out in the first half of the game.

Second half starts with Red Dust taking equipment and BB getting a Living Force Field out to raise his DR to -2.  Fixer get equipment back out and I plan on switching styles so that he can make damage to BB irreducible for everyone else.  Unity is low on bot cards, so she starts fishing killed golems out of her trash.  Tachyon is back to discarding burst cards and helping people with more draws.

Environment plays a Meteor Storm.  And then BB plays a Backlash Field. 

That puts a crimp in things.  Someone has to skip a turn to get the Meteor Storm (Tachyon out of her card for that, and no Bee Bots yet.)  And even then, the Backlash Field is pretty much a bot-crippler.  OK, we'll leave the Meteor Storm up for a round or two and see who builds up faster - BB or the heroes.

Turned out to be the heroes.  A few rounds later (when a Bee Bot was available) Unity had something like eight golems in play.  Fixer was ready to negate BB's DR, and Tachyon kicked off the show by skipping her turn to remove the Meteor Storm.

BB played an Elemental Redistributor.  Then hit Tachyon for 4 - who redirected it to a Blade Battalion to take it from 5 pts to 1 pt.  It then hit Fixer for 1 HP.  Fixer played Overdrive - first strike hit a Bee Bot.  The Bee Bot hit the ED for 2, then it nuked BB's Backlash Field.  Dual Crowbar part of first strike hits BB for 1 HP, but now all hits on BB are irreducible for the rest of the round.  Second strike from Overdrive hits BB for 3 and the ED for 3.

The bots then go to town on BB like bees on Henry Winkler.  Turret Bot hits BB for 3 and Unity does a Powered Shock Wave to blast the ED and then BB for 8.  She also plays an equipment card and then Bot-hacks Champion Bot into play.  Cryo Bot, Swift Bot, and Stealth Bot don't do anything more, but two Platform bots and two Raptor bots are there and simply shred what is left of Baron Blade at that point.

The quick bot roll-out was actually faciliated by the Red Dust environment card.  A Construction Pylon was already in Unity's trash when the card came into play, but discards to get rid of the card brought it back into play for her twice.