Iron Legacy: The Final Battle.

Iron Legacy is the only villian I own that I have not yet fought. He is also the only level 4 villian I own.

I was hoping to get some suggestions on which 4 heroes to use in this battle, and which environment.

Now, I don't want any further stategy than that. I always fight the villians for the first time before looking at their deck, so I don't even know what their cards are. I'm looking for a simple list of which 4 heroes and environment to use, but with no "why" explaining the choices.

You might think to say, "Use the heroes you're best with", but truth be told I don't think I'm yet very good with any of them.

I have all heroes and environments commercially available minus Rook City.

Thanks.

Tachyon, Legacy, Tempest, Ra would be my picks.   Wraith would be an excellent 5th or stand-in for any of the heroes I chose.

Environment probably doesn't much matter,  maybe Silver Gulch 1884 or the Block.

Random. It'll give you respect for a level 4 hero. It'll also let you learn how he works so you can come up with a dream team on your own.

for a 3 Hero team (I know it's not what you asked) I did Tachyon+Visionary+w/e. The Freedom Six alternates are also cool picks for the fight.

Omnitron-X and Chrono-Ranger pair up well, Add in Legacy and Fanatic for extra fun

Whichever team you end up picking, don't get too despondent if you just get totally destroyed in about three rounds ;).

Greatest Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, Visionary, Redeemer Fanatic.

That's how you fanatic him to death.  Burn her deck till you can hit him for most of his health.  It's cheap but effective.

Not a very fun match mind you.

Also Tempest is godly vs IL.

If I remember correctly, we used standard Tachyon, Wraith, Bunker, Tempest, Unity and Absolute Zero (I think that's the "Freedom 6" team).

Even then, we had a hell of a fight (when your "H" score is 6, you get a HELL of a thump!) and had 4 heros incapacitated. GREAT fun though!

Finally played this today. I'm declaring a stalemate.

I did get him down to 8 HP.

Scholar, Temptest, Wraith, and Fanatic in Megalopolis.

Everyone is currently incapped except Scholar. He has no cards in play, can't draw any due to the environment, and his hand is also empty. Temptest makes him immune to Melee, Iron Legacy has no more Ongoing cards to destroy, so eventually he'll heal to full. IL has also healed enough so that he's reflipped. Scholor has, couresty of Fantatic, a crap ton of +1 to his next attack markers, but he's got no way to attack. IL may eventually kill him with one shots that do something other than melee, but that probably won't outpace the healing.

I really thought I might win at one point, in fact, I may have except Tempest was reducing damage fantatic was doing to herself, so she couldn't do her full 5 HP attack (Don't recall the name of the card)

 

The easiest way to beat Iron Legacy is to shut down his damage. He primarily does Melee. He has a few cards that do other types of damage, psychic, toxic, and projectile, but more times than not he is going to be hitting you with Melee. Legacy is really good to take because a Next Evolution plus Lead from the Front can cancel all his damage, you can also have Visionary and Ra double team him with a Twist the Ether to turn all his damage into fire and have Ra Flesh of the Sun God to make everyone immune to fire. This is of course assuming you can get set up before he kills you.

I didn't want to use Legacy against him, thematically, which is why I tried out Scholar. I'd also never seen IL's deck, so I didn't know what kind of tricks he has. The two heroes i'd say I'm good with are Tachyon and Tempest, but I'd just used Tachyon in another game so wanted to have her sit out.

Wraith and Fanatic were suggested in this thread, so I took them. If i'd decided to forgo a support character (or done 5 Heroes), I would have taken Ra as well.

 

Isn't it really easy to have Scholar attack? He just needs to put down a Mortal Form to Energy and use his innate power; you don't need to keep a card in play for more than one turn. Or you could use Grace Under Fire or something. Does Fanatic boost the next damage or deal an extra +1?

Hand was empty, no cards in play, environment target prevented me from drawing any cards. I was pretty much stuck.

 Hand was empty, no cards in play, environment target prevented me from drawing any cards. I was pretty much stuck.

Regarding Fantatic, I believe she gives +2 to the next attack, which is why I had collected quite a few.

Yep, I tackled IL today, and he's every bit as brutal as I'd heard…though if he hadn't lucked into opening on two damage reducers, I think we could have taken him or at least gotten close, what with him having only 32 HP.  But yeah, 3 damage to every hero target every round?  That's unheard-of.  And Demoralizing Presence is just a heinous card.  I plan to tackle the Freedom 6 game eventually; that's going to be just absurd.  4 damage to everyone and six Ongoings in play at the game start (with my luck one of them will be "Galvanized").

That would probably be Sacrosanct Martyr.  (I was very sad when I noticed that this wasn't you dealing 5 separate instances of 1 damage to yourself, as I'd somehow thought.  That would be something else entirely.)

Actually Legs vs. Iron Legs is a totally on-theme match, since IL is an evil (or at least desperate and borderline-insane) future version of AFL, so AFL is literally facing the worst example of what he's capable of becoming.  Although the Scholar is also sort of fitting, just because he's The Dude who just wants to chillax and keep everything going smoothly, and IL is all about taking life super-seriously and being an insane control freak…they're precisely opposite personalities.  Scholar seems to be loafing around and wasting his life, but is actually adjusting the threads of destiny to ensure the ideal outcome with minimal effort; he's doing the right thing even though he looks nothing like anyone's idea of a hero.  IL on the other hand used to be THE super-hero, but now he's gone to ridiculous extremes in pursuit of an impossible ideal of a perfectly safe world, all because he refuses to admit that he could possibly be wrong.  The two might never meet - certainly Scholar probably wants to keep it that way - but they're totally made for each other.

All of Iron Legacy's setups are hideous, except maybe the ones where he has multiple Superhuman Redirections, but the worst was the one where he had Galvanized, Galvanized, Demoralizing Presence, Demoralizing Presence as his opening Ongoings.

Best opening with Iron Legacy. O-X was on the team with disruptive flechettes. He played them and then time shifted into another disruptive flechettes. Before the end of the first round IL had no ongoings. It was still a hard game. No one died by TL Tachyon was down to 1 HP.

Turn 1 Fueled Freeze is pretty awesome against Iron Legacy as well.

That was the case in this game…  O_O

but the worst was the one where he had Galvanized, Galvanized, Demoralizing Presence, Demoralizing Presence as his opening Ongoings.

Oi…had I been designing the deck, I would have restricted him to one Galvanize just for the sake of flavor (and fairness).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etPYl1OQoqk I find this to be relevant to the current conversation.

Agreed.  That scene is one of the tragically few occasions on which Superman has really lived up to how cool he's capable of being.  I'm not sure it quite fits America's Greatest Legacy, who IMO more nearly resembles Captain America than Superman because of how infrequently he attacks (sure, we see him lifting trains and tackling missiles on his artwork, but when there's a Plummeting Monorail or an Electro-Pulse Explosives on the table and nobody else for him to Galvanize, he seems very poor at handling the situation single-handedly, as Superman so often has to).  But it definitely fits Iron Legacy, who has all the same powers but seems to be much better at using them.

…and so Metropolis fell in Man of Steel.

Legacy isn't Tachyon, he can't fight off the villains entire minion horde and stop environmental hazards at the same time.  Tachyon can do that, boost her team and shut down the boss in the same turn, and that isn't even an exceptional turn for her.

Team Leader is even more ridiculous.  Legacy is great, but he's snailhero compared to Tachyon.

It's a good thing she doesn't have a short attention span, then.

I've often speculated on what a grueling mental experience the speedster must have, having to sit through normal people taking entire seconds to complete a sentence.....

It was pointed out that that was part of Quicksilver's attitude problem. The entire world insisted on moving in slow motion.

It is thoroughly fitting that Marvel would lampshade such a thing while DC entirely fails to acknowledge it.  But neither company has ever hesitated to sweep the problem under the rug.  Even the normally-pretty-good-at-this-sort-of-thing show Heroes had a speedster who had no problem dealing with other people, although that was admittedly during the atrocious third season volume.

Do a google. Common Grounds Speeding Bullet. Go to the first hit.

I think Tachyon handles this by talking to the entire room at once, which is only possible due to her superior multi-tasking intellect that allows her to properly compartmentalize and organize the conversations all at once. 

I think for her incapacitated side it would have been much more cruel to lock her up on a nondescript cell, than it was to kneecap her.

The boredom would have led her to slam herself into the wall at mach1 speeds less than a day into captivity. 

Had my first fight against Iron Legacy the other day doing solo games (random villain, environment, and heroes).

Environment was The Block.  Heroes were Wraith, Visionary, Ra, and Fanatic.

The battle basically went through four phases:

Phase 1. Build-up.  Initial strike by IL; his on-goings were two damage redirects, one healing, and one I don't recall.  Wraith had a useful draw and used Throat-Jab the first two rounds to keep IL in check - though he still healed damage and added another on-going, but he also wasn't hammering the group while they got cards out.  Ra summoned a staff, and Fanatic got Absolution in play plus a few on-goings.  Visionary was helping out other heroes and also chipping away at some of IL's on-goings.  Fanatic put Chastise on IL at the end of the fourth round in an attempt to keep IL in check - but IL did a one-shot that took that out plus additional played cards.  Things looking a bit sour, plus the environment deck was starting to pile up some inmates and agents that could add to the harm.  However, things would change shortly.  At least IL's healing on-going had been destroyed.

Phase 2. Clear the Decks.  Looked over an array of almost empty play arrays as Round 5 started for the heroes.  No one had more than two equipment or on-going cards out.  Nothing to lose so the team played one-shots to damage IL (while not for too much due to the redirect on-going in play) and then Fanatic played End of Days.  Woomp.  Everything swept away except Absolution, Aegis and Staff of Ra.  But IL lost all his on-goings and suddenly was a lot more vulnerable.

Phase 3. Beat-Down.  Iron Legacy at this point pretty much fails to get any on-goings back out for a few rounds.  He inflicts some damage all around, but in return starts taking piles of it himself from the heroes.  He is soon flipped and concentrating as much on healing as in taking out heroes.  IL's one-shots are still taking out equipment and preventing Wraith from getting a heavy build going again.  On the other hand, Ra is unloading high damage one-shots that could not be used before.  Fanatic is pitching in using Absolution and playing one-shots.

Phase 4.  Equilibrium.  A sort of status quo now holds for the next few rounds.  IL has -2 damage dealt reducing damage and is also healing 5 HP per round while he attempts to pummel the weakest hero.  Added to this is one-shots doing more damage.  Visionary has "Twist the Mind" in play as well as a duplicate, so she is redirecting a attack back on IL and at least partially taking out his healed points each turn.  The other heros are adding in some damage past the damage reduction, but not enough to be decisive.  But they are also getting some gear into play, a bit of healing, etc. to keep up with IL and the environment.  At this point Fanatic has played Enbolden on herself since a little bit of extra damage to herself is arguably a good thing.

Phase 5. End Game.  Last round plays out with Wraith demolishing her played equipment to inflict a few extra points of damage.  Visionary and Ra do a few more points of damage.  IL is weakened enough now that Fanatic can play Wraithful Retribution to finish him off.

Overall an interesting session.  Needed Wraith's good initial draw early, Fanatic drew End of Days before things got out of hand, and Fanatic had enough help to be able to put IL down at the end after a stretch of attritional combat between the two sides.

This is the only error I saw, Chastise cannot be put on character cards. But, it looks like you didn't have it out for too long, so that's not too bad.

I've noted since that I may have played it wrong.  It turned out to have no effect since an IL one-shot removed it before it prevented him from inflicting any damage.

If that means "Wrest the Mind", that's another card that can't be put on a character.  (If it was "Twist the Ether", it could, but it won't redirect anything, it'll just let you change the damage type of his attacks and reduce them by 1, or increase them if that's desireable for some reason.)

Wow, well done if everyone survived that battle - especially Wraith, what with the Nemesis bonus she'd've been taking. It's not often we have a game against Iron Legacy that lasts more than about four or five rounds. We have beaten him a couple of times but generally we don't expect to necessarily do very well against him - he is about the msot consistent hard-hitting villain out there, after all.

One key in my opinion was Wraith's two "Throat Jab" cards being in the initial draw - that allowed the team to avoid damage from IL for two rounds while they deployed cards and get better prepared.  And then Fanatic cleared his initial set of on-goings plus a few more including the damage redirects with "End of Days" on Round 5.  From there it seemed a much more even fight with a known goal being of damaging IL to the point that Fanatic would be able to take him out since the card for doing that was already in hand.

And the Environment (The Block) ended up being relatively benign.  Initial few inmate cards did damage based on number of cards in trash - so no reason to kill them off.  A few rounds later End of Days cleared everything off.  Prison Riot came out, but Lock-down and eventually the warden came out and kept things pretty clear of inmates, or mainly inmates and agents pounding on each other.

If the Warden comes out, you can basically ignore any Inmates who ever come out (assuming only one comes out per turn), because the Warden will always act before them in the turn and destroy them :). It happened to us once before, anyway - Warden was the first card to come out, and after that any Inmates would just get insta-killed by him at the start of the next environment turn. I think something like Prison Riot might have brought out more Inmates (we haven't fought in the Block many times so I haven't learnt the deck that well yet), but it never showed up so we basically just ignored the environment for the whole game :).

Yeah, the Block is probably the safest environment there is, and a great place for introducing new players to the game or for facing a tough villain for the first time, since it minimizes the distractions you have to deal with while giving you a taste for the idea that the environment can affect both sides of the game, or just ignore them and do its own thing.