Difficulty ranking on SkinWeaver and GloomSpite?

Just curious on the scale of 1-4 where they'd be ranked.  Thoughts?

Probably a solid 3. He is beatable, but with the wrong team and bad luck the fight can go downhill for you pretty fast.

Sentinel sidekick has them listed as 3s. 

Groovy.  Thanks.  :)

If Gloomy is a 3, then he's pretty definitely really a 3 this time.  A Citizen Dawn or Miss Information kind of a 3, even.

Just played SkinWeaver (Haka, Scholar, Tempest, Expatriette, on Time Cataclysm).  He's kinda 'meh' on his first side.  As in 'nothing special'.  Once he flips, He's all about healing himself at the expense of everything else.  It gives him a 'beating a dead horse' vibe that you can get from Ms. Information or Iron Legacy to an extent.  Dealing 4 apiece at the start of turn doesn't help.  He's no Citizen Dawn, but he's no Grand Warlord Voss either.  As above, a solid 3.

hm,  I dunno.  most of the opinions (and my own experiences)  say new Gloom is pretty difficult.  Maybe you just had a good game,  I dunno. Are you giving him damage reduction from the pouch of bones?  Are you healing him when zombies come into play?

Not sure what the last reference was supposed to be insinuating,    I guess you don't feel Dawn and Voss are the same difficulty,  its unclear to me which one you think is hard and which you beat easily.  

Dawn is a three but is one of the most feared villains, the Anvil/Truth start of doom, and the card that shall not be named are big parts of that.  She's a three, but a scary as heck three.

Voss is a three, but he doesn't destroy your cards and is more fun to go against than scary.

Putting Gloomweaver in the Dawn category of a three would put him more in the scary to play againt, but not going to kill you as much as you might think from the game play.

I think I lose a lot more agianst Voss than I do against Dawn....   

Voss is more nearly a solved equation than Dawn; his minions are all the same (low) number of HP, so about the only serious trick up his sleeve is Forced Deployment, with the threat of a Nonstandard Game Over.  But since you always get one turn to remove minions before they win the game, the danger level is pretty low.  Dawn has a lot more hurdles for you to clear...it's extremely difficult to just beat on her without letting her flip, and once she flips you're in for a hard time, having to intentionally leave Citizens un-killed so she can un-flip.  Voss can destroy you with a lucky draw of Vyktor or Flagship or something, but Dawn inherently manufactures her own luck of that sort by playing extra villain cards.  Her Citizens are tougher, have a wider array of abilities, and she routinely heals them or raises them from the dead.  It's not really a contest, even if you fail to build your hero team specifically to beat the villain, which is FAR easier to do with Voss than with Dawn (even a single point of DR makes immense difference against Voss, who almost never destroys Ongoings or Equipment).

Voss can be just as scary as Dawn, though maybe a touch not as consistent. His flagships are damage monster houses that really punish low [H] games with non-scaling damage and minion revival, but they are generally managable and the only way he is going to throw you a loop is with well timed Forced Deployments.

Dawn is one of the few villains that's actually harder with H=3 than 5 (along with the Chairman. He is THE WORST with 3 heros. Whether H=3 or 5, you need to do the same amount of overall damage to win. 9/10 there isnt even a remote chance of that happening). Dawn is pretty easy up until the final few rounds, when her ongoings start to pile up. Less heros = less chances of taking out those ongoings out when it counts and return with the dawn is a backbreaker late.

Her arsenal is overall much scarier than Voss's. She covers a wider breadth of effects you have to plan for, while Voss tries to spread you thin with damage immunities to buy time for his Forced Deployments.

I guess this isn't the best place to discuss these two but, I dunno,  I guess I just disagree...  With gene-bound guards, Tamar, and his Advanced Mode text, he can easily just shut the door on all hero damage.  Then a Dreadnaught or Flagship shows up when heroes are at  -3 or -4 damage and it's all over for you.  

Dawn I tend to have an easy time with.  I just selectively target only the most dangerous Citizens, and focus her down until she dies, never letting her flip.  Sometimes the strategy gets burked up from an Environment taking out an easy citizen, but even then I can usually recover, flip her, and win.   

My general impressions on Skinwalker and AoG Spite (not to distract from the Voss/Dawn conversation, which is fascinating!):

AoG Spite:  I'd call him a 3, and general more difficult than his base version.  The primary reason is that he does more damage, with a secondary one being that his drugs are on a timer rather than randomly coming out.  He does much less healing, but compensates by increased aggression.  Flipping him can be a huge risk, since he's likely to get a monster damage turn before you start pulling hostages out of the safehouse to decrease the damage and get extra plays.  Because of the damage increase, getting rid of collateral damage is absolutely essential, as he can chain-kill all victims with a single hit (initial huit kills a victim, causing him to do damage, which kills another victim, etc, etc, etc)  

Controlling the drugs is difficult, but not impossible.  You need to be either be aggressive and take a lot of risks in playing his own cards (in an effort to get enough victims out), or stack the deck so that you know whats coming.  the first round is likely to set the tone of the game, as an initial play of a lab raid, forced entry or collateral damage (which destroy victim he starts with) can detrail any sort of strategy.

He's slightly easier with 3 heroes, in that theres a better chance you'll be able to flip him before he has all his drugs out.  5 player games may never reach his flip side.  Good samaritans are a HUGE risk, but the only real way to get out ahead of the drugs.

Skinwalker: I'd call him a high 3, possibly a low 4.  A lot depends on the heroes and environments, as giving him lots of targets is an easy way to get far more cultists/pins/relics/etc than can be contained.  He's suprisingly resilient, despite the 50 HP, and a few bad plays can really make life miserable.  AoE damage is very, very, very useful.  Damage control is very useful, especially as H goes up.  

I've found that the initial side tends to be the most dangerous, as its easier for things to spiral out of control.  If he flips with a large army, its going to be a bad scene, but if he is on his own when he flips you can leave him to chew himself up.  Selective immunity/damage control is very, very awesome, as is redirection.    In general, he wins or loses the game on his initial side.  If he can get you low enough, strip away enough cards, or amass an army before flipping, he's in good shape.  If you can control the flip, you're in a better position.  As always, Vast Followings can completely screw up plans and pull things back into play that took several turns to bring down (I'm looking at you, Pouch of Bones...).

***Special Note for Unity Players

Play Unity at your own risk! She (usually her bots) tend to get hammered, and you may have your teammates glaring at you as Gloomy gets cards for killing bots. If you play her, make sure you are VERY aware of who is likely to take a hit, and use scrap metal to pull a vulnerable bot back after it does it's damage (particularly useful with Raptor bots).  Trying to build a large army with little planning is VERY likely to fail, and cause a lot of harm in the process.  

I'm not at all certain that's true.  Dawn has a LOT of effects which scale with H, notably including the number of starting Citizens and the length of time she stays invincible after flipping.  In an H=3 game, her innate damage is a 1-point plink which Bunker or Fanatic can soak indefinitely, she starts with just two citizens (who might well be Spring and Sweat, posing no active threat to you whatsoever on turn 1).  With H=5, she only needs to pull one Citizen from the deck before you'll have enough to flip her, unless you can refrain from killing at least one (which isn't easy; even if it's someone like Spring that you don't really care about, you're likely to hit her with damage-to-everything attacks which are too powerful not to use against the more important targets)…then, once she's flipped, you need to sit for a bare minimum of 2 full rounds, likely much longer, letting every Citizen stay in play no matter how deadly they are, just so that you can get out of an unwinnable state - and desperately hoping that the Environment doesn't kill Citizens on that last turn before Dawn'll unflip.  H=5 games with Dawn are a nightmare in my experience.  3 might be too few to hit the 80 damage, unless it's an extreme power team (say Ra + Unity + Argent Adept), but I'd definitely take 4 over 5, particularly if playing advanced.

@Envisioner

Yes, It is very true. H=3 games, on average, last far longer than their H=4-5 counterparts. This is mainly due to two reasons 1) Less heros = less hero damage output and 2) Most Villains have their main damage dealing abilities scaled to H, reducing Villain damage output on average as well.

Any Villain that is more dangerous the more time goes by will effect low H games to a far greater extent than high H games. The number of Dawns ongoings doesn't scale (And there are a lot and they all suck). Neither does the number of Citizens in the deck you eventually have to mow through, and neither does their health. The more time she has to keep pumping them out, the more likely the smaller number of heros will not have have an immediate answer for it. Also consider Tears and discarding effects which hit low H games harder than higher H games simply due to math (more cards in combined players hands = more of a chance to answer a given situation). Now, you could say that most villains could fall under argument, but the honestly no other villain has the sheer breadth and depth of effects that Dawn employs, making that ticking clock a huge burden for a small hero team that just can't offer the diversity of situational help that a large team can. And thats the difference. What you need to respond to vs. what you can respond to.

Note that villains whos main shtick is just damage, or are not as diverse in effects, are by far easier in H=3 games. As villain damage scales downward, every point of DR a hero increases in effective value. Consider Dawn in a H=3 game dealing her scaled end of turn damage. She deals H-2 damage, turning into 1 for 3 player game and 3 for a 5 player game. Lets say you are playing Legacy and managed to get out Fortitude which grants 1 damage reduction. In the H=3 game, your Fortitude manage to completley nullify the damage, while H=5 you are merely mitigating (by the same token, cards like Shielding Winds and SuperHuman Durability greatly increase in effective value in higher H games. When H=3, there are only 1 or two villains where you will find a use for these effects). Again it is coming down to what you need to respond to vs. what you can, and villain damage is a far easier effect to control and manipulate as H decreases. 

I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me....

I think this is a good example of the theoretical vs the practical. True, in lower H games you can nulify the damage, but does it really matter?

Consider 3 heroes with 25 hp each, and an attack of H-2. Let's see how many instances of damage are needed to wipe out the team:

3p game - No DR: 75 / 1 = 75 instances

3p game - each with DR 1: Nullified

4p game - No DR: 100 / 2 = 50

4p game - each with DR 1: 100 / 1 = 100 Instances

5p game - No DR: 125 / 3 = 42 instances

5p game - each with DR 1: 125 / 2 = 53 instances

In each case, DR does help. Now, its true a DR of 1 can nulify the damage in a 3p game, but look how many times the heroes need to be hit before they are killed. Even in a 5p game with no DR, it would still take 42 times of being hit before being incapped. That's huge. You can often kill the villain before then, so it doesn't really matter, and villains don't play mroe cards baed on the number of people. To compensate, you get an extra play, power and a variety of effects to help you kill the villain even faster. While it's nice to end the game at full hp, in many circumstances it simply doesn't matter, and more players make the game much easier.

True, if you have a villain that can put out that many instances (Matty), then a 3p game will make a difference, but if they can't, a 5p game will almost always be easier. The only other instance this matter is if there is a lot of AoE damage.

I was just elaborating on my view of why I think it to be true.

The Dreamer's flipside does play more cards with higher H, and you need to kill more projections to win too.  It basically gives her the equivalent of scaling villain health.  With H=5, you get an insane 4 villain cards per round, giving pretty decent odds of having two Dark Heroes out at once (which is always something to be worried about).

Personally I find most villains to be easier with more heroes, but it's certainly not guaranteed.

Fair enough. Forgot that one.

Ms. Information and the Dreamer are the only villains I've found to be consistently easier with less heroes.

Something else to look at with H=3 compared to H=5 is also the scaled effect of buff powers.  With H=5 Legacy's Galvanize often outshine's his other potential powers like Motivational Charge, etc.  With H=3 the trade-off equivalence is less, and you are also often in that "what can you do now" decision mode where Legacy adding in a few extra points of damage is possibly more important than the +1 damage later.  (E.G.  Legacy is mid-team and though you'd like the +1 for Hero #1 next turn you need that damage this turn - and a point of healing would be nice too!) 

This also comes into play depending on what the hero mix is in that game.  I play a lot of H=3 solo and Legacy, Visionary, etc. are often important for getting their one-shot damage cards into play.  And a power like Motivational Charge is also important since there might actually be very few sources of healing available to the group.  With a smaller pool of heroes in a game the "best play" optimal for a hero might have to get blurred since the hero might be needed to take a wider or more flexible role in the match.

You know guys... we do have this great resource in the Statistics... Give me  some paramaters to search for and i can find out the information based on what weve been collecting. If you want to know 'Dawn vrs 3 or vs 4 which is a longer game' i can probably come up with the information :p

I'm glad that the Statistics Thread exists, but I don't consider it terribly hard proof of anything.  I've seen duplicate entries which haven't been purged, entries where the Comments admit to the use of a houserule, and other such anomalies that prove it isn't being maintained with scientific rigor or anything (which is hardly surprising since it's something one guy is doing in his spare time, but still).  People can be playing under mistaken assumptions about the rules, they can be using various different strategies of which some are counter-productive, they can be playing ultra-diehard serious or just chilling with their friends and having a laugh as they're utterly destroyed...putting all of these results into the same data pool and then taking random, non-specific samples from the pool produces results that are more interesting than accurate.  It's certainly nice to have the option but I always take the results with a grain of salt.

It's certainly better to make judgements based on lots of data (even if the data's not perfect) rather than just assessing a handful of your own games.

Mistakes and games being taken more or less "seriously" will cancel out given a big enough sample size. It's kind of why statistics are collected in the first place...

I've lost hideously against Omnitron enough times when playing face-to-face games that if I was to just look at my own non-G+ experience I'd conclude that he's much harder than Dawn. Which is obviously complete nonsense. 

Even normal Baron Blade can be quite deadly. One really nasty game played Hasten Doom x2 then Slash and Burn, repeat on 2nd turn, then Consider the Price of Victory. That's a lot of damage and with 4 players that's 11 cards in the trash on his 3rd turn, 12 after his MDP is down.

The duplicates have been purged, or at least all that my tired eyes could find. Ill look through the comments - You may notice the thick grey bars every so often? Thats a note to myself that ive cleared everything before them - or where the stats were when I stopped last. There was a good 3, 4 month period where I was working 60+hr weeks and went to europe for 10 days and other things that prevented me from cleaning it up. But its working on getting there!

Also, like  silverleaf says, the whole point to a massive amount of statistics is to smooth out the bellcurve. There will be anomolies, yes, but the way math works the more entries you have, the less said anomolies matter. And we are upwards of 7000 entries now, which means were probably pushing easily 2-300 for each hero and probably around 150 or so per villain.

I thought the gray bars were just some number of days worth of statistics.  Live and learn.

they were about a month, cause thats about how often I was going in and cleaning it up :P

Yeah. It's true the data isn't perfect... but it is imperfect across many sources, which makes it more useful than imperfect across our own personal experience, so while I do look at it with a grain of salt, I do tend to see it as more telling than my own personal experience... which is tainted by a lot more uniform biases. 

Yeah, you need a wider range of results to get a better idea of what's what - if you only look at your own playing experience, for example, you'll only have stats for the particular number(s) of heroes you tend to play with the most, plus your game results are likely to be affected by the differing playstyles of your players, especially if you play with the same people all the time - if someone likes to play a certain hero in every game and always does so in a certain way, they might achieve or miss some things they might (not) have done if playing a different way. Pretty much all my games are with H as three, so I probably show a much better win percentage against someone like Miss Information or the Dreamer than someone who regularly plays with H as five. Plus, of the two of us who play, one of us plays two heroes and he tends to prefer certain heroes over others, while I similarly tend to take certain heroes I like playing more than others.

If you have a whole load of people, all playing their own games with their own groups of people, all uploading many, many statistics like we have here, you get a much wider range of results so as described, it'll smooth itself out the more you get and you should have a better all-round idea as to how certain game setups tend to work out.

I play all heroes pretty much equally.  Currently each of them has been played between 14 and 16 times, and I'm tracking the total so that I can prioritize the ones that are trailing.

plus your game results are likely to be affected by the differing playstyles of your players, especially if you play with the same people all the time

I have quite a variable playgroup.  Only one person of my acquaintance gravitates toward one character with any regularly, and even he expands his horizons from time to time.

Pretty much all my games are with H as three, so I probably show a much better win percentage against someone like Miss Information or the Dreamer than someone who regularly plays with H as five.

Again, I intentionally vary this up (when I have a choice; in "real" games it's however many people we have, but in solitaire games I do about 45% 3H, 35% 4H, and 20% 5H).

If you have a whole load of people, all playing their own games with their own groups of people, all uploading many, many statistics like we have here, you get a much wider range of results so as described, it'll smooth itself out the more you get and you should have a better all-round idea as to how certain game setups tend to work out.

I'm more inclined to believe that the opposite effect would occur.  You might logically conclude that all the water in the ocean tends toward its level as water is wont to do, but nonetheless, there are such things as tidal waves.  If a certain playgroup routinely mis-plays a certain situation and has a LOT of games featuring it, the entire database could be distorted as a result.  Since I can't personally verify the results from the statistics thread, I trust it less than I do my own experiences (and, more relevantly, projections based on apparent logic, e.g. "obviously The Dreamer is more dangerous with higher H, since she plays H-1 villain cards per turn, deals H damage to everyone with Violent Nightmares, etc.").

We've talked about this before, but that's still not a big enough sample size to draw any real conclusions. 

Evisioner, go to your local community college and audit a Statistics course. (if you dont die from straight up boredom first...) youll learn a lot of cool things about sample pool sizes and what it means for the Project for having 6000 entries versus ... say the 80ish or so you have personally in the system

First off, is the Bellcurve of statistics, which (greatly simplified becaues I suck at statistics math) basically is a mathematical provable formula that extreme circumstances (Tidal waves, in your ocean example) will end up as a small percentage of the overall statistics (the two ends of a bell shaped curve  (see this picture: http://andihammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/6a00d834525fff69e20133ecf35c3d970b-800wi.gif ) ) and the far majority of 'normalized' results will occur in the middle. 

Then youll also learn about Error Rate - which is another pmathematical provable formula that tells you how far off your results will be. When you are in the 10, 20, 30 points of data you'll have 20 or 30% error rates. (i think... my math is hazy)  and its not until you get into 500+ data points (that would be 500 times Legacy plays against Baron Blade) that you finally get down into 2-3% error rates.

More power to you that you keep your play varried. But you are still just one person, and even with your prolifferant addition to the project, we can point out some things

Your heroes - for a well  seen diversion - Bunker and Tachyon are at 21 games each, but Mr Fixer is at 14 - thats 3/4ths of the size of the first. 

or, in otherwords, given your 80 some games, you are 25% likely to have tachyon in your group, and only ~15% likely to have Mr Fixer - thats a 10% difference. Again, this doesnt seem like much, but at 1000 games, if your trends continue? that would 250 games for Tachyon, and only 150 games for Mr Fixer. Your own preferences slowly start to be shown.

But this also proves the other side - more data = more information and less error. Becuase if you do get 1000 games of your own and come back later, how likely do -you- (by your own points above) think youd still be at the same ratio? They are pretty close now, your tachyon / mr fixer ratios, but if you are correct (in your statement that your group is varried) then over 1000 games suddenly youd have a closer one. Maybe in reality, instead of extrapolating as I did above, youd have 250 and 230 games with each hero. Simplifying that (a LOT) means that the difference between 15% use of mr Fixer and your (possible) 23% use of Mr Fixer at 1000 games would mean at 80ish games you have an error rate of 8%. - Which means that your own, personal view of what is going on is at least 8% (probably closer to 10-20%) off from a true understanding of things in an analytical situation.

Yes the ocean is not always flat. Tidal waves exist. Tidal waves also happen once in a long while, while the rest of the time - day after day, week after week - the sea is mostly flat. Even when you take into the Up and down of waves, the mathematical funciton of a wave means that the average height  (With the top being plus and the bottom of a wave being negative) ... is flat.

More data = less impact that odd stats will have.

I am aware of all these concepts.  I simply do not consider them accurate or relevant.  My attitude is that, whether or not statistics proves that the ocean averages out to flat, you can still get your house washed away by a tsunami, and therefore the statistics serve only to lull people into a false sense of security.  It doesn't matter how unlikely a thing is when it actually happens.  I've played games where I assumed a villain was harmless, and managed to get one hero or even the entire group killed by virtue of that assumption; I've also played games against villains that were supposed to be tough, and found them an underwhelming cakewalk.  Therefore, I assume nothing beyond the absolutely obvious.  It's obvious that, say, Spite (the original version that is) is very hard to defeat before he flips, because he's healing every time he deals damage and every time he kills a victim, and every turn besides that in Advanced.  Thusly, if the statistics record "proves" that 60% of all games against Advanced Spite are won pre-flip, the only thing this will "prove" to me is that the statistics record must be flawed somehow.

(Also, for the record, I'm not the one who prefers Bunker and Tachyon to Mr. Fixer; I've actually played him more often in actual non-solo games, but a lot of other players have taken Tachyon or Bunker in games where I was playing.  Not that this disproves your point or anything.)

No. That means that your games fall into the 40%. See how statistics work?

Seems the greatest danger is the assumptions.

Apart from the matter of how many times you play each hero, it's how many heroes are in the group in total, where each hero comes in the play order, which specific heroes are playing, and which villain/environment combo is being used with that particular combination of heroes in that particular order. Someone once worked out how many total possible games there are, and it was an absolutely enormous number, taking into account every possible combination of everything that can ever be played (and that was, I think, pre-Shattered Timelines so the total will be even bigger now).

And if you find that one particular hero is played a lot and also wins a lot, it might just be that you only tend to use that hero in a combination in which they happen to do best. Card luck also comes into it, of course - a Wraith who starts a game against Plague Rat or Spite with a couple of Impromptu Inventions in-hand is already in a much better place than one starting up against Miss Information or Citizen Dawn with a couple of Suture Selfs and Inventory Barrages. I tend to base my hero choice on which villain we're up against, and sometimes also which other heroes are in the group. If you randomise all your choices (we only randomise villain and environment, via dice rolls), you might end up with a lower win rate overall than someone who chooses everything, because you might roll up a combination which ends up being really difficult (lots of equipment/ongoing-dependent heroes against someone who destroys a lot of stuff, or low-damage heroes against someone with high damage and lots of minions/ongoings).

Even if you choose all of the decks being used, you can still get your arse kicked if you just don't get the right cards while the villain gets all their best stuff out and/or the environment plays only the stuff which messes with you and barely/never inconveniences the villain at all. Hopefully games like that won't come up too often, but that's what the stats are for - so you can see "Okay, Baron Blade tends to lose nearly all the time but he's had a few games where he wins in just a few rounds - so we should have a good chance of beating him in general". It's not so you can look at the stats and instantly know whether a hero/villain/environment combo will result in a win (what would be the point in playing if that were the case?) - it's to give you an idea as to the general difficulty of a game and the effectiveness of each hero in various circumstances. The more games we get into the database, the more it'll even out and the better idea we'll all have of how well each deck works in as many different circumstances as possible.

Or something.

Statistics are never terribly hard proof of anything.  They are statistics.

This whole tangent started because I said 'I can look up whats a longer game, Dawn vrs 4 or Dawn vrs 5 if you want me too!'

I suppose I should have included  'On Average' in there. Thats all Statistics are - On average, this is what seems to happen. This is data we can correlate and draw conclusions from, but of course there are always extremes and other things. No one here is saying that you can't end up having a game with 5 heroes against dawn that only takes 10 mins or one that takes 2 hours - life is made up of extremes. 

However, the discussion you were having was not about extremes. It was about - on average which is longer, dawn vrs 4 or vs 5? and thats exactly what statistics are for. On average, such and such information is true. 

Extreme cases always will exist, and extreme situations will always be there. No one is telling you to discount them. No one is telling you that the statistics means everytime you play this will happen. What the debate originally was about is what statistics will answer however.

Well the bottom line is that I don't approve of making decisions based on heuristics.  If you don't actually KNOW the answer 100%, you shouldn't pretend that you have 'relevant data' which somehow impacts the actuality of the situation.  If you go with an assumption that something is 80% likely to happen, all that accomplishes is to make you feel incredibly stupid when the 20% likely scenario comes to pass.  I'd rather just take it as read that the outcome is unknown, and plan for every possibility.

And yet the insurance industry is all about statistics and playing the averages.

From a player perspective, disregarding statistics is entirely fine.  You can plan for every eventuality, have personal experiences, play tons of games, and have a lot of insight into how the game feels.  Thats why there are lots of personal rankings (including your very own, Envisioner) of heroes and villains, and house rules designed to shore up a perceived flaw in their playstyle.  

These are all fine things.

From a larger perspective, having statistics available is ESSENTIAL.  As a playtester, it is very, very, VERY tempting to base all of my conclusions (and suggestions for changes) around my personal experiences.  This is valid, but it hides a fundamental flaw.

My friends and I tend to play games that have:

5 players

At least 1 person who prefers support/multi-role leadership characters, so we tend to have Legacy, the AA, or Tempest in the mix.  

Several people who dislike slow/setup intensive characters (so not much Bunker/AZ)  

At least 1 person who only plays 1 specific character for weeks (or months) at a time.  One of my friends played Ra, EVERY game for a year.  another almost always picks Chrono.

At least 2-3 people who always want to try the "new" guys (which is great for a playtesting session).

Now, this is great for playtesting.  it gives me lots to talk about when I write up my session reports, thoughts, and general suggestions. however, it can cause disagreements between myself and some of th eother playtesters who prefer to play 3 player games, or who don't have damage-buff capable people (IE people who dislike Legacy).  Their experiences playtesting are TOTALLY different, and equally as valid.  Still others have entirely different criteria by which they judge a character, and are absolutely ecstatic if they can accomplish great things while burning themselves out in a few rounds. Others comsider a character a failure if they go down at all.

the only way we reach consensus (and even then there is disagreement) is through playing over and over and over again, using ALL sorts of different parameters.  we read each other reports, ask questions, and try out different ideas.  then we do it again.  then again.  then AGAIN.  through this, we do our absolute best to make sure that EVERY person's playstyle and variables are accounted for (and we aren't perfect).  collecting statisitics and drawing useful information is a great thing, and it can be leavened with the experiences we each bring to the game.  there is a place for both statistics AND experience.  

I, for one, would very much like to know what the statistics say about 5 player difficulty.  From my personal experience, I find them to be harder for setup-intensive heroes (because there are fewer turns for them to get eastablished, and wipes hit harder), but overall easier because there are more heroes to take care of business.  I've found that Legacy is great, but he is better in 5 player games, since there are more people to take advantage of his buffs.  I've found that if someone picks Unity, someone will ALWAYS reach for Nightmist.  I've found that Bunker is really resilient and fun in a 3 player game (where there is more time for set up), but can be incredibly frustrating in 5 player games (where there is more time between turns, so even 1 turn where you can't play anything or have to set up equates to 5 minutes of twiddling your thumbs while other people have fun)

But that is MY personal experience.  It might not be ANYONE elses.  I'd like to know more.

Just jumping in with a link, because I believe it was the first thread I posted on this forum and I'm quite proud of it: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/number-of-herovillainenvironment-configurations-3081

But… you DO have relevant data that impacts the situation. If you have something that is 80% likely to happen, then it is probably going to happen, and if you cannot prevent both scenarios then you are better off preventing the 80% one than the 20% one. And - crucially - if you've prepared to stop the 80% scenario and the 20% one comes to pass (assuming you had no way of knowing which would come beyond the statistics), that does not mean that you made the wrong decision. We cannot cover all bases, so we cover the ones that are most likely to need covering.

Incidentally this attitude of yours, which has previously come out in you suggesting, for example, that one shouldn't play ongoings or equipment in most cases against La Capitan for fear of her destruction (I apologise if I'm misquoting you), represents an abnormally cautious style of play, which sort of implies that your data are probably outliers, in the overall scheme of things

It is no coincidence that I dislike this and similar industries intensely.  I wrote an extensive rant on the topic, but decided I'd better put it on my long-neglected blog rather than here.

Holy crap.  I can think of characters that are deep enough to deserve that kind of dedication, but RA?  All I can say is wow.  I would get bored playing him twice in a row.

Their experiences playtesting are TOTALLY different, and equally as valid.

I'm not disagreeing with that at all.  I completely believe it's fitting to gather huge quantities of data about the game from many different sources; the part i disagree with is the reduction of that data to statistical averages which are treated as meaningful, when they were derived entirely by omitting a vast percentage of the relevant information.  I would rather read ten detailed game reports than the cross-sectional data of a hundred, because the latter is not going to tell me everything that's worth knowing about what happened in those games.  It's likely, for instance, that games against The Chairman are more often won when his first-turn Underboss is The Fence, and less often when it's The Contract, but the statistics report treats those games as interchangeable.  It averages them out, and they shouldn't be averaged out, because what would happen if, purely by coincidence, 100 consecutive games were played in which The Fence or The Contract (one of the two) was ALWAYS the first Underboss?  You'd have statistical "proof" that the Chairman is much easier or much harder than he actually is, and it'd take another 100 games before you'd notice the aberration.  Where if you had been reading the detailed game reports, you'd only need to get 10 games in and you'd see the anomalous pattern right away.  Statistics disregards potentially critical information on the assumption that it's "unlikely", and I don't believe in making such assumptions.  To know truth, you must study it in detail, and this is naturally a time-consuming process, which is why I believe our society shouldn't always be in such a rush to get things done ASAP…it leads to people cutting corners, and I believe this is why we have factories collapsing and housing bubbles bursting in the news every goddamn week.  (And this is turning back into that rant, so I'll stop now.)

I, for one, would very much like to know what the statistics say about 5 player difficulty.  From my personal experience, I find them to be harder for setup-intensive heroes (because there are fewer turns for them to get eastablished, and wipes hit harder), but overall easier because there are more heroes to take care of business.

This is common-sensical enough that I feel confident it's true (in general; it fails to account for issues like The Dreamer and Miss Info), and whether the statistics back this up or not is of little interest to me.

I've found that if someone picks Unity, someone will ALWAYS reach for Nightmist.

Hm.  Why that combo?  I've never noticed any particular synergy between them.

I've found that Bunker is really resilient and fun in a 3 player game (where there is more time for set up), but can be incredibly frustrating in 5 player games (where there is more time between turns, so even 1 turn where you can't play anything or have to set up equates to 5 minutes of twiddling your thumbs while other people have fun)

An interesting point.  Not the way I especially feel, but then I haven't been in that situation terribly often, and it makes logical sense to me that someone would develop that opinion.

But that is MY personal experience.  It might not be ANYONE elses.  I'd like to know more.

Knowing more is always an admirable goal; I just disagree that statistics represent knowledge, or at least useful knowledge.  To me, they are more nearly a form of neural chaff, something to confuse the senses with the illusion of presence, fouling our targeting systems by preventing us from perceiving accurately.  Ideally, I would like us to have better perception and targeting, so that we did not suffer such risks, and thus I am fine with gathering statistics as long as they are not overvalued.  It's just that, looking out at our society, ALL I seem to see is people overvaluing statistics.

But you are still better off being prepared for both.  I say always take the action which is correct in the abstract, and don't try to plan for eventualities which might not happen.

And - crucially - if you've prepared to stop the 80% scenario and the 20% one comes to pass (assuming you had no way of knowing which would come beyond the statistics), that does not mean that you made the wrong decision.

We disagree on that point.

We cannot cover all bases, so we cover the ones that are most likely to need covering.

This is exactly the attitude I most wish to see purged from our species's consciousness.  It is the attitude that it's okay to let ten people die in order to save ninety lives…my sympathy is with the ten, and I would rather see all one hundred perish, so long as it was not a human being who made the decision which cost their lives.  Whereas, if what's on the line is something less than human lives, it's probably not even worth worrying about it.

Incidentally this attitude of yours, which has previously come out in you suggesting, for example, that one shouldn't play ongoings or equipment in most cases against La Capitan for fear of her destruction (I apologise if I'm misquoting you), represents an abnormally cautious style of play, which sort of implies that your data are probably outliers, in the overall scheme of things

That was an early assessment of LC, and my experiences have evolved somewhat.  It depends on what the situation is; playing one-shots over O/Es is preferable in the abstract, but it will depend on who you're playing and what her first few card plays are.  However, it is certainly conceivable that my desire to avoid being responsible for things going awry leads me to play overly-conservatively in general.  I don't think that makes me a bad player, though.  It's more that I want to be able to claim my victories by making them a product of skill rather than luck.

EDIT - oops, accidentally posted the rant in question due to a copy/paste error.  If you saw it, please disregard.

Having made my own heroes and villain, playtesting really helps and some things can drastically affect it. Some heroes, such as Team Leader Tachyon have to be excluded from play or else you don't get an accurate rating of your hero's personal draw power. Any game with both Ra and Legacy will usually be an easy one with all the damage that comes out, but really affects testing a hero that has a lot of self damage. Some heroes manipulate the villain deck so well it's almost like cheating on some villains, especially normal Gloomweaver. I've been testing my creations for about a year now, since I really only test them with my gaming group on Fridays. My villain had a play time of about 5 hours last few times so something had to be done about him. I've even had others test my heroes, posting on BGG helped me to balance them as well, each one had about 50+ downloads before I updated them this last time, and they had about 30 or more before that.

Being a playtester also helps to understand the changes that happen to the official cards. Sometimes a card gets dropped for a different one. I've done that myself for my decks, sometimes something just doesn't work, but it can take a lot of plays to figure that out, I'm close to sending 2 of my heroes to print after a year of constant testing though. I've even made my own divider cards, both for my cards and Vengeance. I realized most of the deck dividers seems to be the splash art on the bottom of the character/environment bio pages, so I have a pretty good idea what the dividers will look like. The RC/IR box helped and the Deck Prot sleeves seem to be the perfect size for the boxes.

My group doesn't really use any statistics to determine what heroes to pick for which villain, some have a favorite and others just pick one that's good against the villain. Though we do tend to play the new stuff alot when it comes out. The Sentinels is one of my favorite heroes.

Haven't gotten to play the new Spite or Gloomweaver yet as the Wednesday after I got them nobody from my group showed up at Arsenal and we're currently out for Winter Break, so no Friday meetings either. Suffering from some Sentinels withdrawal right now, though it did give me time to finish the 1st version of a new character.

The answer to this is simple, Envisioner. You obviously don't get why stats are useful and would much rather focus on your own experiences, so don't use them.

Other people see them as interesting or useful tools, and that's fine. I for one believe that my own personal game experiences are more indicative of my own play style and preferences than of the way the game itself actually plays - I can't gauge that in any reasonable way without the crunching of a load of numbers that are way bigger than just me. And I'm interested in the not-just-me stats because the average win rate against a particular villain is a much more helpful stat for me to give to a person who isn't me.

Case in point - I taught my brother the game today (he liked it, of course) and he asked me which was the hardest villain. I told him I thought it was Iron Legacy, because that's what the stats say. If I'd told him only my personal experience of IL I'd have said that he's easier than La Capitan, especially as I was 100% against him after my first 4 or 5 IL games and am probably still way above the average win rate after considerably more games, while La Capitan beats me more often than I'd care to admit. And of course, that'd be misleading.

Unless someone has exactly the same play style as me, my experiences have little relevance to them - they're probably more like the "average" player than they are like me.

Statistics represent data. Nothing more.

This is exactly the attitude I most wish to see purged from our species's consciousness.  It is the attitude that it's okay to let ten people die in order to save ninety lives…my sympathy is with the ten, and I would rather see all one hundred perish, so long as it was not a human being who made the decision which cost their lives.  Whereas, if what's on the line is something less than human lives, it's probably not even worth worrying about it.

I'm sure the 90 sympathize with the 10, but are a lot happier being one of the 90. If all 100 die, then someone didn't try hard enough.

I'm very curious how you have such a win percentage against Iron Legacy, Silverleaf.  And while I don't think La Capitan is harder than him, I do consider her to be among the hardest villains (she and original Gloomweaver should trade difficulty rankings IMO), so I don't think you'd be drawing an entirely inaccurate conclusion there.  Certainly, Iron Legs has a more visible weakness - take his Ongoings away and he's relatively squishy at just 32 HP, plus there are no other targets besides him - than La Capitan, who is pretty much consistently fearsome throughout the entire game, but is at her worst during the early turns, precisely when you're least able to deal with her.

They used splash art for the dividers in Enhanced Edition, but then in all the expansions they got lazy and mostly just picked a card from the deck to use as divider art.

Haven't gotten to play the new Spite or Gloomweaver yet as the Wednesday after I got them nobody from my group showed up at Arsenal and we're currently out for Winter Break, so no Friday meetings either. Suffering from some Sentinels withdrawal right now.

Right there with ya.  So far I've just played one game with promo Nightmist, while someone else used Expatriette but never actually tried her new power (he got a Tactical Shotgun on turn 1 and the villain was never invulnerable, so he just kept blasting her).  And I have no gaming groups meeting for the next week.  I suspect I'll have to resort to a solo game again, my first in probably a month.

I had a lucky 4 or 5 games (where I drew a lot of useful cards and he didn't play anything too horrible) and that's still skewing my win rating, basically. See, a few abnormal games have had a great effect on my small sample size, but they'd hardly leave a scratch on the overall statistics.

They didn't create the art for the dividers. The art for the Enhanced Edition dividers came from the old hp trackers for each hero, before they came out with tokens. Once the trackers became obsolute, they just reused the art for the dividers, they didn't create anything new. SInce the trackers were only for the core game, none of the other heroes had it, so they picked a card from the deck.

And Rook City.

Ah, I misunderstood; I thought you had said you ALWAYS beat Iron Legacy.  Not sure how I got that from what you wrote.

No one is telling you you have to use the Statistics Envisioner. If you want to keep it to just your playstyle, your luck, and your draw, then by all means do so.

However, once you start to make broad comments of 'Dawn is always easier with 5 than 4' or whatever broad stroking comments you make, you are in a fallacy because how someone else plays the game will give you different results than your play. That is what the statistics are for - an averaged, over hundreds, if not thousands, of games where we can look to say 'Hey. Dawn trends easier with 4 players than 5'

After much work with the formulas (and these are put into the 'Look Up a Villain' section of the stats collection, here is the information for Dawn with 4 and 5 hero teams btw

please keep in mind, especially with the Five Man team for Normal Dawn, the error rate is probably around 8-10% or so.

Take those as you wish and as you see. As has been said, these are just Statistics, which is no cold hard proof of anything, just a noted trend.

Seriously, Envisioner? "Lazy"?

One person is doing all the art for this game. One person. I'll note he's also doing art for the other games they are working on, plus living his life (which has involved some significant things in the past couple years).

I'll stop there. This comment seriously pissed me off, Envisioner, knowing how hard the >G folks are working to give us a game we all love. All the other things I want to say to you on this would not be productive or useful to the conversation, so I won't bother.

To be clear, I did not say that.  It is the reverse of what I suspect of being true.

As has been said, these are just Statistics, which is no cold hard proof of anything, just a noted trend.

A "trend" is when "everyone" fashionable decides that pink is the hot color of the season, or when all the kids at a high school start wearing friendship bracelets, or somesuch.  I find it immensely hilarious that anyone uses this word in a context which is meant to be taken seriously.

Taken waaay out of context, dude.  If Mr. Rebotaro was feeling overworked, I would presume that he wouldn't have painted one extra picture of each of the Freedom Five members and the first three Prime Wardens and Visionary and Ra and Expatriette and Fixer, to say nothing of the villains and environments.  All I'm saying is, why not continue the pattern in the next two expansions?  The art style is relatively simplistic; I don't know how long these things take to paint, but I'm guessing he can get one or two done in a day, so going the extra mile and adding just a few more wouldn't have been a huge investment of effort, compared to how much he was already doing.  Heck, the dividers didn't have to have pictures at all, but if some of them have pictures which are unique to them (apart from these "HP Trackers" that I've never seen), why stop doing it this way after two expansions?  It creates an appearance of discontinuity which is unharmonious, that's my whole point.

Also, when I said "they" seemed to be being lazy, I didn't necessarily mean him; I don't know who exactly is involved in creating such sundries as packaging.  I confess, I forgot how small a company >G is; I always assume these relatively nonessential decisions are being made either by a clueless marketing department that likes focus groups, or a single embittered intern whose name is known only to his immediate supervisor.  It is the curse of >G's success and high production values that I could momentarily and absent-mindedly mistake them for the typical corporation which functions this way.

You do realize that words have multiple meanings and contexts, right? A trend can refer to both science and pop culture and both uses are equally valid.

So, back on topic: We had our first game with SkinWeaver the other day. Turns out he's not so bad... When you forget to count him as a zombie.  He was still pretty scary and we definitely were worried, but we had a lot of great draws including OX having both Innervation Rays triggering start of third turn and both Tachyon and Scholar stopping SkinWeaver from doing damage for a total of 5 turns.

There were a lot of other entertaining moments, but with that one mistake I don't want to act like it was a legitimate game, so there's no real point in telling them. 

Looking forward to giving him another, more realistic chance!

This. Just because you're ignorant of the statistical definition of the word, doesn't mean it's nonexistant.

I use trend analysis all the time as a foundational part of my work and I can comfortably say, from the confident perspective of years of professional experience, that the kid doesn't have a fg clue what he is talking about. No amount of overly verbose b*******ing will make up for a transparent lack of knowledge or experience.

I'm also all angried up by the disrespectful comments made toward Adam and the pathetic attempt at retraction where even more insults were heaped on. You were wrong, you were rude, now please just apologise because it's the right thing that normal people do at this point.

Ahh, sorry everybody, I'm usually so mild mannered but even I've just got fed up with this now.

Edited by Rabit for profanity

Edited by Mezike for some other, apparently less obvious profanity

Understand, Mezike, but please don’t use profanity.

My apologies, folks. I think this is another case where we're better off ignoring the bait Envisioner is setting before us and get back to the conversation around the new promo villains.

Seriously looking forward to trying out the new Spite, myself…

Also, I did forget to mention that, in playing the new GloomWeaver, I absolutely loved the way it felt, the flavor of it, etc. It was great the way he just ate everything in play!

I had a nail-biter of a game against Spite.  It was a 4 person one, with Wraith.  We couldn't get ahead of the drugs, but managed to flip him before he got the fifth one out (no Mind-phyre).  

We were doing well, and then it happened. We were putting the hostages back into play to get new equipment out (since he had the drug that made us put equipment back).  We had him down to low HP, but we were all pretty beat up.  He proceeded to get a Collateral damage...then destroyed a victim when he punched us.  It was enough to set off collateral damage and hurt everyone more.  which set off collateral damage again, destroying the next victim and hurting us MORE.  Then again!  

We all went down.  Wraith popped him with a combat stance first, but by the third round of damage, we were all done.

EDIT: We learned our lesson- when using the eyepiece, Collateral damage is NOT a better option than a lab raid.  Also, IF you are going to let Collateral damage come out, be be better at math than me when calculating how much damage you think he's going to do!  Your last words shouldnever be "Wait guys, I forgot- he gets an extra damage because we left that guy in the safe house, and..."

We beat him in the rematch. Someone else double-checked my math the next time. 

Yeah, sorry everybody, I went all forum macho there and I'm happy to delete the post altogether if it causes offence.

So far I've played the new Gloomy and was utterly destroyed; I used the Dark Watch (well, three of 'em anyway) against regular Spite and although the HP ran down to single digits the heroes were never really troubled by him and had him in the pocket the whole way. I haven't played much over christmas as EggNog and complicated card combos don't usually go well together for me but the next adventure on the slate will be the new Spite on Advanced followed by Dark Watch vs Advanced Skinwalker, because feeling the pain is how I like to roll

Envisioner wrote:

This is exactly the attitude I most wish to see purged from our species's consciousness.  It is the attitude that it's okay to let ten people die in order to save ninety lives...my sympathy is with the ten, and I would rather see all one hundred perish, so long as it was not a human being who made the decision which cost their lives.  Whereas, if what's on the line is something less than human lives, it's probably not even worth worrying about it.

This is a terrible misuse of Statistics.

If Statistics point to a way to save 90% at the cost of 10% that isn't the end of the story.  You use those statistics then to figure out what is it about the 90% that makes it different from the 10% and then do your best to get the 10% into the other 90%.  That's how statistics work.

That is a much better option than just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping everyone lives.

Statistics let us study what happens, if we can look and find consistencies than we can plan ahead to best prepare for what troubles lie ahead.  Without statistical analysis the job of prediction ends up in the hands of mystics and hyperbole, which tend to do much more harm than good.

Any tool can be misused, and Humans will misuse anything if it gives them a perceived advantage.  We don't stop using tools because someone misuses them.

We played our first game against Skinweaver a few days ago.  It was very, very fun.  We lost on his flip side, but we enjoyed every moment of the game.

We basically had the same level of "Fun" we usually experience facing Gloomweaver, but with more of a challenge.  I'd like to see more decks structured like Skinweaver's.  It's a challenge without being a chore.  The stakes are high without a mess of "Blow up (H) hero cards and play the top card of the villain deck" or "The heroes cannot play/draw cards or use powers" effects.

What I'm saying, I guess, is Gloomweaver continues to be one of my favorite villains.

Dee Dub Ex is fantastic fun, and Dee Dub Fix is filled with options.  You never know which card you want to blow up next, and it's awesome when your teammates have a card they're willing to part with so you can get more on your field.  We've yet to play with Dee Dub Mist or Dee Dub Setback, but they'll be high on our priorities with GloomSpite!

Skinweaver can be really annoying when his relics won't stay dead, but that's mostly a case of bad luck.

I'm 33 as of yesterday, just FYI.

doesn't have a fg clue what he is talking about.


I prefer to think of it as "not buying into what society wants to persuade me to believe".


I'm also all angried up by the disrespectful comments made toward Adam and the pathetic attempt at retraction where even more insults were heaped on.


There was no intent to "heap more insults"; when I said the art was simple, I didn't mean it was bad.  I like the art style, but that doesn't change the fact that it almost certainly takes relatively little time to complete each piece, compared to more complex and detail-intensive forms of art.

You were wrong, you were rude, now please just apologise because it's the right thing that normal people do at this point.


Perhaps "normal" people apologize when they've done nothing of consequence wrong, just to preserve social harmony.  I however believe in standing for a principle, no matter who wants to force me to back down.  My "wrong" is simply a different perspective on the truth from the one I've been spoon-fed by the establishment, and my "rude" is simply refusing to water down my beliefs in order to remain popular.


Edited by Rabit for profanity Edited by Mezike for some other, apparently less obvious profanity


And for the record, I don't mind being sworn at, so no need to white-knight on my behalf.  I've got a thick skin, I can take it.

And there I was thinking the forum had been lovely and peaceful recently.

Oh well. I enjoyed it while it lasted. 

Envisioner, if you want to interact with normal people, you are going to have to understand and respect their opinions. All you're doing is trying to spoon feed everyone your specfic truth. You are doing to this forum exactly what you are complaining about society doing to you. You seem to think of yourself as a captain going down with his ship, but the truth is, in this thread, you've just been a rat who refuses to leave the sinking ship.

I do apologize for the negativity of that comment and will try to refrain from going down this road in the future.

Anyway, Skinweaver is great. I've only played two games against him, and I'm going on vacation soon so it'll be a while before I get a chance to play against him for Gloomy Spite.

I'm trying really hard not to cross a line here guys; it may not be apparent to you, but this is me going to immense effort to try to be nice.  Much of this post was stuff I edited out of my last comment because it seemed too histrionic; now that the topic has shifted a bit more to the subject of me personally, I'm putting it back in, but please believe me when I say that I'm not trying to be antisocial - quite the opposite.  If I didn't care about you, all of you, I'd shut up and let you have your opinions, without burdening you with mine.  I want to have my say in your presence because I sincerely think you could benefit from hearing my take on things.

I have enough trouble with the understanding, which is pretty much a prerequisite for the respecting.  I'm constantly surprised to discover how strongly people around me react to what I consider to be innocent statements; I would have assumed that people who were incredibly sensitive, easily hurt by carelessly-chosen words, would avoid all contact with the Internet like the plague, given that it pretty much exists for no other purpose than to allow words to be carelessly chosen.

Mezike, I'm sorry you thought my attempt at "retraction" was "pathetic"; I was merely trying to clarify that my earlier statement was not meant as such a harsh criticism as it had been taken.  I have phrased my statements somewhat poorly, and I do apologize for that - but not because I believe I did anything wrong, only because I was unsuccessful in my aim of communicating clearly.  It is a constant process of trial and error, as I attempt the impossible task of figuring out how a large number of people I know only very slightly will react to my statements, none of which are EVER meant to be taken as combative.

If I knew how you lot would react, I would always write in such a way as to avoid provoking you, but you remain utterly inscruitable and baffling to me in your volatility; I am left barely daring to speak at all, given your capacity to (from my perspective) overreact, to what I think are completely innocuous phrasings.

All you're doing is trying to spoon feed everyone your specfic truth.

Not at all.  I make no attempt to present this as That Which Must Be Believed; it's all just my take on things, and I do absolutely nothing to stop others from dissenting.  I really think that people benefit from hearing other perspectives, even if they disagree with them.  If you come away from this conversation convinced that I'm an idiot because I contradict something that you consider a proven truth, then congratulations on having reaffirmed your own perspective!  I just don't want you to take it for granted that EVERYONE thinks the way you do.

You seem to think of yourself as a captain going down with his ship

More like trying desperately to convince the crew to stop sailing it off a cliff…  (I don't mean you guys there, just society in general.)

Well as a general rule for everyone in the world, when people around you start making annoyed/upset noises that's the point where you should probably shut the hell up, or at least calm it down a bit. Continuing from that point is a good way to end up in a personal argument that no-one benefits from, and mostly leaves you looking like a dick.

It's pretty arrogant to assume that someone who knows a reasonable amount about a subject hasn't already heard your type of opinion before. Your opinion is not a gift that we should all be grateful for. I can listen to as many people tell me how homeopathy cures cancer as there are stars in the sky and it doesn't change the fact that I think (backed up by a whole lot of science and a whole lack of science on their part) that they are wrong.

Calming down would be a good idea, were I ever entirely capable of it (I've been trying, seriously; stopping and thinking before I blurt stuff out is totally my New Years' Resolution, and I'm even starting early).  But the shut up part…er, no.  Did Robespierre shut up when the King and Queen of France disapproved of what he said?  Did Martin Luther shut up about the problems of medieval Catholicism?  No, men of good conscience always say what they feel needs to be said.  It'd be really nice if they weren't punished for that, they certainly don't want to be - but they have to be willing to risk it, or nothing ever changes for the better (and changing for the worse is an absolute inevitability of the universe we live in).  I would rather be disliked for speaking up, than be silent party to a unilateral error of omission which could end up costing the whole of society.

It's pretty arrogant to assume that someone who knows a reasonable amount about a subject hasn't already heard your type of opinion before.

Why would I assume anything of the sort?  All human beings are unique; no person's capacity to contribute should ever be taken for granted.

Your opinion is not a gift that we should all be grateful for.

That is only your opinion.  Which I value about as much as you do mine.  I did not listen when people tried to tell my child-self that I was not special, and I'm not about to start now.  People deserve better than to have their contributions marginalized in such a fashion.

I can listen to as many people tell me how homeopathy cures cancer as there are stars in the sky and it doesn't change the fact that I think (backed up by a whole lot of science and a whole lack of science on their part) that they are wrong.

So?  How are they hurting you by saying such things?  As long as you don't follow their misguided advice (or even if you do, so long as you do so responsibly and with full understanding of the possible costs and consequences, weighed against the potential benefits and your confidence-or-lack-thereof in them), why should they not be free to say whatever they please in a forum of public discourse?  They can say homeopathy works, you can say it doesn't, and the whole world is better off from the debate being aired, rather than suppressed.  Maybe, just maybe, there's a tiny part of homeopathy that works, and people need to be exposed to the idea in order to eventually cut away the chaff and discover the true secret within it.

And similarly, I feel that there's a part of statistics which doesn't work as well as it's almost invariably assumed to, and that people should be discouraged from overvaluing it.  If someone says "cars are 99.999% certain not to spontaneously explode", I feel the need to point out that this statement in no way prevents your car from spontaneously exploding, and that you should take whatever steps you feel are appropriate to protect yourself against the danger, however small, that you might be the lucky loser of that particular lottery.  The decision is yours to make, but there's no reason why other people shouldn't be allowed to influence it, as long as they don't force you to agree with them.  If all of society accepted homeopathy without question but considered statistics to be the worst form of quackery, you and I would be on exactly the opposite sides here, but I'd like to think I'd at least give you the time of day, in view of how passionately you argued in favor of your "logic" and "evidence", even if I didn't agree with you that those things were important.

If my memory serves me correctly, I currently have 5 games against SkinWeaver and 3 against G-Spite. All of which have been victories.

Of those 5 games against SkinWeaver, 2 were DW versus him, both of which ended because NightMist was in Mist Form and allowed GloomWeaver to murder himself. 2 of the other games were randomized and happened to have Visionary in it, both of which ending thanks to Visionary in her Telekinetic Cocoon. The other game took play in Insula Primalis, Legacy with Next Evolution and Lead from the Front in play, making GloomWeaver's start of turn damage meaningless to the heroes, while Ra had Flesh of the Sun God handy, making the Volcanic Eruption meaningless to the heroes as well. One of these days the randomizer will give me heroes against GloomWeaver that won't be the heroes exploiting his self damaging tendency to self murder. However he is much more difficult then base GloomWeaver, because most of those games would of been loses.

Against G-Spite, 2 of them we decided to have him flip. One of those games were very entertaining, because we would abuse a Innocent Bystander like crazy, by saving him and releasing him 2 times a round. Fairly certain he was fed up with us, but he eventually died, so no witnesses to tell the tale. Overall I think his difficulty is about the same as base Spite, but he certainly is a lot more enjoyable of a game!

Envisioner, I was at first going to reply to this in terms of actual philosophical argument, because there are so many fallacies and moral absolutist pollution floating around your arguments that it really bears dissection.  But, for whatever reason, you seem to be completely unable to admit that you might just possibly be wrong, so I'm not going to waste my typing here.

But in the end?  You're not a martyr here.  You're not Martin Luther to whom you allude a comparison.  You're not Ghandi.  You're not doing anyone a service with your negativity and general argumentativeness.  There's no tyranny here that you're fighting against, no injustice that's going to be righted by your adherence to a byzantine and illogical personal code.

You're arguing against the fundamental logic of mathematics on a forum for a card game.   Honestly, man?  Just. Chill. Out.  

Frankly, I'd like everyone to chill out.

In some situatuations, the best response is no response at all.

That's very zen of you.

Alright, I'll play Absolute Zero for this game.  Just keep in mind that sometimes I like to be Fanatic, and don't take it all personally and stuff; it's just who I am.

I appreciate that this thread has calmed down. Still, given the negativity, I want to be clear about some things:

The first rule on The Forum Discourse Rules (https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/official-rules-part-2-forum-discourse-rules-4236) is 'Do not post pejoratives about other people'. There have been a bunch of insults and aspersions. It needs to stop. Even if you're angry. Even if the other person seems patently wrong and rude. Even if your profession has been dismissed. Even if you've been insulted or dishonered. If you can't state your opinion without using an insult, don't do it. If you feel that someone else has misbehaved and needs to face justice, report it to the Moderators.

I recognize that the above isn't always easy or fun. If there's someone else whose posts cause you to be upset, we want to know about it. We don't, however, want to see negative comments and flame wars.

Because  I don't like ending things on a negative note, I offer you this picture of me dressed as the Dish Fairy at Halloween.

Best ending to a post.

seconded

Dish fairy? Seriously?

Well, having played Skinwalker twice now, with selected decks rather than random or theme, we'd have to rank Skinwalker at a high 3/low 4.

For one thing, it seems like he has more minions/Targets than any other villain (21, and the Vast Followings tend to bring them back). If not, it's real close. That means you're always busy shooting something: voodoo pins or relics or cursed acolyte or Ophidia. Other than maybe the zombies and sometimes the pins, you can't really afford to let anything stay out.

Granted, we used Rook City for the first environment, and Silver Gulch for the second (random draw on the first, choice on the second), and they both beat us up pretty badly. Especially when Skinwalker flipped and chewed through an Explosives Wagon. But it seems like you need mass-attacking (Ex-Pat, Tempest) and damage boosting (Legacy) to get by. Don't worry much about deck manipulation and fancy-dancy juggling, and just concentraet on hard-hitting heroes.

It takes us forever to flip him. By then we've cleared the board pretty much of all of his minions, and fortunately Legacy in our 2nd game drew Leads... and Next Evolution pretty early, letting him negate Skinwalker's damage. That's the only thing that kept us going down much earlier. Once we flipped him, he pretty much went through us with whatever other minions he drew.

We fought Skinweaver in Silver Gulch our first (and only) time.  Those Explosives Wagons really jack up the pain on everyone.  And when they finally go off... *shudder*

We tried another fight tonight, with Realm of Discord and... Legacy, Wraith, DW Ex-Pat, and Haka. We did better, and we might have won, but it was kind of boring. There's just too many hit points of things that you have to shoot to get to Skinwalker. Three 25-HP relics, however many 9-HP voodoo pins... I don't think we had time to damage Skinwalker until Turn 8, and we got him to flip on Turn 13. We had Legacy running interference with Lead... + Next evolution to prevent melee, and lots of healing from Positive Energy Force and Legacy's healing power. We probably could have won, but after 13 turns and 45 minutes, it just didn't seem worth it to slog through.

Maybe we should fight Skinwalker on Wagner? Only three targets there...

And that's the other problem. Besides Skinwalker having 21 minions, his "when a non-villain target is destroyed" ability on his starting guarantees that you'll draw several extras beyond the once-per-turn basis. Given three of those have 25 HP, and two of them give Skinwalker protection from damage, it's very hard to make a dent in him.