What to do when heroes got the 'cheap' combo?

Lead from the front doesn't let you redirect environment or hero damage to Legacy, just villain damage.  Same with Smoke Bombs.

I like Flesh of the Sun God and Fire in the Biosphere myself.

Also Naturalist can make heroes immune to environment targets.

I don't mind when it happens, just like I wouldn't redraw if Dawn started with Blood Sweat Tears Anvil and Truth.  Some games go that way.

One of the reasons to play these games is to do cool stuff.

I tend to go against stuff that makes the game uncool, like Dark Visionary making the villain suck the whole game, or when Legacy Visionary or some other return engine keeps take down in play all game.  That's boring.  Using Wrest the Mind on EPE is cool.  Just like being Fixer vs. anyone that makes you damage yourself is cool.  We tend to pick heroes before the villain so we don't have people purposely picking heroes just to face that villain, and we normally random the villain.  So when it happens I don't mind.

Stop picking and use a randomizer?

How do I handle it? High Fives all around.

Just because occasionally you get a situation where it appears to be an easy win doesn't mean it is an easy win. I've had too many games come up where something has happened and a certain victory becomes a loss.

If you feel a situation is too cheap, don't use it.  I don't play Plague Rat on Wagner Mars because I know it'd be lame.  But even if a hero contains the potential of the kinds of ubercombos that you describe, they don't draw into them every game, so I figure it's perfectly reasonable to have them in.

If Ra makes the heroes immune to the volcano (note: Legacy CANNOT do this, as Lead from the Front only lets him take damage from VILLAIN cards; Next Evolution can protect himself indefinitely but all other heroes will eventually burn), just think of it as the fire-god having led the villains onto a volcanic outcrop and then keeping them trapped there, letting the convection heat slowly roast them alive until they surrender or pass out.

If Visionary blows up Omnitron with his own bomb, well, she's telekinetic; she just threw it right back at him and put up a forcefield around him to contain the blast.  It's a bit weird that ONLY she can do this (Tachyon can redirect one blast with Synaptic), since other heroes like Idealist have similar powers, but meh.

And when Fixer is feeling a mite feverish, it just lets him get his Drunken Kung Fu moves going....presumably he trained to use the Jack Handle like a staff while fighting in this manner.

Danger Sense would make Legacy not even need to use Next Evolution in this instance.

When his teammates are all incapacitated by the volcano and Legacy has no one to Galvanize, I'm sure he'll find that a consolation.

My friend chose Ra in his first game. The volcano came out, hit us once, then Ra read the card he'd just played. An expression of  "oh my god, I just realised something very cool" appeared on his face, and he asked me to confirm that the power did what he thought it did, I confirmed. 

The expression changed to one of genuine joy. he knew he could win the game for us. And he did.

Afterwards we talked for about 20 minutes about how the heroes heard ominous rumblings, the air filled with ash and smoke and the terrible heat of lava began to scorch both heroes and villain. Just as the heroes are beginning to worry about their impending fiery death, Ra steps forward with staff in hand, silhouetted against the forest fire that's already raging behind him. He holds the staff up to the sky, and the heroes begin to feel like this fire thing's not so bad really. One of them speaks. "Oh no, we're going to be killed by horrible burny lava! We should run away really very quickly!" Everyone grins. No one moves. They continue the fight knee-deep in the lava that is now reducing Omnitron to a puddle of molten metal and glass and plastic, with one hero or another commenting occasionally along the lines of, "Insula Primalis is pretty warm this time of year, huh? I'm glad we brought sunscreen..."

It was awesome.

And it makes up for all those times when you get beaten by someone who's usually easy, like Blade or Gloomweaver, in some hideously embarrassing way. 

I enjoy "cheap" combos. But I play with random everything, so I never get them intentionally. However, a certain group of heroes basically thrive on being a "cheap" combo. Visionary, Horus Ra, and EW Absolute Zero.

A Demoralizing Cocooned Visionary will never take damage and will deal out 1 point every round. Horus Ra incapped can put a One-Shot that will do nothing to said Visionary. While a incapped EW AZ either shuts down the Environment deck or can do 1 damage to a villain. It works on just about all villains!

Another one is, Visionary Twist the Ethering the Villain Character card. Ra plays Flesh of the Sun God and uses it. While EW AZ continues to be incapped and does what he did before. It works great against single target villains that lack mass ongoing destruction. If facing Plague Rat, Imbued Fire will also shut down Infection damage. Visionary getting the Telekinetic Cocoon will free up Ra's power phase, throw in Demoralization, and woo! Visionary is helping Ra keep up with damage.

Visionary with Twist the Ether on the Villain Character Card plus a Cocoon, throw in a Demoralization for bonus. Horus Ra incapped, putting a damaging one-shot on the top of the deck. EW AZ with Null-Point, bonus for Cold Snap, Impale, Focused Apertures, and/or Cryo Chamber.

Reason why Visionary rather than Dark Visionary? As each hero needs certain cards to work, Enlighten helps a lot to get thost cards.

Cocoon is for wusses.

Visionary doesn't fear her death, she knows it is coming, she also knows you won't be there to see it.

I play a different game.

When you're not in the mood for swingy outcomes based on sometimes-insurmountable card effects (on either side, though the Heroes are obviously much better at it), you're not in the mood for Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Young Legacy, on the other hand…

Horus Ra's incap is about as cheap as the game gets, being able to time-lock the villain forever unless they get bonus plays.  But at least he has to die first, unlike Dark Visionary.  I don't have either promo and I'd be reluctant to use them if I did; the original heroes are more than good enough in both cases, and I'd only ever even consider deploying their gamebreaking alternates against an extremely tough villain, like Iron Legacy or the Advanced Ennead.

What is all this fuss about the advanced Ennead? Sure they get harder but it is just so much fun going up against all of them. I have only played two games against normal Ennead; one when I first purchased them and second on g+ where they all came out anyways. I have taken on the advanced ennead more times than I can count (they along with dawn, dreamer and akash are my favorite to play, all on advanced) and the games are always nail bitting and loads of fun. Even if they play similarly each time, they are such an even team against a 4 team of heroes.

Now dawn, thats a different story. She is my nemisis (sorry expat). I am currently 3-18 against Dawn. One of those wins was on normal and two of the losses were on normal. Sometimes the games are close. Some aren't (but thats ok). But I can't stop playing her even after each beatdown. I once played three advanced games in a row against her and lost each one. By far my favorite villian.

Edit: Rereading what Edwin said I realize he was not complaining. My B.

Citizen Dawn tends to run hot and cold on us (apologies to Absolute Zero :) ). Sometimes she just thrashes us from the get-go.

Then last week I played a game with some relative newbies who wanted to play against her. I warned them that she's tough, but we just walked all over her. We had Legacy, Naturalist, Parse, and... someone else. Ra, maybe? In Insula. We just walked all over CD. She never even got a chance to flip, the environment never bothered us (Ra never did get out his flame immunity card, but we destroyed the lava twice before we had to deal with it).

I agree that it's a fun kind of hard, but it is still definitely hard.  There just isn't much that you can do to avoid being crushed like a bug when all of the Ennies come out in just a few turns, then get a +1 to damage and start healing.  The Ennead deck can destroy both Ongoing and Equipments, as well as dealing lots of damage from multiple sources in mid-sized enough increments that mitigators often won't work.  Beating them involves dishing out an incredibly huge amount of damage in a very short space of time - and then they have incap effects.

(It should probably go in another thread, but I'd be curious to hear about your strategy when fighting them.  EG do you kill Set and take advantage of free plays from his incap, do you save Tefnut for last so you don't have to discard, etc.)

Now dawn, thats a different story. She is my nemisis (sorry expat). I am currently 3-18 against Dawn. One of those wins was on normal and two of the losses were on normal. Sometimes the games are close. Some aren't (but thats ok). But I can't stop playing her even after each beatdown. I once played three advanced games in a row against her and lost each one. By far my favorite villian.

Dawn is great, as long as you don't fight her on Advanced with five heroes (or can stop her from flipping if you do).  Having one game run like four hours, because her last Citizen kept getting killed right before she unflipped, should have been enough, and yet somehow I managed to let it happen again.  No more!..

I will make a topic in gameplay section. It won't be a How to beat the advanced ennead thread but just my thoughts on them and how I usually take them on nor will it be tonight. I'll find some other time to write it up and not here so the mods dont have to split the thread.

How to beat the Ennead Advanced, easy edition:

1.  The Scholar. (flesh to iron is sick, + alchemical redirection eliminates almost all damage they can do, his all target damage and heal is broken when you are low enough and have + damage.

2.  Legacy.  Here's that + damage, and take down is awesome.  Lead and fortitude can let you keep others from taking too much, just don't go crazy.

3.  Mr. Fixer.  Jack Handle with + damage, Grease Gun, redirection and pipe wrench.

4.  Haka.  Rampage, HoB, Ta Moke, healing, Ground Pound.

5.  Tempest.  Tempest is a boss.  

6.  Omni-X.  Defensive blast with + damage, elemental defenses.

7.  Nightmist.  Mistform, oblivion.

they all have -damage taken options, multi target damage or boosting.

Kind of sad that Ra isn't on that list....

I agree, also think parse should be on there since she pretty much allows the heroes to ignore the pretty harmless nuit and go after the always annoying osiris/set/atum/etc.

My experience is that Ra takes essentially double damage from all their 1 HP damage sequences, and they don't have enough ongoing or environment cards for him to reliably produce large amounts of damage to all of them. It's a shame, but really, most Nemesis matchups are more in favor the villain than the hero.

Well, yeah, but Drawn to the Flame is so much fun against them! (Yes, I know X will always =0, but with nemesis bonus, it's basically the same as Tempest's base power, then Imbue Fire, then Staff, then any other bonuses… It adds up so fast!)

Haha yeah, Scorched Earth followed by Drawn to the Flame's power in the same turn (even if there are no villain ongoings or environment cards out) when Ra has numerous damage bonuses is always fun :D. Must bear that in mind next time I'm fighting the Chairman alongside Legacy in a busy environment...

Ra gets the crap kicked out of him with little mitigation, he does fine, but not as good as others.

Yeah, bringing a single-target damage dealer against The Ennead is asking for trouble.  Brings tanks, control, and global damage - that makes them cry.

Don't feel too bad for Haka, though - it's not like bringing Unity against Iron Legacy or anything.  It's just not optimal.

I'm actually kinda wary about using Imbued Fire against the Ennead.  While it boosts everyone's damage and gets rid of Shu's immunity, a third of the Ennead's deck deals fire damage to all hero targets, and Atum and Nephthys get a lot worse.  It's much more of a gamble against them than against other villains.  (Adaptive Plating Subroutine has a nasty habit of showing up 1-2 turns after Imbued Fire comes out, though...)

I can just picture Atum telling Ra "Stop burning yourself! Stop burning yourself!  Stop...."

Fanatic's chastize combined with Unity's stealth bot. fanatic deals herself 4 and everyone is basically immune to damage untill the ongoing is destroyed or fanatic kills herself.

Fortunately, Chastise has been errata'd that it can't be attached to hero targets.