Based on the new challenges, it seems that K.N.Y.F.E. will be the nemesis of Progeny rather than the Scholar (at least I think the general assumption among non-playtesters was that the Scholar and Progeny seemed like a natural nemesis fit?) and the Scholar will square off against Biomancer...that one IS completely new to everyone, right? I'm not just missing something there?
I would hope K.N.Y.F.E. wouldn't be Scholar's nemesis.
Interesting... I've never heard about this Biomancer character before, but looking at the icon for the achievement we've definitely seen him. White hood, orange face with a square jaw... After work I'll have to find the card. I KNOW I've seen that face somewhere before...
Wait, where is Biomancer referenced?
https://greaterthangames.com/content/challenges-achievements-and-steam
Find The Scholar's section in the achievements.
Got is. Isn't that the guy on Sucker Punch
Yes, yes it is. I wish I was on my computer right now, it took me forever to load that thing up.
Also Slaughterhouse Six is hte name of Ambusacde's team and the Challenge Modes look insane (Akash immune to all non hero damage!) That might be the default way to play Gloomy now
So much new info over the past few days!! Man, I really love this kinda thing. I really do.
1) I've said this numberous times here on the forum. We will see body-doubling robots. We first saw a bit of this in Argent Adepts deck, and the idea was solidified by art in Tactics. Scholars nemesis Biomancer (as seen in Tachyons card Sucker Punch) is the guy creating these things. I would have pegged that guy as a Unity nemesis personally, but Homunculus has ties to alchemy so it makes sense.
2) Some interesting "primary nemisis" listings for sure. Untiy Bunker and AbZero, as said by Christopher a few days ago, already have their primarys in the game. Unity being the primary of Iron Legacy though is realy interesting. Thats something Id like to know more about. Visionary have the Primary nemmy of Toy Master (when there is no nemmy symbol in the card game) is also interesting and I wonder if that is something that could be changed in the future. Also, look for Operative to be the main villain of whatever deck turns into the ninjas/assasins themed deck with Heartbreaker.
3) There is a "sinister six" type team just like we all speculated about called the Slaughter House 6. Look for these guys to be the ones formated into Vengeance type decks.
4) Adam, those covers are awesome. My favorite by far is the Baptism by Fire cover. So great. You're the man. Don't believe those things Christopher says about you.
Prime Wardens #25 Breaking Point:
THAT IS DARK VISIONARY PEOPLE!!!! I'm freaking out a bit.
Also Legacy #202. man.
Looking forward to playing Kismet and Ambuscade.
Not so much Cosmitron. First turn ouch.
I hope these challenges make their way into the video game. Things like that are great when you unlock something cool or get points for bragging rights.
Once I got into the villains document, I had one other thought --
I think we've finally seen Ryan Frost's face!!!!!!!
(Christopher, is that really it, or is that a decoy?)
I'm right there with you! That would be fantastic.
I figured it out (although of course I’ve been ninja’d by now) and it is definitely the sucker punch guy. Note, whether that’s actually Biomancer or just a homunculus is still up in the air, but whatever
Everything we have learned about nemeses has been added to the spoiler list. It's out in public, after all.
Also, the unknown character art speculation thread needs to be updated.
What page?
12, I think. Right next to the Wager Master's entry. You can see Guise's foot in the background.
Yeah that is Ryan Frost's face, great explanation for that picture too, but you have to wait for that.
Thread updated.
So we're discussing the challenges in general in this thread now yes?
I want to see Setback in a villain challenge with Cosmitron, or any environment that uses 
, particularly Wagner Mars Base and Self-Destruct Sequence!
Oooooo.
Looking up Tūmatauenga for Haka's "Avatar of" achievement led to an interesting bit of reading.
"Tūmatauenga thinks about the actions of Tāne in separating their parents, and makes snares to catch the birds"
That makes Savage Mana a deeper picture.
EDIT: Also I see a few challenges from the partially scribbled list from >G first open day.
I wonder if these will be put on the new over-sized villain card.
I also noticed at least one challange (Spite) that is based on an older playtesting version of him.
Might just be me, but the Slaughter House 6 gave me vague memories of Gatchaman. We've got the Owl and Eagle (sorta) on the left and a Joe the Condor in the right corner. If the female had a skirt, I'd have a heart condition.
YES! I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that! Condor Joe is my hero.
Sentinel like team of Gatchaman. Joe's power would be to destroy one targer with 2 or fewer HP. This would be the best way to represent him just beathing the crap out of one henchmen over and over and over again.
Does anyone know if the first callenge for Parse wants me to use Targeting Arrow 4 times in a round, or just stack up some Multipliers? It can be read both ways, but 4 targeting arrows sound tough.
Given there are only 3 Targeting Arrows in the deck, I doubt it means 4!
It could mean 1 of them (or Exploit Vulnerability) and 4 attacks, you have increased the damage by 4, albeit spread over 4 different attacks.
And this is why the Sentinerds are my favourite group! No one every knows these guys. Joe is a very fine hero to have, honestly. I've been smitten by Jun the Swan for a long while now, but there's something great about each member of the team. Maybe not the kid. Though, definitely the kid. I just don't like his face.
Yeah! Gatchaman and Freedom Force are the two Super Hero teams I would love to see in Sentinels format. Someone on BGG has slowly been working out Freedom Force, but no one's put any efforts that I know of into Gatchaman converts. And Joe with Sucker Punch base power sounds pretty much perfect.
I've been calling the guy who looks like Condor Joe "Fat Batman" for a while now.
I mentioned this to Adam and he pointed out that he is supposed to be a Manta Ray.
I know, but you could play one of them twice with some adept-shenanigans that I don't bother to figure out 
I completely forgot about Exploit Vulnerability! It could be done with 2 of them in play and then followup with 2 arrows. But my question still stands: Is the challenge saying "give Truth the effect +4 damage taken", or "make someone hit Truth 4 harder than they usually would"?
Now that I think about it, the challenges often wants you to recreate art in the deck. That would make the latter option ( make someone hit Truth 4 harder than they usually would) the correct one.
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Critical Multiplier which is the card referenced for that challenge.
I assumed that didn't apply, that increases hero damage dealt, not Truth's damage taken (which might end up being the same thing).
Technically the same thing, in my opinion.
Not in mine. A villain having DR1 compared to, say Shaky Arm reducing a hero's damage by 1 are not the same thing, the end result might be the same but the method by which you get there is not.
Any combination of Critical Multiplier, Exploit Vulnerability, and Targeting Arrow should satisfy that challenge. If Critical Multipler wasn't allowed for completing that challenge then the only way to accomplish it would be to have the Exploit Vulnerability out before Truth came out and an ability to play all three Targeting Arrows that same round. Not allowing Critical Multiplier to me would defeat the thematic reason for the challenge which Crtical Multiplier represents.
No. It doesn't say it has to be done in a single hit, just that you increase it by 4.
Even without it being a single hit I still think any attack against Citizen Truth increased by Critical Mulitpler would count towards the goal.
I'll note that there are 2 copies of Exploit Vulnerability. Get both those and Snap Decision into play, with 2 copies of Targetting Arrow ready, you will be set.
SInce the talk is mostly about Challenges, I shall comment on The Ennead Challenge Mode. It was quite fun, I used Mister Fixer, Unity, and Kvothe Argent Adept. The match itself was quite easy, but that's mostly thanks to Mister Fixer playing Grease Gun 5 times throughout the 9 round match. The starting members of The Ennead were Shu, Atum, and Set which lead to two additional cards being played per round. Geb, Isis, and Nuit also joined in.
I really enjoy the Challenge Mode and can see how terrible it could of been if they were able to deal damage more, because boy I would of been hit by both the Desert's Wraths they played. They did manage to destroy many bots, thanks to several plays of The Grave Beckons.
I’m really scared to try the challenge mode ennead, but I did the agent of gloom spite and skinwalker gloomweaver challenge with the freedom five no promos, the spite part was difficult but we were able to handily take care of gloomweaver thanks to us already being set up.
Advanced challenge gloomweaver with that same team was another matter since only zero can deal damage that isn’t melee or projectile consistently and the set up for him took time, at least the other heroes were around to mop up cultists and zombies. Still didn’t get gloomy to flip and only one relic came out, I’ll probably try it again with visionary just to stack the villain deck against us.
We also did blade advanced in challenge mode, that was a crazy fun race.
I have now taken on Akash'Bhuta's challenge mode using Expatriette, Fanatic, and Setback. Sadly it was a loss, with Akash'Bhuta being at a whopping 73 HP left. Fanatic was the first to go, followed by Expatriette, and Setback not too far behind.
I just noticed this and am wondering what everyone thinks about this...
Have you noticed that Ra's "primary Nemisis" is Anubis, and not the Ennead?
I noticed. Makes a lot more sense from the mythology standpoint.
My challenge akash bhuta fight hinged on abusing cocoon and smoke bombs keeping all other heroes at the same hp. The dealing damage part fell to Setback with a Looking Up, Wrong time and Place and 2 High Risk Behavior with up to 15 tokens in play. O-X had the nasty job of keeping enough equipment and ongoings in play to protect from badly times destructions.
I did the challegne against Ambuscade, Matriarch, Kismet, Omitron and Blade so far, each met with a success (Kismet was the only one we had to start over on, oddly enough).
It's scary how Ambuscade's challenge is essentially a time bomb. The more his deck thins, the closer you get to playing his traps one after another in an infinite loop.
We had a scary moment on an Armed and Dangerous on our third game vs. the challenge, that card just revealing recklessly like that when he had 3 devices and all his traps in there, one device got played by a trap resolving and we started to realize that we could very well lose on that card despite how well we had shut him down to that point.
reveal-reveal-reveal-trap-damage-shuffle-play-reveal-reveal-trap-damage-shuffle-play. . .
Fortunately we hit a run and gun on the third and shuffled his devices back in, and then finally found one. A second armed and Dangerous there would have been absolutely crazy.
And if you somehow pull of all devices out of the deck an Armed and Dangerous is an insta-loss. Good thing that is hard to do, just don't go Savage Mana crazy.
We've played:
Grand Warlord Voss: the three cards on flip was rough, but we were able to clear the field and after that he never flipped again. If you let him flip back you can get into trouble.
Omnitron: I think this one would actually be better for Cosmic, it only came into play once in the game.
Cosmitron: If anyone ever wins this with 5 heroes and (H)=10 they get a trophy, when his character card deals 9 energy damage to the 8 hero targets with the highest HP, let alone the 8 components to start the game. You cannot flip him and live, and then the Automaton Drones have 10hp. Three players it was too hard to be fun, more was just insane.
Kismet: Love it, just a great addition to the deck, and made her legitimately hard unless you Parse/Visionary her.
Spite: Was much improved, still wasn't worth saving the victims but the burn to flip and don't bother attacking doesn't work, and that is great. Under pressure from the very start, and it kept up throughout the fight.
Matriarch: Ouch. Really tough fight.
Akash,
Akash is the only one we tried and holy hell is she a real threat when she can't hurt herself. We had her down to 92 before dying
I did several battles with the ennead, 2 with just challenge mode and the other two advanced on challenge mode, the first set was ready enough neither set or Atum were out to play multiple cards, but pairs was and he was making life difficult enough for me since every card was people now. After a slog we finally got them in the second game.
Advanced challenge Ennead was another matter, Nuit, Osiris, Set, and Atum were the first for out the hate needles to say we were trounced, I’ve never been more upset to see power of the ennead enter play, because in a regular game it’s just healing which I can normally deal with but on challenge it comes with all those fun rider effects. It was crazy to say the least, I had a revenge match just to try and get them, it was an uphill battle but we eventually win with all the heroes circling the drain around 1 or 2 hp.
Crazy fun I’m really glad that they put this together.
Out of curiosity what was your team for advanced challenge Ennead?
Advanced Ennead is hard enough to beat. Can't imagine the challenge on advanced. ouch.
One thing the challenge does is really drop the threat of extra card play, wince only the very first card played will trigger the effects. extra card play is less important than really good symbol effects.
Nuit is hard to deal with though.
I remember tempest, ra and argent adept I forget the fourth, but this is a match I lost.
When i scraped by a win it was legacy, freedom six tachyon (it was a revenge match don’t judge me), visionary, and the agent adept. I had to take advantage of takedown combined with vernal sonata/mental divergence several rounds towards the end, I pretty much used the visionary for just deck control on the environment since card play from the ennead almost didn’t matter especially when it was both atum and set out.
RIGHT.
Legacy, TLT, Wraith, Scholar and Haka in the Final Wasteland. Legacy for damage buff and potential Lead From The Front/Next Evolution combo; TLT for card draw and Hypersonic Assault, Wraith for utility and Throat Jab, Scholar for tanking and Offensive Transmutation, Haka for damage and Ground Pound.
Round one saw an Offensive Transmutation; round two saw Throat Jab (and a Synaptic Interruption to see off an EPE);round three saw Heroic Interception and Alchemical Redirection; round four saw Hypersonic Assault; round five saw the introduction of the Lead From The Front/Next Evolution combo; round six saw Lightspeed Barrage, Know When To Turn Loose and Haka of Battle strip 43 damage from a 48HP Cosmitron, and an Abominable Snowman drop him to 1; round seven saw Tachyon Synaptic Interruption his own attack back at him for the win.
I'd like my trophy now, please.
I’ve done 2, and on advanced both times.
First was Baron Blade, with Chrono-Ranger, Legacy, Parse, and Visionary at Insula Primalis. He got up to 12 cards before he flipped, but strategic use (read: spamming) of No Executions helped, and a brain burn cleaned it up so it didn’t become a real issue. Then Chrono-Ranger obliterated him in 2 rounds.
Then was The Ennead at a Cosmos environment, with Legacy, Ra, Chrono-Ranger, Super Scientific Tachyon, and Captain Cosmic. We ended with around 16 hp apiece, and only flipped a round or 2 before we won. Legacy really helped with the buffing, which allowed Chrono-Ranger and Ra to take them out in one or two rounds each. Geb died on the first round.
The name reminds me of a certain villain team in the Worm webnovel, though I imagine they're very different.
That would be the darkest villain deck ever, no question
And have a difficulty of 7 or 8, I’d imagine.
There was a team called Slaughter House 5 before they came along. They were never seen after the firebombing of Dresden, though.
That comic just got weird and existential after a while.
Well, Harry Dresden is a little strong on retaliation sometimes.
Oh my dear. Could anyone in the world imagine the terrior and destruction if Worm's characters were put into Sentinels decks? Ooogabooga! I think a Vengeance-style Slaughterhouse 9 could be mighty interesting playing!
I'll play Tattletale.
Worm has terriers?