What to do about Friction?

So, my friend and I tried playing Vengeance with the new multi-villain method finally, and got kicked to the curb. Friction was the first villain in the play order and ended up destroying us by locking down our player decks (via repeatedly destroying all of our ongoing and equipment cards). We focused and destroyed her, but not until all heroes were down into low single digit HP. We flipped Friction's card over only to be terribly dismayed that her incapacitate power was to keep destroying an ongoing or equipment card each time her turn came up. I felt particularly picked on, as I was playing Wraith (as did my friend with the Naturalist deck).

What's the secret to keeping player decks active with Friction playing in the game? I'm fine with a good challenge and all, but Friction made the game "unfun" by preventing the players from being able to build up their powers and then continuing to strip them. By the time she was killed, we couldn't get more than one ongoing or equipment card into play per hero, and then we had to decide which hero got the big "reset" when her turn came around. It was downright frustrating.

Any recommendations on how to play against her?

You were only playing with 2 heros? 

Either way, take her shock dampeners down first. She will start burning herself down so that will help you. 

Friction is tough, especially in a two player game, but it's perfectly feasible to build up against her. Naturalist has Natural Born Vigor, that lets him use two powers in a turn. With that out, it's perfectly viable to burn Naturalist's current form to satisfy Friction on her turn, play a new ongoing on your turn, use Naturalist's inherent power to recover the Form card, and then use whatever additional power you got from the Form or the new ongoing card. It's not ideal, and it's annoying, but it's not impossible.

I don't really recommend taking out Friction's dampeners with targeted damage. That's 9 damage that could be spent reducing her HP by 9, and there's no guarantee that she'll do 9 or more damage to herself from her own cards. (Obviously, if you have someone like Tempest doing a lot of lightning damage, that can change the calculus.) Her Stolen Gear is nasty, since it plays more cards and puts more Surges in her trash, making the cards she plays worse, so that's a reasonable target.

Locking down her deck can be worthwhile. Wraith and Naturalist can't lock her down completely, but Wraith can use IR Eyepiece to get rid of the cards that destroy ongoings. She's only got two Blinding Surges (which only destroy ongoings, so Wraith should be have nearly uneffected) so if you can control her ability to play multiple cards, you shouldn't have to worry about them until the end of the game.

My best method of success with anyone in the Vengeance bunch is to whittle all villains down as evenly as possible to try to take them down in a single round.

See my experience is the opposite, focus fire on one or 2, while plinking away at the others. AoE is great against them but focusing on one of them who’s incap is relatively harmless is a good early strategy. That said, by the time I kill one, it’s easier to kill the others because usually I am built up and they lost a character who had been built.

But to address the OP I would focus someone else, because her incap is nasty and she doesn’t destroy things that often. Or skip playing vengeance mode until you can handle a H=3 game, thw game just isn’t balanced for 2 heroes

As a general rule–by which I mean it hasn’t always worked–I’ve preferred to have villains active just because there are ways to neutralize active villains. You can Ground Pound or Adhesive Foam or whatever to mitigate what they can do to you. Once they’re Incapacitated, though, those tricks don’t work and they just have a steady, unblockable stream of screw you. I agree that focusing on those whose Incapacitated effects aren’t so bad is perfectly okay, but generally speaking, I’d rather kill 'em all at once.

I'm with Humble Knight on this one - focused fire is the way to go, in my experience. Stolen Gear should absolutely be a priority target - having it doubles her effectiveness, so getting rid of it right away is vital. After that, my approach varies depending on whther Advanced mode is on - if not, then with a bit of AoE to help I find it's worth taking out Shock Dampeners and then leaving her to her own devices, but if so that -1 damage taken makes this a less-than-optimal plan.

Out of curiosity, how did Friction keep breaking your stuff? The only destruction she has is Blinding Surge, and that only hits ongoing cards.

I like to focus on the Shock Dampeners when it comes to Friction - that way she helps you out by killing herself faster. One time I was playing Chrono Ranger and chucked By Any Means on her so she killed herself even faster. That was fun :).

We fight the Vengeance Five (well, three in our case ;)) by focusing fire on someone until they go down. Friction doesn't usually end up being the first, but we haven't fought them for a while so I can't remember who's preferable. Not Blade or Fright Train, though. I seem to recall finding Prolateriat's incap power the most "harmless". Before we focus fire on the villains, though, we try to get rid of their worst cards...well, okay, that pretty much amounts to "everything they get to start he game with in play" with the possible exception of Proletariat's clones which can end up gtting nuked by him anyway (with that "reform self" card whose name I can't remember exactly right now).

I agree with the focus fire method.  The incap sides are much less dangerous than an active villain, especially if they have minions out.  It went against every fiber of my being but my group adopted a strategy of just focus fire each villain, not anything from their deck, just the actual villain one at a time.  After the first one or two (depending on H) go down the game gets much more managable.

This is the same reason we also ignore shock dampeners, just kill the villain as soon as possible so they stop drawing cards.  The idea of letting friction kill herself is nice, but we have found its better to just put that damage into her.  At 9 hit points, thats like what, more than a third of her overall life.  You can be well on your way to getting rid of her.

Overall I don't like the vengence format as much simply because we now have this strategy of pick a villain and completely ignore everything else on the table till its dead.  This strategy has been very effective.  In the 1-villain style games my group really tends to ignore the villain and deal with all the minions/ongoings/etc first which I enjoy more. 

Doesn't Fright Train take extra damage the first time he gets damaged each turn?  That's usually a pretty irresistible magnet for our pew pews, so he often drops first for us.

Yeah if we have AoE we will usually throw a point or two at FT so we take full advantage of his ongoing. We also take out nasty minions like an impulsion beam or a nasty nemesis. Last time I played we took out ermine first because she's more likely to kill your stuff than friction or one of the others is. And her incap is fairly tame. 

Proletariat is almost always first on my list. Its why I suggest going after Shock Dampeners first so you can focus your fire elsewhere since she is going to take a fair amount of damage just from herself. Always play to the situation though.

I don't see the point in going after Shock Dampeners. Every point of damage you put on Shock Dampeners is a point of damage you're not putting on Friction. Even a single point of damage on Shock Dampeners might have been the point you needed to kill Friction a turn earlier.

The (fright)train of though here is that you only spend 9(?) damage on Friction instead of 20-something and the rest on more pressing matters (like the Russian or the Train) as she can easily kill herself. You won't always be able to pull it off that way depending on luck of the draw, but if you have ways to manage it, I can't see why you wouldn't let her work against herself. Even a single point of damage on Friction might have been the point you needed to kill someone else. That logic works both ways here.

As a guy that usually plays advance Ermine is extreme top priority that destroy equipment AND ongoing is probably one of the nastiest advanced adjustment. On the bright side I managed to play a fair AZ without equipment twist the ether was still a great boon if only to reduce the self harm.

Plus, any AoE you have hits both of them (assuming it's not dealing lightning damage, of course), so it can be a matter of just dealying 5 or 6 instead of 20.

By the time she's done more than 9 damage to herself with Shock Dampeners, she might have destroyed everybody's Ongoings and Equipments three times over. It's just not worth letting her kill herself the slow and unreliable way.

Given that Friction has no way of destroying Equipment on her front side (short of Caspit's Playground or Imbued Vitality) this seems unlikely.

I usually go after Friction directly. However, if Ermine (who actually will destroy a bunch of your stuff and shred your hand) is in the game, I'll focus Ermine and send area damage toward Shock Dampeners in the hopes that Friction will wear herself down while we deal with the other villains. This usually works pretty well.

I play advanced, and focusing down Friction with her -1 taken isn't something I'm willing to commit to.

Focusing Ermine, goddess of destruction is a much higher priority.

On advanced my priority mostly looks like this:

1.  Ermine

2.  Stolen Equipment

3.  Clones

4.  Fright Train

5.  Proletariat

6.  Friction

7.  Baron

Incapping Friction while Ermine is active is suicide.  You can't keep cards in play at all.

Can we agree Ermine is high on the kill list? After her there are several good targets, but she will mess with your set up if she is on advanced or not.

If you have multi target but not all target damage, there are several targets to prioritize. If we are going after Friction, hit both the dampers and her, she goes down much faster. Fright Train is always a great target for those because he takes extra damage from it.

Also Advanced blade gives the dampers dr 2 which makes Friction the better target

I remember the only game I played, and it was solo, was a 5v5. I got incredibly lucky and won, but one thing was having to leave Ermine alone forever because she had her redirect card out and I didn't have any ongoing destruction yet. It could have been a lot worse though, I think I avoided just about all the worst things they could throw at me by sheer chance. (Yes, setback was in the game )