Curious about Vengeance vs the Base Game

I had a question about the Heroes and the Villains that are included in the Vengeance Mega Expansion. With the introduction of Vengeance, we have 4 new Villains (and alternate Baron Blade) as well as 5 new Heroes. Can any of these Villains and Heroes be played outside of the new gameplay setup that is introduced in Vengeance? Or are they "barred" to only playing within that format? And I guess my question would lead to changing out the Heroes from the base game and the Villains from the base game as well, how would that work?

My friends and I are new to the game, and I recently only picked up the Enhanced Edition, the Rook City and Infernal Relics Combo, as well as a few of the mini-expansion Heroes, Villains, and Environments. Hopefully looking to complete the set, but am just curious about these interactions. Thanks in advance for any input!

The villains need to be played in th Vengeance format. The heroes don’t. You can mix and match the heroes with any others, either in a Vengeance or non-Vengeance games. Same with the environments.

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the clarification! I had been curious about the gameplay. And that does make sense about the Heroes (considering that PARSE and Miss Information are nemeses.)

Yup, you can play any combination you like of hero, villain, and environment decks. It's just the Vengeance villains who are different, as they have a mechanic unique to them in which you fight H of them, as opposed to other villains where you just fight that villain. Okay, the Ennead are a bit different in that they're a villain group as well, but they only have the one deck between them and all act on the same turn (a Vengeance game has villain and hero turns alternating, so you normally have each player controlling the villain who predeces them), same as the Sentinels do.

I've been curious, is it possible to play the heroes as villains and vice versa? Just switching the words "villain targets" for "hero targets"? I haven't gotten the chance to play Vengance yet, but is that theoretically possible?

No, heroes don't have a deck built for automated play. While villains do not have a deck built for having a hand.

It's also possible to tweak in vengeance villains with classic villains in game of 4 or 5 heroes. Like say you find ambuscade boring and wont to spice things up a bit by giving him a partner that helps with his weakness: ongoing and equipment destruction. What I did in a 4 hero game was play Ambuscade as H=3 and add Ermine to the party. Environnment H is still 4 though. And Ermine would play between the 2nd and third hero to make it as even as possible.

This is an unofficial use of vengeance and can make your game harder but when I tested it it works well especially against weak villains.