Nightmist vs. Spite

So, the other day, my group of friends and I were playing against Spite.  We were playing The Naturalist, KNYFE, Nightmist, Setback, and Absolute Zero.  Our Environment was The Block... this was intended to be a warmup fight.

Well, Spite ended up flipping in two turns.  Killing all his victims before we had a chance to save them during the same turn they were brought out.  On the second turn, a prison break happened, bringing out a lot of inmates, and on the same turn, Spite played Lab Raid, destroying all environment cards and replacing them with drugs.  One of those drugs reduced the first hit against him by H-2, or 3.  Meanwhile, he was doing a total of 6 damage per turn (3 hits of 2) to everyone.  Whenever someone used a power, he'd deal 3 toxic damage and make you discard the top 5 cards of your deck.  His last drug would return H-3 Ongoing or equipment cards each turn, which prevented anyone from rolling anything out.

No one really had time to get moving before everyone went down... except Nightmist.

Nightmist, whose trash was full because of that drug that made her discard cards, played Mist Fueled Recovery.  This, combined with the HP gain from Starshield Necklace and Master of Magic (which were out), immediately brought her up to full.  Of course, they returned to her hand from the villain turn.

The incapacitated effects combined with her regular turn allowed Nightmist to play 3 cards per turn.  One before her turn, one during her turn, one after her turn.

So, if she played Master of Magic first, and then made the other two artifacts whose mana values added up to 6 or more, she'd have a net gain of health per turn (Spite was dealing 6 damage to her).  She just wouldn't use powers so she wouldn't take an additional 3 damage (or 5 if she used investigate).

The environment had no surprises that could stop this.  One of Spite's damaging drugs destroyed all environment cards and did 1 damage (+1, total of 2) for each card destroyed in this way.

So, Nightmist could gain more than he could dish out on average.  She kept her health >15, Kept a mist fueled recovery just in case, and slowly whittled him down to 0 from 60 health.  It was pretty glorious.  Turns out, if the last person left alive is Nightmist, she has quite a few options.

Sounds awesome! Welcome to the forums!

Yes, indeed. It is partly for that reason that she makes my canonical favorite team (along with Team Leader Tachyon, Scholar, Haka, and Omnitron-X).

Sounds like you had fun.

Nightmist can get pretty tanky, yeah :D. Master of Magic is a really good card for getting the healing if you can play a bunch of spells, and of course the Starshield Necklace helps too. The Amulet of the Elder Gods can be super-useful too, especially if a lot of damage is coming your way (provided you have the cards to activate it if you're getting hit several times a round). It's a good job the other guys' Incap abilities were letting you play stuff out of turn, otherwise I suppose you wouldn't've got anywhere since as the only hero left active that means you'd've been forced to return all your stuff to your hand at the start of Spite's go (we played for a while, in the early days, misunderstanding that one and thinking it meant everyone had to return H-2 cards to hand when in fact it's a total number of cards across all heroes…so just one in our case, rather than one each). Spite can be a bit of a drag and the order in which his drugs come out (the "take damage and discard the top five of your deck" drug is probably the most annoying…the discard isn't so bad but the damage isn't much fun) can ahve a significant effect on the difficulty. But as we play with H as three, a double Stun Bolt from Wraith every round tends to keep him pretty well sorted once she's set up in order to do so :D.

We've even managed to defeat Spite a few times without him flipping - that lifetap effect he has on his front side is annoying but not insurmountable if you have enough damage to throw out…plus if you have plenty of soak (and/or redirection to someone with soak) he doesn't really get to heal very much because very little gets through.

Ahh, fun times :).

Nightmist is probably the best tank in the game.

Moreso than Scholar? I dunno…

Yes.

Nightmist can tank anyone, Scholar excels in certain prevalent situations, but Nightmist rocks in almost all of them.

I agree with Skippy.

I could be wrong, but doesn't Master of Magic only heal you when you play spells?  Which the other two cards you are describing are not?

You're not wrong.

Well, Scholar sets up faster and easier for me. Plus he has diversity in how he utilizes his elementals. I'd consider Scholar more consistent, from my experience.

Scholar actually loses the deck burn off with Nightmist, he does nothing vs. irreducible damage and has few options to deal with big damage Nightmist has her redirection, better consistent healing with two to three cards in play and some big shot heals that Scholar can only replicate vs. certain decks.

Scholar crushes Nightmist in games with lots of small instances of non-irreducible damage (flesh to iron)  or in games with outside healing sources (since he can increase the amount)

Scholar's biggest strength in this showdown is his early setup, since he has many options if he doesn't get the right cards early, where as Nightmist with the wrong cards early is looking at some lowest HP tanking (which vs. some villains is actually more important than Highest HP tanking) or a nice juicy game of incap powers.

I rarely pay either of them anymore, because I dislike how Scholar turns a lot of matchups into a joke (he crushes Apostate and I've actually beat Matriarch solo with him) and Nightmist flat out rocks when she's the last hero standing and has incap powers to help her.  A lot of teams actually get better by having everyone but Nightmist die, because she scales so ridiculously with incaps boosting her.

The most ridiculous was one hero letting her play cards, one letting her use a power and Tempest making her immune to infernal.  She took down 4 members of vengeance after what was almost a 2 round wipe. (no Ermine ended up being huge)

They sit in the pile with Legacy and TLT (Naturalist is heading that direction too) for revenge games and special challenge games.

I never pay either of them, they're heroes, they do it for the love of the game.

You might have to pay AZ to play with Ronway.

Ronway's killed every hero. It's not just AZ.

Such talent!

He's very dedicated...

We had a similar game recently against Citizen Dawn where we had set her up to flip back to her front side, but an environment card killed all the citizens we needed. Nightmist and Setback ended up both at 1hp, and the others were incapacitated. Nightmist dropped, and Setback used extra powers to use Looking Up to keep his tokens high, and removed his tokens to heal/redirect. It took him something like 10 or 12 turns solo to kill her, but eventually he pulled it out.

Big shock here. But I 100% disagree with that. His innate power alone makes his healing more consistent, and thats not even touching on the cards within each deck and their practical applications.

. . .with 2-3 cards in play. . .

Nightmist can beat that with master of magic and starshield necklace, if you have your redirection it is even better.

The odds of Nightmist having a spell card to play and a card to discard are better than Scholar having a one shot that heals.

Then Scholar's big heal is based on damage dealt, and needs targets to hit.  Nightmist needs someone's trash to be large, and with how she burns cards that is a very easily achieved status.

*Doctor Medico, M.D. just chuckles to himself and goes back to healing everything and even reviving his teammates*

*Ronway just chuckles to himself and goes back to killing everything, especially his teammates.*

Nightmist needs 1 of two cards of her deck in play to even start healing from spells (and those heals from master of magic function more as a mitigation tool to the damage she takes from those spells and rarely actually nets health). Scholar starts with an innate power that heals him and a suite of one-shots that also heal him regardless of whether he has forms out or not (those just make the healing better). If this is about healing consistency, scholar has nightmist beat up and down the block. 

I agree with you Foote.

The world is coming to an end.

Every second brings us closer to inevitable doom.

Shall we panic now or is Friday better for everyone?

Start now. Why wait? I usually wait until the last second to do something, not going to fall into the same trap now.

Quick, heal it! Heal it!!!

Medico, heal it!

Aw man. Thats no fun

I know. I don’t think you’ve had a good, long argument for awhile.

Expatriette has better healing than The Scholar and NightMist combined.

Which version of Expat?

All of them.

Before or after the Hair-Trigger Reflexes/birdie ruling?

After.

I think I tried to force it. It just needs to come more naturally next time

No, it isn't you, it's me.

I'm finally getting around to expanding my ratings to include Vengeance, so I'll throw this FACT out here:

Parse has better deck manipulation than Visionary.

But not better than Expat.

Seconded. Expatriette is best at everything.

Expatriette has a card that lets her use powers, and a power that lets her play cards.

She wins Everything.

Except a "who has the most eyes?" competition. She ties in last place with Omnitron for that one.

She'll just intimidate everyone else to not enter or remove all their eyes, so she wins!

You can't intimidate a potato. Seriously, Potatoes are OP.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/86914#comment-86914

Unless we only count eyes that let you see.

Hmmm. No argument from me there

What if I told you Ra was better than both?

I would say Expatriette is better than all three.

Yeah, but have you ever seen a potato with eyes?

…Apart from that one?

Er… all of them.

Expat beats Potatoes.  Expat has a good eye, Potatoes just have bullseyes.

Along with everything else in the 'verse, according to Expatriette.