Rules/cards you played wrong til you played the video game

One of the many things I am thankful for about the Sentinels video game is that it clears up some mistakes I had been making in my regular game play.

For instance:

- I did not know that when multiple cards modified damage type you got to select the order. Good to know.

- I had been completely underappreciative of Fanatic's Divine Focus, thinking it happened on each of HER turns rather than EVERY turn

What did you run into that you found out you had been playing wrong?

I didn't realize that Mad Bomber Blade and Cosmic Omnitron both could *chain* their extra card draws, drawing 3, 4, 5, or even more cards in a single turn.

I didn't appreciate the glory that is Absolute Zero, particularly tricks with targeting himself with cold (even his own fire-generated attack) to keep him standing.

Didn't handle Wrest the Mind right when the target died from using it.

Didn't do End of Turn turning into Start of Turn right on the villain character cards (did do it right on the other villain cards), which makes a big difference in how useful it is against Omnitron (not such a great idea!)

I didn't realize multiple uses of Wraith's Stealth stacked.

We played "put into play" and "play a card" the same, which made Takedown a lot better. :D

As for new appreciations, Visionary and AbZero. I had no idea how many fights Visionary could trivialize, and AbZero goes freaking nuts if nothing curtails his build up.

Oh, yeah, i had never realized that you could have two of Wraith's infrared eyepieces out at the same time and then use the utility belt to use them both until i played the video game.

I never realized with some environment cards that made you remove ongoings and if you do not deal yourself damage or extra damage that it applied to hero's without ongoings. So destroy ongoing, anyone who does not is dealt 4 damage, I was under the impression if you did not have ongoings then you were safe from those. 

I never realized that cards underneath Self-Destruct Sequence still counted as Environment cards for Ra's Scorched Earth.

Which is great, until you realise that means they also count for Omnitron's Terraforming and Spite's Mind Phyre.

Technically true, but in practice, only if you're careless/malicious.  You get to choose what order to destroy the Environment cards in and you can (almost always should) destroy the SDS first, putting the other card in the trash, but not technically 'destroyed' by the villain card.

Absolute Zero sickness just done vs. Voss...tricks the app helped my figure out.

Ab Zero has two impales, one cold snap out

Twist the Ether, Cryo chamber, both modules, thermal shockwave.

Voss, 1 minion, mystic defenses from Ruins of Atlantis

• Start of turn: deal damage with both impales, cold snap on minion first (killing it), all boosted by +1 with twist but kept cold
• Play hoarfrost, cold to voss, fire to mystic defenses, cold to myself and fire twistedinto cold to myself to heal up a bit more
• Activate thermal shockwave. Cold to Voss, cold to mystic defenses, cold twisted to fire to Absolute Zero, damage sent back to mystic defenses to destroy it
• Resulting fire sent (17 +  1 for twist - 1 for cyro) into to Absolute Zero, twisted into Psychic to deal 18 psychic to Voss and kill him.

Voss had started that turn with almost 30 hit points.

In that game, I'd had Absolute Zero very near death, but Font of Power played that Thermal Shockwave on him, and he got cryo out on his turn. Did a shockwave with the 12 points of fire damage reversed into cold to heal himself up, for the remaining two turns he had the most hit points of any hero.

Oh! This is a good one. I didn't realize the counterattack ongoings, such as Combat Stance, and Flame Barrier, are once per turn per target, not just once per turn. We only let the trigger the first time a hero took damage, not the first time each target did them damage. They're a lot more useful now.

Ah yeah, that's always a handy one...you can take out a whole bunch of zombies or minions or whatever if you have a damage buff...in fact, this happened once versus Gloomweaver. We had Ra, Expatriette, and probably Legacy (there was a damage buff or two active). A cultist would come out and get hit for buffed Hairtrigger damage from Expatriette, then hit Ra and get finished off by his Flame Barrier...then turn into a Zombie which would get insta-killed by Hairtrigger :D.

Also bear in mind with the retaliation effects that they kick in if you get hit by a fellow hero as well (eg Haka on a Rampage), or if you hit yourself. But it works the same for villains too, for example if you can redirect a hit of Baron Blade's back at him when he has a Backlash Field active, said field will then activate and hit him as well because he dealt himself damage :D.

And then hit itself, because IT hit him.

Yeh, I had a careless play take out AbZero, he plinked Ra with Shockwave to garner more frost damage, but Ra retaliated, wacked him for a bunch, and then the fire damage from Shockwave killed him. Woopsie doodle. Yay for rewind button.

I didn't realize that for Thermal Shockwave if AZ hits himself as one of the 3 targets to heal then that doesn't count toward the fire damage he deals himself.

No, because if you healed then you didn't take damage - damage is when your hp goes down, not up ;).

I rather stupidly never realised that for the purposes of flipping back from her 'Merged' Side, Citizen Dawn has the Citizen Keyword and therefore counts as one of the H-1 Citizens that need to be in play for her to flip back to normal.

I don't always play games wrong, but when I do, I make the game unnecessarily difficult for myself. ;)

Oh man, I'm still doing that! Ridiculously enough it doesn't seem to have negatively affected my games against her though.