Spite is just the worst

Spite has long been my least-favorite Villain.  He isn't (necessarily) the *hardest*, but he's the least fun.  He's for all practical purposes immune to damage until he flips, and he will have done a lot of damage to the heroes before that happens.  The only viable general strategy seems to be to try and get as many Victims into the Safehouse as possible, then burn him down fast after he takes the hit from flipping.

Today, while beta testing the App, I found a new reason to hate Spite.  When he flipped, with 8 Victims saved, he took no damage.  I thought it was a bug at first, but then I realized the awful truth.  Technically, it's not the Safehouse doing the damage, but Spite damaging *himself*, and I had hit him with a Throat Jab.  Argh!!!!!

Yeah.  You'll find other threads around here declaiming a dislike of Spite's gameplay.

By the way, congrats on saving 8 Victims.  That's pretty impressive.  Did you never get a Forced Entry?

Grrr! I detest Forced Entry with a burning passion! It comes up so often with Spite's accelerated cardplay that saving victims seems almost counterproductive. 

I gotta say, it's almost not even worth it to save the victims. And that's sad.

You should read this thread on BGG for a unique perspective on whether to save a victim or not!

Correct.  It was mostly luck.  Happened to get many Victim draws and no Forced Entries.

Eh, the cost for saving victims is not so high. When we played him we saved as many as we could except, of coure, the Doomed Sidekick (I know the card isn't really called like that)

That being said we only played Spite 2 times, both advanced, before declaring him the easiest and most boring and villain in the entire game.

Yeah. Really, all the villains in Rook City rank low for me, and the environments as well. The closest I come to enjoying a Rook City villain is the Chairman. Spite and the Matriarch I outright dislike.

Doing the expansions in order makes sense, but considering how much more I like Infernal Relics and Shattered Timelines, it was a bummer to hear the app would follow the official release order up until Vengeance (which gets skipped for Wrath).

Edit: I'm hoping the app makes Matriarch more fun, because I won't have to flip all eleventy-seven birds and resolve their attacks.

So, what's the solution for fixing Spite? If there's a new set of villain card rules I could put on an alt version villain card on my site, I would, just like I have for Gloomweaver and Ambuscarde. 

I think Gloom Spite fixes him pretty well. 

Phantaskippy had a good suggestion in another thread:

So, perhaps an add-on card for the safehouse that  replaces the second paragraph with:

"At the end of the villain turn, move the top card from beneath the Safe House out of play. When Spite flips to his "Drug-Wracked Monstrosity" side, he deals himself X toxic damage, where X = the number of Spite's cards out of play times 5." 

Spite's entire deck is about two things: drugs and victims. If either of those gimmicks doesn't play well… well, then we get a thread with a title like this.

Also/alternatively, you could put a rider on the Safe House that gave the heroes some immediate benefit for saving victims. Perhaps something like:

"Whenever a card is placed under the Safe House, each hero may choose to regain 1 HP or draw 1 card."

Yeah, Agent of Gloom does seem to work quite a bit better, but it would be nice if it were possible to preserve the original intent of "one-winged angel" Spite.

When we play Spite, I'll quite often use the Wraith just so I can get out the double-Stun-Bolt combo on him and nerf pretty much all of his damage (thus preventing his healing on his front side) :D.

Stun Bolt crushes him, actually pretty easy to beat him before he flips with the right team comp

Yeah, we've beaten him a couple of times pre-flip. We tend to save some Victims but never bother with the Good Samaritans. Usually we've got two or three under the Safehouse when he flips, so he doesn't do that much damage to himself relative to his max hp.

I made an alternate version which gives players real incentives to save victims.

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/31875/two-rook-city-variants

You are welcome to host a version on your site, provided you credit me.

We just played a game against Spite, and found it almost shocking how effectively Wraith shuts him down.  Granted, it helped that Tempest kept giving her back copies of Throat Jab, but even aside from that, the Stun Bolts vastly reduced the amount of damage he dealt out.

I still can't see us playing him often, though.

I do that against him pretty often too - Wraith with double Stun Bolts. Have the lowest hp and get out the Smoke Bombs and you don't even need to worry about Nemesis damage getting through if he targets you. This is with H as three...i think some of his damage is H-determined so it might not work quite as well if you have a higher number of heroes.

Cool, I'll take a look.

P.D. - the card says 80 hp, but the text says 60 hp.  Which is the correct value?

I just finished a game against Spite, funnily enough. Fanatic, Setback, Skyscraper, and Mister Fixer. There’s a lot of damage redirection/reduction/mitigation in that set-up, so before he got his final drug out, the one that gives him armor, I was actually managing to stay ahead. Got him down to 36 HP. What really sucked was every time a Good Samaritan came out, the card that I drew as condition of putting him into the Safe House killed him. Happened every time. I hated it so much. By the time he flipped, there were only two cards left in the deck, and I only had two victims (“Innocent Bystanders,” if you were curious) beneath it.

The game would have been a lot easier if the environment, Omnitron-IV, hadn’t kept destroying Mister Fixer’s “Hoist Chains” every time I got one into play. As it was, on the final round, Fanatic and Skyscraper both died. Spite had 7 HP, Setback had 6 HP, and Mister Fixer had 12. I couldn’t get out a Tool or a Style that would bump Mister Fixer’s damage for my life, so Setback made the ultimate sacrifice of playing “Cause and Effect” with 14 unlucky tokens.

Was it fun? Eh, I guess. It’s odd to sweat for a villain who isn’t Iron Legacy or Progeny, anyway. But yeah, I can see how after certain Drug combinations come out–armor and punishing players for using powers would be the worst–it just would not be fun to be able to do nothing but try to get all your Equipment and Ongoings into play and otherwise just sit there taking it until he allows you to hurt him. Sometimes it’s at least a little bit funny, like when he makes you put cards back into your hand so you take back ones like “Absolution” or “Inspiring Presence,” and in my last game it worked out in Setback’s favor because he could keep taking back “Looking Up” before he could burn his own brain out with it, but usually not.

He has a maximum of 80, but starts with 60. A different way of putting it is that he takes 20 damage during setup.

This is because there are plenty of ways for him to heal on the first turn. If he would destroy environment cards on the front, for example, he heals instead.

I really hate to be a bummer with a game I love.

In tabletop, I've been steering the other players away from picking Spite for months.  Forgot why.

So it comes around to 1:30 AM, wife just woke up to prod me to bed, but less than 5 minutes ago I threw down 19 cards on a Haka of Battle, whacked the giblets out of Spite, and watched him regenerate to full the very next turn with 2 drugs up.

Blah blah planning blah...  I wanted to bust some heads right before bed on a work night, not stare obsessively until he hit critical mass & pounce.

I guess sleeping is better than peppering my search history with "sentinels spite worst villain" "sentinels spite slog" "sentinels of the multiverse does anybody actually like spite" "spite worst @$*#* villain"

Guess I'll be replacing him on random computer play as well.   At least the rest of the expansion was decent.

My first experience with Spite was similarly frustrating.

I played a couple of Spite games in the app this week.

It totally confirmed to me why we rerandomise if he turns up in G+ games. I love him thematically, but find him no fun at all to actually fight. This makes me sad.

This is why I love double-Stun-Bolting him with the Wraith and having Smoke Bombs out if she's the lowest hp. Damage, what damage? ;)

Okay so we play with only three heroes so there's less damage to nerf but it still works out more often than not ;).

Well, I enjoyed my last game against him, but that’s because I had The Ultimate Target, the Neurotoxin Dart Thrower, andThe Masada in play and we dropped Spite on his front side.

i completely agree! So I was thinking about what I would do to try and make him more fun, but preserve the theme. Here’s what I came up with:

• Compound Omicron: replace all text with "redirect the first damage that would be dealt to Spite each turn to the environment target with the highest HP."
• Mind-Phyre: replace all text with "at the start of the villain turn, destroy one environment card that is not a target. At the end of the villain turn, play the top card of the environment deck." (I'm considering changing that last condition to "when an environment target is destroyed.")
• Spite, Transhuman Serial Killer: change his flip condition to "4 or more Drug cards are in play."
• Spite, Drug-Wracked Monstrosity: add "when flipped to this side, destroy all environment cards."
• Forced Entry: change "all" to "H-1."

My rationale is that Spite is mainly boring because of what he does to the environment, with the additional secondary contributor that his flipside is always the same. So, I’d try to make it more like he’s hiding in the environment. Still, when he flips, I like the implication that the battle narrows down to just Spite and the heroes, so I put in that destroy-the-environment thing. I changed his flip condition not to make him easier, but to make him different each time. And, finally, while Forced Entry is and should be That Card, putting that cap on it gives the heroes a chance to make up their lost ground (at some cost to themselves).

We haven’t tested this out too much - last time, we clearly didn’t need it - but I’m optimistic…

After playing a lot of Rook City in the App lately, I've come to appreciate the power of Stun Bolt.  Against Spite, Matriarch, or the Chairman, it's almost a necessity.  In fact, I've started rating heroes as to their "stun potential".

Wraith: 1 (W has lots of own-deck manipulation, so it's easy to get at least one Stun Bolt in play; decent chance of Throat Jab.)

Visionary: 0.5 (Twist the Ether)

Tachyon: 0.5 (Good chance of drawing a Hypersonic Assault, but it's just a One-Shot.)

Mr. Fixer: 0.5 (Hoist Chain is repeatable, but MF doesn't have the card churn to reliably get it into play.)

Expatriette: 0.25 (Cryogenic Rounds are effectively one-shots, but E has some means of getting them back into circulation.)

Haka: 0.25 (Ground Pound is great, but expensive.)

I wouldn't go up against Advanced versions of Spite, Matriarch or Chairman without at *least* a total of 1 Stun Rating, ideally more.

I like to put Liquid Nitrogen Rounds on the Assault Rifle. Hit the villain with the first shot, then Fixer Or NightMist redirects the next shot for -2. Or have bith redirect for -3.

Fixer also has Grease Gun, so I'd probably bump him up a bit.

I think the easiest way to fix Spite is just to take away the backlash from the drug that punishes you for using powers. The discarding the top five cards of your deck is fine, but the two damage reprise is a bit excessive. Most heroes don't have a base power that deals more than two damage, and without buffs, the most damage a hero can do with a single power is four. Four damage is the bare minimum needed to just break even, doing a total damage of two damage to Spite and being dealt two in return. This gets even worse if his DR drug is out. I think if you just removed the damage punishment for using powers, you wouldn't have nearly so many games where it feels like all you can do is wait for Spite to flip.

He also deals three damage if his damage-buff drug is out.

At least that drug has the "put something back into someone's hand" part, which is usually kind of annoying but one time we had it cycling Inspiring Presence (when Legacy was first in turn order) so everyone kept getting healed by a point. Bloody Knuckles is a good one as well, especially since that drug goes off at the start of Spite's turn, before he actually starts dealing damage - then you only need to worry about getting hit by whatever comes out on the environment's turn before Spite does away with that as well :D.

I feel like I wait for Spite to flip while he hurts me, doing nothing but occasionally saving victims and hoping he doesn't decide to make the Safe House's name a lie and make my sacrifices pointless. At his own whim he gets all the drugs out, which can take forever, and then I can start actually playing the game.

Then of course he kills me because I have to audacity to need powers to do, y'know, fun stuff, and damage.

I am just not seeing how he's in any way enjoyable to play. I feel like my decisions don't matter, and all games with him play exactly the same way except for the varying amount of time before he flips.

And I really want to like him. :/

Destroying him before he flips is far more satisfying. Try doing that =)

The first time we played him, we managed to get a ton of people in the Safe House, and he never broke them out before he flipped. We whittled him down on his front side, and then when he flipped, the Safe House exploded in his face, and he died. We thought it was pretty fun, and a cool idea for a villain and a mechanic to support that theme.

I've played him on the app several times since then, and each time it has been the same: We do everything we can, he flips right after emptying the Safe House, and we kill ourselves trying to find any way possible to damage him enough to overcome the healing he's giving himself when he hits us.

I've lost every game against him on the app, and he's been at max HP every time.

He doesn't heal on the flip side.

Agreed.

Try Challenge Mode. It was the original version of Spite anyways.

No…

Nonononononononononononononononono!

No max health=bad!

Before playtesting determined that stunk…

Whether or not I can do that depends on what drugs come out in which order. I would say though that with Spite, the most satisfying victories are the ones where you kill him with SafeHouse damage. I also think Spite is easier with three or four heroes. When H equals three, damage reduction makes killing him before he flips much easier.

I still enjoy it.

Challenge Spite was cool, but then I don't seem to have much problem with Spite, probably small sample card luck, but he rarely flips for us, and when he does he doesn't last long.  Of course we do a lot of (H)=3, and he seems to scale nastily.

That is exactly why I find Spite, Matriarch, and The Organization to be spectacularly disappointing villains.

“3/4ths of this expansion’s villains are really fun if you take the same hero in every game and keep two copies of one card in her deck on the field.”

Maybe just cut the need for DR and just make the villains deal less damage so you can have fun with more than Just The Wraith?

Forgive me if I seem to be engaging in histrionics or antagonism, but I truly do not understand the argument “This villain is fun with a very particular strategy offered by a small pool of heroes” being used to try to convey a villain’s design as fun, engaging, and successful.

Strategies to make victory easier are just that.

They aren't arguments that the villain is awesome, just ways to beat them.

Wraith is Spite's nemesis and it is pretty cool to play Wraith and just crush Spite.  There are many more ways.

Mr. Fixer is awesome against Spite as well, and Ra, Parse, Tachyon, Scholar, Sky-Scraper, Cosmic, Unity, Expat, they all have ways to work together to crush Spite.

My favorite team for crushing Spite is Fanatic, Visionary, Ra.  Frankly because he deserves to be judged and burned.

Out of the 27 currently released full villains, most of them have nothing to negate a double stun bolt beyond wiping out equipment.  In fact, off the top of my head, Plague Rat is the only villain to deal irreducible damage on his base card.

Only one villain makes infrared eyepiece dangerous rather than just annoying.

Wraith is easy to use and can be OP, we get it.

Now we return to your regularly schedualled Spite hate.

Setback rocks vs. Spite with Wrong Time and Place and plenty of tokens.

I play Spite regularly, and I often beat him before he flips. Wraith helps, but is not necessary. While I disagree with the punishment for Heroic choices inherent in Spite's deck, I sometimes remind myself that this is a true serial killer and not our flying rat's mad nemesis. The dark nature of the assignment places the heroes in a moral quandry where saving the obvious and immediate victim may cause failure, and the long term threat to go on unabated.

There are a few things to note:

1) Do not bother with victims until he is close to flipping. Take Lost Child, for instance. Take H-1 damage to put under Safe House. Since the damage is done by Spite, Spite now heals H-1. If you just let her die, you take no damage and Spite Heals H, for a whopping 1 point of healing difference, but a lot less damage taken. Only a fool saves the Lost Child. The commonality of Forced Entry means saving anyone is highly questionable. This is non-heroic, but the game punishes choosing to be Heroic in this case. The moral choice for the heroes: save this one victim and let Spite flee the battlefield to kill dozens more while you seek him out again, or focus on the threat and accept that it is Spite that is killing her, not you?

2) Tachyon and others can make him fail to deal damage. Throat jab is not the only card for that purpose. Hoist Chain and Chrono-ranger can also reduce his damage dealt, and consequently his healing. Go with damage reduction heroes, and get that DR out there early. I know damage dealing gets a high priority sometimes, but this is a single target that does lots of instances of damage, so DR is much more effective than normal, especially DR that targets the source. You take less damage and Spite heals less. Time is generally on Spite's side, but some heroes must have a few rounds to get going. Yes, Wraith does this job best (having both "target Damage Reduction", "target deals no damage" cards in her deck as well as Stealth), but you can choose to set her aside and turn it over to those that do it less well.

3) Damage redirection. Spite hitting himself is net 0, but at least you're not dying. It would not be unreasonable to houserule that Spite only heals for damage dealt to hero targets or environment, so hitting himself would do real damage instead of net 0. I play him normal, but I agree with anyone choosing to change him this way.

4) Irreducible hero damage. Omnitron-X and Fixer are great choices. OX is also great due to his damage reduction and feedback damage, while Fixer can redirect. Chrono-ranger can deal irreducible, but he can't do that and reduce Spite's damage dealt at the same time, unless a specific Bounty is in play.

5) PL531 is a boon for some heroes. Omnitron-X loves replaying Slip Through Time. Tachyon can replay Pushing the Limits for no cost. I know Inspiring Presence is a popular one, but Legacy has lots of Ongoings to get into play, so that is often situational. Fixer can take his toolbox back to hand to protect other heroes from losses. Plan for this by choosing the right team, and work together to get the cards in play needed to handle it.

I know a lot of these are not available in the video game yet. Bunker, Omnicannon, Heavy Plating, and Recharge Mode. Consider it.

For those that dislike Spite's normal mode, play his Agent of Gloom promo. It gives good reason to save Victims as fast as you can at start of game. We threw in Rogue Agent Knyfe, who first Turn drew a victim off the bottom of his deck, flipping him with only one drug in a 3 player game, but I've faced 4 drugs at Flip, too. Victims go ignored after flip, since the Safe House punishes the players, so that same disatisfying punishment of Heroism continues as Spite's core theme. Still, you get to be Heroic for a few Rounds.

I like the cost for saving them (heroism isn't free), but it annoys me there's no real penalty for failure to save. A victim flipping should be a bad event period, but failing to save them after the flip ought to be the worst outcome. I simply can't play Spite and not save the victims, so I guess it doens't matter for me in the end.

But when you do save them, and he destroys the safe house and kills them anyway? >:(  Then what's the point of saving them?  And most of the time I try and save the Good Samaritan, Spite's card kills the Good Samaritan before he gets saved.

I'd love a revised Spite where he has a dedicated victim deck, and safe house loosed H-2 (or H-1) from the Safe House. His double play is one of his many mechnical problems, it's there to get victims out without costing him mayhem, but it doesn't work well.

By "victim flipping" do you mean "victim is put into play"?

Agreed.  This is especially so when a victim comes out on the first card and then IMMEDIATELY gets killed by the second card, without the heroes having had any possibility of saving them.

It's especially heart breaking when it's Thiago that gets killed in the first turn. Couldn't even get my free draw.

Yes, as in "you flip over the top card on his deck and it's a victim". It shouldn't make you happy (as a player) to see the serial killer get a victim in his sights

I just played a game against Spite, where the opening Victim was immediately eaten by On the Prowl, which of course brought out a second victim... which was immediately eaten by a second On the Prowl.  

When H=5, If you can't destroy on the prowl, all the victims die.

You're thinking of Collateral Damage.  On the Prowl is a one-shot.

Yes, you're correct.

"Flip" is a technical term in this game. It means taking a card that is in play and turning it to the other side of the card (Incap'ed side, second villain form, or to reveal the back typically). Character cards flip, both villain and hero. Wager Master's villain cards can flip. But putting the top card of a deck in play is not "flipping".

There are two ways a card can come into play from the top of a deck. "Play the top card of a deck" and "Reveal the top card of a deck and put into play". Neither of these are "flipping". I know this is pedantic, but using an already defined term for an action that has another defined term to describe it can lead to confusion. "Flipping a victim" does not happen, ever. Inventing terms is not confusing, but often needs clarification regardless of our intent as writers. I invented the term "Quality" in another thread. I did need to explain my specific invention at one point, since at least one person did not understand why I invented it or what I intended by it. Giving a defined term like "flip" a second definition is a different matter entirely. People try to resolve the known definition with the incorrect usage, which leads to confusion and misunderstanding, and a need for clarification. If you want to invent a term for playing a card off the top of the deck, that's fine, but "Flip" is already used for another purpose by the Official Rules and needs to be avoided.

Almost all Villain cards of any deck coming into play are bad for the heroes, with only the magnitude of the effect defining the concern, so a Victim coming into play is not inherently any worse than a Gene-bound Firesworn or Meteor Swarm. Most Victims, if their Safehouse effect is ignored, are just a "Heal Spite by H" card, which is not tragic in any way. Perhaps the designer intended it to mean something more, or maybe he didn't. Either way, it doesn't matter since Spite's deck is settled and this is all that they do.

While I understand the roleplaying aspect of the game, this is not about a child victim or a serial killer. They are just cards with text-based definitions and rules. If the designer wanted me to treat the Victim cards as important and vital in the way a true potential victim of a real murderer would be by the police forces of our real world, then he failed. The cards are not designed that way, and I will not treat them as if they were. I watch the Victim cards go to trash as they are destroyed and then Spite heals a little while i keep important cards in my hand and HP on my character card, and play the game as designed. We cannot, for certain, say anything other than that was intended by the designer, unless he chooses to inform us directly.

Thank you for your lengthy essay based on an off the cuff comment with imprecise terminology. I hope it was therapeutic :) I'm sorry you can't find joy in treating objects in a game as something more than just words, though. Creativity and imagination are fine things. I personally enjoy playing the heroes as though they cared about more than numbers, but it doesn't have to bouy everyone's watercraft.

 By the by, like it or not, when you play the top card of a deck, you're flipping it over in the literal sense unless it's someting cute like Ambuscade's traps (and really those have their own mechanic that happens when they're visible rather than played). Sometimes real world terms overlap game terms, we cope as best we may. For example, we "play" Sentinels of the Multiverse in a way not accordance with play or put into play as game terms.

Tongue very much in somewhat bemused cheek.

Look, man, I love pedantry as much as the next English major, but kreistor - chill. No need to jump down people's throats or nitpick their every word choice. This is a super friendly community. Let's try to keep it that way.

One of my frustrations about Spite is that I really enjoy the concept of having to sacrifice to rescue innocent victims before they get murdered by a drug-addled psychopath, but the victim cards themselves made it really hard to consider that option, especially given the likelihood that any saved victims will get busted out and eaten after you've sacrificed to save them. I'll never rescue the Sidekick again having seen the benefit I get from keeping him out there in danger, and the Good Samaritan is as good as dead whenever he comes out. The number of times Forced Entry "freed" the victims and then he immediately ate one or more of them has made me cautious about saving them in the first place.

I really enjoy his concept, and when I RP it out it's a lot of fun… but if I really want to win the game, I almost have to play my heroes like sociopaths, and that's not a ton of fun.

That said, the first time we played against Spite, he never got Forced Entry out, and we managed to kill him when he flipped with Safe House damage. That was pretty satisfying, and it hasn't happened since.

I actually agree with kreistor that can be confusing to use the word "flip" in the context of a Sentinels game where "flip" has a specific meaning, and that we should try not to do that if it makes our communication less effective.

But there are nice polite ways of saying that, right?

I played 2 Spite games in the app last night. I won both by ignoring the victims, which didn't feel in the slightest bit heroic. Several times I had to choose which one died and which lived, which again wasn't terribly heroic.

The Potential Sidekick even encourages you (mechanically) to leave him in danger by feeding you cards.

That Safe House must be the worst safe place ever. I really hate making sacrifices to save victims then having Spite just undo all that work in one fell swoop and kill someone that I just saved.

Spite makes me sad, because there's a good deck and an interesting villain in there. He's just not quite where I want him to be.

If there was some way to sacrifice to "shore up" the Safe House or counter Forced Entry... Like a hero takes damage or destroys a card or everyone discards a card, etc., to show that we're protecting the Safe House and not just letting it rot there across the street from Spite's house and next door to the proverbial Lab.

Yeah, so we're actually protecting the Safe House rather than letting Spite just chase everyone out of it whenever he feels like it. I like the idea of being able to choose to sacrifice to keep a victim in there.

Heroes may protect the safe house by choosing a number of heroes equal to the number of cards undernearth the Safe House. Spite causes each chosen hero H -1 damage and they must discard 2 cards.

Something like that, cleaned up for adequate rules wording? The idea would be all-or-nothing, and you could aim it at heroes with insufficient cards without messing up the defense.

I just watched last night's Twitch stream from Handelabra. They had the Sidekick out and they were using other victims (usually Good Samaritans) as human shields to keep the sidekick alive as long as possible without saving him. It seemed... antiheroic.

Communication is a science, not an art. When Analysis indicates that the Predicted outcome did not occur, you rewrite. You know that, better than most here. There is no friendly way of informing someone their predicted outcome failed to be achieved and confusion was the result. That blow always hits the Ego squarely.

I disagree. There's definitely a way to say that without coming across as a dick.

I've been writing and/or editing professionally since 1998. There are ways to correct someone's grammar or usage without insulting them. If there weren't, I'd probably have been working in retail or food service since 1999.

This is a fun gaming forum full of people who like to play with cards that let them pretend to be superheroes. It isn't a Master's thesis defense.

Then again, it isn't really my place to police this (or any other) forum. So, I guess, knock yourself out.

EDIT: I quoted Silverleaf to denote agreement, not to respond directly to her. In case that isn't clear.

It's actually easy to come up with tactful ways to explain something like "why flip is confusing in this context." I don't know, maybe being a professional writer has spoiled me or something.

Communication is not my strong point (and I have never done anything writing-related for a living), but even I usually manage to correct people in a respectful way. And if I do slip up, I apologise for my behaviour.

This forum's usually a really nice place even when people disagree, and I for one appreciate that. We can totally all get along and be nice, right? :)

Spite just brings out the worst in people. I blame him!

Yeah, and the Not-Safe House!

I've found a new (to me) way that Spite is awful. 

I've been playing with his variant (testing for the App), and found it generally to be much more fun than his standard version.  But just to prove that he's still the worst, I discovered the following Spite-ful interaction.

If Good Samaritan is out, and you elect to rescue him by playing the top card of the Villain deck -- if that top card turns out to be Lab Raid, then because no card was actually "played", the Good Samaritan is not actually rescued.

Yuck.  I wouldn't have thought about that interaction but this certainly would be the case since Lab Raid is immediately discarded.  Just another reason the Good Samaritan is the hardest victims to save.   

The soup is a lie.

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

I may be joining this late.  I play on the app, randomly generated games, but usually avoid like the plague any random game with Spite as villain.  I agree with the commentators who say that he's simply frustrating, rather than fun/challenging.  So, whenever I get P.O.ed and really want to whip him, I put together this team, custom-designed to beat Spite:  Dark Visionary, Legacy, Wraith, Tempest.  If I'm feeling really malignant, I add AA, Nightmist, Tachyon, or DW Fixer.

Spite's two big weaknesses are (1) that he doesn't have any minons/devices/other targets to help him cause damage, so if he can't cause damage or play cards, he's in trouble; and (2) one of his drugs kills the environment cards that would otherwise be damaging the heroes.  So, the purpose of this team is to (a) manipulate/play Spite's deck like a bass fiddle, all the while (b) preventing him from doing damage, while leisurely setting up damage combos.  

First, it sounds awful, but don't worry about the victims.  They are there to distract you, and to make you spend HP and cards that you should be saving.  Besides, with the method below, you'll be able to manipulate Spite's deck enough that he won't be able to pull the Forced Entries/On the Prowls necessary to kill them, and if you're feeling really squeamish, use Suggestion to pull them out of the trash and save them.   

(a) Deck Manipulation.  Look at all of the ways you have to manipulate poor Spite:  Dark Visionary's base power, her Precognition and Suggestion cards, Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece(s), Legacy's Take Downs, and Tempest's Into the Stratosphere.  From the very first play, these characters have infinite ways to stop Spite from drawing, push bad cards to the bottom of Spite's deck, and bring back destroyed victims.  Spite's double-draws don't make it a 100% sure proposition, but you can generally avoid the worst cards and put them all on the bottom of his deck, or if that fails, at least know that they're coming and prepare for them.   Once you have out Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece, you can peek at Spite's deck twice every round and send Omicron/Upsilon/Lab Raid/whatever cards to the bottom.  

(b) Damage Reduction.  Getting a Twist the Ether on Spite itself just about seals his fate -- reduce *every* damage he deals by 1.  Combine that with Smoke Bombs, Stealth, Throat Jab, Fortitude, Unearthly Resilience, Decoy Projection, (even Telekinetic Cocoon, if you're really desperate), Heroic Interruption, Stun Bolts....Spite isn't hurting any of your team members.  Put a Next Evolution/Lead from the Front on Legacy, and he will eat most of Spite's damage and laugh at it.  Add a Twist the Ether, and now Spite cannot deal a single point of damage to any of your players--he has NO cards that do damage by themselves (they all say "...Spite deals X damage...").  If things turn really dire, send all of the damage you can to Tempest -- his incap power makes all heroes immune to one type of damage.  Use that on whatever form of damage is making it through your Stun Bolts/Smoke Bombs, and the like.  Since he'll be killing most of the environment cards if you let him play the Mind-Phyre drug, the environment won't be hurting the heroes much either.  (In that vein, though, between Grappling Hook, Flash Flood, Dark Visionary's innate power/Prophetic Vision to manipulate the environment deck, her Mass Levitation to stop its damage, and Tempest's Reclaim from the Deep to bring back/spam your anti-environment cards, the environment won't be much of a problem in any event.)

Once you've accomplished (a) and (b), which should be reasonably painless with these heroes and their decks, Spite will not be able to (a) pull out his nasty drug cards, or (b) heal (since he can't deal damage), and you can start wiping the floor with him.  Keep having Legacy and DV use their powers every turn to tank Spite's damage and control his deck (and occasionally throw in a bit of damage or buffs themselves), while Wraith and Tempest hit him with buffed Razor Ordinance, Gene-Bound Shackles, Lightning Strikes, Chain Lightnings, Ball Lightnings, Localized Hurricanes.  Getting a Legacy Ring and/or Inspiring Presence only makes things faster.   At this point, you can even let him bring out drugs; since he can't hurt you, he can't heal, and you should have out enough cards to be able to withstand his "return equips/ongoings to your hand" drug.  Just keep beating on him, and you should be able to kill him before he flips.

If you're feeling particularly malignant, add in:

Argent Adept -- being able to play 2-3 (or more) extra cards every round lets you find and play your deck manipulation and damage reduction cards that much quicker.  If Spite should happen to get out the "everybody discard 5 cards when they use a power" drug, AA has four Vernal Sonatas in his deck, as well as 4 Arcane Cadences to allow you to get teh him to access them.  

Nightmist -- Enlightenment gives your heroes extra draws to get to their combo cards, Mistbound completely shuts down Spite's deck, the Amulet of the Elder Gods can redirect his damage right back to him, and Nightmist's versatile healing powers give her a variety of ways to heal herself every round and serve as a tank.  Or, put her in MistForm and make her the ultimate tank.  

Tachyon -- adds additional damage elimination/redirection with Hypersonic Assault/Synaptic Interruption, and her ability to auto-churn her own deck means that she'll almost assuredly get to those cards quickly, while she waits to for the chance to use some 15-20-point Lightspeed Barrages.

DW Fixer -- particularly helpful when Spite has managed to get the DR drug (Omicron whatever) into play despite your best-laid plans.  Unlike regular Fixer, he can play Riveting Crane/Alternating Tiger Crane as 3-pt one-shots that should break through Spite's defenses and/or leave him vulnerable to your heroes.  Grease Gun gives all of your heroes a round (more, if Tempest brings it back with Reclaim from the Deep, or Fix himself brings it back with Salvage Yard) of near-total immunity from and the environment.  Driving Mantis makes him a damage soak, particularly in conjunction with Pipe Wrench, Smoke Bombs, and/or Stun Bolts.  If you get a good enough draw, and can get him set up with Grease Monkey Fist/Harmony/Pipe Wrench or Dual Crowbars, he becomes a damage fiend.  The "discard 5 cards when you use a power" drugis just fodder for Salvage Yard -- build up a trash of 10-15 cards, then use Salvage Yard and bring *every* equipment in the trash not just to your deck, but into your hand.  The "return ongoings/equipment to your hand" doesn't matter much to him, since he can do three damage whenever he wants just by burning the card with a Bitter Strike, so build him up with ongoings and make him an early target for that drug while your other heroes play their cards.   (Also, it's just mean; I have to confess to taking great joy at the idea of Mr. Fixer bludgeoning Spite to death with a crowbar.  "Transhuman killer, huh"?" (WHACK!)  "Drug-wracked monstrosity, eh?" (CRUNCH!))

I have recently come up with my own way to change Spite in such a way that rescuing victims as soon as they come into play actually makes sense. It is a small change with major impact. 

Change the text of 'Forced Entry' to: Put 1 card under the Safe House card into play, chosen randomly. Play the top card of the Villain deck.

By doing this, several things happen:

1. Saving victims (put them undern the safe house) is more useful, as the moment when 2 victims are saved, 1 still remains in the safe house after the Forced Entry. Therefore the players will be more eager to save as many victims as soon as they appear.

2. It gives the correct feeling about Spite and his (its?) victims. When the victims are under the safe house, they are safe(ish). As soon as they are in play, they have a change to be killed of. With the removal of 'destroy a victim', and the addition of  'play the top card' on my proposed Forced Entry, there is still a possibility that the recently forced-entried victim is killed of, rather than it is happening automatically because of the same card that puts them back into play. This extra moment of chance is more working the nerves of the players IMO: Forced Entry is still a aweful card.

3. Spite plays his cards faster. There are 2 Forced Entry's in his deck, meaning he will play max. 2 more cards faster. This helps him to get all his drugs into play faster, something that at least I have the experience which is happening too slow. Most of my games I have 3 or 4 drugs out, waiting for the 5th drug to be played so Spite will flip and I can damage him. 

But generally speaking: I am probably one of the few that does like playing against Spite. His mechanics and game-play means that you know how the fight will progress, something that I find a positve change from all the other villains. If I feel like a difficult, frustrating fight: Spite it is. 

My BIGGEST change would be to change the drug that destroys all environment cards to something else. He makes all environments practically useless. Change it to something like

Forced Entry is currently a terrible card that makes you unwilling to save victims until right before Spite flips. I like your version of Forced Entry better.

There are a number of Spite mechanics I don't really agree with. The first time I played Spite, I had the impression there were more than 5 Drugs, but as soon as you got a fifth Drug you were stuck with what you had. Having only five Drugs means every flipped Spite game plays the exact same way. Maybe if there were 10 Drugs, you could then have more variable games with Spite, but this means fewer non-Drug cards unless we up the number of cards in Spite's deck beyond 25.

I also dislike Agent of Gloom Spite because his Drug flipping mechanic just doesn't work. With 3 heroes you can never flip a drug back face-down. With 4 heroes you have only one chance to do it (at the end of the second Spite turn), otherwise you can never flip a drug face-down. Maybe that's the intention, but it's still annoying to be presented with text alluding to the possibility of flipping drugs face-down only for it to not be possible beyond sometimes the second turn.

And only with extremely good luck and/or specific heroes that can play from Spite's deck.

Spite's Advanced and Challenge modes are bunk, too.  They just make it harder to fight him during the more interesting part of the battle.  Spite on Ultimate is basically always the same game: tank until he flips, setting up a situation whereby when he does flip, you can reduce the damage he deals to nothing or almost nothing while you whittle away at him.  Whenever I play him on tabletop, as soon as he flips, we play one round just to make sure it plays out as intended, then call ourselves the winners.

Spite' s gameplay is not that bad buddy. I don't think the same.

Rook City is definitely what I would call “primitive” design. I believe it came out before the Enhanced Edition, which means it was a direct sequel to the original Sentinels of the Multiverse (which had non-illustrated Environment cards, and the rules allowed targets to change their max HP value in a way that had to be tracked separately from their current HP, and of course the heroes and their cards had a lot of different art, like Savage Mana showing a defeated Hippo instead of the Matriarch’s birds). So, since it was never likewise updated, it stands out as not really being balanced with the rest of the game.

I hate the Chairman more than the Matriarch, but I agree Spite is the worst. I take it from your wording that you have a middling opinion of Plague Rat, who IMO is the best of the four by far; his mechanics are a little wonky, but he actually creates some really fun and interesting game states, granting the heroes new powers when they’re all Infected and stuff like that. (There are some wonky interactions with the Wagner Mars Base and so forth, but those are as much an issue with those old Environments as with him.)

On a similar topic, I’ve definitely found that the app has enhanced my enjoyment for some of the really fiddly decks, notably Lifeline. He has so many moving parts that I never really quite “got” him, but the app does an excellent job of showcasing everything. You play Repair Life-Line, and the app just automatically shows you all the cards that were just discarded, which you are now choosing one of to put into play. La Commodora is a similar beneficiary, and Luminary might be the best example of all. My enjoyment of all of these heroes has gone up a lot from playing them digitally (while Harpy stayed about the same, and my initial favorite Akash’Thriya has probably gone down, because it’s now more apparent how hard she needs to work to accomplish anything - I wonder if I was playing her wrong before, putting the Seeds back into the Enviro trash when I wasn’t supposed to or something, so that I thought she was better than she was).

And naturally, I would never even have played OblivAeon if not for the app, with how astonishingly fiddly HE gets.