Not all the advanced modes are created equal. Some villains gain a lot of difficulty, some only a little. Some villains have a completely changed game, some barely changed at all. What villains have the best and worst advanced mode, in your experience?
I like the advanced mode of Baron Blade his main and promo versions. Both give him abilities that make sense for what he is doing. Even though the flipped side of normal Blade is DR it makes snes since he is now in a power suit. Normal Gloomweaver on Advanced bother me because I'm not a fan of giving villain's a permanent damage immunity.
Omnitron is great, the strategy alteration is wonderful, and the constant flipping makes you work differently each round.
I actually like Gloomy's advanced, since it is thematic and doesn't affect his alternate win condition, if he worked better it would be great.
Deadlines advanced is awesome, makes destruction a big judgement to make.
Thematically I can see how Advanced Gloomweaver makes sense but you limit character options with those rules.
I really enjoy the advanced modes of all of the Wrath villains. Progeny turns into a race, Deadline's is awesome, Kaargra just feels like a fight that's rigged against you, and Infinitor's is insanely hard. Also enjoy the afore mentioned Blade, the Ennead, and Voss (the difference between reducing hero damage dealt and villain damage taken is a pretty big deal and really makes this fight different).
I don't like Spite's as it makes it an even more obvious course of action to just flip him) or Apostate (because in most situation it actually makes him easier unless Profane Summons comes up on the first turn)
Not a fan of The Dreamer as it doesn't add much flavor it just makes the game longer on the initial side with the DR.
I'm personally not a fan of any advance modes that apply damage reduction of some sort. It usually just makes the games drag on.
You limit character options when you pick a deck, an environment, play a card, any time anything happened other options were eliminated.
Any time you raise difficulty you either increase the effectiveness of the villain or decrease the effectiveness of heroes.
If every advanced mode and every difficulty increase was solely based on increasing villain power the game would be far more limited in scope.
You have to look at how it limits choice, and for how long, for how many players, and how important the options you took away were.
For Gloomweaver you don't even need to damage him to win the game, so it pushes heroes to focus on a different path to victory if they take those characters. He is such a target rich deck that I've never found Wraith, Setback, Haka or Tachyon to be minimalized by the immunity.
Only one of those four are unable to deal damage to GloomWeaver.
And yet they are the four that are most defined by those damage types. Maybe Fixer?
He can do any type.
I would consider The Wraith, Legacy, Parse, and Guise being the four that are most defined by those damage types. Guise being there because he only has a one-shot that'll be able to hit Advanced GloomWeaver and he has to have allies that he can copy to deal the other types of damage.
Legacy and Parse aren't defined by their damage though, they do damage, but they do other things better.
No one has mentioned Apostate's Advanced mode as being the least impactfull ones in the whole game. It litterally does nothing and is easily dealt with.
5th post in thread
Advanced Plague Rat is my favorite advanced. It changes the tactics a lot since your damage can also be boosted.
I agree with the comments about damage reduction and immunity advanced modes generally not adding much, with the exception of Omnitron because of the alternation.
In addition to 'tron there is Voss
Whose DR is not strategic loss
If he gives too much lip
you can force him to flip
and then you can show him who's boss
I'd say my favorite advanced villian of all time is probably Advanced Bomber Blade. I also like advamced IL, just because it almost makes you have to kill him before he flips, forcing you to stratigize how you'll deal the guy 20+ damage in one round (without superhuman redirection getting in the way)
The limirick was cute but that voss damage reduction is brutal. Check out how much harder he gets in the naive baisian model. Without legacy on your team sometime you can never get on top of those shielded minions.
Advanced Voss is much more likely to overwhelm you. That starting DR can make it difficult to kill minions, and on his flip side, the extra card play makes it much more likely for something like the Quark Drive or a ship to come out so that you can't focus on fighting him directly.