Please convince me Unity Golem isn't completely gimped

My daughter loves Unity and plays her every single game.  However, she won't touch Unity Golem because of the combination of dealing yourself damage to play a golem card and having fewer hp than the base Unity to start with.  Those are compelling arguments, and the few times we've been able to convince her to play Unity Golem, we watch in horror as Unity Golem nearly kills herself to play her golems, only to have them get wiped out in the regular course of a game since each golem has such low hp.

Unity Golem has to give up something precious and finite (hp) to play cards which are delicate and fleeting (golems).  I have to admit that this seems irretrievably broken.  Can anyone convince me otherwise, or has anyone come up with a good house rule to make Unity Golem a more reasonable option to play?  Because, we'd really love to love her.

I know a lot of people were fond of the idea of including the "Mechanical Golem" keyword on her card so that she could heal herself.  I wasn't terribly fond of the idea, but that would probably help a lot.

I'll admit, I love G-Unity and her card on a thematic level, but I doubt I'll play her much.

Adding the Mechanical Golem keyword is a cool thematic way to buff her if you feel like she's underpowered. She'll have some healing to offset the HP loss, and it will boost anything that keys off the number of Mechanical Golems in play. I would be interested to see what it feels like in practice.

I think Golem Unity is weaker than standard Unity, in most cases.  However, I also think that she has her great situations.  She doesn't kill equipment, so she has a lot more opportunities to get her golems out, and isn't completely hamstrung by a bad draw.  If damage can be prevented or reduced, or if there is plentiful healing for hero targets, then her ability can be much better than normal Unity.  One cool thing to do is to redirect her damage to Stealth Bot, which takes three, then heal Stealth Bot with Inspired Repair.  

Another good thing about her is that you actually get to use her equipment, especially Supply Crate.  In practice, I find that I usually only have to damage myself once or twice before I rely on Modular Workbench or Construction Pylons.  And it usually works out.  Sure, in some situations, 8 damage is far too much to take, and Unity dies.  This is especially true of the really fast, high-damage villains, like Plague Rat (where Unity has a hard time keeping golems anyway).  But Unity is really good in general, and I don't think the difference between Unity and Golem Unity has ever made me lose a game.

i havent played her much yet, but I remember christopher saying the ability to put a bot out first turn without any other equipment in play or in hand is pretty powerful. And if you happen to have some fun extra powers on equipment that no one gets to use with regular Unity, that becomes even more powerful

but she does seem highly situational

It will definitely be interesting to see this compared on the statistic. Maybe once shattered timelines is out, we can declare a Unity month and start comparing her.

We're going to try using various house rules to see if we can find a sweet spot where she's more fun to play.  We've talked about the one discussed here where she's considered a golem for the purpose of Inspired Repair, but also of dropping the cost of playing golems from 4 to 3, or maybe even keeping it 4 but having her regain 2 hp whenever a bot is destroyed (which would turn her golems into a resource for self-healing, which could be interesting).  If we come to any conclusions, I'll post them here.

I really haven't had much of an issue playing G-Unity - she's just a very different play style from Unity.

In tonight's game, for example, having G-Unity meant I could get out a first-turn Turret Bot that I would not have been able to do with Unity, and that Bot did a lot of damage (9) before being taken out. I didn't need to use the power again in that game, as I was able to get other items (e.g., Modular Workbench, Construction Pylons) to do the work for me, so it didn't matter. We were going up against one of the new villains, and had a few villain sources of damage that were frequently hitting the lowest-HP hero targets, so we had issues keeping the bots out, but that was going to be true no matter which version I played. Honestly, in this game, G-Unity was better than Unity solely for that first round play, if nothing else. I basically traded 4 of my HP for 9 villain target hit points.

And we ended the game with most of the heroes around 4-6 HP, and G-Unity still had a couple of bots out at the end. (Best play: using Pylons to drop 2 Raptors with 3 other Bots already in play - 12 points to the villain's head!)

I think some of this was in the deal; this game's wasn't great but I was able to go search for equipment or draw extra when I didn't have what I needed in hand, so it worked out nicely.

I'll go back to my thoughts from the Mr. Fixer conversation: I don't think everyone is going to enjoy every hero (or alternate hero, in this case). G-Unity is going to damage herself and some folks aren't going to like that, so they probably shouldn't play her. But obviously we can do things to tweak the characters however we want,  we just have to be careful we don't use tweaks that make the heroes over-powered.

Looking forward to hearing what you work up!

What you're gaining for that 4HP is essentially a play, plus the draw to get the card. What if Unity had a card that healed her for 4? What would you think of that card? If her average card is better than that, then G-Unity's power gets you ahead. If her average card is worse than that, it is not very good. I feel like 4 self healing wouldn't be that great on its own. Cards that only heal for 3-4 tend to have additional effects on them.

Personally, I could see using G-Unity's power once or twice per game, about like I use her regular power. It's really inefficient compared to her other ways to play Golems, so I tend to only use it if I absolutely need to get something done with a bot THIS TURN. In that way, G-Unity's power serves its core function better than regular Unity's power, because no matter what other cards she has she can always drop that golem if it needs to be done.

I only played Golem Unity once, but it did seem to me that she was better than regular Unity. Often I spend the first couple of turns with regular Unity drawing cards so that I can actually put something together. Golem Unity doesn't need to do that.

Apparently I differ on one point with Flamethrower, which is that I never use Unity's base power on Supply Crate unless there's some kind of dire emergency or I have more cards than I know what to do with.

I actually prefer Golem Unity to standard Unity. But I also hate having hit points. Ask anyone who has played a game with me.

Then where is my sub-20 hp hero! Come on Chris!

Nightmist without The Amulet or The Necklace.  Boom!

Although it is not the playstyle of some players, which is totally fine, some people really like the ability to use HP as a resource. Several heroes in the game can do that, and it is incredibly powerful because, in SotM (like many other games), heroes are just as effective at 1 HP as at full HP. For heroes like this, the argument could be made that ending the game above 1 HP means that you have not played as effectively as you could. Golem Unity is definitely one such character.

I agree with that, but for heroes who use their hp as a resource, there typically needs to be some way to get that resource back.  Golem Unity doesn't have that, IIRC.

You could agrue that stealth bot can help. Granted it's not restoring health, but it is keeping her from damage. Now I can see using her new innate power to bring out any of her Freedom Five bots (aside from Champion bot) since they actually have more HP then Unity, so it's a decent trade, plus they are just plain out awesome. Maybe even use it to get Raptor bot if he'll pull of something awesome on he turn.

Are people okay with the new Tempest? I think he is terrible compared to the old Tempest. Golem Unity I'm okay with. I agree she's not as good as the old one, but I feel Tempest got nerfed the most.

Spiff, I agree with your house rule to drop her damage from 4 to 3. Mainly because Champion Bot pushing the 4 up to 5 self damage is just too much.

Yeah, One-Armed Tempest is pretty terrible compared to his old self.  Plenty of villains who are willing to get rid of his cards in play, no need for him to do it just for the payoff of drawing a few more cards.  Tempest is my daughter's second favorite behind Unity and she won't touch One-Armed Tempest either, but we don't even try to convince her otherwise.

The problem with 1 armed temptest Is has anyone ever played a game where tempest had trouble drawing? Doesn't Localized Hurricane (the multi target, draw two cards power) for a couple rounds set you up for the entire game?

I always feel like Tempest doesn't have a problem getting cards. Quite the opposite, I feel like Tempest would be benefitted by a power that let him get rid of cards for some effect.

When I first saw the new cards for most of the heros I was really excited.  Many of them seemed to address play issues that some (if not all) had with the heros.  Bunker had something to do with extra mode cards, AZ and Wraith got some direct damage.  Tachyon in amazingly good in both addressing an issue she had and also helping the team.  Then I saw Tempest and thought "huh, I haven't ever had problems with him needing cards, but I guess more draw is always good."  Still I when I play Tempest I rarely use that power, it seems more like a power that Expat would LOVE.  It would help with card draw and bad draw issue and since she doen't have many one-shots that do damage she would basically pass a damage turn to get some juice.

I think there's a theme with the Freedom Six in general, and that's consistancy. It seems like they're at thier best when luck is not on thier side (especially with Absolute Zero). One-armed Tempest is able to fish for those good cards in his deck (although he's a little slower that way), and G-Unity can get those golems out on a turn where she normally wouldn't. Even Wraith has the ability to deal damage if she's unable to do so becuase of a draw. Consistancy is certianly more key in this game, as there is no "mulligan" of any kind.  The only one who is perhaps better is Team Leader Tachyon, but regular Tachyon can outdamage TLT in the long run

I think even more importantly, the Freedom Six make sense thematically. Their lives suck, so they've adapted to a less than stellar way to keep them selves alive. Like Tempest's card says, it's the price of freedom. 

Ah, that's my two cents. I do prefer most of the freedom Six because I don't like bad draws.

My thoughts exactly!  Getting stuck with a bad hand can really dampen the fun.  With most card games I play I don't worry so much about making the deck as powerful as possible as much as making almost completely immune to bad luck. (Just my personal style.)  If it doesn't work the way I want it to 90% of the time then I look to see if there is anyway to make it more consistent without loosing the point of the deck.  Search and Draw are my two favorite things ever in any deck based game.

Team leader Tachyon has become a favorite with my play group because she makes the experience more enjoyable for everyone playing.

That sounds like a great idea… I might have to start working on a home-made alternate hero card for Expatriette. 

Restock Weapons

Power: Destroy 1 of your guns. If you do, draw 3 cards. 

But to at least try to answer the OP's query, I do agree Unity is definitely gimped… but I have to admit that I like player her more now. I always felt she was a bit overpowered towards the end of the games before. 

I was definitely more concerned with Tempest's promo power, and I don't think I have seen it used more than once in games… and even then it was just to try it out. 

For what it's worth, I feel that if you really liked a character it's gonna be tough to get fully behind their promos since the whole point is to change their feel entirely and provide a different experience.

I do like the fact that >Games is willing to ruffle a few fan feathers to try new things with the game. And I love that the fan community is quick and loud in calling them out when they think something is off or unbalanced. It shows that this is a product people care about. 

We played a game using Golem Unity (spend 4 hp to play a golem) and the optional rule where when a golem dies, you get 2 hp back.  We quickly realized that 2 was too much, since once you got a few cards out and could play golems without having to spend hp to do it, you'd start getting more hp back from dead golems than you'd spent to play them.  However, changing it to only getting 1 hp back from a dead golem actually made it feel just about perfect.  You'd still think twice about having to spend 4 hp to play a golem, but you your little helpers were trying to keep you alive as you reabsorbed their little dead bodies back into you.  I think we'll continue playing Golem Unity this way.