Expatriette Fix?

Okay, maybe not a fix, but an improvement? I realize that she has a lot of great and fun cards to play in her deck (Hello, Unload. Hello, Hairtrigger) but I find that in practice, it is nearly impossible to find those cards. Can anyone suggest House Rules to improve her deck searching/drawing capabilities?

There's been a lot of discussion on some other threads regarding house rules or alternate powers for Expatriette (like this one https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/expatriette-variants-2801)

One in particular that I like but haven't had a chance to playtest enough is to give her a variation on Tempest's promo card. 

Power: Destroy one gun. If you do, draw 3 cards. 

I think something like that would help her get to the good cards without overpowering her too much... but I think this might work better as a card in her deck rather than her base power since it would work very nicely with her Load power. 

I guess the easiest solution would be simply to pair her with a hero that facilitates card draw.  Team Leader Tachyon (base power), Nightmist (Enlightenment), and Visionary (base power) all make good partners for Expatriette, as does Legacy (Bolster Allies) in addition to his base buffs and damage redirection.  Any of these, combined with Speed Loading, will keep Expatriette well-stashed with ammo all game long.

Expatriette has high hp, can deal tons of damage to both single and multiple targets, can reduce damage, and eliminate ongoings/environments.  She can even outright negate high-damage hits with Flak Jacket.  She's got to have a weakness somewhere, and that's her card draw.  Fixing that in her deck makes her overpowered.  

How does this sound?:

Power: Play a card. Draw a card.

...mind you, I only got that off the top of my head, but what do you guys think?

That power would give insane card advantage.

To put it another way: it's bunker's exact same power: only way better.

The sad truth is that just because a character isn't always the most fun to play doesn't mean the character isn't effective, it just means that maybe the character isn't for you

Yeah, crazy, right?  Go see what Visionary, Horus Ra, Team Leader Tachyon, Redeemer Fanatic, and Eternal Haka have to say about it.

Seriously, though, that power's probably pretty strong.  Try it out and let us know if it should be added to the lists of things people are using to try to improve a hero they find occasionally lacking.

I'm not familiar with any of the promo characters to be honest so i have no clue what they do… but Visionary is very differnt: draw 2 discard 1 is not in the same league as play an additional card and then replace it

he's referring to bunker's base power.   The powers of all the characters he listed are "bunkers exact same power, only way better".    

I think the answer to Expatriette's low card draw shouldn't be to have a hero "babysit" her for card accelleration.  What if I wanted to play Expat, Fixer, and Ra in a team?  When Visionary Enlightens Tachyon, it isn't a necessity, it's an awesome benefit to the two of them being together in a team.  With Expat, I never feel like accellerated card draw makes her "better".  It just feels like I'm trying to play catch up with other players who have decks that can actually function on their own and benefit the team as a whole because of it.

It's not a matter of babysitting, I don't feel--it's a matter of working as a team.  There's nothing saying Visionary has to give Expatriette that card draw every turn or that' she can be the only recipient of buffs:  it's just that she can benefit from the prescence of numerous other heroes, all of whom have card drawing as a function of either some common cards in their deck or a base power.  And, those heroes are plentiful enough in number as to be represented in some way in nearly every game.

I guess I look at it this way--we don't see threads complaining about Argent Adept saying, "oh, man, I can't deal any damage with him.  We need to fix him!"  It's not his schtick.  It's not his focus.  He buffs, he debuffs, and he makes everyone else better.  Given the example of Fixer/Ra/Expatriette, yeah, it might be a fun game.  But, you're also an experienced fellow.  You know that these three are primarily damage-dealing heroes with limited (if any!) control or buff elements.  When mowing down minions, they'll excel.  When faced with complex ongoings or the like, they'll suffer.  That doesn't make them bad heroes or underpowered--they just can't (and shouldn't!) be able to do every role at any given time.  They aren't meant to do so, just as AA isn't meant to be pumping off absurd amounts of damage.

I think the feeling of Expatriette's lack of cards comes from the fact that she can literally play her hand twice as fast as any other character.  She runs out of cards quickly, which can lead to less options in hand and a sense of the "inevitable" on the part of the player.  When youve only got one card in hand, you feel constrained, compared to Tempest or Nightmist, who have scads of cards in hand.   What's The Punisher's answer to a problem?  Shoot it.  Same goes for his homage in Expatriette.  She gets a few guns out, she starts blasting away.  Speed Loading adds some versatility, sure, and Hairtrigger is an awesome auto-damage, but they're not really necessary to make her function.  Once she has a gun or two, ammo gets fed in and damage comes out.  She doesn't need a huge hand to load and fire a tactical shotgun each round.  Options make her better, yes, but that's the case across the board.  But, again, what's the gun-toting vigilante's solution going to be in character?  Shooting!

Given the "alternate power" suggested above--play 1, draw 1--I think I've come to acknowledge an overarching philosophy in the game so far.  Generally speaking, any given power upholds the current "status quo".  You deal damage, you heal hp, you look at the villain deck, etc.  these are all things you can do that generally don't affect the direct future of your character (note:  direct.  Using Infrared Eyepiece, for example, keeps your hero indirectly safe from that Devastating Aurora by exchanging it for some other, less harmful negative, but it doesn't give you hp back, give you new power options, or defend you from an attack).  Further, generally speaking, card draw represents potential energy.  Theses are things you CAN do, things you COULD put into play.  However, like a battery, these things have little meaning for most heroes until they are actually put into play.  

That act of playing a card--turning the stored energy of a card into actuality--represents a fundamental shift greater than simply drawing or using powers.      It's "worth more" in many ways, because that energy is no longer potential:  it exists on the table as hp dealt, equipment/ongoings in play, or as staus effects inflicted.

there has to be some trade off for Expatriette's kinetic ability to throw cards down and, as is the case in her powers, that kinetic frenzy comes at the cost of a relatively lower "potential charge".  Increasing her potential makes her overpowered.

I suppose I don't understand why a Punisher-esque character would have to settle for a pistol when a shotgun is a necessary tool for the job.  I feel that Chrono Ranger is a prime example of a better constructed Expatriette AND Mister Fixer all in one.  He deals a lot of small damage (Mister Fixer's Strike power and Charge One-Shot) that he modifies (Bounties instead of Styles/Tools) with an array of firearms (Expat's Guns) that he can access if necessary ("Just Doin' My Job"/Eye on the Prize/"Kill on Sight" into a Displaced Armory).

Expatriette has diversity in her cards.  AoE, massive damage, multiple targets, and she can change her damage type, increase her damage, or reduce damage the opponent deals with her Ammo.  But being able to use those cards is tied heavily into actually drawing them.  Who cares if Argent Adept can't deal damage?  He can effectively draw/search for his Instruments/Ongoings to work.  Pretty much every other Hero has cards that allow for actually drawing more cards.  I don't quite understand why none of Expatriette's cards have a "You may draw a card" option on them.  It just seems like she's being denied a basic benefit of being a player-controlled character.

 I agree with most of what you said, PlatinumWarlock, but I also agree with Reckless.   Where to begin...   Lets start with a Pre-ST mentality.

In Rook City, when Expatriette first hit the field, card draw was sort of at a premium.   It was kind of rare that an ally would let you draw a card out of turn,  and it was special.  Tachyon could do it with fleet of foot (no team leader tach yet!)  and Visionary could do it with Enlighten.  Legacy had Bolster Allies.  That was about it.  A scattering of one-shots in a couple hereos decks, and one power (Enlighten) whose ally-helping potential at the time made it one of the best powers in the game.      It is in this world that Expatirette suffers the most,   where it is by far the hardest to give her the card drawing she needs,   hardest to work as a team as you put it Platinum, because there are so few members of any potential team that can provide the service she requires.   Even they cant usually provide her with card draw in the amount that she needs it.

But when Relics came out, we saw the addition of Argent Adept and Nightmist.   Both of these heroes can allow other players to draw cards,  and in the case of AA,  it's sort of a large part of his schick to do so.    With ST we now have Team Leader Tachyon, OmnitronX, and Scholar, all of which can help others draw cards.    I'm listing X, who I suppose doesnt technically let others draw cards, but Timeshift on Expatriette is pretty much as good or better, so I'm including it.   And the fact that you can do that every turn (as well as TLTach) is huge. 

What I'm saying is that bit by bit, Expatriette is being buffed indirectly by adding heroes with abilities that are card-drawing related.  Now in ST, Expatriette's team is able to help her out more than ever before.   You can still pick a team that doesn't provide any card draw,  but if you were to select at complete random,  the chances that you will do so are now much less.

However,  let's talk about what Expatriette *does*.   You mentioned that card drawing isnt really her thing.   I can respect that,  but what *is* her thing, exactly?   Well,   the only real answer I can make is that her thing is dealing damage.    But in my experience there are many heroes that do her thing much better than she does.  Tempest, Wraith and Ra belt out more damage that Expatriette usually does, and the case of Wraith is particularly damning because Wraith has so much utility that Expatriette can't match.  

So really, what we're looking for is a way to let Expatriette deal more damage so that she'll be on par with these other "damage-dealer" type heroes.   And the solution that most people give is "allow her more card draw"  so that it's easier to ensure she always has the right tools for the job. 

-awp

I can respect the sentiment, but again, I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Expatriette tends to lay down her hand at the start and never really hold more than 2-3 cards at a time, simply because she burns through them so fast.  In terms of drawing cards, let's keep in mind:  she has 6 cards whose sole purpose is to put equipment into play--3 Arsenal Access, and 3 Quick Draw--as well as 2 Speed Loadings, which lets your trash serve an an ammo dump.  That's fully 1/5 of her cards.  How much more are we planning to devote to this aspect of her?

A potential suggestion I might offer is the lowly Submachine Gun.  It tends to be overlooked in favor of its beefier cousin, the Assault Rifle, as there usually just aren't enough targets to justify the reduction in damage.  Plus, any villain DR negates the SMG's attack, making it less likely to be played.

Why not alter the SMG's power "Deal 1 projectile damage to all non-hero targets.  Draw a card."?  It beefs up what's arguably the weakest weapon in her deck, reinforces her overall theme (Answer to everything = more shooting!), and provides an option comparable to Ra's Living Conflagration.  Plus, it raises one of those "Interesting Choices" that tend to come up in games like this:  do you deal less damage this turn to open up more potential options for later, or do you go for the damage now?  Much like Living Conflagration, this becomes more potent with each additional buff or ammo card, but the fundamental choice remains the same:  damage or cards-in-hand?

Alternatively, you could always link the "Draw a card" addendum to one of Expatriette's weaker ammo cards--Incindiary Rounds or Shock Rounds.  Incindiary Rounds gets overshadowed by Hollow Points, while Shock Rounds' global damage tends to get nerfed by DR.  Perhaps add a line, "Draw 1 card for each target that takes at least 1 damage from Shock Rounds."  This way, it encourages a player to use Shock Rounds when there are a lot of baddies around--again, we have that choice emerging:  do you kill them outright with the Hollow Points and free up allies to do other things, or do you go for the big card draw with Shock Rounds and hope that your allies can take out the now-weakened mooks?"  That fits Shock Rounds' overall scheme (deal a little bit of damage to lots of targets) and provides a reward for players using it "correctly".

I think I tend to get wary about changing a Hero's base power, because of how drastic a difference a change it can make.  Just look at Absolute Zero, compared to his Elemental Wrath version--same cards, same relative hp, but they both play drastically differently, and have a much different overall schtick.  Losing his self-healing ability really hurts WrathAZ, but the ability to deal damage without equipment or ongoings in play?  Yeah, that changes the game.  Same goes for Bunker--his base version really suffers from an inability to deal with ongoings, but his Engine of War variant trades that weakness for Expatriette's:  card draw.    Adding to Expatriette's raw ability without subtracting something pushes her most noted weakness into being a strength, which to me defeats her design intent.

I’ve always been a defender of expat just as she is. I find that even if I have to spend the first turn drawing cards and only drawing, she still can be brutally effective. I’ve often found myself using overload not for the massive hit but in order to play a card and use a gun, for getting both hair trigger and an ammo out or 2 ammo on pride or pred. I feel that her ability to effectively play 3 cards every 2 turns and still deal a good chunk of damage if handled right is well worth it. I feel that we consider most heroes in the confines of a single turn - what’s my best action for this turn - when expat needs to be thought of across multiple turns

I agree with this statement whole heartedly.  Although card draw would help I really feel that she is severly lacking in good one-shots for a damage dealer.  With the exception of an RPG or Hairtrigger she only damages once on her turn (possibly buffed). If you look at Ra in comparison he damages through his power every turn AND through his card play the majority of turns.  As a result he has a much higher damage output.  So what if Expat can does slightly more damage on a single attach, she makes roughly half of the attacks. 

Compare to Wraith as you said, Wraith has a fairly comparable card for everything Expat has (except maybe sub machine gun), and doesn't have much for attacking one-shots, but she does have a utility belt to again let her attack almost twice as often.  If you could lower the damage of everything Expat does by one point but get two attacks a turn would you do it?  Hell yeah!  And to be fair actually Wraiths attacks do more damage if you have a targeting computer and no hollow points.  If hollow points were permanent the statement would be more accurate.  She might need an extra card or two, but between Impromptu Invention and Trust Fund she is actually MORE likely to be set up.

End result Expat can be effective, but she can't come close to Ra or Wraith.  I suspect she does around 2/3 to 3/4 the damage of either of those characters (unless Wraith chooses to pass on damage regularly to use the eye piece or something like that).

Maybe I'm not seeing it right, but she only has so many Unloads so if she is playing 3 cards every 2 turns isn't she taking complete turns without dealing damage?  Doesn't that just make her fall farther behind the other damage dealers?

Okay, so I tried out the power I suggested, and you guys are right: wayyyy too strong. The other heroes weren't even set up yet, and Exp was able to completely murder most of the relics Apostate was able to crap out.

I think next I'll try out PlatinumWarlock's suggestion about the SMG... it seems reasonable :)

I do mean skipping a turn of damage to play 2 cards. If you compare her to the likes of Ra and wraith then yes she’s falling behind without a doubt. tho everyone falls behind ra. I’ve seen him have +9 damage. only wraith come close to being able to match that.

But if you take the average damage that say… nightmist or abzero does, she’s right there with them, even if you do take the occasional turn to play two cards. Yes ab0 and nightmist have more spike damage and are able to throw out more memorable bursts (face it we remember the 20+ hp hits and not the 10 rounds of 2 dmg) but she is, once she gets just one gun in play, far more consistent. she sets up faster than most damage heroes really only needing two cards and then is just a consistent source of reliable steady damage.

sure her turns aren’t as interesting as adept or scholar or nightmist. she does far less on each turn. and compared to a lot of heroes her playstyle is simplistic. that can certainly make her less fun for a lot of people. But when you step back and remove all those opinions from it and look at just straight damage, she is actually fairly consistent and does a good chunk. she’s no ra or tempest, but why should all “damage” heroes do that much damage?

plus as for babysitting… It’s a team game. coop . I hate the thought that everyone has to pull equal weight. that unless you are doing 23.2 dps you aren’t worth having along. like Wow damage meters, judging by an impartial value in a situation where you just want to enjoy yourself is a fallacy. why does one have to ‘fix’ expat? (or Mr fixer) If they are not your cup of tea its not like there are not a ton of other choices . to play. not every hero has to be the cream of the crop. why fix? Why not accept them for whom thy are?

now alternative powers for an different game play (ala promo) is different. And I got one for you to try for expat.

power: hold out pistol. expatriette does one target 0 projectile damage. This counts as a gun. (and hence you can play ammo too it)

If Wraith uses Throwing Knives, Razor Ordinance, and Utility Belt (to activate both in the same turn), she needs 3 pieces of equipment out to deal 6 overall damage (3 to one target, 3 additonal spread around 3 targets).

Expatriette deals the same amount of damage (6 points) with one piece of equipment:  Assault Rifle (2 damage to 3 targets).

Admittedly, Wraith has access to what may be the single best solo buff card in the game–her MicroTargeting Computer.  There's no other card that comes close to offering the same raw damage without drawbacks.  The only thing even close is Ra's Solar Flare, which deals him damage every round, unless you manage to pull off the highly unlikely Imbued Fire/Flesh of the Sun God/Solar Flare combo.  Similarly, Impromptu Invention is probably the best single "get cards out of your deck" card in the game.  It gives you two free plays, a free general draw, and a free equipment pull from your deck.  There's nothing even close to that in any other deck.  I'd dare say that those two cards are overpowered, rather than complain because Expatriette can't keep up.

And, of course, comparing a buffed Wraith to an unbuffed Expatriette is patently unfair.  Of course Wraith would outdamage her.  Wraith with MicroTargeting deals 5 to one target, and 9 spread across three targets (total of 14), while Expatriette's Assault Rifle with Hollow Points deals 4 damage to 3 targets (12 total).  They're pretty close, considering that Expatriette can swap out the use of Hollow Points for broader damage (Shock Rounds) or global damage reduction (Liquid Nitrogen Rounds) .  

I'll readily admit that Ra outdamages Expatriette.  He has a ton more One-Shots that deal damage, which puts his total above hers.  However, he has absolutely no ability to destroy ongoings or environment effects, and his only damage mitigation ability is Flesh of the Sun God, which is highly dependent on damage type.  Expatriette trades that bit of damage for some additional utility and damage mitigation.  Is it a worthy trade-off?  Well, I guess it depends what you want.  

If card draw is the issue–which I'm still convinced is a necessary weakness–I'd suggest trying a variant linked to one of her guns or ammo, like the ones I listed above.  

If the issue is her outright damage output–which I'm still not convinced is an issue at all–consider making her ammo cards more permanent buffs, sticking around until destroyed/replaced.  

I would say its extremely fair because Wraith has the tools to go get that setup and do it early in the game.  I think she is almost as likely to have a targeting computer and a razor ordinance in the first couple turns as Expat is to have the comparable gun.  I guess you could compare a setup Wraith to a set up Expat, but a set up Expat is what hollow points with the shotgun or assault rifle?  It still lacks in the comparison AND only lasts a turn unless you have something to bring the ammo back.

I concede that Expat doesn't suffer much from board clearing affects.  I will concede that she is more consistent than an AZ or Bunker.   Although they can both tank.  And the new AZ doesn't need much setup to be as good as Expat so mabey that isn't as easy to concede.  Again damage on both card play and power helps a lot.

I think it is unfair to say "She lacks against pure damage dealers but does as much as Nightmist."  True, but Nightmist can tank, and deck lock, and get rid of environment and ongoings (though Expat can as well, Nightmist cycles so much she is much more likely to have the needed card), and help people draw cards.  I don't think of Nightmist as a pure damage dealer the way I think about Expat.  As a pure damage dealer Expat is subpar, as a utility character, well she has RPG and Liquid Nitro Rounds.  Even the Liquid Nitro Rounds is weak for what it does if you compare it to similar effects.

As far as it being a coop game.  Yes absolutely, I am often not the most effective person on the team.  Heros have good games and bad games.  Mostly Expat contributes to any game she is in.  I agree with saying "She is fine" with this mentality. 

These debates make it sound like I really hate her, but I don't.  I do think she is the most underpowered character though and that is a different arguement.  Playing an underpowered hero now and then is no big deal, it even happens unexpectedly if you have bad draw with any hero.  However if you really like her flavor and want to play her a lot it does kind of blow to know you are playing a subpar character on a regular basis.  Maybe thats not big deal, but it explains why people want to make changes.

Someone suggested a power for her called "Run and Gun"  - Deal 1 target 1 projectile damage.  Draw a card.  That might be interesting to try.

  I like that potential power "Run and Gun"   I also would be interested to see the tweak to SMG that PlatinumWarlock mentioned.   Both those seem very reasonable.

What about if ammo cards weren't destroyed after use?  They would only be destroyed if replaced by a new ammo card.   Or even you could make each ammo card have a small amount of uses, say 3 uses before it's gone.  If this was the case I feel there would be little need for expatriette to have more card drawing.

The Ammo card mechanic is the most interesting thing about the character, in my mind. I'd love an alt power that let's you get Ammo out quicker. And it would keep much of the same flavor the original base power has, too.

The thing you mention here sounds a lot like Speed Loading, a card I really wish came up more often because it's so much fun to use.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I might as well share it here too: I had a lot more fun with Incendiary Rounds when I pretended their text said "Play next to a gun card. After that card's power is used to damage a target, destroy this card. The next time that target deals damage, it deals itself that much fire damage." This way the card feels more unique and thematic, like Liquid Nitrogen Rounds does.

Because in a co-op game, the idea is for each member of the team to help each other.  By having characters that need other heroes to effectively do what they need to do, the characters aren't cooperating as much as one hero is graciously allowing another hero to be a hero.  Forgive the tautology, but generally the idea being being a hero is being heroic.  Why would Expatriette, who walks the mean streets of Rook City, use an Arsenal Access that nets her two Ammo cards when what she really needs is a Gun?  "Well, so Nightmist can Enlighten her or Team Leader Tachyon can Fleet of Foot into a Team Lead power."
In that case, Rook City is kind of screwed if Tach and Mist are off in the Final Wasteland punching out Gloomweaver.  And mechanically, it makes my use of Arsenal Access seem like it didn't really do what I needed it to do just because my deck just wasn't structured the way I needed it to be.

I love Expatriette.  She has a great backstory and interesting mechanics implemented in her deck.  She (and Fixer) are not equipped with decks that thematically represent heroes equipped to handle the villains or atmosphere of Rook City.  Which is really sad, because I would hate to have an Expatriette ongoing series where she just can't get what she needs and has to rely on her beefier buddies to fix her adopted city for her.  My frustration isn't that she "Isn't dealing the appropriate amount of damage to provide maximum efficacy."  My frustration is that I want to feel heroic when playing her, and I find many a situation where I don't.  It just feels like I'm along for the ride thanks to the good graces of the other heroes.

Speed Loading is great but I really wish it put the card in your hand.  If you are speed loading every turn you literally never draw a new card from your deck.  The Run and Gun ability might help with that.

i cant count the number of times ive seen Nightmist  enlighten herself and draw nothing she needed. Or Omnitron X play through the first five cards of his deck and not get an armor (one of his more essential cards in play, that can easily be argued) or legacy never finding lead from the front. Or Haka not getting Mere. Or. or  or or …

Thats part of the card deck mechanic. The randomness that leads to games being different. I also cannot count the number of times ive needed and drawn  ammo from Arsenal access. or the number of times its gotten me a gun. Or the number of times ive played into Quick Draw within the first 2 or 3 turns (or hell to be fair, the numebr of times ive never seen Pride and Predjucide.)

the point im making is that i play expat to just fine effect without being babysat. She may be a little bit less damaging then some other heros (and alot less than Ra, but we already covered that) but she always manages to do something and contribute. Same with Mr Fixer. it doesnt always /feel/ like shes doing as much as nightmist or argent or legacy, but she is.

Of course, mentioning legacy brings up the point … thats all legacy really does. He babysits teh rest of the team, with damage boosts, and damage redirection, immunities ect. But we all know this is super effective. Hell even the statistics agree. Thats all Team Leader Tach really does too - babysit the rest of the team with more card draw. Again, this is a cooperative game. If its more effective for you to spend your turn buffing an ally than doing something for yourself, shoudlnt you? And thats not to say that Expat /needs/ it - i fully disagree that she does.  Is she more effective with it? Yes. Isnt everyone?

Arsenal Access is a fetch card (as we have agreed that Expatriette doesn't have any draw effects), so it would actually be a bit more accurate to compare it to Call Forth, Impromptu Invention, Meditation, Displaced Armory, Onboard Module Installation, Summon Staff, Instrumental Conjuration, Technological Advancement, Keep Moving, and Expatriette's own Quick Draw.  The difference between Arsenal Access and all of these cards is that all but Call Forth (which allows you to keep ALL of the cards you fetch from your deck) get you exactly what card you want to fetch.  My example of Expat receiving extra card draw from team mates after she doesn't get what she needs isn't a benefit in this situation, it is something to help her function as a character.  Yes, all of the heroes get bad draws, which (in theory) are alleviated with the help of a fetch card.  When Expatriette gets a bad draw, her card that helps her get a better one (since, of the first two Equipment cards she fetches off of the top of her deck, she only gets to keep one) can also, in fact, get a bad draw.  This is nothing but worse for Expatriette for seemingly no reason at all.  Even Quick Draw doesn't do you any good if you have both Pride and Prejudice out (unlike OMI/Summon Staff, which both give you some kind of benefit with your search even if you already have what you're looking for).  Even when Expatriette draws cards that theoretically help her get more cards, they are incredibly limited in their execution.

Legacy (who deals damage and buffs his teammates) and Team Leader Tachyon (who draws cards and allows her teammates to draw more cards) being good at buffing teammates and allowing them to draw more cards respectively isn't really a problem.  That is what they do.  They are built to make everyone better.  Better, being the keyword.  But take them away from a game with Expatriette as opposed to Ra or Tempest or Haka.  I get the "Well, just help her draw cards" argument, but what if that isn't an option in the game you're playing with Expatriette?  Deal with it?

That is the part where I get disappointed with the mechanical aspect of Expatriette's deck.  I would rather Expatriette be able to help her own deck function as intended rather than relying on the assistance of another hero.  It would be nice if Expatriette could get the Gun she needed for the job on her own so that she could help the other heroes while they are helping her, i.e. teamwork.

see thats the difference. I dont find Expat to have a problem without help. I find her to be just fine and capable. It might be that I play her a lot. If its choice game i almost always pick expat or fanatic. And when i pick expat, i rarely have trouble. sure i have the occasional game where she doesnt manage to do much more than get a submachine gun out and maybe a liquid nit rounds and thats it, but for the most partI never seem to have a problem - with or without help from teamates. 

Sure, she isnt ra. Sure she's no argent adept. Certainly she is no wraith. But taken on her own i find her to have no trouble doing what needs to be done in a game, and giving worthwhile contribution. Maybe its my playstyle (for instance... i cant stand visionary. I find her power to be rather weak, and even once you get the good ongoings in play i still feel her to be rather lackluster  - most games ive played visionary its very simple turns - play a damaging card and stack a deck. End of turn. No real decision - i find i have more choices iwth both Mr Fixer and Expat than I do with visionary - and that may just be my playstyle. 

I've actually been considering just giving it to her at the start of the game, just like I want to try to give Mr Fixer a toolbox or harmony.

Both Expatriette and Mr Fixer are a bit low-key compared to other heroes, but I kind of like that. But it helps that we usually play with two heroes a player, so it's not so bad when one falls flat.

> I love Expatriette.  She has a great backstory and interesting mechanics implemented in her deck.  She (and Fixer) are not equipped with decks that thematically represent heroes equipped to handle the villains or atmosphere of Rook City.  Which is really sad, because I would hate to have an Expatriette ongoing series where she just can't get what she needs and has to rely on her beefier buddies to fix her adopted city for her.  My frustration isn't that she "Isn't dealing the appropriate amount of damage to provide maximum efficacy."  My frustration is that I want to feel heroic when playing her, and I find many a situation where I don't.  It just feels like I'm along for the ride thanks to the good graces of the other heroes.

This. A lot of the time, playing Exp feels less "I'm a bad-ass hero about to load your ass full of bullets", more "....where is that damn gun?"

it should also be noted that both fixer and expat are the most Au natural heroes. they don’t have suits (bunker) or trust funds and research teams (wraith) And every other hero has some kind of super power.

that is kind of thematic then as to the feel of their decks. but still, I haven’t had a problem with either

Another suggestion, again right off the bat with no play testing whatsoever.

Can we change Arsenal Access (almost completely)? Instead of its present effect (which, as has been pointed out, can just lead to another bad draw), can it read

"Search your deck for an equipment card. Play it. Shuffle your deck."

Precisely.  On a superheroic level, we're comparing Iron Fist/Luke Cage and The Punisher to Superman, Batman, and Doctor Strange and saying "oh, look, they're not as powerful!"  

Of course they're lower-powered!  The heroes they're based on are lower-powered! 

Rook City is meant to emulate the Iron/Dark/Modern Age of Comics, which has darker storylines, more potent villains, more "mature" storylines, and anti-heroic, street level characters.  It makes sense that they're slightly less potent, while The Chairman and The Matriarch are some of the most lethal villains in the deck.

And really, outside of their "Perfect Human Specimens" thing The Organization is just a bunch of regular people too. Outside of her psychic control over them, the Matriarch's fowl are just ordinary birds. And yet...

No different than The Kingpin, Typhoid Mary, Bullseye or the like–all classic Daredevil villains who rose to prominance in the Iron Age.

thats all well and good, but the purpose of comic books is to tell a story.   It doesn't much matter who is more powerful than who;  they face challenges appropriate to their strength.    However,  in SotM telling a story is only a secondary purpose.   The primary purpose is playing a game.   And because the primary purpose is playing a game,  relative hero strength matters quite a bit.  In a game, it's important that characters are relatively on par with each other, that's called balance.   

I like it.

Here's another without playtesting: "Reveal cards until you find two equipment you may put both in your hand OR you may put one in play and one back into your deck."

I don't think I agree that balance is as important in a co-op game. The villains aren't all the same strength, why should the heroes be? It gives you more knobs to fine tune the difficulty to where you want it. As long as nobody's completely useless and nobody guarantees a win (i.e. nobody's flat-out broken), I'm okay with a some variance as long as everybody's fun to play. The weakest hero (Bunker) still has a 63% win rate, so it's not like the game is so punishing that you can't use the less-effective heroes if you feel like it.

I mean, wizards are OP as hell as soon as they get access to third-level spells in pre-4e D&D, but that game is incredibly popular. As long as they're close enough that everybody can have fun, it's good. IMO Sentinels is well within those tolerances.

So Fowl and Thugs can be handwaved as super deadly because of popularity but Fixer and Expat are subject to the laws of reality because they're "gritty"?  I don't quite understand what your trying to say.

hehehehe… exactly why we started the statistics thread I love that Abzero is always thought of as a popular, strong hero, and is currently at the bottom too. 

Of course, remember what the  math boys said. Were still at probably a 6 or 7% margin of error, which could very well heavily change these guys. Around 500 games each is where we'll be down to, i think it was a 2.5% … (as of this posting, we have about 350ish games each live, to be updated at the end of the month)

It's more a matter of intentional contradiction.  From about 1981 (I mark the start of the "Iron Age" as the start of the X-Men "Days of Future Past" storyline by Chris Claremont, though other dates ranging from 1981 through 1987 come up), comics began to focus on more realistic, flawed heroes whose superpowers were either limited or utterly nonexistant.  In this age, we get Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Denny O'Neil, Grant Morrison, and numerous others rising to prominence on nuanced, philosophically-charged storylines.

Coupled with those storylines, we get villains that are simulataneously (and contradictorily) both innately human and seemingly untouchable.  The Kingpin, in Miller's Daredevil storyline "Born Again" dealt with this in spectacular manner—The Kingpin is just a guy, but he's an incredibly well-connected, wealthy guy who controls organized crime throughout Hell's Kitchen.  Compare that to The Chairman.  He's just a guy, but he's an incredibly lethal, merciless, beast of a guy.

Rook City, thematically, emulates those sorts of comics.  That comes with the constraints of the idiom, whether positive or negative.  And that includes the seeming contradiction between street-level, gritty heroes and seemingly all-powerful, unstoppable villains.

Mmm.  I don't think Absolute Zero is very popularly thought of as strong.  He definitely has his fans, but he has a lot of detractors as well.  (At least before Elemental Wrath appeared, anyway.) 

You should have seen those debates rage before you got here.

So which issue of the Punisher involved him not being able to find the right gun he needed to shoot a squad of Hand ninja?  Or when he couldn't beat the Kingpin on his own and had to rely on Charles Xavier souping his brain up with enough know-how to effectively dish out some vigilante justice?  Or when he went to his underground bunker to load up on pistols and rifles to take on Bullseye but accidentally went to the location filled with nothing but ammo?

I definitely get the idea of The Chairman (who certainly is not just a normal dude, considering the fact that he's over a century old and has developed a physiology completely untouched by toxic waste, dinosaurs, lava, chaos energy in a realm outside of time and space, postapocalyptic cryptids, and ancient Atlantean technology) being an untouchable villain, but Dawn is the Magneto to Expat's human Quicksilver.  If Expat can't step to crime lords and bird ladies, then what hope does she have against a literal coalition of metahumans?  I think there is a rather prominent issue of conveyance if that's what >G was going for with these characters.
Watchmen is a great comic.  Watchmen:  The Game would consist of the players being undermined, humiliated, and destroyed before concluding with a pyrric victory(?) through a Journal Equipment card (Rorschach reference).  That...is much more fun to read than to play.  I would be quite surprised if the inspiration for Fixer and Expatriette were specifically the era of heroes being kicked around by villains, because losing to bad guys all of the time isn't very fun.  The narrative of a game is quite different than that of an Alan Moore story.

He's still a pretty good writer, though.

If balence is the most important thing, then rather then fix Exp. or Mr. Fixer who it is a little early to say if they are to weak or not, stats wise, may I rather suggest that people talk about nerfing Legacy? 

Personaly I am fine with everyone as is, but the one thing the stats do show at this early stage is that Legacy is more powerful then everyone else. 

Again I am fine with whatever people want to do. I like the game as is, but for the balance folks why not go for the biggest balance issue, Legacy? 

I think you're conflating the two very separate arguments I've made over the course of this thread:

Argument 1–Expatriette's lack of card draw is a relative weakness intentionally built into her design, as she has relatively high hp, can deal with ongoing/environment cards, and deals consistently high damage with relatively low set-up.  Increasing her natural ability to pull from her deck (particularly by direct choice) causes her to be overpowered.

Argument 2–Thematically, Rook City–and only Rook City (not the whole of SotM)–is meant to represent an era of comics that often featured street-level, low-powered heroes facing off against overwhelmingly powerful criminal organizations.  This representation is common throughout the entire game:  it's kind of the overall point.  Expatriette is as much The Punisher as Superman is Legacy, Bunker is Iron Man, and Tachyon is The Flash.

Applying the inherant logic of a card game to a narrative structure is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum and isn't really applicable to the conversation.  It's comparable to webcomics like the early episodes of 8-bit Theater or Order of the Stick where we read a narrative tainted by video game/RPG logic and laugh at the results.  But, even still, given your examples, how about the numerous storylines where Green Lantern can't get his ring to work, because of a loss of will?  Or the number of times Batman gets captured, and the first thing the villain takes is his utility belt?  Adversity and conflict breed good narrative, and that's true of comics, novels, and even games.  

And, for what it's worth?  I heartily disagree that "Watchmen: The Game" would be un-fun.  It's why I wrote one.  It has much less to do with "humiliating and destroying" the heroes as much as focusing on investigation, moral quandary, and burtal action in a semi-realistic setting.

IMO, AZ can be strong but also he's swingy and hard to play effectively. When I pick him I often feel like I'm gambling. Either he will completely dominate the game or he'll be comepletely useless, depending on his draw and whether the environment and villain decks blow his stuff up. I would expect both of those factors to push his numbers down.

An alternate base power: Search your deck or discard pile for PRIDE or PREJUDICE. Put it into play.

This means she always has her trademark guns close at hand. The cards which do the same thing are still useful, because she can then fire the gun on the same turn. It seems like it would address the concern some people have (that she can go a while without being able to get a gun) without really making her any more powerful.

Also, it would just require a new character card - not changing any of the cards in the deck itself.

That might make her a bit overpowered. Pride and Prejudice by themselves aren't too much, but together they can be quite a handful, and with this power, you could easily have both of them in two turns, and it would make equipment destruction mostly meaningless to Ex-Pat. I agree that Ex-Pat should have a way to more reliably get what she needs whether it's ammo or guns. Probably the easiest fix is to just allow Quickdraw to search for any gun in her deck, and have arsenal access reveal cards until an ammo card is revealed an either put it into play or into your hand. You still wouldn't get exactly what you needed 100 percent of the time, but it would put her a little bit more on par with characters like Wraith.

I agree with you to a large extent.  In the case of Expat though I do get the feeling that I really don't want her in a game with the tougher villians because she can't do as well as someone else.  As far as mages that is one that thing that I always hated about D&D.  How stupid is it that if you want to play a long campaign the other classes just have to accept an almost minion roll to the player that everyone knows is playing the more powerful characters.  It is so much more fun when all the players can be roughly on par (strengths and weaknesses yes) rather than "you be awesome and I'll be backup."

Even more important when just using the base percentage is that it doesn't take into account what teammates and villians are being used.  If people think Expat is weak so they always team her up with Legacy, DV, and Tempest against some of the weakest villians while at the same time someone like say Wraith is strong so people player her along with a less dominat team against harder villian then of course Expat will have an inflated win %.  Now we are getting enough games that I think this issue is going away and really shouldn't be an issue, but I know in my group Expat is NEVER chosen against Matriarch or Chairman.

Agree completely!  Sometimes he really struggles.  However at least when you choose him you know you MIGHT be amazing and you MIGHTbe terrible.  Sometimes its fun to gamble.  Some people don't like to play him, some think the risk is worth the reward for those great games.  Going into a game just knowing you will be subpar is not fun, its not a gamble, its just subpar.

What if ammo cards did not get discarded upon use, but get attached to the gun as a perma buff. Speed Load would be altered slightly to let you play an ammo card from your hand to destroy and replace whatever round is in the gun. Ammo could be a much cooler mechanic than one-shot in sheeps clothing. I think this would bring her damage more in-line with her contemporary heros while not breaking her with a power thats way too good

I actually quite like Expat against Chairman. Get a damage boost or two and Hairtrigger Reflexes can one-shot some of the thugs.

Last time I played Chairman and the last time I played Apostate we had an Expat. We won both games. In either case I play with mostly people who don't frequent the forums, so none of them seem to have a problem with Expat. For my submitted games at least we don't shy away from using her against harder villains.

I don't think I'd hesitate to play Expatriette against the Chairman either. Leaving Hairtrigger Reflexes aside for the minute, Flak Jacket, Assault Rifle, Liquid Nitrogen Rounds and Tactical Shotgun are all very solid against the Organisation.

My wife and I played some this evening, and I did some stress testing with the optional rule I suggested earlier for Expatriette:  her SMG card would deal 1 damage to all non-hero targets, then draw a card.

I actually charted out the damage dealt overall between Expatriette and Ra, with our ther heroes being Tachyon (normal) and Haka--two heroes that have relatively low interaction with other heroes.  We chose Gloomweaver and Tomb of Anubis, to provide a baseline without ongoing or equipment destruction and a fair amount of villain and environment targets.

Both Ra and Expatriette received pretty solid starting draws, with Ra's Summon Staff and Expatriette's SMG in hand.  Ra was able to get down Imbued Fire, as well, in round 3.  Expatriette got down speed loading in round 4, though it was a non factor.

Our findings?  Innate card draw massively overpowers Expatriette, precisely as I had figured.  By round 5, Expatriette had all but one of her guns out and was was preparing back to back turns of Unload.  Even taking a full round off to prepare by only playing cards, Expatriette outdamaged Ra 85 to 48, mowing down targets with abandon.  Ra's best turn, a Scorched Earth/Staff/Imbued Fire combo dealt only half the total damage of Expatriette's second Unload (17 vs. 32).  Ra's only saving grace was that he plunked off Gloomweaver's final 6 hit points.

What's most frightening about this experiment is the fact that Expatriette's ammo was an utter non factor.  I drew two ammo cards throughout the game--incindiary and nitrogen rounds--which were only used once each.  I didn't need or even want them, as my card draw was high enough to get down any guns I wanted, open with an RPG Launcher or an ongoing, and utterly annihilate the field.

I'll readily admit, Imbued Fire helped Expatriette, but the buff applies to everyone's instances of damage, so it's hardly the contributing factor.  Rather, I had copies of every card I could have wanted in Expatriette's hand, and just let loose twice to destroy everything in the way.  Giving her deliberate card draw, even linked to one of her powers, massively overpowers her.

(Edit--oh, and we took down The Chairman with her, too.  Pretty handily, mind you.  Same sort of scenario, only slightly more ammo, and two less guns.)

If that's the case, Platinum, then I guess her deck really should be kept as it is, more or less, at least concerning outright card draws. Like someone said earlier, maybe the card draw "weakness" she has was deliberately built in to control her awesomeness?

Vindication!!! XD

Of coruse, as you said you had a pretty awesome start. But out damaging /ra/ … thats pretty ridiculous.

How broken would she be if her ammo stuck around until destroyed or replaced? Has anyone tried that? With her ammo able to replace old ammo to the discard pile. I really like the idea of the ammo mechanic, but I find it to be....lackluster 

The problem with permanent ammo is that she's not going to have a lot to do on her turns anymore once all her guns are loaded up. At least with Speed Loading you have to work for it. I think it would likely be a small increase to a normal turn because she's not going to have a lot of other effective options most of the time, but it gives Unload an unneeded boost.

Once you start reclaiming ammo and speed loading every round, you're going to get pretty static. The ammo mechanic appeals to people who want to set up a tight loop and iterate all the way to the bank. People who want dynamic turns where you're always doing something different are naturally going to be disappointed.

I feel like this is okay, actually. Different heroes' mechanics appealing to defferent players is actually a really good thing IMO.

We actually played a game or two with the "Perpetual Ammo" mechanic in play as well.

While the results weren't as overpowered as the SMG Draw mechanic, she was still significantly outdamaged every other hero in the game.  It did make  her more dynamic, in the sense that she was free to play "other" cards during her turn, but the overall damage effects were pretty strong.  Being able to throw down a Tactical Shotgun with Hollow Points and keep that combo all game, without any buffs?   This effect was only magnified when Argent Adept got to play his "Use a Power" song out, and she began pumping off Shotgun blasts 2-3 times around.  Whew...

It's been suggested up-thread that perhaps a limited mechanic on the Perpetual Ammo might work better.  Given my experimentation, I might suggest the following:

1) When an ammo card comes into play, attach it to a gun and place 3 tokens on it.  

2) Each time you use that gun's power, remove one token from the attached ammo card.  If the ammo card ever has no tokens on it, destroy it. 

After all this tweaking, I'm still back at my original conclusion--baseline, normal Expatriette is functioning precisely as intended. :D

@Lynkfox--Yeah, Expatriette had a pretty solid start, but the thing is...so did Ra.  I started the game with a Summon Staff, Scorched Earth and a Fire Blast (and another card that apparently wasn't important enough for me to remember).  Expatriette beat him down in terms of damage in every sense of the word beatdown:  More single-target, more targets, more overall damage, you name it.  When she can take a full round and do nothing but play guns/ammo and still nearly double Ra's damage output?  That's something else.

@Drako--That was me, by the by.  Expatriette really can do it all.  She excels at single-target and spread damage.  Liquid Nitrogen rounds make a great debuff.  She can destroy ongoings and environment cards, and she responds exceptionally to any buffs due to her multiple instances of damage.  The only thing holding her back is her lack of card draw and her relative fragility--(her only defensive card is Flak Jacket).  Eliminating one of those weaknesses by handing her more options really pushes her over the top.

How about instead of tokens you use discards, something like when you play an ammo card you can put asmany cards from your hand under it and every time you use the ammo you get rid of one card. If there are no cards under it when you use it then you destroy it. 

Why not give the ammo HP that decreases after each use? That gives it a limit without adding any new counting mechanisms. Gotta use it up fast, though, or foes might damage your gun and you'll lose some of it!

Why not add

"When you would destroy this card, you may discard a card from your hand instead"

to all ammo cards?

I've played a few games with her where I tweaked Quick Draw to allow you to get any gun and put it into your hand, and limiting Arsenal Access to ammo. It actually worked out pretty well. The only game it made a significant change with was one against Plague Rat where I was able to get a Tactical Shotgun out in the first round. So far this is working really well to allow her to get the gun she needs for a particular situation without making her overpowered, and it's a pretty simple change.

Platinum, How did the ammo tokens work out? Did it break Exp? :O

Jagarciao, that actually sounds like a very good suggestion. It would add another element of choice: should I keep these cards in my hand, or do I need more uses of this ammo? Of course, I can imagine Hollow Points and Nitro Glycerin to have a crap load under them, but they would still be limited, and of course if the gun they are attached to is destroyed, bye-bye ammo... I think I'll try this out, see if it works :P As our resident "Expatriette is fine as she is" expert, Platinum, would you do us the honor of trying it out as well? :P

i point out my alternate power that people seemed to have missed - one of Expats major issues is having ammo in hand and no guns at the setart of the game.

Alternate Power: Hold Out Gun - Expatriate Deals 1 target 0 projectile  damage. This counts as a gun (So you can play ammo next to her character card)

Its obviously less powerful than having a gun out, doing 0 damage, but it allows you to use those ammo cards you have in your hand that you would be stuck double drawing and at least contribute /something

Ooooh lynkfox, that's another one worth trying out. Though wouldn't become much less useful when you finally DO have a gun in hand? Unlike load which is still useful later on. And how does this power affect Unload? :O

Well it says gun, so I would imagine it could count for unload. A lot of heroes have base powers that are no longer used once they have their set up, or have cards in their deck that gives them a purely better version of their base power. 

exactly, on both counts - so it would count as a gun for extra powers uses (so if you had any kind of damage boost it be worth while, or a good place to put down an ammo for later) - and like Wraith, Bunker, Argent Adept, … once you get going how often do you touch their base powers? heck once Expat gets speed loading out and a couple of good ammos to draw through i rarely touch Load,.

It might be a few days till I get to test any more Expatriette variants, as it's the end of my school's quarter, and I have a ton of grading to wrap up.  Plus, I'm demoing my own game at conventions over the next two weekends.

if I get a chance, I'll whip out my SotM, but if someone else wants to take up the testing, feel free!

Had a really cool game with Expatriette once. One of the other team members was Ra, and I think the other may have been Legacy but I'm not sure. Anyway, we were against Gloomweaver. Expatriette had a damage buff from somewhere (possibly Imbued Fire, if not then something from Legacy if he was indeed in the game) and Hairtrigger Reflexes out. Whenever a Zombie was played, insta-kill. Whenever a Cultist was played, it'd get hit but not killed by the Reflexes. Then we'd let it hit Ra first and his Flame Barrier would finish it off. The resultant Zombie would, of course, then be insta-killed by Expatriette. Good game :D.

Ameena, beautiful :> That's the kind of thing you just love to see, yes? :> Though I think as a whole Gloomweaver...kinda sucks. Have you seen the *suggested* improvements to Gloomweaver? Check out Spiff's website to see it :P

Yeah, I saw them - stuff like zombies getting more damage, heroes with pins in them being the only ones who can attack their pin (ie other heroes can't hit a pin that's stuck in someone else), and so on. But I like having another "easy" villain to counter all the nasty buggers. Mind you, Gloomy did get lucky on his cards once, a few weeks ago, and beat us, which was kind of embarrassing :P. He didn't flip (he never has, for us), but I think a combination of hard-hitting cultists and (probably) horrible environment cards just whittled us down.

At least he's only beaten us once. It gets a bit frustrating against some villains who have amuch higher win rate - for us, that's probably Plague Rat (the constant irreducible damage is nasty) and the Matriarch. The latter beat us in a terrible four rounds the other day, though it took about half an hour because of the working out of who was getting hit when birds got killed. We were in the Tomb of Anubis and a combination of Akana (play an environment card when a villain target is destroyed) and Mdjai (hit every target for 1 melée damage at the end of the turn) meant that in a single turn we were all practically wiped and the entire environment deck was in play. The game ended the following round when the same thing finished us off (Lilian had played a Darken the Sky to put all the birdies back in play during her turn) :P.

Upthread, I suggested an alternate base power: Search your deck or discard pile for PRIDE or PREJUDICE. Put it into play.

There was one reply:

I don't think it would make equipment destruction meaningless, because she doesn't have many cards that do damage directly. So if her equipment were destroyed then either (a) she has a gun in hand to play and uses it or (b) she has to skip her card play to use the power, and doesn't get to make an attack on the turn after losing equipment. In the second case, all she has out is Pride or Prejudice - which just does as much damage as the base character powers which do direct damage.

So equipment destruction would slow her down for a turn or two. If the goal is to give her reliable access to guns, I don't see how it could do any more than that.

I could imagine not using this power at all in many games, if I had decent cards. It makes her more secure than her usual base power, so give her fewer hit points to compensate.

TBH, I'd rather draw the extra card and try to get to a set up faster than use Hold Out Gun with a hand full of ammo early. The only exception would be if we had to kill a thing this turn. But I don't usually take Expatriette if I feel like I'm going to need her damage on turn 1, because she's so susceptible to bad draws.

Maybe a riff on Eternal Haka's power? Draw a card. You may discard an ammo card. If you do, draw 2 cards. This'll help mitigate ammo-heavy starting draws and get to the cards you want, both guns and utility. She's sacrificing one of her big strengths of being able to get a fat setup in a turn or 2 even if her entire tableau gets wiped. I kinda feel like a lot of the promo hero cards are about sacrificing a strength to cover a weakness, and this would be in line with that.

Let's start with the claim that Expatriette is already powerful enough, so any tweak is just to make her more fun, not more powerful.

Expatriette's base power allows her to play more cards that other heros.  If nothing let's you draw additional cards, you're stuck only being able to use that power 3 times before you've got an empty hand.  There doesn't seem to be much incentive in skipping your turn to draw an additional card, because you loose out on the opportunity to use a power and deal damage.  How do we entice her to skip turns?

I love the idea of ammo cards.  I see her base power as a way to drop a ton of ammo, and then use it.  What would happen if Speed Loading did not put a card on top of your deck, but instead read "Power: take all ammo cards from the trash and add them to your hand."  You use up your power for that turn, but you've also got plenty of options for loading on following turns.  It encourages more use of Pride and Prejudice to burn through ammo.  It also encourages the use of ammo other than just Hollow Point every turn.  I imagine the movie sceens where empty bullet shells pour out of the gun and cover the floor.

Agreed, thats one reason I liked the run and gun power suggested: do 1 target 1 damage and draw a card.

I think the big thing about Expatriette's power is that it makes spending a turn drawing cards less painful. When faced with opposition that's essentially immune to damage, you can draw cards, or put out a Flak Jacket and an RPG Launcher, or whatever. A lot of the time, you're going to prefer your gun to your base power anyway, but I have found that sometimes you're better off playing two cards than doing a couple of points of damage.

I jsut recently played another game with Expatriette, no modifications, against Voss. It. Was. Beautiful. While it was ultimately Fanatic who burned Voss down to nothing with Wrathful Retribution, it was Exp who was able to mow down the field of minions. She was invaluable: instead of taking multiple turns to take down 2 or three baddies, it took just one of Exp's to Assault Rifle them all to death, with some assitance from good ol' Imbued Fire. And Exp always just seemed to have an RPG, just when the environment threw something nasty at us. Point is: wow. Expatriette might just not need a fix.

....of course, I was able to draw Assault Rifle in my opening hand soooooo, you get the point.

Yeah she's great when you start with her good cards.  I played recently and got Pride and Prejudice in my opening hand.  She did great.  I think that a lot of the talk of "fixing" her is more about the fact that she doesn't get her good cards all too often because she has no extra card draw (and possibly zero when speed loading) and her search cards pale in comparison to what we see with other heros.

As a side note on speed loading, you can't really use that card if you want any opportunity to search for other key cards like unloads or RPGs and I think that is frustrating to people.  If she could somehow speed load AND see new cards it would help a lot.  Thats why the idea of Run and Gun is growing on me.

I'm wondering how fun it would be to have the run and gun and be able to play an ammo next to that.  Might be too good, but I would really like to see how it works out!  Actually it wouldn't be much better than Haka and Scholar's 2 damage and draw power.  It could be better depending on the ammo, but you would also need the right ammo and the speed loading card in play so it would take more to set up.

Even if you can't put ammo on it I like the idea of "This turn I'll choose to do less damage to get an extra card".

I had another idea for improved consistency.  I'm not a big fan of changing cards inside the deck when changing the base power accomplishes the same thing.  What if her base power was changed

   from "Power: Play a card"

   to "Power: Play an ammo card directly from your trash"

Compared to my last suggestion, Speed Loading as it's currently written isn't completely negated since you still may want to use your play phase to play an ammo card, and use your power phase to fire a gun.

At the same time, this modification makes her base power becomes more restrictive.  She can no longer play any card, but still has a pool of options that she can pick from later in the game.  I think it has to be restricted to just ammo cards; being able to pull any equipment card from the trash (including guns) , seems like it would make her too powerful.

I honestly think this would be a lot weaker than her current power.

Especially early game.

Weaker or different.  While you miss out on being able to drop your entire hand in the first few turns, your mid and late game consistancy is drastically improved.  Someone would need to play test with other heros to determine the overall interaction.  As someone mentioned, hero's that let you draw cards are your best friend.  How many card draws do you need to make the original base power worth your while?

Pride and Prejudice together can be a really deadly combination and with this base power you're guaranteed to be able to do it in two or less turns. That kind of consistency would put her way ahead of other equipment heavy characters like Bunker and AZ. What makes equipment or ongoing destruction so devastating in Sentinels is that you may not have extra copies of the destroyed cards in your hand, and it could be a while before you draw them again, and so yes, this base would take out most of the tension or real danger of having your equipment wiped from the board, since you're guaranteed to only have to wait a couple of turns to be able to get one of your most devastating setups up and running again.

I had another game with her yesterday, and honestly I think she's mostly fine.

But her base power is just dumb. It's almost never a good idea to use it, you're pretty much always better of using just your guns, or playing the gun you need with your play and then using that. And this again ties in with ammo being a bit.. meh

While her base power is called load, using it to play ammo is almost certainly worse than just using your gun, because you could just play the ammo on your play next turn and benefit from it that turn anyway. And without speedloading, ammo is mostly a mediocre, complicated one-shot.

And don't get me started on her tutors.. fetch pride or prejudice? How restrictive can you get? It doesn't even have an additional draw+play to offset it being completely useless when you don't need p&p. Arsenal Access is barely better.

None of these things break her, but they are a bit odd and it feels frustrating when I run into these things when I play her, because to me they feel like mistakes instead of deliberate limitations that define her playstyle (which is how I experience similar things with mr fixer). But the difference between those two is very subjective, I guess. And I still have fun with her, so it's not too bad anyway :)

I think it gets worse when you play Chrono-Ranger, because then you get to play a guy whose cards have him do cool stuff AND then shoot the baddie... So hes going all guns blazing (which fits his theme), but weapons expert Expat is readying, loading, then shooting... and for less damage most of the time. 

I haven't personally used Chrono Ranger (I still haven't purchased ST :( ) but, well, that sucks man. Its kind of weird that an old timey sheriff person with a single revolver, etc is able to outgun a modern day Punisher. Oh well.

See, I almost get the opposite feel, despite the fact that I love Chrono Ranger's "Ping for 1" riders.

What does it take for CR to deal 4 damage?  Well, he'd need his Compound Bow and a Bounty that ups his damage, and that applies to one single target.  Or, he could pull out Masadah, and hope to get a ton of bounties out, so that his damage goes up on it.  Or, he could stack bounties onto one target, then ping it with Quick Shot.

What does Expatriette have to do to deal 4 damage?  Tactical Shotgun.  Or, Assault Rifle/Pride/Prejudice with Hollow Points.  Pretty simple, right?

Yeah, Expatriette's not flashy, but you can't argue with her results.

I'm not saying that Chrono Ranger's not awesome or that he can't do things–he's incredibly capable and can pull some really awesome tricks.  I love his feel, even only having played him once.  But, if we're talking damage output?  I think Expatriette has him dead to rights.

I've only played Chrono once and maybe I just had a lucky draw but it just felt like he was running and gunning the way I wish Expat would. So the next game I played Expat and had my friend played Chrono and he was shooting  circles around me. I guess maybe he wasn't doing quite THAT much damage, but I couldn't draw a gun to save my life for a couple of turns and it just got a little frustrating. 

I think the difference is that there is a much stronger sense of control with Chrono.  He can search for his Equipment and his Bounties quite effectively, and he has a very reliable means of playing multiple cards in one turn while still using a power.  If you get a Tactical Shotgun or Pride/Prejudice with Expat, it's totally awesome.  If not?  Well…hopefully someone else can lend you a hand.

Honestly, I find Chrono to be a refined Expatriette AND Mister Fixer at the same time.  He utilizes a vast arsenal that he can easily access and modify with Ongoings while still dealing with annoyances such as high damage dealers, destruction effects on pesky targets, DR, and Ongoing/Environment cards while still plinking away at the enemy with small amounts of damage.

This isn't to say that Fixer and Expat aren't good, but I agree with LCinn that the more characters I see in this game, the more I feel that Fixer and Expat's lack of control over their decks was more an oversight than a deliberate design.

Which has happened early in every single game I have ever played with him because his search capability is fantastic.  Which is kind of the point. 

Plus all of his one shots hit for one so the only thing he actually needs to do four damage is have +1 damage for any reason (the +1 bounty, hunter hunted with a bounty, whatever).  Then play pretty much any one shot and hit for two.  Then use his base power and hit for two more.   Really he can do it with just the bounty search card because you can find the +1 bounty and put it on your target, THEN the search card lets him shoot for 1+1 then his base power hits for 1+1 so you really only need one card at that point.  Give him one of his weapons and a +1 for some reason and now we are starting to out shoot Expat.

Yup and when you get it, its good, but her search and draw suck so you might be less likely to get any of those cards than mutiple cards awesomeness for CR.

My last post mostly just repeated yours because I agree with this completely.  Hey like everything else people get better at character design with practice.  What is interesting is that some of the very early characters are so well liked.  I guess its not surprising since it isn't like every character is a refinement of something else, and many different ideas were used in the base game.  Even so, the ones that are more susceptable to bad draw are the ones people seem to argue about. 

I don't know if the designers were worried about power creep with Rook City heros but maybe it was in their minds and that is why you see many of their deck control cards that are similar to other heros be weaker.

It might just be that, in the same way that the Rook City villains tend to be the toughest of the game, the Rook City heroes are more difficult to play.

That's all well and good, but lacking the ability to search your deck to become awesome when you aren't being awesome isn't very fun.  It seems to go against the Greater Than Games spirit of everyone having a good time whether they're at the top of the roster or knocked out cold.

Your mid to late game power is still reduced. RPG Launcher, Flak Jacket and Hairtrigger Reflexes are, most of the time, better than Ammo cards. Spending your Power to get more damage later, when you already have a gun, is dubious. Spending your Power to protect yourself from a Hired Gun or to destroy a troublesome Ongoing or Environment card isn't.

That said, I agree that Quick Draw and Arsenal Access are needlessly weak cards.

I played a game against Citizen Dawn today.  I had some time to kill, and drew Ra, Chrono-Ranger, Tachyon and Expatriette, and thought: "Well, won't this be applicable to the conversation?"  I counted the damage.

The heroes were helped most of the game by Imbued Frailty from the Realm of Discord, which I applied to all of their damage numbers, but I tracked hero-granted buffs in a column special to that hero.  I also counted Expatriette's Nemesis bonus seperately.  

The final number for "real" damage was Expatriette 35, Chrono-Ranger 30, Ra 28, and Tachyon 9.  While Chrono-Ranger and Ra were applying their ridiculous single-target bonuses near the end of the game, Expatriette edged them out due to her multi-targeting nature the whole game.  She was only able to get out the Submachine Gun and Assault Rifle, but these proved more than sufficient for this game.  

The story changes only a little bit when you add the buffs in.  Ra added 9 points of damage with a late Imbued Fire, while Chrono-Ranger's By Any Means was responsible for 4 more damage in his column.  This would appear to pull Ra to a total roughly equivalent with Expatriette, but for this game, her nemesis bonus brought her value up 6 more points.  

Overall, she usually works fine for me.  The lack of card draw is a glaring issue, but it doesn't make her unplayable.  

This conversation has actually given me an idea for a potential story-scenario, which could be a lot of fun....

If I get a chance in the coming days, I'll write it up.  It might just help solve some of the queries we've been undergoing!

Expa has been a decent Hero to grasp, the only card that throws me off is that Ammos also count as equipment so it sort of makes Arsenal Access worse since you might end up with 2 ammos when you have no guns.

One game where I disliked playing Expat did nothing was a game where she had all the ammo cards in her hand before getting any of her guns.

I personally would like to change her power or see a promo where

Power: Reload - Discard an ammo card to draw 2.

Especially since after seeing how all the new Heroes has a way to fetch really specfici cards.

Like Chrono Ranger after 1 of his unique weapons or Scholar after his specific elemental forms.

Out of curiosity what was the turn order that they went in? Mostly changes slightly as it gives Expat more targets for her Submachine gun and Assualt if she went first.

The order I listed.  Ra, Chrono-Ranger, Tachyon, Expatriette.

Wow.  That speaks for itself right there.

I can only imagine how the damage total might look if Expatriette was at the top of the order…

I'll admit, I'm likely the biggest Expatriette "apologist" around, but she's never let me down.  I've never gotten or even seen the mythical "no guns, no contribution" draw that so many others have.  If that's luck, that's one thing, but she does have a TON of weapons.  The odds are pretty well in your favor…

I've never got why the order matters so much to people, it's a consideration while you set up but after that? Effects generally last a round so you will always get a turn before it ends.

In terms of buffs and the like, you're right.  There's only a short gap in terms of who gets a given buff, if the buff is given at the beginning vs. the end of the round.  Same thing goes for deck control–it rarely matters when a deck gets Mistbound/Take Down/etc., so much as the fact that it does.

The issue here, though, is one of available targets.  Using the group that Flamethrower played earlier, if Ra takes out all of the villain's minions with a Scorched Earth card, the value of Expatriette's SMG goes down dramatically, as there are less overall targets for her to damage.  Generally speaking, there will be less villain/environment targets at the end of the Hero round, than at the beginning.  

The fact that Expatriette went last and still outdamaged every other hero, when her biggest strength is multi-target damage, says something drastic about her overall damage capacity.  

Indeed.  This game, due to Expatriette's multi-targeting nature, Chrono-Ranger and Ra pretty much focused on Dawn, paying only enough attention to the minions to get them low enough for Expatriette to effortlessly kill.  I don't think order affected the numbers here.  Chrono-Ranger, however, did hold back a moment when he focused on utility by using "No Executions" to bottom Citizen Tears.

Teamwork is kinda easy when you play all the characters yourself. 

Agreed, I played a game with Chronoranger the other day and was last in order.  At the start of every round I had the capacity to single handedly clear the board.  In reality I spent a lot of turns doing nothing since everything was already dead.

I was actaully working on typing up a scenerio for this, but you've got it covered. The first heroes set it up to where the last heroes can be most effective. Sure Ra may have been able to play Scorched Earth, but those high damages to all targets aren't really that much for Ra. Even if turn order was flipped, it'll be Expat weaking the minions instead to the best of her ability, allowing the following heroes to clean up what she couldn't accomplish. It's not turn order that effects how well heroes do, it's teamwork.

Yes it really does say a lot for her to be last.  Honestly I'm very surprised she ever had more than one target to hit in that scenario, but different people play in different ways.

I'm coming around more and more to her.  I have always thought she was fine IF she could get a good gun early.  The downfall is she doesn't have a consistent way to do that.  I had a game last night where she did quite well (she was first in the order btw).  But I also played bay changing her base power to "do 1 target 1 damage and draw a card".  Turns went like this

1.I put out a hair trigger and used this power.  On my REGULAR draw (second card drawn) I got a quick draw.

2.I played quick draw to put pride into play and used the new power again.  Again I benefitted as on the second card (the one from the normal draw) I got prejudice. 

3.I play predjudice and its bang bang every turn after.  I never used this power again but it was nice to be able to get set up a little faster and do 1 point of damage each turn.  I didn't hit another gun or quick draw till the game was nearly over

If I had played with her normal power it would have been

1.Do nothing draw two and get the quick draw

2.Play hair trigger and use power to play quick draw

3.Maybe I use pride, or I do nothing and draw two

4a.If I had drawn two last time I play predjudice and I'm going one turn and 2 damage later slower than what is stated above.

4b.Or If I had used pride I use it again and draw predjudice

5b.Play predjudice and continue as in real game.

In the end I got things going 1 to 2 turns faster and nothing changed after.  The big thing here is it helps to eliminate that bad game where you draw and draw and cant find what you need.  In addition to her guns, lets say I really need an RPG, I really like the chance to do less damage to help me find it faster.

A little explanation on this.  First it was agianst dreamer so I couldn't attack the boss.  Two of the people ahead of me had Scholar and O-X so with all the auto damage at start of turn and auto healing turned into damage they couldn't really help but kill everything.  At one point I asked Scholar not to attack just so I could attack once in the game.  Then I got up and checked on the pizza in the oven.  I couldn't really paly bounties even.

I realize this has nothing to do with CR, it was a very specific and odd scenario, but it was one case where order definitely mattered!

I have and more than once.  I generally play her with a sense of fear and anxiety until I get that first gun.  I'll admit usually that is only a couple turns, but I've been totally grounded with her a couple times and that is a enough to make me fear it happening until I get one.

Hm… I'm not so sure about that. The Scholar would of known that Chrono has the ability to deal damage aswell on his turn. Scholar could of saved cards by not having Mortal Form to Energy into play, at least not very many of them, thus focusing on more of his deck, such as playing all those snazzy one-shots he has!

You are probably right, at the time he was sustaining 3-4 forms.  He used "take what you need" every turn and only played one shots that either made everyone draw cards or heal of stack your deck which helped everyone.  I think he played the draw 5 cards and end your turn once.  Basically he didn't even attack unless he got to for free, but he did discard 3-4 cards a turn which was really easy for him to do.

Turns would go something like this:

X-O: do two irreducible damage to a projection, then two more.  Heal everyone for 1.

Scholar: oh I heal 3 instead and then do 3 damage followed by 3 more damage.

X-O: everyone heal for 1.

Scholar: oh I heal 3 instead and then do 3 damage followed by 3 more damage.

X-O: so now that everything is dead and I'm just reaching my play phase what should we do?

Scholar:  Well I plan on discarding four cards, then letting everyone draw a card, then getting 3 more with my power and draw.  What are you going to do CR?

CR: Check the pizza.

I think this speaks for the divide between Expat players.  I have a friend that, without fail, can get a turn one Tactical Shotgun regardless of who shuffles Expat's deck that game.  He's just lucky with her, I guess.  But it is so cripplingly disappointing to have a character not function as intended for a game and have literally NO means of fixing her setup the way she needs to on her own.  It's that feeling of helplessness that really hurts Expatriette, as far as I have experienced.  If I had just one buffer, one card that either let me search for the Gun I needed without random luck or one or two cards with "draw a card" tacked on to the end, having a crappy game with her would be so much more bearable (even if those cards needed were never drawn).

I had a game against Grand Warlord Voss on Advanced difficulty earlier where Expatriette failed to draw a gun all game and was still more effective than Chrono Ranger.

Wow.  What happened with Chrono, Texas Ranger?

Chrono Ranger really struggles with damage reduction, doesn't have a lot of area damage, and Temporal Grenade isn't as good against Forced Deployment as Hairtrigger Reflexes and RPG Launcher are.

Huh.  Doesn't seem right.  I've played him against Advanced Voss, and he can certainly do just fine.  Damage reduction crushes his whole schtick, it's true, but Chrono-Ranger has a lot of (searchable!) ways to avoid having to deal with it, boost his damage, or to just play support even if he can't come up with the first two things.  How was Hairtrigger Reflexes useful when Chrono-Ranger wasn't?

Well, once Voss had flipped, Expatriette was able to do things like use RPG Launcher to blow up Forced Deployment and immediately kill two Minions. Possibly part of Chrono Ranger's problem was that he was before Expatriette in the turn order, so he wasn't able to affect the Minions when they came out.

Ok, that makes some sense, but if Voss has no minions he doesn't have any DR on one side and only DR1 on advanced mode on the other.  Chrono can nail him for 6-12 damage every turn effortlessly with no DR and can do >12 with some effort.  Now on his DR1 side (if you played advanced)  I could see that being as low as 2 damage in his not quite worst case.  Even then that should only last a turn or two before getting up in the 3-4 range in a still poor card draw scenario.

So I guess I CAN see this happening but it requires unfortunate order of characters and terrible setup for Chrono, where as a having Hair trigger and RPG with no card draw and not search is somewhat lucky for Expat (although NO GUNs is very unluck so… I guess she had to have something). 

Voss is probably one of the best villians in the game for Expat.  Especially with hair trigger out.  However hair trigger does nothing at all if the minions have DR so I wrote this post mostly thinking you had DR for Voss and not minions since you mentioned hair trigger being valueable.  Did Expat have a damage buff to help hair trigger to more than 1 damage?  If so where was this buff for Chrono?  If hair trigger was useless, that means Expat had one good card the whole game "RPG Launcher to blow up Forced Deployment and immediately kill two Minions" and Chrono HAS to be better than that.

Well, in general perhaps he can, but in that game he couldn't. 3 damage to Voss, when damage to Voss wasn't useful at all, was more his métier. ISTR he spent most of the game without bounties, and had a hand consisting mainly of the equipment that requires bounties and The Hunter Hunted.

Hairtrigger Reflexes was valuable because it meant it took less damage to kill the Minions, and, for instance, she could kill two guys with RPG Launcher instead of not killing anyone with RPG Launcher. She had Hairtrigger Reflexes, which quite possibly did more damage than Chrono Ranger by itself, two RPG Launchers, and a Flak Jacket or two that were useful. Chrono Ranger managed to take out one Minion on Voss's front side, and that was nearly the extent of his contribution.

Hairtrigger Reflexes isn't killed by Gene Bound Guards, incidentally, since you choose what order the Minions come back from the trash in, although I don't think there were any Gene Bound Guards in that game, oddly enough.

We played Chrono Ranger against Voss a couple more times, we lost those games, and it never felt like Chrono Ranger was the guy making the biggest contribution in those games either.

We played a three man game against Voss with Chrono, Ra, and Unity, and we kicked his tail. I haven't played a game with Chrono yet where he hasn't made a useful contribution.

Yeah, Chrono Ranger is really cool :D. Mind you, I had a pretty fun game earlier with Omni-10 against the Chairman. Used the "find a plating or component card and put it into play" card in the first turn to get out the melée/projectile/toxic plating and kept that in play for the entire game. Not long after that came out I was able to put out the Reactive Plating Subroutine, which by itself (and, later, combined with one and later two Obsidian Fields the environment decide to put out) killed plenty of Thugs in retaliation every time I took one damage (after soaking two) from being hit by something (usually the Operative after a Thug had been killed). We won the game with everyone still alive, and a Prison Beak would have been the next card played by the Chairman...which would have been kind of nasty.

Yeah Hair Trigger is probably at its best against Voss.  I can believe that Voss is a particularly bad boss for Chrono with a certain play style or the cards that you drew.  Chrono's nevery let me down like that personally but I see how it could happen, and yes DR is his biggest hurdle.

Now play him against Plague Rat and watch him dominate like crazy.

I’ll tell you hair trigger is hilarious against the matriarch on a turn she’s bee stun bolted or light speed barraged. watching expat clear half her deck as she keeps playing more birds to get shot out of the air but can’t do any damage is hillllllaaarious

That sounds awesome! I've always been nervous to play it against Matriarch for fear of a turn where she or the carion fields CAN do damage.  Does hairtrigger have a "May" clause on it?

I believe it does, yes.

Just confirmed - it says "may".

Gloomy is another villain who has problems with Hairtrigger Reflexes, especially if Expatriette's damage is boosted even by one point - zombies? What zombies?

Okay, now that I've finally had a chance to manage to get some items off of my plate, I finally managed to test out my "Challenge" game as listed below:

Target Practice, or "More Dakka!"

Heroes:  Chrono Ranger, Expatriette, Bunker, Wraith and Tempest

Villain:  Grand Warlord Voss (alternatively, Citizen Dawn, The Dreamer, The Chairman, or any other high-minion villain will do.  I tend to avoid ones with equipment destruction, as that really hurts the whole field and can make the challenge un-fun)

Environment:  The Final Wasteland (alternatively, any other environment with a many environment targets, such as Silver Gulch or Insula Primalis)

Scenario:  Determined to find out once and for all who's the best shot, Jim, Expatriette, Bunker, and Wrath suit up and head into the training room for some target practice.  Wraith asks Tempest to act as an impartial third party, keeping score and ensuring that everyone stays safe.  

Additional Rules:  Tempest begins the game with a copy of Otherwordly Resilience and Cleansing Downpour in play, but only begins the game with 3 cards in hand.  Tempest may not deal damage to any Environment or Villain Target aside from the Villain himself.  If Tempest would deal damage to another Environment/Villain Target, that damage is reduced to 0.  Tempest may destroy or remove such targets (such as through "Into the Stratosphere"), though he may not actually deal damage or receive points for doing so.

Each time a hero destroys a Villain or Environment target, they receive a number of points as listed on the chart below.  The hero with the most points is declared Best Marksman.  If a hero is incapacitated over the course of the game, they lose all of their points immediately.

Point Values:

Starting Target HP            Point Value

>4                                       1

4-7                                      2

8-12                                    3

13+                                     4

Main Villain                         5

How does this work if a villian target has say 12 HP and one hero does 10 damage to it on their turn and then next hero in line finishes it off with a measly 2 point shot?

Points are always based on the target's starting HP, and awarded to whomever destroys/kills/removes the target.

So, if Chrono Ranger takes the Stalwart down from 15 to 4 HP, and Bunker finishes it off, Bunker gets 3 points and CR gets none.

That's a good way to infuse drama into the proceedings. Now it can be a semi coop game, where sometimes you don't want to help out. Might be fun…

Since we had a few posts in this thread where people talked about how amazing Expat was I figured I would share my experience in a game I just finished playing.  The set up was

Kismet, AA, Expat, AZ, TLT, DV in Silver Gultch.  Now consider the help TLT gives.  I wish I had recorded the number of turns but she let everyone draw and extra card every single turn from her power plus played the card that lets everyone draw a card 3 times so everyone is looking at 3+rounds extra cards in their hand.

Despite this Expat didn't have a gun out until turn 4 when she played an arsenal access to choose between an SMG or flak jacket.  She didn't get another gun out the entire game. 

She did have hair trigger out fairly early but only used it on 3 turns (though it should have been 5 if you count flipping talismans).  Over the course of the game her best turn was when she put hollow points on the smg and hit 3 targets for a total of 3 damage each.  In the entire game she did 24 damage, 3 from hair trigger, 4 using an RPG to kill an eviroment card, 9 on the turn descirbed, 6 on a turn with hollow points and two targets, and 2 on a turn where she hit two targets for 1 damage each.  Some of this damage was even unwanted as she was hitting the talisman when we didn't necessarily want to.   Total damage to Kismet, a whopping 9 damage.

Half they game she couldn't attack, the other half she could barely attack AND THAT IS WITH ALL THE EXTRA CARD DRAW FROM TLT.  Now to be fair I guess she out damaged both AA and DV, but come on, thats not their game and she doesn't do anything else.  That was a frustrating game and exactly the point.  This is the third time I've seen this situation with her.  This is why people think arsenal access needs to be a search or she needs some extra card draw or something.  It happens, it happens too often, and when it does its not just a little suck, its a lot of suck.

so… I’ve had those games with expat. I’ve had those games with abzero, the scholar, chrono ranger, and even legacy… With non less frequency than I do on expat. I find visionary to be /much/ more boring than expat but she’s widely regarded as indispensable, but so often I find all I can draw is mind spike and cocoons… and practically do nothing all game

so why does xpat get the hate.

Talisman never enters play besides at the very start of the game, flipping just changes what it does. It's still the very same target.

Also why wouldn't she have a gun? The odds seem oddly unlikely. As she could be drawings 3 cards a round (one from Tachyon and 2 on her turn if she really had nothing to do) Considering it was AbZ as the only other big damage dealer, that means the game porbably lasted 8+ rounds as he can take a bit to set-up, meaning she should of at least had 20 cards in her hand. With 11 guns in her deck and 3 one-shots to get Pride or Prejudice means, so 14 cards to get a gun and only finding 1 guns would mean all the other 13 guns would of been on the bottom of the deck.

And if that has happened 3 times, that seems like it is bad shuffling since all the guns are right next to one another in the deck and aren't being spread out.

Well the thing is, even if DV is boring at least she is USEFUL. Sure you might not be doing much but every turn you can look at the enemies deck and that is extremely helpful. The problem here is that expat could literally do nothing for half the game. In the second half she was almost worthless. She helped the team almost not at all.

Now, I have also seen those games with Bunker and AZ, though never with any of the other people you stated. Bunker and AZ get plenty of hate as well. Bunker is often considered weak and the stats back it up. AZ has lovers and haters because even though he has the potential to flop he has an amazing up side. Expat is often useful, but I don't believe she has that type of upside.

Even in bad games I don't know that Bunker comes off as completely worthless, although I could see that happening. Maybe he can at least take some hits with DR?  At the very least it seems like you have a reason to play cards.  In this game Expat was completely useless, even the damage she did and the evironment she killed were kind of allowed for mercy or not really needed.  She never had the lowest or the highest HP so she never took hits for anyone.  She could have not been in the game but still kept H at five and it would have made no differnce.  In addition she was frustrating to play because she didn't even have playable cards in her hand (see Chrono argument below).

Why Expat gets hate vs Chrono I believe is the difference between revealing and praying vs searching for what you want. With so much search chrono gets exactly what you want when you play his tutors. Had arsenal access let me search, she still would have been worthless half the game but she would have been very effective in late game, which isn't too uncommon. 

Another reason is what his other cards do.  If you don't get a gun all of your ammo is wasted with expat, where as with Chrono, if you don't get a… bounty or weapon (not sure how he gets useless as a result of his own deck since he can at least attack for 1.  It usually is at least villian shenanigans that makes him flop) his other cards will still allow you to do something.  Also in the case for CR he NEVER has redundant cards either since even if you don't have something to search for you can play the search for the damage aspect of the card.  With Expat (and plenty of other heros which is why this is a CR specific argument) you end up with a lot of cards that you can't use because you already have a copy of that card in play or ammo with no gun.  With CR you are never just sitting there with a hand full of dead useless cards and you are never powerless to do anything as a result of your deck.  Maybe if the villian has done something to make them useless, but then at least its the villian being a jerk and not your deck being useless on its own.  How many times with other heros have you been holding nearly 10 cards in your hand and you can't play a single one AND you're not already set up pretty well with ongoings or equipment.  In this case she didn't even have a power she could use till she got the smg, the power she wants least.

Ok, that is what I thought and how we played it, I just thought I remebered reading somewhere in the whole CR bounty vs Ennead talk that some people thought maybe it should.

YES you are exactly right. I believe the player used the skip your turn to draw cards three times so we are talking around 11 or more extra cards and yet that is how it played out.  I agree it is very bad luck, but as I said this has happened to me enough times that I always player her with trepidation.  I was not actually the player this time, but I glanced over at his hand once and saw something like 2 hollow points, 2 incediary rounds, a redundent hair trigger (he already played one), 2 reloads, an unload, a nitrogen round, and a flack jacket. I just said "Man that blows".  The idea for the hold out gun where you can play ammo next to her character and can attack for zero damage might have been nice there although it actually slows down getting to a real gun since you can't skip to draw two.

Now the Expat supporters out there posted a few games that made her seem like she was the most amazing character in the game.  I just figured I would share the other side of playing her as this is the exact situation that her detractors describe.  Someone earlier spoke of "The mystical no guns game" like we were all just imagining it or making it up. Well, I am definitely am not imagining it,  though I suppose I have no evidence that I'm not making this up.

so why does xpat get the hate.

Yeah, I find playing with Visionary to be way more boring than even the most boring game with Expat too.

The differnce here being boring vs worthless.  People like playing differnt types of heros.  People like different types of play styles.  But when do you play DV and think "she didn't help the team in any way".  Never, thats why although people may not like to play DV personally they can still recognize that she has high value when played.

Everybody can draw hands that suck for the situation.  Expatriette probably does it with more frequency, since unlike everybody else, she doesn't have extra card draw, and her turns are fairly sad if she doesn't have something specific (a gun).  Absolute Zero, in my opinion, has much of the same problem, and there used to be a lot of posts complaining about him.  (I think those complaints dropped off when he got a damaging power.)

This is from a perspective that recognizes Expatriette's flaws, but enjoys the hell out of playing her.

Chrono-Ranger has specific needs determined by the game, but he has a lot of cards that get him exactly what he needs.  The Scholar and Legacy, while they can use setup time, don't need specific things to be awesome in my experience.

Far be it from me to try to force my love of Visionary on you, but some of her power is in the fact that she needs precisely zero setup time and has a variety of powerful options - she doesn't need specific things either, as most of her cards can help somehow.  Both incarnations have extremely helpful powers.  Her style may bore you, but that's a different issue.

The differnce here being boring vs worthless.

Heh, yeah.  Boring's worse. ;)

agreed. The often times I’ve played visionary (and it is often, I make an point to regularly rotate heroes to have better understanding of what my teammates can do) I’ve often found myself on my phone or picking up my notebook and doodling rather than paying attention to the game.

And I’ve not found her power all that useful. it’s some nice card draw, but it’s just that. Some nice card draw. I’d rather have expat skip two turns and start doing some damage than use my turn to play Decoy Projection and let someone get the top two cards. at least dark visionary is useful on the villain.

I can count the number of games on one hand where I’ve seen visionary take more than 45 seconds for a turn. useful as she may be, what’s the point If your contributions to a coop game take up less time than it takes to read the environment card.?

on the contrast, sure ive had bad setup games with expat. As I’ve said I’ve seen them with pretty much every hero. it’s Luck of the draw. I’ve also seen plenty of games with expat where by turn 3 I’m out damaging every other damage hero on the table and plenty where I’m comparable in damage.

and the stats project… she may be on the bottom 5 but no more than by a couple percentage points. that’s an acceptable spread and she’s still in the 2/3rds win area which is apparently the benchmark

well to be fair… I can do that to any hero on the game. What you described is really the pinnacle of bad luck in card draw. tlt and fleet of foot and double card draw it is at the very end of the probability scale that you won’t see at least a quick draw arsenal or gun in 3 turns. The very low end. sure every hero has those days, but that’s just it. every hero has those days. so I don’t see how it really helps your side of the discussion to use an extreme situation

Does your team appreciate it when you spend two rounds doing nothing while a Visionary player allows for card accelleration each turn?  I'm just curious, because my group generally is disappointed (and, to be quite frank, bored) when anyone has to spend multiple turns exclusively drawing cards to get what they need.  And I think that's the point.  WHY do we need to spend so many turns waiting with Expatriette?  If we're talking about how fun she is, is it really an incredibly titilating experience waiting and waiting to draw the card you want?  Again, it's that lack of card draw and her spotty search cards that make her boring games all the more painful.  Every other hero has multiple cards with "Draw a card" or one to many "Search your deck..." cards.  Expat just doesn't and I really don't know why.  I don't know why she has an Arsenal with nothing but Incendiary Rounds and a Flak Jacket when all I really need is an Assault Rifle.  It's mechanically and thematically unsatisfying.  I've had incredible games with The Visionary and I've had terrible ones.  Even when I'm getting the snot kicked out of me, I generally feel heroic as The Visionary, because I generally have what I need to help the heroes save the day with her plethora of card draw.

If she isn't your thing, I get it, but if you're saying that Expatriette is a more fun experience due to skipping multiple rounds to find the card you need rather than helping your teammates out with some card accelleration and deck manipulation as The Visionary, I really don't get it.  In one instance, you're contributing nothing to the team and doing nothing for entire rounds of gameplay (which sounds incredibly boring), and in the other you're consistently and meaninfully contributing to the field (or using her card accelleration to get something useful, which actually involves the player actively participating in the game).  If anything, when Expat is without cards and without options, I feel boring and worthless.  With a bad Visionary hand, it's just boring.

Also, Abs has OMI (card draw and search) Glacial Structure (card draw), Modular Realignment (trash recovery), so (thought I have had plenty a frustrating game with him) he has the potential to actually recover on his own from a poor hand.

Flamethrower, as always, has a strong grasp of the game and the criticisms levied for and against the heroes.  Generally Legs Galvanizing alone helps turn the tides, and Scholar has so much card accelleration and deck search that it's almost funny when he can't get what he needs.

Absolute Zero has 4 Null Point Calibration Unit, 4 Isothermic Transducer, 4 Onboard Module Installation and 2 Glacial Structure, for 14 cards that are either Modules or search/draw cards. Expatriette has 3 Submachine Guns, 3 Assault Rifles, 3 Tactical Shotguns, Pride, Prejudice, and 3 Quick Draws, for a total of 14 gun/search cards. Oh, and she has Arsenal Access, which is better at drawing the cards you didn't get than Modular Realignment is. I just don't see how he's more reliable in general than Expatriette, though clearly he can do better in individual games.

Load is a good power. I've used it plenty of times, even when I had no gun in play and a gun in hand.

Also, if Expatriette was never on the highest hit points in that game, it's because you had Twist the Ether on Kismet and the game was basically sewn up. I mean, she starts that game on joint highest hit points, and she has Flak Jackets so that she can stay on top longer.

Its true, I agree with you there.  It was exceptionally bad luck.  I've had bad luck before with others but never been so powerless to where I wasn't even playing the game.  Actually not me but the player in question.  Also it was his first time playing so it was extra disappointing for me but that has nothing to do with Expat or her deck. 

But Modular Reallignment doesn't fetch me a Focused Apertures when I want an Isothermic Transducer (assuming they're in the trash, of course).  Arsenal Access is not a bad card on its own, but as THE search card other than Quick Draw?  It's nothing but luck of the draw.  OMI gets you exactly which Module you need (and allows you to draw a card), while she can only search for Pride/Prejudice without "Draw a card" with Quick Draw.  She doesn't have any cards that allow her to draw at all, while Abs can draw off of OMI and Glacial Structure.  It's her lack of a concrete way to set-up compared to other heroes that is so disappointing.

All I get from this is that every hero needs search and draw cards to be good heroes. The only thing a hero should have to make them unique is the names of the cards and the type of damage they do.

Maybe im just really lucky. Its possible. But 4outta 5 games Im not worrying. I either have a Quick Draw, Pride or prejudice, Tac Shotgun, or Assault Rifle within the first 2 turns. (thats, if you're counting, 1 of 11 cards in a 40card deck) and feel quite capable of contributing after that. I dont even count Arsenal Access cause I typically use it to fetch ammo rather than guns. Add in Hair Trigger and a Sub machine gun for Minion decks, and you need 1 card out of almost half of her deck to feel like your contributing. Everything more passed that is fun.

As for my team, they understand how I play expat and they are willing to wait a turn or two yes. Its the same with Fanatic, who usually takes a turn or two to get anything worthwhile going (especially if there is DR) and with Omni X who needs 2-3 turns of his power use on himself ot be truely set up, and for AbZero who can go 3 -4 turns of doing nothing because he /cant actually do damage yet or even heal/.

Or the same for Argent Adept who doesnt draw a Instrument and is stuck with the heal for 2hp harmony. Or Nightmist who spends 3 turns killing herself to draw cards to be able to do something. Or Bunker wh o draws nothing but Recharge modes and Ammo Drops for his opening hand. Or Wraith who only sees her hit 3 for 1 power and no micro targeting computer or Utility belt and there is only one enemy.

Wait. So for pretty much every hero?

Thats what I'm saying. I dont. I have a few Mindspikes A coccoon and a Decoy projection. Whoopy someone gets to draw 2 cards… its gonna be me isnt it? Sure i can throw out that damage but there are what, 6 one shot damage cards in her deck? By turn 3 or 4 what do i usually see with visionary?   A wrest the mind or twist the either if im lucky, more likely a couple precogs r Prohphetics, or better yet a Mass LEvetation as my only other power option when no damage is incoming. It usually takes me 2-3 turns to contribute anything meaningful for Visionary… and even then im still bored. Even if im helping i dont feel heroic when I say 'Yep, again, i look at the top two cards of the environment. Oh i already know what that one is. Lets keep it there. And you draw 2' … as opposed to expat who, generally in the same amount of time, is at the very least plinking everything on the board for 1, but far more likely setting up to throw down some awesome gunplay.

I can see that - But for the fact that generally, in my experience (YMMV of course) it takes the same amount of time to feel worthwhile with Visionary as it does with Expat. Again. Maybe im just lucky. 

As for Legacy and Scholar, well yes. That is why Legacy is one of the top heroes in the statistics for games won. I won't deny that his ability is /awesome/ - same with TlT. They have two completely amazing and incredibly insane abilities. Expat's is not so widespread, but i continue to say that in experience her good far more outweighs her bad days. She has them - but thats the point. So does every hero. Why does  she get singled out?

Amen brother. Amen.

Presumably, by round 4 with Tachyon fueling card draw, you could potentially see 16 of the 40 cards in your deck (4 to start the game, 3 per round after that).  It could potentially be even more, based on Tachon, Visionary, or AA plays.  You said that you played Hairtrigger Reflexes and Arsenal Access so lets knock that down to 14 cards.

A full 20 cards in Expatriette's deck are either guns, RPG Launcher (instant ongoing/environment destruction) or cards that find guns/equipment.  How much more needs to be devoted?

Fully realizing that you could have been playing random heroes, you did end up playing a hero that excels at multi-target damage against a villain with precisely one other target, in an environment with pretty limited targets.  That's not a recipe for success.

Sometimes a random deck just sucks.  There's no dealing with that.  My friends and I just got our butts handed to us by Omnitron last night, when he got out two Flechettes and an Explosive out in the first three turns. We died like punks.  It happens.  

I suppose we're experiencing subject drift but, here goes. 

I feel especially keyed in when I'm playing Visionary.  She's probably my favorite hero to play in a group.  I keep my pulse to the heroes needs, handing out buffs like candy and smirking at the heroes who think they're dealing with something difficult when I know what could have happened.  Lynkfox, I don't see you badmouthing Team Leader Tachyon, so I know you know that cards are valuable.  Hell, Expatriette loves it when Visionary is around.  Again, it's not your thing, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it's not useful. 

Your other comment interests me.  Are long turns your metric for fun?  Just how long do you take on Expatriette's turn?  I can see taking a moment to total up your Unload damage, but Expatriette is not exactly complex.  On the other hand, sometimes Visonary's abilities require her to read 3 environment cards, so something's wrong with that part of your statement.  The point is to feel like you're useful and contributing to victory, which both characters do.

god no, long turns are not fun.

However, Yes i know card draw is great. I dont have a problem with that. WHat i like is a choice and a chance to do more than just one of the 4ish options in your hand.

Team Leader Tach (and reguarl tach) youll end up playing 3-4 cards in a turn. As expat i have to consider the best use of my ammunition, when to use Load or when to attack, if there is an option. - and there is /often/ an option.

With visionary i pick a card in my hand, usually for most of the game, one of her damage cuards or Precog. And then i use her power. There is rarely any choice on what to play. There is usually very little /choice/ in what to do. DV is a bit better, having a choice to affect the villain or environment deck, but...... Its also why i dont like to play fixer (note - i dont think he's weak by any mean, and I dont think he needs 'fixing' - i just want to have more to do on my turn than play a card and use a power that iver already done before. I rarely have anything of interesting to do. Any choice. Any complexity.

I would say more in defense of Visionary, but I'll drop it in celebration since you admitted you don't like Mr. Fixer. 

I'm on record as saying that I wish Quick Draw and Arsenal Access were better cards, but saying that she takes longer to set up, is less resilient in terms of her equipment, is more likely to jam up on several copies of the same card, or is less consistent than the original Absolute Zero is ocean madness.

For him to do 2 damage to the enemy as a Power without outside assistance requires two cards, one of which is not fetchable with OMI, and he takes damage in the process. Expatriette has 8 cards in her deck that can do that by themselves, and she can fetch either of two of them with another three cards. Now granted when he has all of his stuff and Thermal Shockwave he can pull off nukes that she's basically incapable of, but she requires a lot less setup for basic effectiveness.

The funny thing about this is that Pro Expat crowd has claimed that she only seems underpowered because she is boring ie you put out a shotgun or assault rifle and don't do anything else all game.  The same argument has been made for Fixer (although I think Fixer is very effective I do admit he can be boring), but now we have a hero in DV that is considered by many boring yet far from under powered.  Its not an absolute conclusion, but it definitely lends to the idea being boring does not necessarily lead to a feeling of being underpowered.

She might have started the highest I forget.  Most damage came in small amounts and flack jacket only saved her 3 life.  AZ was a healing machine as he started with his cold damage becomes healing card turn one and never had to get rid of it so he tanked and did the most damage for us.

Funny enough the guy playing DV never got a twist and claims he has never had twist in the few times he's played her (it hasn't been that many 3-5 games maybe).

I agree with you here, he can have some real set up trouble, and can be vulnerable to destruction, but man he has a delicious upside when it all comes together.  I'm starting to waiver on which version of him I like better for the exact reason you state.  It did work out well for him in this case to use his original because he tanked like a champ in addition to dealing damage.  Playing AA I helped him set up a little, I kept wanting to help Expat, but she never had any cards she wanted to play.

I've had plenty of games where Expat hits a shotgun early and does well as a result with very little setup.   I just wish that could happen more consistently.  I don't consider her a high setup character unless you are really shooting for a full power unload.   To be fair, the high setup characters can still help out without hitting their full potential.

P.S. AZ hit an impale and a cold snap early.  I guess technically to do two damage AZ only needs a single impale, but of course he can't change the target each turn so it doesn't really help like a targeted power use would.

I want to add my opinion to Arsenal Access. Arsenal Access is not a search card and should not be viewed as one. It is an improved draw card - rather than simple draw a card (i.e. Mere) and hope to get lucky, it allows Expatriette to access the next 2 Equipments in her draw sequence. Comparisons of Arsenal Access to other cards with search abilities is unfair.

You just listed 3 options…

I understand the theory of Expat having options, but every time I play her (and I'm trying to play her more to get a more well-rounded experience), it's: is the shotgun out? Shoot it. Do I have a helpful ammo? Use it. And most of the game is, "I guess I'll put another gun out in case I get an unload and shoot the shotgun."

Now, if you get that shotgun out, congrats, you're going to pull excellent damage. Just keep pumping that shotgun and getting that 4-6 damage out every turn.

And the most important thing to bear in mind is that people enjoy different playstyles. Some folks like pumping that shotgun over and over, and other folks enjoy a versatile support. Being a natural support type (IT support by trade, in school to be a pastor, prefer a healer in RPG's…), I really enjoy Visionary. My first 2-3 plays were always Dark Visionary, but then I played a few normal (Light Visionary?), and I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful it was to help teammates get cards in their hands. Plus, having a slightly-less-overpowered power made me feel free to use her other powers when it was appropriate. Whenever I play DV, her base power is the best power to play probably 95+% of the time.

Though really, if we're arguing over Visionary vs. Expat, we're basically arguing over two characters who compete with Wraith to try to be as awesome as her. (IMO Visionary's a slightly better support than Wraith, while Wraith is a slightly better damage dealer than Expat, though if Expat pulls off more than one well-set-up Unload, she might do more damage for a whole game.)

Who gets off more than one well-set-up Unload in one game, the odds of that have got to be about the same as going a whole game without getting a gun… oh wait

You are correct, a better direct comparison might be something like call forth.  The reason its compared to a search card is because the people making that arguement think it SHOULD be a search card so she doesn't rely so much on luck to hit the cards you need for just basic play.  If arsenal access where a search, or even just restircted to guns maybe it would alleviate some of the trouble getting to a gun early in the game.

One thing I have noticed in all the heros post Rook City is that they all have search except Nightmist, and beyond that they all have lots of draw or reveal except CR (who has some draw and two types of search).  Mostly it is nearly impossible to have a bad luck with draw with any of those heros because you go through half or more of their deck in the game and while you are doing that you are searching for the right cards as well.  Heck NM doesn't have search but if I don't get at least 30 cards in her trash (not to mention the ones in her hand) I feel like her heal card is wasted.  In a situation like that I'm going to get access to every card I want at some point where there is still time in the game to matter.  Personally I love this.

Whoa, this is maybe where the disagreement is.  I could be misunderstanding this, but does this mean that the deck completely bombs 20% of the time?  That is WAY to high for me.

I was pulling numbers outta my butt   The point is that more times than not i have a good game than i have a bad game. Its comparable with every other hero i play, in my eyes.

4 options in hand being 4 cards in hand of Visionary. You combined two seperate lines of thought. THe first is that with visionary, you have 4 options in your hand (ish depending on your hand size of course) to play, and they generally are always the same things. With Expat you have many more options to play what you might think.

I challenge you to play without the Shotgun. I have done many many games without the shotgun, and still find her to be effective. If you are only looking for the massive amount of damage you can do per turn, then yes its going to get boring. If you are looking for how you can best help… I love getting a single damage boost (from anyone, doesnt matter who) and using SMG and Shock rounds. 4dmg to every enemy target on the board! Voss got a big damage round incoming? SMG+Nitrogen rounds really takes the edge off. Got a pair of annoying projectile immune baddies? Hurrah for Incendiary rounds on Assault Rifle. 

I use the shotgun, sure. But only in what we affectionaly term, DPS checks. IE - Iron Legacy is a DPS check. You have to do enough damage to beat him in 3-4 rounds before he just is too much on the table. BB is a DPS check, albeit an easy one. Chairman is a good one - you have until that Prison break brings the whole gang back onto the board and wipes you to kill him. Are you good enough to do so?  Even then, Im still fond of Expat SMGing down a good chunk of the mob with Shock rounds. 

The point is that sure, any hero is boring if you let them only play the same way. I may dislike Mr Fixer's play style, but im always experiementing iwth him to find out a better way to play him that I enjoy - Im finding some interesting things. Ive been recently bouncing around Styles per turn to see if i can maximize their effectiveness, and using a lot of Tool Box to get more cards in hand to have that option. Its been different, and not so static. Ive been trying to work over the environment deck more as Visionary to see if I can feel more excited about her - its harder, cause i still feel like she only has a play 1 power 1 option every turn and rarely has the chance to feel like shes setting up for something interesting. (Don't necessarily mean a massive Nuke tastick Abzero combo, but play this card this turn so next turn i can play this card and do this with both of them - not necessarily damage but cool tricks - I did think I had a way to do infinate damage with her once, betwee Wrest, Decoy, Twist, and Coccoon … but it fell through That was a fun game where I had that thought meandering through my head :P)

I play a healer in most MMOs. Love the support classes - love the feeling of holding the entire teams life in my hands evil grin - seriously tho, I enjoy being more responsible for healing and support - and ill tell you why. Tank? Has to consider only a few things - the one boss, or a mob of littles (if there are 2-3 bosses, there are usually 2-3 tanks) and keep your eye on that. DPS? Dont stand in the pools of icky damage. Done. Healer? I gotta watch all 20 of you buggers, find the ones on the field to stay in range, make sure im not over healing, dont heal a target thats already being healed by one of the others, get the right buffs out, make sure i cleanse the debuffs, and not die myself. 

Whoa! Complexity!

Visionary doesnt have that sort of complexity. If you let go of the Shotgun as the only viable option for expat, then she can and does. I dont find anything in Visionary's deck that gives me that same sense of 'how can i do this…' Im starting to find it in Fixer with more games (though far less than other heroes, i do note) but ive just never found it in visionary.

I love Abzero. And yes i do play the base abzero, and go for the typical Isothermic and whatever the other one is set up to be typical. I also play plenty of games where i try and find some other method of playing him. Its out there, somewhere. I havent found the perfect  one yet, but ive found plenty of  other methods than just his so called 'standard' set up. Sure he's most effective with that, im not denying it, but hes still fun to play without it.

Thats my point. Expat gets all this hate becase a) she doesnt have any real search cards - 1 card for a specific 2 cards in her deck, and one advanced draw card 2)She plays the same everytime (shotgun+Hollowpoints) 3) She takes too long to set up.

well, with 20 cards in your deck being guns, quickdraw, or damage cards, why in heavens name should you /need/ more search cards? Sure bad luck happens, but my point has always been - it happens to other heroes too, and in my experience with no less consistancy than it does to Expat.

If you think the only option is the TacShotgun and Hollow points, then maybe thats the issue - not giving the other weapons a chance. If thats your playstyle, then theres nothing that can be done sure, if you're not willing to try something different. But dont try to fix her (you dont see me trying to fix Visionary. she works just fine, i dont like her, but i dont think she needs to change)

as for taking too long to setup… well ive spouted the answer to that before. I have expat set up and ready to go in 2 -3 turns, with only 1 turn of skipping to draw 2 in most of my games with her. maybe a second turn. Ive done t he same thing with pracitcally every other hero, or seen it. Ive never done more than 3 turns of drawing 2 to get her set up, and that was a rare outside chance - thats 10 cards in hand by the way, and thats 1/4th of your deck. If you havent seen a gun or a card to get a gun in 10 cards, then you had the worst possible deck shuffle there can be. And thats a rareity. Most games i only need 1 turn of double draw, if at all.

Well, I think he's saying he's only played with Expat in five games, and only on of those he had any problems with.

I feel that's kind of similiar to my stance on this debate. I have never had any troubles with Expatt getting a good gunand contributing, but I've only played her 3 or 4 times, so I'm not sure how well that contributes statistically.

hahahaha no. I’ve played expat a lot more than 5 times. She and fanatic are my most played without a doubt, even if I try to spread it out. I meant more the majority of the time I don’t have a problem with her and don’t have bad games any more than any other hero

Anecdotal evidence aside, your stats project suggests that Expat bombs out noticeably more often than most other heros (Fixer, Bunker, and AZ round out the "bottom tier"). But then, you already know that, so I can only assume that 1) you think  her data are biased towards bad players, 2) like the rest of the bottom tier, she is simply especially hard to play well, or 3) people's tolerance for bombing out depends on the particular character they are playing, and yours is higher than average for Expat. At the end of the day, house rules don't really hurt anyone; if they improve people's enjoyment of the game, then I am all for it.

The problem with going by how well she is doing in the statistics is that we have no idea how the game was played in each fight in each game she has been apart of that lost, aside from the games each individual has entered. What if a majority of those games she has been apart of that lost isn't because of her, maybe it is a collective loss? Maybe Expat was the only one doing reliable damage against the villian while other heroes aren't doing their fair share of work? There are plenty of things that aren't just linked to Expat being a problem.

Interestly whenever I look at my statistics since everyone can look up their own username at this point, Expat on mine is higher than Ra, Fanatic, Young Legacy, Wraith, and Unity. All of which are doing better than her in the overall stats. Then looking up the Google Game statistics she is even higher on the board. So I think the overall may be an issue with who is playing her and not because of her lack of card draws or searches.

The error on Exp win% is still to high to say she is "bombing" out. Right now she is only 5% below average, with an error of 2.5%. There is still a chances she could end up average. But even if she is really 5% below, I have no problem with losing 1 in 20 games more then average. 

To say a hero was "bombing" out, personally I would have to see something like a 20% drop below average. Even AZ's 10% does not bother me.

@Ronway: While I admit that it is possible, I find it very difficult to believe that there are severe biases in Expat's data. All of the things you mention are likely happening with similar rates with the other heroes as well. Is there really any reason to believe that Expat is more succeptible to unhelpful teams than any other hero (eg, Visionary)? As for your own personal statistics, they are much more likely to have biases and also suffer from considerably more uncertainty than the data set taken as a whole.

@youperguy: It is true that there is ~2-4%  uncertainty any given hero's win percentage, but Expat's is about 2-sigma below the mean. A 1/20 chance of being normal is certainly much larger than, say, a chance of 0.3%, but is still fairly unlikely. The uncertainty in the value of the average is known quite a bit better than Expat's win percentage, so it doesn't contribute a whole lot in the comparison.

As for Expat's playability as is, I don't really care, since I don't have Rook City, and I'm not inclined to get it. I'm just saying that 1) it does look like Expat is a bit less "effective" on average, and even if that weren't so, 2) there is nothing wrong with house ruling her to make her more fun. It seems a bit like thread-crapping to me, to barge into a thread on houseruling Expat just to tell everone that there's nothing wrong with her (which necessarily implies that there's somehting wrong with the people that want to houserule her; I mean, maybe there is, but it seems a bit rude to point that out, doesn't it?).

If bias means I know how to play the character properly than i'll take that.

Im with ronway - but mostly, im with the fact that Expat is still not below 66%. None of the heroes really are. (k, abzer is 65.5 but round it and give him his error percentage)

I say 66% because 2/3rds win average seems to be what the game is balanced around. Overal, with almost 2000 games of varying t ypes, villains, and players, you have about a 2/3rds win. So any hero that fell below that would be 'bombing out'. I feel that any hero that is above that mark is actually doing fine and not a 'bad' hero.

Ill not deny shes in the bottom. Ill not deny its easier and sometimes more fun to play other heroes. Ill not deny that she certainly has a worse loss rate than other heroes. How does any of that mean shes is a /bad/ hero? Especially when she comes out with the average win percentage? Or are what you saying is that every hero should be in the 72-75% win rate or above? Then wed have a 3/4ths win average not a 2/3rds win average. Being near the bottom of the stack doesnt mean shes a bad hero.  It does mean she has a tougher time at winning the game, she may not provide as much for a team, and she may have a higher learning curve to get right. After all, how many people feel U nity is overpowered? But shes only at 72%. Lower than the majority of the heroes.

Also, hard conlusions are hard to draw. Last month, Wraith was at 67%. This month shes at 74%. Thats 7% error /if/ we take this months data to be the end all end all, and in truth, she still has about the same error margine as expat, she could still drop back to 72ish. No one denies wraith is a good hero. Expat has also gone up 3% since the month before. 

As for House ruling - no, there is no issue. House rule away. After all, we house rule that players dont have to go by card order played with their own cards. 

And if youll look back in this thread, youll see ive made my own contributions on  how to give a promo version that I think would be fun to play (havent tried it myself, to be honest, but i did contribute to the issue of 'is she fun to play)

What i speak out agains is the need to 'Fix' her as if she is inherently broken and unplayable. No. I dont believe that. I have no problem if your style doesnt line up with her - again, I dont tell anyone they need to 'Fix' Visionary cause i find her boring as all get out. If you find her(expat) playstyle something you don't like, by all means! House rule away. Discuss house rules on the forums with others. But shes not a broken hero, she plays just fine if you like her playstyle, and she can do some incredible things when you give her the chance. But dont call her broken. Thats what I'm about. 

*edit*

Interesting note. My entered stats look up has 10/17 games won for Expat, 58% :P Apparently I /dont/ know how to play her (To be fair i did like 6 games against the Chairman Solo using her :p So i lost a lot and it skewed my personal stats ;P)

If you read what I wrote, it should be obvious that when I said "bombing out" I meant that she manages to lose a single game, not that she never wins. I'm using 74.5%  as the benchmark, because that's the median win rate; I don't really understand why you'd use anything else. Wraith was a bit of a curiosity, but the jump is tempered a bit by the fact that you got a ton of new data in the last month (at least doubled, IIRC). A 1.4-sigma deviation is a lot more common than 2-sigma, and with the number of heroes we have, someone moving like that is expected. I will say that I think she is better than the stats indicate, though. Maybe the same is true of Expat.

As for any character being so bad they aren't worth playing ... someone has to be on the bottom, and there isn't really any good reason for it not to be Expat, Fixer, Bunker and AZ. And yes, I have won my share of games with Bunker and AZ, so their stats have never bothered me. I do wonder, though, whether it's just that these are the toughest heroes to play correctly. I could definitely stand to be better with Bunker.

And now for the last bit, I didn't see anyone say that Expat is so bad that she's broken and not worth playing. What I mostly see are people saying that her deck doesn't work the way it's supposed to more often than it should, and when that happens it's really unfun.

Interestingly this topic is called "Expatriette Fix?" and if people aren't calling her broken, than why is it she needs fixed? Maybe if the topic was called "House Rules for Expatriette because I don't like the way she plays and feel she and every other character should be played like Wraith" seeing as it is not that and it's talking about fixing her than that would imply she is broken.

Maybe they just need the fix of playing her more?

I think, like folks have been saying, that there are multiple factors in play. Like shimage said, the most objective evidence we have available says that Expat, Fixer, Bunker, and AZ consistently lose more than other heroes. I think we can agree that, with those 4 heroes especially, when you get an off hand, it really hurts the team. To go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, with Dark Visionary, if you played no cards but spied the villain deck every turn, she'd probably still have an above-average win rate (and I'll go ahead and disagree pretty vehemently that DV is less interactive than Expat, though we can save that debate for another thread :-p). With Wraith's stats jumping like they did, I think you can look at her deck and say, "Wow, those low stats are really an anomaly, and it makes sense that she trended toward the average." Now, personal opinion, I still think 75% is low for Wraith, but I just happen to think she's one of the 3 or 4 best heroes in the game for any team :)

Another factor is enjoyment, and people are trying to anchor enjoyment objectively, but that's really hard to do. For instance, of the four heroes above, I love playing Fixer, I enjoy AZ and Bunker, and I'm trying to play more Expat to get a more educated opinion about her. I could list off a dozen reasons why I love Fixer (and I probably have in another thread or two), but I also understand that he has a weakness, and that weakness can really kill his games (see: 68% win rate). Though don't be shocked if Fixer's win rate pulls a Wraith, because I think that, early on, people tried to play him as a damage dealer, when he's definitely not (he can fill very specific niches when he needs to, but he's not in any real damage dealer's league).

I have another anecdotal "Expat hater" reason why I find her frustrating: I had just about as ideal as a starting hand as possible (Shotgun, Quick Draw, Arsenal Access, and the Assault Rifle, the environment let me play a second quick draw on like the third turn) against advanced Ennead (with Bunker, Ra, and Scholar). Very long story short, Ra also had the perfect start (imbued fire, solar flare x2, fire immunity), and he got 2 or 3 staves out for the heals, so by the time I got to 8 damage in one turn (P&P, imbued fire, hollow points), I was dead, but Ra was still in good shape. So when I died, I just startged supplying Ra or Bunker with an extra power (9 damage to one or 4-4-3), instantly outstripping the output I could have done on my own save for very specific setup (SMG/Imbued Fire/Hollow Points or Unload). I totally understand and agree that it's unfair to use the perfect Ra setup as the example of Expat contributing more dead than alive, but I was primed to just dominate, but instead I got nickel & dimed to death, dealt a fair amount of damage, and then dealt more damage by allowing someone else to use a power. It was both the best and worst scenario for playing Expat. The most frustrating thing was I had to discard a card early on, so that meant that the entire rest of the game, I had a hand of 3, because I had no means of getting extra cards outside of Scholar's one shots.

My favorite homemade Expat base power is this one: destroy a gun to draw 3 cards (2 if you think that's too powerful?). If the only weapon in your initial draw is SMG and you're fighting Iron Legacy, you can get 1-2 skipped turns' worth of cards and hopefully get something on the table and pumping out damage the next turn instead of 2-3 turns later.

I had a long and rambling post written but... :)

I am bowing out. I started to write things that were not within line to the congeniality and politeness we should expect from this forum (higher than average for the internet!)

I hold my opinion about Expat, and will continue to do so :) (that opinion is that she does not need 'Fixing' and is a fine, viable hero all on her own)

One of the two.  The other is shuffled back into her deck.  And I agree with you.  It's quite frustrating when people try to describe it as a search card, which is the big frustration a lot of people have with Expatriette.

And I get where you're coming from, Katsue.  I just don't understand why I have to sit and hope for the Gun that I need rather than having one or two small draw cards or a proper search card.  I find Zero's set-up to be rather delicate and frustrating at times, but I can only imagine how awful it would be if he didn't have his search/draw cards.

Well, it depends on the character.  If a character's cards are for the vast majority playable and effective at any time, then they don't need extra search and draw (although its still nice) because they can get by on what they have.  They might not meet their full potiential, but thats ok, at least they are functional.  Legacy, Ra, Haka, and Tempest among others fall into this catagory although draw helps Haka with his discard effects.

However, if a hero has really requires a certain setup, or certain card(s) in play to be FUNCTIONAL (ie the fire and ice conversions for AZ, guns for Expat, etc) then that character really does need some kind of search or acceleration because they need to those cards to opperate on a basic level.  You can't really just "get by" with other cards so you need  a way to help insure that you will get the necessary ones.  We have plenty of characters in this catagory as well, but most have the search or draw necessary to make it work.

For example in this specific game where she was so bad the group still won so it goes as a win for her.  It might be nice if there was an option to list an mvp or a check box for each hero to say if they worked well, but that really gets into all kinds of trouble with subjective discussion on what "worked well" means for each hero and game.  Plus the stats page is super awesome and appreciated as is so I'm not going to start demanding questionable additions requiring all kinds of work.

Yeah really for those that think she needs help go head, it doesn't change anything for the rest.  Likewise those that don't want to house rule her don't have to.  For those that do I guess some discussion might be helpful as to what works well.

I applaud you good sir.

Legacy sure doesn't have search cards, and his only drawings come from Bolster Allies and Thokk. Alright I can see this on. Ra has Summon Staff and Excavation how is he not a hero with search or draws? Tempest, Aquatic Correspondence, Localized Hurricane, and Reclaim from the Deep all allow him to draw a card. Haka has Vitality Surge, any Haka card, and Mere all allow him to draw. How do these characters fall into the "They just play with what the get because they have no card draws" to me they certainly fit into that to me.

So once again i'll say, i'll i'm getting out of this is every hero should be the same.

Today I got to look up what reductio ad absurdum means

There is a huge jump from saying that a search or extra card draw helps a hero get going and saying that every hero needs to be the same. (And I say this as one who has little care for flavor and setting.) Are you honestly telling me that giving Expat a more sophisticated search makes her the same as AZ?

I think this was mentioned before, but as soon as you give Expat even a little extra help drawing cards, she becomes rather beastly in damage dealing. Too beastly maybe?

And this is where I feel is the disconnect. Truth is, if you gave Expat a few true search cards, my hunch is that she would quickly overshadow even the likes of Ra when it comes to total damage done over the course of a game. In games where I have tried some of the suggestions on here about giving her more innate card draws/searches this has been the case more so than not (and I am no Expat fan here).

I do hope we eventually get a promo Expat. The reason is because I really feel that playing the promo AbZ helped me get a much better understanding of how to play the original. Maybe a promo Expat would do the same for me  

That is getting into much finer mechanics. Overall if most heroes had a search card the games would be "I search my super-awesome-mega-card and deal X damage" thus heroes will have the same feel about them. If Expat's Quickdraw was a rip off of Impromtu Invention then she would be a very damage heavy counterpart to Wraith, infact she would most likely be the most powerful character in the game. While right now she is your average character.

My main point to it all over the course of this thread is Expat doesn't need Fixing, she is fine the way she is. She just doesn't fit the ideal of how people would want her to work, which is different than her actually being broken.

Lord, I'm going to regret this but...

Wraith NEEDS a search card/ her search card isn't a game breaker. Why? Well, because at any given time she could use three or four different pieces of equipment. So you have to ask yourself "What's more important, her utility belt? Her infrared eyepeice? Micro-targeting computer?" That decision adds another layer to her search card. You DO get to pick whatever, but you have to decide what you need more. Every time I drop an impromptu invention, I'm having to make a hard choice between several good options.

Expat? Well, her shotgun. You'd look for her shotgun. (Yeah yeah, maybe the assault rifle, but let's be real)

I love them both. But seriously, no search card for expat.

Hey, folks.

Let's step back a moment. Remember, we're all talking about opinions here, not fact. Some folks feel Exp is balanced and some feel she needs to be changed. Some feel her only good gun is her shotgun and others feel she has a lot of versatility to deal with many different situations.

Let's not mistake our opinions for fact.

And lets respect each others' opinions.

I'm always amazed at how many ways we all approach aspects of this game differently!

Have a better one…

Just had a question that ties into this and I don't have my cards in front of me.

Isn't the shotgun the highest damage, single target power in the game? It's 4 damage and I can't think of anything higher off the top of my head.

This isn't to get into the debate, but you guys were mentioning it a lot and got me thinking.

Chaosmancer: Yes.  It is the highest single-target damage power in the game, without any other preparation.  It's nice for that.

You are completely correct, I guess my point is they don't NEED draw and search because their cards do just fine in a vacuum.  Search and draw are ALWAYS good, but not necessary in some cases.  Even if every hero did need search and draw that doesn't remotely make them all the same.  Chrono and Wraith both have search and very different.  Every hero needs some (high) level of consistency… now that I agree with.

Yes, but its worse than Wraiths razor orddinance with a targeting computer, and the same as bunkers flak cannon with a turret mode or Ra's fire cyclone with a staff OR imbue fire out.  Each of those characters can use their thing AND do something else on their turn (Ra has lots of good one-shots, bunker and wraith can get two powers).  I've heard that arguement before and mostly I'm like Mckayla when I hear it.

I personally do not think every hero needs a search and draw cards. What i've been getting at is people want her to be a character she is not. The point behind me stating all heroes should be the same is because people want Expat to be able to search for the guns (or rather the shotgun) and draw additional cards, which if they want to play a character that does that than why not play someone already built for that rather than changing Expat into a copy of Wraith, with a few minor differences. It's a bit of an over exaggeration  on my behalf, but that fact is Expat does have Quick Draw which is a search card, but it searches for her two most prized guns. It's more of a Summon Staff in that they are cards you don't need every game, but they are both great when you have them in play. Allowing her to be able to search for any gun (shotgun) would make her on the over powered side, as she'll be able to blast away without fear of losing it as she could easily just retrieve it back, which is why she lacks such a card.

It's just disappointing that it is the only search card in the game that is completely useless when the card(s) it searches for are already on the field.

And then they become discard fodder as needed.

Which makes it a poor comparison to OMI and Summon Staff.

Even Summon Staff can be discard fodder if you have all of them in hand and the Staff in play.

Why would you want to discard Summon Staff, when you can just play it for draw 1/play 1, thereby, thinning your deck?

It is still superior to Quick Draw in that respect.

There are times that you have to discard something.

That's like saying a card is good because it's another card in your hand.  Or a power is good because it's a power.  Of course there are times that you have to discard something.  Every card can be discarded.  Is there a Hero card in a deck that is incapable of being discarded?

That's like saying each and every card needs to stand on its own merits and not require any outside influence from other cards.

In what respect?  You're arguing that this card can be discarded.  I agree with you.  I just don't understand why that is a point in its favor.

Every card serves a purpose and none of them exist in a void. Some cards are useful only with cards in their own deck. Other cards work with synergy with other decks. So long as a card serves the purpose to which it is intended that is all it NEED do. Comparing one card to another card really doesn't serve a purpose. A card in hand which I have 2 others in hand really serves no purpose if the object it's intended for is already in play.

"Oh, hey! This cards lets me do X as well!" Great, because that is part of that card's intention. If it was the intention of THIS card, it would say such.

Personally, with the games with her that I've played, I've never run into a problem with Expatriette. Or any of the others. So sometimes the draws aren't optimal. Unless the villain is going to take out all the heroes in the first turn, it isn't a problem. The game mechanics allow for a work around for slow starts with a 2-card draw.

I've had just as much fun in the games that have been lost as in the games that were won. That, first and foremost, is the important thing.

THIS. It all comes down to this. If you feel like you need to add a little something to Expatriette, Bunker, Mr. Fixer, or whoever, by all means go ahead. If you don't then don't. Point is that everyone enjoys

Ah, now I understand.  I was confused, as I was quoting Ronway's comparison of Quick Draw in relation to OMI and Summon Staff.  I understand your argument about comparisons, but the issue I was addressing was that these cards are not terribly comparable.  I think you and I are arguing the same thing.

That being said, I still find Quick Draw to be lacking as a card both on its own and in Expatriette's deck.  I don't quite understand how it is uniquely crafted to benefit Expatriette's deck by being a reactionary fetch card if either of her pistols get destroyed at best or a dead card to discard at worst.  It just sounds like more waiting.

Would really be curious for a Mr. Fixer and Expat alternate hero card given all this discussion. Sort of giving them abilities like the Freedom Six or Eternal Haka to make them more viable with bad draws.

if Mr. Fixer is given another power other than a damaging power than he would be useless. As his only source of damage would be Charge.

Sometimes a promo hero made me realize how much I enjoyed the original, F6 Absolute Zero and Horus Ra comes to mind. Hopefully a promo Expatriette can help people enjoy original Expatriette more.

Agreed, ketigid. Agreed.

That's interesting. I respond to the promos very differently than you do; when we randomly select heroes, we roll for the hero and then choose which version we want to use. I usually choose depending on the needs of the team, but I prefer the card draw version of Ra. For AZ, I go Elemental Wrath if my team has better tank available (which isn't always the case, of course).

I've pondered what a promo Fixer would look like, because like it was just said, it's his only damage. So giving him 1 damage and letting him do something offers no trade-off. People have suggested giving Expat a 0-damage base power so you can fire ammo, and while I don't like the idea for Expat, I do like the idea for Fixer. Call it "Take a swipe" or something, and it deals 0 damage and he draws a card. He can get damage through stances and tools, but since he's not a damage hero, I don't really see it as a huge sacrifice (other than trying to make all damage to a target irreducable that turn).

Last night I had the ideal situation for Expat's base power. A cakewalk with Citizen Dawn turned into a laughably long snorefest highlighted by the environment's uncanny ability to kill enough citizens that she wouldn't flip back. So I spent around 6-8 turns building up (and destroying her ongoings) for when she flipped. Then she had two devastating auroras, so everyone had to rebuild quickly in case she flipped with a particularly rough draw (bear in mind that she kept whittling down my team, so we were all low-teens). Because of Fixer's salvage yard and Expat's base power, she was able to get all her guns out and a few rounds of ammo to finish her off (Dawn flipped with 77 health, and Tachyon responded with 21-card Lightspeed Barrage x3). There are all sorts of negatives the hater in me could point out, but it did give me a better appreciation for Expat's base power.

(That said, I'd still rather have a "destroy a gun to draw 2/3 cards" promo version, but it was still a good use of her base power.)

I came up with an alt power for Mr Fixer that does not make him useless:

ANTICIPATE:

Power: Discard a card.  Search your deck or trash for a non-Equipment card and put it in your hand.  Shuffle your deck.

Now he's a two phase character - first phase is setting up his combo.  After that he relies on recycling Charge to do damage.  Limiting it to non-Equipment cards prevents spamming the Grease Gun.

I'm not sure I like the idea of a character having a search as an innate power. If you had a decent setup you could easily spam your overdrives and charges.

Overdrive wouldn't really be helpful in this case. As Strike is no longer a power. The power is actually encouraging the spamming of Charges, as that would be Fixer's only way to attack. Using Anticipate as Fixer's power would leave you with the decision of either playing a Tool, Style, or Charge. If you choose the former two than you won't be dealing damage that round, while the latter one you'll deal 2 points and not be getting closer to setting up. Also if you have trouble even drawing a Charge, you are really shut down as the only two cards Fixer has in his deck that would be useful without a damaging base power other than Charge is Toolbox and Grease Gun.

It seems like it will make Fixer unplayable because he would truly require 1 card to be functionable.

You are guaranteed to have Charge whenever you want with the Anticipate power.  The idea is he sacrifices his early game damage output and late game flexibility for getting out the style of his choice and harmony and being slightly ahead of his normal damage curve once that happens by using Charge every round rather than Strike. 

Yes, he relies on one card to be functional.  That card replaces the one power he currently requires to be functional.  It requires a different approach to play.  And it's the only way I've come up with that gives him an alternate power that still works.

The fact it makes Overfrive a useless card isn't really a positive to it. I also didn't notice it searched the deck as well. That makes the power a little too powerful and awkward at the same time. Infact I almost don't see them using it as a sacrifice damage early on. What I see happening is in the opening hand they'll play whatever style/tool the have and from that point on Charging every round. While waiting to draw anything else that would be worth the sacrifice of damage for that round. Saying his one power he requires is a little different as it is his character card and can't really be taken away.

I understand the attempt at it, but Fixer really should have a damaging Innate power, otherwise it becomes odd.

I think it's an interesting idea; Just because a search-based innate power doesn't yet exist, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. If it's overpowered, you could refine it to specifically find Charge, but I can see this working quite well. The complete and total uselessness of Overdrive is worrying, however; maybe change the name of Anticipation to 'Ready to Strike'? :P

I'm not horribly fond of a search innate power thematically either. If their base power is to get a certain card in their deck, then that implies that without that card, they aren't really anything. I think it can end up making a hero too reliant on one card.

Bloody Knuckles too.

I think the main problem with the "search" innnate power would be the time it takes each turn. I've had games where Ra chains his Summon Staffs or AZ plays multiple search cards, it takes a while, and makes this already fiddly game even more fiddly. That's just my thinking, though. It might not be a bad idea other than that...

I think this idea is really interesting.  Charge becomes useless but that happens with some other alternate cards as well.  For example I guess TLT could use research grant but its rare that it will be better than her base power. 

The point isn't that making overdrive is a positive so much that it doen't make it OP.

Secondly remember that this power puts the searched card in your hand.  So if you EVER want to change your set up you have to play the style/tool to do that and thus NOT play charge that round which means no damage that turn.

After a certain point everyone has the cards the want, or at least most do. At which point Research Grant is better for Tachyon as it functions exactly like Team Leader for her but can discard a card. So it depends if you really want to give everyone their entire deck or not. I tend to play Research Grant and using it several turns into the game as everyone already has a big enough hand.

If you read the sentence after that, I even mention that you would scarficie damage in order to play a different card. So I think i've already understood that. I was merely giving an example of what I think will happen, in fact it is the way I would play. As there isn't really any reason not to play Charge every round until you draw something else worth play.

Spending a turn retrieving a good style or Harmony would be a good reason. It lets you get any style out more easily, but increases the cost of style-changing, and it gives Fixer an alternate power that's not a flat upgrade (which the major house-ruled alternate Fixers are, power-wise).

To be clear, I'm proposing this as alt power for a Promo Hero version of Fixer - not as a "fix" to the character.   I think he works fine as is, but I spent some time the other night brainstorming how an alternate hero card would work considering his reliance on Strike.  Yes, it's a major change, but making a new power named Strike that also does damage isn't interesting and I enjoyed the puzzle of coming up with an alternate power that still lets him function. 

I dubbed it "Anticipate" because you are setting up your next turn most of the time, but thematically and mechanically it might be better named "Focus" because (mechancially) it really narrows how Fixer gets played and (thematically) it fits with the Martial Artist theme of digging into his wealth of fighting knowledge to take the perfect approach for the situation.  He can always get out the style he wants.  He can always get out Harmony.  The only question mark is if he has the best tool for the job. 

Yes, it makes some cards useless.  But not totally useless as they are easy options for the Discard part of the power.

Yes, deck searching can take a bit of time.  But it won't take that much becuase once this Fixer is at the point where he's using Charge every turn it is right on the top of the Discard to nab.

Maybe he won't be as much fun to play, but some people already have that criticism of Fixer.  And I know plenty of people who would enjoy getting out the perfect Style for the situation and hammering it.  Eventually Fixer will have a Grease Gun in his hand or a better tool and there will be the tension of when to use it vs wait and Charge again.

I think I put this in another thread, but my idea for a promo Fixer's base power is: "Take a Swipe - Fixer deals 1 target 0 damage. Draw a card." Of course, when he gets other cards in play that increase his damage, this power starts actually dealing damage, but IMO this would get more tools and styles into his hand, giving him more flexibility to swap them out as necessary. It'd be like always playing with TLT, except losing his early damage (and let's face it, if you're using Fixer as a primary damage hero outside of a couple specific niches, you're doing it wrong :-p ).

I actually got the idea from this Expat thread, as someone suggested a 0-damage base power to let her use her ammo. I'm not personally a fan of that for Expat, but I like the idea for Fixer. I'll try it sometime and report how it goes.

Edit: this also gives Fixer cause to use his double-power one-shot early in the game; I'm always gun-shy with using it before either A) I've got Harmony and a good damage tool out or B) I really need an extra point or two of damage to put a target down.

Why lower Fixer's damage out put? The lower it gets the worse off he is. Riveting Crane becomes pretty bad at that point. Plus it isn't named Strike, so Overdrive once again is out of commision. Why not just lower his HP instead of damage?

Yeah I love the name you chose because you have to anticipate what you are attacking next turn.  "I'm gonna put this tool out now so I can't attack this turn, next turn it will be just right."

Interesting I've never played research grant with TLT cause people can always get more and better one shots.  Some heros like NM, Scholar, Haka, etc can always use discards as well so I've found it more beneficial to keep pumping my teammates full of cards.  Difference in play style I guess.

Yes you did and it is more clear from rereading what you said.  Your arguement is probably more true with not being able to search equipment.  Otherwise I'm sure my first few moves would be getting a style, a tool, and a harmony.  As it is, if I started with a tool a style and harmony would probably follow.   I might also often pass to find a scrap yard after equipment destruction or to get a grease gun back (see example below) if the team was taking bad damage.  I guess again it might be up to different play styles.

As a separate comment on this idea:

I could see some interesting scenarios where it is better to get a meditaion rather than a stance because next turn you could get any style out the following turn rather than just the specific one you got.  However eventually that doesn't work as Meditation doen't search the trash.  Interesting…

A far as creating a dead card in Overdrive, wasn't someone describing earlier that Quick Draw is never a dead card because you can always use it for discard fodder?  I guess the same rule applies except in this case it starts as discard fodder, not just after certain cards are out.

I'm a little curious about tool box.  Obviously there isn't too much need to draw cards except to get tools, but it might be worth skipping damage to get those tools.  between tool box and using your power just to thin the deck I'm sure you could get the one you want pretty fast.  Personally I like to drop toolboxes against Spite (to a lesser degree MI) as fodder since it does its job once and is coming back to hand anyway.  Well in this setup you can't do that unless you also don't want to attack.

I think this idea is very intriguing, charging every turn isn't much different than striking every turn.  The main difference is higher damage, but you can't both attack and change setup in the same turn.  Grease gun is pretty much identical for both. 

I do think you might have to worry about scrap yard with this power though.  Then again maybe not.  Lets, just for this example say you play Grease Gun, end your turn.  Next turn you search scrap yard, next turn you play scrap yard, next turn you play grease gun.  You could play GG over and over again, but it takes like 3 turns (Search, Play SY, Play GG) and you could only ever play a different card on one of those turns so maybe not so bad. 

Wait I guess you could search for SY on the same turn you played it so that might be too much.

It might be a little boring ie get out your setup and strike over and over, but honestly I already get that exact same arguement about him from a couple of the guys in my play group that are not fans "You just get the tool and style you want and spend the rest of the game just sitting on it and strike every turn" so I'm not concerned.

Anyway my conclusion is I think this is interesting and I'd like to see how it turns out. I might ask the guys and give this a try. I'm quite interested to see how creative a person can be with the power though I think I got into most options above, after all he doesn't have a ton of interesting one shots.

Good point on using Scrap Yard to spam Grease Gun.  That's too good.  I suppose the search could be limited to a Style, Harmony, or Charge - but that's getting wordy and the power is already wordy as it is.

Yeah, its too bad because I really like this idea so far.  I can see SY being a great search option for help after say a devistating aurora.  Grease Gun does put a damper on it a bit, but I guess you could try it out and see how it ends up.  I agree that if you start listing specific cards it gets too wordy.  Maybe just non-equipment, non-Salvage Yard.

Well then name it Strike so that Overdrive still works :-p

Riveting Crane is the one that makes everyone else's damage irreducable, correct? (I don't have the deck in front of me at work.) That's the one real drawback to using this version instead of the base (and I'd like to think that we're done with the days of promo versions with no drawbacks like TLT, DV, and Grandpappy Legacy); now he can't break through DR2 without help. (To be fair, I was thinking his HP would drop one or two as is, since there aren't all that many times you'd need to break through DR2.)

The only other time his damage really comes into play is Jack Handle, and the extra card draw should put you into position to get Harmony out earlier.

Really, if you're dependent on Strike's damage to make Fixer successful, you're playing him much differently than I play him. When I play him, I usually try to get Pipe Wrench and redirection out as soon as possible and then adjust based on the game.

I don't think Fixer needs innate search, though if you'd like me to play around with it, I'm happy to. I'd also like to try my version to see if the 0 damage power really cripples him or if it's a decent trade-off.

When I'm out of commission from surgery in a couple weeks, I may try to do a bunch of games in a row with one of these fan-promo versions against a variety of villains to see how they play. Stay tuned

If I were to give him a damage dealing power and draw I would give him 24 HP to counter act it. Heck I think he'll still be beastly at 20 HP.

When did I say I rely dependently on Strike to make Fixer successful? What I do rely on Fixer's deck to make Strike and everything he does successful. Fixer is full of really great combos, I don't hold any one combo over any other. I start off the game thinking of what combo would be best for the situation.

I'm going on my summer schedule next week (partly at least) so I'll have tons of free time as well if you need some company recovering

I, personally, have never found use for a Tire Iron/Riveting Crane combo.

I apologize, I misread the quoted line. I took it to mean that you were saying he's already bad off with only 1 damage, so lowering it to 0 puts him worse off.

I agree that if Strike did 1 damage and let you draw a card, he'd be beastly still with 20 HP; that's why I didn't think there'd be enough drawback to using this hypothetical promo. Dropping the damage to zero and giving him an extra card definitely could be too crippling, or it could be a way for him to have quicker access to the right tool for the situation.

I'll keep you posted

Meditation can in fact search the trash.

Now I never said every combo is great. Just that his deck is full of really great combos. Also against Voss this combo isn't so bad. You can hit Minions other than Guard to kill it. Also you could hit Voss if there are no minions so that way damage dealt to him is irreducible so on his turn if he plays any more minions or Tamar he is still vulnerable. Toss in Charge or Harmony and you can also wipe out the guards. Is it a great combo? Not really, but it is functional in some circumstances and doesn't really compliment eachother.

In that case making the base power search only for charge or meditation might work fine.  The advantage is you can get any style you want almost on demand (one turn later) and his basic attack would be 1 pt stronger.  disadvantages would be that he has to skip damage to play any card (meditation, a tool, harmony, salvage yard) and he has some decrease in burst potential since he cant double strike via over drive and cant play a charge and also strike in the first turn.  You wouldn't have any extra ability to get those extra cards, that part would just be the same. 

It might be interesting to change overdrive to say "you may play two cards now"  Then an over drive would allow a setup change with attack or double attack although doing so would really reduce hand size since you would have to play three cards out of your hand total.  He would then have even more than normal reason to benefit from card draw via tool box or other heros like TLT.

I have 2 houserule for Expatriette's tutor cards.

Arsenal Access: Select a card type - Equipment, Gun or Ammo. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal 2 cards of that type. Put both of them into you hand. Shuffle the rest of the revealed cards into your deck. You may play a card.

Quick Draw: If both "Pride" and "Prejudice" are in play, search your deck for a Gun card and put it into play. If not, search your trash or your deck for either "Pride" or "Prejudice" and put it into play. If you searched your deck, shuffle your deck.

Mainly helps her get what she wants when she needs.

I just ended up going all-out and making an alternate deck for her, but kept the base card.  So far it works better/smoother and she hasn't run into a situation (out of 7 games) where she has been unable to get a gun.   She's still got the same vulnerablities as any equipment-intensive hero, but the payoff for getting things out is much more dynamic.

If christopher/paul/adam/etc are willing to give the OK, I'll post the actual cards and PDF's I've made.  If not, its all good- they know I love the game!

I enjoy a deck that runs smooth and feels like its all designed to go together where the cards work together as a fluid machine.  I saw a good Expat game this last week, but at the end the player (who was fairly new, 3rd game, 1st with her) commented that he wasn't sure what to do about speed loading since he wanted to see the rest of her deck.  I think a decent house rule is to have speed loading put the card into your hand instead of the top of your deck.  Maybe also remove the part about putting an ammo into play or say you can put an ammo into play rather than drawing a card.

Maybe even better is to say you may either put an ammo from your trash on the top of your deck or draw a card.  That way it can be  pure card draw card if you want that or you could cycle to basically draw 2 cards every second turn while getting a returned ammo on the odd turns.

Personally when I use Speed Loading I don't use the option to put an ammo on the top of her deck unless I really need that ammo next round. I use it for that extra ammo play so I can play other things that I want to get into.

That's pretty much how I use it, as well.  True, it burns through your cards really quickly, but that free Ammo play keeps you pumping out damage on a consistent basis.  

A round where you can throw down a set of Hollow Points, an RPG Launcher, and an Unload in one turn makes for a happy Expatriette player.

Agreed, but even then its only a couple times an you are out of cards.  She seems to have a lot of ways to play extra cards and zero ways to get extra cards.  It just leads to an overall sense that her deck kind of fights itself rather than the smooth well oiled feeling you get with some others.  In particular the statement above was a comment by a person seeing her for the first time, but I do get that internal power struggle feeling when I read some of her cards.  Really maybe just that one, thus the desire to errata it.

I see what you're saying, Sefrit; Expatriette's lack of card draw has been the biggest commonality through this whole thread.  Hence why I tried the SMG variant: "Deal 1 damage to all non-hero targets.  Draw a card." (which was way overpowered).

I wonder how it would turn out if you added a "Shuffle your deck.  Draw a card." rider to the end of both Arsenal Access and Quick Draw.  Wraith, The Scholar, Argent Adept, Chrono Ranger...they all have something similar on their search/tutor cards, and seem to keep larger hands.  Okay, maybe not The Scholar, but he has card draw out the yin-yang.  You'd still get the full benefit of each card (1 of 2 Equipment cards or Pride/Prejudice), but also a second random card to follow it.  Could go a long way towards alleviating the ammo issue.

I'm still very much in the camp of "Expatriette is fine", but I like exploring these potential changes.  I also tend to view Unload as a nova turn.  You build up by playing your ammo cards (preferably with Speed Loading) and your spare guns, while dealing out consistent damage with Assault Rifle/P&P/Shotgun, then let loose and mow everything down when you're loaded up.

This is the big confusion a lot of people have over Expatriette.  I'm certainly not in the camp that thinks she is "broken," but it amazes me that she literally has no card draw (Arsenal Access is a search card, but it's one random card out of two), which is especially strange since her base power allows her to play another card.  I don't think she needs a "Draw a card" attached to any of her powers, but Quick Draw does nothing if you have Pride and Prejudice in your hand/in play (short of card destruction, but that's the case for every other search card that has "Draw a card" in the description).  Does this make her an unplayable wreck of a deck?  Goodness, no!  Is it frustrating?  Oh yeah…

Interestingly, search cards tend to only search the deck. Impromptu Invention, Summon Staff, Onboard Module Installation, Flash Forge, Technological Singularity, Sudden Contract, and Keep Moving all fall under that. However Quickdraw, Meditation, and Displaced Armoury can search the deck and the trash.

Her lack of extra card draw is not without rational. The playtesting that has been done with giving her some extra draw help (in this thread no less) has all pointed to her becoming TOO powerfull, outpacing even the damage king himself, Ra, in pure damage output over a given game.

That will soothe none of you I am afraid, but that is just the reality of the situation.

Have we tried giving her draw from one-shots rather than powers?  This is news to me.

EDIT:  Also, characters who can only search their deck rather than their trash also typically have 3-4 copies of their search cards and 3-4 copies of the cards they search for.  It doesn't make them better than Quick Draw or vice versa.  They're just different methods.  The card draw, however, really does make a difference.

As one of those  "experimenters", I wholeheartedly agree with you.  But I also like seeing what happens when you tinker with a deck, hence the suggestions for Arsenal Access and Quick Draw.  It might just be limited enough to provide a more appealing balance between play and draw.

And, no, I don't think anyone's tried tying extra card draw to one-shots.  Ammo, yes.  Guns, yes (particularly SMG).  Not the one shots, though.  Again, hence Arsenal Access/Quick Draw.

I'm not completely sold on the this being so OP.  I would really like to have seen that game played.  Obviously the right combo with the right heros can make anyone OP.  I had a game last night where we had OX, Granpa Legacy, and AA and were doing all kinds of ridiculous healing, taking no damage, and dealing crazy damage ourselves.  I've seen Ra do something like 40+ damage in a a single turn with at least 7 damage to each target.  I've had a few perfect games just by accident not because of a specific character but the nice interaction between them.

Personally I find SMG rarely useful on its own.  Except for select bosses I my group doesn't see more than 3-4 targets at a time on the board very often. Even then we find it just as useful to take them down one at a time rather than not kill any but weaken all of them.  Of course if you can kill the whole group via aoe thats great.  Its usefulness is also fairly dependent on bonuses from other heros.  An imbue fire or galvanize really makes it much more powerful but as stated above you can get a lot of OP things going on when you are invovling multiple heros each with the right setup.

Really the SMG statement above isn't important to the arguement and its only there because a test was base on giving SMG the card draw.  More importantly I find Expat MUCH more fun and not OP at when she is played in conjunction with a Team Leader Tachyon.  In fact that is when I feel like she plays as intended, so I think just adding card draw isn't what is making her OP.  Even if the combo of SMG with a card draw is too much, that is why a power like do 1 target 1 damage and draw a card is very good.  In that case you MUST sacrifice damage to get the extra card (except if you have SMG and one target or no gun).  I've played her a few times with that base power and it doesn't seem to make her OP at all.

No one is arguing that team interactions that benifit a hero are bad. I've seen all those same situations as well. 

What I was trying to say is that, team interactions aside, the games in which she has been given innate card drawing in her deck, her average damage output per any given game tends to skyrocket and far out perform other heros in that niche by a noticeable margin. 

I am merely pointing to the rational behind not giving her an innate draw or a better search card in the first place. 

I played her a couple of times with the "destroy one of your guns in play. If you do, draw 3 cards" variant and it was a lot of fun and didn't feel OP but actually rather balanced. although there were times when I ended up with a ton of good cards in her hand and was wishing I could use her Load power instead, hahaha. 

One variant I tried involved the SMG- After using the power, you could play an ammo card on it.  It became the jack of all trades weapon.  

Another involved Pride and Prejudice- Pride let you draw a card (but did 1 less damage), Prejudice  did 1 more damage (so 1 and 3, respectively.) 

this gave you an interesting choice when quickdrawing.

I understand your aguement, and that is exactly what I'm not convinced of.  My point was that only two games have been reported.  In at least one of those she was benefiting from Imbued Fire.  In games where I have given her extra card draw she becomes more on par with a Ra but doesn't seem to surpass him and definitely not by any noticeable margin.  In my experience she seems about right with the card draw, not crazy awesome. 

I recently played her with extra card draw and yes, she was the best damage dealer in the game, but she was also the only pure DPS character in the group and everyone else was giving support in some way.  She was narrowly beating out Tempest (who had spent most of his power uses using his heal though he had some nice damage oneshots) until she finally hit an unload in the last turn and wracked up 13 damage to pull ahead farther ahead when the game was already in the bag.

I realize this is just one game so it isn't evidence on its own, but so are the other examples reported where she performed so well.

Very interesting, how did that work out for you?

When I ran the game in question, my wife and I specifically ran characters that had little interactions with other heroes, in a target-rich Environment and Villain combo.  We used base Haka and Tachyon, along with Ra and Expatriette.  Both Ra and Expatriette had quality draws, with next to no interaction with one another.  We structured the game that way, so that we could minimize outside interference and allow us to evaluate how much the extra card draw affected Expatriette.  Was it a "scientific" study?  No.  Were the results conclusive?  I think so.

Ra did put down Imbued Fire late in the game (I believe round 6 of 8 or 9, but I'd have to double-check), but Expatriette had well and truly outdamaged him across the board and had nearly half of her deck in play/hand/trash.  The overall damage comparison wasn't even close.  She nearly doubled his output, even while taking a full turn to do nothing but play cards and set up for consecutive Unloads.  Mind you, it wasn't a matter of "she got a great hand, while Ra got crap."  Ra started with everything he could have wanted–Staff, Scorched Earth, Fire Blast and more.  The extra card pulls just allowed Expatriette to outpace him across the board.

I think we've all noticed (from playing with Team Leader Tachyon) that the heroes greatly benefit from an extra card a turn.  I highly doubt that a "Draw a card" on two of her one-shots would make her greatly outpace anyone.  If anything, I think it would just reduce the instances of "Well, if you don't have what you need with Expatriette, use her super cool do-nothing-and-draw-two-cards power."  If it is such an OP thing for Expatriette to have an extra card every so often, I haven't seen the "Expatriette and TLT is INSANE!" threads popping up much.

Idea I have had.

Was based on the fact her base power is "Load" basically setup fast.

I was thinking something of the line:

Reload

Return a Gun in play to your hand.

Draw a card.

You may discard an ammo. If you do draw 1 card.

or 

Reload

Return a Gun in play to your hand.

You may discard an ammo. If you do draw 2 card.

Basically the fastest way of searching through her deck, but slows her setup down. Which the vibes of the new Freedom Six Hero gives.

It also allows her ability to bounce guns if is suspected to be destroyed. Or search for RPG or that specfic gun.

The SMG variant ended up making it a much more interesting choice for pretty much any situation. The pride/prejudice changes were even better, though, as they weren't quite so interchangeable and single target/card draw combo seemed quite useful without being ridiculous.  

My custom deck ended up making her an "every other turn" character- one turn to get things ready, and one turn to let loose.  

I ended up changing pretty much everything- I added a new gun (a 50 cal. Sniper rifle named "Citizen Friendly") that could only be fired if there was ammo in it, and you had to use a power or one-shot to load it.  But in return it did massive (5 points) irreducible damage.

I added a new ongoing- the Black Market.  Every time you destroyed an ammo card, you drew a card.  And at the end of turn, if you didn't have any guns in play or in hand, you drew cards until you got one.

I also tweaked all the ammo and increased the amount in the deck, at the cost of reducing amount of one shots- but I bulked them up so that when you got to play one, it was awesome.

I ended up changing the vest so that it always provided a damage reduction of 1, but the 3 point prevention check came first- so a heavy hit would make it go away, but it would protect you until then.

So far its working good.  She's become a steady damage dealer, with some bursts when things align.   Its a lot easier for her to get the various guns, though there is still an element of "use what you have"  In return, she has more group-synergy friendly ammo (one increases damage taken, another reduces damage froma  target by two..but only if they took damage from the gun after any reductions), and more of it.

Oh, and I named all the guns.  Because I figure she's the type of person who names all of her firearms.

Sniper Rifle (Citizen Friendly, because it really helps people open up, and show what they are like on the inside)

SMG: Group therapy (because she has anger issues)

Rifle: Date Night (because the firing range is a great first date...and what you bring and how you shoot will determine if there is a second one)

Shotgun: Ol' Hateful (It reminds her of her mother, especially when she pulls the trigger)

I've been quite curious about how that would work.  I've noticed a lot of times that she gets nickled and dimed while wearing her Flak Jacket, which is a bit of a bummer.

Yeah, pretty much this.  I think the idea of putting the extra card draw on SMG is that SMG isn't used that often in the majority of games so it would only be a couple of cards.  If you really want to limit it to just a few, how about drawing one card after quick draw and having arsenal access put the second equipment into your hand?  By this I mean you could choose to put one into play and one in your hand or both in your hand.

Agreed, I have had several games where the jacket doesn't stop a single instance of damage.  Of course this is true for cards like Tachyons redirect as well.  In general I find 1 DR better than negating a full big attack, but of course there I times when that isn't the case.

See, this idea I like  a lot although I feel likely it would add more card draw than just adding draw one card to SMG but I haven't played with SMG that way to know how appealing it is. 

Edit: Also not sure about the second part.  Of course you really need a gun out and its likely that wouldn't be too many cards drawn, maybe a reveal until you got a gun would lessen my reservations.

What I do see is the fact that right now she can play up to 3 cards a turn and has no way to replenish that so really she can do that once and never again unless she skips turns or had outside help. 

However with this setup she could be essentially speed loading an ammo every turn.  Use a loaded gun and getting another ammo back.  Its seems like using both parts of speed loading with this would make it so she could cycle ammo every turn and still draw her normal card.  That seems very good, did you take speed loading out of your deck with the new edits or does it still exist?  I'm not trying to say this is OP or UP or anything, I'm just curious since you said things were working nicely.  I'm also curious what other things were removed for the new cards.

I changed speed loading, precisely because that specific combo was proving too powerful, especially with the sniper rifle.

Speed loading became: Start of turn, you may play an ammo. When this card is played, you may play an ammo card.

So, speed loading now has an immediate benefit, but you can't recycle ammo except with Reload (and there are only two of those).  But there are 12 ammo cards, so you'll have ammo coming up more frequently with the added card draws.

The other major change I made involved the two big guns (assault rifle and shotgun).  After using the power, you'd have to destroy an ammo, or the gun itself.  Pride/prejudice and the SMG just destroyed ammo after use, so you could fire them without loading.  It makes using the shotgun/assault rifle something you have to prepare for- or you have to be willing to lose them.  

Braithwhite, 

Nice, I like the idea with the guns.  More ammo loading and more decision making process make a more interesting interactive play experience.  I think the speed loading change was probably necessary as well.

My buddy Chris had the following idea for improving Expatriettes deck...

All Ammo cards should allow you to play another card.  This would basically make Ammo cards "free to play" and thus would be easier to get out.

We have not playtested this yet.  What do you guys think?

I don't think the issue people are having is getting Expatriette's cards into play, so much as getting those cards into her hand in the first place or finding the desired gun/ammo in a given situation.  She already has Speed Loading, which gives her a free Ammo play every round, and her base power lets her play cards. I think you're trying to fix a part of her that's not broken.

Agreed - plus it will cause issues with (I think it's) Speed Loading, in that she'll get lots of free plays…

I think most people are trying to fix a not broken character. But i'm pretty much alone in this, so eh.

I feel the same way man. Her and Fixer both.

Although I'm the original poster, I have long since come to that same conclusion: Expatriette is fine as is. Though personally I am not a big fan of hers, I have a friend who plays nobody but Ol' Exp, and he has never, ever had a game where she wasn't effective for him.

Nah, I'm with you, too, brother.  I like Exp as she is.  However, I do like experimenting with rules to see how they affect the outcome.  Chalk it up to the designer in me...

Why not tty toying around with making custom heroes? It's probably even more fun than changing an existing character. I have 3 in the works and it's fun coming up with new ideas.

I've found that making custom characters runs hand in hand with re-evaluating current characters.  Coming up with new ideas is awesome, but in the process you start to notice card interactions that you never did before, or notice the bits in current characters that don't work as well as they could.

Its not a question of Expatriette/Fixer/Bunker being "broken".  Its wondering why certain choices/cards were designed the way they were.  Its trying  to figure out their central mechanics, roles, and the "whys" and "hows" behind the wording.

Occasionally, in this process, I come up with ideas about how to enhance a specific aspect of that character or rework their deck to emphasize what I consider to be their core mechanic. This is usually done to make a character who has been relegated to the box by my friends as "weak" or as more of an anchor to be carried (Bunker) more fun to play and rewarding for the group.  In the case of Expatriette, it is because I had a string of bad games where I couldn't get any guns out until turn 3,4, or 5.  

Nicely stated.  I think part of the issue I have with her conceptually is that she CAN get things out fast, but has no way to balance that by putting more into her own hand to replenish this so her deck seems like rusty gears in desperate need of lubrication as opposed to other heros that run like a well oiled machine.

I'm sure thats very true, and its nice for him.  Unfortunately my personal experience has been much more frustrating.  Anythingthat helps her with getting what she needs more consistently is vastly appreciated.

I really enjoy giving her more draw because it addresses both of these ideas simultaneously.

I admittedly do not have the experience of some here, but so far I don't see anything wrong with any of the heroes.  They all play differently, they all have strengths and weaknesses.  Exp's big weakness seems to be card draw, but the rest seems pretty golden.

I think that's part of the problem that we, collectively, have:  the majority of our evidence is colloquial, qualitative impression; the quantitative data that's available isn't deep enough to actually provide insight into her strengths and weaknesses.

Believe it or not, for the first time I actually had one of the "no-gun" draws about two weeks back–I ran Expatriette for a solid 5 turns with nary a firearm in sight.  While I was a little astounded by this–even more so considering that in that span I pulled two Arsenal Access cards, both of which gave me Flak Jackets and a hand full of ammo–I didn't really feel that she was ineffective.  I played two RPG Launchers, taking out the Environment and keeping up with damage.  I played Speed Loading and Hairtrigger Reflexes, so that I'd be ready for when those guns came into play, and I had Flak Jackets taking big-damage hits, so I stayed at near-max health.  I did take a turn to double-draw, which disappointed me at the time, but I was pretty well set for when that first gun (an Assault Rifle) came up.

The complaints that I see–and this entirely an exaggerated perspective and summary; I don't want to put words in anyone's mouths, nor do I intend to mock in any way–boil down to two main ideas:

1. "I don't like not being able to choose the cards I want, for a given in-game situation."

2. "I don't like not being able to have enough cards to run all of Expatriette's options."

To the first complaint, I can sympathize (how many times have we all needed that one card to kill an Ongoing, only to have it at the bottom of the deck?), but the randomization of cards essentially is what makes the game unpredictable.  I compare Expatriette to Nightmist in this respect.  Call Forth and Arsenal Access are both pretty similar cards, boiled down to it–both provide random equipment.  CF pulls more, but requires discard and puts the cards in Nightmist's hand, while AA puts less cards directly into play with no discard.  Nightmist can't control the cards she gets–I can't count the times I've begged for a Amulet of the Elder Gods and all I get are Elder Rings and Tomes.  That doesn't make her underpowered–it just means that you, as the player, have to be crafty in how you play.

I find that I tend to not enjoy Heroes that have a specific "build order".  Absolute Zero and Argent Adept, for instance, often require specific plays in a specific order to be effective.  AA almost always starts off with "Song, Song, Instrument" or some variation thereon that provides that end result.  Wraith, too, to a degree, suffers from this.  I've made the argument in the equally long Mr. Fixer thread that he's often seen as underpowered because he–and Expatriette–do not have this set direction of play.  Rather, they're more free-form.  While this can potentially limit their "ceiling" of effectiveness, it doesn't make them underpowered in any sense.  I like that, as I feel freer to roll with the proverbial punches.

To the second complaint, I feel like the argument is unfounded.  I compare Expatriette to The Scholar in this respect.  The Scholar runs through cards like water when he has more than 2 or 3 Elemental Forms out, and surely has difficulty operating all of them at once, in terms of both card economy and in the fact that the Forms often run at cross purposes.  If you have Flesh to Iron out, you're not likely going to be taking a lot of damage, which means that keeping Solid to Liquid out is overkill.  Sure, it'd be nice to have enough cards to become a juggernaut of Liquid/Energy forms, but it's not realistically going to happen without significant outside contribution.  

Expatriette, in this vein, can't (and shouldn't) be able to operate everything at once.  Every 'play' segment that you spend throwing down a new Gun means an Ammo card doesn't come out, and vice versa.  Every time you use the Shotgun is an opportunity lost to use the Assault Rifle or Pride/Prejudice.  If you're cycling ammo with Speed Loading, you likely won't Unload any time soon.  That's okay.  Those opportunity costs provide the choices that make seemingly similar choices different, based on the situation.

TD:LR?  I like Expat as she is.  Same with Fixer.  I'm still going to tinker, now and again, but only to see what happens, not to "fix them" in any sense.

I think the reason why people feel less frustrated with Nightmist and The Scholar not getting what they need is their incredible potential to draw cards.  Scholar can draw five cards in one turn (or use Bring What You Need, Proverbs and Axioms, Transmutive Recovery, or Truth Seeker), and Nightmist usually draws 7.5-10% of her deck a turn.  Expatriette doesn't do that, and in that respect people find her to be more disappointing than other characters.  I understand your point, but I don't find it to be a terribly accurate comparison.

So, this is coming from the perspective of someone who almost always plays 4-5 person games.

I want to fix Expatriette.  I want to fix Bunker.  (Mr Fixer is awesome, though I prefer to play him when someone else is playing TL Tach.)

The reason I want to fix Expat is because playing her in a 4-5 person game can be incredibly frustrating.  Expat needs her guns.  if you don't start with one, you are pretty much frozen until you can get one. You are forced to wait until you get one. You can play speed loading and flak jackets and hair trigger reflexes, (if you have them), or (in some cases) sit there looking at a fistful of ammo, reloads, unloads, and flak Jackets.

Maybe you get a gun.  MAybe its the SMG-since you have no means of pulling out the gun you want- and the villains all have +1 damage resistance. 

Well, back to drawing cards. 

oops!  you have to get rid of equipment cards!  Will it be Wraith, who has been effective this entire time?  Maybe Haka, who has been steadily killing enemies?  Oh, I know- it should be Unity! 

No.  Its going to be Expatriette, since she hasn't been useful at all.

So you go back to hoping for a gun.  turn 5 rolls around and you get a shotgun.  You beg for your teammates to let you land the killing blow.

Unity does it instead. 

The more people are in the game, the more things accelerate.  You get hit harder, but there are more people doing damage.  You get fewer turns to set up and actually do something.  I've been in this situation with AZ, Expat, and Bunker.  it never feels good, heroic, or fun to sit on the sidelines and wait. It feels even worse when you finally get to do something and its the last turn with the enemy on his last legs.  Or if things are going poorly, its horrible to be feeling like you've let your teammates down by playing the weak link.  To see the other heroes fall, lose, and know -ABSOLUTELY know- that its partly your fault for sitting around turn after turn hoping to get something to turn the tide.   

I've been there.  I love the games when Expatriette gets what she needs to handle a situation.  They're great.  I just don't experience nearly as many of those as I do with other heroes that have some means of getting what they need through card accelleration or search effects.  If those are both missing from a deck, then an innate power that contributes to everyone (such as Legacy or TLT).  I definitely don't find Expatriette's deck to be broken.  I just don't find it to be terribly synergistic.

Well, I'm not quite sure it's the same thing with AZ and Bunker. At least they have big payoffs when they get to where they're going (uber-healing and lots of cold damage, Omni-Cannon galore). That feels heroic.

Expat's big payoff is… well, Unload. She never seems to quite there, or she has to use it prematurely.

We have stepped on discovery. One of your problems with Expat is you dont give her the chance to be effective. Shouldn't Wraith destroy soe of her spare equipment, surely she has spare copies in her hand that should get in play. She has so many cards maybe she could even focus on a different task instead of the she was doing prior. Same with Haka. Plus Unity's equipment that she keeps in play isn't really needed, why have Volitile parts when Expat can keep her Assualt Rifle which will do that same damage but to 3 chosen targets.

I don't think that's necessarily a good argument, because that goes back into the "babysitting Expatriette is rather frustrating" complaint.  Expat has plenty of spare copies of her Equipment and can play two cards a turn.  Why is it that she's the one that needs all of her Equipment and The Wraith doesn't?

Yeah with only two copies in her deck and no acceleration to get it I probably average 1/2 a use per play.  I've never seen it played twice in one game, though Platinum did describe that in her big blow Ra out of the water game so it CAN happen, its just unlikely.

As far as AZ I've definitely seen his struggles but I've also seen him as completely dominating.  I've never seen Expat be dominating, good yes, but never dominating. 

I'm kind of curious, for those that support her so much, what do you consider a good turn for Expat?  Say with 1 target, with 3 targets, and with 5 targets.

I've seen Ra do over 40 damage to 5 targets with no help or bonuses outside of his own deck.  Now it was an EXCEPTIONAL card draw that did that, but I could see 22 (or at least 16) damage pretty easily with 5 targets.  Against 1 target 12 damage is pretty easy to pull off.  These won't happen in the first turn, but usually pretty easily by midgame

I've seem CR do 10+ damage in a turn muliple times and number of targets have nothing to do with it.  Even better, after doing that nothing is used up so he will continue to do that or better EVERy TURN for the rest of the game unless you get stuff destroyed.  Again this takes some setup, but he has the search to get that setup with in a few turns most games.

Wraith is pretty hard to see because she is so versatile that she spends many games setting up a team defense with smoke bombs, eye piece, and stun bolts.  But again its is ridiculously early for her to get a razor ordinance, targeting computer, throwing knives and utility belt into play if that is what you are going for.  I think those let her do more damage in any 3 or few target situations than Expat. 

In that specific game, I didn't have an assault rifle. Or a shotgun. I had SMG's, reloads, inferno rounds, an unload, and a cryo round.

I started with 2 reloads and 2 cryo rounds. 

Our enemy was the matriarch, who is the worst person to have an SMG against. 

Ive run into this situation, with different enemies and starting hands. You have to hope you get a gun.... And that it is a gun that is useful to the situation. 

This isn't about X hero should have done Y action and that would have made Expat all better. 

This is about a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that should never, ever happen in a finished deck. 

Its one thing for the villain to beat you despite everything you try. It's another to get beaten without a fight, and drag the team down with you. 

She doesn't need all her equipment in play though, if she already has spare a gun in hand than it'll be fine destroying the gun she has in play. However if the only gun she has is the one in play, and Wraith is sitting over there with Razor Ordinance, Micro-Target Computer, Throwing Knives, three Stun Bolts, two Mega Computers, Infrared Eyepiece, Utility Built, and Smoke Bombs in play, while having spare copies of those in hand and maybe a Impromtu Invention, why destroy Expat's one gun just to protect Wraith from something that doesn't matter if it is in play or not? I don't consider that baby-sitting, that is being a team player.

Matriarch doesn't have equipment destruction, not to mention I can't think of a single environment that allows you to choose an amount of equipment cards to destroy, other than Mars Base with Pervasive Red Dust, which in fact allows you to retrieve equipment cards back from the trash. SMG is great against Matriarch, Haka being the highest with Ta Moko you can clear out all the birds and she'll only deal 1 damage to him for each one.

Edit: Wraith with Stun Bolt on the Matriarch will lower it to 0 damage to Haka, with an extra Stun Bolt and Utility Belt it'll stop a carrion field from doing damage as well. So Expat has free rain to destroy all fowl in play, I consider that a job well done.

I feel like we are having two very different conversations, Ronway. There's no magic "team player" bullet that lets Expat find the right gun for the situation at hand. In the example I specified, Expat ditching the SMG was the right call (as gunning down all the birds was not a good idea)... But that didn't make it any less frustrating to not be able to contribute in an offensive capacity. 

Why wasn't it a good idea? Was Haka not playing the one card he needed to soak the damage from the bird destruction? Was Wraith not using a Stun Bolt to prevent more damage from being dealt to Haka making it 0? To me it sounds like Expat had exactly what she needed, the other heroes were lacking.

Huginn can destroy equipment. 

And in a 5 player game, it's not 1 damage. 

And if there are Carrion Fields it's not to one person. 

And this isn't about one specific game, but a general problem. 

If Wraith has all that stuff out and Expat has one gun, I can definately see letting expat lose her gun to make sure Wraith has the most options to protect her and us. Expat should be skipping her turn to find useful more things anyway, so having that gun out isn't going to help her much.

Ok, but Call forth should get you 4 cards, yes that can miss, but its a large % of the relics in the game.  Even if you don't get it, you just decreased the deck size by 4 and drawing 3 cards a turn you will get some good stuff soon.  In addtion you increased your hand size by two.  With her play hand size, even if all the cards are bad, is great as it just fuels everything else.

I can agree somewhat with Bunker and AZ because that is what they are, but for the most part I just strongly disagree.  Heros like Wraith and Scholar are more flexible, partially because they have their options in their hand.  Sure Fixer can do a lot, but only if that option is in your hand and not barried in your deck.  The fact that Scholar runs through cards so fast means that he has the option he needs as he needs it thus being able to roll with the punches.  You are right about not needing them all out at the same time, but you see he can start with certain forms, and then as the game changes he can easily switch to other forms to adapt to the situation.  Similarly for Wraith when you get an Impromptu Invention you search for what you need in the game now or think you will need in the future.  For Expat and Fixer, they have the options, in their deck, but way too often it remains there when you need it most. 

Also, its not remotely hard to keep 2-3 elementals out.  I see 3-4 handled pretty regularly (though 4 can be a bit tricky). 

(And if you want to cheat and play him with heros that get him more card draw I've seem him keep as many as 6 out while having his hand size INCREASE. I just played him with TLT and Old Man Legacy and he was putting a minimum of 6 cards in his hand each turn by the third round.  He played 2 of the +healing and 3 of the heals to attack and kept them out.  Every time Pappy gave him a power and healed him for 1 it generated 3 attacks of 3 each.  It actually got stronger later and we started hitting him with the other heros just so he had health to gain!  Talk about OP, but I realize that was a special situation with a lot of external help so I don't consider it a normal game for him, just silly and fun once in a while.)

Just want to share a house rule on improving Expat's ammo.

Ammo's can be used twice, instead of once, before being destroyed. 

- After first use, "tap" the Ammo card sideways.

- After using a tapped Ammo card, destroy the card. 

The rest of the card mechanic remains... 

Ok, you can all go back to improving Expat's chances of getting hold of a gun discussion. :)

I know most people consider this a general problem, but in this instance it wasn't Expat with the improper gun, it was the execution of how to use it. So I still stand that in this game Wraith double stun bolt and utility belt, one to Matriarch and one to Carrion Fields and Haka being the highest with Ta Moko and Taiaha in play. That would only be 1 damage to Haka with each Fowl Destruction, plus using his Taiaha and Unity with a Platform Bot could easily Dispatch Huginn before it can destroy anything. You can keep adding details so try and keep the blame on Expat, but SMG still sounds like the bext gun she could of drawn.

What Munnin was in play too? Still sounds like Haka could of played a Haka of battle to kill it off while still doing 3 to Huginn. After a, no other hero suffers from bad card draws so everyone else should of had every card I listed, right?

So much focus on her lack of draws. Spend this energy focusing on what she CAN do instead of what she can't and maybe you will start having better games with her. That is an honest suggestion.

If Expatriette has 2 Cryo rounds to put in her Submachine Gun, and 2 Reloads to reuse them with, then she can hit The Matriarch and the Carrion Fields first, before killing any birds, for 4 turns in succession. (Although in that circumstance, the obvious answer would be to use Load to play the Incendiary Rounds, and let them get destroyed by Huginn, and then to use the Submachine Gun on subsequent turns.)

She can work with what she gets, which is sometimes fantastic and sometimes frustrating.  Many people find the number of frustrating games with her is too much compared to the number of good games with her.  When she doesn't have something, she holds her turns and draws two cards until she finds something useful.  When she does, she uses it.  She puts Guns into play, mods them with Ammo, and blows away the competition.

The fact that there are many games where she cannot do this and has little to no way of alleviating that through her own deck's mechanics is exactly what this topic is discussing.  The frustration is that the things she doesn't do often impacts the things she is supposed to do in a very negative way.

Hm. What would happen if you changed Arsenal Access to read "Search your deck or trash for an equipment card. Put it into play." Boom, you have a search (which sounds like it would solve your problems), and with three of them, you should have no problem. you could even add "Draw a card." to the end if you'd like.

or would that be OP'd?

Belteshazzar mentioned earlier that we had joked about putting the text of Impromput Invention on Arsenal Access.  That was just a joke but honestly I don't think its such a bad idea.  I would allow her to adapt to the situation more easily by finding the gun or ammo type she needs as the situation arises. 

I'm in the Expat is fine boat, but there are times I wish RPG Launcher was considered a One Shot Equipment (if that could exist) because I see that pass by on an arsenal access and really wish I could take it.

Not so sure they will have a One-Shot, Equipment. As the three main hero card key-words are one-shot, equipment, and ongoing. Some of them have a few extra key words, while targets tend to have something completely different.

I could see One-Shot, Gun, as Gun is a "subtype" rather than a "supertype" keyword.  But the Distraction keyword with Miss Information has blurred those lines a little bit.

Villain cards not being a target or having the key words ongoing/one-shot has been around ever since Rook City. Specifically Spite, as he has Victims and Drugs.

But he doesn't have Victim targets or Drug targets.  There are no targets that are also Ongoing/Drug/Victim/Equipment.  Miss Information has Distraction cards and targets with the keyword Distraction.  There is a subtle difference, but she has changed the game more than Spite's Drug/Victim cards have.

I see your point, however Relic is another key word that appears on both targets and non-targets. First seen in Matriarch's deck as a target, and in several heroes decks as a non-target.

Miss Information's Diversions can be seen as a combination of how Drugs and Relics would work in a single deck that instead share the same key word. Of course she still has changed the game a lot, as she isn't a target in the beginning. I see her Diversions as something that has been seen before just all in one deck.

Except that they're either Equipment or targets.  Relic is a "subtype", if you will.  Ra's Staff is an Equipment "supertype" with the Relic subtype, like Fanatic's Absolution or Aegis or Nightmist's Tomb/Amulet/Necklace/Ring.  A hero Relic is an Equipment card, but not all hero Equipment cards are Relics.  The Matriarch's Mask is a target with the Relic subtype.  Her Relics and Apostate's Relics are villain targets, but not all villain targets are Relics.  There are no cards that are just a Relic.  The Tomb of Anubis's Relics are one notable exception, but Environment cards are a bit strange as they aren't as categorized as Hero/Villain cards, and they can be destroyed by cards that destroy Environment cards (unlike cards with the Drug, Victim, or non-target Diversion supertype, which have no hero card that can specifically destroy those types of cards (Cedistic Dissonant is an exception to this with any non-indestructible cards)).

The difference is that though certain keywords have appeared on multiple card types, they do not change the card type itself.  Tachyon has Burst Ongoings and One-Shots, but they're never just a Burst card.  If anything, the Tomb of Anubis sneakily redefined that barrier before Miss Information came along, so I missed noticing that at first glance!  But Environment cards seem to work in a different fashion than other cards, since they've always had a history of non-target Environment cards coming into play.  Environment targets are probably the only example of two supertypes clashing together, up until Distraction targets.

Huh...I learned something today.

I think the biggest difference between you and I is the fact you use things like Supertypes and Subtypes, where I see a string of keywords and if the card is a target or not. Now that I understand why you are using supertypes and subtypes I better understand your point as to why it is different in your stand point. I do think that it is a nice touch, however I don't see myself describing cards has having a Supertype or a Subtype.

AH, yes!  My classification system is as follows:

Each card has only one supertype (except for Environment targets, as the Environment deck behaves in a different manner than the hero and villain decks), and not all cards have a subtype.  Subtypes typically interact with the mechanics in the deck itself, but they sometimes impact other decks (such as Big O and O-X's Components, Relics, or Distortions).  Typically Ongoing/Equipment/One-Shot/Target/(Environment) is enough to classify a card, and the other supertypes are notable exceptions in one deck at most.  Miss Information's Distraction cards are also a notable exception to this system.

Supertype:  Ongoing, Equipment, Target, One-Shot, Victim, Drug, (Environment), Distraction*
Subtype:  Module, Burst, Mode, Relic, Tool, Style, Gun, Spell, Rhythm, Harmony, Melody, Bounty, Component, Elemental, Trap, Distraction*, and any others that I may have missed.
Other:  Keywords on targets (Citizen, Appendage, Dinosaur, Limb, etc.).  This can range from a mechanical benefit (Thoration DR on a Gene-Bound Guard, Citizen's regaining 1 HP a turn, etc.) to pure flavor (Sheriff Pratt's "The Law" keyword).  Typically describing something as a Target is enough, but individual deck mechanics may come into play with specific keywords.  There are just a lot of these to go through, and I haven't taken the time to look them over!
???:  Environment cards.  They fit into the Hero/Villain/Environment card trinity, but they're also a "supertype" to be destroyed ("Destroy an Ongoing card" is essentially on a similar scale to "Destroy an Environment card").  They also get a little weird since they have cards that are not targets and no Ongoing/Equipment cards.  They are the only card in this classification system that can be two supertypes at once (other than 1st Ed. Visionary's Decoy Projection when it was an Ongoing Target, and Miss Information's Distraction Targets).
*An exception to the rule, like whatever the Environment Relics would be classified as.

These descriptors aren't terribly important.  They could be "Big" and "Small", or "Alpha" and "Omega".  It doesn't really matter.  It just helps me categorize the different card types.

Doesn't Imbued Vitality effectively counter your argument? Ongoings become targets, albeit temporarily.

It's an exception, yes.  But short of one card fundamentally changing a fieldsworth of cards for the brief time it enters play, the structure is pretty sound.  Imbued Vitality changes a lot about how the game works.  It's one card in a thousand or so.  Just look at all the questions the Unforgiving Wasteland card brought up.  It doesn't change the fact that typically, a card goes to a trash when it is destroyed.

I just meant I really wish I could pull an RPG Launcher with Arsenal Access...

If RPG Launcher was "One-Shot, Gun," that would be possible.

But it wouldn't; Arsenal Access pulls equipment, not guns.

Ah.  My mistake.  That would involve a bit more fiddling with the mechanics, then.  Sorry!

I think the fix you're looking for is to rename it Equipment, give it "When it enters play..." to do its action, then "At the end of your turn, destroy this card."

After 7 pages and 313 posts, what I would really like now is to hear from the designer himself. Maybe Christopher tell us how he plays Expatriette. Or the next time during a Con, someone ask Christopher to demo how he plays Expatriette.

I really like the idea of getting the launcher with Arsenal Access. It is one of those cards in her deck that you really want to dig for. 

One of the other cards that could use help is speed loading. It is a card that I always want to use, but it really jams up her card draw. All it would need is to return the card to your hand instead of putting it on top of the deck. That way you can still get a draw in and not get stuck in a loop with no new options. Or does this just sound too over powered? It essentially gives her a card in her deck that allows her to draw 2 cards per turn, but requires that she has both speed loading and an ammo card to pull it off. 

I would like it if speed loading functioned like the omnitron x card where he can either play a card at the start of a turn or draw at the start of the turn, an either or action.  So maybe to not be overpowered but still be enticing to play, change the language to something like "at the start of X-Pat's turn play an ammo, or at the start of X-pats turn take an ammo from your discard and put it in your hand" I don't know I'm not a designer, but there is something irksome about speed loading, I like the idea of using it but I also like getting to through the rest of my deck, sometimes I only put it out to have a buffer for ongoing destruction.

Hear hear!

One thing to note is Speed Loading doesn't force you to put a card on top of your deck. I very rarely even use that part of the card, only when I for see a danger that will need an ammo I have in the trash next turn. (such as Voss playing Forced Deployment and, Submachine Gun and Hollow Points will take care of that)

You are correct, you don't have to use it and in fact most of the time I don't. I play it and it just sits there and usually ends up as the card that is the first to be sacrificed to satisfy some condition (as was previously pointed out). 

I guess at the end of the day the hard thing about Ex Pat is that her base power lets her play cards really fast, but she doesn't have a way to fill her hand making said power pretty much useless after the first turn. Which is true for some of the other characters too. 

Maybe the way to play her is to always sacrifice your first turn to draw 2 cards and count on your base power to catch you up in subsequent rounds…

Wait, you mean people are not doing this already? (Hint,  you should)

Load may allow you to play cards really fast, there is usually no need for it unless you have a lot of cards you want to get into play. If you play an Assualt Rifle and you want play some Hollow Points into it than don't use load to do so. Wait for next turn to play them in there (or speed-loading) and use that next turn. This turn kist fire off your Assualt Rifle as it.

Other methods to use load is be using it to play Unload when you have bunches of guns and Pride and Prejudice, as you can still use all your guns. Or play Unloud for your play phase. Use your lovely Assualt Rifle which has Hollow Points thanks to Speed-Loading than use Load to play Reload to put those same Hollow Points on Pride or Prejudice.

I had a very similar thought.  My thought was to always allow the playing of an ammo, but for the other part you can either put an ammo on the top of the deck or draw an extra card.  I would work out so that on the turn you put an ammo on the top of the deck you just draw that ammo and don't get any new cards.  However if the next turn you don't put an ammo on the top of your deck you draw a card essentially getting you the card you missed the previous turn.

Is this the standard way to play her? More importantly is she the only hero that you have to plan on always sacrificing your first turn? If yes then doesn't that mean there is inherently a problem?

i understand that some Heros take time to ramp, but the payoff is usually very good. I just don't see all that much ramping going on with Ex Pat. 

I've done this once in the 6 or so months I've had Rook City.  I would not say that taking an automatic double-draw is the best way to play her.  It's certainly a way.  I'd just as soon contribute from the get-go, even if it's minus a gun.

If you see drawing 2 cards as "sacrificing" a turn, that seems more of a "perception" problem rather than one inherant to the deck. No I do not believe that you should auto draw 2 every time, but if you can't see the benifits of it (especially given her tendancy to have poor opening draws and her innate power), you are not exactly losing a turn in the long run, just giving yourself more options on your second turn. You still get two card plays in two rounds just like any other hero. Gotta think outside the box here people.

Basically the draw 2 Approach is good when there is no immediate threat that requires you to take out. 

It's not like AZ where you possibly need every play action you can get.

Exactly Koey. Usualy when I play Expat, I tend to run her in an "every-other-round" sort of deal. You take a turn to load up with ammo, then unload with the right gun/ammo combo when you need it. If I can, she functions much better as a "situational" attacker in that sense. Too many people play her like Ra or AZ, where you feel like if you dont play or damage something you have "wasted" a round and that is just simply a flat out wrong way to approach Expat. It makes sense that the people who approach her that way are the most vocal about her not being "good". It is not a coincidence.

Hold on. I don't think that I am being unreasonable in my assessment of resources. Every turn you can play one card and use one action. A typical hero will have played 2 cards, used 2 powers and drawn 2 cards by the end of turn 2. Under your strategy with Ex Pat you will have played 2 cards and drawn 3 cards by the end of turn 2. Yes I understand that you will have used a power, but for all practice purposes your power just let you play a card that caught you up to what all the other heroes did for free in turn 1. So the every other round strategy nets you a negative compared to what every other hero gets accomplished. So if wanting to do something every turn makes me someone who just doesn't get it, then you are right I don't get your logic. Most games I play there is something that needs to get done every turn. 

I don't think anyone was really disagreeing with you, waedens.  From what I'm seeing, there's pretty much a general consensus of "I play Expatriette as normal most times, but if I don't have what I need/want in my initial flop and don't have an urgent target, I don't have an issue double-drawing early in the game."

You are down one power use I guess, but remember you are also 1 turn ahead of digging into your deck to get what you are looking for. Sure things need to happen on hero turns generally to win the game, I understand that, but if you are playing a hero that notorriously does not have what she needs very quickly, well, you see where I am going with this.

I am not disagreeing with you nessesarilly, and I am really sorry if it came off like I was attacking you in any way. However, people really undervalue the strength in the extra draw and that is evident in the way you described it. 

Having only recently got Rook City I can't really comment on Expatriette, but I can comment on the value of the double-draw, in that with one of my favourite heroes the double-draw is quite often a vital first turn move, and nobody would dream of calling Unity underpowered. If you don't have the stuff you need, then you double-draw, because you need to be getting Golems out, and it's far better to search for them (or sacrificable equipment) then to take a crappy turn.

[note: this is not a call to begin Unity-Expatriette comparisons, just a note that sometimes a first turn double-draw is sometimes extremely valuable)

Sorry if I was a bit defensive. I think everyone will agree that every hero needs to take a turn to do a double draw from time to time. However, the difference with Ex Pat is that she seems to consistently need to do it. Which points to a weakness. Unity can be a slow build hero and Zero can be too, but the payoff they get in damage when they get going can be impressive. The same just hasn't been true for Ex Pat in my experience. Something about her deck just doesn't click like it does with the other heroes. Which is why (I think) there are so many people looking for ways to "fix" her. I think the interest in her shows what a great great character theme she has. In the end I tend to play her alot because I love the theme. 

QFT. Double-drawing is not a waste. I've seen players screw themselves because refusing to do it slowed them down a ton.

Isn't that pretty much what I said?  I don't view double-drawing as a waste, but nor do I view it as mandatory.  I think that's the general opinion so far, as well.

I think he was quoting you just to enforce the point

Yeah, "QFT" stands for "quoted for truth," and is used just as boxwood said.  Occasionally you can see some weird QFT recursion going on when fanboys get together.

My apologies; I misread the intention entirely.  Alas, the perils of Internet debate.  

Carry on!

I'd like that, too. Not sure, however, where to put it in the following list of things I'd like:

• GSF playtesting to be great
• Vengeance playtesting to be great
• Unamed future project to be great
• Greater Than Games to remain solvent

All kidding aside, my sense is that it's going to be a while before Christopher has enough time to answer some of the things we're looking for on this forum, including the growing list of rules questions. I think your suggestion of someone asking Christopher about how he plays Expatriette at a con may be the most likely avenue.

There's actually a pretty easy way to fix her.  Give her a passive: At the start of your turn, if you have no ammo in play, you may reveal the top card of your deck.  If it is an ammo card, place it in your hand.  Otherwise, you may move it towards the bottem of your deck and you may immediately end your turn to draw two cards.

Boom, you've just made her roughly the power curve of other heroes while making her more appealing to pay.

Edit:  I'm sorry for the necro, stumbled on this thread because my wife really loves playing Expat.

I like Expat how she is, we have a very high win rate with her.

Expat's strength is that with support she can do a ton of damage, with options as to how it is dealt.  Play Expat with Adept or Visionary and she just shines.  if she gets fully built up she isn't going to do as much damage each round (unless you tempest scholar and play unload every round outside of her turn) as other carries, but very few have the flexibility and total output to match her when she has support to help her.

Hairtrigger reflexes is also just an amazing card.

She doesn't stand alone as well as several others, but I find her a more consistently valuable damage source than Ra or Bunker.

My experience with her so far is that if I try to do as much damage as possible with her all the time, she's awesome with strong support like Adept, but very frustrating without it.  If I instead try to do just enough damage to help my team deal with whatever is on the table, and otherwise focus all my efforts on preparing for whatever might come next, she's much more satisfying to play without support.

I agree, she does enough by herself, with help she can really snowball into a killing machine.  Her versatile damage is her strength, being able to alter it with ammo is great too.  She's my go-to damage dealer, and I find her very effective.

phantaskippy: curious, with which heroes you do not have a high win rate?

About Argent/Expatriette: I'll say it's the other way around, Expatriette makes Argent better. Similar to how Zero makes Legacy better. Thing is, if Argent is with a guy who has no use for a buff, he doesn't get much out of his plays. OTOH, if his buff allows a hero to do double damage, he is great because although the other guy is dealing the damage, it's Argent who is doubling it. Since these guys can get more out of the buffs, they are increasing the importance of the buffer in the team. If I'm giving a guy a +1 damage and he uses it only once, my play was worth 1 damage, but if he uses it 5 times, my play was worth 5 damage. This is just to point out that Expat's power doesn't really change depending on her team since she doesn't affect other guys as much. I'm of the opinion that each Hero should be cool and fancy to play on his own without considering pairings, Villains or Terrains (though, I still love you Zero). I hold even that Ra makes Argent better than Expat, since Argent can also Vernal Sonata his Inferno/Fire Blast once set up.

I have tried several of the variants posted for Expat (and Fixer) and ended up sticking with one of my own (surprise surprise). Tried the "discard a card to keep an Ammon instead of destroying it" which I ditched on the 2nd turn: I was just emptying my hand to keep Hollow Rounds up. Tried "Ammo breaks on it's second use, tap it the first time you use it" which worked but... wasn't much fun or added much. Tried adding "draw a card" to Load which I found I still only wanted to use on the same occasions I wanted to use her regular power: for Pride/Prejudice/QuickDraw (if one gun was down), RPG Launcher and Unload. Tried the "do 0 damage and draw a card" and it's variations (you could play an ammo card there) which I forgot as soon as I got a good card down (ok, it solved the "I have no guns in hand" problem but became irrelevant way too fast).

That got me thinking on Expat's deck structure and how she feels to play (and how I think she should feel to play). I figured that while most heroes have a super set-up that they can aim for, besides doing stuff on the board, Expat only aims for Unload. That means having lots of guns down (that you won't be shooting) and hoping you even draw Unload. Speed Loading is great for Ammo but that's it (either with or without putting an Ammo card on top of your deck). She is a damage dealer who's base power is play cards, but she has no cards that deal damage upon being played (other than RPG).

Going on a tangent a bit, I realized that my idea of a gun-wielder hero (ala Punisher) would be a guy that get guns down FAST, use them, destroy them and get another one out just as fast. So I would have wanted something like guns of "One Hand" and "Two Hands" which would limit which ones you could have in play, and having guns destroy themselves, make you draw and play a new gun giving the feel that the guy/gal just burned through whatever he had in hand and went for the next gun. Expat feels more like getting an arsenal all aligned and hoping you get the clinch that fires all the guns with 1 click. And even then... Unload is not such an awesome card, not like other heroe's "ultimate" card. With all guns down and without Ammo it does 11 damage to 1 target. With Ammo it rises to 19 which is more impressive but takes almost twice as much to reach that. Damage increase are great because they are a +5 each, but at the same time damage reduction hurts as much. The fun/interesting decisions you have with Expat (IMO, of course) is when you have some guns down and you have to choose which Ammo is the best for which gun this turn. Yeah, usually is just Hollow Rounds on Shotgun, but when you dont have that, or you do but you are giving up on Liquid Nitrogen on SubMachine gun.

So what I wanted was a way to help her get to her ultimate set up while contributing, matching her damage-dealer role without one-shot damage cards and making her base power a bit more interesting. I just accepted the fact that you could have games where you just couldn't draw a gun. In every case, the previous variants were just a tad lacking in one of the areas.

TL:DR

The variant I'm using is: every Ammo card reads "When this enters play you may draw a card". I'm pretty sure this looks quite silly after a wall of text but that's the variant that has really worked. It helps you get the damage for the turn up while also helping cylce your deck. Increases your hand size which ends up with more options each turn and having harder decisions on what to play. Makes Speed Loading from great to awesome. Makes the Pride/Prejudice extra Ammo slot desirable for Ammo cards you don't care to use right now and want to see other cards. Basically, so far it has made Expat feels her stand on her own and have a more 'build-up' feel instead of 'let's just shoot Tactical shotgun again'.

My win rates would be wierd.  I play a lot of intentionally difficult matches, and playtest a lot of variants, so total win/loss rate would be scewed pretty badly, like Legacy, I've probably lost a higher percentage of games with Legacy than anyone else, but he's sickly powerful.  I just happen to play him vs really wicked challenges, and avoid him in easier games.

My lowest win rates weighted for difficulty would probably be Bunker and Nightmist.  My groups I play with don't like Random games, so we don't do that, and we tend to put together teams that work well.  I don't play Heroes that make the game too easy, we don't even use TLTachyon anymore (unless it's a revenge match, then my B-i-L plays her for the sure win)  Have only lost once with TLT, and that was vs. IL when he killed us in two rounds.  

It's my opinion that most losses come from badly built parties, and since we don't random we don't have a lot of those.  Most of the people I play with pick heroes that compoiment the group and make a well-rounded team.  They'll do random villain and environment, but they won't do random heroes.

I find Expat to be more like Fixer in that she is good, but not a front-line show-off great.  Her guns give her variety of damage more than sheer volume of damage.

Shotgun is awesome, as are her ammo cards.  Speed loading is a bit like Turret Mode, in that it will shut down your card draw but allow you to do more with your cards.

All heroes aren't equal in this game, and Expat isn't a top tier hero, but I find that she fits what I want more than most others.

She pairs really well with The Scholar/Tempest (unload every round is wicked) Visionary (card draw adn TtE) Unity (Hasty Augment and ammo bots), Omnitron-X (more cards in play) and Mr. Fixer (they just compliment each other so well) Argent Adept does better with others, but he still works with her.  She is a great help to teams that have burst damage but need a stable minion control character.  Which is why I also like her with guys that can nuke one target really well like Ranger and Ra, they kill the big guy, she kills the little ones.

One variant rule I've kicked around with her for fun is when Expat destroys a target with a power she may draw a card or use an additional power.  

I don't really feel like I need to play for unloads, although I see why that is an attractive option.  Personally when I player her I get of feel of rusted gears jammed against each other as opposed to the nice fluidity of other heros.  This comes from her ability to play additional cards and stack the top of her deck but having no way to draw extra cards without skipping turns.

As for win percentage, I'm fairly convinced by the stats project that many people have trouble with her.  What is she at? About 69%?  Thats doesn't sounds bad at all, until the context where the vast majority of the heros are somewhere around 74%+.  

Take the stats with a grain of salt, Fixer isn't much better stats wise but I like him a lot.  For both heros I think they have the ability to handle most every situation, I just think that perhaps they frequently don't have the tool they need at the time they need it.  This is perhaps why so many variants are made for these two.  People like the flavor, and they see what they have the potential to do, they just want to help them do it more consistently.

My issue with Expat isn't her function tbh.  Once she gets her equipment out (tact shotgun/assault rifle) she can do damage.  My issue is more of how limited her other equipment/fetch cards feel.  Quick draw and Arsenal access in particular are very very bland and out of all heroes, she just constantly feels the most in threat of a bad shuffle (hand full of reload, ammos, speedload, flak jacket, etc).  The suggestion I had was simply to give her a bit more deck manipulation but nothing over the top which I think will smooth her out more overall and make her more fun to play.

I agree that overall, she doesn't need a whole lot of help as when she gets going she's good at her job but she can also feel very very pointless in a game as her only function is really outputting damage and she doesn't even always get the cards out to let her do that.  Outside of RPG launcher, her utility/buff cards are awful.

That's the thing, if you play ammo whenever its in your hand, and use Speed Loading to recover ammo whenever it's in your trash, then her deck grinds to a halt, and you don't get the basic cards she needs for the versatile damage she can offer.  Her guns often do enough damage to get the job done even without ammo, especially once you get several in play to choose from.  Unless I have abundant support, I only use ammo when the extra boost is really needed.

that's one of the things I like about that variant, Speed Loading let's you play Ammo cards and still draw cards (since each time you play one, you draw the Ammo you put on top of your deck).

About her fetch cards, I don't mind having unreliable heroes as long as there's a payoff somewhere for that unreliability. Unlike something mentinoed before, I do not think Quick Draw as a dead draw if I have both Pride and Prejudice down since Quick Draw can fetch from trash.

Her ammo IS her versatile element.  Her guns basically come in two flavors (barring unload), tact shotgun and assault rifle.  With damage boosts, P&P is better but more often than not, Tact shotgun does the job thanks to punching through armor (Especially since P&P doesn't interact with ammo well DESPITE loading two ammos being a highlight on them)  As you've mentioned, Speed Loading and using ammo kills her flow so badly that most of the time there's no real point playing them at all so a majority of your turn is simply spent playing a gun and using the shottie or assault rifle.  There's little interaction, little complexity involved and overall very dull.  I've been recommending Expat to pretty much any new players simply because of how straight forward she is.

That's why I find her much better with some support.  Esp. Visionary allowing her to draw two and discard a card she doesn't need.  Also let's you burn through your deck with or without speedloading.  Speedloading with a Unity is awesome fun as you just feed unity bots whenever she needs them.

I actually use the ammo from trash to top of deck very seldomly, the free ammo play to start the turn is awesome, the second half helps you keep a certain ammo in case it is needed, but usually you have reload for that.

Speed loading when you have Fixer is really fun, never pull them out of the trash, eventually Fixer will put them all back in your hand and you can use them again that way, just save a reload in case you really need a specific ammo.

FIxer Expat Adept is a great three hero team that really lets all of them shine, they all can benefit each other immensely.

I have been as well, until I had a new player have a terrible game where she didn't get a gun until the second to last turn.  Needless to say they didn't have much fun.

Your point about Unity is a good one and quite clever.  Visionary is a great boost for her, but then again she is for whoever she works with.  She is particularly awesome for Tachyon as well, but I think that is part of why people have a feeling that she needs to get baby sat.  She is much better with support, but she seems to need that support more than other heros so she kind of ends up hogging it all.  The case for speed loading is a good example.  With no way to draw extra cards on her own (without skipping your turn), you can only play so many free cards before your hand is empty.  This is even ignoring the portion about stacking the top of your deck.  She seem to need help just to use her own cards.  So Visionary ends up helping Expat a lot and ignoring the other heros to some degree.

I find it interesting actually that Expat and Fixer do very well together since they were expansion buddies.  We often have Expat shoot Fixer and have him redirect it.  As you said he can grab destroyed guns, ammo, and even her flak jacet back for her as well.  They team up well.

So Visionary ends up helping Expat a lot and ignoring the other heros to some degree.

I actually like this becasue most matches I get other heroes set up then end up feeding people cards who don't really need them, Expat can get set up and keep benefitting from a draw every couple of rounds.  

Visionary is a great boost for her, but then again she is for whoever she works with.

Yeah, that does seem to be the case.  I love the whole manipulating things from behind the scenes thing she has going on.  Argent Adept was the first hero I played and was an instant favorite, but I've moved on to Visionary, I just love all the stuff she can do.  Although the most fun I have is when my sister plays Adept(she's gotten really good with him) and I play Visionary and we get two damage dealers and go rampage through pretty much anyone.  Visionary and Adept together is why I started playing Adept at the end of the heroes, I think he's much better there.

Played Expat the other day again. My final version of her change is:

Lock n' Load:

Play an Ammo card. If you do, draw a card and use a power.

This makes Ammo cards speed your deck and your main power as the way to play them. Makes Speed Loading really speedy. That fits the bill of connecting her unique aspect (Ammon) with what her deck needs (card draw).

That is quite an interesting take on her since ammo card will essentially replace themselves and have not cost to play.  I'm curious to give this a try.

My favorite version of Expat makes her power exactly like the text on Quick Draw.  I know that when it comes to Expat a lot of people on here are vegas all-stars, or maybe I should say the opposite; that I am a big winner of the reverse lottery but I have had several games where either she gets no gun, OR gets a gun with only one or two turns to use it and the game already decided, OR gets a gun early, has it wiped by a "Destroy all Equipment" effect one turn later and never sees another gun again.  Either way you spend a lot of time drawing two cards and having a miserable experience.

Once I made this power switch it was game on with Expat.  It actually makes her potential lower than her other powers, but it completely avoids terrible experiences that are possible.  Since I have gone to this version I've really enjoyed her.  I've had more then one game where from raw drawing I would have been stuck like above, but with the power to get P&P on her character I'm blasting away and having fun. I didn't come up with this variant, I saw it on BGG, but boy I'm glad I found it. 

It will be hard for me to play her any other way now, but since your version adds cards draw that would help.  Although you do have to be able to play ammo to get it so maybe not.

I think that for your problem you got a good solution, but I would probably find her a bit repetitive that way.

I think her distribution is fine though, with 11 gun cards in her deck + 3 Quick Draw + 3 Arsenal Access odds are quite decent of drawing something in the first 2 turns. With this power if she has to pass some turns early and get a big hand, she can put it to use later one (since if she doesn't had Guns she most probably had Ammo) making up the slow start.

If Arsenal Access went along the lines of "Name a type - Ammo, Equipment or Gun. Reveal cards ... ... until named card type is revealed ... ...", it will reduce some of her frustrations of not getting what is needed at the moment. :)

I understand that concern and think that it is a valid concern.  For myself it works out nicely because I always wanted P&P to be a bigger part of her game play anyway.  And you still get to play ammo and if you do draw those extra guns you still have the choice to use them instead.  I guess it hasn't been an issue for me but you make a good point.

Some variations I've tried:

1.  Concealed Carrier - Power:  Reveal cards from the top of your deck until a gun card is revealed, put it into play, shuffle your deck.

That gets you a random gun anytime you want one.  It is alright, not a fan myself, but then I'm a Vegas All-Star at Expat, so I never used it (much like Load)

2.  Gun Slinger -Power:  Search your deck or trash for Pride or Prejudice, put it into play, if you searched your deck shuffle it.  You may use a power now.

This one I like, no cost for her pistols, which is cool since they are her signature cards, she also recovers from equip destruction insanely fast.  It makes her a bit more powerful, but not much, those pistols don't beat an Assault Rifle or Shotgun most games, it just lowers her fail rate.  Starting hand has one of the pistols or quick draw makes for a great start.

The most popular Variant for my gaming group is just a house rule:

If your opening hand contains no guns, you may put it on the bottom of your deck and draw 4 new cards.

That burns 20% of your deck, turning the rare "no guns for 3 rounds" game into an insanely rare occurance.

I like the Lock and Load option a lot though, I will try it out.

Yup mine is the same way without the extra power use.  I don't find that she needs to find her pistols AND shoot.  Higher use of signature cards, quick recovery, and lower fail rate are part it though - yup I love it.

Maybe I should have created a thread for this, but this one is close enough for my question:

When have you guys ever used her base Load power?

I don’t think I ever have. The only situations in which I would do so haven’t come up: either because I want to play two cards with passive effects (Flak Jacket, RPG Launcher, and/or Hairtrigger Reflexes); if I just played at least the third gun and now want to play Unload; or because I have no guns in play but I do have two copies of Arsenal Access in my hand and the first one didn’t draw a gun. Any other situation I can think of (putting two guns, two bullets, or a gun and a bullet in play simultaneously), I can’t imagine why I’d want Expatriette to go a round without shooting someone.

When has Load been a good idea in your gameplay?

I use Load whenever it is the best possible move I can make on that turn.

Flak Jacket + RPG Launcher is probably my most common usage.  Also Arsenal Access + Hairtrigger reflexes with no guns.

I don't use it much, esp. without house rule that if you dont get a gun in your first 4 cards you can put your hand on the bottom of the deck and draw 4 more.

What Ronway said. (*cringe*)

Seriously, I've had situations where I wanted to set up something awesome for the next turn. For example:

• Setting up because we can't do damage for one reason or another
• Due to timing with other effects, I'm better off waiting a round to do my damage so I load up ammo
• On someone else's turn I'm going to get to use a power so I'm going to do far more damage if I load up those Shock Rounds on the gun I'm playing
• I'm playing against the Dreamer and there are no targets I want to hit...

Yeah, it's situational, but when it's useful, it's useful.

There are a few heores that have their base power immediately replaced (e.g. Wraith), so, to me at least, not using at all the time isn't a big deal. However, you are right. There are very few times that it is worth it to play an Ammo card for Load, then use the gun the next turn. All of the guns do the same exact or more damage by using their power twice isntead of Loading an Ammo and using a power The notable exception is Submachine Gun with Hollow Points. This of course assumes that you can't just play the Ammo during your second play phase.

Now, when do I use it? When I can't destroy a target in one round with the heroes help. This isn't always true, but sometimes it helps.

For example, if you are playing against Voss and you have Assault Rifle and Incediary Rounds in your hand. Assasult Rifle itself won't destroy anything without help. Assuming you don't have other heroes dealing damage, you have two options.

1) Turn 1: Play Assault Rifle and use it's power. Turn 2: Play Whatever then use Assault Rifle to destroy three targets.

2) Turn 1: Play Assault Rifle and Incendiary Rounds (or Hollow Points if the Guard is in play). Turn 2: Play Whatever then use Assault Rifle to destroy 3 targets.

The advantage of #2 over #1 is that you can hit new targets that come into play, assuming there weren't three targets to hit to begin with.

This, of course, will depend on the villains and the damage power of the other heroes, but playing the Ammo on turn #1 to destroy new targets on turn #2 can be beneficial.

Of course, all of this assumes that you can't destroy targets in one round, and that you can't play the Ammo card during turn #1's play phase. Are these situations very specific, sure, but take advantage of whatever you can.