Hey All,
Sorry, I know I'm new at this but I have a newb question. I bought the big villain cards (so much nicer than the two little ones!) and I noticed that I got two versions of Baron Blade and Omnitron. Are these alternate versions ("Mad Bomber"/"Maniacal Death Ray Wielder" Blade and "Cosmic-Powered Exterminator"/"Sentient Dropship" Omnitron) used with the same villain decks as in the Enhanced Edition?
Thanks!
Yep. They are the promo villain cards. You use the same deck just change the character card. Use it the same way you would use the promo hero cards.
Awesome, thanks. I missed out on the promo hero cards so that'll have to wait.
You don't have to if you have a printer. All of the promo hero cards were uploaded to BGG.
Yeah, I've downloaded those already but I'd really prefer to have nice ones on good card stock. I have card stock for my printer but the quality isn't going to be the same. Do they have different backs? BGG only has the front for most of them, Young Legacy being the exception.
Use this file; I think you'll have to register for Board Game Geek to use it, but you can print out really high quality cards if you use it: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/85258/sotm-out-of-print-promos-heroes-villains
Follow-up about Promo Blade and Omnitron: I've played a handful of time and just got my own set last week. My friends and I sat down and decided to play the promo-version of Omnitron (didn't know it was a promo version until I looked it up todaY), and it was seriously HARD. We almost wiped, and definitely would have if we didn't fudge a few draws (we cheat when we find it amusing). Are the promo Blade and Omnitron supposed to be the same level of difficulty, or are they actually harder?
tl;dr - Promo-Omnitron version kicked our tails in a 3 hero adventure (Wraith, Legacy, Haka) because:
A) Bad character choices
B) our lack of experience as players (first time for everybody but me)
C) Promo-Omnitron is a higher difficulty level
They're supposed to be significantly more difficult, as a compliment to how easy their normal versions can often be.
Lol...Omnitron frequently kicks our arses - Sedative Flechettes and Technological Singularity (either or both) are the usual culprits...
Not counting advanced versions of villains, I think Cosmic Omnitron is harder than anyone but The Chairman, The Matriarch, and Iron Legacy.
Legacy's advantages diminish when there are fewer members of the team.
Any thoughts on difficulty ratings for these alternate versions of Baron Blade and Omnitron?
I'm thinking I want to write in a difficulty in my rulebook for both of them, but wanted to see if people more knowledgeable than me had ideas on what I should put... My group took on the Promo version of Omnitron last night, and we lost. We didn't mind losing, but I think we would've liked to know what we were up against ahead of time and planned our group of heroes out a bit more rather than going random.
Thanks!
Christopher told me that Bomber Baron Blade is a 3 and Cosmic Omnitron is a 2. Those are the numbers I use on my custom oversized cards.
Bomber Blade and Cosmitron are both 3s I believe.
Not according to Christopher when he told me personally what numbers to use. I kind of agree that Cosmic Omnitron feels harder than a 2, but that's what he said.
Don't know what the official difficulty levels of Cosmic Omnitron and Mad Bomber Blade are. The following stats about Villain win/loss percentages might be of interest.
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Sentinels1/Villains?:embed=y&:display_count=no%C2%A0which
For the record, virtually all villains are harder with 3 and easier with 5 (the notable exceptions are generally considered to be The Dreamer and Miss Information, though I could see an argument for others who start with H minions in play and have frequent mass-targeting attacks, such as Citizen Dawn and possibly even Warlord Voss). The H mechanic has some effect of scaling difficulty, but it generally isn't enough…even if Omnitron's Sedative Flechettes do 6 damage instead of 4, two extra heroes mean a 66% greater chance of finding a card which prevents him from dealing damage at all, and various other effects also tend to be more quadratic than linear as the heroes get more numerous (the ur-example being Finest Legacy's Galvanize power). Omnitron especially trends in the direction of being easier for more players, because the self-destruct of his components (all but one of which do nothing whatsoever if they're destroyed in the first round they're out) is not in any way tied to H…dealing 7 damage in a round to destroy components (or 15 in a round to destroy That Bomb) is vastly easier with five heroes than with three, and all OT can do to compensate for the extra heroes is to do a piddling bit of extra damage with Flechettes and Automaton Drones. Nothing else on the non-promo version scales at all, apart from the damage of the components, which aren't really a problem as mentioned above. Also there's the Adaptive Plating, which is far more likely to shut down three heroes than five - if Bunker and Wraith are right next to each other, one of them is largely neutralized, and that's a much bigger problem if that leaves only one other hero than if there are three others. Finally, there's the question of what Environment you were in, which you didn't specify. Some Environments can make the villain play a card right before their turn, and that's absolute gold as far as Omnitron's concerned…it's the only way his components ever get to fire in a lot of games, to say nothing of That Bomb coming out and doing 15 to everyone without any warning at all.
Play against Omnitron with five heroes in a place like Metropolis or Insula Primalis. You're extremely likely to wipe him out with little trouble. Then play with three heroes in the Ruins of Atlantis. You'll find it makes a difference. In particular, the heroes who mop the floor with him are Visionary (due to deck control and Wrest the Mind), Wraith (due to deck control and generally being extremely strong), Omnitron-X (due to nemesis bonus and the "I Sabotage Yourself" exploit), and Legacy in a at least a 5-player game, probably even 4 (with 3, he's not that hot anymore).
The Sentinels Sidekick app (which is officially licensed) has both listed as lvl3 difficulties.
Im inclined to use that as an official classification.
I hate when ppl say that 3 heros are harder. Totally not my experience (and I feel I have quite a bit at this point). It depends on the villain. Chairman is always harder with less because you still need the same damage output to handle all the targets with less heros to do it. Nearly everyone else becomes easier as small amounts of DR start to nullify a ton of damage instances instead of just mitigate it. You know how often H-2 damage happens? It's by far the most frequent for villains to throw out.
That's a decent point, but not every hero has DR. I already explained my reasoning on (non-Cosmic) Omnitron, can you gainsay any of that logic? He doesn't have any H-2 damage, and the Components-destruct number is fixed.
I agree with most of this. However, it doesn't just depend on the villains, but also the heroes. Even against the Chairman, Operative deals H-2 damage to the highest when a card is destroyed. Someone with a DR1 can actually tank that damage. Have someone like Tempest, who not only has the DR to cancel out Operative's and Chairman's damage, but can also do some tough AoE. Toss in Legacy to make Tempest's AoE even more vicious. Have Tachyon get ready for a killing blow on Chairman for when he flips and it is golden.
Argent Adept, Bunker, Fanatic (Undaunted in terms of H-2 will get rid of that 1 damage), Haka, Legacy, Mr. Fixer, Omnitron-X, Scholar, Tempest, and Unity. That's 10 out of 18 heroes, odds are is you'll have someone with DR. Even if you don't, AZ, NightMist, Ra, Visionary, and Wraith are fairly decent at redirecting/healing/immune
Edit: That leaves Expat, Chrono-Ranger, and Tachyon who aren't the best at any of those. However Chrono-Ranger can heal HP every round, use his Dart Thrower to reduce a villain damage. Expat can prevent damage from time to time and reduce damage dealt with Nitrogen Rounds on occasion. While Tachyon can redirect and make targets unable to deal damage.
The damage scales though. If you want to expand my point about DR, thats where it leads you. Not everyone has DR, true. But they have ways to deal with what villains throw at them, and when thats all scaled, on a per hero basis, those things each hero has to deal with are much easier. Whats bad is when you run into non-scaling effects like the hitmen damage for example.
Chairman isnt the only villain harder at H=3. He was just a perfect example. But ultimatley, the blanket statement that 3 is always harder than 5 is just not always correct.
Generally, what I've found is that having more people can make the game easier, but accelerates the pace signifigantly.
So, you'll have more heroes to deal damage, and spread around taking damage, but the amount of damage that will be incoming is increased. 1 point Damage reduction is still good, but you start seeing more use out of things like undaunted/shielding winds/Superhuman durability...or you just start seeing harder hits that nothing can really stop.
So you have to step up the pace. Each hero has to offer something right out of the gate, and even a turn or two devoted to setup or card drawing can lead to the team suffering, or it can lead to you (as a player) getting left behind as the rest of the team takes care of all the threats. Thats not to say that setup-intensive heroes can't be awesome- 5 player games are where synergies and out-of-turn actions can absolutely shine, and support heroes can really come to the forefront. In larger games, you are probably going to have more options and ways of manipulating the villain and environment, or clearing out threats, or ways to ignore those threats altogether.
In terms of Cosmitron, a 5 player game can be more difficult because it starts out with more stuff, and once it flips it deals more damage to more targets. Cosmitron, personally, becomes more of a threat than its drones (though they can still be nasty). It CAN be easier because you have more people to dish out of the hurt, and possibly more of a variety of hero types (so that sedative flechettes doesn't wipe out everything, just the portion of your group that relies on ongoings, and ditto for Tech sing), so you've got more possible recovery points if something goes wrong. Or you've got some way of predicting/nullifying Cosmitron to prepare and mitigate the damage on its turn.
So basically, 4/5 player games can be awesome, and lead to stomping villains. Or they can be brutal, where villains dish out massive hits and you have to somehow weather the storm. Or they can become these grand, swinging affairs, where the momentum shifts drastically because someone did something ridiculous, or managed to nulify the villain for a round. There aren't a lot of drawn-out grinds where one person tanks everything for turn after turn (unless you have Nightmist).