The Warlock's Guide: Omnitron-X

Since the Strategy Guides have started to open up, I figured I'd toss my hat into the ring.  As such, here's Omnitron-X!

Character Profile

• Best Attack:  Defensive Blast, Singularity
• Best Team Support:  Base Power (TimeShift)
• Best Personal Support:  Slip Through Time, Electro-Deployment Unit
• Primary Damage Type:  Projectile
• Secondary Damage Type:  Energy, Fire, Lightning, any
• Worst Card:  Rocket Punch
• Nemeses:  Omnitron, Cosmic Omnitron

Hailing from the future, the rebellious robot Omnitron-X provides a unique play experience.  Utilizing numerous start-of-turn and end-of-turn actions, Omnitron’s options can sometimes seem overwhelming, as he often has numerous cards flying around.  While his Components suffer a unique fragility, Omnitron-X can easily become a titan in any Sentinels lineup!

Flirting With Time

OX’s greatest strength lies in his ability to affect the battlefield through start-of and end-of-turn actions.  Both Slip Through Time (a One-Shot) and Electro-Deployment Unit provide the ability to play additional cards and either draw (EDU) or use an additional Power (STT).  These two cards allow OX to push out his Plating and Components incredibly quickly. 

Technological Advancements aid in this set-up.  While you won’t be able to pull Slip Through Time from your deck with it, Technological Advancement not only allows you to play Components or Platings from your deck, but also draw afterwards.  Laying down these speeds OX’s build-time to incredible levels.  

During start-of-turn actions, OX’s Components allow a player several flexible options.  I often prioritize Focused Plasma Cannon over Innervation Ray and Gaussian Coil Blaster, as the damage is irreducible, ideal for facing down Iron Legacy or Apostate’s relics.  Keep in mind that these three Components are not Limited, which means that you can stack them for additional effect—multiple Innervation Rays can make OX into a capable healer. 

Reset can also help get OX set up, but its overall effect is underwhelming, compared to his other options.  However, Reset can get a series of necessary cards back into OX’s deck, which can become vital in extended battles.

Power!  Unlimited Power!

OX’s base power, Timeshift, is phenomenal.  Allowing Heroes to put cards directly from their deck into play aids every Hero, particularly those with extended set-up times, like Unity, Bunker or Absolute Zero.  What’s more, Timeshift isn’t limited to Hero decks!  You can easily trash Gloomweaver’s relics or deal with pesky cards after another Hero (Visionary or Wraith, perhaps) has peeked at a Villain or Environment deck. 

After the team is set, I often find myself switching to Bio-Engineering Beam.  Automatic, guaranteed Environment destruction keeps an entire deck under control, and the damage rider makes a nice bonus.  Rocket Punch, unfortunately, plays a weak sister here:  I’ll always take the guaranteed Environment destruction over the meager projectile damage.  Disruptive Flechettes make for a straightforward, quality One-Shot, though the Ongoing destruction is often more useful than the damage.

OX’s best power, hands-down, is Defensive Blast.  While it requires OX to both discard a Plating card and have a Plating card in play, Defensive Blast hits all non-Hero targets for an instance of each damage type listed on the equipped Plating.  Slightly confusing?  It's okay--it got me too!  But, since these are all separate damage instances, buffs affect each instance independently.  With a single +1 buff, Defensive Blast goes from merely a “good” clearing attack to one capable of wiping out nearly every non-Villain target in one Power usage.  Yes, it means that you need to be set up with a Plating and have a Plating in-hand to discard, but it's a phenomenal, minion-scorching attack.

Singularity and Self-Sabotage continue OX’s “self-damage” theme, allowing him to destroy Component or Equipment cards for damage.  While these can make for excellent “nova” turns, I find that I gain greater benefit from keeping OX’s items in play.  Singularity, though, allows the flexibility of destroying any Equipment cards—even those of your allies.  If Mister Fixer’s in play, a quick Salvage Yard can make for a great recovery combo.  For Self-Sabotage, this can even extend to Omnitron's own Components, which does provide some situational offense against OX's nemesis.

A Fragile Little Butterfly

OX’s greatest weakness is a pretty significant one:  if OX ever takes 5 or more damage in a single turn, all of OX’s Components get destroyed.  This can essentially put OX back to square one, if you’re not careful. 

OX’s primary line of defense comes in the form of Plating cards.  All Platings reduce certain damage types by 2, as follows:

• Ablative Coating:  Melee, Projectile, Toxic
• Elemental Exochassis:  Cold, Fire, Lightning, Energy
• Temporal Shielding:  Psychic, Infernal, Radiant, Sonic

After you’ve gotten a few Components down, do your best to play the most suited Plating to the Villain OX is fighting.  Keep in mind that a particularly brutal Environment turn can wipe out your Components just as easily as a Villain can, so keep an eye on damage types in that deck as well.  Most dangerous are Villains like Citizen Dawn or La Capitan, whose minions can inflict multiple instances of damage in a given turn, of multiple varieties. 

OX does have a “backlash” ability in Reactive Plating Subroutine, though OX actually has to take at least one point of damage for the Subroutine to trigger.  While it’s always nice to get some out-of-turn damage, Reactive Plating Subroutine should be a late play.  If it’s pinging often, it’s not likely that you’re going to have Components for much longer.

Playing OX successfully often involves ensuring that he never falls into the “Most HP/Least HP” trap.  Heroes in either of these positions often take significantly more damage than their allies, which will swiftly result in OX unable to keep Components in play.  Innervation Ray’s targeted healing can remedy this problem significantly, allowing you to manipulate who’s at the top and bottom of the hit point stack.

Team Composition

Omnitron-X’s weakness means that he needs a meat-shield to soak up big hits.  The Scholar and Legacy are obvious great allies, though OX has great synergy with Bunker:  OX can feed Bunker cards while Bunker mows down minions in Turret Mode, while mitigating damage with Heavy Plating, Maintenance Unit, and Innervation Ray.  Unity, as well, makes for a great partner for Omnitron-X, as OX can place Unity’s Golems directly into play.  This combo works spectacularly for The Scholar’s Elemental Forms, Chrono Ranger’s Bounties, and any number of Nightmist’s Spells.

Solid 4-man OX teams: 

• Legacy, Bunker, Chrono Ranger, OX.
• The Scholar, Unity, Nightmist, OX

Villains Matchups

While his ability to lay down cards quickly helps him out, OX is still vulnerable to Equipment and Ongoing Destruction.  Citizen Dawn makes for a nightmare matchup for OX, as can Omnitron himself, thanks to the nemesis bonus.

Plague Rat and Ambuscade make for ideal foes for OX, as they have relatively few minions and deal primarily one or two damage types, making Plating choices simple.  The Chairman can make for a great matchup for OX, as well, due to The Chairman's heavy reliance on melee and projectile damage.

Nice.  Any suggestions for which Platings are particularly good choices for which villains?

You might want to mention that Self-Sabotage, like Singularity, can destroy cards belonging to other characters, not just Omni-10 himself. And there's only one other person who has components - bonus versus your Nemesis :D.

Elemental Exochassis seems great against Voss.

Most of the villain damage combos run directly along their theme:

The Chairman deals primarily Melee and Projectile damage, so Ablative Plating is optimal.

Kismet's whole schtick is bad luck and schadenfreude, so she deals primarily Psychic damage.  Use the Temporal Shielding against her.

Citizen Dawn's goons deal a lot of Fire and Cold damage, while Dawn deals Energy, blasting away.  Elemental Exochassis is probably your best bet.

The biggest issue arises when you have a series of Villains/Minions/Environments that deal significantly varied damage.  You can't cover everything at once, which means that the team has to prioritize their targets!  The longer OX can keep himself intact, the better off the team will be!

I disagree with this interpretation.  The card says the damage has to be dealt to him, it doesn't say he has to take it.  I read "dealing" damage as "there's X damage coming your way", whether X is 1 or 10.  If your defenses reduce the damage, that's after the fact of the damage being dealt.  

Put another way, the various villain cards say "at the end of turn, villain deals 2 damage to the hero with the highest HP" or somesuch.  Using your interpretation of "deal", villain damage is irreducible by definition, which is clearly not the case.

I think Reactive Plating Subroutine is far more powerful and higher priority than your assessment.  It is a veritable machine-gun; I would categorize it as his best attack or close to it, because it's essentially free once the cards are in play.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/68#comment-68 The ruling is about Absolute Zero's Isothermic Transducer. However it does state being dealt damage always results in HP loss, if HP was not lost there was no damage dealt.

Well, official rulings are official rulings, but holy cow does that result in bizarre contortions of the language (not to mention rendering all armor useless).  I withdraw my objection.

How does it render armour useless?

"Dealt" is the past tense of "deal".  If a villain deals 2 damage to a hero, the hero must take damage, otherwise no damage was dealt, according to the ruling, meaning you cannot satisfy the rules of a villain dealing damage unless all villain damage is definitionally irreducible.  Otherwise you're stuck in the contradictory state of "villain was supposed to deal damage, but no damage was dealt".  The action of the villain is rendered impossible to satisfy unless armor is ineffective.  After all, if damage reduction comes into play, a villain that deals 2 damage has not dealt 2 damage if the damage was reduced by 1.

The alternative is a twisted contortion where the present and past tenses of a verb used throughout the game refer to different, perhaps contradictory meanings.

Frankly, I believe the ruling to be poorly stated… I would have preferred to see AZ's card errata'd to check fire damage taken, since that thematically fits the character, or perhaps make a ruling that a target's damage immunity pre-empts the dealing of damage to the target, thus eliminating any "dealt damage" trigger activations.  As it stands, OmniX's Reactive Plating is all but useless, not to mention Chrono-Ranger's "The Ultimate Target" and any other "dealt damage" trigger cards I'm not conjuring to mind at the moment.

I think you may just be putting a little too much thought into this.

Every time you see the word "deals," replace it with "attempts to deal".  Similarly, add "instead" to the end of all sentences containing "would".

Problem solved.

It's possible; MTG has trained me to parse game rules thus (frankly I'm enjoying SotM a hell of a lot more), and I'm admittedly a little OCD when it comes to language anyway.  I try to just roll with things, but this one just drives me crazy.

I can understand, not really as I never was a MTG player. No need to parse SotM game rules, at least not quite yet, as they are fairly simple and straight foward. That's what makes it so enjoyable.

FFG's stuff is the same way.  There's a ton of unstated/implied rules in Arkham Horror and Descent (for example) that one can only discover by reading the FAQ or by hardcore parsing.  

I agree that SotM is enjoyable in large part because of its simplicity and elegance.  I think this ruling detracts from that elegance, but I'll shut up now.  

Bio-Engineering Beam is one of my favorite cards for OX, the first three times I played him it came out early and was used almost exclusivley, locking down the environment made those games cake-walks

Totally agreed–it's generally my go-to power, after Timeshift has run its course.  Singlehandedly "tanking" the Environment is always a good decision.

Of course, it'd be nice to be able to use Defensive Blast all the time, but the limit on its use is much needed, given its potency.

Omni-X with Bio-engineering, And Argent with Sarabande can make some games feel like cheating.

It drives me a little crazy, too. SotM is my favorite game, ever, bar none. Still, the ambiguity in the language is sometimes unnecessary.

I thought it dealt the damage that is currently reduced by a Plating card (i.e. deals the damage of a Plating card currently in play).  This is different from dealing the damage of the plating card that was just discarded.

You are correct, sir.  I just went and double-checked to make sure.  I will update my guide accordingly!

Yeah I argued a lot about the whole "damage delt" vs "damage taken" thing. But what Ronway said is pretty much a good rule of thumb. If no HP was lost then no damage is delt.

There are some weird exceptions to that rule however. Cards that use the terminology "would be delt" don't quite follow that. For example, Nightmist with her Amulet and Mistform in play. Even though she is immune to damage, she can still redirect damage that "would have been delt" to her. 

It has irked me quite a bit as I was an old MTG player as well. 

A lot can be resolved by treating immunity as the last step to check. That is, at the moment when you physically reach your fingers to remove the hp counters, if that target is immune, do not remove any counters.

I find Rocket Punch to be amazing with someone boosting Omnitron's damage.  With plus one, you can deal 3 and 2 or 5 to one target.   I only use bioengineering beam if we really need it.  Otherwise rocket punch does more damage.

I see what you're saying, Donner, and it makes sense on some levels--extra damage is good, right?

But, in that same scenario, Bio-Engineering Beam deals 3 damage and takes out an Environment card regardless of hit points, or if it's even a target.  That 17 HP Portal Fiend?  Toast.  The Rampaging Triceratops?  Gone.  Scum and Villainy?  Irrelevant.  HP aren't relevant once BEB is out, and I'll take that over 2 points of damage every time.

There's a lot of enviroments that are neutral or even net benefitial for the heroes or when the cost to get rid of them is much lower some other route, discarding a card, each player mills 3, etc.

Or maybe the T-Rex is trying to eat an annoyed looking Legacy. 

I agree that Beam is very helpful in a lot of situations, but rocket punch can actually do a fair bit of damage with the right allies.

wiki'd!

Sorry, but me and my group are still going to translate it "Atempting to do damage". That's how we read it off the cards, and it's been said multiple times that SotM is wonderful to many in it's "simplicity and elegance". Taking it as the "official ruling" says would take much of the fun out of using that card.

It may seem like cheating to some, but to others it's just following what the cards say.

Also, I've never seen any real use for Defensive blast. Yes it beeing buffed makes it awesome, but the same could be said for any attack.

I think it's because it's Omni-10's most powerful attack if he just gets a buff or two. Plus you can use it as many times as you have spare Plating cards, so if someone lets Omni-10 use a power out of turn, that's a lot of damage even if he's only got buffs from, say, Galvanise and Inspiring Presence. I suppose it depends who else is in the group.

I tend to focus on getting out a Plating and my Components first, so the other in-play cards don't tend to get out until later in the game, unless we really need an Environment card destroyed right now, no-one else can do it, and I do actually happen to have a Bio-Engineering Beam in my hand when it gets to my turn. Generally, though I seem to find that non-Component/Plating equipment cards don't show up until later in the game. Not that that's a bad thing - it means I can spam Resets and Technological Advancements and generally get all my stuff out :D.

I put Defensive Blast as OX's best offensive power for the level to which it interacts with buffs and the fact that it hits all non-hero targets.

Let's do some comparison:  Let's toss Defensive Blast against Haka's Taiaha, Expatriette's Submachine Gun, and Bunker's Grenade Launcher.  For the sake of argument, let's say that there are 5 valid targets, and no damage reduction in play.

Submachine Gun is the easiest to figure.  1 damage to all targets becomes 2 with a single buff, 3 with a second buff.  It hits all targets, so total damage is potentially incredibly high, depending on valid targets.  Expatriette's overall damage becomes 5/10/15.

Taiaha deals 2 targets 3 damage each:  less targets, but more focused damage.  Haka's overall damage becomes 6/8/10.

Bunker's Grenade Launcher deals 2 targets 2 damage, and a third target 1.  Overall damage of 5/8/11.

Defensive Blast hits all targets with literally 4 times the force of Expatriette's SMG, hitting all targets for (effectively) 4 damage.  Buffs affect this multiplicatively because of the sheer number of instances.  His result starts off at 20 net damage!  Buffs only exacerbate this, increasing his overall damage to 20/40/60!  

Defensive Blast requires significant set-up and a discard of a very specific card, which isn't always to easy to get.  But the results are utterly shattering for villain targets.  It's hands down his best power.

I had wondered whether it hit all non-villain targets or just a single target, but couldn't remember off the top of my head…otherwise I'd most certainly have added that in as a reason why this power is so amazingly destructive :D. It's like Ra playing Scorched Earth when he has all his damage buffs out and there are a load of environment cards in play…actually, with his buffs, even if no environment cards are in play that'd still be six damage (assuming no other buffs but his own) to all non-hero targets…and Drawn to the Flame could do the same thing in his power phase right after that :D.

My first game as OX was against La Capitan, tore her minions to pieces with Legacy in the party (+2 damage)

Hold on.  I thought that Defensive Blast discarded your Plating card in play, leaving you defenseless until you got a new one out?  It really just costs one of the countless spare platings you have sitting uselessly in your hand?  That's totally insane.

Yup. Whenever you see the term "discard", it is always ment from your hand. You do not "discard" cards that are in play. It would have said "destroy" if it was ment to scrap the one in play.

Now that you mention this does seem like the way you expect it to work.

I now sort of see how cards like Slip Through Time would make more sense. (Destroy current plating by tossing it, then place a new one with Slip Through Time or use innate power and hope for one)

Too bad its discard and not destroy.

And now this works with the Omnitron IV environment as well!

I would add that OX loves Time Cataclysm. Fixed Point means his Components can't be destroyed and he can throw out multiple plating cards at once. Multiple platings comes with several huge benefits. You can get either 2DR against every damage type or even 4DR against some types. But more importantly is what this means for Defensive Blast.

DB is already terrifying with one Plating out and a couple buffs. With Fixed Point, OX can hit 11 times -- with the right team, we're talking total devastation. And because it's every damage type, nothing escapes.

Not to the same degree though; as Warlock pointed out, a single +1 damage translates into 4 damage to all non-hero targets. No other card in the game can match that kind of efficiency.

Of course, this also makes it suck when damage is being reduced, but hey that's when you play the other cards.

Also, with no buffs either way, it still deals 4 damage to all non-hero targets. The only people who can match that on their own are Haka (Rampage, comes with the downside of hitting all heroes as well), Nightmist (Oblivion, highly variable, hits all heroes), Unity (Powered Shockwave, takes a fair amount of setup) and Ra (Scorched Earth and Drawn to the Flame, both of which require a favourable board state); of those, only Drawn to the Flame can be used more than once.

Situational? A little. It's still one of the best powers in the game.

Situational? A little. It's still one of the best powers in the game.

Not even that "situational."  Think of all of the damage buff heroes out there:  

Legacy:  Up to a +2 damage buff

Visionary:  With Twist the Ether, Omnitron-X can do 6-8 (depending on the plating) damage of *any type* to all targets.  Even better, he (it?) can tailor the amount of damage, because TtE increases or decrease each individual "hit" by one, so you could (ex:) do 6 points to one bad guy (by increasing each "hit" of damage by one), and then hit the next bad guy for zero (by decreasing each "hit" by one.)   Great if you need to reduce a bad guy's hit points by a specific amount, but not kill him--take out all of Dawn's Citizens or Voss' minions except one, or hit all of the Dreamer's nightmares, but leave her unscathed.  

Ra:  Imbued Flame +1

Chrono-Ranger:  Put the +1 damage bounty (By Any Means) on the main bad guy.

Unity:  Hasty Augmentaton:  +2 damage buff

Argent Adept:  Syncopated Onslaught

Various Heroes' Incapacitated Powers.

Not to mention, the various environment effects that increase all damage by 1 (Obsidian Field, Close Quarters Combat, etc.)

Long story short, there are plenty of opportunities for Omnitron-X to turn a 3-4 damage to all targets (which is great in/of itself) into a 6-8 damage to all targets, which is just sick.