My Personal Character Rankings and Logs

As of last night, I have played every Hero in the game at least twice (I think; once for absolutely sure, but if there's a hero I failed to play a second time I can't think of it), and so I have a pretty good grasp of their playstyles, though I may have missed a few nuances.  I thought it would be interesting to sit down and try to figure out, of all 18 heroes, which ones do I like the most and the least.  It's a difficult analysis for me to perform, which is probably why I'm doing it; nearly every character has some things I like and some things I don't, so I'll play them all with relatively little prejudice, but overall, I've got some overall preferences, and will attempt to narrow them down to an exact numerical ranking.

Top Third

* Nightmist.  I was inclined to give her the top spot after my first time playing her, but I got in another game before I made up my mind.  That game confirmed that it's not as total a preference as I might have thought…I rather like the element of resource management and tricky redirection that she relies upon, but sometimes the awkwardness and fiddlyness can get to me.  Having to constantly check the spell-power of cards in order to determine what she'll do is something of a nuisance, and the fact that she can't do virtually anything when out of cards or low on HP is a serious problem; I can see a lot of potential for her to be frustrating.  Also in both of my games with her, I got the Amulet of the Elder Gods on turn 1, and I can see that she's probably a lot harder to have a satisfying game with if you fail to obtain that.  Still, overall, I have come to regard her as having the most mechanical depth, the most enjoyable diversity of options, and the coolest overall flavor.  She's not somebody I'll always be in the mood for, but I feel like it's going to be a very long time before I've fully plumbed the depths of what she's capable of (not least because I don't own her, and thus can't play endless solitaire games with her as I can with Scholar, Chrono and Zero), and thus I won't be growing contemptuously familiar with her anytime soon.

* Scholar.  I love the character concept (in part because he reminds me of my best friend, an amiable old hippie who agrees that The Scholar is pretty much himself in game form), and the mechanical complexity he offers is highly satisfying to me.  I'm currently estimating him at #2 on my list because of how underwhelming he can be in the early game, with only 1 or 2 cards out and possibly no use for his Power, and because there's often a bit of awkwardness with getting him set up.  He seems to be the most "quadratic" of all characters, with his power level starting out at a very shallow curve and then abruptly spiking into the stratosphere, and I approve of that less than I do with a steady diagonal buildup.  It can also be a problem when he's at full health and unable to regain more, which prevents him from triggering Mortal Form to Energy to deal out damage.  Still, he does a lot of things I really enjoy (drawing cards, healing, resisting damage, hitting multiple targets, and chaining combos), and the bottom line is I have a lot of fun with him, at least when things aren't going horribly wrong - I've got him ranked below Nightmist at least in part because, with her, you sort of expect that things will go horribly wrong and are mentally prepared for it, whereas with scholar, you kind of actively something screwing you up just when you've finally got all the pieces put together.

* Tachyon.  Was my first favorite from about the third game I played, and has largely retained that status.  I'm just beginning to get a little bored with her simplicity, but her ability to play multiple cards and sometimes to get insanely large effects out of them remain highly satisfying to me.  Playing her feels like a game of pinball - you have to think a little but not too hard, and you get a lot of very quick rewards for your effort, but the appeal eventually wears thin.  I have a spectacularly poor win record with her (she's won only 3 out of 7 games where I was present, and in one of those she was more useful dead than alive, while in another she had been completely neutered by the end; the games where I actually play her myself almost always seem to be against the hardest villains, and her low HP means she's usually one of the first to die), but I almost always enjoy myself when playing with her.

* Chrono-Ranger.  Earlier in my time on this forum, someone heard me talking about my preferences in other heroes and suggested that I'd probably enjoy Chrono-Ranger; I can now verify that this person was right.  While my top five characters are practically a tie, I've kind of pushed CR toward the bottom because of his linearity, which is both a strength and a weakness, but overall tends to negatively affect his panache.  (This may change with time, as he's less likely to be completely screwed out of a game than many characters, and thus is less likely to have his rating go down when I'm in a bad mood.)  Nearly always tossing off 1 damage in addition to everything else he does is a good way to stay engaged in the game, but often there are a shortage of useful options for such attacks, and the repetitiveness is a downside as much as the reliability is an upside.  He offers a diversity of options with his equipment and Bounties, which is good; the base experience is very satisfying, and he has a lot of potential to skyrocket in power if things go right, while he's less sensitive than most heroes to them going wrong.  Overall, a very well-rounded, strong and enjoyable hero, but the flavor isn't ideal for me and he's a bit simpler than other highly-involved heroes, so I don't feel that he quite takes the top spot.

* Absolute Zero.  I've debated ranking AZ above Tachyon before, but for now have decided against it, since he has more potential to go awry and be left stuck without good options.  Even so, I love the combo-centricity of the character, as well as his disgruntled and sarcastic attitude, and the way his effectiveness varies wildly in different Environments.  He has a lot of cards which can end up being duds depending on the situation, and that can be frustrating, but overall I find him very engaging most of the time.

* Expatriette.  I'm not into guns at all, and so from a flavor perspective, Expat is an absolute bletch to me.  But mechanically, I find her very satisfying.  The Ammo cards are often useless, and getting a Gun into play is often much harder than it should be, but when she works, she really works, and I find the array of options she offers very enticing.  She's kind of my own personal dark horse, the character I didn't expect to like, yet somehow do.

Middle Third

* Omnitron-X.  This character has the potential to end up in the top third instead, but he's got an awkwardness and repetitiveness that I feel keeps him from cracking that for now.  Too many of his cards are Components that blow up when he's walloped, too many of his options involve discarding or destroying his own cards, the Plating mechanic is somewhat annoying, and I often fail to find good targets for Bio-Engineering Beam.  Interestingly, I have never used Reset in either of the games I've played with him, but it's not likely to improve his ranking when I do, as I consider extraneous shuffling to be a nuisance, and not entirely beneficial anyway.  The extreme narrowness of Defensive Blast, offset by its ridiculous potency when it works, is a sore spot to me; I don't tend to like characters that are too swingy, with too much potential to take over the game or to fall flat.  Note that Omnitron is very high in my rankings in spite of all these failings; the Timeshift power alone is pure awesomeness, and he gets to play still more extra cards with Slip Through Time and Electro-Deployment Unit, so he's front-loaded with a lot of things I love…he just also has a lot of ways to screw up, and as a result ends up being a highly conditional fave.

* Tempest.  Extremely powerful, but simple enough to make a good starting pick, Tempest is just an all-around solid character, and that's pretty much all I have to say about him.

* Visionary.  She was an early favorite of mine, and I still love her playstyle…but the extent to which she utterly takes over and neuters several matches have left me reluctant to play her again.  Were she more completely about Wrest the Mind, Twist the Ether, and Mental Divergence, she'd be an absolute, no-qualifications favorite of mine, but as it stands, her Enlighten power means that she spends a lot of time churning through her deck, and sooner or later comes upon Precognition and Suggestion, cards which are too powerful not to play, but result in an otherwise-challenging match turning into a cakewalk.  It's rather sad, and it's happened to me too many times, so my original fondness for Visi has been severely tarnished.  (And I have absolutely zero intention of ever playing Dark Visionary, a version which gives up her awesome Enlighten Power in order to become even more thoroughly the part of her that I don't like.)  She also leads to some frustration when I spend too much time drawing her more underwhelming cards, such as Mass Levitation, Mind Spike, Precognitive Vision, or even Foresight (which is better than Enlightening herself, but lacks the ability to help other characters, and overall tends not to seem like the best use of my card play for the turn).

* Unity.  Flavor-wise, I absolutely love her; she's one of my very favorite characters on a strictly conceptual level.  But I'm forced to rank her as low as this because she has TWO of the three things (the third is being flat-out boring, which fortunately doesn't apply to her) which I see as being able to ruin a character: being powerful enough to utterly steam roll a game, and the potential to be completely useless and frustratingly unable to turn things around.  It's very possible for Uni to get a bad draw or be screwed by villain/enviro cards, and be left with two or three Golems in hand and no way of playing them; conversely, if she draws no Golems at all, but just a bunch of Volatile Parts and Powered Shockwaves, she's not getting anywhere either, and can't even cannibalize her allies' Equipment to fix the problem.  (Also, the game is supposed to be co-op, but bot-fix is the kind of power that lets an antisocial player screw his buddies over and sabotage the entire group's chances of winning, just because the player is the kind of person who wants to dominate the game rather than sharing in a collective victory.  Between that risk and the general fact that she's complicated and potentially frustrating, I strongly believe nobody should ever be offered the chance to play Unity until they've played the game several times with more standard characters.)

* Ra.  I don't think I'm exagerrating when I say that Ra is the single simplest, most newbie-friendly character in the game, and as a result, he inevitably becomes a little boring once you've played as often as I have.  But he's very good at what he does, has a surprisingly wide array of ways to do it, and the bottom line is that I love Egyptian stuff, so in spite of his almost insulting straightforwardness, Ra still manages to rank fairly high among my preferences, even though I always try to find other characters I'd rather play before resorting to him.

* Haka.  The very first character I played, he's never really excited me, but I consider him very solid.  His immense HP simply means he stays in the game longer than most, and that alone is an advantage; he also has a built-in damage power, which is something I usually wish I had when playing the more involved heroes.  He draws a ton of extra cards, although I usually find myself playing his Hakas just for card draw because I don't want to discard anything.  It annoys me how powerful the Taiaha is; once that shows up, there's no reason not to use it, but it seems to outshine so many other options that I can't help but feel saddened.  Savage Mana is an absolute spoiler in certain otherwise-difficult matches, and it varies whether I feel that this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Finally, he has a lot of cards that are only useful in certain Environments, and I seem to be extremely good at drawing them when not in such environments.  I consider him a good fallback character, but one I've resorted to too often, and thus I try to find reasons not to play him again, so as not to intensify my feeling of meh-ness.

Lower Third

* Mr. Fixer.  I wanna like this guy, I really do.  But the bottom line is, he seems to be really weak, and I've yet to have a single game where he was able to get both a Style and a Tool in play so he could really go to town.  Usually I draw multiples of one or the other of those things, leaving me with few cards I can actually play, and his little 1-damage plinks are hardly worth bothering to do.  If I recall my rankings correctly, he's the only character who I've played three times and not scored a single victory with.  I find his intricacy conceptually interesting and keep wanting to give him another chance, but I have yet to even start really enjoying myself with him - even when he's almost beginning to work, he's really not that much fun to me, and the bottom line is that fun is what it's all about.

* Wraith.  The very first character I played, she's almost as simple as Ra but has a little more depth, although I don't enjoy her as much on a flavor level.  The effectiveness of Micro-Targeting Computer plus one of her throwing weapons leaves me with little desire to explore the other options she possesses, which is a real pity.  I think the most fun I've ever seen someone have with her was when a Ruins of Atlantis card forced her to play an inconveniently-timed Inventory Barrage and throw away all her stuff for a non-lethal blow to the villain (who was Gloomweaver, so we weren't even supposed to be attacking him anyway, as we were waiting for his third Relic to come out so we could kill that and win).  She has the potential to be fun, but is unlikely to fully utilize it, and so I tend to leave her on the bench these days.

* Bunker.  I started to develop a bit of a fondness for Bunker's mechanical complexity early on, but it faded fast; he's neither a simple character nor an intricate one, but in an unhappy medium where he takes effort to figure out but is quickly solved and left without further depth.  Once you get that it's all about Recharging until you draw the other two Modes, then Upgrading to get down two guns and going Turret for the rest of the game while you fire them, you quickly realize that the entire rest of his deck is irrelevant and you'll never do anything interesting thereafter.  Add that to my lack of personal fondness for the military theme, and I've got very few reasons to like Bunker, though I will occasionally give him another chance to try and impress me.

* Fanatic.  I'm strongly un-fond of her Christian-ness, and while she has a lot of fun cards (I do wish anyone else got something like Final Dive or Embolden), she also has a lot of ways to completely take over the game (I've seen so many villains finished off by Wrathful Retribution or utterly gimped by End of Days; it's long ago stopped being funny).  I like to say that if your idea of "strategy" is to pray for a miracle, Fanatic is your character, and she's very definitely not mine, but I not only don't tend to want to play her, I often would rather she wasn't being played at all, because of how much potential she has to eclipse the contributions of the other heroes.

* Argent Adept.  I saved this character for last to try, because I wasn't interested in his musician-ness and because he was rumored to be fiendishly complicated.  Turns out, he was even MORE complicated than the rumors held, and I don't feel that the complexity pays off with a deserved reward, as is true for Nightmist or Scholar or Zero.  He has a lot of different effects among his music Ongoings, but many of them strike me as relatively weak (healing is nice, but it's only 1 point at a time; card-control is only worthwhile if you'll survive long enough to draw and play the resulting cards, which is less likely since the Adept hasn't done anything to stop the villains while he was setting up your cards, and destroying Ongoing or Environment cards is theoretically a life-saver, but very often there aren't any out which are worth bothering with).  And above all, I find it a nuisance to have to track which ongoings are Melodys, Rhythms or Harmonies (the cardnames don't tend to help much, at least not unless you're a music geek), and which instrument will play which half of which of those card types; it's a lot of hoops to jump through, and only a few of the effects seem to have enough of a payoff to justify that.  Overall, while I'm due to play him a bunch more times and may eventually decide he's somewhat more enjoyable, I currently feel very justified in calling him one of my least favorites - too much effort for too little result, and an unappealing flavor on top of it.

* Legacy.  I wish I could like this guy, since conceptually he appeals to me - as something of a USA Patriot myself, I want to be able to cheer for a character that combines some of the best aspects of Superman and Captain America.  But the fact of the matter is, Legacy's Galvanize power makes him a glorified cheerleader, his deck has an extremely high proportion of situationally-useless cards (Danger Sense, Next Evolution, Lead from the Front, Surge of Strength, Heroic Interception, and even Bolster Allies if the heroes won't survive long enough to play the cards they drew…all of these can fail to be relevant under fairly regular circumstances).  When he's at his absolute best, he can entirely render the hero team invincible (to the best of my knowledge this is only possible in one Environment, but still), which is not necessarily a good thing, since the game is less fun when it entirely ceases to be a challenge.  It's nice to have Legacy in your game, but I don't want to be the one who's stuck having to play him; his simplicity and "buddy-buddyness" makes him a great choice for new players, and I of course have long since stopped being one of those, so now I am quite confident in saying that Legacy is the character I least wish to play ever again.

I'm not sure two games per hero is enough to get a full idea of what they're abuot - the Adept is probably my favourite but I didn't think that after the first couple of games I played with him, since it took a little while for me to get the hang of his deck. But now I think he's brilliant because there's always something you can do - a card you can play, or a song you can use, and you don't need masses of cards out to do it. I can recall having a very successful game versus Citizen Dawn in which I only got out about three or four cards or something (can't remember what they were but it was probably an instrument and a couple of songs), but was able to consistently do stuff which was useful, either in helping other heroes do stuff or possibly Sarabande or something like that.

Anyway, specific characters aside and being more general, some heroes will be more useful in certain circumstances than others, and some work better with certain other heroes than others (for example, Unity with anyone who grants card draw, or Legacy when he can use powers out of turn and provide everyone with more than one Galvanise bonus at once). You probably need to play every hero against every villain, multiple times and teamed up with different heroes to really get a full idea of what can happen. Plus there's the general luck of the draw in terms of which cards you get (though some heroes tend to have an easier time of this, for example Chrono Ranger has plenty of search capacity, as opposed to Legacy who has to use whatever comes off the top of the pile).

With the heroes you're less keen on, perhaps playing them more often like this (or seeing them played by other people who play them differently) will help you form a different opinion of them. Personally even though I've had the game about a year now and have played multiple games almost every weekend (we're missed one or two), somehow I've only managed to play Fanatic maybe four or five times or something. I keep meaning to amend that but there always seems to be someone I want to play more, lol. Plus my partner likes Fanatic a lot so tends to play her quite often (more so Redeemer Fanatic, though I don't own her actual card and her details are just scrawled on a piece of paper ;)). Wrathful Retribution doesn't tend to come up that often (unusually for a hero card, there's only one copy of it in the deck…the only other cards I can think of that are like this, off the top of my head, are the Adept's instruments), and End of Days, while it can be nice in the first round against someone who starts with a bunch of minions in play or whatever, can often do more harm than good if everyone else has managed to get a load of their stuff out by the time you're thinking about using it. Had a very fun use of it against Akash'Bhuta once, though, conveniently destroying the "By Any Means" Bounty on her after she'd whacked hereslf for about 107 damage from all the limbs that got destroyed >:).

I reckon I must have played around 15 games as Ra (and been involved in many many more where other people played Ra) before I played one particular game when Excavation came into my hand. I remember being shocked - it was as if someone had snuck an extra card in there that wasn't part of Ra's deck at all! I'd literally never seen that card before and had no idea of its existence.

After just two games, I would in no way consider myself experienced with any of the heroes. Many cards are so situational you just can't judge them until you've seen them in many different combinations with fellow heroes with different setups against different villains, with different numbers of cards in your hand, etc. I've played hundreds of games and even now I know I have a lot to learn and experience.

Yeah, honestly, two games is just not enough. Not that your assessments are wrong, just that you might want to come back to some of those heroes again later, because folks who have have been pleasantly surprised to find they really like those heroes.

I will definitely get in more games as all the heroes, and may well change my opinions somewhat, but it's likely that the characters will stay sort of within the same brackets where they are now…Argent just doesn't really have the makings of the kind of character I'm likely to enjoy all that much, being able to do literally nothing without at least one card in play, and with a lower HP even than Omnitron-X, but few if any defenses to make up for it.

You must not be the kind of player who looks through their decks between games.    I believe I got Excavation in my very first Ra game, and was frustrated by its uselessness (the game usually has to go for a pretty long time before there are three cards in the enviro trash…oh, and remind me never to play Ra in Silver Gulch 1883, as you never want to go Excavating while Lost on the Past).

There are several characters who have a lot of singletons in their deck, and I for one prefer it that way.  Chrono Ranger, for instance…he has multiple copies of his search cards, but only one of each Bounty and one of each Equipment, preventing the kind of situations I have with Ra or AZ where you have the card already, and often can't even find another one when searching for it because you've searched too many of them up or just randomly drew them.

I've played hundreds of games and even now I know I have a lot to learn and experience.

Well I'm only 21 games in, so I'm sure my opinions have some evolving to do.  But then, the replayability is much of what I love about SOTM…

Guess not! It's probably because he's one of the base heroes - when I got Sentinels I wasn't expecting to like it (bit of an involved story but I'm not into superheroes and I bought the game for my RPG club simply because we didn't already have a superhero-flavoured game) and therefore didn't invest time in studying the decks. And there's quite a lot of cards to read there!

To be fair, I didn't have more than a cursory glance at any of the expansion/mini-expansion decks either (with the possible exception of Unity, who I was extremely excited about). Look at all the cards? When I could be playing?

But yeah. Every game is different due to the vast amount of possible combinations of things. I just didn't see that card for a long time.

You'll get your money's worth in terms of replayability, I'm sure of that.

I take slight issue with the "Adept can't do anything at all unless her has a card in play" thing. Um. Arcane Cadence? Vernal Sonata? He can't do anything in his Power phase unless he has a song in play, but that's not the same thing - if your Play phase can't get you a song in the first turn, then yeah, you skip your Power phase for that round, but he has so many songs in his deck and four (I think) copies of Arcane Cadence that the chances of you obtaining a song, any song in the first turn and getting it out are pretty high! He does indeed have a low hp total (the lowest of any hero), but has the means to heal himself for several hp a turn - Vernal Sonata, Inspiring Supertonic, and Rhapsody of Vigour can all restore his hp (and two of those can do so for the other heroes too), and once you've got a few of the right cards out you should be able to use those effects multiple times a turn :).

Similarly to Silverleaf, I don't look through decks out-of-game. I'll see what's in the deck when it comes up in-game. This is true for all the decks, not just the hero decks. Of course, these days I've played each deck enough times to have learned pretty well what all the cards are and what they do, so a cursory glance at the image on said card is usually enough for me to know what the text is without my having to actually read it. I can also do stuff like keep a count of how many Staves of Ra I've got through - I know he has four so if theyv'e all been and gone when I play another Summon Staff, I'll just shuffle the deck and not worry about searching it :).

I think it's quite reasonable to have a personal reaction to all the characters - even after two games each.  As long as an open mind is kept and going to the bottom tier occurs often enough that they have a chance to promote.  When I got original edition, after sorting the characters, I knew which characters I was most excited to play. That's gut reaction based on artwork and fluff. My rankings have sifted considerably since then.  I thought I would love Bunker and hate Fanatic.

I will agree with everyone that everyone should play more games.  As Shakespeare said regarding Sentinels, "The play's the thing."

First impressions are one thing, but I find that some heroes grow on you, the more you play them.  Argent Adept was like that for me.  The last game that I played as him, I ended up being able to chain together two instruments, letting everyone heal for 2 (or heal for 1 and destroy an environment/ongoing) and let someone else at the table either draw or play a card....all on my Power phase.    

What's especially neat to me is when you get heroes chaining together to do really awesome stuff or to try out new ways to play..  Our group had Scholar, Tempest and AA working together to churn through trash piles:  we played "Don't Dismiss Anything" five times in the same game, which really fueled some butt-kicking for us!  Plus, because I was healing 2 hp most rounds, The Scholar became my personal cannon, via Mortal Form to Energy.  One hero in a vacuum might not be impressive, but when you start working them together, the sum is greater than the parts.

Similarly, in one of the forum games recently, I watched someone play Visionary in a way that I'd never seen before, using Wrest the Mind to take out minion after minion with no backlash.  In another online game, I saw someone play Fanatic in a way that I'd never contemplated before, using Sacrosanct Martyr in ways that I'd simply never done.  I've seen Mister Fixer pull off stuff that's simply unbelievable, comboing redirected damage from allies and himself to outright lay out foes.  Individually, you wouldn't necessarily see these interactions, but they come up in the context of other characters, they're great!

I guess the key in a lot of ways is to keep an open mind when playing.  The biggest value in SotM for me is its replay value and that's exemplified by the sheer number of ways each hero can be played.  Don't be afraid to be surprised! 

Envisioner, everything seems to keep getting put into either being too weak or overpowered.

Some heroes are intended to be stronger than others, the balance of the game is intended towards team balancing.

The moments where a hero really carries the day isn't bad game mechanics, its the way the game was intended.  Your hero doesn't always get to be the one that shines, but sometimes your hero is the one that saves everybody and turns the fight against the villain.  It is a comic Book themed game, it should work that way.

Every once in a while enough of the team click that the villain just gets wiped out with no real threat to the heroes.  There are always fights where it is too easy, usually because there is something really nasty on the horizon.

I don't mind those fights, or the ones where you get creamed and it never at any point felt like you had a chance to win, because those are proper Comic Book fights as well.  The heroes don't always know why they won so easily or lost so badly, the bigger picture isn't complete.  I love the revenge matches, and the "Seriously Omnitron, how many times do we have to beat you down?" sequences as well.

This is one of the reasons I've gotten into modding the Villains, esp. adding the lieutenants to them, Omnitron is going to upgrade himself if he keeps failing to destroy the heroes, and the next time the cultists try to sommon Gloomweaver they might make sure they have a little extra help doing so.

Eventually you have a fight that settles a story line, and you get to start a new one.  That's what I love about Sentinels, we are telling a comic book story everytime we fight, we just don't know if it is a one-shot, or part of a bigger arc until the fight is over.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of people make comments like this, about heroes including AA, Visionary (Envisioner: Ever use her base power to help someone else?), Bunker (Envisioner: The fact you think you've solved him is highly entertaining to me, as what you described is far from the "best" way to play him. ), Haka, Fanatic, Mr. Fixer, Expatriette, and Unity (off the top of my head).

The message I was really trying to get across in my earlier post was not to discount a hero because you had two poor games with them. Sure, enjoy the heroes you're enjoying now, but after a while dip back into the pool and see what you think about the other heroes now that you have a better understanding of the game. You might find your opinion hasn't changed - that's a perfectly valid result! But you might find you were missing out on what because your favorite hero of all.

Not all heroes are for everyone. Mr. Fixer can be far too zen for some folks - that's fine and makes sense. Some folks don't like taking on a support role with heroes like Legacy and Visionary, but that's what those heroes do. So those folks don't play those heroes (or they come up with home rules that alter the heroes to make them the way they want them )!

I've played a lot (really, A LOT) of games, and in my experience, ALL the heroes are very powerful but can have weak moments. The only reason I would not be happy with a given hero in a random setup is because he has drawbacks against this given villain - and then only if the whle team is impaired in this fight.

This said - we all have our favorites, depending on how we like to play. Some enjoy having lots of cards to draw and chose from, some are happy with improvizing with what they have. But these personal preferences just means we enjoy (and understand) some heroes more than others - not that the other are less powerful.

I don't like Argent Adept much, but he is powerful - it took me longer than with others to understand him a little, but now I am happy when he is in the team. And very happy to have began to "grok" him. On the other hand, I always enjoyed Mr Fixer, and wonder how others can find him underpowered.

So, there is nothing wrong wit you ranking your preferences - but I'd encourage you to try the heroes you like the less and discover their strengths, it is one of my great pleasures in this game : discovering that this card or hero I found lackluster can become incredibly powerful if I finally understand what to do with it. And I still have so much to learn.

I don't know what Vernal Sonata is, but I'll grant you Arcane Cadence, that's a very strong card and having it in your opening hand (or after losing all your stuff) makes a big difference.  But it's just one card with 2-4 copies in deck, so you have a 5-10% chance of having it; the rest of the time, you're probably playing a card, activating it, and quite possibly losing it to villain/enviro destruction, so next turn you get to do it again.  You can't normally activate Accompany texts until you start the turn with that card in play, and the Instruments do nothing without a song in play, so you always have to play a song first, and then hope it survives until you can play the Instrument which will play both halves of it - assuming you even can do an entire card with one instrument (I saw this being possible for Xu's Bell, but the other two instruments I saw required two different cards to activate fully).  It might not be quite as fragile as Mr. Fixer, and it probably pays off better if you can survive, but it definitely seems like a strategy that's highly vulnerable to interference.

Yes of course; I usually try to target someone downstream from her in turn order, so that they can play the resulting card without waiting for the next turn.  Besides, other characters are seemingly more likely to have duplicate Limited cards (even when Visi's cards are Limited, they're often things like Wrest the Mind which destroy themselves after use, versus Haka's Ta Moko and Taiaha for example), so even targeting someone upstream of Visi is often better than targeting herself.  I mentioned when I was analyzing Visionary that Foresight was often one of her less strong options, because while it gives better card access than Enlighten, it can't target others.

(Envisioner: The fact you think you've solved him is highly entertaining to me, as what you described is far from the "best" way to play him. )

It is pretty much the best when your objective is to deal a lot of damage to the villain, which is of course not always the case.  But if you do want to deal damage, your only other real option is the Omni-Cannon, which is vulnerable enough to destruction that it likely may not be worth depleting your card supply for.

The message I was really trying to get across in my earlier post was not to discount a hero because you had two poor games with them.

Nowhere have I done that.  My reasons for disliking Argent Adept were not based primarily on his poor performance, but on the fact that he's excessively fiddly to play, and thematically unsatisfying to me personally.  Fixer I am kind of down on based on his poor performance, but that's in three games, during which I've seen most of his cards.  Driving Mantis style can be very nice in certain matchups, Grease Gun is a lifesaver, Dual Crowbars are very nice, and Scrap Yard is huge, but overall he just doesn't have much gas compared to other heroes; he has to keep an Ongoing and an Equipment in play in order for Harmony to do anything at all, and his innate power deals less damage than other heroes who have a built-in attack, except for Chrono-Ranger who does extra damage on nearly every card he plays.  Like I said, I want to like Fixer; as a character, he's very cool, and somehow the hoops you have to jump through getting him to work are satisfying to me…but he really doesn't give you enough of a payoff for them, so playing him is kind of a masochistic experience.  I think there are a few minor tweaks that could have made all the difference for him, such as making his Strike deal irreducible damage right off the bat, and replacing one of the two irreducible-based styles with something more proactive.  As it stands, he has a lot of dead cards in any match where the villain doesn't rely on reductions, and when the villain does, he still has an uphill battle getting the right Style and keeping it in play.

Sure, enjoy the heroes you're enjoying now, but after a while dip back into the pool and see what you think about the other heroes now that you have a better understanding of the game.

I plan on it.  Although I'm going to be staying away from Fanatic for a very long time, after the TWO games she utterly punked with turn 1 End of Days, and the several times that she's Wrathful Retributionned for the win.  Heck, I might just take those cards out of her deck and see how playable she is then.

Some folks don't like taking on a support role with heroes like Legacy and Visionary, but that's what those heroes do.

Legacy that's true of for sure, but Visionary to me is more about battlefield control.  Mental Divergence looping Wrest the Mind, or repeated Precogs and Suggestions…these seem to be at least as effective as feeding your teammates cards, though of course it will all depend on the situation.

(or they come up with home rules that alter the heroes to make them the way they want them)!

I'm generally somewhat reluctant to houserule the game, as it complicates the process of introducing new players, wonks with game balance, and generally increases mental bookkeeping.  I have yet to actually institute any house rules, and have only even begun to think about a few of them.

There are 4 copies of both Arcane Cadence and Vernal Sonata in the deck. I'm really surprised you don't know what Vernal Sonata is. I'm not going to tell you, please look it up for yourself.

Unfortunately I don't own Argent Adept (or Nightmist or Fixer or Expat), and won't until December.  I play a friend's copy, but only see him once a week.  So come next Friday, I may get to try him out again, perhaps I'll see the card again.  But I may very well have seen it already and just not noticed it.  (Did it have a picture of a dog on it?  If so, I saw the card, but I don't remember its effect.)

Vernal Sonata - One-shot. Heals all hero targets for 1hp and then all heroes can choose one card from their trash (not Vernal Sonata) and put it on top of their deck.

The Adept can suffer if someone destroys his stuff, yes, but so can anyone else. And with the Adept, it can be pretty easy to cycle through his deck, especially in a long game. I've had my entire deck out before (a mixture of cards being in-hand or in play), which was cool. Arcane Cadence is good for getting cards out in the early game so I tend to use it ASAP if I start with it (and frequently chain into a second, or more), then later not really use it so much but give Silver Shadow more attention.

As far as I can remember, there are three different Harmonies, Melodies, and Rhythms. That's nine cards. But there are two of each, so that's eighteen cards, just under half the deck. Then you have four copies of Arcane Cadence. Even if you start with no songs in-hand but one copy of Arcane Cadence, it's almost like being able to start with a hand of nine cards but then having to stick some of them in other places (trash, top of deck, bottom of deck).

My style of playing the Adept involves playing Arcane Cadence if I get it in my starting hand, chaining into other copies of the card if I reveal them as a result of using that first copy (should I reveal two copies with one card, I can put one on top of the deck so it comes out when I play the other one). After all this is done, all I need to do is make sure that among the cards revealed by the final Cadence, one of them is a song and goes into play. Then I have something to do with my Power phase. I don't always remember this and end up playing something else and then going "Oops, I forgot, now I don't have a power I can use - oh well", but that's just me being forgetful and it doesn't usually make too much of a difference. If one of my songs/instruments gets destroyed, I have Vernal Sonata and Instrumental Conjuration to get stuff back. The latter also lets me draw a card, which is a nice bonus.

Once I get set up with a nice selection of stuff, I can potentially, in my Power phase, let myself use another power, which I use to let myself use another power (Harp + Lyra + Inspiring Supertonic, wheeee :D), which I use to let myself or someone else do a wide variety of possible different things. I can play or draw a card, or let someone else do that. I can give up to two hero targets +1 damage and/or +1 soak. I can ditch one of my instruments to insta-kill absolutely anything in play that isn't indestructible or a character card (aww Voss, did you like that spaceship? Or Apostate, were you counting on the soak from those Runes protecting your stuff? Shame >:)). I can heal myself for up to 4hp, and everyone else for up to 2hp. I can destroy up to two ongoing/environment cards. I can do some other stuff that I can't remember right now. And that's just the Power phase. Never mind that I might have used a song effect in my Play phase via Silver Shadow...multiple times, if I have more than one copy of that particular card. Oh yeah, and if someone else happens to be able to let me use a power on their turn...wheee, here we go again!

The Adept might stat with the lowest hp total of any hero, but he makes up for it by being, as far as I can see, one of the most versatile. The fact that you can use the same song effects multiple times (Perform and Accompany texts aren't powers, remember, so there's no limit on how often you can use them in your turn, provided you have the means to do so) can just get insane :D.

Wow, what's the reverse of a rant? I think I just managed it - sorry ;).

Ah, that's the one I suspected you meant (the fact that you can't tell what the cards do just from their names is one of the things I don't like about the Adept, though he's admittedly not the only hero with this problem).  I do NOT regard that as one of his strongest cards, because it does not give you an immediate return on investment, except for 1 HP per hero which isn't that huge (though now I definitely want to try playing Argh next to Unity sometime, healing all the Golems is certain to be fun, and in Raptor Bot's case, 1 HP is the most healing he can benefit from).

The Adept can suffer if someone destroys his stuff, yes, but so can anyone else.

Ra, Tachyon, Chrono-Ranger and Tempest all function extremely well even if they never play anything but one-shots (CR's one-shots often get Equipment or Bounties into play, but we'll assume these are destroyed in the following Enviro and Villain turns).  Sure Ra likes to have a Staff or Imbued Fire in play, but it's far from essential; just roasting everything with Scorched Earth, Inferno, or a single instance of Drawn to the Flame's power is quite adequate.  Not coincidentally, CR and Tachyon are among my top five heroes, and perform very well just on playing a number of one-shots.  Even Expat and Nightmist can use their Powers to good effect under the worst of circumstances, while Argent's power is the only one that does literally nothing without a certain card already in play (Absolute Zero comes close, as the only thing he can do in a vacuum is hurt himself - but that can in fact be beneficial in some cases, if a villain/enviro effect is about to hit the highest or lowest HP hero for a lot more than 1 damage, and AZ wants to change which hero that is either to or from himself).

And with the Adept, it can be pretty easy to cycle through his deck, especially in a long game. I've had my entire deck out before (a mixture of cards being in-hand or in play), which was cool.

Okay, that at least does sound cool, and I look forward to achieving it (I'd imagine it involves a very limited subset of Villains who will completely leave you alone except for damage, or else having Visi or Wraith controlling the villain deck so Ongoing destruction never appears).  So far my record in that vein is probably CR, who once played a pair of Just Doing My Jobs in consecutive rounds, followed by a Bounty Board, and ended up with sixteen cards in hand.  That was certainly nothing if not fun.

Arcane Cadence is good for getting cards out in the early game so I tend to use it ASAP if I start with it (and frequently chain into a second, or more), then later not really use it so much but give Silver Shadow more attention.

Silver Shadow is good with a song out, yes, and usable even without one.  But you don't always draw these strong cards; you need to be able to plan for the worst-case scenario, even if it's fun to imagine the best one.

As far as I can remember, there are three different Harmonies, Melodies, and Rhythms. That's nine cards. But there are two of each, so that's eighteen cards, just under half the deck.

Valuable info, that.  Thank you.  It'll eventually be possible for me to construct some mnemonic to remember which is which; that'll make him more playable, though it's likely he'll still remain close to the bottom of the list just because I don't care for the music theme.

Then I have something to do with my Power phase. I don't always remember this and end up playing something else and then going "Oops, I forgot, now I don't have a power I can use - oh well", but that's just me being forgetful and it doesn't usually make too much of a difference.

I did this in my second game with him, playing Xu's Bell on turn one and then facepalming (it was solitaire, so I probably should have just let myself go back, but I was testing whether the Matriarch was really all that, so I didn't want to be generous in my favor).  To me, that's not something that one simply shrugs and moves on from; it's a strong strike against both the hero (for making such errors possible) and my own dumb self (for actually committing them).  A character who isn't capable of screwing up that badly is something I strongly appreciate, just in case I'm having a bad brain day.

I can potentially, in my Power phase, let myself use another power, which I use to let myself use another power (Harp + Lyra + Inspiring Supertonic, wheeee :D)

So just to confirm, Perform and Accompany abilities are unlike Powers, in that the same one can be used multiple times in a turn?

The fact that you can use the same song effects multiple times (Perform and Accompany texts aren't powers, remember, so there's no limit on how often you can use them in your turn, provided you have the means to do so) can just get insane

Ah, okay, thanks for the prompt reply. 

I can ditch one of my instruments to insta-kill absolutely anything in play that isn't indestructible or a character card (aww Voss, did you like that spaceship? Or Apostate, were you counting on the soak from those Runes protecting your stuff? Shame >:)).

The narrow applicability of that card failed to impress me; I think I was playing against the Ennead at the time, so there were no targets at all except the environment (which was Pike Industrial, so they were 3-HP rats).  Had it come up in the fight against Matty, I'd certainly have appreciated the ability to kill Huginn or Muninn (I can never remember which is which).

Wow, what's the reverse of a rant?

A rave.

Oh! Hey, in case it's useful/interesting, there are a series of strategy guides some of the forum folks have compiled.

I'm aware of them, and have glanced at a couple, but in general, I enjoy figuring the hero out for myself.  I looked at AZ's guide only after already understanding him quite well, though it did reveal a couple interesting new tricks.  (Cold Snap + Thermal Shockwave + Isometric Transducer = good; add Focused Apertures, and it's probably not such a great idea, depending on how many targets there are).  Looking at Argent's guide now wouldn't be useful to me, because there are too many of Argent's cards I don't recognize just by the name...after I've played him about once more, I will probably be at the "sweet spot" where the guide is legible to me, but still has information to convey which I haven't yet realized.  I'm thinking I might read the Fanatic guide to see if it can convince me she's cool and non-broken again, but right now I think of her as a match-wrecker who isn't welcome on my teams because she'll hog all the glory; it may be difficult for anything to talk me out of that opinion.

If you think you've solved Bunker, Envisioner, check out Pydro's "A Look At Bunker"; it's an 8000-word document which mathematically examines his options. You may find it enlightening.

Yeah, Bunker was actually the reason I posted the link, as I believe he's far more complex than Envisioner's worked out.

And just to be clear, I have no issue is anyone doesn't like / want to play a hero! I just want to help them understand that hero to make sure it's an educated decision.

That's right, if you have some way to activate the same melody or harmony twice in a turn, go for it!

Another thing about the Adept is the sheer number of ways he can help other heroes. He has a grand total of two means of dealing damage (Scherzo fo Frost and Flame, and the Accompany of erm, Syncopated Onslaught, I think), and if I ever use one of them it's only because I have literally nothing else I can possibly use. Oh, and one time I used one of those to get the kill on Akash'Bhuta, just because I could ;). But the Adept is all about support, and in opinion even more so than, say, Legacy or Visionary. Pair him up with, say, Unity ("Oh, you can't play bots on your turn? Okay, play one on mine…in fact, I'll sing that song again - okay, now you can play another one"), and it can get pretty epic. Similarly, you can let someone re-use a power that they just played on their own turn - Legacy and Galvanise, for example - he can use it on his turn to give everyone a +1 to damage, but then it's the Adept's turn and he can get Legacy to use it again for a total of +2 damage. And then supposing someone like Tachyon or Jim is next…>:)

You seem to have a thing about his stuff getting destroyed. He can use Vernal Sonata and/or Instrumental Conjuration to get some of it back, or Arcane Cadence to gamble on what's in the top five cards of his deck. There aren't that many villains who destroy everything - most only destroy a fixed number of cards across all heroes, or belonging to the hero with the highest/lowest hp, so the Adept doesn't even have to lose anything. Then again, because he has so many different effects he can access via songs, and because, as with any hero, some of those effects are pretty situational, it means that if you've got nothing better to do you can just put out a song you know you probably won't be using, just as something you can freely throw away if some ongoing destruction comes out. And if someone else loses a card they really wanted to keep, just chuck out a Vernal Sonata to let them get it back again…albeit not till the end of their next turn, unless they get to draw before then. I do seem to recall a game in which Fanatic had played Wrathful Retribution. So now it's in the trash. I (the Adept) play Vernal Sonata, and suggest that Fanatic puts Wrathful Retribution on top of the deck. During my Power phase, I use the Accompany of Counterpoint Bulwark to let her draw it. I can't remember if I then used Alacritous Subdominant or Inventive Preparation to let her play it as well, or whether she did so on her turn. Either way it was an extra play of the card and was probably enough to finish off the villain (though I can't remember those kind of specifics as it was ages ago ;)).

I'm curious as to why you keep saying about the card names not meaning anything to you, or suggesting what the card actuall does. Does "Inspiring Presence" suggest +1 damage and a one-off +1hp for everyone, for example? Or would you know, at a glance, that Hypersonic Assault nerfs all damage coming from stuff it hits, as opposed to erm…the one that deals the same damage but has no other effect? The cards have to have some kind of name, after all ;). Anyway, I tend to focus more on the image than on the name of the card (it took me a while to remember the names for all the Adept's cards because they use quite long words, but I've got it now and I think they're cool anyway), which is why I've not been able to get too attached to any of the upcoming Vengeance cards when playing in games that use those - all except the character cards just have a blank white space where the image is gonna be. Still, it's something to look forward to when it actually gets released :).

If you're not a fan of support characters (or just the Adept in general), that's fine, of course. I'd love to play him in a game with you, though, and show you what kind of stuff he can do :). I gather you play most of your games solo? That might be why you seem to have trouble getting the hang of some of the characters (coupled with the fact that you've not had the game long, of course ;)), since you're having to focus on all the decks at the same time, rather than being able to let other people manage their own heroes and stuff. Playing with someone who's got more experience than you might help you pick up the numbers quicker in terms of not missing stuff because they'll know the decks better and know what to watch out for, and stuff :). And also, you'll see how other people play certain characters. You might have developed your own preferred method of playing a certain hero, but then see someone else playing the same hero in a completely different way and go "Hey wow, I never thought of doing that", and get a whole new perspective on how to play them and stuff :).

Some heroes are more situational than others, and that will always be the case.  I've been playing for a while, and I'm still figuring out how to play different heroes, and finding situations where one hero completely dominates in a way that I never understood before.

I don't take issue with your assessments- because they are your personal assessments, and its totally OK to have different opinions on different heroes.

Here are some things to try/think about, if you want a different perspective on heroes.

Mr. Fixer- He's incredible.  It takes a ton of patience and time to master him, but its worth it.  Having a jack handle in any situation where you have to hit yourself is good times!  One of my most satisfying games was with Mr Fixer destroying all of Apostate's relics (irreducible damage+jack handle+bloody knuckles) and leaving him open for everyone else.  It really helps to either maintain a very "play what you have, not what you want" mindset...or to pair him with Team Leader Tachyon so that you are more likely to HAVE what you need!   

Bunker- Bunker is one of those characters that I'm still working on.  I have phenomenal games where I save everyone, I have terrible games where I can't get set up or spend turn after turn drawing and feel like I'm letting the team down.  I can say that he's a master of the waiting game.  He's got great armor potential, and if you can find satisfaction in spending some time waiting, armoring up and taking the hits...Bunker can reward with some really fun blasts.  Or you can literally spend the entire game in recharge mode with heavy plating, absorbing hit after hit with a Gatling gun and Omni-cannon, charging and whittling.  I'm still learning him, and I've played a LOT of games.  I don't feel like I've figured him out, but i feel like I'm finally beginning to be effective with him.

Wraith- I spend more time with Wraith peeking at the villain deck with the eyepiece and debuffing them than actually shooting.  She's great at combat, but she's absolutely phenomenal at arranging things and getting a massive array of options while doing it.  If you feel that damage is king, and its every hero's responsibility to pile it on, she certainly can, but that barely scratches the surface.

Fanatic- I really don't understand your perspective on Fanatic.  thats OK, but its entirely contrary to my perceptions of her.  We've had games where End of days turned the tide, and wrathful retribution was Fanatic's last, desperate attack.  we've had times when Final Dive got rid of one of Voss's guards so that everyone else could do damage again, or when embolden let someone pull off some ridiculous tricks with dual powers.  Or divine focus burning through (reduce the first hit each turn) armor so that everyone esle could be effective. 

the Argent Adept- I rarely play him, because there are always other people who want ot play him more.  He's phenomenal as long as he survives.  Much has been said already, so i won't add much beyond how much flexibility he adds to any game.

Going with the theme of playing more games, try the heros in different ways. 

My favorite heroes tend to be the ones I can play completely differently in different situations.  I see you really like Nightmist, so do I, but I have liked her more and more as I see her do different rolls, I've used her for all out damage, tanking, and deck and board control.  She plays differently and favors different cards in all those scenarios.  Multiple heros can do like wise so you might find you dislike a hero in one role, but like them in another. 

In addition to attacking, Wraith can spend her time protecting people with throat jabs, stun bolts and smoke bombs, or spend her time peeking at the villian deck and grappling hook for troublesome cards.  With the utility belt she can do combination of these roles.

This is just another way the game provides replayability.

Wraith also has the potential to tank the occasional hit via Stealth, though admittedly this isn't really something that comes up too often since once you've got out a Utility Belt and any two cards that have powers, chances are you'll be using those instead. Also, never underestimate the effectiveness of multiple Mega-Computers in a harmful Environment ;).

Yeah, there's a reason why Wraith is considered to be one of the most powerful, she can do almost any role and do it very well.  Not too hard to set up for any o them either.

I am planning on trying out the combination of Adept and Unity sometime (when I want a party that broken), as the two of them are sort of half-homages to Green Lantern, my second or third favorite superhero.  Together, they can doubtlessly accomplish a lot, but I won't want to waste that kind of raw power on a weak villain who never destroys their stuff, as it's just too degenerate when build-up heroes like that are able to operate unchecked.

Conjuration only gets Instruments, which are useless without songs (and in my experience, Ongoings seem to get destroyed more than Equipment - Citizen Dawn is a notable example, having one way to destroy Equipment but three for Ongoings).  And Sonata doesn't give you a play for the turn, so when you have your turn begin with all your songs destroyed, you play Sonata to get one back, but it'll be next round before you can play it, and meanwhile you've wasted the opportunity to draw two cards on your turn by playing a card when you didn't have a power to use.  Destruction really hurts the Adept, and yes it is often destruction of everything.

There aren't that many villains who destroy everything - most only destroy a fixed number of cards across all heroes, or belonging to the hero with the highest/lowest hp, so the Adept doesn't even have to lose anything.

I played him against Matriarch, who got Huginn and Muninn in play, in a three-player game.  Later I played against Miss Information, who is similarly fearsome, although Adept wasn't in that game.

I do seem to recall a game in which Fanatic had played Wrathful Retribution. So now it's in the trash. I (the Adept) play Vernal Sonata, and suggest that Fanatic puts Wrathful Retribution on top of the deck.

I have never seen anyone play that except to kill a boss.  They hang onto it until Fanny is down to about 5 HP, by which time the boss is usually down to 20 or so, and if Fanatic survives (or is resurrected by an Aegis), then the party wins.  This is one of the reasons why I don't really like Fanny; she's too much of a spoiler for otherwise hopeless matches, and IMO it feels lame when she busts out a win from out of nowhere.

I'm curious as to why you keep saying about the card names not meaning anything to you, or suggesting what the card actuall does. Does "Inspiring Presence" suggest +1 damage and a one-off +1hp for everyone, for example?

Kinda, but more to the point, the HP healing happens the moment you play the card, while the +1 to damage is easy to remember because Legs is handing out Galvanize effects which have the same effect.  You just remember "Legacy is boosting all our damage", and then glance over to see if he has the card (with easily recognizable art) which indicates that it's automatic, &/or if you have to wait for his power phase for him to hand out "hats" (my word for status markers).

Or would you know, at a glance, that Hypersonic Assault nerfs all damage coming from stuff it hits, as opposed to erm…the one that deals the same damage but has no other effect?

Having played Tachyon about five times, yes I do know that one by heart, since it's such an incredible bacon-saver in tough games.  Also, again, it's a One-Shot; those are never terribly hard to remember.

The cards have to have some kind of name, after all

The more evocative and specific that name is, the better.  I actually once got a short-term writing gig with Wizards of the Coast to assign names and flavor text to cards.  I was extremely good at it, but the relationship ended due to a conflict with management.  (Shocking, I know.)

Anyway, I tend to focus more on the image than on the name of the card (it took me a while to remember the names for all the Adept's cards because they use quite long words, but I've got it now and I think they're cool anyway), which is why I've not been able to get too attached to any of the upcoming Vengeance cards when playing in games that use those - all except the character cards just have a blank white space where the image is gonna be.

Agreed with this; art is huge to me as a way to recognize cards, which is part of why I don't play with proxies of the promo heroes.  And the Adept is not the best in terms of illustrating his effects, given that it's difficult to draw a sound.  Offhand, I can only remember the healing thing, Sarabande of Destruction, Scherzo of Frost and Flame, and Cedistic Dissonant by their art (oh, and Supertonic because of the robot Baron Blade).  I know I had Syncopated Onslaught out as well, but its picture didn't seem to depict anything in particular as far as I recall, and I only know its name because you just mentioned it, although I do remember it as the only way for Adept to do more than 1 damage (except against Akash'bhuta).

I gather you play most of your games solo? That might be why you seem to have trouble getting the hang of some of the characters (coupled with the fact that you've not had the game long, of course ;)), since you're having to focus on all the decks at the same time, rather than being able to let other people manage their own heroes and stuff.

Yep, it's definitely a challenge…but that's part of what keeps me fixated on it.  Something of a masochist, I am…  I eagerly look forward to the day that I can finish a game, solo or otherwise, absolutely certain that I did not make one rules mistake.  It has yet to happen.

Finally tried the Argent Adept out in a non-solo game, and I can say that I recognize how he has a fair bit of potential, but I still don't really consider him to be for me.  It's virtually impossible for him to accomplish much in the first couple turns, and he has to luckily draw one of his super-powerful songs (chiefly Alacritous and Inspiring) before he can really get the ball rolling.  Combined with the tricky-to-memorize song-typing and the low starting HP, he's just got a very steep hill to climb, and doesn't feel like he pays off anywhere near as well for all his buildup and fiddlyness, compared to Nightmist or Omnitron or the Scholar, all of which are comparably difficult but offer much more immediate and powerful rewards.  If I were in the mood to play a cheerleader, I'd get more out of Argent than Legacy (as my list reflects), but I am seldom in that mood.

Meanwhile I did another solo run with Nightmist, and I've further confirmed that I really, really like her, although I'm still not sure she quite deserves my top spot.  Playing her is burdensome, as she always has to sacrifice a ton of potential power in order to actualize her options; it feels like work, and I feel like my #1 spot ought to go to a character who's just flat-out enjoyable at all times, but that's a tall order of course.  Scholar is probably closest to my definition of perfection, but still a bit awkward at times.  Also, Tachyon is beginning to feel simplistic to me (though still flat-out fun, unlike Ra, who I'm struggling to remain interested in despite loving the Egyptian feel), and probably doesn't deserve to be ahead of CR or even AZ anymore.

Omnitron probably deserves to switch tiers with Expatriette, as he's just tons of fun to me, although he still suffers enough shortcomings that I don't think he can take top billing...he probably gets the highest marks of any single hero for me, but also a lot of demerits that keep him from retaining the high score.  Also, Mr. Fixer is beginning to grow on me, though I'm still infuriated about Riveting Crane (if Fixer can manage to deal damage at all, why bother making it irreducible for anyone else?) and Meditation (I nearly always draw multiple Styles and Meditations, with maybe one Tool).  He should have a tutor for his tools, since he doesn't have to destroy those when switching them.  Lastly, while I didn't play Bunker today, my very smart friend Thorin did...and he went into Turret Mode with Flak Cannon and Grenade Launcher out, just as I always do.  Unless you fail to draw these cards, I fail to see how it doesn't eclipse all his other options, so I still consider him a depressingly linear character, with a lot of potential that almost always goes to waste.

So, a few adjustments to the list, but it's still pretty much accurate.  I can't wait until Vengeance arrives and I'll be able to shake these rankings up a little.

Also, Mr. Fixer is beginning to grow on me, though I'm still infuriated about Riveting Crane (if Fixer can manage to deal damage at all, why bother making it irreducible for anyone else?

He can be great melee support for heroes like fanatic, Expat, AZ, Omnitron-X, even Bunker vs. a villain like Voss that throws out minions and can put up dr of 1.  Jackhandle Meditation and riveting crane spell certain doom, even more so vs. the Ennead with Nuit out.  Crowbars and Riveting is the easier way to do it, but if you get meditation you can really set up for your allies to knock them out.  We had Dawn put out Truth and Anvil on turn two and a riveting crane bloodyknuckles Fixer completely saved the day.  

Also while Grenade/Flak/turret Bunker is really strong there are other builds that work well, it depends on the situation and the villain.

The Adept doesn't need multiple cards out to be useful - he can be amazing with just one, depending on what it is. Inspiring Supertonic? Okay, TLT would you like to use your base power so everyone can draw a card? Or maybe Legacy wants to stack a second Galvanise on top of that first one he just cast so Fanatic will be dealing 3+3 damage with her base power on her next turn? Alacritous Subdominant? Okay, Mr Fixer how about you play that Overdrive that's in your hand so you can use Strike twice right now? Or Unity, perhaps you'd like to put out that Turret Bot so he can shoot at someone when your turn starts? And so on. Some songs are less useful, yes, but plenty can be pretty effective on their own, depending on what kind of options the other heroes have. A lot of what the Adept can do is more…indirect - he doesn't do much to the villain himself but he can let one of his friends kick the crap out of them (or get set up) faster :).

On the subject of Bunker, another set-up for him can be Heavy Plating, Recharge Mode, and the Omni-Cannon. Then you get to draw three cards a turn and have pretty good soak so can tank a lot while you charge up your Omni-Cannon. Okay so you're not really actively doing much, but it's certainly a viable alternative to the Turret Mode one, and satisfying if you get to totally obliterate the Big Bad with a most-of-your-deck-loaded Omni-Cannon :). There are other ways to play Bunker too, but those are probably the main ones.

Phantaskippy has pretty much summed up why Riveting Crane is good on Mr Fixer - if he has a damage buff to get through someone's soak, he can enable everyone else to whack them pretty well too - after all, if he has a damage buff, in many cases other people will too (eg if the buff is coming from something like Galvanise), which means said buff will be even more effective on those other people as it won't be needed to help burn through the target's soak.

Basically, every hero has their strengths and weaknesses. Some will get their arses totally kicked in some circumstances whilst seeming almost obscenely overpowered in others. That's just the way it goes, and is kind of the point of the game - it encourages the players to think about what they're doing and plan their tactics together and stuff. If one hero is having trouble right now (say, Jim or Tachyon because the villain has a pint or two of soak), then another can help them out (maybe Legacy can buff their damage, Mr Fixer with his Riveting Crane and self-buffs can get through the soak and remove it for everyone else, etc). You don't have to do even a single point of damage to be a super-effective hero (eg Visionary, the Adept), nor do you have to be constantly hammering away at them with everything you've got (Ra, Haka). Once you get to learn the decks, you know which cards to keep an eye out for in order to set up the best combos (eg Taiaha does more damage than Mere, but Mere lets you draw a card and fill up your hand to do a massive Haka of Battle later on).

And even when you get a strategy you like with a character, you might then play a game with someone else and see them play that same character a completely different way, thus giving you new insights into how they can be effective :D.

Sure, those are all nice.  But what happens when your opening hand is Syncopated Onslaught, Polyphoric Flare, and two Instruments?  Or Instrument Conjuration, Silver Shadow x2, and Rhapsody or Sarabande?  In my experience, it requires either great luck or much time to accomplish anything with Argent, and he's extremely vulnerable to mass destruct effects.  I played him against Citizen Dawn in my only non-solitaire game with him, and for two rounds I was utterly paralyzed because Citizen Autumn was on the table - there was no point in using my entire turn to just play one Song, use its Perform once, and then have Autumn destroy it, so I simply sat and drew cards until the others got around to killing her.  I spent a lot of time sitting on Polyphoric, Silver Shadow, and multiple Vernal Sonatas when I wasn't configured to play anything with them.  And in one of my first two solitaires, I stupidly played an Instrument on turn 1 and then realized I had wasted my turn (I should probably have let myself go back and fix the error, but I didn't).  It frustrates me that he's one of the three heroes whose power does NOTHING if you don't have the right card in play (counting Absolute Zero, whose ability to hurt himself is not quite NOTHING, since you might occasionally want to change who's highest-HP, but pretty close).  And unlike AZ or Unity, his payoff is not usually potent enough to be worth all that effort, unless he's paired with particular heroes who he supports - and doesn't that say as much about them as himself?

On the subject of Bunker, another set-up for him can be Heavy Plating, Recharge Mode, and the Omni-Cannon. Then you get to draw three cards a turn and have pretty good soak so can tank a lot while you charge up your Omni-Cannon. Okay so you're not really actively doing much, but it's certainly a viable alternative to the Turret Mode one, and satisfying if you get to totally obliterate the Big Bad with a most-of-your-deck-loaded Omni-Cannon :).

You would have to know that neither the Villain nor the Environment is capable of destroying your Omni-Cannon.  (By the way, is there an explicit rule in the game about cards like Omni-Cannon, saying that when they're destroyed, the cards under them also go to the trash?  It's common sense, but It ought to also be stated specifically.)  And personally, I kind of disapprove of using that sort of meta-knowledge in the game.  Like, I'll probably never fight Plague Rat on Mars, because courtesy of one of the players on this board, I know that Meteor Storm completely shuts him down and lets the heroes sit there building up until they can kill him in one turn.  That this occurred once is hilarious, but to ever do it again would be utter lameness IMO.  (If I play him there at all, it will be with a small number of carefully selected heroes, who are not especially likely to be able to pull off this rather unfair upset.  No unity, no Ra and/or AZ, no Chrono-Ranger, no Legacy…perhaps I could do it with, like, Visionary and Scholar and the Argent Adept.

Phantaskippy has pretty much summed up why Riveting Crane is good on Mr Fixer - if he has a damage buff to get through someone's soak, he can enable everyone else to whack them pretty well too - after all, if he has a damage buff, in many cases other people will too (eg if the buff is coming from something like Galvanise), which means said buff will be even more effective on those other people as it won't be needed to help burn through the target's soak.

Yeah, all this is Cloud Cuckooland to me.  In my experience, what happens is that you're sitting there with your little 1-damage Strike, drawing an opening hand of Riveting Crane, two Harmonies and maybe a Grease Gun, and Warlord Voss starts the game with two Gene-Bound Guards in play, or the Dreamer has a Dark Hero, or Dawn has Citizen Anvil…it's almost comedic how regularly this sort of thing occurs in my experience.  I never count on being able to get an ideal setup; I want a character who's almost incapable of going wrong when the worst happens.  (Then again, I like Absolute Zero.  Go figure.)

And even when you get a strategy you like with a character, you might then play a game with someone else and see them play that same character a completely different way, thus giving you new insights into how they can be effective :D.

I have yet to observe this, save perhaps with Fanatic.  The guy I know who really likes her nearly always ends a game with Wrathful Retribution, whereas when I play her, I always seem to get first-turn End of Days and then plink away with Exorcism and a few One-Shots while hoping to draw Absolution.  (And, annoyingly, usually drawing multiples of it.  I'm so much happier with the Staff of Ra because that can destroy itself.)

Seriously man, hiding from limited destruction isn't the way.

If you know a certain amount are going to be destroyed, get out in front of it, choose which cards to protect as a team and keep them out by playing others.

If one hero sits back, the others need to also, and you end up not having equipment for longer trying not to lose it then you would if you all played it and damned the torpedoes.

I agree. If you know some destruction is coming, having the team try and get ahead of it so at least some of the board stays is a viable tactic.

Citizen Autumn is a bit of a special case though since she destroys all the ongoings of one player.  So, just by being the hero with the lowest HP, you are protecting the other ongoings but won't be able to save your own.

The option to try to out play them is why I greatly prefer villains who just destroy a certain number of equipment and/or ongoings (which is most of them).

You only get one card play a turn under normal circumstances.  There is seldom anything to spare.

If one hero sits back, the others need to also, and you end up not having equipment for longer trying not to lose it then you would if you all played it and damned the torpedoes.

Four heroes are going up against La Capitan.  Turn one, each of them plays an Equipment or Ongoing, then uses a power.  Then Cappy pulls Plunder and destroys H ongoings or equipments.  You have now all wasted your first card plays and have nothing to show for it.  If your next round consists of you all playing a second such card, Cappy may well Plunder again and leave you even further behind.  In my experience, such occurrences are FAR more common than occasions on which it is at all advisable to dump your entire hand onto the table.  I have had a few games like that against enemies like Plague Rat, and they're tremendously fun, but the most credible villain threats are those which make it impossible for you to keep a card in play.  And as I said before, I'd rather prepare for the worst than plan out some over-the-top dream play which is easily shattered.

And yet if these are your only options, something's gone wrong. Every hero has multiple ways to play, that's half of the fun. The trick is to keep an open mind, and be prepared to rethink your strategy, many times if necessary.

If you hold off playing anything just in case the villain (or environment) puts out something that'll destroy it, you'll just end up never getting set up and they'll eat you. Yeah, you might get unlucky and find that the villain destroys your stuff twice in a row, but most villains can't destroy all your stuff consistenyly - most just force the destruction of a few, or of the stuff belonging to a certain hero. If you can change who that hero is, you can get around it - Autumn is destroying the Adept's stuff because he has the lowest hp? Okay, let's let Tachyon get hit a bit so she's got less hp than him and is much less likely to suffer from her stuff being destroyed because she's hardly got any and can get to the stuff she does have pretty quickly when she needs it because she goes through her deck so fast.

I don't think any character is, as you put it, "incapable of going wrong when the worst happens". For starters, "the worst" varies between heroes. Everyone's stuff has been destroyed? Bunker, Expatriette, and friends are probably rather annoyed while Tachyon isn't that bothered. Everyone getting hit for a load of damage? Whoops, there go Omni-10's components because he had the wrong plating out, meanwhile Legacy, Bunker, and Haka all sat there and tanked it. Everyone having to discard two cards? Again, Tachyon's probably happy with that, while the Adept and Omni-10 probably aren't that bothered. Bad news for Mr Fixer, though!

Also, you need to remember that if some of your stuff gets destroyed, there are those who can help you get it (or some of it, at least) back - Mr Fixer can play a Salvage Yard for all the equipment-heavy guys, while Tempest and the Adept can play Reclaim from the Deep and Vernal Sonata, respectively, to help everyone stick a single card back on top of their deck to draw next round (or possibly right now, if it's the Adept's turn), meanwhile Jim has multiple ways to find whatever he needs from his deck and/or trash :). Even the environment can help - destroying the annoying Evasive Red Dust on Mars lets everyone take a piece of equipment from their trash and put it into play when it gets destroyed.

We've had games where we were relutcant to play stuff in case it got destroyed, but that just resulted in none of the heroes really getting set up and we never tend to do very well in that case (barring those heroes like Tachyon who don't need many cards in play to be effective). Some villains who nuke your stuff can be handled pretty well, though - once had a game against Miss Information where I played Omni-10 and I practically soloed her as I got all my stuff out, including the right plating to block the repeated Psychic damage I'd be taking, while I think the other heroes were the ones to lose less important cards (though I tend to have no problem losing stuff like Rocket Punch, which I very very rarely use - I mainly stick to the components but other stuff is a nice bonus, like Bio-Engineering Beam, which for some reason I don't see very often). Fun game :D.

La Capitan has 2 copies of plunder.  Even with the boat you are not talking about a statistically likely occurance.  A first turn plunder isn't a bad thing either, since without any crew it destroys exactly 1 card.  Even with the boat out it would have to play Raiding party and then follow that with plunder, at which point with her normal destruction it would destroy (H) cards.

We aren't talking about highly likely circumstances.  Yeah it will happen, that's the game.  But to plan for something with under 5% likelihood of occuring, that isn't cautious, it is paranoid.

As for Autumn and Dawn, Dawn is going to blow you up eventually, but you can't live in fear of that, and Autimn is nasty if she's protected, but like stated above you can even smack an ally to get Autumn off of a specific hero.  You don't try to get in front of Dawn's destruction though, since it isn't a numbers game.

These scenarios are one of the reasons I really love Fixer and Expat.  Expat can really help a team get ahead of destruction, with a second card play, things like ammo to sacrifice and if you get speed loading, a free play to start your turn.  Fixer laughs at equipment destruction with Salvage Yard.

Omnitron-X, Expat, Chrono Ranger, Bunker, Argent Adept, and to a lesser degree Wraith and AZ can assist in getting in front of destruction.

Players like Tachyon and Visionary do fine when villains destroy equips, but can rarely help you get out in front of the destruction, they are great against Dawn for that reason.  Visionary and Fixer are great vs. Dawn, because with those two you can pull ongoings and equips out of the trash, and neither require many cards to be rolling.

Certain heroes are better or worse vs. specific villains or environments.  That is one of the cool things about this game.  I don't view it as right and wrong heroes to take into a fight, but I love it because that is how comic book fights work, sometimes heroes get caught in the wrong place vs. the wrong villain and have to do their best to overcome.

I seem to project an anti-statistics aura or something.  Things like this happen very regularly in my presence.

A first turn plunder isn't a bad thing either, since without any crew it destroys exactly 1 card.

I did forget that, so I stand corrected on my particular scenario.  But that only means it's worse in the mid-game, because instead of destroying 3-5 items, it's quite likely to destroy 6-8 of them.  And what chance do you have of ever so much as scratching the Crew after that?

Depends if you can keep up with the crew numbers and kill them before too many of them come out, I suppose.

La Capitan has 7 crew members.  Raiding Party puts out the most crew members at a maximum of 4 (in a 5 player game).  If you have all 7 of them out at the same time and La Capitan has time to play Plunder, you've probably lost anyway.

With this in mind, if La Capitain played Raiding Party, then immediately played Plunder (via her ship),  you'd lose an absolute maximum of 6 ongoings/equipment (again, in a 5 player game).  On the extreme outside chance, you could chain together a Raiding Party on Captain's play, then A Motley Crew (with 3 crew in the trash) which might chain into a Plunder…but that hinges on three specific card draws in direct sequence and banks on crew already being in the trash.

Long story short?  The likelihood of that happening is incredibly miniscule.  Yes, Plunder sucks–all equipment and ongoing destruction does.  But, it's there to keep you from steamrolling the villain and it fits thematically:  the pirate is stealing your stuff.

Welp, that was the game I was playing, and we did indeed lose (spectacularly).  But it didn't seem unusual at the time.  Those Crew are tough.  Killing one of them was the work of an entire round for us because we couldn't keep cards in play.  (And we weren't even fighting her Advanced version, which automatically destroys a card in play every round, in addition to how often her deck does it.)

Bunker, Fanatic and Fixer have all trended up a point in the wake of recent games, but Haka and Tachyon are the only characters with any downward mobility at the moment, so the actual sequence changes barely at all.  (Haka does not drop from #7 to #2 just because Bunker and Fanny try to move up and Wraith refuses to drop below them; their values have changed but not enough to affect their positions.)  Omnitron and Expatriette are both showing very strongly, but do not manage to displace my current Top 5.

To mark my 30th game last night, I made up a personal database of how often I've played each Hero, in what matchup and to what result.  (I can't easily get this information out of the statistics compilation, since this doesn't distinguish heroes I played from heroes someone else played in a game with me, so I made up my own form.)

Some interesting tidbits from this survey:

* I've played Haka five times, but only against three different villains - Baron Blade and Grand Warlord Voss on both regular and advanced, plus the Dreamer on regular.  Conversely, in six games Absolute Zero, Bunker, and Ra have never repeated a villain.

* I've played Chrono-Ranger in only three different Environments: Silver Gulch, the Final Wasteland, and once on Mars.  Bunker, Legacy and the Scholar have managed never to visit the same Environment twice.

* After five games each, Unity and Visionary have never been incapacitated.  (Granted the same was true of the Scholar until he played his sixth game...but he only died there because I royally screwed up, so I have every reason to expect that U&V will go 6-0.)  In the same number of games, I've gotten Fanatic killed four times and lost the whole game three of them.  Tachyon and Zero have also died four times, but that was in six games, and they won all but two of them.

* I have yet to play Nightmist or Mr. Fixer in a game with a number of heroes other than 4 (7 total games between them, one of which contained both, and was also the only game featuring Fixer which the heroes won).  This is not incredibly strange, since I play four-hero games about half of the time (trying to alternate from 3 to 5 and back to 3 again with 4 always in the middle), but it's still interesting as a happenstance.  The Argent Adept is the other hero besides Nightmist whom I've played only thrice, but he had a different number of compatriots each time.

* I have never played Absolute Zero second in turn order.  Bunker and Tempest have never gone fourth, and none of Chrono-Ranger, Tachyon or The Scholar have ever been third,   Not one hero has managed to play a different position (out of the twelve possible ones) in each of six games.

* Ra and Tempest have never been in a 4-hero game.  All but the first of my games with Tempest have had five heroes, while Ra has played in five three-hero games and a single fiver.  (This had a lot to do with my having played mostly three-hero solitaire with simple heroes while I was still learning the game.  But the Tempest thing must have been entirely accidental.)

I'll probably have a few more interesting items of note after I chart up exactly what heroes I've paired with what others during my solo games.  I know that I have a bad habit of buddying Haka with Absolute Zero, but that's the only correspondence I'm sure of offhand, though I feel as if I see the same pairings a lot.  As I get more games played, it'll no longer be likely for me to unintentionally stumble into these interesting patterns, as I'll be obsessively logging everything and striving to try out exclusively new combinations, in as balanced a fashion as possible; thusly, I felt I should enjoy the idiosyncracy of my early games while it lasts.

Argent Adept is strong.
Having I think one of, if not the strongest deck searching powers in the game and single cards that give players the ability to use cards/powers outside of turn is nothing short of extrodinary.

Simply having his Bell out along with 1 or 2 rhythems is enough to have a very strong presence within a game.

Once one has the card types along with the abilities of the instruments committed to memoery... gameplay is much more fluid and incredibly usefull to the team.

It is frustrating at times when equipments and ongoings are wiped however his payoff for when he does work is both powerful and satisfying.

An alternative to the memorisation is Spiff's awesome Deck Search Sheets. Spiff's SotM Resources | Print & Play Accessories

The AA one has a helpful table which shows what each instrument does.

Have gotten enough additional experience playing each hero (except Nightmist, who I don't think I've upticked since making this list - she's at 3 games right now, while everyone else is at least 5 and some are as high as 8) that I'm revising the order a bit, as well as further subcategorizing into six tiers rather than three.

Tier 1 - All-Time Faves

* Scholar.  While occasionally awkward, his playstyle is rewarding to me on so many levels, and I just love the flavor of him.  There may not be a more fun or much-more powerful card in the game than Proverbs and Axioms, and I love the numerical minigame of figuring out how best to use "Get Out of the Way!".

* Chrono-Ranger.  I concede the point to whoever said before I'd really enjoy CR, because I really do.  Probably the only reason I don't put him at #1 is that he lacks a lot of effectiveness when he can't get a Bounty out early on.

* Nightmist.  I've decided that too many of the decisions she forces you to make are painful for me to call her my #1 hero anymore.  But she's still incredibly interesting to me.

Tier 2 - Excellent Fun

* Absolute Zero.  The high-risk high-reward nature appeals to me less than simply the fact that he has to jump through a few hoops to become effective; he's the simplest of the Complexity 3 heroes, and that puts him at a sort of sweet spot.  Also I love his personality, though some of his flavor text isn't ideal to me.

* Omnitron-X.  I love the complicated, builduppy heroes with nuclear potential, and I've had some spectacular Omnitron games which have made him shoot upward in the rankings.  He's not higher than he is because of a certain level of clunkiness he suffers, the general shortage of one-shots other than Reset, the multiple reshuffles that one forces, the brokenness of Bio-Engineering Beam which turns awesome cards like Anubis into lame anticlimaxes, the fact that Timeshift stops short of some of its ideally desireable applications by being unable to return the card to the top of the deck, and the mechanical silliness of being able to destroy other heroes' Equipment and even Omnitron's Components for Singularity and Self-Sabotage.  Lots of individual negatives, but the whole they assemble into is cool enough that they can largely be forgiven.

* Tachyon.  Still appeals to my more ADD tendencies.  She's just fun, has some of the most powerful cards, is easy to understand but full of nuances, and is a hilarious character.

Tier 3 - Highly Enjoyable

* Visionary. Still the intellectual, megalomaniacal heroine I love, with a lot of really cool cards that nobody else really duplicates.  I still dislike how badly she can gimp certain villains with Precognition and Suggestion (and for this reason, Dark Visi is absolutely the last of the promo heroes I will ever want to play), and her psychic damage one-shots are also underwhelming, so she's swingier than I wish she were and often fails to live up to her potential.  But just her build-in power automatically goes some distance to correct this shortcoming, as well as making her a great team enabler.  As long as I stay away from the matchups which prime her to be stupidly overpowered in a lame way, and concentrate on giving her opportunities to shine in a unique and satisfying way, she'll bring me much joy.

* Expatriette.  Not much to say beyond what I've already said.  I have had a game with her since my previous writing where she opened on a hand with three Ammo and no Guns, and that royally sucked.  Speed Loading should really be at least a 3x in her deck, more Arsenal Access would be nice, and the fact that there are more Quick Draws than cards to fetch with them is unfortunate, leading to late-game dead draws.  But she's still an enjoyably active character; I feel as if she was a prototype for Chrono-Ranger, and that he profits from the learning experience represented by her shortcomings.  I also love the backstory of her being an exile from the Citizens of the Sun who now plans to prove the deadliness of powerless humanity to her mother; that's great storytelling.

* Tempest.  So powerful, and with loads of options.  I recently pegged him as the one hero I would play exclusively if forced to do so, just because he is better-rounded than my other faves, with his only real weakness being low HP that keeps his bad games mercifully short.  His backstory is a little bland for me and some of his cards are a bit simplistic, but overall he's just extremely solid, and much harder to go wrong with than most heroes, which is a huge plus for me given my dread of bad shuffles.

Tier 4 - Somewhat Conditional Faves

* Ra.  Playing him more, I've found him to contain a satisfying number of additional nuances which help mollify his overall one-noteness, and so I don't feel so bad about resorting to him now and again, even though I always look for reasons to play a more sophisticated hero.

* Unity.  Still a great character whose shtick is theoretically cool, but hampered by fragility and an over-reliance on either luck or exploits, tending to succeed big or fail miserably with little middle ground.  Utterly failed in a recent outing against Iron Legacy, so I've got more of a sour taste for her than usual just at the moment.

* Haka.  I love love love the immense starting HP, and loading up on cards with Mere or Dominion is really fun.  The Hakas are his weak point, as I'm seldom impressed with the healing of Restoration and almost never want to bother with Shielding (though I really must remember to try him against Omnitron sometime, just in the hopes of having him Shield for 16 right before an Electro-Pulse Explosive goes off).  I also generally feel bad about drawing Elbow Smash, as it's just rather underwhelming compared to other cards.  And the whole Maori shtick doesn't do it for me, making much of his flavor text feel wasted...I'd rather hear more about how he adapts to life in the Western world (the general impression I get is "very well", but some more details about how he ended up teaching kindergarden etc. would be nice to have).

Tier 5 - Heroes I Find Lacking Somehow

* Wraith.  Has more depth than I've given her credit for, but not much more; it's often hard to find time to play around with an Infrared Eyepiece or Smoke Bombs when you could just blast for 8 with a Targeting Utility Throwing Razor setup.  Also, her Stealth power goes to waste with tragic frequency; she'll probably be the first hero for whom I try one of the alternate promos.  Still, a very good newbie hero that I still have a soft spot for.

* Mr. Fixer. He's actually trending up rather well compared to my previous games, just not well enough to gain ground as other heroes also uptick.  The asymmetry between his Tools and Styles continues to bug me, as I draw the latter more than the former with truly absurd regularity, and I still tend to find him high-investment-for-medium-reward, similar to the Argent Adept in that regard, but less interesting about it.  However, he remains effective enough, and just at the right balance point between straightforwardness and complexity, for me to still appreciate him.

* Bunker.  As with Wraith, he suffers from the fact that some of his least interesting options are too effective not to emphasize, at the expense of his more clever potential.  And I really wish he had more HP and more soak, in order to qualify for the sobriquet "The Indestructible".  Still, he's one of the heroes I anticipate the most improvement to in future games; he could end up in Tier 3 one day if I grow tired of Expat and Haka and so forth, as he has an amount of depth which they tend to lack.

Tier Six - Played Grudgingly For the Sake of Balance

* Argent Adept.  I've come to understand him more or less fully by now, and this has greatly improved my fondness for him, but not greatly enough to escape the bottom sixth (once the game contains KNYFE and possibly Parse, we'll talk; both of those, from what little we know about them, have the potential to disinterest me).  He's extremely draw-dependent; I've had the "Arcane Cadence into Arcane Cadence" opening now, and it makes so huge a difference in his effectiveness as to leave me incredibly ennoyed he isn't guaranteed to get one in his starting hand.  Inspiring Supertonic is also an absurdly swingy card that gives his games a sea-change of effectiveness depending on whether or not it appears; overall, he's far too variable for my taste, and I still think is maximum potential is nowhere near as impressive as, say, Zero's or Haka's.  But he will likely continue to climb steadily in my esteem, even if he may never gain the momentum to exceed most other heroes.

* Fanatic.  Despite the whole Christian angle, I really want to like her.  Final Dive is one of the greatest cards ever, and the Divine Focus through Prayer of Desperation loop is magnificent...when I manage to play these cards in a game, I tend to enjoy her.  But she still has too many lame incremental one-shots like Brutal Censure, too many game-ending wrecking balls like End of Days and Wrathful Retribution (even as a singleton, that one nearly always seems to come up), and overall too little consistency to be worth putting up with her foibles.

* Legacy.  Still a dull cheerleader of a hero whose contributions to the game are seldom proactive enough for me (Take Down and Lead From The Front are great cards, but passively great, and that's not how I roll).  I like him best as a tank, but too many of his cards are situational at best, and his deck utterly fails as a Superman homage IMO, despite being a flavorfully interesting take on the concept.  I really need to try Young Legacy sometime, as she'll almost definitely be more my style, and Greatest Legacy might be even better, but the original is definitely just about played out for me.

More interesting (or at least I seem to think so) factoids from after my 40th Sentinels game, not counting the forum game that I jumped into after a couple of turns (which I'm not counting since I didn't pick out the villain and environment, nor did I choose my own Hero, and on top of that there were promos in it, which none of my other games have had).  As I become more aware of these statistical anomalies, it becomes less likely that they happened serendipitously, so eventually I'll stop bothering to observe them, but for now they still amuse me a bit.

* I've played every hero at least five times now (this requiring a somewhat painful night of back-to-back Nightmist games, neither of which was easy even apart from her involvement), and many are up to 8.  Haka still holds the record for fewest villains faced, at 4 different villains in his 6 games (tied with Nightmist, except she had one fewer game in total); besides the two 5s (Misty and Mr. Fixer), the only heroes never to repeat a villain are Bunker, Expatriette, Fanatic and Unity, with Uni being the only one to do this in seven games rather than six (many other heroes have faced seven villains in eight games).  This could easily be fixed by pitting the four of them against Omnitron, as all have gone up against him on either regular or advanced; counting regular and advanced versions of villains separately, however, they don't have a villain in common.

* Legacy is the only hero to have never repeated an Environment in eight games.  In the same number, Chrono-Ranger has only visited four; I seem to have a compulsion to keep sending him to Silver Gulch or the Final Wasteland, strictly for flavor reasons.

* The only hero I have never gotten killed is Nightmist.  Visionary and Chrono-Ranger are tied for the most games they didn't die in (7 each).

* I am uniquely terrible with Mr. Fixer; his five games have included three losses and a concession due to impatience.  (However, two of his defeaters were Chairman and Matriarch, so it's not entirely his fault.)  Conversely, not one of the games which included Omnitron-X was a defeat for the heroes, though he himself was incapacitated twice.  Expat and Fanatic currently have identical win/loss records - six games each, with four incapacitations and three team defeats.

* Fixer and Nightmist have still never been in a five-player game, not that this is incredibly strange since they've been in only five games period.  The same distinction is more peculiar on Unity, given that she's played seven times (and her eighth game is reserved for Freedom Six, so it'll remain true even then).  Absolute Zero and Fanatic remain ignorant of three-player games, and Ra has managed to get in eight games without ever being in a four-hero group, despite my playing that number roughly 45% of the time (three heroes is about 35% and five approximately 20, as I find threes much easier but tend to oscillate between fives and threes, with fours thus close to half of the total).

I have greatly changed my playstyle since I first started playing, I was a cautious player, always trying to get set up and win a war of attrition.  I've had so much more success since I've abandoned that and go for the all out win, damn the torpedoes playstyle that fits me so much better.  The win percentage uptick could be just because my brain works better the second way.

I say this because you commented you haven't had visionary die.  I have the exact opposite experience, Visionary dies so much when I play her, but normally she has turned the game before she goes.  Her whole ridiculously overpowered mental goddess with a time bomb in her head feeds that side of me.  Maybe it is the Quaker background in me, but sacrificing yourself to win is an awesome way to go out.  Probably why I like Fanatic so much too, she is all about the win, whether she is around for it or not, and both characters I do really well as when I ignore the health and just go for the juggular.  

Well, once in eight games.  Not at all in the first six, but eventually the streak had to break.

Her whole ridiculously overpowered mental goddess with a time bomb in her head feeds that side of me.  Maybe it is the Quaker background in me, but sacrificing yourself to win is an awesome way to go out.

The only ways I can think of for Visi to kill herself are with Brain Burn and Wrest the Mind, and the former is only useful in some matchups and only barely so in many of those.  Wrest, you could deal yourself a ton of damage with that, but usually I find that there are mooks around which don't even survive the first hit.  My best time ever Wresting someone was when I did it to a slightly damaged version of Char - he was hitting the villain anyway, but he lived long enough to hit him two more times for a total of 18 damage, and Visi had damage reduction so she took only 4.  I've never managed to get the Wrest + Divergence combo set up in order to really tank her HP.

Probably why I like Fanatic so much too, she is all about the win, whether she is around for it or not.

I would say that my six Fanatic games bear this out, except that Expatriette has the exact same percentages and they play nothing alike.

I like Mental Divergence a whole lot, I like Using TtE on myself to lesson damage to myself from WtM, but usually end up reducing it to the target as well, so I can keep them around.  I esp. love good damage at villain end turn, since once your victim is the oldest target on the villain's team you get to act after new cards are played but before they get to act, it is wicked.  I also tend to get lowest hp status and end up paying for that.

Also I mean she dies a lot when the heroes win, and by that I mean she is one of the few who I tend to lose when the heroes still win.

New factoid:  As of today, I have been defeated at least once in every Environment except the Final Wasteland.  There is something slightly wrong about that being the only place where I have a perfect winning record.  I will discuss other factoids of my "third age" after I reach the 54-game mark, at which I would be projected to have played 3 games against every villain (in actuality this was impossible; I have 2 against some and 4 against others, but have avoided exceeding that range).

Also, the last of my three games today (all three-heroers, and all miserable defeats, two of them regular games against Shattered Timelines villains and once on Advanced against a core-set one) marks the first time in eleven games that Omnitron-X has ever lost a game within my sight (even the one time someone else played him in a game I was in, he was instrumental in our victory).  Even in defeat, he held out far longer than the other heroes...my impression of him has steadily gone from "weird and slightly awkward character who never seems to do anything off a single card play" to "nigh-unstoppable juggernaut that gets deadlier with every passing turn".  Clearly, I have a particular talent for his playstyle, without really expecting it.  Conversely, I seem to be consistently awful with Fanatic and Absolute Zero; I like playing the latter despite apparently stinking at it, and one of my usual co-players IRL has had a great deal of success with the former, but both have lost five out of the nine games I've played with them, and only survived in three and two games respectively.  (And come to think of it, one of AZ's four wins was a five-hero match with Legacy against Baron Blade, while another other was the Dreamer game where the heroes all died except Fanatic, and then she pulled an End of Days to kill all the projections and win, and a third was the fight against Miss Information which properly speaking I should have lost...I can't remember whether the remaining victory actually had anything to do with AZ himself, but if so, it still makes only one game against an actually-dangerous opponent where he participated in a properly earned team success.)

I now have all heroes within 2 plays of each other for probably the first time ever (or at least since the numbers were 5 and 3; they are now 9 for Nightmist and 11 for all but a handful of others who are at 10).  And the last name has been crossed off my "heroes who never die" list....Nightmist was the last survivor of three heroes taking on Miss Information on Advanced, and managed to batter her down to 7 HP before finally running out of cards to fuel her Amulet of Don't Make Me Kill Myself on turn 12 (or possibly even 13, as I frequently miscount).  It was the first game against Missy which I actually lost, although my first game with her was only a win because I misread a critical card in the heroes' favor...appropriately enough, I screwed up once in this game to the heroes' detriment, although the effect was probably corrected over the course of the game so it likely didn't actually matter.

Last night was my sixtieth game.  I debated selecting three heroes in that game such that, with a following game containing exactly the correct four heroes, I would have played every hero exactly 11 times.  But I chose not to restrict my hero selection quite that much, and instead am shooting to play everyone twelve times within the next several games.

In sixty games, it is projected that one should play every environment precisely five times; my actual results are extremely close to this.  Three environments have been done only four times (Tomb of Anubis and Pike Industrial because I had limited access to them and was less motivated to go out of my way than for their expansion counterparts, and Time Cataclysm just because I found it intensely difficult), and three others have occurred six times (Megalopolis for its inherently generic and newbie-friendly nature, The Block because I consider it a "safe" place to fight battles I consider difficult, and Insula Primalis for both reasons as well as an unexpected randomizer result.)  The 61st game is currently in progress, and will boost the Final Wasteland to 6th-play status as well.

I'm not too sure I'd ever refer to Megalopolis as "newbie-friendly", what with those Hostage Situations, Papparazzi, and Traffic Pile-Ups...

Those are actually a point in favor of the newbies understanding the game (not necessarily winning it, of course, although an easy villain on non-Advanced typically makes that probable anyway).  By skipping a phase, they briefly avoid the cognitive load associated with playing that phase; one of the best ways to speed up the learning process is to decrease the number of decision trees that must be mastered at one time.  And skipping a draw phase means being exposed to fewer new cards (though not none; you'll still see a new villain card for instance), so that also diminishes the learning curve.  But the ultimate trump card in Megalopolis's favor is Rooftop Combat, since it basically turns the Environment deck off altogether, possibly for several turns, and thus reduces the distraction of having to pay attention to more than just the villain.  Once the players are experienced, Megalopolis begins to be boring and frustrating, but to the newbie, it's the best Environment for simplifying the choices they must face in ignorance, letting them concentrate on mastering the new concepts one or two at a time.

(Of course, ease of play is only a point in favor of a newbie game; raw cool factor is another one, and so I might well use Insula Primalis for a newbie environment; everybody loves lava and dinosaurs.)

Rooftop Combat is certainly a (usually) helpful card due to its shutdown of the environment deck, provided the villain doesn't have so many damaging cards out that the damage bonus doesn't add up to something tremendous. Once we had it come up in the first round against the Dreamer, which was just epic as it meant we had a damage bonus to kill all the projections and could completely ignore the environment deck for the entire game :D.

Personally I would say that having to skip certain phases (which would keep changing as you get rid of one card only for a different one to come up and make you skip something else instead) would probably be confusing, especially for someone who hadn't had enough time to learn the turn phases just yet. I'd prefer to learn what it was I could do and get the hang of it before something started teling me I couldn't do one or more of the things. Still, people differ, so I'm sure there are those who wouldn't be too bothered by it…though there is the other matter of that having to keep skipping phases (if you keep drawing those kind of cards round after round so there's always something you can't do) is basically giving the villain a huge advantage and a game you might otherwise have won without too much trouble can become a rather swift and horrible wipe due to the fact that you couldn't get yourselves going enough to take down whatever the villain is putting out. I've had this happen in games and I reckon it'd be really frustrating to a new player - "Okay so you're playing Ra because he's pretty straightforward and just nukes stuff…except on this turn you can't play any cards so you can't put out that lovely Staff of his…okay, this round you now can't use any base powers so you can't use your now-boosted Pyre skill…and now you can't draw cards so that Living Conflagration is actually now worse than your base power…" and so on. Worse if multiple you-can't-do-that-thing cards are out at once, but hopefully if you're showing a newbie the game you're not going up against someone like the Chairman where that's more likely to happen ;).

My newbie environment of choice is Insula Primalis. Did it on Monday, in fact, when showing a friend the game for the first time. Baron Blade in Insula Primalis. I playe as Legacy and Visionary, so as to give damage buffs (and explain the Nemesis mechanic) and keep Blade's deck under control (good thing I did - the remaining two Mobile Defence Platforms were right next to each other within a couple of cards of the top) without ending up doing loads of damage and risking "taking over" the game. I gave Ra to my friend because as mentioned above, I find him straightforward and you can do All of the Things (ie benefit via both one-shots and ongoings, plus you even have one equipment card) whilst nuking the crap out of everything :). By the end of the (victorious) game Ra was buffed by Galvanise, Inspiring Presence, Imbued Fire, and two Obsidian Fields. He didn't manage to get the Staff out (though had a Summon Staff but didn't get a chance to use it before the game ended), but as he was already doing eight damage with his Blazing Inferno this didn't matter hugely, considering who we were fighting :). We then fought Ambuscade with different heroes and thrashed him too - I could have got the killing blow but I let my friend do it and he strung a load of cards together (was playing TLT though used Research Grant rather than the base power for every round except one) to take out pretty much all the environment targets before finishing off Ambuscade himself. And he's coming round in a couple of hours to play some more :).

I haven't used Megalopolis with any face-to-face players for the very reasons Ameena mentions. The thing that I find important to drum into new players is the Play-Power-Draw sequence, and skipping one of those phases (and then potentially skipping a different one next turn) I beleive would interfere with getting that basic principle down.

Besides, I'm trying to show off how fun this game is. It's much less fun if you can't do all of the cool stuff you're supposed to be able to do...

Insula Primalis all the way for me.

Insula is one of the best environment decks, it doesn't mess with you, it just tries to eat you.  I can respect that.

Since we are talking about Megaopolis, let me tell you about my quick game last night.

Advanced Dawn. In Megaopolis. Team was Tempest Haka and Dark Visionary.

Dawn started the game with Blood and Tears. Anvil was the first card played.

Megaopolis' play order was as follows: Hostage Situation, Traffic Pile Up, Hostage Situation, Impending Casualty

After the second Hostage Situation, Sweat showed up.

Dawn never got touched, no citizens ever got put down, and it ended in 4 rounds with no hero having cards in hand.

Megaopolis shut me down hard. I had to do a rematch with the same setup in which I ended up squeaking out a win (thank you Brain Burn!).

Ouch. Nasty! We once had a game versus Dawn where she had Sweat and Tears in play after the first turn, meaning we only had half our starting cards on our first turns and never managed to get set up to the extent that we could really start doing anything. Another time we were in Megalopolis against…someone (may even have been Dawn again) and were doing okay - we all had reasonable stuff available, the villain wasn't being a massive threat, and none of us were particularly near to being dead. Then the environment chained all three different horrible cards turn after turn after turn, for ages, so even though we were getting rid of them every round we were repeatedly shut down in various phases of our turns and subsequently lost the game. Had Megalopolis not done what it did, we were well on track for a relatively easy win (assuming the villain didn't later do anything disastrous for us, but since I can't remember for sure who it was, I don't know how likely that would've been).

Dawn has produced some legendary games in my time - my very first battle against her, she opened on Blinding Blast, so we were all down two cards on turn 1, and by the end of the game, my decision to keep Return with the Dawn around, and thus render Citizens Sweat and Tears immortal, had resulted in Tachyon being completely neutralized (no cards in hand, could not draw enough cards to keep any in hand, no Ongoings in play) and Ra reduced to nothing but his base power.  Only Wraith had Equipment on the table and was able to directly slice Dawn into pieces 8 HP at a time.  Dawn never flipped that game, and experience has taught me that the game is much easier (and more importantly quicker) when that's the case...she's one of the few heroes that I think is easier to fight with 3 heroes than 5, because she gets fewer Citizens out and thus it's more likely to be safe for you to just ignore them.  Plus her innate attack deals less damage, and if she does flip she won't stay flipped for long.  I believe I once had a solitaire game against Dawn which took seven hours to play out (admittedly, my attention was partially on the Internet, so it shouldn't have taken that long, but the actual play part was probably not less than three hours).  So much waiting, so much math...it's just easier not to let her flip, if you can afford that luxury.

We just make sure we have one Citizen (usually Spring) around before we make our fifth kill. Then again, with H=3, we don't have to have any more than that so I suppose it's easier. So generally we don't have to worry about her staying flipped because of the whole flip-and-insta-flip back thing :).

Play a 5-hero game on Advanced sometime.  Someverylongtime.

If I've kept count correctly, the game I just finished was #67 in my time playing SOTM, and it also marks the moment at which I have played every hero exactly twelve times.  So it's time for more factoids from my datasheet.

* Absolute Zero still holds the death record - he's only survived to the end of the game four times.  However, he's been involved in victories for his team half the time; the record for game losses involving a single hero remains with Fanatic, who (despite my friend Chris's record of winning games with her) has only helped to win six of the games she's been in, and only one of those involved her dying - her other six failures were a gift she chose to share with the group.  At this point I'm forced to wonder if I'm subconsciously sabotaging her.  (Expatriette continues to be tied with Fanatic for second-most deaths, but has won the game once more while dying in the process.)

* On the other end of the spectrum, Nightmist continues to hold the best survival record, having only been incapacitated in one game.  She and Omnitron-X have both won all but one of the games they've played in!  (Omnix died in two of these victories, but I've also seen another player run him to good effect, while I'm the only player in my circle of IRL friends that has tried Nightmist.  This doesn't include members of the forum games crew in games that I wasn't involved in, of course, any more than it includes RL games from before I started playing.)  Visionary and Scholar have only ever actually lost the game once, dying 2 and 3 times respectively, but they have also each been involved in one game which was conceded as a loss, after they were the only hero who survived and had clearly no hope of achieving a turnaround (this is different from conceding a game just out of lack of desire to continue it, without recognizing it as a win or a loss).  Interestingly, Visionary's concession comes from the same game in which Nightmist died...all the deck-control both heroines wield wasn't enough to turn that game around.

* The Ennead is the only villain I have not fought at least three times.

* Plague Rat is the only villain who I have not played three heroes against.  Akash'Bhuta is the only one I haven't played four heroes against.  (Multiple five-hero games are still in my future.)

* Iron Legacy has beaten me three times.  Spite has frustrated me into a concession (a not-win/loss one, that is) once, but never actually incapped one of my heroes, nor has Plague Rat or Akash'Bhuta, all in exactly three games.  So IL has defeated all my heroes (except once the Scholar) in as many games as the other three have failed to kill even one.

* I have played in every environment six times, except for Rook City, Pike Industrial, the Time Cataclysm, and the Tomb of Anubis (the latter is the only one that remains at just four plays).  The Realm of Discord is the only one where I have lost three games, and abandoned a fourth in disgust; I have won only two games there, as well as two of the four in the Tomb, making IR clearly the site of my greatest frustrations.  The Final Wasteland is the safest place in the world as far as I can tell; uniquely among environments, I've never lost a game there, and only had one hero even incapped.

* Of the 91 possible combinations of two heroes, the only ones I have yet to see in a game involving myself are Mr. Fixer + Tempest (ironic, given that art has shown the latter two together on several occasions), Mr. Fixer + Bunker, Bunker + Scholar, Omnitron-X with either Haka or Wraith, Wraith + Chrono-Ranger, and Absolute Zero with either Argent Adept or Chrono-Ranger.  (I seem to be prone to repeating combinations with these specific heroes for some reason.)  In addition to these eight matches I haven't seen are eleven where I have not played both heroes, totaling 72 of the possible combinations which I have explored.  (The number of combinations of two- and three-hero groups with each other or with additional single heroes is...rather larger, and I won't be making significant headway on it anytime soon.)

Wouldn't you need to have played an even number of games in order to have played everyone twelve times (and does the fact that there's also an even number of heroes make a difference)? Or does the fact that you play solo games with multiple heroes make it add up? My Maths is rubbish, just so you know ;).

You can vary the number of heroes in each game; you could do them all once in 5 games, for example, by playing three fours and two threes, or in 4 games by playing two fours and two fives. Some solo games and some games with people mean that a game can encompass anything from one to five heroes, which means making the numbers work is rather easy to do :D

Yeah, I just meant Envisioner said he'd played every hero twelve times, implying him personally, not someone else in a game with him. But yeah, I suppose there are solo games where you count as playing everyone so you could play an odd number of heroes and still have the game total be an even number. Or the other way round. Um. Or whatever. I think I'm just confusing myself, lol.

Games have varied between three and five heroes, with me playing between one and five heroes within games (two has only happened once, in my second game ever).  The number of players is immaterial in this context.

It turns out I miscounted somehow...I've played The Wraith only 11 times, and the Argent Adept 13.  This is the exact opposite of appropriate, since Wraith was the very first hero I played, and Argent was the one I saved for last to try (although I got used to him faster than I did to Nightmist, so she was played much less than him until recently), so I am now committed to playing a series of additional games to correct the total.  Said series must consist of at least four games (and I won't want it to be more, since I've already played six games in two days and am feeling a mild degree of burnout); during these, I must play Wraith twice (and Argent not at all), but I just played her two games ago!  So I've decided that this is a momentous occasion upon which I shall finally try out a promo hero version, using the images from BGG (and since Wraith is one of only three heroes who has double promos, it's fitting for me to start with her, so that I can eventually "loop" the promos as well with minimal redundancy).  Since they don't have an image of the incap sides for the Freedom Six on BGG, I can only use Rook City Wraith, but since the Play-Different-Environments challenge of the weekend is over, and I'm no longer committed to contributing to that, I'm reasonably free to select an Environment specifically for the sake of RCW's ability to interact with it.

Uniform 13-ness has been achieved as of game 71.  Of course, it's not quite actually uniform, because most of these plays are solitaire, so my next task will be to balance my with-actual-people games, so that I've gotten a real teamwork experience for each hero.

Took most of a week off from playing SOTM, but last Friday and this Friday involved three more games between them.  My next game will be the 75th, not counting forum games that started but haven't finished.  As my heroes move into "played 14x each" status one by one, with the online games preparing to make that 15 for the two heroes involved, I updated my database again and began looking at new, interesting categories to put my heroes into.  Here are my observations.

* Absolute Zero has played 13 games and only survived to the end in 4 of them, making him my "dyingest" hero.  However, my "losingest" hero is Fanatic, who has only died 8 times, but only helped her team to win one of those games while incapacitated...thusly, half of her games were losses.  Tempest splits the difference; he's been incapped in half his games...however, he's only actually won six games, because he's the only hero with whom I've quit a game twice before he was killed (once by making a rules error which mandated that I forfeit the game, and once by my simply losing patience with the game and abandoning it without resolution).

* Nightmist died for the second time last night (it was the Advanced Ennead vs. five heroes, so a loss is hardly surprising, but it's particularly insulting that Nightmist was the very first casualty, not to mention that she partly caused the defeat by casting Oblivion twice while the heroes had no protection against the blast).  She is still the only hero to have sustained no more than two incaps, making her the "livingest" hero.  However, Omnitron-X holds the title of my "winningest" hero, having lost only one game, even if he didn't survive to see two of his team's victories.  (Scholar is almost tied with him, having only actually lost one game, but conceded another one as a near-stalemate, in which he was more likely to eventually lose due to a moment of bad luck.  In both cases, they've had 13 games and so might not preserve the title after their next..currently Nightmist and Omnitron are tied for highest number of games won, but Misty had one more game total, so the title defaults to Omnix unless he loses his next game.)

* Mr. Fixer has fought the most different villains (13 in 14 games...Matriarch was the only repeat, and that was on normal once and Advanced once), while Ra has faced the fewest (just 8 in 13 games; everyone else has had at least 10 different foes, so Ra's 14th outing cannot possibly remove this "most incomplete" status from him).

* Haka specializes in Advanced matches more than any other hero I've played...a whopping 8 of them!  He is tied with Bunker and Nightmist for the most villains fought on both regular and Advanced (3 apiece).  Fanatic is unique in having never fought a single villain on both difficulty modes (she's fought Warlord Voss twice, but both times on Advanced, and Iron Legacy twice, who I've only ever faced on regular...I'm beginning to suspect I know why she loses half her games).  On the other end of the spectrum, Tempest has faced advanced villains only three times (tied with Ra in this respect, except that Tempest has had one more game..so I will deliberately be making Ra's next game Advanced, and in fact I've decided that will happen tonight), making his mere six victories even more pathetic.  (I would characterize him as a strong hero, so this poor performance is tragic and puzzling.)

* Absolute Zero and the Scholar are closest to having visited every environment, with only three more to go.  I plan on deliberately resolving the tie tonight, probably in the Scholar's favor, just for flavor reasons (and to try and address AZ's uniquely terrible performance as compared to Mr. Rhodes's excellence).  Conversely, of the heroes who I've tended to play again and again in the same environment, Tempest takes the cake - 14 different games, all of them set in Insula Primalis, Megalopolis, the Block, Wagner Mars Base, Silver Gulch, or the Realm of Discord.  (Again, I'm beginning to suspect I know why he's been having a hard time.)

* After seven games each in the core set environments (and The Block), I have almost but not quite gotten every single hero to visit one of them.  I have personally played 15 different heroes in Wagner Mars as of last night, so one more game could make it a hat trick, even with only three heroes.  The Block is close to this status, except that one of the 15 heroes there was not played by me, but by another player during one of my games.  The Realm of Discord is the runner-up among environments I've visited five or six times, as I've seen 14 heroes there.

* It may not be a coincidence since I've played more games there period, and a lot of them with many heroes, and often against particularly deadly villains (I keep hoping that Meteor Storm will protect me, even though Villainous Weaponry is more likely).  But for the moment, Wagner Mars has killed more of my heroes than any other environment - twelve of them!  Rook City is the runner up, and could easily surpass it in one more game.  Realm of Discord is the one I appear to be worst in, with three defeats and a concession out of six total games, although Tomb of Anubis has also killed me three times in just five games.  The Final Wasteland remains my "happy place"; only Bunker has ever died there.  Ruins of Atlantis has also been good to me, with only one three-hero defeat; the Block and Megalopolis have the same won/loss ratio over 7 games, but have killed more heroes in the process.

* Visionary is the only hero who has played all 12 possible positions (excluding the Freedom Six game, which I have done once).

* Haka has never played second in turn order in his 14 games.  This was largely accidental - sometimes I couldn't remember that he was waiting for a chance at position 2, while other times I gave it to another hero who wanted it more.  I was uniquely stupid in setting up my game last night, as I could only remember one position I wanted to fill (Unity playing last in a 5er, and even there, I would have preferred to do 4th); had I checked my records, Fixer and Nightmist and Haka could all have crossed some positions off their todo list.

I have stumbled across the 100-game mark, and am approaching another milestone - because there are currently 12 Environments and 18 villains, the next opportunity to achieve exact parity among them all comes at game 108, when each villain can have been fought exactly six times, and each environment has been fought in exactly nine times.  My fifty-fourth game came early enough in my career that I wasn't even close, so this time I'm making an intentional effort.  Already I've managed to bungle the effort slightly...I have visited the Realm of Discord once too often, and thus will not be exactly lined up, but I can get quite close.  Villains are also lopsided, because I gravitate toward the easier ones and away from the most difficult (both for my own sake, to avoid frustrating experiences, and because I'm frequently teaching the game to newbies and trying to spare them too punitive a first impression).  Still, I will be intentionally choosing my next 8 games to try and balance the scales as nearly as possible, so here is me calibrating my efforts.

Games vs ?:

Games vs Omnitron:  5

Games vs Grand Warlord Voss: 6

Games vs Baron Blade:  7 (once vs. Mad Bomber)

Games vs Citizen Dawn:  6

Games vs The Chairman: 5

Games vs Plague Rat: 6

Games vs The Matriarch:  6

Games vs Spite: 6 (once vs. Agent of Gloom)

Games vs Akash'Bhuta: 5

Games vs Apostate:  5

Games vs Gloomweaver:  6 (once vs. Skinweaver)

Games vs The Ennead:  4

Games vs Iron Legacy:  4 (one was a not-strictly-legal 6-hero game)

Games vs Kismet:   6

Games vs La Capitan:  5

Games vs The Dreamer:  6 (though one was a rematch)

Games vs Miss Information:  5

Games in Insula Primalis:  8

Games in Megalopolis:  8

Games in Ruins of Atlantis:  9

Games in Wagner Mars Base:  8

Games in Rook City:  8

Games in Pike Industrial Complex:  8

Games in Tomb of Anubis:  8 (though one was a rematch)

Games in Realm of Discord:  10

Games in Time Cataclysm:  7 (though one was an experimental PVP match with no villain, and another was a game so fast that only one environment card was played)

Games in The Block:  9

Games in The Final Wasteland:  8

Games in Silver Gulch 1883:  9

So my plan is to have my next eight games be against Omnitron, Chairman, Akash, Apostate, the Ennead, Iron Legacy, La Capitan and Miss Info (and except possibly for Chairman, Missy and Apostate, these will all need to be Advanced games), and to situate them all in different environments, visiting each one except for Atlantis, Discord, the Block and 1883.  This will leave me with only five variances: Discord and Blade once too often, and Ennead, Iron Legs, and Time Cataclysm once neglected (unless I decide to play TC twice in this series at some other setting's expense, in deference to how it was sort of shorted a couple of times...but this is unlikely, because I just plain don't like it much).  Blade turns up so often because he's the ideal newbie villain, and Discord is a personal favorite Environment, although its crossing the ten-line was an oversight on my part; failing to fight the Ennead as often as other villains was also a goof on my part, because I enjoy them tremendously, but the avoidance of Iron Legacy was deliberate (he is still the only villain I've never faced on Advanced, though I plan to make it happen soon).

Given your dislike of playing against Spite is he going to be retired from these efforts going forward?

No, but I will definitely be playing his Agent of Gloom version almost exclusively.  The other villains that have promo versions, I will try to do roughly half and half, or 1/3 promo and 2/3 normal, or somesuch...but with Spite it'll be more like 2/3 promo and 3/12 non-advanced original.  That would give me roughly 108 more games before I'd have to deal with his Advanced version again, and by then I can put together a team specifically to try the nigh-impossible feat of outracing his healing so that he's beatable on side A.  Otherwise, it's just a pointless slog, and I've had my fill of those.  (Citizen Dawn is the other villain who I've gotten my fill of one permutation...I won't play another five-hero Advanced game against her anytime soon.  But she is still one of my favorite villains in general, so I'll just hold the hero count down if playing Advanced games.)

Scratched Omnitron and Tomb of Anubis off the list last night in a game with four newbies; I was really hoping I could get some of the people I've already introduced to the game to join me in one of the Advanced fights, but then I got roped into an Arkham Horror which ate up the rest of the night, so it didn't happen.  I figure I'm probably going to have to do at least one or two solo games in order to finish this series up, though my usual playgroup can probably be persuaded to take on some of the others...still, I need to finish the set fairly soon, so that I'll regain the ability to do newbie-friendly games.  (Currently I have only Apostate left as a relatively easy villain, and we fought him in the previous newbie game, so those players would probably rather not see him again right away.)  I guess Akash'Bhuta is also an option; she's certainly daunting with all that HP, but not exactly difficult.  (Like Omnitron, half the time she just sits there being massive and letting you beat on her.)

I am proud to announce that as of the 7th of this month, I have been involved in games featuring the nemesis of every villain which has one pre-Vengeance.  It took me 103 games to happen to have Fanatic meet Apostate, but the set is now complete, unless promo versions are counted separately - and even then, as of yesterday when I introduced Nightmist to Skinwalker Gloomy, I am missing only a Cosmotron vs. O-X game (having not done a full game against Cosmic Omnitron at all).

My 108-game series of "(almost) every villain exactly six times, in (almost) every Environment exactly nine times" is now complete except for an in-progress game on this forum, and so it's time to mention a few more stats...they're decreasing in relevance even as I'm decreasing in free time, so I'll make this brief.

* with 16 plays for Unity and Fanatic, 19 for Chrono-Ranger, Fixer, and all the male core-set heroes who don't wear power-armor, and 17 or 18 for each of the remaining heroes, Expatriette is by far my "dyingest" hero, having gotten incapacitated in 12 out of 18 games.  I really don't know what I'm doing wrong.  She also holds the title of "losingest", though not by as massive a margin - just 9 games.  Absolute Zero and Argent Adept are the runners-up in losingness, with 10 deaths each (Argent in one more total games than AZ), and Fanatic's low total game count is probably all that keeps her from equalling or exceeding Expat's loss count, having died nine times and only helped win one of those games.  Argent is also at 8 game losses, while Zero is tied with Tempest and Fixer for 7.

* Nightmist has died only three times, and each of these corresponded to a game loss; Wraith has 4 incaps and 4 losses in the same 18 games.  Scholar has been incapped four times, but only lost one of those games; however he has conceded two other games as losses while remaining active (once because of a rules snafu that made me abandon the game, and once because he was trapped in an indefinite stalemate which he would eventually lose due to having to reshuffle his deck).  Chrono-Ranger, Haka and Ra also have excellent win records, with only five games lost out of 19; Haka died in 7 of these games and the other two in 6.

* Haka and Tachyon have fought in every environment except Pike Industries; the Scholar has fought everywhere except in Rook City (which is also the one environment I haven't visited a ninth time, while Realm of Discord has gotten ten games due to an error in my recordkeeping).

* Visionary had played every possible position (first, second, third, fourth or fifth in a game with three, four, or five heroes) even before the Nemesis Challenge occurred (which I think was in January); she was joined in that accomplishment by Chrono-Ranger during the Challenge and by the Scholar earlier this month.

* Deviations from my six-games-per-villain schedule are as follows:  +1 game vs. Baron Blade, +1 vs. Spite, +2 vs. Gloomweaver (all of these due to promo games; the last SkinnyGloom battle is technically outside the 108-game series), while -1 vs. Akash'Bhuta, -1 vs. the Ennead, -1 vs. Iron Legacy, -1 vs. normal Spite, the yet-to-be-completed game against La Capitan, and one game which experimented with a PVP format and didn't include a villain at all.  It's ironic that Abby and the Ennead are two of my three favorite villains, but I never made quite enough time for plays against them, while I got seven games in against each of the lacking Baron and Spite, and a whopping eight versus the wimpy and awkward Gloomweaver (though this is largely due to my playing two games against him in sequence last night, with the victory over regular Gloomy being such a landslide that I proposed a sequel against his more difficult version).

* Despite the fact that I almost exclusively play him on Advanced, I have never seen regular Gloomweaver flip, and only in my first game did we beat him by destroying three Relics.  The rest of the time, even if melee or projectile damage is unavailable, he's easily beaten senseless without waiting around for the Relics to turn up, or risking a Vast Following returning them.

* All but one of my five games against Akash have been advanced, and that's likely to remain true in future games.  Conversely, I've fought the Chairman six times but only dared to go advanced once; the same is true of the Matriarch, but I'll be more likely to fix that in a future game.  Iron Legacy has also had only one advanced game, but that's out of five total, and for the moment the same is true of La Capitan, though a second advanced and sixth total game is pending.  For the remaining villains I have generally gone half-and-half, with Voss and Gloomy erring on the side of Advanced and Plague Rat on the not, and Spite and the Ennead have had five total games, two of them advanced.

* Ambuscade has been beaten in all six of my games against him, and Spite has also never beaten me, though he did elicit a concession due to a rule goof.  Iron Legacy and the Matriarch have each racked up four wins against me, with the Chairman, Dreamer, Miss Info and for the moment La Capitan all sitting at three (although last night's Chairman game might not have been a win if not for a rules snafu, and my first against Miss Info almost certainly wouldn't).  Citizen Dawn, Grand Warlord Voss, and the Ennead have two wins each against me, and Apostate has one win and a game that was scrapped out of impatience and confusion.  That leaves five villains who have yet to beat me twice, with all except Abby having had at least six chances.  Off the top of my head, Miss Info and the Ennead are the villains who I have always beaten on non-Advanced and never done so on Advanced, though this may be true of others that I haven't double-checked as yet (but probably not), and only in the Ennead's case am I fairly certain the victories were legitimate.

* Fun fact - in my four games against promo villains (not on advanced mode, but still), I have not had a hero incapacitated.  Of regular villains, only Spite is comparably ineffective at killing my guys, though of course that's over more than twice as many encounters.  Every villain except Spite has killed at least three of my heroes, while La Capitan holds the record for the most different heroes who have died against her while under my control, closely followed by Iron Legacy and the Dreamer.

I noticed you mentioned your distain for Fanatic in a few of your posts due to her "Christianiness." If you read her story, it is losely based on some aspects of the Christian faith, but by no means is it even an example of Christianity. If anything a christian could be offended by the character (her desire for vengence rather than forgiveness). Why are you offended by it? Is Ra a nuasance as well? I'm trying to understand your need for mentioning your contempt for a fictional character who bares some christian iconography and speeks of punishment and absolution. Minus the cross, is that not what all the heroes wish to dish out.

Sorry, I was just passing through and saw you had such contempt. Have a swell day. Peace.

Well, there are reasons he was banned (and the ban publicly mentioned for two of his account names) ...


Did Christopher just...

Did Christopher just resurrect Envisioner?






There's two people there. I think Edwin's been resurrected as well.

I have 98 jellybeans.

Which 2 ran away?

A yellow one and a purple one. Pineapple and blackberry, I think.