Incapacitation too powerful?

Having recently discovered this game due to a friend of mine bringing it over when we get together to play board games I just had to get my own copy and I'm loving it to death. That being said I have yet to lose to a villain, mostly due to some very cheap shennanigans on the part of incapacitated heroes.

For example my friends and I decided to take on Iron Legacy expecting a tough fight or to get wrecked at the worst. Instead we were basically immortal. Once Bunker went down we just used his incapacitated ability to cycle Mr Fixer's Grease Gun card into his hand every time it went into the trash. We were completely from all damage, every single turn. Bunker was way more useful dead then alive. In fact as soon as an incredibly powerful card is drawn Bunker should immediately try and get himself killed. It's true that he could have never drawn the card, but The Scholar has a very similar one and realy once the card is drawn and used once Iron Legacy lost the fight, we couldnt be hurt by the environment or him at all. We didnt need to do anything but just sit back and wait for our better cards to come while we ignored everything every turn

By far the most rdiculous example though is in a recent fight against The Chairman. his minions had us on the ropes, we were completely unprepared having never fought him before. we all wnet down at about the same time aside from Mr Fixer. Then we noticed something, Tempest's ability made everyone immune to one type of damage for an entire round and aside from about 3 entire cards in The Chairman's deck he can only deal melee damage. So 1 hp fixer just beat the Chairman down from about full health to dead while being completely immune to anything The Chairman could do. Bunker was there so once again we could have infinitely cycled the "completely invincible for a turn" card but we didnt even need to.

I guess the point I'm getting at is that most heroes have a draw a card and play a card power along with one insanely powerful ability. Has anyone had similar experiences? Im considering house ruling something along the lines of only being able to use each incapacitated ability once

Team Leader Tachyon (Freedom 6 promo card) lets you shuffle a trash into a deck.

That lets you flip Akash'bhuta or The Matriarch at will.

There are some that really wreck certain games.

We have used a rule that you have to use each incap once before you can reuse one, so the really sick ones get limited to once every three rounds.  It does pretty well.

Tempest, Bunker Engine of War, and Ra Incap with Wraith at 1 hp is how my gf and I beat Iron Legacy once. Because IL has only a few non melee damage and tempest has immune to one damage type, bunker destroys ongoing, and Ra destroys environment cards So yes.  Incaps can be overly breaking of a game, but at that point you're already got at least one incapacitated hero, you're probably on the ropes.

You do realize that an Incapped hero picks one of the three options, don't you? All three don't fire off.

yeah I am a aware of that. I was just mentioning it as a "why use these other two when I can make everyone immune to a certain type of damage for a turn" kind of way

An incapacitated hero doesn't play a card or use a power, so they are intentionally given extremely strong incap abilities, because that's all they're good for.  It's true that some of them are VERY potent, but this just acts as a balancing factor in the game.  If you haven't lost yet, just give it time.  Even the most potent incap abilities are only sometimes the correct solution for the problem at hand.

If you think the villains are too easy, try fighting the Chairman (arguably even harder than Iron Legacy), the Advanced Ennead (about triple as hard as the non-Advanced version, and a heck of a lot of fun), The Dreamer with five heroes, or Advanced Citizen Dawn with three.  Make sure that you're selecting heroes at least semi-randomly, rather than picking ones you know will be strong in the match (whether alive or dead).  Among the less-strong heroes are Expatriette, Bunker, Haka and situationally Unity or Absolute Zero (those last two are "break the game in half" heroes if played to greatest effect, but can be a bit fragile; the others, except perhaps Haka, are simply a bit on the weak side); if too many of your games feature Legacy, Wraith, Nightmist, Scholar, or Omnitron-X (let alone several of these), who are the likeliest candidates for "tier 1" heroes, then you're probably performing a bit above average in general, though any hero is particularly strong if played against a villain whose weaknesses match what they can do.  (Dead Tempest, for instance, is extremely strong against Iron Legacy in particular, since almost all of Tempest's damage is the same type...against Miss Information or Grand Warlord Voss, both of whom have two damage types on their own card and more on their minions, he's much less efficient.)

With experience, you'll see that the balance point is pretty close to where it ought to be.  Sometimes you get utterly destroyed by a seemingly weak villain, sometimes you faceroll the tough guys.  I doubt very much you'll stay undefeated for more than a dozen or so games.

Pretty much everything he said there is absolutely true. I recommend La Capitan -- she can really wreck your day, given the chance -- and the Vengeful 5, both on advanced. THAT will be a challenge for you.

Why the hell did I not think of Cappy when I was trying to think of an incredibly hard villain who wasn't officially a 4?  I settled for Citizen Dawn, but Cappy is definitely harder, especially with only 3 heroes.  (Try sinking the ship even WITH Legacy's help when you have only two teammates.)

Considering that I'm currently fighting her on this very forum, my failure to think of her in this context is deeply shameful.

To be fair La Capitain is the closest I've probably ever come to losing. We had five heroes and 3 of the people we played with were new to the game. We thought as difficulty 2 she would be a slight step up. Holy crap were we wrong. She just about steam rolled us with her crew and full healed at one point thanks to some insane combos but a combination of fanatic and Tachyon burst literally dropped over half of her HP in a single round. 15 damage from Tachyon twice plus Fanatic basically killing herself to do about 20 more damage. Still, La Capitan's crew might just be the strongest minions in the game. Her crew puts Voss' army to shame XD

also yeah we did fight The Chairman and again almost got steam rolled but once Tempest went down he just made Mister Fixer immune to melee damage and The Chariman could not hurt him, so he just pummeled him for six turns while at 1 hp. It was kind of sad really XD only like 3 cards in The Chairman's deck are non melee damage.

I had a terrible game against Matriarch last night. 4 heros all bit the dust on turn 3. Try her on advanced. Invincible Coherts and tons of ongoing destruction. Maybe I am missing the trick to her, but I almost never have an easy Matty game. Its always a brutal loss or a win by the skin of my teeth kinda thing.

i have the same experience with matty, every game is either hard won or a bitter defeat

if you want to loose a game definately try the dreamer with 5 weaker characters, my fiance and I got wreacked last night by her on advanced.

H = 3 and hefty DR make Matty a cake walk. Try it out.

The Dreamer in the Realm of Discord. Claustrophobic Delusions at the wrong time is really painful. Had a game a week ago that was cake walk in-the-bag until Claustrophobic hit the table followed by two Violent Nightmares (Dreamer was at 3 HP). That was pretty much a game-over when we couldnt get another distortion the next round (portal fiend). 

I think most of the point of the original thread wasn't about villain difficulty so mach as Incaps being too powerful.  I don't really know because the way my group plays we really try to keep everyone up (we just think its more fun for all players).  If one person goes down, sometimes we just stop unless we are only a turn or two away from victory. 

I do know that certain incaps really are ridiculous though.  Any villain with one main damage type is a joke with incap Tempest.

My group tends to be "end the fight, win or lose". Never give up. Never surrender.

Tempest's incap in the Enhanced Edition was actually nerfed from the original printing, if you can believe that

Difficulty 2 for La Capitan is almost certainly a misprint; it's never been confirmed but anyone who has played her and Kismet can tell that the two ought to be switched.  (Not that Kismet can't be devastating with the potential for huge bonuses to damage on both sides, but still, she has enough dead plays and little enough hero scaling that she compares very well to Plague Rat or Akash'bhuta.  A difficulty-3 villain, excepting the also-mismeasured Gloomweaver, should be reliably dangerous, not just occasionally so.)

True but those cards are The Contract and Hired Gun, so you will almost certainly see them.

Matty is one of the easier "hard" villains, though; she's possible to "solve" without too much trouble.  2 points of DR will make you invincible against her unless she has the damage-boosting Cohort in play.  If Scholar rocks double Flesh to Iron with Alchemical Redirection and the other heroes just play fodder to keep those in play (the Alchemical needs to keep getting replayed, but Scholar himself has recycling tech to help that happen), the Birds can be safely ignored, up until the moment they power a Grace Under Fire or a giant Get Out of the Way with Mortal Form to Energy.  Plus of course Tachyon has lots of tech to use against her, and any hero with even one point of DR has a huge advantage.  Tempest can set his Subwave to "projectile" and get down Otherworldly Resilience, that makes him immune to all but the cohort-boosted damage, though he has to refrain from Squalling.  Overall, she is definitely less hard than Iron Legacy and the Chairman.

Wow, what did he used to do?  (Someone once linked me to a spoiler of the original edition, and I foolishly didn't bookmark it…)

Ongoing from trash into play (as opposed to into hand as currently)

Fixer still puts an Equipment from the trash into play.  Is this powerful?  I don't believe I've ever played an incap turn as Fixer, usually the entire team dies when he's around.

Both of them are difficulty 2, i'm not so sure what exactly you would be accomplishing if you switch the difficulty of them.

He's amazing with Expat or Bunker.  Instead of playing an equip you discard it for gatling or shoot it wiht Omni, then have fixer put it into play for you.

Expat you can recycle ammo all day.

Fixer is also interesting in that he can destroy ongoings only when he's incapacitated.  Having Fixer go down first has saved me against Iron Legacy before.

I do think that incap abilities are supposed to be strong to help get your team back in the game, and to balance the fact that you can only do one thing a turn.  There's a 2-hero variant with H=3, two live heroes and one incapacitated hero at the start of the game, and I've found it to be actually stronger than regular H=3 half the time.  Unless you've got a villain/environment that gangs up on the lowest HP target a lot, most of your team is likely in the single digits by the time the incap abilities become available normally.  Getting them at the beginning of the game can potentially be just downright silly.

Apologies if I have something wrong here, but I'm confused as to how Grease Gun could be out for every single turn. It gets destroyed at the start of Mr. Fixer's turn, so there's no way for Bunker's incap ability to get it back there ready to be played again. Barring something involving IL destroying it and then Bunker going beforehand, I can only see it being out every other round, which still gives IL a chance to do some damage (or get out things like Demoralizing Presence, where the heroes damage themselves, or Vigilance, which would then pre-empt Grease Gun being played).

And it'd be interesting to hear which environment you were in, since sometimes damage can be dealt without coming from a target (Falling Statuary in Rook City, for example), therefore bypassing Grease Gun.

I don't mean to say that incap abilities can't come in very handy in certain situations, nor that you've got the rules wrong, but it would be helpful to clarify any such encounters.

Nah, not a problem Hotheart. We were fighting in Megalopolis and the environment couldnt hurt us either, Grease Gun disables all damage from all non hero sources and we also had The Scholars Infernal....something (played with a friend who has all the xpansions, dont have The Scholar in front of me) but it basically ALSO prevented IL from hurting us for a turn.

Offensive Transmutation (source: Scholar is my jam)

Ah, I see. And thanks for clarifying. In my experience, Megalopolis can be a real pain when it comes to stopping the heroes playing cards, making them discard, etc.

Sounds like you had some good fortune and set up a good strategy though!

Indeed! we were expecting to get stomped but we managed to pull it off. Iron Legacy is kind of a one trick pony though, the fight goes one way or the other and can be fairly easy depending on your incapped abilities. In my opinion La Capitan is by far the most fun and challenging to fight. She can steal your equipment and make it very hard to set up against her and her crew members are absolutely brutal.

Be aware that Grease Gun only stops TARGETS from dealing damage, it doesn't prevent ALL nonhero damage the same way Ground Pound does.  Damage from non-target sources will still get through.  Toxic Seaweed, Impending Casualty, Oxygen Leak, Miss Information's frontside, Trial of Fire, Falling Statuary, Chemical Explosions, etc. will all continue to deal damage.

oh so the damage has to come from a source to be negated? Would that include environmental targets like dinosaurs and other enemies? Or are they excluded as well?

Some of the rulebooks printed Kismet at difficulty 3.  This has been discussed before on these forums.

Interesting wrinkle to the otherwise-general rule that it's always the Environment that remains dangerous despite Grease Gun (Legacy for the win!), but I don't recall Miss Info being able to deal damage on her frontside.  She just lets her Diversion buddies do it.

Grease Gun stops damage coming from targets, so its not blocking damage coming from all sources, just sources that are targets. So T-Rex's and Raptors would fall in that catagory because they have HP. But take the Rook City deck and look at Falling Statue, thats damage from a source thats not a target (in this case the card itself). Grease Gun would not negate that.

And a lot of environment cards, such as River of Lava, just say "deal" the hero damage...this is meant to signify that the environment in general is the source.  Lava can't trip on a pool of grease and have to spend the next round getting back on its feet.  (And yet, a Living Rockslide can....)

Just to clarify, the card is the source. Not sure if you meant that or not. 

I heard that it was "the environment", but this makes little difference as long as we assume Danger Sense and Enduring Intercession work.

I see. Thank you for the clarification Foote! I have only had Sentinels for about a week, so still getting the hang of how everything works.

The more it tightens its grip the more the heroes slip through its fingers.

Yeah, its really just a technicality thing. Consider a Volcanic Eruption. If we have it target, say, Bee Bot first and destroy the Volcanic Eruption, wouldn't you say the damage sequence would be interupted? If we call the card the source, removing the source interupts damage sequence. If it was just Insula Primus as the source, removal of the Eruption may not stop the damage sequence.

No problem. Heck I'v been playing for a while and still have questions and get things wrong. 

Mmm...point.  Yeah it makes more sense to say it's the card dealing the damage, though you could argue that the card is enabling the environment to deal the damage...a fairly pointless distinction though.

makes more senes then "The statue was too greasy to crush you!" XD

Though we must still wondering why Haka pounding the ground will prevent the statue from crushing someone... Infact, the pounding on the ground is probably what caused it.

wait.....would Haka's Ground Pound stop Iron Legacy's Demoralizing Presence card from making you hurt yourself?

It says that "Non-hero cards cannot deal damage".  If you're hurting yourself, then it's a hero card dealing the damage, even if a non-hero card is causing the damage.

You are right about the source being the card.

But if you remove the instruction to deal damage the damage would stop.

Scum and Villainy has the Villain Character card deal damage to all hero targets, that damage can destroy Bee Bot, and Bee bot can destroy Scum and Villainy and stop the attack.

I think it may only be via Tony Taurus and Dr. Tremata, but it is possible for her to deal damage on her frontside.

Rook City cheats.

I did.  He helped Fanatic bring out her resurrection aegis about 8 times against Voss.  She soloed Voss for a long time because of Fixer's incap. 

Still lost, because we were on the moon and I think it was the red dust that wiped out the equipment before Voss' turn.

That's Mars. No battles on the moon.

...yet.

Haha, thanks.  I always get my terms mixed up.

Yes, a moon battle would be great.  Envisioner mentioned somewhere a battle on a riverboat.  That would be interesting too.

As long as the Moon is still there and hasn't been pulled into the Earth by Baron Blade ;).

What kind of geeks are you?

That was the perfect opening for "That's no moon..."

But then she would find our lack of originality disturbing…

I just tend to avoid Star Wars openings whenever possible.

Is it because they're traps?

Sorry.

No. I managed a specialty shop for about 5 years. The owner was a really BIG Star Wars fan. It created burnout of the franchise.

In my case, a geek who hates Star Wars.