It's Perfectly Natural: An Amateur Strategy Guide (WIP)

The Naturalist.  One ofthe new heroes in Vengeance, he has a very versatile bag of tricks to bring to the table.  He is unique among all heroes (so far at least) in the use of colorful icons on his cards which denote special-circumstances text, an innovation even greater than the "magic number" mechanic in Nightmist's deck (though not as consistent; several of his cards lack these symbols).  I played him second out of the new heroes, having seen him in use once, and found that he was a lot harder to manage than I expected; three forms to choose from doesn't seem like a lot, but he has quite a bit of depth to consider, and in my first game with him, I botched the effort horribly, plummeting from an HP lead to being the first hero incapacitated.  Having learned from my error, I took a more thoughtful approach the next time, and while I plunged as low as 4 HP at one point due to a painful miscalculation, I soon bounced back and contributed significantly to the team's victory.  While I've nowhere near mastered him after these two games, I figure that this is a decent enough level of confidence that I can begin writing a guide to him.

Introduction

Some players who begin to dabble in SOTM may come to the conclusion that a lot of heroes are excessively linear, and don't give you enough meaningful choices to be very enjoyable.  Tachyon always wants to fill her trash with Bursts, Expatriette wants to get out a Gun and shoot things with it, Wraith is usually going for Utility Belt + two Projectile weapons + Micro-Targeting Computer, and once these characters get their setup, they tend to do the same thing several times over until the villain is dead.  Players who have developed such a concern ought to take a look at the Naturalist, because his Transform power means that you always have the ability to change your entire game on your turn; because he can shift from offensive to defensive to tricksy-Baggins mode almost at whim, the player always has a decision to make, whether to stick with the setup they currently have or to start off in another direction, setting things in motion for the next turn.  Because nearly all of the Naturalist's cards will do something useful even if he's not in the Form which makes the card excel, the decision of whether to shift forms is generally not too obvious; sticking with a form while holding a lot of cards which match it can be an effective strategy, but it doesn't preclude the alternative, and so he can offer a fairly deep and rich experience for players that would like a bit more of a challenge, while still not being too difficult to comprehend.

To begin to understand what makes the Naturalist (henceforth "Natch") tick, let's start by looking at the breakdown of his deck:

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As you can see, I've broken the cards in Natch's deck down into five categories.  The first group of cards have no icons on them, and function identically regardless of what Form you're in (including Human Form, which is denoted by the lack of a Form card).  The last is for cards bearing all three icons, which do something different for each Form you might assume (and nothing at all if you're in Human Form).  Lastly, there are cards specific to each Form (I've included the Form itself in these categories, though obviously there's a difference); these cards (excepting the actual Form) all have one basic effect, which is generally beneficial, and then an additional ability which is true if you're in the correct Form.  Thusly, with his Transform power granting him the ability to switch forms each turn, he is obviously an incredibly versatile hero, with nearly all his cards doing something regardless of the form he's in (the triple-icon cards become ineffective if he's never able to keep a form in play until the start of his turn, and Environmental Allies is something of a special case, but otherwise all cards are at least somewhat playable for their "basic" effect even if you're stuck in the wrong Form, or none at all).  So let's move on to a more in-depth look at each of the Forms, and the cards specific to it.

Reptile Tears:  On Being a Crocodile

When the Naturalist's goal is to deal damage and lots of it, the Deadly Crocodile is the form he'll plan to spend most of his time in; it is the most one-note of his forms, but also the one which contributes most directly to winning most games.  The innate power deals Melee damage, while most of the Crocodile "riders" on cards involve dealing Toxic (the only ones that stick with melee are Primal Charge and possibly Bestial Shift, I don't recall which type that one deals).  If you're going up against Plague Rat or Grand Warlord Voss, your lack of access to more exotic damage types may be an issue; most of the time, though, the sheer quantity of hurt you can dish out will be the important factor, not especially caring about type.

Feral Fury is a potentially impressive damage card when in crocodile form, although it is of very limited use otherwise; with the Crocodile rider and the Form's innate bonus, it can deal a total of 6 damage to a target without damage reduction.  It can also be used to kill two 3-HP targets, although for this purpose it is generally inferior to Crafty Assault, which hits three targets equally hard, unless you'd rather save that card for when there is a third target and/or some Ongoings to destroy as well.  The Predator's Eye adds a further damage increase against a specific target (unfortunately difficult to combine with Feral Fury's two instances, though arranging such a double-whammy is certainly a productive use of Argent's turn); this bonus is shared with the rest of the team (and any Environment targets, and even villain self-damage - yeah, Vengeance Blade won't last terribly long against multiple copies of this card), so it's a great way of signalling "get 'im, boys!" (or "get 'er, girls!", or any combination thereof) when the rest of the team is set-up and it's time to start taking the villain apart.  All that is true of the card all by itself, of course, but if you're in Crocodile form, the card plays one additional role.  You deal at least 3 damage, counting the Crocodile bonus and that from Predator's Eye itself, and you can get that up to 5 if need be - but if you choose the lower number, this also gives you the only extra card-drawing you have access to while you're Crocodile-shaped.

Lastly, Cornered Beast is worthy of special consideration, despite being the least common of the Crocodile cards (an interesting note is that 8 cards in the deck have only crocodile "riders", while the icons for rhino and gazelle are both exclusive to just 7 cards; this is one reason to consider defaulting to Croc form in the absence of other choices, though that's not personally what I tend to do).  Able to obliterate low-HP targets without resorting to damage, even if you're not a Crocodile, this card costs a Power to use in this way, but in the meantime, a Crocodile also gains an additional damage bonus from this card, contingent upon there being a lot of targets in play (or on most of the Heroes being incapacitated, of course).  Not a card that you especially want to draw while playing alongside Unity or the Sentinels, obviously, and also not incredibly useful against Warlord Voss (though it can one-shot those annoying Guards), but potentially very good for taking down Citizen Dawn before she can flip, or the Operative, or a member of the Ennead - there are quite a few matchups this card is strong in.  (There's also the Apostate loophole; being more generous in its choice of targets than Sucker Punch or Wrathful Gaze, this card can take out the Periapt of Woe after it's been just slightly scratched, but the real hilarity is being able to have Natch messily eat Apostate himself alive, no matter how many Relics are protecting him, without giving him any opportunity to flip and heal back up.)  But against Plague Rat or Iron Legacy?  The only way Cornered Beast will do very much in those matchups is if the Environment cooperates, providing many semi-friendly targets to join you in tearing apart the villain.  (Thusly, this card is the indirect third member of the set with Environmental Allies and Blend Into the Pack.)

One of the few things Crocodile form is good for, besides dealing damage, is that if you Bestial Shift out of Crocodile form, you can Transform to one of the other two forms, and then immediately use its power during your Power Phase.  Gazelle form shares this advantage, of course, but you don't always need the healing.

Crocodile form may be especially useful against these villains:

• Grand Warlord Voss.  Don't ask me why you can deal Toxic damage to the ships, but you can.  And between the Crocodile's bite and Cornered Beast, you can chew through Minions like popcorn, perhaps even if there are a couple Guards in play.

• Omnitron.  A lot of heroes's best damage setup relies on Equipment, making them vulnerable to Technological Singularity.  Crocodile Form is an Ongoing, and if Sedative Flechettes destroys it, you can just get it back.

• La Capitan.  No matter what form he's in, Cappy will be a fairly miserable match for the Naturalist; there's a chance she'll steal one or more of his Forms and cripple him significantly.  If they do end up crossing paths, however, Crocodile is probably the form you want to start out in, as you need to be able to kill the Paradoja fast in order to get the game under control.

• The Ennead / Vengeance Five:  Both of these matches feature multiple relatively squishy targets, rather than a single high-HP villain with or without mooks, and get easier if you focus fire to take down the targets one at a time.  Crocodile delivers a lot of damage which is excellent in these situations; Cornered Beast is likely to provide its extra bonus, especially against the Ennead, and then can finish them off even if you've been fighting through reduction (Proletariat in particular is likely to suffer against this card).

Crocodile form is perhaps not recommended in these matches:

• Plague Rat.  Giving yourself a bonus to the damage you deal yourself when Infected is probably not a great idea.  If you aren't Infected yet, of course, putting a Predator's Eye on the Rat is likely to turn out well, but between the ever-present Infection risk and the potential for Rat to be immune to all your Toxic damage, Natch is not the best choice for going aggro against this villain.

• Miss Information.  It's pretty obvious, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway; against a villain who spends the first half of the game not being a target, and possibly not having any other targets in play, Crocodile is of very limited use.  It can be handy for punching through the damage reduction on her flipped side, but it won't deal as much damage as you'd like to, and will trigger retaliation damage.  You'd likely rather go Gazelle for the ongoing destruction in this match.

Get It Through Your Thick Skull:  On Being a Rhinoceros

It's only fitting that the purpose of the Formidable Rhinoceros form would be straightforward; when in this shape, Natch's job is to be the party tank, shrugging off mighty amounts of damage and preventing attacks from reaching the squishier heroes.  Of the three forms, Rhino is by a small margin the most desireable choice for Transforming into on your first turn; the passive damage reduction becomes useful immediately, while Crocodile's damage boost probably does not, and when the game is still in the process of gelling into its eventual form, the Rhino's innate power to draw 2 extra cards per turn, for just the price of a power (take that, Nightmist!), is hard to go wrong with.  The only downside is that sometimes, being a rhino can be slightly dangerous (particularly if there happens to be irreducible damage flying around, or just absurdly large quantities of it); one of Rhino form's signature cards, Indomitable Force, carries the non-optional consequence of focusing all damage to hero targets on your armor-plated self (thusly, 3 damage to each hero target instead becomes 4 damage to you and you alone; 4 damage to each hero target becomes 8 to you, and the news gets worse from there).  Bestial Shift is another card that can sometimes make you regret being a rhino, since it gives you more of what you already have, and doesn't grant you an extra power use as it does in either of the other forms.

Not many tanks are tankier than a fully-loaded Rhino; the combination of rhino form, Resilient Hide, and one of the two one-round buffs (Bestial Shift or Indomitable Force) can entirely negate any hit of up to 3 damage, and Natch heals a point at the start of his turn besides.  Obviously keeping this many Ongoings in play can be tricky; against such villains as Citizen Dawn, La Capitan, Ermine or the Ennead, you're unlikely to be able to keep much of anything in play, and the very Ongoing-centric Rhino plan isn't the best one.  But if you're able to keep this suite stable, you can soak up an incredible amount of damage virtually unharmed - and that's when the other half of the Rhino's shtick comes into play, as both Indomiatable Force and Threatening Stomp cause enemies (one or all, depending) to focus fire on your nigh-invulnerable self.  This obviously can be precarious, and you want to be VERY sure that you don't switch out of Rhino form after a Threatening Stomp (Indomitable Force will take care of itself, since it's an Ongoing whose redirection effect depends on remaining a Rhino, but the Stomp's effect is duration-based, so it lasts even if the Form leaves play somehow), unless of course the Stomp killed whatever it was played upon, or that target doesn't deal damage in the first place (or at least not very much).

Resilient Hide is also worthy of note in that it can entirely stop irreducible damage, as long as the instance is just 1 point; against a non-advanced Plague Rat with his Locus destroyed, Naturalist will never even notice that he has an Infection as long as he keeps Resilient Hide out, whether he's a Rhino or not.

The Rhinoceros is especially likely to shine in these matches:

• Iron Legacy.  You don't have a lot of time to get set up to defend yourself against Angry Paul's initial onslaught; playing Indomitable Force and then Transforming to Rhino will buy all the other heroes time that they desperately need, and after he flips, keeping IL's attention focused on you while you spam Bestial Shifts and heal with Natural Form's Power will protect the other heroes.

• The Matriarch.  All those 1- and 2-damage instances are easily dispensed with by a single point of soak, and Natch is one of the very few heroes who can repeatedly ditch his protective Ongoings to Matty's punishment ability and still benefit from them when her turn rolls around (provided he's not first in the turn order).

• Vengeance Five.  With crazy amounts of damage flying around from the various Nemesis targets, a little soak will go a long way.  You probably don't want to be a Crocodile after Fright Train or the Baron have gone down for the count, so switching into Rhino form will help ensure that the game continues, even if some of your teammates have sacrificed themselves getting rid of some of the villains.

These matches may prove frustrating to a Rhino-form Naturalist:

• Citizen Dawn.  As the most Ongoing-centric of Natch's forms (five of the seven Rhino cards are Ongoings, compared to only 2/7 Gazelle and 2/8 Crocodile cards), Rhino is uncomfortably fragile against the amount of Ongoing destruction which the Citizens of the Sun can deliver.  You're generally better off either relying on the damage of Crocodile or using Hyperactive Senses as a Gazelle.

• Plague Rat.  So much irreducible damage!  Resilient Hide is great if you can draw it, but you don't need to be a Rhino to get the basic effect, and Rhino's innate reduction will be ineffective against Rat's A-side innate and the self-damage from Infection.

• Spite.  It's strange…most heroes would rather pick up and replay their Ongoings or Equipments, as Spite's Compound Upsilon requires, instead of destroying them.  But for Natch, when a Form goes to the trash, it takes only a Power to get it back, while from the hand it requires a card play, and Natch is good enough at getting extra powers that a play phase is likely a dearer cost.  I mention this general fact under the Rhino heading for two reasons: as mentioned above, Rhino relies the most on keeping Ongoings in play, and it is the only animal form which can't get an extra power by playing Bestial Shift.  Thusly, if Spite opens on Compound Upsilon and you keep putting The Formidable Rhinoceros back in your hand every round for the entire game, all you're probably doing on your turn is replaying Rhino, then using its Power to draw two cards.  I haven't played out this scenario, but I picture it as being slightly more annoying than to perform a similar maneuver with the Gazelle.

How Do Uncle Get Married:  On Being an Gazelle

"Antelope"…get it?  Fortunately, while the role of the Nimble Gazelle form is harder to summarize than the other two, it has nothing whatsoever to do with making extremely lame jokes.  Assuming this shape leaves Michael Conteh largely a noncombatant, but gives him quite a bit of utility, consisting primarily of the ability to heal himself and the ability to moderate the Environment's role in complicating the heroes' lives.  Throw in some Ongoing destruction and a tiny bit of deck control, and it's clear that this particular Gazelle is more than just a lion's next meal; while there are risks associated with assuming this form, it can definitely pay off in some of the more complicated circumstances that heroes inevitably find themselves in.

Hyperactive Senses is one of the strangest cards in Natch's arsenal, as it allows you to manipulate decks; the two copies of the One-Shot are the only way for him to do this, so you can't really call it one of his shticks, the way you can with Visionary or even Nightmist.  But uniquely, he does it to two decks at once, enabling him to help out both his allies in a three-player game, or more likely to simultaneously mess with both villain and environment decks; neither Visionary nor Nightmist (nor Parse, as far as I recall) is capable of that particular feat.  Being a Gazelle is nowhere near strictly necessary to make this card effective; it offers a relatively minor, yet potentially critical, extra bonus…being able to ditch one of the two cards from each of the peeked-at decks.  Just be sure you know whether you're activating this clause or not, when you put the cards back on top of their decks - the one you're okay with seeing should be second if you are discarding the other one, and on top if you're not.

Lastly, there's Environmental Allies, the single biggest reason for staying Gazelle, but also my personal least favorite card in Natch's deck (undoubtedly some awesome future game will change my mind there, at least in its immediate aftermath).  While you're not a gazelle, this card may actually tend to cause problems for the team, protecting environment targets so it's difficult to keep them from occasionally munching on your head.  (Exceptions exist, some more situational than others; whether you like the Kraken or the Dinosaurs will depend on who exactly they're targeting, but Dr. Tremata and Sherrif Pratt are always your friends, and so it's possible that you'll wish to have Natch protect these - not to mention keeping an Explosives Wagon from detonating at an awkward time).  But as long as you can keep The Nimble Gazelle in play, any hits the Environment sends your way are ignored, and you can sit back and watch as the villains occasionally suffer the hit.  (Excluding Chairman Pike, of course.)  If you are going this route, Blend Into the Pack and Cornered Beast are also great options, and Rook City Wraith or Omnitron-X would be a good buddy to you.  Just beware of abrupt Ongoing destruction!

A Gazelle is probably going to be at his best in these matches:

• Plague Rat.  With lots of damage flying around, and much of it self-inflicted and/or irreducible, healing yourself is golden.  Let others deal damage in this match; your job is to try to intercept Plague Rat's various one-shots by managing your HP total.

• Citizen Dawn.  This is a rough match for any form, but Hyperactive Senses offers you the ability to spot That Card (Devastating Aurora, for those who haven't yet suffered it) before it happens and ensure that the team keeps their stuff, even if your Gazelle self remains vulnerable to Citizens Sweat and Autumn.  Natural Form's Power lets you hand out cards to whoever's been hurt worst by Blinding Blast or Citizen Tears, and Primal Charge will ensure you're almost never caught with an empty hand yourself.

• The Chairman.  Rook City is Yours, is it?  Me and my Environmental Allies beg to differ.  Though this match will never be easy, Natch as a Gazelle acts as a direct foil for one of Chairman Pike's biggest advantages.  You can also draw a lot of cards in this form in order to keep the Enforcers off your back.  Just beware of the Informant; if you're first in turn order, try to have Natural Form's Power on the table, so that you can switch to Crocodile and immediately eat her without playing a card, then switch back to Gazelle ASAP.  Hyperactive Senses is again excellent here, letting you avoid Prison Breaks.  Though there are no Ongoing cards to destroy and thus Crafty Assault isn't really a Gazelle card in this match, it is still always handy against this many targets.

These villains might well leave you feeling like a prey animal:

• The Matriarch.  No Ongoings to destroy, widely distributed damage to the whole team, and a deck that's almost impossible to control with Hyperactive Senses.  Not ideal.

• Akash'Bhuta.  This is probably not a match in which you want to encourage Environment targets to come into play, even if you can make the heroes immune to their damage.

Something Something Something Chicken Something Egg

So, you're beginning a game.  Having drawn four random cards off the Naturalist's deck, what exactly do you do?  A special problem presents itself if you happen to draw one of the three Forms in your hand, as this is the one place (assuming you're not fighting La Capitan) that you can't obtain the card from while Transforming.  You can use your card play to play the Form, but then you might not be able to usefully use your Power (if you play Gazelle this way and are at full hit points, or if you play Crocodile and there's nothing worth biting).  The longer the Form remains in your hand, though, the more likely you are to end up regretting having it there; you might find yourself needing to switch to that form and being unable to do so (a particularly thorny issue when fighting in Megalopolis or Atlantis, where you have a better than 1/8th chance of being unable to play cards during any given turn).

When should you take the "draw 2 turn" in lieu of doing anything else?  Probably not very often.  While Natch wants a lot of cards in his hand to be able to pull all his various tricks (especially Shifter's Strength), he has numerous card-draw effects (a Bestial Shift the turn after going Gazelle results in far more card advantage than two turns of doing nothing, and Rhinoceros form can slowly but steadily accumulate a huge number of cards as well).  Even if your current hand suggests not playing a card, also giving up your Power means not being prepared to act on your next turn, when you might very well be desperately needed.  Therefore, it's usually best to rely on your card effects to supply extra draws, and not try to skip your Play and Power phases for merely one extra card.  The rare exception is that if discards-from-hand and/or Ongoing destruction are thick on the ground in a certain match, Natch is probably going to want to build up a supply of cards that he can take advantage of when he gets the chance, so in that case you might spend your first turn or two skipping.  In most situations, though, it's far wiser to start the game with a Transformation, possibly preceded by a card play.

I am Not a Rhino, I am a Human Being!

Once in a while, circumstances will configure themselves such that you simply can't manage to be in an animal form, and you have to make do with whatever abilities your cards offer you as a mere hyoo-mon (sorry, Ferengi moment there).  Shifter's Strength is the one card which is always equally useful no matter what form you're in, though you do have to have at least one other card in your hand in order to get any benefit from it; it never costs you your card play (unless an Impulsion Beam is in play), but the ability it grants you is simply to exchange cards from your hand with cards off the top of your deck.  While this can be handy for discarding Gazelle cards while you happen to be a Crocodile, in hopes of drawing Crocodile cards to replace them, it's potentially effective even without a Form in play, as you can ditch triple-icon cards which are currently useless to you, and then use whatever you draw to inform your choice of a future Transform.

Natural-Born Vigor also has nothing to do with any particular Form, although one of its best tricks is to let you Transform into a Form and then immediately use its innate Power; if you're somehow stuck in your native form for a long time, you can at least use NBV to gain 4 HP, at the start of the turn after you've played it.  Lastly of the iconless cards, there's Blend Into the Pack, whose utility depends on the target-heaviness of your current Environment.  While granting Natch potentially as much as 12 Soak (in the Final Wasteland) certainly has its charms, it isn't always worth letting the rest of the team get mauled by Kraken arms or Explosive Bubbles, especially if you being a non-Gazelle rules out the benefit of Environmental Allies (which actively becomes a liability if you're in any form other than Gazelle; I consider it the worst card in Natch's deck, with Blend Into the Pack being second-worst, as the two of them really only work well together, and then only if you stay in the overall least effective of his three Form cards).

Beyond that, the various cards with a single icon tend to still do useful things even if you're not in the proper animal form, although a lack of access to Ongoing destruction from being a non-Gazelle is likely to hurt seriously.  Feral Fury still deals one instance of damage, without the Crocodile's boost and the second instance that also gains it; it's a tragic waste of potential, but sometimes THAT HAS TO DIE, and the option does exist.  Crafty Assault is better, even if its Ongoing destruction potential is wasted - after all, not all villains use many Ongoings, though certainly several of the worst ones do. 

Tragically, all of the cards with triple icons are useless when you're Formless (NFP can at least be laid down, assuming your Human-stuckness is temporary; the other two are One-Shots and simply can't be played to any effect).  The immense versatility these cards offer you at other times must, after all, carry a price.  Ra, certainly, isn't interested in hearing you complain about your lack of choices.

To Be (a Rhino) or Not to Be (a Crocodile), That is The Question

So the question is (see what I did there?), when do you stay in your current form, and when do you Transform?  Experience has taught me this harsh lesson: it is not a good idea to shift forms just because you can.  A lot of what makes Natch tick is the ability to plan ahead for a turn or more; because you Transform during your Power phase, you're setting up a card play for the subsequent round, and so you have to think a few steps ahead in order to make the best use of your resources (and of course you draw a new resource every turn, which might make you wish you could reconsider your choices).

Sometimes, you're just going to have to make hard choices when playing Natch; in the game I lost horribly, I had held onto a couple copies The Predator's Eye for several turns, wanting to save them until I could combine them with the Deadly Crocodile's bite, but kept deciding during my Power phase (I had Natural-Born Vigor in play) that I wanted to assume one of the other forms just so I could draw cards or heal, and so I kept sabotaging myself.  Don't be the damned fool I was!  While the tides of war shift constantly, and SOTM in general is a game that pushes you to adapt your gameplay to the situation, Naturalist's shapeshifting powers do not equate to making him one of the more random, constantly changeable heroes…you tend to want to pick a plan and stick with it, because you can't change course on a dime, it takes some effort to turn things around in order to suit a new direction which the circumstances might require.  So Natch might be a good hero for SOTM players who are also into chess (assuming such individuals exist; I would assume there are a few, at least), because getting the most mileage out of him means playing to the long game, setting things in motion well before the critical hour arrives.

By Our Powers Combined, We Are Thinly Veiled Environmentalist Propaganda!

(Note:  I happen to agree with said propaganda, so my little joke ought not to be regarded as a critcism.)

The Naturalist is one of the most power-heavy heroes in the game, with each of the Forms offering an innate Power (and Natch's character card of course giving him "one-click" access to all three of those options, unless they're stuck in his hand or something).  On top of that, Natural Form's Power has a power (strangely enough), which grants you a different ability depending on which form you're in; with this card and NBV in play, either the Rhino or the Gazelle can both heal and draw card, while the Crocodile sticks to damage-dealing but can now hit multiple targets for small amounts of toxic damage, instead of one mighty wallop of melee.  Cornered Beast also gives you a Power, albeit one slightly less useful (except for making Ra cry bitter tears from his Wrathful Gaze); all told, you definitely want to give the Staff of Ra to some other hero in your party, as Natch is pretty much always going to have uses for whatever number of per-turn Power usages that Argent and Fanatic can help him stockpile.

One Perfect Moment in the History of the (Natural) World

One special case bears mentioning.  Players who have fought in the Time Cataclysm with Mr. Fixer may have noticed an amusing interaction with Fixed Point, a card which makes all other cards indestructible for a round.  Thusly, "Slim" can get more than one of his usually-mutually-exclusive Styles into play (and ditto for Tools since "indestructible" is a somewhat imprecisely defined term in this game, but nevermind all that), and keep the both of them for as long as he refrains from switching again.  Well, Natch happen to have an even more disproportionate fondness for Fixed Point; as crazy as Fixer could get because of its effects, Natch's ability to reap its rewards is absolutely absurd.  First, unlike Fixer's reliance on the luck of the draw, Natch can always find a Form with his Transform power (unless he can't use Powers of course, but few villains inflict such a debility and the Time Cataclysm never does).  Second and far more importantly, not only does assuming a pair of forms let you get the "rider" on twice as many of your cards, but on the triple-icon cards, you can get both effects - imagine a Rhino-Crocodile performing a Primal Charge to deal 3 and 4 melee damage to the same or different targets, or a Rhino-Gazelle repeatedly using Natural Form's Power('s Power) to both draw cards and heal…potentially healing from below 0 HP, thanks to Fixed Point.

If you have an incapacitated hero or The Argent Adept in the party, and they can grant you a power usage (or, rarely, a card play) in addition to your normal turn, you could potentially get all three Forms into play, and the result would be simply ungodly - as long as we're in Cloudcuckooland, imagine performing a Bestial Shift to activate two copies of Natural Form's Power in one turn, letting you regain a total of 7 HP while drawing 4 cards (or letting someone else do so), and dealing 4 instances of 2 damage and one that's even bigger, plus leaving you with an extra point of armor for a round.  It probably will happen twice in about a thousand games, but just the faint possibility of it working is enough to make me positively drool.  More realistically, the not-incredibly-difficult (given the search utility of Transform) triple-Form scenario lets you get the "rider" on every single card you play, and since it relies on you getting extra power usages

Pretty good.  I certainly would like to see if your strategy changes after more playthroughs with different environments/villain/hero combinations.  I've only gotten to seen him played by a friend once and the rhino form was certainly a great tank against a five clone proletariat.  

What on earth has Fixer and the Naturalist both being black got to do with ANYTHING?

Pulled off the all 3 forms/Fixed point combo in a Google+ game last night; it was what enabled us to beat Akash after she had us dead to rights

It was an observation, nothing more.  Don't go reading ulterior motives into everything, you'll go nuts.

I don't see why you had to mention it at all if you weren't attaching some kind of significance to it. I'm sure they have other things in common too, but you didn't list all those. They are both male too, but that's not relevant at all to their gameplay. Neither is the relative amount of melanin in their skin. 

Yeah, that was kind of lame. :)

Alright, I still think you're fussing over nothing, but just in case others might find the comment to be in poor taste, I've extracted it, as well as revising the opening a little to make the whole "amateur" part more clear.

That little bon-mot-faux-pas aside, does anyone have any comments about what I've written so far?  The advice is pretty broad-strokes at the moment, and perhaps wordier than it needs to be, but I'm curious to know whether it's proven at all effective as far as it goes.  I welcome commentary from both newbie players and those with far greater expertise, either on Natch or on the game in general.

Hmm, I would disagree partially with the suggestion that Environmental Allies is only useful if you're a Gazelle - it might be worth mentioning that it's helpful to protect stuff that you'll want protected - the Propulsion Systems in the MDP, the Sheriff in Silver Gulch, stuff like that which won't ever attack you and might be worth keeping around. Plus those situations such as when you're fighting Voss in Atlantis, all heroes have high hp, he has loads of Minions in play (thus, plenty of targets with fewer hp than you which you'd really like to be not there any more), and a Kraken comes out ;). Oh, and it can also protect Tony Taurus and Doctor Tremata from villain wrath in Rook City - the only other target there is the Ambitious Racketeer, who's more of a mild annoyance than a major threat.

I just thought it might be worth mentioning stuff like that so it doesn't sound as though that one card is only useful if you're in Gazelle Form but more harm than good in any other situation, because it isn't ;).

Good points, Ameena.  I will go soften my language on the Environmental Allies thing.  Also, I'm bemused to discover that Natch is apparently actually considered a Complexity 2 hero...this not only puts him below Setback, but also the Sentinels, though I found both of those easier to comprehend their "shticks" than to begin master the nuances of Natch's three forms.  Nevertheless, I will remove my statement about him being the most complex Veng hero; that was apparently headcanon on my part.

The Naturalist is my favourite of the Vengeance heroes and has quickly shoved his way up to the top of my list - I'm not sure whether he joins the Adept at the top or is slightly below him, but I certainly enjoy playing him a lot and I've played him more than any of the other new guys. I wouldn't say he was particularly complicated, not in the way Ab'Zero or the Adept can be, but rather I find him versatile in an easy-to-get kind of way. But I've played him a lot, so... ;)

Constructive points of feedback I can give is on content. 75% of the guide as written boils down to "Rhino is a Tank!" "Croc is DPS!" and "Gazelle is Support!".  You took 3 paragraphs to tell us that croc form deals damage for instance. Think about your audience. Anyone coming to this forum looking to read a guide on Naturalist probably has already figured that out just by looking at the card right?

I'd like to see more analysis of his strengths and weaknesses in a plethora of situations and against a variety of villains. Where are his combos? How can his cards be best used in frequently difficult situations? Who plays well with him? Where are the synergies? You have a great start toward the end, but as others have pointed out, its all very limited in scope. Do you have a unique play style with the character? Can you employ different tactics with his forms and twisting them to create cool situations or combos that may not be evident to others?

Answering those questions usually produces more interesting and in-depth guides, while my only takeaway after the first 5 paragraphs was that Croc deals damage.

You just gave me a fish to eat for the night. I need you to teach me to fish so I can eat forever.

I would love to see you restructure this guide and focus it in a little more. Its kinda all over the map and way too long for how thin the meaty content is. Find a particular area of Naturalists game or playstyle and dive into it. Heres a guide I wrote on Scholar a while back to kinda show what I mean.
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/advanced-alchemy-a-guide-to-the-scholar-engine-4306
It's not a great guide by any means, but It has a clear goal in mind and its focused toward that end.

Hope that helps? Keep on saving the multiverse!

Foote hit it in one:  the guide is over-long and spends a lot of time on the obvious. 

One of the most useful things I've found to include in any guide are the brief, bullet-point style lists:  what's his best group support card?  What's his best personal support card?  What's his worst card?

Those bullet points can really provide structure for your guide and give you jumping off points to talk about specific cards and how they interact at the table.  If you want to maintain the structure based on Naturalist's forms, that makes sense, but right now, the text itself is too wordy and lacks actual content.

Well, I'm not sure it's much of an improvement, but I've poked at the guide a couple times, added the beginnings of some specifics.  Those, however, will indeed require more games to get much of a handle on, so for now I will continue to mostly work on the broad strokes.

I still have yet to become an expert on the Naturalists but here are a few gems I discovered with him that should make their way to your guide.

• First off Environmental Allies is extremely Awesome against Skinwalker Gloomweaver. Quite literaly allows you to ignore some of the worst an evironment can dish at you while also allowing you to protect it so he doesn't get extra card plays.
• The fact that gazelle form can get other heroes to draw cards was extremely loved by the Scholar (would work on any heroes that greatly benefit from card draws: Nightmist and Haka come to mind).
• All the crazy damage reduction and healing the naturalist can get also make him one of the very best candidates for Fanatic's Embolden believe me seeing the naturalist use 3 powers per turn is pretty insane
• Crafty assault in Crocodile mode is as good as a chain lighning 3 times three equals nine damage and 4+3+2 equals nine too
• Same goes with Threatening Stomp so it can be at Lightning Slash or Fire Blast levels
• Predator's Eye is a must when collaborating with heroes with many instances of damage on a target like Chrono Ranger, Knyfe, Fanatic, Argent Adept (song of fire and ice can be activated easily two times per turn making four strikes of 1 damage just begging for damage boost), Tempest can all extremely benefit from it

That's all that comes to mind at the moment but if I get more I'll share to make your guide better

I will consider adding that note, although mentioning solely a promo version of a villain is a bit "ehh…" to me.  Might end up doing it, though, if only because normal Gloomy isn't really a credible enough threat to bother mentioning.

The fact that gazelle form can get other heroes to draw cards was extremely loved by the Scholar (would work on any heroes that greatly benefit from card draws: Nightmist and Haka come to mind).

The problem with that is that you have only two copies of Natural Form's Power.  It's a nice ability if he can get it, but not sure it's really reliable enough to be something worth focusing on.  Then again, I have mentioned Hyperactive Senses quite a bit, so maybe.

All the crazy damage reduction and healing the naturalist can get also make him one of the very best candidates for Fanatic's Embolden believe me seeing the naturalist use 3 powers per turn is pretty insane

Ayup, that's certainly a good team-up.  Not sure when I'll get around to detailing which heroes Natch combines well with, but Fanatic will probably be close to the top of the list (exceeded by the Argent Adept of course).

Crafty assault in Crocodile mode is as good as a chain lighning 3 times three equals nine damage and 4+3+2 equals nine too

Hm…good point.  I tend to ignore non-X cards while in X form, but that's obviously stupid of me; the damage bonus is definitely something to pay attention to with these cards.  (At least this guide has now helped someone, ie me, know how to play him more effectively.  Hopefully I can manage to give as I have received eventually.)  I will note however that 3x3 damage is not quite as good as 4+3+2 on average, since punching through reduction or removing particular targets is generally higher importance (with possible exceptions for the likes of Warlord Voss, but even there, Chain Lightning can remove a Guard and one other minion while 3x3 cannot).  Unless, of course, you're partnered with Nightmist and Tachyon…

Predator's Eye is a must when collaborating with heroes with many instances of damage on a target like Chrono Ranger, Knyfe, Fanatic, Argent Adept (song of fire and ice can be activated easily two times per turn making four strikes of 1 damage just begging for damage boost), Tempest can all extremely benefit from it

Again, when I get to mentioning team-ups, I'll try to include this info.  Thanks!

question.

do you play a lot of CCGs?

ccgers ive noticed tend to see a card and say cool! but there are only two copies… .frequency wise im not going to see it so that drops its value. ina deckbuilding situation frequency is very important

in SoTM because there is no deckbuilding, this ia a fallacy of thought in guide witting. SoTM is about finding the perfect use of the cards you have in hand for the board layout, not looking for the card that /would/ be useful if you had it. So in writting a guide you need to touch on these ‘fringe’ cases where its frequency is low. Not avoiding talking about them cause its not likely. to happen, but pointing out all the myriad of uses such a card, should it be in your hand, could be played for.

Guide witting for SoTM should talk all about the unique, little seen or used reasons for playing a card toopen up a players mind to be able to make the best use out of the current card and situation.

everyone can guess such and such card is great for dealing with its obvious application but did you know you could use it for (blank)?

I agree with lynkfox and just put as an example the fact that ongoing destruction can be useful even against a villain with no ongoings so it allows your partners to play stuff like Hunter and Hunted and Bloody Knuckles and still be safe because you destroyed em before the environment or player's turn. Once you think about it it makes sense but willfully destroying another hero's stuff is counterintuitive.

Now your thinking like Setback.

I feel extremely silly for having described Feral Fury as "the best damage card in Natch's deck", after comparing it to Crafty Assault.  Though it still compares loosely to Lightning Slash when you're in Crocodile form, it is sufficiently useless the rest of the time that I am now forced to regard it as one of Natch's worst cards.  I didn't even have to play another game to come to this conclusion, I just thought about it more in light of the new information Medic-Tank provided.  These revisions will continue for a long, long time…

Used to, yeah.

In SoTM because there is no deckbuilding, this ia a fallacy of thought in guide witting. SoTM is about finding the perfect use of the cards you have in hand for the board layout, not looking for the card that /would/ be useful if you had it.

I don't think frequency in deck is entirely irrelevant.  Yes it tends to be better to play with whatever you happen to have (unless you have search cards), but that doesn't mean that you can't do some planning around what you might be drawing in future.  If Fixer had four copies of Salvage Yard, it'd be very strategically correct for his allies to discard Equipment constantly throughout the early game, in the hopes that he'll draw a Yard and get them all those cards back.  Since it's only a x2 in his deck, they can't sensibly follow the same procedure, without either a significant risk of it never paying off, or else waiting for Fixer to say "okay I have it now" and THEN they all start discarding, having lost potentially several turns when they could have been setting up for an even bigger haul.

So in writting a guide you need to touch on these 'fringe' cases where its frequency is low.

I do intend to, it just may not be as high a priority as the more common cards.

Even if Fixer did have four copies of Salvage Yard in his deck, that's only ten percent of his total cards. Considering he has no means to get extra draws by himself, you're still not necessarily likely to get it in any given game, unless said game goes on long enough that you manage to cycle through most/all of your deck (again, assuming no external help at drawing cards or otherwise getting them off the top of the deck).

It's always nice to hope for a certain card to come up, but if you do that then you run the risk of spending an entire game waiting for That One Card to show up (regardless of how many copies of it you have), and might neglect strategies you could put into action with the cards you do have and which might actually turn out to have a greater effect than That One Card, whatever it is, that you're sitting there hoping will come out.

On the subject of Feral Fury…that's the "deal two damage and if you're a Croc do two more", isn't it? That's two and two, or three and three. Assuming no soak, that's a nice amount of damage to be dealing to one target. You could kill two Zombies with it unbuffed, or two of Voss's minions if buffed. Or pile all four/six damage onto a single target. If you're in Croc Form, you can deal six damage from that card and another three from your Croc power, meaning nine damage, which ain't too shabby. Yes, several characters can outdo that but they tend to need a bit of setup (Wrathful Retribution, Omnicannon, Savage Mana, etc). With the Naturalist, you can go Croc on your first turn and nom someone with Feral Fury for buffed damage on the following turn. Personally I find it one of the best damage-dealing cards if you need that thing there to die right now. Maybe not so good against the Periapt of Woe when the Runes of Malediction are out, but that's when you chuck out a lovely Predator's Eye and buff everyone else or something ;).

coughTool Boxcough

Errm...yeah, of course, that's what I meant...no means of getting extra draws except Tool Box which I totally didn't just forget about or anything ;).

I thought the same, until it was pointed out that Crafty Assault with the Crocodile bonus deals the same 3 damage per instance as Feral Fury, but is hitting three different targets, instead of only two, or one target twice.  Feral Fury is better for single-target hits, but even there, a single point of DR makes it no better than Threatening Stomp, and DR 2 makes it a lot worse.  The real crappiness of the card, though, is what happens if you try to play it while not a crocodile.  Other cards are worth something even if you're in the wrong form, but Feral Fury is just a strictly-worse Crafty Assault.  Its only advantage is the higher single-target damage potential, and that's just a 1-point advantage over Crocodile Stomp.  The ability to deal some of the damage as Melee and some as Toxic might occasionally come in handy, but equally is sometimes a liability, so overall it's just not the greatest card.

And not having all cards be gamechangers is also fine, you wont EVER see me play punish the weak exept against spite and maybe Iron Legacy in the freedom tower, that card is a liability. 

Just thought I might play it as an ongoing from express destruction when I know I want to keep better stuff so yeah my ever was too strong but I'm just pointing out that having cards that are not as strong or more situational is fine too it eventually balances itself.

I almost always play Punish the Weak, unless facing a villain where it is better for Haka to ignore various targets that enter play, such as the Matriarch or Dawn. Unless of course, Savage Mana is also a card Haka has. As it lets him kill those pesky lower hit point targets easier, fueling his Savageness.

It allows other heroes to focus on the bigger targets, only hitting the lower ones to ensure Haka can kill two with Taiaha. It combos very well with Mr. Fixer, who could have Riveting Crane and deal damage to a target, allowing Haka to deal his full damage to that and still hit the lowest for the +1. Instead, Driving Mantis works as well, Haka can hit the lowest for the 4 damage with Taiaha, hit Fixer for 2 damage, who can then redirect to the the lowest non-hero again, increasing it up to 4. Rampage also works wonders, dealing all heros only a single point of damage, which with Fixer and Driving Mantis, he can redirect it to whichever non-hero is the lowest at this point, making it 3 damage.

Edit: Another great advantage, is when villain/environment cards force heroes to deal themself or other heroes damage. When Haka has to do one of those things, he actually reduces it by 1.

Actually, Punish the Weak has its uses, particularly against Voss and the Dreamer.  With Voss, it can help Haka punch through the armor provided by Gene-bound Guards, and with the dreamer, it can help with the bonus provided by Dark heroes.  

Its not a game changer, but there have certainly been lots of occasions where I've been extremely happy to have it.

Punish the Weak also forces Rampage to deal the hero targets 1 less damage, cutting the "cost" of that card in half. 

Thanks for the tips I'll take note of them, a step in the direction of being a better player

It does have that bit of versatility that Feral Fury doesn't though, in that you can hit the same target twice.

And another damage boost, from Legacy, Ra, CR or many others (not to mention environments) makes it that much better than Stomp.

Bestial Shift, Primal Charge and Natural Form's Power are worthless without a Form in play, while Environmental Allies, Indomitable Force and Environmental Allies are not fantastic compared to a lot of others. This is part of the point of the Naturalist; that if you play a card while in the wrong form, then you're not going to get its full worth.

I think a point worth making here is that discerning which cards are the 'best' or 'worst' in a given deck - while not a bad thing to do, and certainly something I've engaged in - is not actually particularly useful strategy advice in a fixed-deck game. In a CCG, such a judgement has value; this card is crap? Right, it's not going in then. This card is brilliant? Three copies, please! But during the game, the general value and utility of a card comes second place to what it can do right now - and that's what strategy guides are for, really.

Punish the Weak fun:

Vs. Iron Legacy with Fixer/Mantis.

Taiaha deals IL 4, Fixer 2, but redirect to IL for 4.  Gets under Superhuman for 8 damage.

+1

That's not really "versatility" given that this is the only purpose for which Feral Fury is actually good.  Yes, if you're facing down Voss and you don't have Crafty Assault, you might decide you need to play Feral Fury to take out two minions instead of three, rather than saving the card and not removing any minions.  But if you then draw Crafty Assault, you feel stupid.  Having some cards which are strictly worse for certain purposes than other cards essentially punishes you for being forced to act on that purpose now, rather than waiting until you draw the better ones.

And another damage boost, from Legacy, Ra, CR or many others (not to mention environments) makes it that much better than Stomp.

True.

Bestial Shift, Primal Charge and Natural Form's Power are worthless without a Form in play

But you will usually be able to have a Form in play for all but your first card play of the game, the only exception being against ongoing removal or loss of Power usage.  Plus if you don't have a Form, Natural Form's Power can still be put into play for later use, so it's only six cards that are completely unusable in that fairly-uncommon situation.  And they're more than good enough the rest of the time.

while Environmental Allies, Indomitable Force and Environmental Allies are not fantastic compared to a lot of others.

As I have said before I consider Environmental Allies (and also Environmental Allies) to be the least-useful card in the deck.  Indomitable Force is pretty decent, though, as it's the only way you can get some soak while not being a rhino.  Being a rhino is a little dangerous with it; you get another point of soak, but you also HAVE to get fire focused on you.  Just last night I played a game where the Ennead forced Scholar to put Alchemical redirection into play, then hit him with two Sun cards for a total of 20 damage even through his Flesh to Iron (since there was a villain +1 damage in play, and five heroes).  So having 2 soak is not a guarantee that you can survive getting all the area attacks concentrated on you.  There are definitely going to be times where you're a Gazelle, frantically scrambling to recover HP after having been pounded on, and 1 point of soak while staying a Gazelle, slowing the damage you take even while you heal, is better than 2 points of soak while switching to Rhiono and painting a bullseye on your face.

This is part of the point of the Naturalist; that if you play a card while in the wrong form, then you're not going to get its full worth.

Crafty Assault, Threatening Stomp, Cornered Beast, Hyperactive Senses, Resilient Hide, and Eye of the Predator all provide more than sufficient utility even without their riders (indeed, Cornered Beast and Crafty Assault aren't necessarily any better, and Threatning Stomp is actively worse in a way; Hyperactive Senses can go either way depending on what the cards you reveal are and what you might like to do with them, though of course it's always better to be Gazelle since you can choose not to discard the cards).  Indomitable Force is arguable, and Environmental Allies is situational.  Feral Fury is the only card which is flat-out worthless if you're in one of two Forms, and only fairly good if you're in the third form.  I feel confident in calling it his overall weakest card, though I still will pick EA as being worse in a fairly large percentage of matches.  To draw a parallel with the Visionary, Environmental Allies is like Brain Burn - a very narrow but potentially lifesaving card, which I will happily discard 9 times out of 10, but would never want to actually take out of the deck.  Whereas Feral Fury is like Cerebral Hemorrhage - a fairly tepid effect which certainly might come in handy, but there's another card in the deck which is almost always better (Psychic Maelstrom), as well as still other cards which tend to compare favorably to it (Mind Spike), and this entire category isn't even what that hero is best at.

Three copies, please! But during the game, the general value and utility of a card comes second place to what it can do right now - and that's what strategy guides are for, really.

I can see the use of a strat guide pointing out specific, unusual uses for cards, like we've been doing for Punish the Weak.  Alas, the Naturalist doesn't really seem to have a lot of cards with those kinds of counterintuitive uses.  For the most part, what Natch can do in any given situation is fairly self-evident, which is probably why the Guide as I've written it so far comes across as mostly stating the obvious.  You have to give very specific examples in order to really meaningfully describe anything, and even then, he's straightforward enough most of the time that it can be hard to say anything terribly useful which the player couldn't have figured out on their own.

Feral Fury at least lets you deal damage when you're not in Croc Form. I can't remember whether any cards have powers which deal damage but the base powers for both Rhino and Gazelle are both utility types (card draw and healing) so if you're in one of those forms you can do their base abilities and still hit something during your Play phase - yeah it's only two damage, but that's what a whole load of heroes have as their base power. So there ;).

2 damage as a base power is ten thousand times better than 2 damage at the cost of playing a card.  I think the only character who does a mere 2 damage to one target with a 1-shot is Mr. Fixer (who I don't consider terribly strong either, but he at least has more than just a +1 damage to add to Charge's effect, though at least Natch can pretty nearly guarantee getting that +1 without relying on the luck of the draw).

But you shouldn't compare one hero to another, because each is their own thing. Okay, the Naturalist can spend a card to hit something, but then he can either heal three or draw two, or do something else (depending on form and the presence of any ongoings)…or even two other things if he has Natural Form's Vigour out as well. The game's not all about doing damage, and certainly that's not the Naturalist's main thing unless you want to go Croc all the time (in which case you're basically neglecting two thirds of his potential). He's a versatile hero - like the Adept, Fixer, Nightmist and several others, his thing is that he has a whole bunch of tricks he can switch between in order to have the greatest effect. Playing a card is just one thing you can do on your turn, and the Naturalist can still be helpful even if he can't do that (during a Hostage Situation, for example), unlike, say, Tachyon, who's more severely affected. And stuff like Environment Allies is active all the time so you get their benefit even if you can't do anything :).

I wouldn't say any card is outright "better" or "worse" than any other. It's all situational. If you're in Croc form against Voss and he has a bunch of Minions out, Feral Fury is better because you can kill two Minions at once (assuming no Guards are out, of course). If you're against someone like Spite or Kismet and your fellow heroes include people like Young Legacy, Tachyon, Expatriette, or Chrono Ranger, I'd say Predator's Eye would be better due to all the extra damage you'll be getting out of it from all the hits everyone's likely to be doing.

I reckon most heroes have at least one card that some people have never used (or do so rarely). I don't think I've ever used Haka's Enduring Intercession, for example, or Visionary's Brain Burn, but they both have situations in which they're useful. Just because a card's prime moment doesn't come up very often doesn't make it a useless card. Plus is every card in every deck was "zomg I want it" then what would you do when a villain made you discard?

Not with Paparazzi on the Scene or if you need your power phase for something else. I would be careful about overusing hyperbole; especially when it isn't strongly supported. Even with the cards we don't like very much, there are situations that come up where they will save the day. In my experience with the game, dealing a little more damage is a virtue, but having the flexibility to deal with edge situations can be a lot more valuable.

The Naturalist can get up to a +3 damage bonus in Crocodile Form based purely on his own cards, which would allow him to hit someone for 10 damage. Anyway, I think it's less situational than Resilient Hide outside Rhino Form, which is only useful if someone's hitting you for exactly 1 damage.

I have to disagree about Environmental allies.our group has found it to be one of the naturalist's signature cards, and it has swayed many (30+) games in our favor.

Almost every environment that has creatures has is extremely dangerous for the heroes.  They can inconvenience the villains, and if you finesse things and are cautious, they can be extremely beneficial.  But if you get unlucky, then you can find yourself getting snacked on by krakens, chomped by T-rexes, torn apart by exsplosive wagons, and bound by ethereal chains.  

The gazelle form for the naturalist is one of the least offensively oriented, but it still has plenty of usefulness.  Staying as a gazelle and making everyone immune to the vagaries of environmental targets can be the turning point of an entire game.  It particularly benefits the Sentinels, as they are extremely susceptible to environment snackage (usually being the lowest targets).  It can also radically change the tactics of a group, as explosive wagons become happy barrels of fun time villain damage.

Here are some scenarios where it is incredibly useful:

Silver gulch explosive wagons!

Any environment with the dreamer!

Atlantis!

Etheral Bonds and bubbles!

T-rexes and velociraptors vs any villain without minions!

When playing with the visionary, as it allows her to Wrest the mind for longer on environment targets (though she still hurts herself)!

EDIT: More scenarios where it has been a game changer...

Allowing Unity's bots to survive and prosper in the Final wasteland, Atlantis, Silver Gulch, The MDP, the Realm of Discord, Pike chemical's rats, and the Tomb of Anubis (though there are cards in the Tomb that are dangerous with the +1 damage resistance).

Protecting Setback from an ill-timed (or unlucky) Wrong time and Place.

It is a fantastic card.  there are environments where it will not be the best choice, or useful at all (such as the F5 tower), but it really allows the entire group to be more effective. Oftentimes, it makes the Naturalist less of a focus, but it allows the team a lot more latitude in what they can do.  And because he can switch forms, it doesn't hamper him once the environment calms down a little. 

Yup, for me the Gazelle + Environmental Allies setup is one of my favourites. Obviously yes, it's utterly useless in the Freedom Five Tower or whatever, but any place with targets which are vaguely likely to attack the heroes (or be redirected to heroes off the villains) it's useful to varying degrees. I am looking forward to a game in Silver Gulch where we can get out both Explosive Wagons and deliberately set them off and then sit back and laugh as all the bad guys (and any of the Hayes Brothers who happen to be around at the time) get exploded at while the heroes just kind of stand there going "Hmm, do you hear something? Like, a sort of explody sort of noise? No? Oh well, must be just my imagi…hey, where did all the bad guys go? And what are all those smoking sooty patches on the floor where the bad guys were standing just a minute ago?" :D.

Even in environments where hefty damage can come from non-target cards (some of the trials in the Tomb or the volcano in Insula Primalis, for example), at least that's all you have to worry about regarding direct environment damage. Not so good if all the environment is doing is buffing the villain or something but still, it's nice to have, isn't it?

There can definitely be times when Gazelle-form Environmental Allies will be strong, but in my experience, the Environment is generally as likely to help the heroes as harm them, so defending against it seldom ranks among my highest priorities.  (The last time the Environment really hurt me was when Fright Train played Last Stop and threw a T-Rex at me; that isn't actually Environment damage, though.)  The fact that it doesn't stop damage from non-target Environment cards, while Legacy's Danger Sense does ignore the damage from those cards (admittedly only for himself), is a further nuisance.  I'm sure I'll be glad of EA eventually, but so far I find it less compelling than his Rhino and Crocodile options, Crafty Assault and Hyperactive Senses (with or without their riders), and the massive card-draw abilities that Primal Charge and Natural Form's Power grant to the Gazelle.

And I can't believe you brought up Wrest the Mind there.  The last thing you want to do with that card is deal less damage to the target, while still full damage to yourself.  The only case I might consider doing this would be if Visi was in a TK Cocoon, and I've seldom seen WtM stay in play for long enough that you could play the Cocoon on top of it.

Ah, you're not talking Feral Fury anymore at that point, I presume.  The 10-damage combo - 11 actually - that I see is The Predator's Eye drawing no cards with Cornered Beast in play (3+3 damage to the TPE target, followed by 2+3 more with Crocodile's power); Feral Fury could add another 10 damage at that point, but only if you can get a second card play within the 1-round duration of TPE.

Anyway, I think it's less situational than Resilient Hide outside Rhino Form, which is only useful if someone's hitting you for exactly 1 damage.

Which happens fairly often, especially in H=3 games.  The Ennead, the Matriarch, Plague Rat, Citizen Dawn, Kismet, Friction and Spite all have significant numbers of 1-damage instances regardless of the H number; they often have ways of boosting the damage and thus turning off RH's protection, but it's still handy for keeping your HP from dwindling gradually over the early turns before these boost arrive (or after they're removed).  Combine with reduction (either Indomitable Force or an effect from other heroes or the Environment - Smoke Bombs is a particularly apt example) and the results get even more impressive.  While you definitely want Rhino for best effect, it's far from useless the rest of the time, while Environmental Allies pretty much is useless (except as noted below), and Feral Fury is a holdout weapon that you'd hate being desperate enough to waste.

"Whatever" = Rook City, I guess; only one target in that deals damage to the heroes (though EA is potentially useful for keeping the other two alive while the villain beats on them; you don't even have to be a gazelle for that part, this being a rare case of the card being beneficial in that situation).

I'm not sure I get your point of saying that environment targets having soak is a bad thing - if you're in Gazelle Form they can't hurt you anyway - you can bascially completely ignore them unless they're targetting the villain(s) or each other. So then you might as well let them stick around longer so they can kill the bad guys all the faster. The fact that non-target environment cards can still hurt you is irrelevant, as that's what they'd do anyway so it's business as usual for those.

As I see it, the main reason I play Environmental Allies is for the group-wide damage immunity. The environment targets gaining soak is a bonus. Have you managed to play a whole bunch of games in which the card does more harm than good and that's why you think it's rubbish? Because really, that could happen with any card ;). And in fact, if you've been playing it in situations where is has done more harm than good, then presumably you probably should've been playing something else in that situation instead so it was a bad play rather than being "the card's fault", as it were ;).

I meant when you're not a Gazelle.

The fact that non-target environment cards can still hurt you is irrelevant, as that's what they'd do anyway so it's business as usual for those.

Except that you played Environmental Allies instead of some other card, whose effect isn't contingent on the Environment deciding to play a Target instead of some other card.

As I see it, the main reason I play Environmental Allies is for the group-wide damage immunity. The environment targets gaining soak is a bonus.

Then why isn't the soak the Gazelle-form rider, and the hero immunity the main effect of the card regardless of form?  It doesn't really make any sense anyway; why do you have to be a Gazelle to protect your allies from a kraken?  Actually, if I were redesigning the card, I might make the gazelle part be able to either decrease OR increase damage to enviro targets, Twist the Ether-style; it sort of makes sense that seeing a tasty Gazelle running around might distract the T-Rex enough to make it more vulnerable to other attacks (nevermind that environment targets can also be a Battalion Mechanic or a set of Mystical Defenses).

Have you managed to play a whole bunch of games in which the card does more harm than good and that's why you think it's rubbish?

Nope, only three games as Natch so far, and in the last one all Environmental Allies accomplished was to be fodder for a Marsquake, so that a non-Gazelle form and Argent's song could remain in play.  It didn't help, though; Natch has died in three of the four games I've seen him in (two of the three with me playing as him; once I managed to keep him alive, though he did fall to 4 HP at one point), and I've yet to see EA be helpful.  It certainly is a card with potential to be strong, but that potential is not always actualized, and I have a problem with the fact that it can be counterproductive sometimes, as my tolerance for cards which backfire when played "just because" (or as a result of effects like Incapacitated Set) is pretty minimal.  Generally speaking, I'll take all-upside cards over ones that might make me regret having played them instead of nothing.

I think that you are missing a huge part of environmental allies.  This may be because you (in general) rate "attack" powers and abilities far higher than support or tanking.  Many of your examples boil down to "how much damage does this do", which is a bit of a detriment to a guide that is about a character who has support as one of his primary functions.    

While you are right that Environmental allies causes you to lose playing a different card, it has far-reaching repercussions for the entire game dynamic.  It sacrifices the Naturalist's ability to deal damage for team security, which is not to be taken lightly.  

My wrest the mind example is a fringe case, but I think that you are missing it's potential.  One of the limiting factors of WtM (Wrest the Mind) is that AoE enemies, particularly environmental ones suffer an appalling amount of damage from it, especially in games where they are hitting all targets.  Dealing them one less damage is a pretty major thing when you look at something like a skunk ape- if you can protect the visionary (through a cocoon, or Heroic interception, or Wrong time and Place, or any number of other clever combinations, you can have the ape deal a truly ridiculous amount of 1 point hits to a singel target.  The limiting factor becomes keeping the Skunk ape alive at that point!   But Environmental allies helps with that.  Twisting the Ether (on the visionary) could give you a minion that was doing TONS of damage that you could keep around as long as you wanted.  And if you don't understand the appeal of that, I would strongly urge you to play the visionary more.  

Ultimately, this is your guide, and you are quite free to rate cards as "good" or "bad" as you see fit.  I think that you have a slight bias towards aggressive tactics thatis causing you to miss out on some of his potential.  You are free to disagree with me.

Support perhaps, but I definitely do not underrate Tanking; I consider that to be Natch's primary function, since several characters easily out-damage even his Crocodile version.  The only character who tanks better than Rhino Natch is the Scholar, and he has 40% as many of the cards that let him soak up all damage for a round, though he's better at becoming invulnerable in the short term (and possibly at healing, I haven't really compared Liquid Scholar side-by-side with Gazelle Natch, to see which of them would win in a straight-up race).  Natch, though, gains rather than loses cards every round while having as much as 3 armor, and he can heal in that form too with Natural Form's power.  So yeah, I consider him a tank first and a damager second.  I like his support aspects, but they are inadequate in my opinion; I would like to replace his Feral Furies, Shifter's Strengths and maybe Primal Charges with more cards along the lines of Hyperactive Senses, and give him more form-riders which did things other than damage, healing and card draw.

This is probably why I come down so hard on Environmental Allies - though Natch can already do a lot of neat, different tricks, his concept suggests that he should be even more versatile than that, and so I begrudge him the existence of even one card that doesn't necessarily do anything that even might be useful.  The Gazelle part of the card is great, but if  you're needed in another form, the chances of EA doing anything beneficial are no better than those of it actively causing you minor issues.

(Although I do like your vision of the Visionary; Wrest the Mind is an excellent example of how I wish she would play, and I'd rather she didn't spend so much time doing piddly amounts of psychic damage, or gaining highly situational Powers from Ongoings she seldom wants to waste time playing.  I consider her an extremely strong hero and she's in the top half of heroes in terms of how much I enjoy playing her, but she could be a lot more to my taste.  And god-damn am I ever sick of drawing both Brain Burns in her opening hand.)

One thing I would do for your guide is to carefully go over each card, listing scenarios in which that card is extremely beneficial, and scenarios where it is really not.  You do not have to list their text, but a good description goes a long way.  If the first part of the guide is about how you think the Naturalist works, this kind of appendix will show that you've done your research.

It will be beneficial to people who haven't played the naturalist, and who will therefore benefit the most from a guide!

An example would be:

Environmental Allies

This card allows the Naturalist to control environment targets while in Gazelle form, rendering the heroes immune to their damage.  Regardless of form, Environment targets take reduced damage while it is out.

Usage

As a card that works only on Environment Targets, this card is of limited benefit in Environments that have few targets like Rook city and Pike Chemical.   It can be a liefesaver in ones with AoE targets, high-damage targets, or targets that prevent heroes from dealing damage like Atlantis, the Final wasteland, or the Realm of Discord.    It is of no use (except as a sacrificial ongoing) in environments with NO targets, like the Freedom Tower.

Because the Naturalist must stay in Gazelle Form to keep the team safe, his offensive abilities will be more limited.  This can be worked around with teammembers that provide extra power uses (Argent Adept, Fanatic, Incap heroes) or his own cards that allow him to shift to other forms and then back to Gazelle.  Look for opportunities to shift briefly into a Crocodile or a Rhino for a quick attack, then back to gazelle before the Environment turn to protect the team.

Situational examples

Because The Sentinels are low-HP hero targets, the environment tends to go after them heavily.  this is an excellent team card, as it allows the Sentinels to focus more on offense than self-preservation!

The Dreamer is incredibly vulnerable to Environmental targets that hit everything or go after the lowest HP target (Mystic defenses, Explosive wagons, velociraptors)

Silver Gulch's Explosive wagons can be extremely hazardous, but Environmental allies turns them into anti-villain bombs.  

The Realm of Discord's Etheral Bonds only work if they can damage heroes, so making everyone immune to them enables the entire team to contribute.

Until your on a team with Legacy Scholar and Ra. Your primary function is dependant upon the team/situation, thats the beauty of Naturalist.  

@ Braithwhite:  That's very, very in-depth analysis, and people are already complaining about the length of my guide.  I think if I were to do anything of the sort, I'd want to make a separate please-do-not-post-in-this thread for it, making each card its own post, and then having the appendix just be a sorted set of links to those posts.  But I'm not sure that level of effort is entirely justified for a character whose cards are often just "do some damage" or "regain some HP" or  "discard some cards, draw some cards, and get your play back".

I consider Natch a better tank than Legacy; while Legs can shield other heroes from damage, all he can do to survive it himself is Fortitude and SHD, and the latter rarely works in my experience, since the vast majority of your damage comes 4 or fewer points at a time.  Scholar I'll grant you, but not the other two; I would happily have Natch tank for Ra, unless Ra was holding nothing but Staffs.

Lead from the Front and Next Evolution doesn't exist? Legacy has team damage prevention, something Naturalist can not boast. When it comes to preventing/redirecting damage, Legacy just has more tools at his disposal.

In H=3 games you are right about the damage instances. In H=5 games you're very off. Something to keep in mind when writing future guides (both need to be given equal weight).

I am talking about Feral Fury. Do 5 damage with Feral Fury, then do 5 damage with the Crocodile rider effect on Feral Fury. That's 10 damage. Cornered Beast is not Limited, so the damage bonus from multiple Cornered Beasts stacks.

I did forget Next Evo, but that only works on one damage type, so it changes little of what I said.  I still consider Natch more likely to survive combat himself than Legacy, though Legacy gives his allies better chances of surviving too.  And having Natch tank for Legacy so Legs doesn't get himself killed totally makes sense to me.

Legacy has team damage prevention, something Naturalist can not boast.

Uh, go read Indomitable Force again.

In H=3 games you are right about the damage instances. In H=5 games you're very off.

No, very few instances of damage are equal to H or greater.  Usually it's H-1 or H-2, and often times it's just "1" or "2".  Even with a single +1 around, the majority of hits will do just enough damage to make Legacy rapidly die, without ever making SHD useful.  I speak with great confidence on this, as I've played Legacy as often as I have any single hero (a total of 20 games).  SHD, along with Shielding Winds and Undaunted, is just not a great card; it comes up dead against more villains than it proves useful against.

It's possible to tank without soak if you have some decent healing, as long as there isn't so much damage going around that your hp drop low enough for someone else to take a beating before your turn comes around again. Heh, I've tanked on the Adept before, healing something like 6-8hp a turn, every turn. But like the Naturalist, the Adept is extremely versatile (though can take significantly longer to get set up/recover from having his stuff nuked). That's kind of why these two guys are my top two favourite heroes. I like that they can do All of the Things.

When I'm playing the Naturalist, if we're in a target-heavy environment I'll go for the Gazelle/Allies combo. If there's lots of bits of damage being hurled at the group, I'll go Rhino. If that thing over there has to die right now (or the villain isn't a big enough threat to need to tank or heal myself) then I'll go all om-nom-nom in Croc Form. Whatever my form I'll try and make sure I get out at least one copy of Resilient Hide, preferably both if I'm a Rhino (actually took me a few games before I realised "omg duh I can heal 2hp a turn if I have two copies out…" for some reason, lol).

As tends to happen with heroes I really like, I've played the Naturalist a lot since I got hold of Vengeance. I think I've only been incapped twice, possibly thrice (I can only recall using his incap abilities in one game, but that's the only game I didn't go down either last, or at the same time/in the same round as everyone else). It's possible he just doesn't suit your playstyle though having only played three games with him I suppose it's too early to tell yet - it takes me more than three games to learn a hero's deck, anyway ;). Incidentally, you mention Hyperactive Senses a lot…I think that may actually be about the only card in his deck I've never used. I can see its use, I just always have something that I want to play more, for whatever reason. Just goes to show how people play decks differently, I suppose :).

Natch definitely suits my playstyle; I sucked as him in my first game because I kept switching forms just because I could, but having gotten that painful lesson out of the way, I played again and found him quite excellent at what he does (though I wouldn't say he can do All The Things by a long stretch; he has no way of destroying a Volcano for instance).

Noticing which Ongoing/Equipment cards aren't Limited is always tricky for me.  If I were reworking the graphic design of SOTM cards, giving them icons for start and end of turn, etc, I'd also replace the word "Limited" with something like a big red STOP sign and a "x1" or the like.

And I mention Hyperactive Senses a lot because it can do a lot of things, and is worth calling attention to, although it is unfortunately a fairly "rare" card in his deck.  That doesn't necessarily mean I play it more than you, though, just that I think more about its potential.  (For an example, in my twentieth Nightmist game last night, I made extensive use of Astral Premonition for the first time; I've generally not thought it was worth my power, but being DW Misty and having this, but not any spells, in my opening hand made me want to try it, and it was quite effective.  So in past games I've always thought about AP, but this was my first time using it on more than a very occasional basis.)

You are as wrong as a very wrong thing could be.

Every single villain can easily hit the threshold of 5 damage, especially in a  5 player game. Here is a scenario that I have come up against for every single villain (base or promo) where Shielding Winds, Undaunted, and Superhuman Durability have proven their worth.  

I would stress that 5 player games change the dynamics considerably, but I have run into these situations in 3 and 4 player games on multiple occasions.

SoTM: Enhanced Edition

Baron Blade: Blade battalions, devious disruption with any tech-heavy team, slash and burn

Mad Bomber Blade: if you get unlucky and he gets a run of targets to fuel his bombs/death ray, protective cards help a great deal.  This is not taking into account environment modifiers!

Omnitron: Drones. Electropulse explosives.  Sedative flechettes and singularities.

Cosmitron: all of the above, plus dropship lasers!

Voss: If you ever have the misfortune to play Voss in an environment that has +1 damage modifiers, or even worse +2 damage modifiers, his troops can be horde of murderous thugs (though mostly the banshees and Maerynians, as they have natural 3 damage).  The real danger are the ships, which hurt badly if boosted.

Citizen Dawn: Depending on the lineup, it can be extremely helpful to have some sort of protection from Summer and Hammer, particularly if they have environment help or Citizen Dare.  Or Citizen Assault.

Rook City: 

The matriarch is horrific with both cohorts in a 5 player game, as she does 5 damage per bird.  Sheilding winds (or undaunted, or SDH) can allow the heroes to go one the offense with less damage taken in reprisal.  

The Chairman: A single Hired Gun can get up to 8 damager per hero, particularly on advanced.  And enforcers.  And the Operative, or the Chairman himself!  Basically, I always look for defensive setups when fighting them in a team.

Plague Rat:  Seriously, everything he does can hit the 5 point threshold, though some of it is irreducible.  

Spite: More of an edge case than the others, but his drugs can push him over the threshold in a 5 player game.  However, given that the heroes tend to have to damage themselves for using powers, having SdH, Undaunted, or Shielding winds can allow them to buff each other and avoid the self-damage repercussions.

Agent of Gloom Spite: If he flips, he will absolutely get to 5+ damage, and has the potential to AoE the heroes.  If you aren't prepared, he can obliterate entire parties in one large chain of slain victims.

Infernal Relics:

Apostate can amp his damage to ridiculous levels, much like Fanatic, if he has some buffs from the Environment or his own relics.  With redirection relics,  protective relics, and a penchant for AoE damage, sometimes you have to hunker down and ride out the hits until you can strike back.  

Akash'Bhuta is less likely to hit the 5 point threshold, but the landslides in particular are bad if the environmental stars align (which happens more often since she plays lots of Environment cards).  Entomb is a big hit, and if you are playing her on advanced, she does direct damage on the flip side that can get very ugly.

Gloomweaver: Though less likely to do personal damage, his zombies can be extremely painful ina  5 player game, as can his cultists.  Strength of the Grave can be a morale-shattering experience.  

Skinwalker Gloomy: He DOES do tons of damage personally, and when he flips, he piles it on.  Having shields an dprotective options can allow you to ride out the AoE as he consumes himself.

Shattered Timelines: 

Iron Legacy:  Seriously.  Any size team, any environment. 

The Dreamer: Her personal AoE can be a total party wipe to the unprepared, particularly with Dark Hero support.  In fact, most of her projections can hit the threshold easily.

Kismet: Another edge case, but she can get to very high damage bonuses on either side- one for having lots of jinxes (and if you have a team that doesn't destroy ongoings, they pile up), and a variable hit on the other side based on the relic's health.   and this is before Environment mods…

La Capitan: Most of her crew have fixed damage, but the Battle-forged is a monster with his prediliction for going after the weakest for H damage.  I can't emphasize how enough how good it is to have some means of reducing that hit when it is for 5 or more damage.  Which it usually is in a 5 player game.  and he helps her play cards.

Promo Villains:

Miss Information: an edge case, where it will be mostly used as a sacrificial card.  This is the one villain where I would be less likely to play it, even in a 5 player game.  HOWEVER, once she flips, it is extremely useful as she has self-damage buffs and AoE damage.

Ambuscade: He generally falls just under the threshold with all of his attacks, even in a 5 player game.  However, in teh right environment, you will want the protection (Atlantis, Pike Chemical, Insula Primalis), as his damage can jump suddenly due to an environment card.

The V5:

Fright train hits very, very, very hard.  no matter the number of heroes.  Most of the V5 do fixed amounts of damage, but they synergize well and each one of them can hit the threshold, especially with nemesis and mini-nemesis bonuses assisting.  

Environments: Atlantis (Krakens), Pike chemical (multi-vat explosions), The F5 tower (entry points amping villain damage), Insula Primalis (Volcanoes, lava, obsidian fields, dinosaurs)

Technological Singularity is unlikely to hit Heroes in 5 damage chunks, which is just as well, because it's dangerous enough as it is.

Recently, I fought Cosmitron in the F5 tower.  There were 4 entry points, and a Tech Singularity wiped out Expatriette's guns and ammo.  

5 chunks of 6 damage would have annihilated her, if not for a well-timed Lead from the Front and SDH.

A month or so ago, Bunker got hit in similar circumstances in Insula Primalis with all 3 fields upping the damage, and he was saved by the Shielding winds.

It doesn't happen often with Tech Singluarity (Electropulses tend to be where it really comes in handy), but it certainly can happen with some bad luck.

It does lead me to wonder why Expatriette had ammo sitting around unused while fighting Omnitron. A Flak Jacket and two guns would be my limit.

That was my fault, and the Control room helping me get out stuff.  I got greedy and gambled, since I had an unload from the start.

Rebuttal against Braithwhite - I will be excluding the promo villains, since I have at most two games against any of them and thus have little sense of how they differ from the normal versions.  I also will ignore any consideration of the Environment boosting villains's damage, since my selections of a matchup are always informed by an awareness of how much danger the Environment adds to the Villain, and I play accordingly to that knowledge - I don't let Explosives Wagons stay out when fighting villains with lots of damage instances, etc.  And to the best of my recollection, no Environment has any single card which adds more than +1 to damage, so only almost-5 instances become actually-5s unless you make almost no effort to manage the Environment.

Yeah okay, those (and OT's Automaton drones) hit for 5 damage - once when they enter play, and then they're easily killed.  Not a significant enough threat to be worth having multiple cards specifically and exclusively defend against.  Any time this is the case, I will consider that card to be no proof of the usefulness of "magic bullets" against such incidental threats.  (If a card just happened to defend against the threat while doing other useful things, that would be different.)

devious disruption with any tech-heavy team

Keeping the Ongoing out will up the damage all heroes take from Devious disruption.  Sometimes it might be worth it; this is certainly a meaningful threat, but it alone doesn't prove much.

slash and burn

Right, now at least we're talking.  All three of these cards combined, Blade is definitely capable of triggering Shielding Winds (the most useful of these three cards by far since it protects the whole team).  Still, he's a difficulty 1 villain, so why bother having special protections against him?  I believe I've lost only one game out of seven against him; he's not much of a threat even with these. weapons.

Omnitron: Drones. Electropulse explosives.  Sedative flechettes and singularities.Cosmitron: all of the above, plus dropship lasers!

The dropship lasers are H-1 IIRC, so only on Advanced would they be an issue, as OT has no other way of boosting his own damage.  EPE is usually possible to kill or at least significantly weaken before it explodes, but still it poses a threat, as does Flechettes.  Overall OT is one of the better arguments for these cards, but once again, is easy enough to defeat even without them.

Citizen Dawn: Depending on the lineup, it can be extremely helpful to have some sort of protection from Summer and Hammer, particularly if they have environment help or Citizen Dare.  Or Citizen Assault.

Assault + Battery will not happen very often, and Summer+Dare or Hammer+Dare is still only 4 except on Advanced.  (And I've played two H=5 advanced games against Citizen Dawn, that was three too many, it won't be happening again soon.  In H=3 games, though, this might be a concern.)

The matriarch is horrific with both cohorts in a 5 player game, as she does 5 damage per bird.

Hm.  Well Matty is tough, but I can't say as I recall seeing both cohorts stay out very often, and if they do, the reprisal damage is probably the least of my worries.

The Chairman: A single Hired Gun can get up to 8 damager per hero, particularly on advanced.  And enforcers.  And the Operative, or the Chairman himself!  Basically, I always look for defensive setups when fighting them in a team.

The Chairman is the single hardest fight in the game, but again, SDH is as likely as not a wasted card you can't afford.  Enforcers are a non-threat in most cases since you can discard and not take any damage; I only recall taking damage from them once, maybe twice.  Hired Gun usually caps at about 3 damage.  By the time the Chairman flips, all the Thugs and their corresponding Underbosses should be dead except maybe for Enforcers or Thieves, depending on which one concerns you more.  If Prison break comes out, you just lose; Shielding Winds won't change that.  And I've only even bothered to try the Advanced game once; it's not worth even trying to win that one IMO.  Again, while SW will apply, it won't suffice by a long shot.

Plague Rat:  Seriously, everything he does can hit the 5 point threshold, though some of it is irreducible.

He's another one where it's a significant concern, but still, he's fairly easy to beat, and most of his damage is 1-3 point irreducibles rather than 5+ blocks.

However, given that the heroes tend to have to damage themselves for using powers, having SdH, Undaunted, or Shielding winds can allow them to buff each other and avoid the self-damage repercussions.

An interesting consideration, but it has little to do with Spite (his damage-on-powers is NOT hero self-damage).  And I've only fought Agent of Gloom once, so while I recognize the theoretical danger there, I haven't actualized it in practice (I believe in that game he died without flipping).

Apostate can amp his damage to ridiculous levels, much like Fanatic, if he has some buffs from the Environment or his own relics.

He gets +1 from one of his relics, and with that could be dealing as much as 4+4 damage to the highest-HP hero.  4+4 is not > or = 5 in SOTM math, however.  Remorseless Provocation and Fallen Angel might be able to get up to 5, I can't remember offhand.

Entomb is a big hit

Which, if anyone fails to take damage, keeps happening, so you're better off just tossing in 5 HP each and getting rid of the thing.  Yes, Shielding Winds will reduce the pain, but you need to make sure it isn't reduced entirely for anyone, or it will just be increased for everyone else.  It's entirely possible that I once had Scholar and Tempest in the same game against her, and deliberately avoided playing SW rather than let it react badly with double-Flesh-to-Iron.

and if you are playing her on advanced, she does direct damage on the flip side that can get very ugly.

That's 3 points, and she has no built-in boosts.

Gloomweaver

Oh puh-leaze.

Skinwalker Gloomy: He DOES do tons of damage personally, and when he flips, he piles it on.

To himself far more than to the heroes.  I've only fought him twice, but both times were easy wins.  Admittedly I have yet to try the advanced version.

Iron Legacy:  Seriously.  Any size team, any environment.

True, very true.

The Dreamer: Her personal AoE can be a total party wipe to the unprepared, particularly with Dark Hero support.  In fact, most of her projections can hit the threshold easily.

I'll definitely give you this one.  Illusionary Demon gets there even without Dark Hero.

Kismet: Another edge case, but she can get to very high damage bonuses on either side- one for having lots of jinxes (and if you have a team that doesn't destroy ongoings, they pile up), and a variable hit on the other side based on the relic's health.   and this is before Environment mods…

Not to mention a potential +3 to damage on advanced.  Kismet is rarely seriously dangerous, but she's all about those rare occasions, so I'll give you this one too.

La Capitan: Most of her crew have fixed damage, but the Battle-forged is a monster with his prediliction for going after the weakest for H damage.  I can't emphasize how enough how good it is to have some means of reducing that hit when it is for 5 or more damage.  Which it usually is in a 5 player game.  and he helps her play cards.

This one is more of an edge case than the others, but fine, I'll give you all four of the Shattered Timelines villains.

Miss Information: an edge case, where it will be mostly used as a sacrificial card.  This is the one villain where I would be less likely to play it, even in a 5 player game.  HOWEVER, once she flips, it is extremely useful as she has self-damage buffs and AoE damage.

She blows up her own damage buffs in order to deal damage at all; if you don't choose What Doesn't Kill You as the first Clue to remove, there's something wrong with you.  Again, most of her damage is in numerous small instances.

Ambuscade

See above under Gloomweaver.

The V5:Fright train hits very, very, very hard.

Agreed.  Vengeance 5 in general is one I'll give you.

Environments: Atlantis (Krakens)

Usually more likely to help the heroes by picking off minions.  I should try fighting Plague Rat there sometime though.

Pike chemical (multi-vat explosions)

Very rarely seem to occur; I believe I've only had it happen once or twice.  Usually the damage is 3 or 4.

The F5 tower (entry points amping villain damage)

That one could definitely be a big issue.  Only played there once, and it will be turn 4 before more than a +1 bonus can accrue, but I see definite potential for disaster there.

Insula Primalis (Volcanoes, lava, obsidian fields, dinosaurs)

Insula is one of the friendliest and least dangerous environments in my experience.  Obsidian fields are easily gotten rid of, velociraptors hit the lowest and seldom survive to pack up, the Volcano is a slow boil which seldom ever goes off without interference, and T-rexes are only an occasional threat.  River of Lava is big, but avoidable with Equipment.  This one could be an issue, but in general I find it pretty safe; I only remember one game where the Lava and Plant hits kept on coming and I was in serious peril the whole time.

[/quote]

So, I recognize two environments and about eight villains (the four from Timelines, Vengeance Five, Omnitron, Plague Rat, Blade and I'll take your word on Matriarch) as having serious potential to pose a threat which these cards can avert; the Chairman is a lost cause, and the others are either unlikely to hit 5 or are not significantly dangerous even if they do.  (I should even throw Omnitron and Blade in the not-significantly-dangerous category, but we'll consider them to be "going halvsies" with Ambuscade and Gloomweaver, both of which are dangerous so rarely that I take them even less seriously than the diff-1s.  I may be regarding the diff-1s as being slightly more dangerous on average, specifically because I favor them for newbie-player games, in which I cannot count on the same level of teamwork effectiveness as in a game with my regular group, or of course a solo game.)  Combining these two, we have 134 matches out of 266 - that's about a half chance of the situation having serious potential to occur.  The fact that, in 121 games to date, I have perhaps seen Shielding Winds or SHD be useful twice should no longer come as any surprise.  The cards do nothing else, and they can't be tutored on-demand, nor sacrificed for some inherent benefit (irrespective of the situation).  They are very, very seldom the best use for your card play, or the best thing you could wish to have drawn.

You say that like it's an argument against those cards existing, rather than for.

Precisely; a half-chance that something might happen is nowhere near sufficient to justify preparing yourself in case it does, not when the preparations come at the expense of something that is certain to be useful.  Most cards are not that situational.  If Legacy draws a Back-Fist Strike, I can be 99% certain I can use it to good effect (the 1% mostly covers games against Miss Information, and not even all of those).  If he draws Next Evolution, I'd rate it at roughly 50% effectiveness, given the cost in Powers and the fact that many villains do multiple damage types; I might be glad of it, or I might regret it.  But the odds that I'll be glad to see SHD are something like 10-20%.  That does NOT justify having two copies of the card in his deck, when he only has two copies of the must-have Legacy Ring and the game-altering Take Down.  Again, if the card did other things, or was a tutorable singleton, I'd be fine with it.  But as-is, it's a lot like Visionary's Brain Burn - a card that might occasionally save your bacon, but is a dead draw more often than not.  And at least Visionary can Enlighten herself and discard Brain Burn.  If Legacy draws SHD against the Ennead, he receives absolutely no compensation for this rotten turn of luck.

Every card is useful at some point. Some are just useful more often than others. Even if you're only hanging onto/playing a card so you've got something you can discard/destroy later for whatever reason, that's still a use for the card even if it makes no use of any of that card's text. It's a card game, it's random, that's kind of the point. Sometimes you get a hand and you go "Wtf noooo these cards are crap, what can I do with this?" but other times you might get the exact same hand and go "Omg wow I can totally kick arse with this" because you're in a different game. I don't know whether it's possible to play a single game and find that absolutely every card you draw is of good use at some point during that game. But it might be useful during a different game instead. I don't think I've ever used Brain Burn but I'd love to try it in my first turn against the Chairman someday, just to see how well that actually works. I think if every card was useful in every game, then all the villains and environments would have to be pretty similar, and that would get boring.

There's the MTG attitude again, that there should be more copies of the "best" cards because that's a sensible way to make a functional deck.

But this isn't Magic, and the decks weren't created to be as kick-ass as possible to be better than everyone else. They were designed to be fun and relatively balanced with the other decks so that you have a reasonable chance on average of beating the villain as a team.

I don't know why you'd want to add more of Legacy's more generically powerful cards to his deck when he's considered to be a "top tier" hero anyway (by those who think of the game that way). Personally I feel he's more fun to play when you don't have the Ring out all the time, since you have to make the decision of which one power to use, and that's much more of a meaningful decision than which two powers to use. 

This. Every card is useful at some point. I see the purpose of a guide not as saying "these cards are awesome but these other cards suck because you almost never use them", but as explaining when you can best take advantage of each of the tools in your toolbox.

For example, rather than just dismissing Superhuman Durability becuase it isn't relevant in a lot of match-ups, a good guide would probably talk about when you might actually want to pay attention to it (i.e. environments with lots of damage boost and a handful of villains that frequently deal larger instances of damage).

From my standpoint, a guide that is negative and unconstructive isn't fun to read and I usually won't pay it much attention. Whereas a guide that talks about possibilities, things that you can do in corner cases is exactly what I'm looking for.

Most people can figure out the bread and butter stuff: Crocodile is good at dealing damage, Rhino is good at tanking, and Gazelle has some support stuff. There's no need to spend more than a few sentences explaining this.

But there are other things that people miss sometimes. For instance, have you ever used Bestial Shift in Gazelle form? You can gain 3HP, use your power to shift to Crocodile form, then execute the Crocodile part of Bestial Shift (since it's lower down on the card that you're processing) to deal 4 toxic damage and use a power. Then you get a third power use during your Power phase. Three powers, healing, and damage all in one turn isn't too shabby.

Or think about when Environmental Allies is most useful. Maybe they're good for keeping those Raptors alive so they can chomp on Dreamer's projections a little longer. Or use it in Gazelle form to protect Unity's bots and the Sentinels from Char. Want to keep the environment targets alive a few more rounds until Akash'Bhuta flips back to her front side? There are plenty of cases where this card is exactly what you need.

Ooooh...that Bestial Shift thing never even occurred to me. That sounds frigging epic - must try that next time I get a chance! :D

Using Bestial Shift to switch between forms for multiple effects and multiple power usages is fantastic, one of my favorite cards for The Naturalist.  In a previous thread, someone argued that you don't need to execute the different parts of Bestial Shift in order—that you can use the bottom Crocodile portion to shift into Rhino and still process the Rhino effect—but I'd love to know if there's an official answer on that.  Bestial Shift is great no matter what, but that would certainly affect how I use it, making it phenomenal in Gazelle, still great as a Crocodile, and then serviceable in a pinch as a Rhino.

If you don't happen to have any extra powers out, so that you wouldn't have an extra power to use during your power phase after the Gazelle-Crocodile shift, Bestial Shift is also impressive as an off-turn play from someone like Argent Adept.  You end up getting two different effects from the card play as well as two power usages, without missing out on a potential power usage during your power phase the way you sometimes can during your own turn.  Which means you're regaining 3HP and dealing 7 damage, if I'm remembering the numbers right, very healthy for an off-turn card play and without having to spend any additional cards—by which I mean, it's not like you're playing multiple cards from hand, you're essentially getting four distinct effects as a result of one single card.  Even better if you have other damage boosts, since you're getting two instances and will be set up for Crocodile damage next round.

I could see a Naturalist Guide having a whole section on Bestial Shift—which combinations of effects and which shifts are good for which situations, what other powers from Naturalist's deck you may want out first, when you may need to play it sub-optimally and when you want to save it, etc.  In my games so far, Bestial Shift has always been one of Naturalist's most impressive plays, it's useful and versatile.  Predator's Eye is another that can lead to some big plays—on a turn where you desperately need to kill something big, a Crocodile-fueled Predator's Eye gets you 5 damage itself, and it also ups your inherent power to 4 damage, which is enough to kill quite a lot of the more troublesome minions and potentially a very good use of Naturalist's Turn.  The fact that the damage increase lasts for several more turns is just gravy—if Naturalist is leading the charge to make this the last round, he gets to deal 9 damage and also buff every later player's damage, which is a big contribution to pulling out that victory.

Cards resolve from top to bottom - this is trivially obvious in most cases. It's less obvious in the case of Bestial Shift, but since the symbols aren't really anything more than conditional clauses I don't see why it wouldn't still be the case.

I don't know if it would work that way.

The ongoing cards say you may activate those effects.

Bestial Shift does not give a "If Gazelle is in play . . ." so timing might not be an issue.

The argument would be:

The effects on the one shot are not triggered by the one shot, because they can only be activated by the effect of the corresponding ongoing card.

They are all conditional optional effects.  When the condition changes the new symbol effect may activate.

We already have cases where the second line of text on a One-shot can be activated before resolving the first line of text.

If the symbol text being unable to activate does not cause a "missed timing" situation then you would be able to do them in order other than top to bottom.

This was covered and answered during PTing. The order of the animal symbols does not matter. As long as you are in the form, you may activate the forms abilities. Think of it like Imbued Fire. Due to the nature of the effects, the order they appear on the card does not matter.

I agree with the logic of your point, BlueHairedMeerkat---the order-of-text answer makes sense.  But like phantaskippy, I can also see some reasoning for Bestial Shift being more accommodating.  I think the symbols aren't technically processed as "If Gazelle, this card has '<text>'", even though for most cards it works out that way.  Instead, I think the wording on the Form card is "you can activate effects" with the appropriate symbol---or maybe "you may"?  In any case, something about that wording can be read as giving the player a bit more leeway---it's not 100% clear to me that the text of Bestial Shift is processing three instances of possible text in order, such that you need to have each form at a specific point in time for the corresponding effect.  I might still lean that way, I'm not sure, I could understand either answer being the case.  But I think Naturalist's forms are quirky enough that I wouldn't mind hearing whether stuff like this interaction came up in playtesting.

Marginally related issue regarding another point in the guide.  While the Rhino-based effect on Indomitable Force is not itself worded as being optional, the Rhino form card itself suggests that you can/may activate Rhino effects.  So I read the interaction of these two cards as effectively making the redirection optional for each instance of damage.  While resolving each instance of damage, if you are in Rhino form then you can/may activate the effect of Indomitable Force to redirect that damage to you.  This would let you be a bit more selective with damage, letting Naturalist soak and reduce some, but letting some instances go through if that's preferable---to let Tachyon deal her extra sonic damage next turn, to let Nightmist redirect it, to let Ra counter-attack, whatever.  I don't know if this will be taken by most as obviously true, obviously false, or a surprise twist that makes sense in retrospect, so I'm curious to hear others' interpretations.

No cards in front of me, so if I've gotten any card texts or names wrong, please bear with me.

EDIT: Aha!  Thanks for the answer, Foote, glad to have an authoritative answer either way.  And I like the extra versatility this gives you to switch gears when using Bestial Shift in Crocodile form.  Change over to Gazelle or Rhino and immediately start building up a more defensive game. Don't suppose the Indomitable Force question had come up, too?

Second EDIT: In the rare situation when you can have multiple Forms out due to Fixed Point, would the same logic apply to other cards with multiple form icons, like Natural Form's Power?  Can you activate the multiple effects that you have access to in any order, as opposed to going down the card?  That seems like it might follow, but I don't know in what context this came up during playtesting, so I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.

Second EDIT: In the rare situation when you can have multiple Forms out due to Fixed Point, would the same logic apply to other cards with multiple form icons, like Natural Form's Power?  Can you activate the multiple effects that you have access to in any order, as opposed to going down the card?  That seems like it might follow, but I don't know in what context this came up during playtesting, so I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.

Good question.

I'm pretty sure that I have done it on several occasions.  Chrono-Ranger was probably involved; on the off chance one of his cards is completely useless, he can just pitch it to Just Doing My Job.  I don't expect every hero to quite measure up to that, but even Bunker, the probable overall worst hero in SOTM, at least never has a bad card per se, because every single card in his hand serves as potential fodder for an Omni-Cannon or Gatling Gun.  Legacy does not have such cards, so while he's unquestionably very strong overall, just for Galvanize, he doesn't get anything that can modulate his effectiveness to a smooth mean.  When he draws Legacy Ring and Motivational Charge, he is flat-out better than when he draws Surge of Strength but no cards which deal damage (and I've totally had that happen too).

I think if every card was useful in every game, then all the villains and environments would have to be pretty similar, and that would get boring.

That's a false dichotomy.  It's perfectly possible to make things different in particulars, but equal in overall effectiveness.  Balance can be achieved through the use of trade-offs; this could result in matches possibly being easier or harder based on whether your strengths match the enemy's weaknesses and vice versa, but everything would work out to the same net potency, so any match not determined by such matching "slants" would be equally challenging (within a particular bracket; you could still designate some villains as harder or easier, but they'd be equally easy or hard against every single hero, except possibly their nemesis).

Except that it's virtually never an actual choice.  If you have to pick between Galvanize and anything else, Galvanize is correct 90% of the time.  So Motivational Charge is almost completely useless without Legacy Ring, and Next Evolution isn't much better.  This only exacerbates the problem of how many cards in Legs's deck are frequently not beneficial, or at least not enough so.

…  jaw drops …Okay, that goes in the guide, with credit to you.  I've used Bestial Shift as a Gazelle often enough, just to heal and then heal again, but getting two of the riders on the same card without Fixed Point shenanigans would never have occurred to me.  (I guess there's more reason than just text space for why the card's Rhino mode doesn't give you a Power.)

I very much disagree. I've had a lot of games where I've had to seriously think about whether to sacrifice my Galvanise use to heal us with Motivational Charge, and there have certainly been times when I've used it to kill something that absolutely needed to die this turn, knowing my fellow heroes were unable to deal enough damage, Galvanised or not. And when you know everyone's going down pretty quickly Galvanised isn't so awesome. 

Do you really want to "improve" Legacy's deck when he's generally considered to be one of the strongest heroes anyway, with one of the strongest base powers? It seems unbalanced to give him an extra power twice as often as he gets now. 

Really? Name one.

Point, but…do you then acknowledge that SOTM heroes can indeed be "tiered" (even if the only difference were Tier 1 = Legacy, Tier 2 = Everyone Else)?  I don't want Legacy to be more powerful, but I would like him to be more fun for me to play (especially since it's been recommended I play as him while newbie players take other heroes; I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet).  Young Legacy accomplishes a lot in this direction, but she's still frequently stuck with these cards I don't like, and if anything she has even less reason to ever use Motivational Charge than normal Legacy does, unless she finds the Ring.

Incidental Contact.

There are a lot of times when I'd rather use Next Evolution than Galvanize - with Lead from the Front, NE shuts down a lot of villains. Shutting down retaliation damage from the Operative or the Matriarch is more valuable than slightly increasing the amount of damage everyone does. Or if I already have Inspiring Presence out, the extra damage boost from Galvanize becomes less attractive.

It's like Ra using Flesh of the Sun God's power in a fire heavy game - yes, you'd rather Ra was using a highly boosted Drawn to the Flame, but sometimes not dying is better than killing everyone else.

Legacy tends to be a double-edged sword in my games, since the other player really likes using Nightmist as one of his two heroes.  Depending on what cards everyone has out and in their hands, Galvanize can end up hurting Nightmist worse than it would hurt the villain—if she doesn't have the Amulet out yet, Legacy's buffs can be brutal for her.  Similar thinking, of course, for any other hero whose cards sometimes damage them, or for villains like Plague Rat.  If this is a turn when Knyfe, Ra, or whoever else is likely to spend a bunch of HP, I try to be careful with Galvanize.  With Knyfe, the benefits of Galvanize are going to buff a bunch of different instances of damage to the villain, so it's often worth it, but I don't want to buff her damage so that she's actually going to incapacitate herself.  Galvanize is still great, no doubt about that, but it's nice to also have powers that actively keep people alive.

No. The first line totally starts resolving first. Plus the second line is adding a modifier effect to the damage of the first line, just like Hypersonic Assault.

I purely disagree, I tend to use motivationnal charge before atomic glare as more often than not 1 hp on all hero targets is worth more than 1 damage, of course if something needs to die and the 1 dmg will count.

The first line has started, but has not resolved when the second line of text has a chance to activate.  And with bestial shift the new form card will be in play before the power use is resolved.

Edwin, a suggestion - play more games. Like, a lot of games. A few hundred or so. And try to vary how you play each hero from time to time. And then see if you think of each of them the same way you do now ;).

I've played one more game as Natch, and I could update the guide based on that, but I think I'll wait a bit, try to get another one tonight or tomorrow.  But I can share this: I got to try out the Bestial Shift into Transform thing, and it was great fun.  Gained 3 HP as a Gazelle, then turned into a Crocodile and then chewed on the villain (Baron Blade) a bunch.  But since I needed protection more than damage, it would have been nice to know for certain whether I was allowed to take a croc-munch first, then turn into a Gazelle and gain 3 HP twice.

I don't know about "a lot", but I definitely believe that such times do exist.  The comparison between the two is much less direct, since Next Evo corresponds to defensive play, and either Galvanize or Atomic Glare is pure offense, while Motivational Charge is a weird mix of some offense (but almost certainly less than Galvanize and quite possibly less than Glare, unless of course Legs is the last hero flying) and defense (but quite possibly less than Next Evo).  It also doesn't help that I believe Motiv Charge is a x3 in the deck, so I see it more often despite often having less desire to use it.  (Though I haven't played it with The Sentinels, where I'm certain it will be impressive.)  Next Evo doesn't really translate directly to a comparison with Galvanize, but with Motivational Charge, you're straight-out asking yourself "is 2 damage now worth more than +1 to every damage instance my team will do in a round?  What if I throw in healing?"  I'd say that on average, 1 HP to each hero is probably worth about as much as 1 damage to a single target (again, the Sentinels are an exception, and Unity might be as well), since if you kill that target, it isn't going to deal damage to you on the next villain turn, or otherwise do whatever it does.  Certainly that's a broad generalization, but I figure it's good enough on balance.

Or if I already have Inspiring Presence out, the extra damage boost from Galvanize becomes less attractive.

I definitely don't agree there.  There's no overkill like more overkill; +2 to all damage instances on a hero like Fanatic or Chrono-Ranger is a spectacular way of winning what would probably otherwise be incredibly tough battles.  (There's a "when did you feel like you were almost cheating in the game" thread somewhere on here, and Galvanizing Presence is a pretty good answer to that one IMO.  As long as you're not an Amulet-less Nightmist or the like, of course.)

In a lot of cases, the best way to keep people alive is to kill the things that are trying to kill them.  Very rarely does 1 HP per hero per round suffice to outrace the entire damage output of the villain and the environment; it's far better to make progress toward actually ending the game.

Which is usually IMO.  Not always certainly, but often enough to be an appropriate statement even without being qualified, as long as it isn't emphasized as being an absolute.  (I don't have to say "the sky is blue except sometimes it's gray or purple or white"; just saying "the sky is blue" is sufficiently often true to be a valid statement all by itself.)

Interestingly, it occurs to me that the Vengeful Five are a great example of a villain like that, since both Baron Blade and Fright Train force the heroes to self-damage when they're down.  It's very fitting that Legacy's nemesis would have an incap power that makes Galvanize suddenly unappetizing, especially if you don't know it's coming.  (Conversely, of course, Friction has an incap power that devastates almost everyone but Tachyon.  And I'm really not sure what Proletariat's incap has to do with anything.)

No. There's obviously variation in how consistent the performance of each hero is, how much they benefit from support, and how well they tend on average to deal with the bad stuff that the villain/environment throws at them, but I don't see any sensible way to "rank" heroes other than by your personal playing preferences because the game itself has so much variation.

I said that Legacy's considered to be a stronger hero (not necessarily to me) because I hear that from players all the time. I believe he's not so much "strong" as "consistent" - he's useful in the majority of games, even those where Tachyon and Golem Unity and Nightmist are glaring at him every time he encourages them to hit themselves harder, since he can heal to mitigate some of that damage and often it's still worth Pushing The Limits or Investigate-ing or similar anyway despite the higher cost.

Some heroes are somewhat swingy if you look at their performance over many games. Some will vastly outperform Legacy given the right circumstances, and do almost nothing given the wrong ones. So tiers? Pointless. 

The value of each hero is not Quantifiable, and no list is going to be definitive, but that does not make them useless.

They are a great way to compare your impressions of and experiences with heroes to those of other players.  That is a cool thing to be able to do, and you can gather useful information about the game and yourself through it.

Pointlessness is a similar measurement of worth, something you find pointless may be a valuable tool for someone else.  Just like someone coudl rate Mr. Fixer as a worthless hero to play, simply because they don't see the value in playing him.

I'm totally good with people having their own lists. Whatever.

But I don't see that there's any use in saying that Hero X is better than Hero Y when "better" is so heavily dependent on the villain, environment and other heroes, and what cards happen to come out. Sometimes Hero X is a superstar, but he's rubbish against Villain Z. Hero Y sucks against anyone who destroys on goings, but is full of win against minions because they have area damage.

Im arguing that it's pointless assessing how good a hero is without taking into consideration what hero, villain and other heroes are also in the game.