Beating Citizen Dawn

I've played Citizen Dawn in the Ruins of Atlantis 4 times now and can't seem to beat her.  Does anyone have any suggestions on some good Hero combinations or strategies to go up against her?

You have two choices when dealing with Dawn - try to beat her without letting her flip, or try to survive long enough for her to unflip.  If you get lucky with the citizens that turn up, you may find it easiest to just focus fire on her and try to get rid of those 80 HP, but if Truth turns up you'll be in trouble, and if both Truth and Return with the Dawn turn up, you might as well just get used to the idea that you have to weather the storm.  Damage mitigation is crucial in the latter case, whether it's something that the card plays force you into, or your strategy from the beginning.  You're going to take a lot of damage of a lot of different types, in a lot of different amounts and distributions; this makes her a lot harder to adapt to than Warlord Voss, but on the plus side she isn't invincible while her minions are out (excepting Truth, and to a limited extent Anvil and Spring), nor does she have an alternate win condition or anything equivalent to Forced Deployment.

Any random set of heroes can take on Dawn, but there are some that special utility against her:

Parse lets you control the villain deck with various ongoings, and her Buffer Overload lets you cancel an ill-timed Devastating Aurora or unwanted Citizen. Parse also has a lot of abilities to provide irreducible damage, to get around some of the nastier Citizens.

Visionary also has deck control powers and cards, and her Brain Burn card means you can afford to kill a couple of Citizens, since they'll end up at the bottom of the deck and not in the trash.

Haka can use Savage Mana to prevent Citizens from going to the trash.

Team Leader Tachyon provides everyone with a stupid amount of card draw, which can help against the Citizens that make everyone lose cards.

Wraith has limited villain deck control with Infrared Eyepiece, and Megacomputers are useful in Atlantis to minimize the threat of the kraken and gun turrets. She's also a consistent damage dealer once she gets rolling.

For a grudge match, I'd probably pick either Visionary or Parse or Wraith, Haka, and Team Leader Tachyon. Depending on how you want to play, you could add an additional hero or two such as Legacy (he makes everyone better) or whoever else your favorite hero is.

There are a couple of heroes I wouldn't play against Dawn: Expattriette is a bit iffy, and Unity will probably lose her golems if the team doesn't work together very carefully. The Sentinels might get battered down before they get a chance to be effective. Still, there's 20+ heroes you can field against her, and 5-6 that are especially effective.

Parse is amazing vs. Dawn, that irreducible damage for one round is ridiculous, and catching a Devastating Aurora is the best.

Visionary too.  Not as epic as facing the Captain, but pretty epic.

Why do you keep losing? Is it one specific thing, or different ones?

Dawn is one of the harder villains of the game. Ruins of Atlantis is one of the more brutal environments to play in. And…you have no idea why you keep losing?

No matter what advice we give you, you are just going to have to understand that you will lose more games than you will win in that setup. But thats the fun of it! Just trying to manage expectations here. You choose a very unforgiving setup.

If you're having trouble grasping what Dawn can throw at you, try a different environment such as the Freedom Tower, the Block, or Insula Primis. Other than that, you have to keep in mind that she has 2 Devestating Aurora's. All games against Dawn revolve and hinge upon where those DA's are and how you're going to deal with them. Suggestions of Parse/Dark Visionary/Wraith are perfect for scouting those out. Ongoing destruction is also going to be really missed if none of your heros have any (the above 3 have decent destruction options as well as deck manipulation)

Funnily enough, we played against Dawn in Atlantis last night…and we kicked her arse, it was great :D. Let's see, who did we have…it was TLT, Mr Fixer, and Tempest, in that order. Starting set-up for Dawn was Blood (not too bad) and Truth (argh), and then she played Winter (meh) on her first turn. We managed to deal with Truth in a few rounds. A Kraken came out in the first environment turn and as there were Citizens around, never focused on any of us before we killed it a few rounds later.

TLT obviously let the rest of us get out a bunch of cards, which was nice :). She also used Blinding Speed on a Toxic Seaweed which came out about halfway through the game. Was generally useful with the card draw and offered a few plinks at some of the bad guys too :).

Mr Fixer (played by myself) had plenty of tools and styles within a few rounds. I put out Dual Crowbars first but wasn't able to hit two things until the Kraken came out (since Truth was the only viable target for a while unless I wanted to hit myself or something - no Driving Mantis in play so no benefit to doing so ;)). Then I used Meditation to put out Grease Monkey Fist for more damage. Then I drew a Harmony (via TLT I think) a round or two later so had even more damage. We also had a Phosphorescent Chamber…well, two in fact, through the course of the game, whose damage we took advantage of as much as possible. I also got a nice set-up in which I played Bloody Knuckles for even more damage in the same round that Dawn had put out an ongoing (first it was Channel the Eclipse, then the following round it was Return with the Dawn), then Tempest played Ball Lightning on his turn to dish out some damage and nuke both Dawn's ongoing and my Bloody Knuckles (the latter at my request) so I didn't risk getting heavily pounded by anything. I think I did quite a substantial amount of the damage during the game, but not much else (though nothing else was really necessary).

Tempest got out Cleansing Downpour on his first turn and used it more often than Squall throughout the game, after the plinks we were getting from Dawn, Blood, and Winter for the first few turns. Nice when a Phosphorescent Chamber came out and we were able to benefit from an extra whole piont of healing :D. He put out his Shackles after a couple of rounds which was handy against Dawn, and he also used a bunch of one-shots to dish out some damage and finished the game with a Lightning Slash, I believe.

Dawn herself mostly played Citizens - after the first three we later saw Dare, Assault, and also Tears…she also played Channel the Eclipse and on the following round, Return with the Dawn (see above, in the paragraph on Mr Fixer, as to how we dealt with those). Return did bring back Truth but we were set up enough by then that he didn't really last long. We put a fifth citizen into the trash at one point but Dawn was defeated before she had a chance to flip, but I think we'd made sure that Assault was still out anyway, so she'd've flipped straight back had we got that far.

Had the game gone on any longer, though, things could've got worse for us - I checked her deck after we beat her and the next card was a copy of That Card (with the second maybe five or six cards below it). Phew! had she managed to play it, I was holding onto a Salvage Yard from the first turn so at least

So that was our game last night - we got lucky, I think, in that she didn't put out anything too hazardous and what ongoings she did get out we managed to deal with in the same round. Similarly, the environment didn't do too much - we had, in no particular order becuase I can't remember, a Kraken (only hit citizens and we managed to kill it), a Toxic Seaweed (TLT hit it with Blinding Speed), a couple of Hallway Collapses (the only reason I ended the game on less than 20hp), a Leaking Room (okay so TLT couldn't do much that round but me and Tempest were pretty well set up by then so weren't too bothered), and both Phosphorescent Chambers (we took advantage of the extra damage and weren't too impeded by the discards thanks to TLT).

In general for Dawn I would say that deck control is very, very useful (which basically means that our game last night was super risky as we had absolutely no way to see what was coming until she played it), so heroes like Parse and Visionary (either version) are very good. Those who can deal hefty amounts of damage (if it's irreducible, even better if Truth and/or Anvil are out) to a single target are good for taking out citizens in a single hit or whittling them down so someone else can finish them off. Haka is good if he can get Savage Mana out and start eating everyone, but that's one specific hero and one specific card (of which there are only two copies) so don't count on that tactic working if you decide to fight Dawn with Haka. Jim can be good with his bounties - No Executions probably has Citizen Truth on it for a reason, after all - he can't Return with the Dawn if he's at the bottom of the deck ;).

Environment destruction is also helpful if you're fighting in Atlantis, since it's one of the tougher environments. You're safe enough from Krakens as long as there's at least one citizen in play and all the heroes have a decent amount of hp remaining. But stuff like the Pillars of Hercules (giving Dawn an extra play at the start of every turn) can be your downfall if it lets her cycle through to a copy of That Card all the sooner. Basically, That Card is the bane of anyone fighting her, unless you either don't need any cards in play to be set up (Tachyon can probably get away with it, for example) or are so early into the game that you haven't had a chance to set up yet.

Remember also that it's a card game, it's random, and sometimes you can fight a villain with a certain group of heroes in a certain environment and get totally thrashed one time, then totally kick arse on the very next attempt. One time we had Sweat and Tears as the starting pair of citizens - we'd discarded half our starting hands before any of us even had a turn, meaning we never managed to really get set up before she killed us all. I think she may even have hammered it home even more by playing That Card just as we thought we were getting somewhere.

If you're finding her too difficult in Atlantis, maybe try her somewhere a bit less lethal…the Block isn't too bad as long as the inmates are attacking the guards or the villains, and somewhere like the Final Wasteland or Silver Gulch could be fun if you have the Naturalist in his Gazelle-Form-and-Environmental-Allies setup :D. Any environment which has the potential to let the villain play multiple cards on their turn is a bad thing with Dawn, since the more cards she plays, the more chance you have of That Card coming up.

Keep at it, though, and hopefully you'll find something that works…or just get lucky and get all the right cards while she keeps throwing "nice" citizens at you like Spring and Blood ;).

If I had to make a rough estimate, based upon my own personal experiences given a random group of heros, you are looking at a one win every 6-5 games on average vs Dawn in Atlantis. So I don't think the OP is doing anything "wrong". Sounds about right to me. /shrug

Also don't forget that Citizen Dawn counts herself to make her second flip, out of invulnerable status.

Perhaps so, but I would expect to see her be effective at least some of the time.  The nemesis bonus Mom gets against her will help Flak Jacket trigger more often, and the bonus to damage against Mom will be epic if you can get both Pride and Prejudice running, or draw into an Unload.  You may have to hesitate to play all your guns if you don't know where Those Cards are, but Reloading those Shock Rounds over and over will be totally worth it.

My dream team against Dawn is Visionary, Unity, Fanatic, and Tachyon.  Visionary has Brain Burn and Suggestion for trash maintenance,  Fanatic can make Citizen maintenance a lot easier with things like Zealous Offense and Final Dive, and Unity and Tachyon do what they always do.  They also have a good bit of ongoing/environment destruction which can really help, and they barely even flinch at Devastating Aurora.

Thanks for everyone's comments.  I finally beat her.  I took the suggestion of using Visionary.  I think that she was the key to victory.  Being able to control which Villain and Environment cards are on top of the decks is huge.  Allowing your other heros to draw cards was also key.

I used Visionary, Tempest, Raith, and Tacheon.  Thanks all.

With the possible exception of Tacky, those are all top-tier heroes (not that the difference between high and low tiers is immense; the game is very well balanced, but some heroes do tend to perform just a bit better than others on a fairly reliable basis).  All of them together can do a great job of bringing their A-game, though luck still remains something of a factor.

Tachyon is definitely a high tier hero: she does massive damage, group damage, damage redirection, damage shutdown, card draw, and ongoing and environment destruction without being particularly dependent on ongoings or equipment cards. She has her weaknesses, but all of the top tier heroes do.

Honestly, about half the heroes in the game are top tier, and many of the mid tier heroes are nearly as good. The bottom tier heroes could probably even be top tier if they only had more reliable ways to draw and play their gimmicks. A fully loaded Expatriette is insane, but she rarely gets the chance to get all her stuff out.

Here's how I would rank them, and I admit that all of the mid tier folk could be top tier in some other people's rankings.

Top Tier Heroes

Ardent Adept, Chrono-Ranger, Haka, Legacy, Nightmist, Omnitron-X, Parse, Scholar, Tachyon, Tempest, Unity, Visionary, Wraith

Mid Tier Heroes

Absolute Zero, Fanatic, KNYFE, Mr. Fixer, Ra, the Sentinels, Setback

Bottom Tier Heroes

Bunker, Expatriette, Naturalist

…

Really?

takes second look

…

shakes head

The Naturalist, a bottom-tier hero? Buh?

Tiers even existing in Sentinels of the Multiverse?

I figured that ranking Naturalist at the bottom would be controversial. I've only played a few games with him, and I might be missing a lot. But what's so amazing about him? He can achieve DR3 with some work and redirect all attacks to him (whether he wants them or not!) for a round, at the cost of minimizing his ability to do damage. Scholar can achieve DR4 and redirect all attacks to him and still be able to do damage. Legacy can make himself immune to (some) damage and selectively redirect attacks to himself, or make everyone else immune to damage, or shut down the villain deck, and buff everyone's damage or heal everyone while doing a little damage.

My feeling is that top tier heroes contribute to defeating the villain in a lot of different ways, and have the card draw/search ability to get a useful trick in hand. Bunker and the Naturalist have a lot of card draw, but they don't have as many useful tricks, so they're at the bottom tier. They're still decent heroes, and I'd expect that Expatriette, Bunker, and Naturalist can beat any difficulty 2 villain 90% of the time, and most of the difficulty 3 heroes 50+% of the time. It's not like they're bad heroes, they're just not incredible heroes like Omnitron-X or Wraith.

I don't see the point of tiers, or ranking heroes by any other criteria than your personal preferences.

As long as none of them are significantly under- or overpowered and we can still enjoy games with them, right?

I've had good and bad games with all of them (with the exception of the Vengeance heroes excluding the Naturalist, since the UK's still pretty much a Vengeance-free zone). Sure, there are some I don't enjoy playing as much as others, but there's so much variation in setup that it's futile trying to determine who's the "best" because the effectiveness of the hero is so dependent on other variables.

Silly example: I had an absolutely rotten game with Chrono the other night, against Advanced Voss. I did precisely no damage all game, and the only useful thing I managed to do was reduce damage dealt by a couple of Psi Weavers using the Neurotoxin Dart Thrower. And yet Chrono seems to be near the top of pretty much every "tier" list. 

That certainly caught my eye, but there was plenty of other head scratchers for sure haha.

I mean, Unity is considered many things. "Top Teir", well, thats certainly a new one for me 

I'm not a big fan of tiers unless there's a very clear power discrepancy (e.g. D&D) but I will say that Naturalist has been MVP in every game I've seen him played.

For the others, the difference for weaker heroes primarily seems to be the ability to get the things you need.  If you have heroes boosting your draw or leave Thiago out for a turn or two, it can make a huge difference for them.  Expat has a tendency to underperform, but if you can get her lots of cards or extra power uses, she pretty much annihilates everything.

I wouldn't put Haka in the top tier, and as I said before I'm not sure Tachyon belongs there either.  Unity being top tier is questionable, but I can definitely see an argument for it; she's fragile and draw-dependent and has a lot of bad matches, but if she succeeds at all, she succeeds to an utterly incredible extent.  My one game with Parse did nothing to suggest that she deserves top marks, but I will concede that I know too little about her to form an intelligent opinion.  And I want to argue that Fanatic is Tier 1 just based on how many of her cards are off-the-charts powerful, but my win/loss record with her is something like half, so I can't seriously claim anything beyond that she has potential

I'm somewhat saddened to say that I can't disprove the assertion that Naturalist is fairly low-tier, even though I strongly disbelieve it.  He's good at what he does, but he doesn't do an incredible lot of things, so there may be some logic to putting him toward the bottom of the hero selection.  Personally I think he's better than Fixer, but a lot of people have pointed out that my sample size with Fixer is a bit limited.

I would not put the Naturalist in the top tier just because in order to get maximum effect from his card, you usually need to know what you’ll need to do next round to have the right shape in place. It limits his flexibility.

In my estimation the Naturalist is an almost Tempest level character he can flip a game around by himself has crazy support and power use can do a major shutdown of Skinwalker Gloomweaver by protecting the environment and the heroes from it. Can boost damage from other heroes (even if temporary that's insane) can freaking feed cards to card draw dependent heroes tolerates and benefits from embolden like few heroes can do. He can be second best tank after scholar. I've seen crazy good shennanigans from him most games he's been in.

I've seen all decks shine one moment or another and even seen Parse manage a 17 damage shot in one turn with the only external boost a +1 from her infection on advanced felt like a Tachyon moment. The use of tiers to classify heroes feels wrong and doesn't mention how you usually use them fanatic is better in H=3 as undaunted goes off a lot more all damage reduction ignoring cards get more valuable on advanced.

I'll admit I use homerules on two heroes as they felt like they needed a bit of tuning and my gaming group appreciates them better this way. Whenever I use base Expatriette I replaced her power by Secret Stash: Discard an ammo card to draw two cards and suddenly she felt less vulnerable to bad draws and we also use the variation where you can change your mode with bunker at the start of your turn making more choices available without giving him anything game breaking. But those changes are group approved as the goal of the game is to have fun and they felt more fun this way.

What is the point of tiers, exactly?

To give us something to argue about.

Haka is a top tier hero, he can shut down villain damage, tank, deal steady and burst damage, and break decks, he also does not need any help from other decks to do it.

Ronway's Tier Rankings

Top Tier

Absolute Zero, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Bunker, Engine of War Bunker, GI Bunker, Fanatic, Redeemer Fanatic, Haka, Eternal Haka, Legacy, Young Legacy, Greatest Legacy, Ra, Ra Horus of Two Horizons, Tachyon, Team Leader Tachyon, Tempest, Sacrifice Tempest, The Visionary, Dark Visionary, The Wraith, Rook City Wraith, Price of Freedom Wraith, Expatriette, Dark Watch Expatriette, Mr. Fixer, Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, The Argent Adept, NightMist, Dark Watch NightMist, Chrono-Ranger, Omnitron-X, K.N.Y.F.E., The Naturalist, Parse, The Sentinels, Setback, Dark Watch Setback, The Scholar, Unity, and Golem Unity.

Mid Tier

N/A

Low Tier

N/A

+1

I like Ronway's Tier Rankings. I think I'll use them.

I disagree with literally every one of your opinions.

MEERKAT'S TIER RANKINGS

Top Tier:

Mid Tier:

Absolute Zero, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Bunker, Engine of War Bunker, GI Bunker, Fanatic, Redeemer Fanatic, Haka, Eternal Haka, Legacy, Young Legacy, Greatest Legacy, Ra, Ra Horus of Two Horizons, Tachyon, Team Leader Tachyon, Tempest, Sacrifice Tempest, The Visionary, Dark Visionary, The Wraith, Rook City Wraith, Price of Freedom Wraith, Expatriette, Dark Watch Expatriette, Mr. Fixer, Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, The Argent Adept, NightMist, Dark Watch NightMist, Chrono-Ranger, Omnitron-X, K.N.Y.F.E., The Naturalist, Parse, The Sentinels, Setback, Dark Watch Setback, The Scholar, Unity, and Golem Unity.

Bottom Tier:

No, really. How is the tier thing useful? Do people think, "Oh I fancy a challenge today, I'll pick a low-tier hero"? I'm curious since I don't tier and almost exclusively randomise everything. 

The only moment I really take a big peak at what caracters come up is before taking on the chairman especially on advanced in rook city cause you can't have dead weight in such a context. But barring that I'd use pretty much any caracter against anything except unity versus skinwalker gloomweaver so much pain last time we tried that...

As a relatively newer player, I could see something like that being useful.  For example, if a group is about to have their first fight against Citizen Dawn, having done all right against Omnitron and Blade.  They're jumping up to a 3, so they want to make sure they're using some of the stronger heroes to make sure they don't get destroyed this first time.  Later they can try again with different mixes, but for that first time they want to make sure they've got a fighting chance.  So a list of who's considered good and who's considered weaker might help them, until they've gotten a better grasp on the heroes themselves and how the villains play.

It can also help players, like the OP here, who has a really awful slog of it in some fight, to find out that "Oh! Turns out I happened to be using three characters that people generally regard as being on the weaker side."  They may be more willing to try that villain again once they know that they just stumbled into a slightly rougher line-up.  They should also know about particular matchups being good or bad, of course, even if everyone agreed on some sort of raw rankings that wouldn't be the end of the discussion---but I would think the rankings can be a useful shorthand, at least for some.

But the relative "strength" of heroes is so situational.

I agree, I alluded to that at the end of the post.  But I think it's fair to assume that not every new player is going to have perfect information, have read the relevant guides, etc.  Some just want a quick snapshot, and since I don't know that there's a comprehensive, brief mapping of how each hero does situationally, a quick snapshot of generally how each hero tends to be regarded is useful.  If someone has or wants to create the more useful resource, I'm all for that.  It's just in the absence of it that I'm saying I could understand the value of "rankings" as a shorthand for newer players.

Edit: Also, just to say---I'm not a proponent of tiers/rankings or anything, my goal wasn't to jump in and push for them.  You were asking what the value was, so I thought I would chime in and offer a possible answer, that's all.  We have two players, so we tend to half-randomize our games right now---we each pick one hero from a small randomized set, and choose from the full list for each of our second heroes.  We do end up picking heroes that we tend not to use as much, which is good, but we never feel like we're stuck with a team that we won't enjoy or that we don't know how to use.  (Or that has no damage, or something.)  We wouldn't really use formal rankings for our character selections, but it's potentially helpful for us to think about whether or first two heroes tend to be powerhouses, support, etc., so that we can balance our teams a bit.  In case that helps explain a bit where my perspective is coming from.

But it's a futile exercise because, aside from all other considerations, the value of the hero depends upon the villain. Take The Argent Adept against Iron Legacy, for example, and you are going to have a problem, but no-one would suggest AA is bottom tier based on that. 

I would say that giving heroes a "rank" implies that some are outright better/worse than others - this isn't true. Depending on luck of the draw, a hero can have a really bad day and do nothing or they might wipe the floor with whatever's thrown at them (more/less so if the villain and/or environment has a good/bad draw themselves, of course). I think it's better to (as some people have already done in the past on this forum) try to sum up each hero with a quick sentence. Some examples...

Wraith - Good all-rounder, can dish out damage and destroy ongoing/environment cards as well as give herself a bit of healing/soak but has a bad time against equipment destruction.

Legacy - Excels at buffing other heroes' damage and can deal a bit himself but relies pretty heavily on ongoings to achieve his full potential and has no means of destroying non-target cards.

Ra - Really good at burning stuff in a variety of ways, but doesn't really do much else. Has a decent mix of ongoings and one-shots and only one equipment card.

So I didn't mention everything that each of those heroes can do (eg no mention of stuff like Trust Fund, Smoke Bombs, Danger Sense, or Excavation), but if I'm trying to briefly sum up a character for someone who's completely new to the game I don't think I'd need to go into specifics that detailed, but rather just give the briefest summary possible. And then if someone has played a couple of games and wanted a hero a bit different to the one(s) they'd just played, I could suggest someone based on what they liked about whomever they'd already used - If someone played Wraith and then decided "Hmm that was fun, but I'd prefer to do more damage via one-shots and be less reliant on equipment" I'd suggest they play Tempest, for example.

Agree with Ameena and BHM.

And I think part of the fun of the game is in figuring out which heroes are good in which situations, rather than relying on a table of "well we're facing the Matriarch so let's pick only awesome-against-the-Matriarch heroes".

Christopher claims that any team of heroes can take down any villain, and I for one believe him. 

Personal subjective rankings are only useful to a point. On my phone, so no link, but check out Phantaskippy,s hero ranking rubric. It's the best attempt on these forums to objectively rank and rate heros. Let's move this discussion over to that thread. 

In my case it's more likely "Oh crap, La Capitan; I'd better take some high-tier heroes."  But yes, that's the entire point.  It's not especially fun to steamroll someone as pathetic as Spite with someone as powerful as CR, nor is it very enjoyable to watch Iron Legacy pancaking your teammates and be unable to help them because you're Bunker.  If you're conscious of a hero's overall potency when you select who you'll play, then you can decide more intelligently what'll make for a fun and balanced match.

If you randomize everything, of course, well, that's why you don't see the usefulness of such a system.

Thats why you bring EWBunker instead. Omni-Cannon has singlehandedly won me more than 1 game against IL on its own.

Yeah, I like a challenge I guess, and don't like to restrict myself to only playing a selected number of heroes deemed "appropriate" to that particular villain.

It'd be far too formulaic to me to essentially say, well I struggle with Kismet (I'm not ashamed to admit she's steamrollered me a few times) so I'll only take in heroes I know are good against her, or to only use Blade as a training match for the old stereotypically weak heroes like Golem Unity, Bunker, Fixer and Expatriette.* Boring. I want to see new combinations and different things happen. I want more challenge. Can we beat La Capitain without ongoing destruction? Can we take on the Dreamer with Haka, Tempest and Nightmist (damn you randomiser)?

• Note: I don't think any of the heroes are significantly underpowered, but these are the names that keep cropping up in these discussions. 

I guess what you're doing is assessing heroes based on the villain you're about to face, which I can see the logic of even though I don't do it myself. 

The bit I don't get is how you can assign a hero to a general tier when they all perform differently against different villains. 

+1

Bunker and Fixer shine extremely well against Advanced Miss Information but keep cropping up as bad heroes. Expat can get the full blast from Speed Loading if somebody boosts her draw like Team Leader Tachyon, Visionary or Gazelle Naturalist. Even Unity can cream Iron Legacy if you can Hypersonic Assault, Ground Pound, Grease Gun, Offensive Transmute or Throat Jab him a few rounds in a row I've seen it happen. Playing random boosts your creativity, but I can see how having lists would be good for people who well don't play an average of five games a week.

To get back to the original topic, I think Expatriette has a good matchup against Dawn. She benefits a lot more from the nemesis bonus than Dawn does, she has Ongoing destruction, and she has the all-important ability to get past 2 damage reduction.

For me making tiers is about looking at heroes from as many angles as I can.

Heroes are not equally powerful, and exercises like tier lists and the ratings system I did are more about understanding the heroes than saying these heroes are good, these heroes are bad.

We post them to see if the way we view the heroes are different from others.  I learned a lot after thinking about, posting and then looking at others tier lists.  It brought up a lot of debateand I ended up playing a few heroes differently.  (Ra for example, I find him overrated as a damage dealer, but I've learned to use his other cards a lot better, and he's really good)

A lot of newer players will post tier lists, because they are getting to the point that they find those lists valuable, eventually they will move past them.

Just like Guides, none of the more experienced players are interested in writing guides for the Vengeance heroes, because we don't really think like that anymore.  The process of writing and discussing a guide to a hero is a very valuable learning tool for players who haven't reached (for lack of a better way of explaining it) Sentinels Enlightenment. 

Part of the tier thing, and I just skimmed most of the comments, is tradition as much as it is anything else.

Many people on here have played DnD or Magic, or something else where there were some very clear breaks in power. So people divided them up and said Group A is clearly the absolute best and really can't lose to Group D, but they could lose to Group B is B gets lucky.

As a lot of us have said Sentinels doesn't support that thinking very well, but the impulse is still there to try and optimize teams and preformances.

The difference between tiers in SOTM is very small compared to most games, but it definitely exists.  Wraith is an absolute top-notch hero; that fact should be obvious to everyone.  Who else can draw a card, tutor one of a half-dozen great Equipment cards straight into play, play another card, and then use one or even two powers?  Nightmist and the Scholar can become virtually invincible if they have time to set up, Ra does unparallelled amounts of damage, Unity's army of bots is unstoppable against anything other than AOE damage (or horrific luck), Tempest is an amazing beatstick with only a few weaknesses, and Legacy boosts every team's win percentages through the roof.  While other characters may not be useless, they may have trouble comparing to these high marks (Tempest, Unity and Ra are debatable as being in that top category; Wraith and Legacy are not).  And there are a few heroes - Bunker is the one most often mentioned - who just don't tend to measure up as well.  They can certainly contribute, and they have a few specialized tools which may occasionally make them the star of a match, but very seldom do they pull more than their fair share of the weight.  Both Tachyon's Lightspeed Barrage and Bunker's Omni-Cannon are good for large amounts of damage, for example, but Bunker has to burn huge numbers of cards and possibly risk losing them to equipment destruction, while Tachyon doesn't have to do anything but play cards normally.  No hero is ever completely useless, but there are definite inequalities in exactly how useful some heroes are and how often, compared to others.  I do not believe I have ever once seen a game where Legacy's presence was not a tremendous, continual benefit; I definitely cannot say the same about Mr. Fixer or Parse.

New player question: I had a game that was getting to the end Citizen Dawn had 2 copies of Channel The Eclipse in play. This card is Ongoing. Can she knock herself out with this ability? I just let her KO herself, I couldn't do any damage to her. She only had 4 life left after environment cards were played.

Yep.

Spending too much time in the sun gives you sunburn. Just ask Ra how those Solar Flares feel. Dawn can sympathise

What a missed opportunity to add some fun in the answer. Screw it! I will answer anyways!

She certainly can kill herself. But surely she'll kill you first!

Thanks...thought it was wierd , but, had the environment with train falling damage x2 because there were two of those cards in play, so it was really pounding damage on the two top HP targets, one being Dawn.

If you were unable to hurt Dawn, how was she hurting herself with Channel the Eclipse? She only deals herself two points of damage with it (assuming no buffs)...unless she had one point of soak (from Anvil, say) and you only had heroes with one-point attacks (like Tachyon)?

It was very late in the game, I had 2 Monorails Plummeting that was dealing damage to her and one of my heroes, with highest HP. At the end of the Enviro turn she only had 3 HP. I think she had 1 healed by card affects. She had 2 copies of Channel the Eclipse, doing 2 points of damage each, in its proper turn, don't have the cards in front of me. Those 4 points KO her.

Regardless of the specifics of the example the point remains and is a good one.

Very true but I know that when I think about hero power a lot of emphasis is put on how consistent the hero is as opposed to just potential.  If a hero single handedly blows up everything 10% of the time and is crap 90% of the time, thats a bottom tier hero.

Consistency is so subjective to experience though, to try and look at it as some objective inherent aspect of a particular deck is a logical mistep. Some folks think Expat is totally inconsistent and does nothing most games. See, I just have never had that experience with her. Yes I'v had bad games, but I'v had bad games with everyone. The percent of games she does a ton of damage for me is pretty dang high. But theres a large contigent of folks who place her at the bottom of the barrel.

And no, Envisioners point wasn't a good one because the assumption made is that Bunker is always going to be useless in that particular matchup, which is unequivocally false. Watching IL beat up the team sucks. Yes, good point. Being unable to help because you're Bunker? Horsefeathers

Woah, watch it with the name calling, Foote!

Edwin's point was made using an assumption.

While I'm not particularly fond of Bunker myself (I find him kind of boring) I will say that he is useful in certain situations, and I have seen Bunker players turn what could have been a terrible loss completely around.

Also, the Freedom Six promos are pretty much designed with putting IL in the ground as quickly as possible as their main objective.

I don't think Foote called anyone any names. He said the idea that Bunker would ALWAYS be useless is "horsefeathers," but there's a difference between attacking an idea (the correct way to argue) and attacking a person (the WRONG way to do it)

Somehow I don't think Edwin/Envisioner is going to complain either way, but yeah, looks like he was calling out the idea.

Theta probably didn't know Edwin = Envisioner and thought by calling him Envisioner I was name calling.

Honestly, I was just itching to use the term horsefeathers for something. I rarely get to pull it out of the bag, but its a fav

It's a marvelous word. Right up there with bullhockey.

Actually his point was that it wasn't fun to steam roll villains because of the heroes you took and it wasn't fun to feel weak or helpless because of the hero you took.  Iron Legacy and Bunker were just a part of a poor example which is why I said:

A reminder of the first part of the statement:

So, on the the discussion of why do people make tiers.  It is completely fine and expected that everyone will have their own view, we've all had different experiences with different heroes, but as in this case, a new person might come in and said say "I don't have much experience, what characters are good?"  Well I will tell them with all good intent to be helplful that I have found Legacy, TLT, and Sentinels to be extremely strong and Bunker, Expat, and Fixer to be weak and maybe they should start with that in mind but I recommend they give all the heroes a try at some point.  Hopefully they understand that different players will see different results.

Now if I don't want to relate a personal stance but still try to be helpful I can always point them to the stats. According that completely non-personal, non-biased page are some heroes more likely to win than others? Yes, of course they are! But it still remains that this is just a starting point for someone as different players will see different results and I recommend giving all the heroes a try at some point.

Once you have built up your own experience to work with you don't really need to bother with other people's tiers anyway unless you are just curious what other people's results have been.

At first there are definite people I recomend against but that is usually due to difficulty (Argent Adept, AZ, etc.).  Once I became experienced with the game I almost always random while my wife picks who she wants to use.

But we can't agree which heroes are "strong" and which are "weak" because the real answer to "Who should I take?" is always going to be "It depends".

I think it's misleading to label some heroes as less effective or whatever because every hero shines in different situations. Sure, some are less consistently shiny but that doesn't make them bad, or weak, or low tier, or whatever. 

And it's becoming more clear to me every time this discussion comes up that when people say "this hero is weak" they actually mean "this hero is incompatible with my preferred play style and therefore I find it more challenging to win with them".

"Who should I take?" can always be answered with a randomizer or "who do you enjoy?"

Or "Setback"

My instinct to disagree with you is strong…but I can't. Setback is so good haha

And thats ok and well and good.  If someone asks me I'll give MY opinion, if I don't want to be biased I might tell them about the stats page.  That is exactly what happened here, someone asked and another person gave a personal opinion.  There is nothing wrong with doing that or even disagreeing with it.  Just remember when someone disagrees with your opinion it isn't an attack on you as a person.

I'll disagree on some level (though not completely) about incompatability of style.  For one thing I like to play with more than one style.  I've actually found it quite fun to try and play heroes in completely differnt ways than I normally do.  I also note that my roommate seems to be much better with Scholar and Naturalist than I am so I keep what I have seen from other players that I play with (which by now is a fairly large and diverse group) in mind.  I don't look through decks until I've played a hero a couple times.  Then I look through all the cards and see if I missed something and try again with any new understanding.  At no point do I stop playing heroes or trying to be better with them.  My group mostly randomizes unless someone just has and itch to play a specific hero.  Keeping this all in mind I don't think that my opinions are based completely on A play style or MY play style.

+1 and +1 for every 3 tokens in my vote pool.

I always ask what superhero is there favorite and go from there. ofcourse they always pick superheroes that are not easily represented in sotm...cough, spider-man, cough. :P

That's a feature. Not a flaw.

And I failed to mention this earlier, but to some degree yes.  My group mostly refuses to play Legacy in any incarnation as well as Team Leader Tachyon and Dark Visionary because they proved to be way too potent.  Teirs are not just about which heroes are weaker, but which ones are very strong as well.  We randomize for the most part, but Legacy is removed from the list and if Tachyon comes up we only play the base version.