So after analyzing the decks available, there's something I've learned:
There's more environments than solo villains. So I won't be using all the environments until we get to the team battles.
Also, I'm nearly done with the unlocks! The last few have some REALLY stupid requirements.
With that in mind, let's use up one of the dumber environments on this next Ultimate mode battle!
Villain: Deadline
Difficulty: 2
Nemesis: The Naturalist
Deck Gimmick: Aside from a single one-shot, there are two types of cards in this villain's deck - devices, and catastrophes. Catastrophes count as ongoing cards, and if there's more than a certain number of them in play, Deadline will expend them to remove cards in the environment deck from the game. If there is no environment deck left, it's an instant villain victory. This guy is a bit above Captain Planet's paygrade unfortunately, so it's up to us to stop him.
Advanced Mode: Normally, you'd want to destroy catastrophes early. But in Advanced mode, if you do that, Deadline will pile on tons of Infernal damage to the whole team. When he does launch his catastrophes, the heroes will deal multiple instances of Psychic damage to themselves. The wording on that is important.
Challenge Mode: There are four devices in this deck - a glaive that deals damage every turn, armor that blocks the first damage the villain takes each turn, a relic key that plays more villain cards when the environment gets a draw, and a relic sphere that deals damage and forces discards. Normally you can destroy these. Not in Challenge mode - these become indestructible.
My Team:
Haka (complexity 1)
Play Style: It's hard to pin down what comic hero this guy represents. All of his damage is melee damage (okay, there is ONE source of Toxic but that requires some buildup and is more like a finisher), but he's got a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Weapons, the ability to keep environment damage off the rest of the team, card draw when environment cards get destroyed... his biggest deal is the "Haka" cards. You draw 2, discard as many as you want, and depending on the card you can heal yourself, reduce the next damage you take, or increase your next damage by the amount you discarded. Paired with a hero that can give tons of card draw, the Hakas are incredible.
Variant?: Base version deals straight damage, Eternal variant can potentially give you tons of card draw, and XPW variant lets you redirect damage from one target each turn. I'm using the Prime Wardens variant here - you play a card, and if it's one of his "Haka" cards then you can choose who benefits. Not only is this extra card play, it's very handy for emergency healing with the Haka of Restoration.
Absolute Zero (complexity 3)
Play Style: Imagine Iceman with some of the tribulations of Iron Man. This deck revolves around several pieces of equipment - one module that heals you if you receive cold damage, another module that lets you deal a cold damage attack if you take fire damage, and two non-module devices that increase cold damage. Many cold damage attacks in this deck also deal you fire damage.
Variant?: Base variant can let you deal fire or cold damage to yourself, meaning you have more control over your device effects. Freedom Six version can deal straight damage to enemies, Termi-Nation variant ramps up all damage he deals and takes... but I'm going with the Freedom Five variant - you can only deal fire damage to yourself, but in exchange you can search your deck for ongoing cards to put into play. It gets you set up faster, but the vast majority of his cold damage specifies "non-hero" targets so you can't heal nearly as easily. You're basically reliant on someone else if you want to heal, as the two modules are normally designed for that but you don't have enough self-cold with the Freedom Five variant.
NightMist (complexity 3)
Play Style: Lovecraftian spellcaster whose powers are all mist-themed. Every single one of her cards has a spell value from 1 to 4 on it. Most of her cards rely on that number for something related to its effect - but many one of them also deals NightMist more damage. However, she's also got a relic that lets you discard cards to redirect damage taken, and a relic that lets you discard cards at the end of turn to gain HP based on the spell value.
Variant?: Out of everyone here, this is the only hero that's going in as the base version. Base version deals self-damage to draw more cards. Her Dark Watch variant lets her rearrange the first three cards of the deck every turn. Dark Watch version is better if you have ways to use powers out-of-turn as you can manipulate a card with a good spell value to be on top. With this team, the base is better.
The Naturalist (complexity 2)
Play Style: An environment-defending shapeshifter. His deck revolves around three forms - gator, rhino, and gazelle. Gazelle provides card draw, rhino reduces damage, gator increases damage - but most of the cards in the deck have other effects depending on the current form. You can't have more than one form card out at a time.
Variant?: His normal variant's power is to put one of the three Form cards in play. I'm using his Hunted variant instead, which lets you activate Form effects for a specific form - and gives extra card draw or play. The Hunted variant is straight-up better because the Form cards count as ongoings and can be destroyed easily.
The Sentinels (complexity 3)
Play Style: So instead of just one standard hero here, you get four weaker ones - energy being Dr. Medico, the rough-and-tumble Mainstay, psychic superstar The Idealist, and shadow being Writhe. Each one has a Signature card specifically for them, but otherwise most of the cards take into account whether specific heroes are active or incapacitated. There are even cards to revive part of the team. All four must be incapacitated before this deck is considered "out". The catch is, you're also four targets, which is horrid for enemies with lots of team-hitting attacks. Your standard hero has at least 24 HP, all the way up to 35 (PW Haka) with one case of 50 (Akash'Thriya). The Sentinels individually don't go above 15 HP. They will melt FAST.
Variant?: So this is one of those cases where neither the base version nor the Adamant variant is strictly better. Let's run down the differences. For Dr. Medico, base version can heal anyone for 3 HP where the Adamant version only heals The Sentinels for 1 each - but the Adamant version gives card draw at the same time. Base Mainstay can block damage for all the Sentinels whereas Adamant version has him deal damage and make the next attack irreducible. Idealist deals more damage in base form but reduces the damage dealt by the target in Adamant form. And Writhe has bottom-deck scrying in base form, but can put destroyed non-hero targets on the bottom of their deck in Adamant form. It's a toss-up, but ultimately I'm choosing the Adamant variant here.
Environment: Madame Mittermeier's Fantastical Festival of Conundrums and Curiosities (difficulty 3)
Environment Gimmick: Welcome to the lower birth... the Greatest Show Unearthed! No seriously, this is one of the darkest carnivals there is, with many grim attractions. A lot of them deal widespread damage, but some affect both hero and villain. The carousel's horses are partly undead, and force discards. The fortune-teller can let you see the next card - and play it if it's a one-shot. The maze rebounds the first damage from any source back to itself. The freak show locks away the hero with the lowest health. The big risk is letting the attractions pile up - if you let too many attractions stay active, you run the risk of losing heroes completely. As in, they don't even get incapacitation abilities.
My Strategy:
So remember what I said about Advanced mode where if you destroy the catastrophes early, Deadline will deal lots of Infernal damage? And how proper destruction of the catastrophes results in the heroes doing damage to themselves? Yeah, that's really important because of Haka's Ground Pound - which states that non-hero targets can't do damage. So that's why Haka is going before everyone - NightMist, Absolute Zero, and The Naturalist all have cards that can destroy multiple ongoings in one shot... including Catastrophes. With Ground Pound in play, they can use those cards without worry for a turn - which can stop eco-destruction if Deadline gets 3 or more out at once.
One of the issues with this team is that there's not a lot of environment destruction (primarily NightMist), only ongoing destruction. The Naturalist actually has a card that completely eliminates environment damage to heroes - but he has to maintain the gazelle form effect to keep that bonus. When "Gone Without a Trace" (the card that can remove heroes completely if there's too many attractions) comes into play, its means of removing targets relies on self-damage so The Naturalist is ineffective at stopping it.
The base strategy thus becomes a race to prevent Deadline from getting a lot of Catastrophes out to begin with. With his double-dip on card draw, this is a DPS race in a similar vein to Baron Blade. NightMist can actually stop card draws from one deck for a turn, but we shouldn't be relying on that.
How Did it Go?:
I had to reset this fight once because he drew Unnatural Disaster right off the bat. If he draws Unnatural Disaster on his first turn, restart - you won't be able to recover from an annihilation that early. His environment annihilation is end-of-turn, so you might be able fix that with one of Absolute Zero's cards that forces those to the start of the turn.
In my case, Deadline pulled off two annihilations and removed half the environment deck. The Sentinels went down on the first one, Absolute Zero dropped on the second (it was going to be him or The Naturalist on that Restoration Haka, and I chose The Naturalist. A later Shielding Haka didn't cut it). NightMist would have dropped, except Mist Form blocked damage for several turns - I dropped it after the second annihilation and used a Haka-enhanced Oblivion (with a redirect from Amulet of the Elder Gods to make sure she could finish the spell) for the win.
I never actually had to worry about Gone Without a Trace this time around. I also got every one of this villain's devices in play EXCEPT the one that blocks the first damage taken each turn. I might not have won if he'd brought that one to bear.
Would any other heroes work?:
Tachyon or Wraith would also solve the issue with Advanced mode. As for someone like Visionary? Deck manipulation is... partially valuable here - the five types of catastrophes are not uniform in their effects, but 18 of this guy's 25 cards are catastrophe cards (he otherwise has the 4 devices and 3 copies of Unnatural Disaster, a one-shot that is about bringing out lots of catastrophes). However, with Challenge mode, the devices aren't going away - so your only recourse is for them to never be played in the first place.
Whoever you swap in, swap out The Sentinels - they won't survive a single round of environment annihilation in Challenge Mode even if you have Dr. Medico's signature card out.
Now, the self-damage from the catastrophes being destroyed makes Legacy a very bad idea for this opponent. Same for anyone that boosts their own damage for a whole turn (instead of just one attack like Haka does).
Now, for what's next in this series, there are several villains I want to take down early because they've got hero versions. Baron Blade and Deadline are two of them, believe it or not.
The remaining six that I want to prioritize are Ambuscade, Akash'Bhuta, La Capitan, The Matriarch, The Dreamer, and Omnitron. Ambuscade's a difficulty 1, Omnitron and Akash'Bhuta are 2, La Capitan and The Dreamer are 3, and The Matriarch's a 4. The Cosmic Omnitron variant is a 3 as well. And if I'm going this far, let's throw in Mad Bomber Baron Blade, another difficulty 2 villain.
So that sets me up for the next 8 episodes. I may actually deal with Mad Bomber Baron Blade first.
(Most of the villains don't have variants by the way. Only six of them do, and I will likely face the variants back-to-back with the originals... with one possible exception...)
