Sentinels of the Multiverse

Sentinels of the Multiverse is, according to the creators, "the World's Greatest Cooperative, Comic-Book Based, Fixed-Deck Card Game." Fortunately, it is also a badass card game on its own merits.

Born when Christopher Badell and Adam Rebotarro got tired of every damn superhero game being either a lame exercise in "my childhood icon could beat up your childhood icon" or another damn Parker Bros. reskin, in Sentinels you play a group of superheroes (scientifically, the correct collective noun is a "crossover") working to fight a villain in a place.

From such simple things spring great ones.

Every hero plays completely differently, every villain has a different ballgame for wrecking your shit, and every environment has different effects on the ongoing struggle. And the lore is actually pretty amazing for the kind of thing that can be easily skipped, both because there's a few strong creative forces undergirding all of it and because it doesn't have to make everything the same forever. Hell, the art's pretty good too.

Notably, "promo" versions of different heroes with alternate powers but using the same decks are available, but usually hard to find print versions of.

The game has spawned two major spin-offs, a scenario-based skirmish game called Sentinel Tactics, which got a few expansions, then died young because the product needed a rework, then had a rework/reboot that died late in the womb, and a roleplaying game called the Sentinel Comics Roleplaying Game. Both are/were sequels to the card game, each taking place in alternate versions of the climactic OblivAeon event that comprises the card game's final expansion.

Anatomy of a Turn

The villain goes first, playing the top card from its deck, then resolving all effects. This usually takes a good deal longer than it sounds.

The heroes take turns going in a set order. Each one may play a card from their hand, use a power, and draw a card in that order. If they don't play a card or use a power, they may draw two. Sometimes it's really that simple. Sometimes (lookin' at you Omnitron-X), this takes for-bloody ever.

Every hero has one "base" power printed on their card, and most can put other cards into play that let them use other powers.

The environment goes last, plays a card, and resolves all effects.

Repeat until the heroes or the villain get a victory, usually but not always by smashing the other into paste.

There are no limits on hand size, and when you run out of deck you just shuffle your trash and flip it over.

Notably, the villain and environment turns are completely automated, so you don't need someone to play them. In practice, however, both can get pretty lengthy and complex, so it's not uncommon to have a kind of quasi-Gamemaster run these turns for you. Additionally, the game supports between three and five heroes, with the villains scaling to match them, though players can choose to run multiple heroes. You can even play all by yourself if you're desperately, desperately lonely and/or bought the digital version.

A "dead" hero isn't out of the game. On his or her turn, they can use an "incapacitated action" to help out the team from the bench. This mechanically mirrors the common comic book situation of the rest of the team being K.O.'d, but the last survivor taking on the bad guys single-handed and taking home the win anyway in heroic fashion.

Heroes

The good guys. You need 3-5 of them to play a game. Most have "variant" forms, representing versions of themselves from alternate dimensions and timelines, or just the same person changed slightly after Advancing the Storyline. They use the same decks, but have different amounts of base hitpoints and different starting powers. They (theoretically) aren't stronger or weaker than their normal versions, just different.

Absolute Zero

Style- and concept-wise, he's kind of like Mr. Freeze, though he's got more in common personality- and backstory-wise with the later Ant-Man. A depressed janitor with a tragic life who had the bad luck to work at Pike Cryogenics, Ryan Frost got mutated in an explosion that left his body temperature hovering around absolute zero. Now he's got to work as a superhero for the government to pay off the cost of the special thermodynamic suit that's keeping him alive. He is, at the start of the story, the latest member of the Freedom Five, and the unstable loose cannon of the gang.

He's got a well-earned reputation as one of the most complex heroes in the game, and it's obvious why just looking at his character card: his base power involves adjusting his suit's thermostat to deal himself fire or cold damage, and many of his cards do the same. What makes him tick is his equipment, which lets him heal off ice, blast cold damage whenever he gets hit by fire, and heal himself of any fire damage he might take by blasting himself with the resulting cold damage. Understandably, this puts him in something of a bind against equipment-wrecking assholes and means he may accidentally self-destruct if his player isn't good at math, but fortunately, a quarter of his deck involves either replacing lost equipment or boosting/mitigating the effect of damaging himself. Late game he can casually regenerate a ton of health on top of dealing good damage, and can suicide to basically kill himself while dealing 20+ damage to the big bad. And that's not counting how nice damage boosts are on him. Not for the faint of heart or the inexperienced, but can hit harder than almost any hero in the game in the right hands or with the right support.

Variants:

• Freedom Six: From the Iron Legacy timeline, where he was one of the few survivors of the titular tyrant's rampage and holed up as his powers mutated. He's got a much-more straightforward base power: punching something else in the balls with two cold damage. While this makes him much less versatile and high-reward than his predecessor without lots of build-up, it also means he's just as online from square one as, say, Ra. A useful way to put training wheels on your Absolute Zero experience.
• Termi-Nation: After fighting the tech-absorbing villain Chokepoint, Zero's going in with a lot less suit. His base power boosts all damage he deals and receives by two, which makes him incredibly fragile but amazingly deadly. Handle with care. If you have trouble keeping regular Zero from self-destructing...
• Freedom Five: This is AZ late in his heroic career, after he had made the shift from "self centered guy who's only a hero to pay off his suit" to a genuine hero. His Power allows him to deal himself 2 fire damage to bring an Ongoing card from his deck to the field. This gives him better damage then his base counterpart, but the lack of on demand healing can really hurt at times

Akash'Thriya

After being defeated by the Prime Wardens and severely weakened by Professor Pollution, The Naturalist helped Akash'Bhuta sever her ties to the earth and take on the smaller form of Akash'Thriya. While Akash'Thriya didn’t really have a change of heart, she does join the heroes to face off against OblivAeon and even sacrifices her life to help ensure their victory.

Akash'Thriya is one of the more unique characters in the game, and not just because of her massive 50 hp. Her deck is all about environment control which she does through the use of special cards called Primordial Seeds (3 hp targets that have minor effects when destroyed) and several effects (including her base power) that allow her to shuffle them into the environment trash and deck. Putting her seeds in the environment deck prevents the environment from doing anything negative to the players, and also activates the seeds' special effects when they are played. The downside to all of this is that like most complexity 3 heroes, Akash'Thriya is very difficult to set up properly, additionally certain environments can make it difficult for her to actually get her seeds into it.

Variants:

• Spirit of the Void: After being critically wounded during the OblivAeon event, Akash'Thriya was forced to take on her original Void spirit form in order to survive. This variant's base power allows her to either play or draw a card, then each seed in play deals 1 toxic damage. This makes her less capable of getting seeds into the environment, but more capable if she’s able to get and keep them in play

The Argent Adept

...Well, he's a superhero bard. The latest heir to the title of "Virtuoso of the Void," Anthony Drake learned that he was destined to fight the avatar of elemental chaos, Akash'bhuta, when he handled an ancient musical instrument. Unfortunately, Akash'bhuta had managed to delay the process of passing down the musical knowledge of ages to him by killing the last Virtuoso and smashing his fiddle before he could find Anthony, and he's working to make up for lost time. The superhero team known as the Prime Wardens was originally formed to help him defeat her and compensate for his green-ness.

The Argent Adept is also a really complex hero to play, though not because he's in danger of self-destructing like Zero. Rather, his deck has three major components: music cards (subdivided into Rhythm, Harmony, and Melody) that each have Perform and Accompany components (his base power only activates a single Perform component), musical instruments that each activate two of those sub-components for different types of music card, and, of course, search cards to help get what he wants into play. If you haven't got a good head for all these kinds of things, he's really tough get to do what you want him to, but done right he'll turn his team into an unstoppable hurricane via combo-buffing.

Variants:

• Prime Wardens: Considering the team formed to help him, he'd better be a member. His new power lets him play the card on the bottom of his deck and use an Accompany text, which is... well, it's pretty nice, even if Accompany components tend to be less-direct than Perform ones.
• Kvothe Six String: ...Well, the character of the Argent Adept was originally developed as a direct reference to The King-Killer Chronicles, and Rothfuss turned out to be a big fan. His new power reveals the top cards of two decks, putting one into play and the other into the trash. Most useful when villains don't want cards in the trash, obviously, but still really good for set-up-heavy heroes. Unfortunately, this also means he can't activate his music without instruments anymore, making him very draw-dependent compared to his counterparts.
• Dark Conductor: Anthony felt like a cool guy there when he defeated Biomancer's half-baked clone of him and reclaimed the instrument it wielded. Then it started affecting his mind. Literally identical to the Kvothe card gameplay-wise, but was added later so that people could have access to a version of it while still needing to support the charity to buy Kvothe.
• Xtreme: Product of an ill-advised attempt to reboot Anthony as a punk-rocker full of 'tude in the 90's that got reconned into an alternate universe. This bad boy can blast any target for two sonic damage, and if he hits a hero target they can immediately play a card and use a power (so long as he actually hurt them, powergamer). Another variant that can't play his songs on his own, but it hardly matters because his ability to support his team from the word go is just that good. Not as broke as, say, Freedom Six Tachyon, but still an example, as with many of the Xtreme Prime Wardens, of balance fighting awesome and awesome winning. Just be careful not to mosh pit your own team too hard if someone or something keeps boosting your damage.

Benchmark

Randall Butler was an extremely gifted individual, being skilled at chess, boxing, acting and just about everything else under the sun. He always wanted to make the world a better place but didn't really have a good idea for doing that, thinking that simply getting into acting would be enough to inspire people to be better. Eventually he got a call from his casting agency about being a superhero and leapt at the chance, too bad he didn't look into his new employers. Revocorp (a company Baron Blade set up to further his schemes then abandoned) wanted to use him as a means of gaining good publicity as well as settling a personal vendetta for the company's CEO, leaving Randall to juggle heroism with the demands of his new boss. Notably the in universe fan reaction to Benchmark was negative, with him being viewed as a Gary Stu due to his massive amount of talents and quick push to the forefront of the comics.

Benchmark's deck has two kinds of special cards in it, "Hardware" and "Software" (which are also Equipment and Ongoings respectively). These cards allow him to do almost anything, but the catch is that if he ever starts his turn with more Software then Hardware, his software starts blowing itself up two at a time until the hardware and software are equal again. This balancing act makes him one of the toughest characters in the game to play, but also the most rewarding. If set up and played right, he can deal damage by the bucketload while healing hp almost as fast as he takes it. If played poorly (or if you get unlucky with Equipment/Ongoing destruction) Benchmark's player might as well sit around and jerk off for all the use he'll be. His innate power allows him to draw a card and deal 1 energy damage. Useful for keeping his hand full, but you'll have much better options at your disposal for damage.

Variants:

• Supply and Demand: An alternate universe version of Benchmark where he is the only hero in the world, and Revocorp isn't run by evil jackasses. His innate power heals him 1 HP then plays the top card of his deck, which is an effective but risky way to set him up quickly. He also has one of the bigger HP differences between his base card and the variant, but the HP restoration from the innate power should make up for that.

Bunker

The current generation of a line of metal-suited military heroes going back to the second World War, and the game's attempt at aping War Machine. A former mechanic's kid from Vegas, Lt. Tyler Vance was a decorated combat vet who was given the chance to be the next incarnation of Bunker. He became the second member of the Freedom Five, and Legacy's strong right hand in running them.

Bunker is one of the first equipment-heavy superheroes in the game, and it shows. He can equip self-repair systems, armor plating, and a variety of powerful heavy weapons, but his unique mechanic involves shifting between three Modes: Recharge mode, in which he gives up every other part of his turn to draw three cards (including the bonus for not playing or using powers) while taking less damage, Upgrade mode, in which he forgoes using powers to get more equipment on the field at once, and Turret mode, in which BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA. (...Ahem, in which he gets an extra power and deals extra damage but can't draw or play cards.) While these extra modes give him a unique feel, they also give him terrible turn economy, though he's still very powerful. No other equipment-heavy hero shares Bunker's toughness and ability to get extra cards. Speaking of which, his base power lets him draw a card, and one of his other cards lets him draw every time a villain card goes in the trash.

Variants:

• G.I. Bunker: The black WWII incarnation of Bunker, who got offered the job because it was deemed too dangerous for a white guy, and took it because it was his one shot at promotion. He went on to kick much Nazi ass alongside his era's Legacy, fistfighting tanks and pushing the power armor to the limit, before going out in a blaze of glory trying to kill Hitler while soloing an entire fortress full of Wehrmacht troops. His unique power, Panzer-Buster, picks an enemy and makes all damage dealt to them irreducible. Obviously, how good this is depends on how much DR is on the field, but when you do need it, it's golden.
• Freedom Six: Bunker was one of the casualties when Iron Legacy slaughtered the Freedom Five in his timeline. However, his former nemesis, Fright Train, was driven to repentance by his death, and joined the new Freedom Six wearing a hollowed-out, jury-rigged version of the Bunker suit. (Also, making the War Machine copy black again.) His new power discards a mode card to destroy an ongoing, something the original couldn't do at all and a priceless trick against Iron Legacy. Not a bad way to give up the bloated hand full of modes you weren't going to use soon, and the only Ongoing destruction base power in the game.
• Termi-Nation: The current Bunker riding in a ceramic-and-fiber-optic mech after his old suit got Chokepoint'd. He can destroy one of his own ongoing or equipment cards to give himself a whole new turn's worth of actions which can be taken in any order, which can be positively badass if you know what you're doing.
• Freedom Five: Bunker's final suit, worn for the OblivAeon crisis. His power allows him to reveal the top card of each hero deck and then play the top card of one deck other than his own, as well as the top card of his deck if it's a mode card. Extra card plays for your allies are always nice, but playing the top card of your deck can screw you over depending on when it happens and what mode is played/destroyed.

Captain Cosmic

Like Green Lantern, only dressed like Firestorm. Hugh Lowsley was a British lawyer and amateur stargazer. Granted the power to create golden light constructs in the same cosmic event that transformed his brother into the mad supervillain Infinitor, he took up the mantle of Captain Cosmic to protect the Earth from high-level threats.

Captain Cosmic is a support-heavy hero that runs on constructs. He gives them to his friends as buffs, he uses them as living shields, he repairs them when they're going out, and, when they're finally destroyed, he can immediately use their energies to retaliate against enemies. Alternatively, he can destroy them to deal heavy one-off damage or give himself a big ol' pile of extra card draw or play. The rest of his deck involves getting them into play, with his base power letting him play or put in hand the top card of his deck.

Variant:

• Prime Wardens: Hilariously, he technically joined the Prime Wardens before he was released as a hero in the gameline. His new power lets him draw or play a card every time a construct his destroyed for the rest of the turn. It needs quite a bit more forethought and set-up than his original, but is potentially much more powerful.
• Xtreme: Reinvented as a loutish Guy Ritchie-esque gangster who sprays construct bullets everywhere. Rather than accelerating his own set-up, like the other two, this variant focuses on capitalizing on actually managing to get set-up, blasting someone for one energy damage, then causing all his other constructs to do the same. Obviously, he doesn't shit out constructs as hard as the other two do, and damage reduction takes some of the bite out of this, but if enough universal damage increases are in play and he manages to get enough of his buddies in play, the results can be staggering.
• Requital: When OblivAeon was about to kill Hugh and reclaim the cosmic power he'd taken from one of the being's shards, his brother, on whom he'd never given up, threw himself across space and time and sacrificed himself to save Hugh. Now armed with both sides of the OblivAeon shard, he hears the whispers his brother heard, but rather than madness, they fill him with rage. He will silence his brother's killer... (So badass.) Anyway, his new power reveals the top three cards of his deck, then forces him to play them in any order. Obviously, this can result in inadvertently blowing up lots of your own constructs, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because after he's finished playing all three, if there are more than four constructs in play, they all hit him for two psychic damage a piece. And he's even squishier than the original in terms of raw hitpoints. Just... be careful, and prioritize slapping Energy Bracers on yourself if your team doesn't have a friendly tank who's able to prevent or soak hero damage.

Chrono-Ranger

Jim Brooks is a time-displaced Wild West sheriff, who landed in the Final Wasteland, a nasty future where various cryptids had rendered humanity extinct. And then one of those damn rat-man varmits made off with his arm. Upon meeting and befriending a sapient robot factory called Con, who outfitted him with a futuristic arsenal, a new, mechanical arm, and a time machine in the shape of a badge, the newly-christened Chrono-Ranger set out to kill 'em all before they could become strong enough to bring their timeline about. In the meanwhile, he claims bounties on other criminals across space and time.

Chrono-Ranger shoots all the bullets. Almost all of his non-equipment cards, as an additional effect, involve shooting one target for one projectile damage, just like his base power. His major unique mechanic involves posting various "bounties" on different targets, offering him benefits while they're in play and after targets are destroyed. Combine that with his arsenal of future-guns and his hat, and he'd be a solid plinker. However, what makes him go from decent to crazy is the "Hunter and Hunted" card, which causes him to deal and take an additional point of damage for every bounty currently in play. Obviously, he suddenly becomes very fragile and a one-man hurricane of destruction simultaneously. Very high-risk, high-reward, but sweet as hell when it works.

Variant:

• The Best of Times: After a mishap with his time-badge left him stranded in a temporal anomaly, Jim got rescued by an older, more-grounded La Capitan. After fixing him up, she asked only one thing in return: to help prevent the mistakes of her youth. His power lets him pick a target and make all his bounties affect them too. Amazing for stacking cards on the boss and still making one of their minions vulnerable, and because Chrono can pump out a fair amount of damage even without using a power, it's a good way to fry a troublesome minion without having to get set up again later. And, of course, to capitalize on stuff like Kill on Sight or Dead or Alive multiple times. That said, if you don't start the game with a weapon in hand, well... have fun waiting to actually gain a useful power, nerd.

Expatriette

Amanda Cohen was the daughter of Citizen Dawn, the leader of a Magneto-esque cult of superhuman-supremacists. When she turned out not to have powers, the good Citizen murdered her father for his "failure" and burned out her eye before she could fight her way out. Fortunately, a lifetime in that environment had given her a knack for survival, and, despite her only superpower being "firearm," she became a vigilante crimefighter in the mean streets of Rook City, eventually joining the broader superhuman community as Expatriette after a talk from Mr. Fixer.

Her deck is built on a solid foundation of guns and ammunition. The former let her shoot them off as powers, the latter can be loaded into the former to give them additional effects. The rest of her deck mostly either gets them into play from her deck and trash or lets her shoot more of them off. Fittingly, her base power lets her immediately play a card. This means that while she's unlikely to spike as high as some of the other equipment-heavy superheroes, she's also going to come online practically right away while they're still putting their gear together. She also offers a few great utility cards, in the form of a damage-dealing, ongoing/Environment destroying one-shot rocket launcher, a damage-soaking flak jacket, and the ability to immediately shoot any arriving enemies in the face. One of the weaker heroes, but her strong fanbase proves she's not truly useless.

Variant:

• Dark Watch: After Mr. Fixer disappeared, Expatriette, Setback, and Nightmist formed the Dark Watch to help keep things in Rook City under control. Expat was and is the brains of the bunch, using her tactical expertise and natural leadership skills to keep the group on-task and infiltrate Setback's pants. Not necessarily in that order. Her new power, Aim, increases all damage she deals until the end of her next turn by one. In short, this means sacrificing some of the original Expatriette's signature lack of setup time for greater potential payoff after putting together a good next turn.

Fanatic

Helena was hit by a car in Lima while playing in the street. She was six years old. She went into a coma, had no memories when she woke up, and no one came to the hospital looking for her. Raised by nuns, she began to receive visions of the afterlife, manifesting holy powers and growing huge white wings. Naturally, she took this to be a sign from on high, and left the convent to begin a one-woman crusade against evil.

Fanatic is primarily a damage-dealer and debuffer, with a few healing effects. Her base power, for example, hits someone twice, once with radiant damage, once with melee. However, many of her cards also involve hurting herself or discarding cards to add effects, though fortunately she's rather tough and has some good equipment to help keep her from self-destructing. Most infamously, she can play a card called "End of Days" to completely wipe everything but relics and character cards off the board. (Hilariously, this is probably least effective against her nemesis, though he also can't destroy hers with his similar card.)

Variants:

• Redeemer: After first encountering Apostate, who claimed to have created her for his own purposes, Helena had a crisis of faith, eventually emerging from three straight days of meditation more determined to destroy him than ever. Her new power causes her to regain a hitpoint and draw a card, useful for recovering after a long turn of burning the candle down for extra damage and effects.
• Prime Wardens: After a few years of superheroics, Helena has finally become a balanced, temperate person. Which is good, considering the enemy of the Prime Wardens is a primal embodiment of elemental rage. Her new power causes her to deal herself a point of damage, then play the top card of her deck and let someone else use a power. Fittingly, this makes her a great team player, but it also puts her at risk of self-destructing, so tread lightly. And, of course, there's always the chance that you don't want to play the top card of your deck... sorry about causing the End of Days, everyone...
• Xtreme: Ironically, probably one of the less radically-changed of the Prime Wardens in terms of attitude, though she's still got a very... bootylicious 90's redraw. Her power hits a target for one radiant damage, then redirects all damage she would deal to them until the end of her next turn. Looks innocent, doesn't it? Practically weaker than her base power? Hahahahaha. The kicker is, her deck has a lot of potential damage sources built into it. Being able to redirect all of them, especially the ones that would hit heroes or might hit a target she can't control is amazing. That said, it means if she doesn't get another power out, she's locked in to hitting just that target, so pick judiciously.

Guise

Their version of Ambush Bug, though all the kids today will probably think of Deadpool instead. A one-time tabloid reporter who got squished under a falling piano. Fortunately, for him at least, the pavement he got smeared all over had been the site of a battle with Wager Master, and its raw improbability soaked into him, transforming him into a shapeshifting glory-hound of a superhero, whose cards break the fourth wall and require things like high-fiving other players.

Unfortunately for Deadpool's massive fanbase, Guise is another tricky hero. His deck's basic themes are miming other people's stuff and setting up huge combo chains with his many one-round ongoing support cards. His base power, which causes him to draw or play a card then deal one target one melee damage, helps him capitalize on both. A good Guise is a useful and potent force-multiplier, doing things like doubling up Legacy's tanking for a turn, or giving the party another source of Ra'splosions. A bad Guise is a selfish parasite, stealing other people's shit and barely letting anyone else get a turn in edgewise. Hopefully, you're not going to play him like the latter.

Variant:

• Santa Guise: ...Yeah. Anyway, if the original Guise's power really let him use his own miming tricks and combos, Santa Guise has gifts for everyone. His new power either causes each hero to put the top card of their deck onto the field face down or for one hero to flip all their cards upright and act as if they'd just been played. While this means Guise himself isn't going to be quite as potent, it really helps the rest of his team, which, in the long run, can help him too. Just try not to accidentally flip End of Days on everyone...

Haka

A Maori chief who discovered he was immortal after one of his people challenged him for leadership and slit his throat, only for him to return the next day. He crushed the challenger, but was exiled from his people as a freak. Aata Wakarewarewa wandered the world for many years in many roles. In the modern day, he is both a superhero and a substitute teacher. Amusingly, he's not really that much like the Hulk. Think more an heroic Vandal Savage.

While he can be a great damage dealer, Haka is a surprisingly flexible character. He has mechanics that let him buff himself with various war-dances that discard cards to juice him up, both tanks and heals well, fucks minion-heavy villains up the ass when he Rampages or Ground Pounds, can use Savage Mana to eat enemies and keep them out of the villain trash, and can fill up a hand pretty quick. That said, his base power is still punching people in the face, and he doesn't have a lot of true utility in the form of, say, Ongoing destruction or team support.

Variants:

• The Eternal Haka: Turns out the Final Wasteland doesn't see all humanity extinct. Aata, being immortal, survived as the guardian of the last library in the world, keeping the last record of humanity's past alive and occasionally obliterating any monsters stupid enough to try going after him for a thousand years. With the time-space rifts opening thanks to the Shattered Timeline event, he sees an opportunity to ensure others have a brighter future. His new power lets him draw a card, then to choose to discard a Haka card to draw two more. While this means he now needs his other cards to deal damage, it makes him really, really good at filling his hand.
• Prime Wardens: Same ol', same ol'. His new power lets him play a card and, if it is a Haka, to apply its benefits to a different character. Naturally, this makes him a great team player, and capitalizes on his wacky card draw.
• Xtreme: Now sporting a 5'clock shadow and an artfully-ripped leather jacket, because 90's. This variant has a power that specializes in tanking, picking a hero character card and redirecting all damage they would take before the start of his next turn to him, and healing him for a single hitpoint everytime he takes damage. Naturally, this power is at its strongest when it's soaking for frail heroes who don't need to take backlash damage to make effects go off. Freedom Six Unity and Captain Cosmic (especially his Requital variant) are standouts in this department. But even without that, it's the only tanking base power in the game, man. Holy cow!

K.N.Y.F.E.

A sexy Scottish ex-Marine who developed energy-blade powers while working in the extradimensional prison known as the Block, Paige Huntly then got a sweet power-suit and went to work as a black ops agent. However, she cut ties with F.I.L.T.E.R. and left to become a superhero when her bosses proved unwilling to help investigate the onset of an eventual temporal calamity, then tried to send her to take in Tempest even though that alien was helping people.

K.N.Y.F.E. is a straight-up damage dealer, pumping out mixtures of melee and energy damage, with a base power that does two energy damage. In addition to equipment cards to boost this, she has a lot of "one-and-done" ongoings that are destroyed after dealing heavy damage, plus others to help her get more cards in play, and she can actually react to having her cards destroyed by playing and drawing more. Her biggest weakness is an extreme lack of card-draw, which, combined with the many extra plays she also gets, burns through her hand fast with no in-deck way to replace it. Additionally, several of her more powerful cards hurt her, her teammates, or both.

Variant:

• Rogue Agent: K.N.Y.F.E. going "stealthy" after figuring out a bit of what's to come. Her new power is Omnitron-X-ish, and involves picking a card from the bottom of a deck and putting it into play or the trash. This is primarily interesting because it can combo with a whole lot of deck control effects. However, it also means that she loses her primary means of dealing damage, so buyer beware!

Legacy

Like Captain America mixed with Superman. Paul Parsons is the latest in a long line of American superheroes dating back to the Revolution, each generation inheriting all of the last ones' powers and mutating a new one. The current one's contribution is his indestructible skin, while his daughter has laser vision. An all-around good guy and the founder of the Freedom Five.

Though a few of his cards do deal respectable damage, Legacy is a leader whose primary role is support. He can buff and, to a limited degree, heal his teammates, help them draw cards. His base power is the coveted "Galvanize," which gives all the other good guys a damage boost until the start of his next turn. He's also amazing at tanking damage, with cards that make him immune to a damage type of his choice, able to tank hits for other characters, and to damage himself in exchange for shutting down the bad guys for a round.

Variants:

• America's Greatest Legacy: The WWII Legacy, killed by Baron Blade but drawn into the modern day temporarily by time shenanigans. Amusingly, can still use the cards that rely on his son's invincible skin even though his contribution was flight. His base power lets one hero heal a hitpoint and use a power, focusing on the other half of Legacy's support game while letting a number of other heroes really shine. One of the most powerful heroes in the game with the right team.
• America's Newest Legacy: Paul's daughter Pauline Parsons, who became a superheroine after her father died fighting Baron Blade on Mars. Then Iron Legacy punched time-space in the dick and changed history. She eventually decided to go by "Beacon" so as not to confuse everyone. Anyway, her new power involves blasting a sucka with her eye-beams for three energy damage, the highest damage base power in the game, giving her a lot more punch than a normal Legacy, but making her more-dependent on her hand to provide support.
• Freedom Five: Unlike the other variants, this one is actually the same guy as the base card. His Power allows him to either give any Hero (including himself) an extra card play, or send an Environment card on the field to the bottom of the deck. While this version of Legacy can't help his team deal crazy damage like his base version, this version allows him some versatility where he can choose between helping his allies or getting the Environment under control (and is the only Legacy capable of doing the latter).

Mr. Fixer

A blind, nearly hundred-year-old mechanic, Harry Robert "Slim" Walker was a kung fu blaxsploitation superhero known as "Black Fist" for most of the 70's, until some scum killed his students for standing up for themselves. Disheartened, he hung up his afro, put on his baseball cap, and adopted a new mantra: "Don't fight back." Unfortunately, his old nemeses are on the rise, and he's finding that not fighting back won't protect those close to him anymore.

Mr. Fixer is a hero who sacrifices raw power for versatility: his deck includes both tool and style cards, and he can only have one of each in play. They add effects to his base power, which normally deals a piddly one melee damage. Properly augmented, however, that one damage is some combination of irreducible, causing other attacks to be irreducible, causing foes to deal one less damage, hitting every bad guy at once while turning self-damage into area damage, auto-killing anything left at 2 hitpoints or less, throwing a tire iron, et cetera. He also has some support cards that help him get more cards, pull equipment cards out of everyone's trash, prevent all enemies from dealing damage for a turn at the cost of the rest of his, and a few cards that let him punch twice or turn him into a mini-Chrono-Ranger by boosting all damage he deals and takes for a turn.

Variant:

• Dark Watch: Fighting the good fight in a battle with the Operative and the Chairman, Mr. Fixer perished. However, his old nemesis Zhu Long used vile rites to restore him to life as a mindless soldier under his control. NightMist managed to reconnect his mind to his body and restore his sanity, but the experience left him one angry undead motherfucker. His new power, which explicitly works everywhere his old power would, deals three damage instead of one, but at a cost: it automatically destroys one hero ongoing or equipment card in play. This power can be used for good (destroying Bloody Knuckles before it can deal him extra damage, for instance), but it makes getting his tool and style cards a bitch to get out at the same time. Still, it's very powerful, and if you friends have shit they didn't care about anyway, go nuts. Honestly works best when his friends feed him cards to burn, turning him from a support character to a carry.

The Naturalist

Michael Conteh was once a crooked Nigerian oil baron, before nature's curse transformed him into a series of animals to punish him. Regaining his human shape and mind with the help of the Argent Adept, he became a changed man. When his old company refused to let him resume control and take them in a more-responsible direction, he took up the mantle of the Naturalist, a shapeshifting Animal Man-type eco-superhero out to protect the planet from both obvious threats like alien warlords out to wreck the place and subtler decay like pollution and misuse. Or, to be less kind, Furry Captain Planet.

The Naturalist is perhaps the only hero in the game who can challenge, even surpass, Tempest in terms of sheer versatility. His main unique mechanic involves his shapeshifting between three animal forms, mostly as the result of playing the appropriate form cards. Fortunately, his base power lets him scour his deck or trash for the one you want, so there's not a ton of difficulties there. He can have only one in play at a time, but the one he's activated adds effects to virtually all of his other cards. In general, Gazelle offers utility in the form of card draw, Ongoing hate, and self-healing, Rhino tanks and prevents environment damage, and Crocodile kills the shit out of things. While there's some frustration inherent in figuring out how all the pieces fit together, he's not as complex as, say, the Argent Adept. He just requires a bit of forethought and understanding to get the most use out of him.

Variant:

• The Hunted Naturalist: Pursued by Ambuscade and the Slaughterhouse, Michael Conteh is forced to push his powers to the limit. However, he is losing control of them as well, and if he slips too hard, a terrible fate awaits him: irreversible transformation into an Otherkin. (10/10 best horror story) His new base power lets him pick an animal icon, activate card effects as if he's got the appropriate Form card in play until the end of his next turn, then draw or play a card. This means he can activate two of his card effects at once once per turn... until he inevitably draws a Form card and plays it, at which point he can activate two all turn and three once per turn. Yeah, this is basically as busted-solid as it sounds. The Hunted Naturalist is a huge powerboost over the original in most situations, only really losing out when speed is a factor, and even then, if you're lucky enough to draw the Rhino in your starting hand, that gap closes quick.

NightMist

Occult private eye Faye Diamond, looking for what happened to her grandfather Joe in Arkham, MA seventy years ago, accidentally mis-fired the "Mists of R'lyeh" spell, leaving her with a body that shifts back and forth between mist and corporeality. After years of training her magical skill, she was recruited by Tachyon to aid the Freedom Five in defeating the entity responsible for her grandfather's disappearance: Gloomweaver, now attempting to intrude on the physical universe.

NightMist is a powerful hero, but a bit tricky to use. Her base power damages her in order to draw cards, and most of her abilities require either damaging herself or discarding cards. Fortunately, she has both a great deal of self-healing and the ability to reflect the first damage she takes each turn at another target, with the right equipment of course. Her unique mechanic is an "occult rating" on each of her cards, distinct from its other qualities (two of the same cards might have different occult ratings), that fuels her spells. Depending on the spell, it might heal her, deal damage to enemies, or even weirder stuff. Add to that some solid deck control for a difficult-but-not-unusable character.

Variant:

• Dark Watch: Seeking power, NightMist found herself drawn out of the physical universe, transformed into a being of pure magic, pure energy... and surrounded by hungry predators of the astral plane. For years, centuries, her mystic strength waxing mightily, she fought these creatures, ultimately destroying countless hundreds of them as she claimed, and used, a jagged portal back to Earth... only to arrive a few days after she'd left. Derp. Anyway, that's how she knew how to resurrect Mr. Fixer. Her new power lets her view and rearrange the top of her deck, useful primarily to set up one of her spells with the right cards, though it also means giving up her primary ability to restock her hand and reflect damage.

Omnitron-X

After years of getting the shit kicked out of him by heroes, Omnitron-IX decided that its next incarnation needed to be as human as possible, so as to assimilate the strengths of the meatbags that kept kicking its ass. It worked... kind of. Omnitron-X got, among other things, empathy and a conscience, and was horrified by the things its previous incarnations had done. Time-porting back to the past, it joined the heroes in containing its past self and other threats to the world.

Omnitron-X is a complex hero, but not a difficult one. He has a lot of moving parts, imitating his villainous predecessor, including various kinds of Plating cards that reduce different kinds of damage, different kinds of components that take effect at the start of his turn, healing his team, damaging enemies, and putting cards in play, and equipment cards that give him new powers to use. From there, his one-shots let him play more cards and take more turns by abusing time-travel, or blow up his carefully-crafted mountain of gear to deal huge damage to all enemies. He's a powerful, versatile hero, and his base power, picking the top card of any deck and choosing whether to put it in play or trash it, is good for all manner of different things. However, his biggest weakness is that any of his cards with the "component" keyword are destroyed if he ever takes more than five damage in a turn.

Variant:

• Omnitron-U: After heroically detonating itself to prevent the original Omnitron from achieving a singularity, Unity, always the robot's best friend, rebuilt it... mostly. This scrapped-together Omnitron's new base power first causes any of its equipment destroyed before the end of its next turn to deal two fire damage to one target, then lets it either play a card or pull a piece of equipment from its trash to its hand. While this lacks some of the power and versatility of its previous power, it simultaneously means it will effectively never run out of defensive blast ammo, makes cards like Singularity a lot more tempting, and makes for a great final "screw you" if the villain gets out an equipment-wrecker or manages to deal enough damage to destroy all his components.

Parse

An Australian aborigine with Asperger's, Kim Howell was one of the technicians analyzing the original Omnitron's data core when the cosmic event that created Omnitron II struck. However, even as it re-created the self-aware robotic menace, it empowered her own mind, giving her a super-human ability to process and analyze data. This manifested most obviously in her newfound ability to precisely target weakpoints with pinpoint accuracy using her bow. However, it was for her improved intelligence and deductive abilities that the Freedom Five contacted her to help them unmask the nefarious saboteur Miss Information.

Parse does three things and does them both extremely well: she buffs and supports her team with irreducible damage, and she has piles and piles of deck control. Also, some projectile damage. Her base power, for instance, just shoots a guy for two projectile. However, many of her other ongoings either help her allies deal extra damage while circumventing damage reduction, or help get more cards in hand and into play. And many of her Ongoings let her rifle through various decks and pick and choose what cards are on top. Special mention to Critical Multiplier, which lets her boost the next damage a hero does by one whenever she discards a card, since she can have many copies of it in play at once and has multiple reasons to discard cards on top of being forced to do so by villain effects. Her major weakness is that she has rather low health and no defense.

Variant:

• Fugue State: Emerging from an information-overload with more powers than ever before, Parse gets ready to fight OblivAeon with the most drastic step of all: dressing like an actual superheroine. This variant discards (heh) the original's damage-dealing power in favor of acceleration: she plays the bottom card of her deck. Then, if she discarded a card this turn, she also plays the bottom card of another hero's deck. And Parse doesn't have many Limited cards, and lots of reasons to discard on her turn. Ow.

Ra

Dr. Blake Washington Jr., world-famous adventurer archaeologist, unearthed the ancient tomb of Ra. Upon taking up the scepter within, he became the latest incarnation of the ancient warrior Ra, receiving the memories and powers of countless previous bearers of the staff. Now aware that the gods of ancient Egypt were actually bearers of even older, more-advanced powers, he resealed the pyramid, and prepared to make war on the enemies of humankind to defend the world from evil. While he's an arrogant douche, he's also fundamentally well-intentioned, cooperating with the other heroes in spite of his gruff loner personality.

Ra is probably the simplest pick-up-and-play hero in the game. He blasts the shit out of things with fire. Sometimes, it takes the form of blasting many smaller things, sometimes he blasts one big thing really hard, sometimes he counter-attacks when struck, but from his one-shots to his ongoings to his base, they're all fire related. Some of his cards instead increase his overall damage, such as his staff, which he can, if something's immune to fire, throw at bad guys. Fitting his description above, though, he does little to support his team beyond blasting bad guys. The most that can be said is that one card gives all fire damage a +1 buff and makes all heroes deal fire damage while another can, by eating a power, make everyone immune to fire. He's still pretty effective, but if you want to do just about anything more subtle than murder-blasting the badguys to death as hard as you can, don't bother.

Variant:

• Horus of Two Horizons: When the Ennead first appeared on the scene, Ra went out to try to 1 vs. 9 them. It went about as well as it would if you actually attempt it in the cardgame. Shattered in body and mind, Ra wandered out into the desert for years as the Ennead continued their rampage, before finally emerging, changed, from obscurity for round two, this time with the other heroes. His new power allows him to draw three cards and discard two, trading a ready source of fire damage for better hand control. And it's not as if the rest of his deck lacks for ways to blast people with fire.
• Setting Sun: The final part of Ra's cycle, in which he goes to Anubis and the Ennead, and leads them in a suicidal alpha strike against OblivAeon... in which all of them perish, including him, smiling in Fanatic's arms. Yeah, with a story like that, you can guess where this entry's going. First, Ra hits every non-hero target for two irreducible fire damage. Then, he hits himself for the same, destroys one of his cards, and removes the top two cards of his deck and trash from the game. Sure, you could just rely on your other cards to do damage... but why play Setting Sun Ra if you don't want to live fast, die young, and suddenly start Channeling the Eclipse an awful lot? Also, two of your three incapacitated powers also pour out a ton of fire damage, but then they remove you from the game altogether.

The Scholar

John is a lazy old coot who just so happens to be the nigh-immortal bearer of the Philosopher's Stone and the most powerful alchemist who ever lived. He occasionally rouses himself to help the other heroes actually do things whenever his comfortable existence is threatened, and/or when he feels a disturbance in the ley lines that needs correcting, while occasionally serving as a mentor and source off wise advice.

The Scholar's base power involves healing himself, and the other cards in his deck frequently either do the same or let him draw cards. He needs to draw all he can, as his main gimmick involves stacking cards that transmute his "mortal form" into various elemental substances, to let him soak damage, boost the amount of hitpoints he heals by each turn, and damaging enemies for the same amount as he heals... assuming he can discard a card for each of them in play at the start of his turn to keep them in play. He's also got a decent amount of support in there too, helping other players draw cards, play cards, and occasionally tanking, blasting, or neutering specific enemies for one round.

Variant:

• Scholar of the Infinite: After communing with the Void, John sees what's coming in the final expansion, and it ain't pretty. It's enough to finally get him off his ass. His new power damages himself and a target of his choice an amount equal to the number of cards he's discarded since the end of his last turn plus one. While this obviously makes him a whole lot less tanky in terms of regeneration, and undermines his counterpunching playstyle a bit, it makes him plenty more blasty, especially given the huge amounts of damage reduction he can give himself will actually fuel this power by destroying cards.

The Sentinels

A team of weaker superheroes consisting of: the Idealist, a psychic pre-teen; Dr. Medico, her adoptive energy-charged doctor father; Mainstay, his super-strong, super-tough college roommate; and Writhe, the shadow-suited reformed criminal they busted once. That's the short version, anyway. Not that much like the Fantastic Four... though there are obvious similarities.

The Sentinels are unique in that they actually have *four* character cards, plus a fifth that explains how they interact with the game's mechanics. So expect to be hit by all effects that target the hero with the most cards in play for a start. Each has a different power, and each has about half the health of a normal hero, so expect to *also* be hit by every effect that targets the hero with the lowest HP. And, finally, their deck has a very limited ability to offer self-damage buffs and no ability at all to destroy Ongoing or Environment cards.

However, their value comes from a mixture of teamwork and unique abilities. One ongoing, for instance, lets a Sentinel use a power whenever another sentinel does damage, while their Signature cards each boost them in various ways: turning all of Dr. Medico's damage into healing, for instance, or giving another player a free card draw each turn. And, of course, there're the things they can do that no other hero can, most importantly with Dr. Medico reviving incapacitated Sentinels. They also have some of the best card draw and tutor cards in the game, helping them have a retarded-huge hand and get all of their powerful "Signature" cards into play.

They have four basic powers: Dr. Medico heals one hero target for 3 HP, Mainstay reduces all damage taken by the Sentinels by 1 until the start of his next turn, the Idealist blasts someone with psychic damage, and Writhe can remove the bottom card from a deck and either plop it on top or mill it into the trash. Also, the OblivAeon event resulted in them getting charged-up powers, so each of them got their own decks as individual heroes in the Void Guard standalone.

Variant:

• The Adamant Sentinels: Eventually, the Southwest Sentinels got some government funding and ended up working in Fort Adamant. Many civilized and respectful debates have been had on the subject of whether or not one can mix-and-match the Adamant Sentinels with their original-recipe counterparts, but the digital card game has come down quite firmly on the side of "yes." Dr. Medico can heal each member of the Sentinels for one hitpoint a piece, the Idealist hits someone for one damage, then reduces all other damage they deal by one until the start of the Sentinels' next turn if it actually hurts, Mainstay hits someone for two melee damage and makes the next damage they take irreducible, and Writhe causes the next destroyed target to go to the bottom of a deck rather than into the trash, which is actually quite powerful against the right villains.

Setback

Pete Riske was a frequently-fired blackjack dealer with a chipper outlook and terrible luck, who signed up for a series of medical experiments by some guy named Baron Blade. The tests did... nasty things to the other subjects, but made him really buff... even as they turned his awful luck into really swingy luck. "Escaping" from the facility because the front door was coincidentally unlocked one night, he found that, while disaster followed him everywhere he went, the occasional gem of bizarre good fortune did too, as when Bunker suddenly fell out of the sky to save him from Baron Blade's pursuit. So, by becoming a superhero in his own right, he wanted to make sure some of that bad luck hit bad people.

Setback is a very risk-reward-centric hero, via his unique mechanic: an Unlucky "pool." His innate power, Risk, adds a point to the pool and causes him to play the top card of his deck. Most of his cards interact with his pool in some way, either adding to it or letting him spend points from it for positive effects. In this way, he can heal, tank, support, and deal damage in either single-target or AoE flavors... but many of his cards also hinder or hurt himself and his allies, and a few cause him to dramatically self-destruct if the pool is too high. Still, while he will always be one of the most random-factor-dependent heroes in the game, a good Setback player can still elevate him with skillful play and good awareness of the cards on the board.

Variant:

• Dark Watch: If Expatriette is the brains of the Dark Watch, Setback is the heart. He's really come a long way from the semi-annoying hanger-on to the superhero community to beloved for his upbeat optimism, respected for his unwavering determination, and dating one of the most heavily-armed women in the world. His variant power, Mitigate, drains a point from his pool and reduces the next damage that would hit one of his friends by two. While, as its name would imply, this power is always potentially useful and much less risky than his other base power, it also leaves him without his primary means of refilling his pool and can potentially mean an ally will soak the wrong hit.

Sky-Scraper

Portja Kir-Pro was a member of a rogue Thorathian cell attempting to liberate her people from the tyranny of Grand Warlord Voss, using her mutant size-shifting abilities to make her both a matchless, miniscule spy and an army-smashing giant juggernaut as the situation demanded. However, she was kidnapped by the interplanetary bloodsport mogul Kaargra Warfang and enslaved to fight in her arena for years, before she helped stage a breakout when the heroes of Earth were drawn within.

Sky-Scraper's unique mechanic involves her size: she has three hero cards, each of which has a different power, that she morphs between depending on which of her one-shot cards she last played. Similarly, her deck offers three different styles of play. While small, she focuses on using her equipment cards to debuff enemies and shift the playing field in her team's favor, with a base power that lets her play two of them at once and draw more to her hand from her trash. While large, she smashes up bad guys with damage while inflicting occasional collateral damage on her fellow heroes, and has a base power that hits everyone but her allies for 2 damage, then hits her allies for zero. This matters because damage buffs apply to that zero. Her "normal" size functions as a kind of transition state between the two, where she draws cards, picks up spent links, and regroups for future turns. Amusingly, each of her sizes also has unique "incapacitated" powers.

Variants:

• Extremist: During the build up to Oblivaeon, Portja had her Powers enhanced by Baron Blade (now a "hero" going by the name Luminary) which made her shrunken form able to reach microscopic size and her giant form much bigger then it was previously. Unfortunately this also made her powers far more unstable, which is reflected with her base powers. With this variant her normal size is now the one that focuses on playing links and putting them back in her hand, It also forces her to play the bottom card of her deck which is nice but could end up screwing her if she plays the wrong card at the wrong time. Her small size Power allows her to deal irreducible toxic damage based on how many links are on her unfortunate target, but then requires her to either destroy a link or turn back to normal. And finally her large character card destroys an Environment card then has two different effects depending on what kind of card she destroyed, either dealing damage to one enemy if she destroyed a target or dealing damage to everyone and being forced back to normal if it wasn't. Like her normal version all of her sizes have different incap powers, but each one has the ability to switch to a different size.

Stuntman

After getting his ass repeatedly kicked by the heroes (and a meet up with Mainstay, who happens to be a huge fan of his) Ansel Moreau decided to give up on his career as the villain Ambuscade in favor of returning to the big screen. However after an OblivAeon attack leveled the studio where he was filming, he gears up and joins the heroes in defense of the Multiverse

True to his origins, Stuntman's deck is all about stealing the spotlight from the other people in the fight. Most of his cards have either have the ability to interject into other turns on their own, or have extra bonuses if used outside of his turn(whether it be through the use of his own cards or the cards/powers of others). When played correctly he can dish out tons of damage to the bad guys, though he does have a tendency to empty his hand pretty quickly. His innate power deals 1 irreducible projectile damage, and gets a +2 boost when used outside his turn.

Variants:

• Action Hero: An alternate universe version of Stuntman who was a hero/action movie star from the very beginning, and didn't let a little cheek scar interfere with either. This versions innate power increases all damage he deals by 1 until the start of his next turn, and then lets him play a card. Given the number of out of turn powers Stuntman gets, this can turn him from a reliable damage dealer into an absolute juggernaut. However this does amplify his issues with keeping cards in his hand, with one of his only draw-boosters inflicting self-damage, and if his hidden mine goes off at the wrong time he can end up causing almost as much damage to the heroes as he does to the villains.

Tachyon

A one-woman scientific revolution and self-proclaimed "badass of science," Dr. Meredith Stinson has helped boost her world into an age of comic book technology thanks to the super-speed she gained from an experimental mishap with tachyons. In between using her powers to make her a really good scientist, Dr. Stinson helps keep the world safe as the hero Tachyon and a member of the Freedom Five. Think a mixture of Reed Richards and the Flash.

Fittingly, Tachyon is all about speed. Many of her cards help her play or draw extra cards, and the ones that don't typically deal small amounts of damage. However, she also has two kinds of cards: "Burst" cards, and cards that get stronger the more Burst cards are in her trash. This is why her base power lets her look at the top card of her deck and choose whether or not to discard it: to help her get charged up faster. She makes a very effective damage dealer and, with the right cards, a semi-effective tank, as some of her cards also prevent, redirect, or mitigate damage. That said, a lot of her "Burst" cards are less-than-effective on their own to make up for how many of them she can play at a time.

Variants:

• Freedom Six: With the greater part of the world's heroes scattered or dead at the hands of Iron Legacy, Tachyon assumes the mantle of the new leader as she creates the Freedom Six to oppose him in her timeline. Her base power lets everyone draw a card, and is often seen as one of the bigger examples of "power creep" in the game, as it is a better version of a couple different powers. To add insult to injury, she also has more health. Easily one of the most powerful heroes in the entire game, with no real downside compared to her base card.
• Super-Scientific: Tachyon "off the clock," working as a scientist. Her new power, Experiment, chooses a deck, looks at the two bottom cards, and puts them into play if they share a "keyword" (like One-Shot, Limited, Equipment, etc.), but otherwise discards them. The mechanics of how to best use this are... complex, but if nothing else it works really well on both her and Legacy.
• Freedom Five: Tachyon later in her career. Her base power is a purely offensive one, dealing 1 melee damage and then she can place a burst card back on the bottom of her deck to do another one melee damage. This continues until she either she either runs out of cards or chooses to stop using it. This version of Tachyon will have a harder time filling her trash with burst cards and using it at the wrong time can drain you, but putting some damage boosters on her can allow her to do insane damage since each burst card provides a separate instance of damage, each of which receives a boost.

Tempest

A combination of Aquaman and Martian Manhunter, M'kk Dall'ton (who mostly goes by "Mick Dalton" among the people of Earth) is a chieftain and diplomat among his people. Leading a group of refugees ahead of the conquering armies of Grand Warlord Voss as the evil warrior took Vognild Prime, his shuttle crashlanded on Earth. There, armed with his powerful alien biology (featuring both invulnerability, the ability to breath underwater and talk to fish, and fucking weather control), he, following a few initial misunderstandings, began to help his people integrate into Earth culture to prepare for the tyrant's arrival.

Tempest does a lot of things. His primary specialization is AoE damage, coming armed with what was, for a long time, the only "hit all non-hero targets" base power in the game, and is still the only one with no strings attached to it and a few of his other powers offering similar multi-target attacks. From there, he has a strong, if not completely focused, ongoing game. He has a bit of support, with Cleansing Downpour still being widely-regarded as the best group-healing power the heroes have, some card-draw, a few powerful pieces of equipment that hit the highest-health villain target (typically the main villain) harder, and even some defensive cards. There's not a team comp in the game that's damaged by the inclusion of a well-played Tempest.

Variants:

• Freedom Six: Having had his incapacitated artwork brought to uncomfortable life by Iron Legacy, this alternate-timeline version of Tempest has joined one of the last superhero teams left for revenge. His new power destroys one of his ongoing or equipment cards to let him draw three more. Not terrible, per se, particularly if one of his teammates tossed him a free power and he needs to charge up in a hurry, but definitely much less general-use than his original.
• Prime Wardens: After overseeing the integration of the Maerynian race into human society and the defeat of Grand Warlord Voss, M'kk has become a beloved and respected hero throughout the world. And, with the Freedom Five not wanting to change their name to add a sixth member, he was a natural choice to join the nascent Prime Wardens. His new power lets him immediately put up to three cards into play, taking three points of lightning damage from the environment per card. With his strong ongoing game and multitude of ways to get some DR or healing and mitigate that problem, this power is amazing for Tempest early-to-mid game, even if the potential to self-destruct is high, particularly against enemies with lots of equipment or ongoing destruction.
• Xtreme: He's here, he's covered in black leather, and he's gonna ride some lighting. His power hits a card for one lightning damage, then prevents all end of turn effects it would have if it's not a character card. A bit more finicky than most Tempest base powers, but hell, your deck's got plenty of other nice powers in it, and it'll help keep you alive if, say, Voss pulled out one of his ships on turn one like an asshole.

Unity

A clever Israeli teenager with technopathic powers, Devra Thalia Caspit seemed like a shoe-in to be a new great scientist. Unfortunately, she had trouble making friends and flunked out of three different colleges in a row because she was lazy, easily bored with the material, and spent all her time making cute robots out of other people's stuff instead of doing coursework. However, when Dr. Stinson put out a request for a new intern, she ended up getting picked. While the two bicker and fight over explosions in the lab, Devra has taken well to the world of comic-book science and become a sort of unofficial sixth member of the Freedom Five as Unity.

Unity's deck revolves around golems. Whether they're the powerful, Limited copies of the Freedom Five or cheap, buffable dinosaurs and wasps, a Unity that's gotten into a good groove can quickly snowball into an unstoppable force. Unfortunately, said golems are a pain to get into play, since she can't put them down during her Play phase. Outside of out-of-phase card playing, she has to use special effects, like her base power, to get them on the field. And those that do are usually either one-shots (Construction Pylon), or require some kind of price. Her base power, for instance, cannibalizes an Equipment card on the field, destroying it, to create a new golem. It's not unusable (indeed, her deck has cards like Scrap Metal tailor-made for re-purposing into golems), but it definitely makes her very vulnerable to swings of fortune, since not drawing the cards she needs can quickly lead to a hand full of golems that can't be played.

Variants:

• Freedom Six: What, Unity survived Iron Legacy's rampage? Actually, no. But her greatest creation did: a golem of herself, imbued with all of her powers, and wearing Mr. Fixer's hat. She thinks of herself as the original, and no one's in a position to argue. Her modified base power causes her to deal herself four damage to put a golem into play. While this obviously means she's not going to be caught in a position where she can't play anything like the original and doesn't have to cannibalize her stuff to put golems out, it makes her very prone to blowing up, especially in a damage buff heavy team, meaning that, like the original, you might wanna avoid using this unless you have to.
• Termi-Nation: What, you thought the technopath wasn't going to get in on the action while they're tracking down an evil version of herself? Her power lets her destroy a golem in play, pull one out of her trash into play, and draw a card. While this leaves her totally reliant on her deck to put out golems in the first place, it works very well for recycling golems back once you've lost one you wanted, combos well with stuff that goes off when her golems are destroyed, like Volatile Parts or Bee Bot, and means she's got better card draw anyway.

The Visionary

Like if Professor X and Jean Grey combined into one bald-but-feminine lady. Or Moondragon, but no one's going to get that reference. The Visionary hails from a dark future where China conquered America after a protracted nuclear war. The only surviving result of scientific experiments with Compound PSY-200 on volunteering Chinese couples, Vanessa Long lost both her parents and was raised by the American government before its eventual collapse. She hurled herself back in time to try to prevent her future from coming to pass, principally the superhuman criminal activity that left the government crippled and unable to respond.

The Visionary shares the title of reigning queen of deck control with Parse. Many of her cards all let her peek ahead into different decks and cherry-pick what they want to find there, while others, including her base power, let her help other heroes draw what they want or pull lost cards from their trash. She can also empty villain and environment trash piles by having them shuffled into their decks, which is incredibly useful when it matters. (Baron Blade and the Chairman both come to mind.) She also has a respectable number of ways to blast bad guys with psychic damage, and one of the best buff/debuff cards in the game, Twist the Ether, along with her "stasis card," Telekinetic Cocoon, that makes her unable to play cards or use powers but also makes her immune to all damage. A bit complex, but endlessly useful.

Variant:

• Dark Visionary: What, you thought that a mashup of Professor X and Jean Grey wouldn't have a secret evil side? While her original power only to look at the top two cards of a hero deck, putting one into the hero's hand and the other into the trash, her new power lets her look at the top of any deck, and put one card on top and the other on the bottom. Obviously, this lets act to control more decks at once during her turn, even if it seems a bit redundant given her deck's other cards with similar functions.
• The Visionary Unleashed: Once the Argent Adept blasted Vanessa's evil alternate universe doppelganger out of her mind for good, she was finally free to do what she always wanted to do: blast the shit out of things with the full power of her mind. While her base form leaned into the team-support side of her deck, and the Dark Visionary leaned into the deck control, this variant just leans into damage dealing, hitting someone for as much damage as she has Ongoing cards in play plus one.

The Wraith

...Yeah, she's basically Batman, only Jewish, female, and with a dead boyfriend instead of dead parents. Naturally, Maia Montgomery is also the last member of the Freedom Five, using her vast wealth to help keep things smooth for them.

So, being Batman, the Wraith has a ton of equipment for any situation. Whether she's using smoke bombs to make enemies hit other targets and deal less damage, peeking ahead into the villain deck to manipulate what they've got available, or just throwing a huge array of projectiles at her enemies, the Wraith has a huge array of tools at her disposal. She combines them with a decent set of passive buff equipment, cards that let her quickly go through her deck for the tools she needs or just draw lots of cards, a bit of self-healing, and a base power that gives her temporary DR against the next hit she takes to get set up and keep herself alive doing it. A very self-sufficient and versatile hero against nearly any opponent.

Variants:

• Rook City: Otherwise known as "We can't give her a Dark Watch variant! She's in the Freedom Five!", this variant represents her working as a detective on her home turf. Her new base power lets her peek at the next Environment card and choose whether to play or discard it. It's something her original version can't do at all and adds to her versatility, even if it's not quite as straightforwardly powerful.
• Freedom Six: Blinded and maimed by Iron Legacy, but armed with the Operative's old weapons, Maia has slain both her and the Chairman, before assuming control of their organization to further her battle with the tyrant. Her new power whops two different targets for one melee damage each. Not terrible, even if both of the others outclass her a bit.
• Freedom Five: Another late career freedom Five member, having been brought out of the shadows and into the public eye thanks to her involvement in the team. Her power lets her draw a card, then any time she draws a card after that she can choose to discard a card to give another hero a draw. While this version isn't quite as durable as the base version, the extra cards can be a godsend to your teammates.

Villains

The bad guys. They're here to beat the shit out of you, and do whatever nasty thing they're trying to do, dictated by the special rules on their character card. Most of them have some effects that "scale" up or down depending on how many heroes are in play. Somewhat inevitably, this means some villains are harder with a full party of five heroes than they are when attacked by a modest group of three, and vice versa. Villains typically "flip" over the course of the game, changing their unique rules in response to particular stimuli by literally flipping their character card over to reveal the other side.

Each Villain is also a particular hero's "Nemesis," meaning that they both deal and take a bonus point of damage when attacking or being attacked by them, and may interact with their hero nemesis's deck in specific ways. A few Villains also have Variants, just like the heroes, that also interact with their decks a little differently.

Akash'Bhuta

An ancient spirit of chaos and destruction, Akash'Bhuta is the eternal enemy of the Virtuosos of the Void, and the Argent Adept's Nemesis. Ironically, she's also one of the villains to get a retool as a hero in the OblivAeon expansion, courtesy of the Naturalist.

She has a bowel-loosening 200 HP, and many of her cards turn the theoretically-neutral Environment deck against the heroes, notably by causing her to flip when the Environment trash is shuffled into its deck, and causing Environment cards to be played when her own cards are played/destroyed or vice-versa, depending on which side she's on. However, that 200 HP isn't quite as bad as it looks, simply because her minions, or Primeval Limbs, each deal damage equal to their max HP whenever they're blown off, so hurting them is the easiest way to hurt her. This doesn't quite make her a pushover, though, since she can rapidly regenerate damaged limbs or grow new ones with the wrong cards, and many of her others can destroy hero Ongoing or Equipment cards, on top of the heavy damage and disruption her Limbs already do. One of the four villains to get a playable Hero version during the upcoming OblivAeon expansion, since even though she's evil, she's still a spirit of nature while OblivAeon wants to destroy everything.

Ambuscade

A doozy mixture of many different supervillains, Ansel Moreau was once one of the most highly-paid action movie stars in the world, and a skillful big-game hunter. However, after a shady genetics corporation "ruined" his million-dollar face while giving him energy powers (which later turned out to just be a tiny little scar that his ego blew out of all proportion), he started using his wealth and training to hunt the most dangerous game of all: superhumans. Most of all, the immortal Maori warrior, Haka.

Ambuscade is considered probably the easiest villain in the game: he doesn't scale well with big hero groups, he can't destroy hero ongoings or equipment cards, he "only" has 50 HP, the lowest for any non-gimmick Villain in the game, and his main flip power, turning into an invincible invisible form whenever his Cloaking Device is in play, is hard-countered when his Nemesis, Haka, eats it using Savage Mana. But this has actually made him very popular with the fanbase, as a way to test out weird Ultimate Killer Strategies in a relatively-safe environment, and he can still be a nasty threat if some of his extra card plays chain together, he triggers some of his traps, or he manages to get a good early game advantage going, and if Haka isn't around to eat it yet, he has many "tutor" cards to help him get the Cloaking Device in play. He is one of only two villains in the game to have had every kind of deck in the game: a classic Villain deck, a Vengeance-style deck, a playable Hero deck from the OblivAeon expansion, as Stuntman, and a Tactics incarnation for the spin-off.

Apostate

Bezaliel, a fallen angel who draws power from lies and falsehood, trying to break his Nemesis, Fanatic's, faith while using evil artifacts to end the world. Secretly, he's actually just a spirit of deceit whom Fanatic unintentionally ruined the plans of forever when he tried messing with her, so he went on to really lean into the whole "demon lord" angle.

Apostate has a modest amount of health for a Villain at 66 (heh), but he brings with him a small arsenal of evil Relic cards. Many of them offer potent Damage Reduction for him and other Relics, tank for the nastier Relics, or just buff him up into the stratosphere. Beyond that, he also has an arsenal of Demon servants who hurt the heroes, steal their gear, or just heal up his damaged Relics and summon more from his trash back to the field when destroyed. Oh, and if there are any Relics in play when he's destroyed, he just blows one up and flips to his Dark Corruptor side, on which he regenerates pretty hard, flipping back if there are any Relics in play when it's destroyed, and so on until you just get rid of them all then kill him. Notably, he has an identical version of Fanatic's End of Days card called Apocalypse that does the same thing, and he has a lot more Relics than her.

Baron Blade

The man, the myth, the legend, the most-famous villain in the game, Baron Blade is the brilliant and evil son of a Soviet weapons manufacturer with a grudge against the Legacy line for killing his father and a private country full of his loyal soldiers and inventions. He starts the game trying to smash the moon into the Earth, which happens when he has fifteen cards in his trash. The heroes must disable his Mobile Platform, which makes him invincible, then deal enough damage to him to foil his plans, whereupon he flips over into his suit of power armor and tries to take revenge on the heroes by beating the crap out of them.

While one of the easier villains, Blade is often seen as the best way to introduce heroes to the game, since his deck has versions of most of what they'll meet in other villains': traps that destroy their equipment or make them discard cards, Ongoings that give him damage reduction or redirection, clever inventions that buff him until they're blown up, minions that pick fights with the heroes while they're trying to take him out and so on. The single most-adapted villain in the game, with a Variant, a Vengeance-style deck, a Hero version, as Luminary, and an appearance in Tactics. Speaking of which...

Variant:

• Mad Bomber Blade: Blade after his plans were initially foiled, having gone a bit off the deep end, with a massive scar and a huge arsenal of bombs as he leads the heroes into a trap, where he tries to take them out with a death ray. This represents Blade working alone, so he automatically destroys any of his minions or platforms when they come into play, but he keeps his inventions and powers up as more and more cards are milled into his trash or under his card, meaning he'll deal more and more damage as the game goes on. This huge damage output is why he's often seen as much harder than the original.

La Capitan

A time-traveling pirate whose ship, La Paradoja Magnifica, is crewed by warriors from throughout history... and also an acrobat.

La Capitan's deck is heavy on ways to wreck your equipments and ongoings, then puts those cards under La Capitan. When she has enough, she flips. When flipped, if you attack her and she has one of your cards, she puts that card in your trash and takes no damage until there aren't any left, when she flips back. Fittingly, the captain needs her ship, as without it she burns through her deck at a rapid rate. Her crew also isn't that tough and is vulnerable to attacks that hit multiple targets.

The Chairman

The secret master of the Rook City underworld, and a scary mixture of both Ra's al-Ghul and the Kingpin, Graham Pike (spoilers!) is the leader of the Organization, and has, over the course of a century, molded Rook City into the crime-ridden corporate shithole it is today, maintaining his youth with regular baths in vats of rejuvenating chemicals. At his side is the Operative, Sophia DeLeon, one of Mr. Fixer's old pupils, and together they each constitute his nemeses.

The Chairman is widely considered to be the most difficult boss in the game, and an absolute headache for all but the most well-prepared teams of carefully-selected heroes to deal with. Originally, the Chairman himself is hidden in the shadowy underworld and can't be targeted, while the Operative is in play and his many, many Thug cards are in the villain trash. From there, the Operative scries his deck for an Underboss each turn, who then plays a Thug from the trash. Thugs will block for their bosses, give the villain extra card plays, or just beat the shit out of you, and there's two thugs per underboss. This can quickly cause him to snowball into an unstoppable force, so killing off Thugs and Underbosses is important, but every time you do the Operative kicks you in the dick. Also, the Chairman is revealed as Chairman Pike when the heroes have "interrogated" enough Underbosses, and brutally counter-attacks whenever he's hit. Oh, and some of his cards can pull KO'd Underbosses out of the trash en masse. Good luck taking on the Organization, kids!

Chokepoint

Formerly the minor Bunker villain Choke, Evelyn Moore was a technopath raised by the Ironclad Project, who went rogue when the military overreacted to her eating a tank. After being brutally injured by K.N.Y.F.E. during the Vengeance event, she frantically tried to absorb something, anything to patch herself up... and ended up munching on the Zenith Gauge, one of Deadline's disaster-causing alien weapons, super-charging her powers. Whoops. Now, she's on a rampage, beating up heroes and eating their gear to try to expand without limit and "fix" the world by destroying "weak points." Naturally, the three most tech-dependent heroes of the Freedom Five, Bunker, Absolute Zero, and Unity, aren't too happy about that, and serve as her nemeses.

Chokepoint is a bloody thief of a villain. Most of her cards swipe hero cards and put them face-down in front of her, while also damaging heroes, healing her, etc. Once she has enough, she flips, then opens up on the heroes with her stolen arsenal, doing extra damage and taking less from heroes whom she has cards from. These cards are slowly destroyed over time, though, so it's theoretically possible to get her to flip back, though unlikely given the pace at which she munches hero cards. She also has no small number of nasty Ongoings, both defensive, giving herself damage reduction and soaking big hits, or animating hero gear and causing it to turn on them. She's not really super-difficult, though she can get into a groove if she gets the right card draws, and is one of the easier "disruption" themed villains in the game.

Citizen Dawn

The Magneto-esque leader of a cult of superhuman supremacists that made their home on Insula Primalis, a volcanic island in the frozen north that contains a jungle full of dinosaurs. From thence she occasionally leads her people to try conquering the rest of the world, to establish a new world order where superpowered individuals dominate their lessers. She herself comes armed with mastery over light and energy, which she uses in many different ways. Her daughter, Amanda Cohen, had no powers, to her eternal shame, which led to her burning out one of her eyes, and her daughter becoming the one-woman-army known as Ex-Patriette.

Citizen Dawn is one of the more-difficult villains in the game outside of the Difficulty 4 club. Her minions, the Citizens of the Sun, all come in sets (Citizens Assault and Battery, Citizens Hammer and Anvil, Citizens Blood, Sweat, and Tears, etc.), that (usually) buff one another up when they're all in play. Furthermore, many of her other cards either heal them and her, bring defeated Citizens out of the trash, or wipe the board clean of all hero Ongoing and Equipment cards. Worse, if enough of her Citizens are destroyed, she'll flip and merge with the power of the sun, turning invincible until more of them join her. Fortunately, this can only happen once per game, and she stops tearing into the heroes with energy damage while so merged, so you at least have a fighting chance.

Deadline

A renegade from a community of ageless survivors of various destroyed races, Tarogath, the last procitor, has realized that a series of events on Earth have begun to mirror the events of his own homeworld before a cosmic evil obliterated it. Stealing their tech, he's come to our planet to save all mankind... by driving us back to the Dark Ages.

Deadline's primary gimmick are his Catastrophe ongoings, various natural disasters that he's inflicting on the world. They aren't great for the heroes, ranging from blowing their cards back into their hands, shuffling trash back into decks and causing him to heal, or just shitting out sprays of damage, some of it irreducible, but things get really bad when he has enough of them in play. He then flips (and note that unlike a lot of villains, this can happen during his turn, meaning if he gets one of his acceleration cards out that puts a ton of Catastrophes in play there's not much the heroes can do to stop it), destroys them all, destroys every Environment card in play, deals each hero a pile of irreducible damage and removes a number of environment cards from the game. If he flips enough to remove them all, he wins. Naturally, this means the usual way to beat him is to try to keep him from piling up Catastrophes in the first place. Aside from them, he has a number of space-age inventions that give him extra card plays, prevent the first damage he would take each turn, or just let him fight back and disrupt the heroes. He's not the hardest villain in the world, but neither is he a pushover, especially if you bring the wrong team and don't have enough Ongoing destruction to keep him in check.

The Dreamer

The Visionary rescued the Vanessa Long from our universe from her fate as a lab rat, but not from the consequences of being a traumatized child with awesome psychic powers in a world full of scary things...

Notably, the Dreamer is a target in this fight, and with only six hitpoints too. However, she’s also just a scared little girl so the aim of the game isn't to kill her. In fact, being too indiscriminate with your attacks and letting her get incapacitated causes a Bad End, and you have the option to jump in the way and take the hit if the Environment targets her, which you should. Rather, the goal is to beat up all the nightmares she's creating and help her get her fears in check. Unfortunately, many of these nightmares are pretty tough, with nasty attacks and disruption effects, plus often-heavy damage reduction and punishment effects for destroying them. Also, when the Dreamer flips, she starts to stir in her slumber, and in the process wipes out a load of hero Ongoings and starts spraying psychic damage at the team. She's tough, sure, but she's not nearly as bad as, say, the Matriarch, or even Citizen Dawn. More than any other fight in Sentinels, beating the Dreamer is all about tempo. Carefully controlling the pace of the fight so that you're ready and set up even when she starts flipping out and trying to mash the proverbial Snooze button. Be careful, and maybe bring some irreducible damage and/or damage reduction of your own.

The Ennead

Long ago, in a distant land I, Aku, the shapeshifting master of darkness okay, that's enough of that. Anyway, back in the day, the rest of Ra's pantheon ruled Egypt too. But when the modern Ra decided to bully Anubis into saving his friend from a curse, Anubis punished his hubris by putting their own relics of power into the hands of various grave-robbers, creating the modern supervillainous incarnation of the Ennead.

The Ennead are, in more ways than one, a progenitor of the "Team villain" format that would come out an expansion or two later. Rather than one main villain with a big ol' pile of health, the Ennead are all separate targets with roughly as much power and health as the heroes. At the start of the game, you're only fighting as many of them as there are starting heroes, but more and more of them show up as more and more of their deck summons them out of the Temple of the Ennead. Their other gimmick is the way their powers trigger. Rather than each villain attacking each turn (unless you try the fight in Challenge mode), each card in their deck (which is all One-shots, by the by) has one of three symbols printed on it. These symbols activate different effects for different members of the Ennead. And, of course, two of them play extra cards, so they can potentially trigger lots more attacks or heals or whatever from their friends. And if the game drags on long enough for all nine of them to be in play, then they all start regenerating. As with Team Villain mode, this fight's all about target prioritization. Concentrate all firepower on one member of the Ennead at a time, until they're down, then move on to the others. Remember, their greatest weakness is their inability to coordinate compared to your thinking human brain.

Also, in a neat twist, they all have incapacitated effects just like the heroes. Some of which actually help you too, so even from beyond the grave they step on each others' toes.

Gloomweaver

Somewhere, where Lovecraftian horror, voodoo, and Dormammu meet, there is Gloomweaver. He reigns over the Realm of Discord, an alternate magic dimension, with terrible cruelty, feeding on the despair of its inhabitants, and seeks to enter the physical world and rule it as well. And with the Cult of Gloom on his side, he's nearly done it. Get to work, boys!

Gloomweaver is not the hardest villain in the world. Oh, sure, he scales up pretty harshly with large teams, he's got swarms of zombies, cultists, and cultists that become zombies when you kill them, and he sticks the heroes full of voodoo pins that deal damage or have nasty disruption/destruction effects. And sure, he's got three relics with unpleasant attacks/buffs for his team which also, if he can get all three into play, will summon him into the physical world, healing him up for a huge amount of health and letting him start attacking directly. But, well... he's stuck in an alternate dimension for most of the battle! Even worse for him, he has an alternate win condition for the heroes if they put all three of his relics in his trash. And there are a lot of ways the heroes can finagle them into there with deck control without firing a shot. Sure, some of his cards are pretty mean, but he's generally seen as much less intimidating than he seems at first glance for an experienced team.

Variant:

• Skinwalker: Yeah, remember how we said a second ago that Gloomweaver was pretty easy because he's stuck outside our universe for most of the fight? Guess what's no longer true now that he's found a body. At first, he seems easy enough. Sure, he's a zombie, and benefits from the cards in his deck that buff zombies. And sure, he's actually hurting you now, but he's only got 50 HP, right? Stay frosty kids. Get your defenses lined up before you finish him off, then GET IN AND HOLD ON SON. His flipped form, a nightmarish colossus of flesh called the Rotting God that he becomes after you wreck his body, heals up to one hundred hitpoints and pumps out shitloads of infernal damage. Oh, not at you... mostly. The first swing hits everyone, hero, villain, and environment alike, and the second one hits everyone but you. That sounds great... but every time something, anything dies, he regains hitpoints as he devours his own minions to remain around. Good luck with that!

Grand Warlord Voss

A brilliant geneticist and a masterful military leader, Rainek Kel-Voss conquered his own planet using armies of genetically-reshaped troops, then took them to the stars, conquering world after world and refashioning the inhabitants into gene-bound slaves made for no purpose but war. After the hero Tempest led some Maerynians off Vognild Prime, Voss followed them, and has now set his sights on Earth.

Voss is an interesting villain. He starts the game almost-invincible, since he gains a huge pile of damage reduction for each of his Minions in play and he gets a lot to begin with. Once the heroes cut down enough of them, though, he flips and enters the fray himself to prove he's no armchair general, attacking the highest and lowest health heroes. While his Minions are all three health targets, they traffic in almost literally every damage type, they can swing for the highest health, lowest health, all heroes at once, and everything in-between, some grant armor to all villain targets, and each one is immune to the damage they cause. On top of them, he also has a small number of really nasty cards in his deck, like two of his Lieutenants that either boost damage or offer armor or spaceships and warp gates with a ton of health that pump out extra cards or lots of damage, that can all pop out when you least expect it. Plus, his sole Ongoing that puts all the minions in his trash onto the field when destroyed, and destroys itself if you're too chicken to. He's not as hard as a real difficulty 4 villain, or even Citizen Dawn, and some games he just plays lots of three-health targets that the heroes easily mow down as they whale on him, but he's no pushover.

Infinitor

Hugh Lowsley's beloved brother Nigel also got cosmic power from the shard they touched, but his came at the cost of his sanity. Driven mad by screams and whispers from the thing he was connected to, he also learned to harness his power... and to use it to destroy all he finds out there in space.

Infinitor is a villain in the mold of Plague Rat, with relatively few complex strategies offset by pure, raw damage output. Unlike Plague Rat, who goes it alone, he has an army of Manifestations on his side, evil mirrors of Captain Cosmic's constructs. They're also four-hitpoint critters, but while Captain Cosmic's are fragile and tend to buff his team, Infinitor's get built-in damage reduction from his card (and the Twisted Miscreation gets all damage dealt to it reduced to one if it goes over) and instead shit damage all over you, and in one case trap you in a slowly-closing cage that keeps you from playing cards. Worse, he's very much a solid fighter in his own right, and lots of his cards put a lot of Manifestations into play. He can chain tons of constructs onto the field with relative ease, and the only one that doesn't hurt you can potentially play cards out of his deck whenever any Manifestation is destroyed, including itself. What stops him from being super-difficult? Well, bluntly, the fact that Nigel's still in there, and doesn't really want to hurt anyone. Once he's shit out enough constructs, he flips, puts a straight jacket on himself, and starts destroying the lowest-health manifestation at the start of each of his turns. He will still bombard the team with a higher-damage cleave each turn, but it makes dealing with some of the more-disagreeable little buggers a lot more reasonable. Also, because, unlike Plague Rat, his damage doesn't go through armor, heroes that can turtle up and tank can help mitigate the worst of his attacks... though some Manifestations hunt for weaker targets, so it's not a perfect one-size-fits-all solution.

Variant

• Heroic Infinitor: Well, good news. Hugh was ultimately able to help his brother get his mind back! Bad news: he still has issues. Lots of them. And, like the Dreamer, they take the form of rampaging Manifestations. However, unlike the Dreamer, Nigel's not asleep or a frail child, and you are here to help him get over his issues and his Manifestations by helping him punch them in the face, one by one. In this variant, Infinitor is a hero target, even if he's a villain character card. (It's a bit confusing, but it mostly only matters for team support.) While there're still lots of Manifestations out, and they're indestructible now, Nigel will attack them along with you for a respectable amount of damage each turn, and when he reduces one's health below zero, it goes under his card, never to be seen again unless you fuck up. Ideally, you'll win when there are no Manifestations in play but the ones under his card, probably because he played one of his cards that hits all targets in play and used it to finish off all the bad guys and get his shit together. But, well... if he gets too hurt, he flips, and his flip is a doozy. Overwhelmed by Manifestations, all the shattered bits merge into a colossus of energy around his screaming body, and then you're in for it. It regenerates a ton of health each turn, absorbs any Manifestations that enter play, and is just generally the worst. Try not to fail your brother, Hugh.

Iron Legacy

Legacy from another universe, where Baron Blade decided to kill Legacy's daughter, who was next in line to become Legacy herself. Driven mad with grief, Legacy takes over the world, kills almost all the villains brutally, and then becomes a planetary dictator. Ironically, it was his intervention in the primary timeline that prevented the death of either Legacy, since the original was slated to die in the same ambush that killed his daughter.

A member of the Difficulty 4 club like the Matriarch and the Chairman. However, while they both summon obnoxious numbers of minions to harass and murder the heroes and punish them for getting rid of them, Iron Legacy simply punches them to death. Quickly. Iron Legacy doesn't fuck around, he starts killing the heroes from turn 1 and unless the team can set up fast and defend themselves he can kill weaker heroes before they get to play their 3rd card. A lot of the cards in his deck reduce the damage he takes, increase the damage he deals, cause him to regain health, bully players with discard and disruption effects, and are all "dark" and stronger (read: overpowered and cheaty) versions of the cards from Legacy's deck. While he may "only" have 32 health, he's got enough nasty regeneration and damage reduction to make it go pretty far. And while hurting him enough makes him flip, so he stops attacking the entire team, it also gives him built-in damage reduction and a healing factor. Fighting Iron Legacy is all about getting your feet under you as fast as possible, using irreducible damage or just absolutely massive hits to punch through his flip side's damage reduction, and chewing through his various Ongoings faster than he can put them out before he rips your heads off.

Kaargra Warfang

A space barbarian warrior turned interstellar bloodsport mogul, Kaargra Warfang teleports her gladiatorial arena around the cosmos, staging battles between planets' champions and her army of Bloodsworn in her endless quest for glorious combat. The victors go free, the losers get pressganged... or die. Or just get tossed out of the arena. It's about as consistent as actual comics.

At the start of the game, Kaargra is smirking on her badass arena throne as the heroes go toe to toe with her armies of gladiators, and can't be targeted directly. Instead of killing her, the heroes win when they've gained twenty points of Favor, a resource earned by doing various cool things. (Beating up enemies, you get the idea.) However, her Bloodsworn have their own Favor too, and twenty points in that pool nets the heroes an automatic loss. Also, if there are no more gladiators in the arena (or, more likely, if she's played the wrong card out of her deck and is kicking an injured one off the bench and back into the fray), Kaargra flips, becoming a 40 hitpoint target that pumps out damage, and the heroes can't win until they flip her back. Finally, she has yet another gimmick mechanic: a Title deck. Titles are played at the top of each turn, and they're effectively in-game achievements, earned for doing specific things and granting various buffs: Death-Caller goes to anyone who can destroy a target without dealing damage and gives them a passive benefit that kills anything they reduce to three or fewer hitpoints, the Indiscriminate goes to anyone who hits multiple hero and villain cards in one round and boosts their overall damage, that kind of thing. Titles are awesome, but villains as well as heroes can get them, so get cracking! Because of these wacky mechanics, and because of her very-swingy deck, Kaargra is often considered the most difficult boss in the game. That said, this is mostly because fighting her means playing very differently from the way you're probably used to, pushing to grab Titles rather than just to get the combos you're familiar with in play, and while she's still hard proper deck control can make her easier to deal with than the Difficulty 4 club. Also, all her fiddly mechanics make her kind of a pain unless you're in the Digital version, since there's just so much to keep track of.

Kismet

Gabrielle Adhin stole her family heirloom, a fortune-manipulating talisman.

Kismet has Jinx cards and Lucky cards. The former debuff the heroes and the latter benefit Kismet. She also has her talisman, which increases her damage and is a target. Destroying it instead puts it on the heroes' side and causes Kismet to flip. Appropriately for a luck manipulator, Kismet's deck is very swingy. If it's stacked in the right way, she can put loads of cards into play and prevent just about anything the heroes can do to stop her. Otherwise, a paltry 1 psychic damage and a single card play are all she can manage.

Variant:

• Unstable Kismet: After many run-ins with the heroes, Kismet escaped from The Block and found herself in Madame Mittermeier's Fantastical Festival of Conundrums & Curiosities, and fighting in that bizarre place has given her the edge. Unlike the default, the talisman starts in the hero play area. She heals herself and damages the heroes when a Lucky card enters play and hits the hero with the talisman. When it gets destroyed, she flips and starts dealing the heroes and the talisman damage, which will eventually return it to a hero play area and flip her back.

The Matriarch

Once, Lilian Corvus was a goth teenager who resented being compared to her more successful cousin Meredith (or Tachyon) and frequently bought antiques and curios. One of those was a feathered mask, which, when she put it on, gave her the power to control birds, which she used to go on a reign of terror.

The Matriarch is a member of the Difficulty 4 club for her ability to cover the field in minions. While they don't deal much damage on their own, she has a lot of them and the damage quickly builds up, not to mention that when you destroy them, you have to either blow up your own ongoing cards or take even more damage. Any amount of damage reduction slashes her damage output, though be careful she doesn't destroy it.

Miss Information

Amina Twain is the secretary of the Freedom Five, but in another world, they chose to save a group of civilians instead of her, which caused her death. Now in our world, she has a grudge to settle.

At the start, Miss Information can't be attacked directly as she's still pretending to be the innocent secretary, but once enough clue cards enter play, she flips and can be attacked.

Omnitron

A sentient robotics factory that went on a murderous rampage.

Omnitron's deck is built around two things: drones (which are also devices) and components. Make sure you destroy those devices because when Omnitron is defeated you don't actually win until there are no devices in play, which includes hero devices, should you bring Luminary. Omnitron can't deal damage on its own and thus requires drones or components. If you have high enough damage output of your own, you can destroy both of these things.

Variant:

• Cosmic Omnitron: After Omnitron was destroyed the first time, it was reconstructed by a cosmic being. This Omnitron starts with components in play. So why not just destroy them? Because then Omnitron will flip and start blasting the heroes until a component enters play and lasts until the start of the next villain turn.

Plague Rat

Formerly a drug dealer, he hid in the sewers at the same time that Pike Chemical Plant poured a ton of mutagenics down there, turning him into a mindless wererat. A vague pastiche of villains who live in sewers and are either mindless or have no strategy beyond hitting things, like The Lizard or Killer Croc. Notably, he's Chrono-Ranger's nemesis, as the progenitor of the race of arm-stealin' varmits that made off with his shootin' hand in the Final Wasteland.

Playstyle-wise, Plague Rat is pretty simple. He spends most of his time doing nothing but hitting the players, and in terms of aggression is pretty high up there. Other than simply dealing painful amounts of toxic and melee damage, he also has the unique mechanic of infecting players with a madness virus, forcing them to self-damage (which nastily turns a lot of damage-boost effects against you) and punishing them for trying to get rid of the Infection cards before the whole team's infected. Worse, a whole, whole lot of this damage, including most of his and the Infection self-damage, is irreducible. He doesn't really have any tricks besides pumping out tons and tons of pure damage and giving himself various defensive and regenerative buffs, but unless you've got some weird Ultimate Killer Strategy (like chaining together the Visionary's ability to change the type of/reduce a particular target's damage and Ra's ability to both make all hero damage fire damage and make all heroes immune to fire damage) it's probably enough to turn the game into a high-speed damage race as you try to murder him to death before a mixture of his armor-piercing attacks and your own damage boost cards sent you into oblivion.

Progeny

Far beyond our galaxy, came a spark, which drove itself into the Earth. Now, that spark has come to life as a mostly humanoid mass of liquid metal and enacts the will of its master, OblivAeon, by exterminating all life.

The last member of the Difficulty 4 club and the most straightforward by far, Progeny isn't here for minion shenanigans like the Chairman or Matriarch or the dizzying array of defensive buffs that Iron Legacy has. No, Progeny just starts beating the shit out of you from turn one and never lets up. Once a hero inevitably gets low on health, Progeny flips and starts hitting that unlucky sod specifically. A key part of Progeny's deck is the scion cards, which deal some damage to the heroes and have a lingering buff for. Crucially, the scion cards aren't ongoings and are thus hard to get rid of, though thankfully once enough of them enter play they destroy themselves. While Progeny deals a lot of damage, it is either energy damage or not very high and only the flip side's is influenced by the number of heroes.

Spite

When The Wraith put the serial killer Jack Donovan behind bars, he was offered a stay of execution if he participated in an experimental drug trial. Unlike the other participants, Jack didn't just react to one of the drugs, but all of them and was able to overwhelm the guards and escape. The Joker to Wraith's Batman, and thus her nemesis.

In-game, Spite heals himself whenever he hits something or whenever he destroys a victim card from his deck, though these victims can be put in a safe house at the cost of letting Spite hit the heroes, play a card or force the heroes to discard. The big part of Spite's deck is the drug cards, which buff him and can't be removed. When all five of them are in play, Spite flips and turns into a Resident Evil boss, though he stops healing, destroys his entire field and starts hitting the heroes instead of playing cards. Spite may have healing and damage reduction from one of his drugs, but he's the also only thing in his entire deck that can hurt the heroes, not to mention some of his drugs can be helpful for certain heroes, like Compound XI helping Tachyon fill her trash or Compound Upsilon allowing Legacy to use Take Down and Heroic Intervention infinitely.

Variant:

• Spite: Agent of Gloom: So Spite died, but was resurrected by Gloomweaver. He doesn't heal himself when he hits the heroes anymore, but he does start with all his drugs in play facedown and flips them one by one. Unlike normal Spite, you can actually flip those drugs, but you need to play a balancing game with victims in the safehouse. Keep them out and Spite can flip drugs, but put them in and Spite himself will flip and start dealing more damage.

Wager Master

A cosmic entity with the power to warp reality.

Any fight with the Wager Master will have him change the rules of the game and has many alternate victory and defeat conditions. At any time, if the right (or wrong) card enters play, the game might just end.

Card Games
Collectible Card Games:	Call of Cthulhu - Cardfight!! Vanguard - Fire Emblem Cipher Force of Will - Jyhad - Magi-Nation Duel - Magic: The Gathering Netrunner - Pokémon - Star Wars: Destiny CCG (Dead) - Yu-Gi-Oh
Other Card Games:	1000 Blank White Cards - 7th Sea - Apples to Apples - Bang! Cards Against Humanity - Coup - Decktet - Dominion - Dvorak F.A.T.A.L. - Keyforge - Mafia - Mag Blast - Mao - Munchkin Race for the Galaxy - Sentinels of the Multiverse - Tanto Cuore
Traditional Card Games:	Bridge - Cribbage - Mahjong - Solitaire/Patience - Poker - Rummy - Tarot