Does anyone have any tips for how to gauge the difficulty of a matchup?

[rookiebatman]

I'm not very good at the game right now, so I thought it might be fun to kinda start with the basics and progress through increasingly difficult matchups, but it's really hard to gauge what that would be (beyond the basic difficulty levels given for the villains). Does anyone have a method for what to do when you feel like giving yourself an easier or harder mission? I found a website one time that had like a points system, but after thorough testing (maybe like twenty games or so), it didn't seem especially accurate.

[Du-Vu]

It's hard to give a simple answer , since so much depends on the heroes you're playing and how you're playing them. There's a learning curve for each hero, villain, and environment, never mind the various synergies/vulnerabilities between decks, and while you could look up all kinds of guides, what's probably going to be more fun and helpful long term is just building up your familiarity, playing heroes you like against a variety of villains, sticking with easier environments until you get a feel for the game, then changing things up bit by bit as you feel comfortable taking bigger risks.

The in-game difficulty scale isn't a bad starting point. The easiest villains are probably Baron Blade and Ambuscade, and the easiest environment in the base set is Insula Primalis. And obvious though it might be, having a balance of damage/healing/tanking among team members makes a big difference -- plus the ability to reliably destroy ongoing and environment cards, and/or manipulate decks in general.

[Chewychucky]

I use this tool: (SotM Difficulty Calculator and Randomizer) It uses actual statistics from the video-game so it's not overly weighted with people only recording wins. It does note that it only counts /completed/ games though, so take with a pinch of salt.

I find that a good guide (for me and my group) is: 0%-20% is nearly impossible, 20%-40% is extremely difficult, 40%-70% is very hard, 70%-90% is challenging, 90%-100% is good for learning the game.

Sometimes specific interractions between as little as a single card from a pair of decks can synergise or clash in such a way as to throw the chances of the game /way/ off, but these cases are fairly rare.

[powerhound_2000]

Here’s a link to the site https://mindwanderer.net/sotm/random_vg.html

[rookiebatman]

When I Googled "SotM Difficulty Calculator and Randomizer" it took me to https://mindwanderer.net/sotm/randomizer.html, then the other person posted the link to https://mindwanderer.net/sotm/random_vg.html. Is there any difference between randomizer.html and random_vg.html?

[Chewychucky]

The difference is that (vg) refers to the video game, and uses statistics pulled from Handelabra. (Randomizer) refers to SotM across all platforms (video game, paper and other emulators) and relies on user-submitted results.

I was recommending powerhound_2000's link (I was unable to post it myself for some reason). But both links should give similar results.

[rookiebatman]

Okay, I gotcha. That page seems like it'll be really useful, even if all I did was use it as a ranking of villain difficulty (and selected heroes according to my own style and strategies).

[rookiebatman]

...Okay, so right away I see a pretty huge problem. That page claims a higher win probability for the Challenge variant of Baron Blade (and some other villains) than the Standard version. There's no way that can be accurate, right? Isn't the whole point of the Challenge variant that it's more challenging?

My hypothesis would be that it comes out this way because people who would attempt a Challenge variant would be more likely to already be skilled players. The data this page is working off of doesn't have any way of comparing different selections at the same player skill level, so it could very well be creating a situation where something that's harder but is generally played more by skillful players reads as easier.

I'm not sure any way around that, except to only draw comparisons between different sessions of each individual player, which would then result in much lower sample sizes, making the results even less dependable.

[Du-Vu]

That's kind of what I was saying, yeah. How hard the game is depends a lot on the player, their experience with this game as well as other games like it. Deck familiarity is a huge thing, and given that the game is based on running at least five different decks per game, it's pretty hard for anyone but you to judge that.

Not that people can't still give you tips based on specific setups, mind. It's just kind of got to be done on a case-by-case basis.

[Feral Yoda]

Biggest thing I can recommend to learn the game and the different decks:

Don't be afraid of anything. Try things and don't worry to much about things going "wrong."

Don't worry about hit points too much or losing characters. Sometimes it actually makes what was an unwinnable scenario winnable.

And if you do lose don't worry to much about that either, it's all part of the game and learning to play.

[Morgaln]

Originally posted by Feral Yoda:

Don't worry about hit points too much or losing characters. Sometimes it actually makes what was an unwinnable scenario winnable.

Reminds me of that time incapacitated Extreme PW Fanatic let Nightmist deal 60 damage to Progeny with one Oblivion. I wouldn't have won that game otherwise.

But on topic, the way I really learned to play the game was to start unlocking all the variants. It does teach you to pay attention to how decks work and how to counter/stall villains to buy yourself time. If you have to do something complicated with a hero, it also teaches you to learn the deck and find out how their cards interact with others.

My recommendation would be to start changing things slowly; take an easy villain (as others said, Ambuscade and Baron Blade are both good choices), find a team of low-medium complexity heroes and do several games until you're comfortable with all decks. Then start switching out one or two heroes at a time or the villain, to get to know other decks. That way you can concentrate on learning a new deck without getting completely overwhelmed by new stuff.