Sentinels of the Multiverse: Rook City - Tips & Strategies

Of the Rook city villains, Spite was by far the easiest to tackle. We played against him three times and won all three with room to spare against 4 person teams. As long as Spite’s drugs don’t all come out at once, he is quite vulnerable. The penalties for “saving” victims are not onerous and only a few of his cards actually damage the victims. He does churn through his deck quickly, so focus on dealing damage early and often – support characters are less important except for helping players draw extra cards. Quickly fill up the safe house and make sure you get all victims on the table into the safe house once his 5th “drug” card comes out – he often kills himself due to the safe house effect before he can flip over and be a real pain.

There is no foolproof way to beat the Chairman, but here are a few things that help:

1. Have someone to soak up damage (my personal favorite is the Scholar)

2. Have someone who can deal lots of damage to multiple targets (Tempest works well for this, along with Ra and Knyfe)

3. Deck manipulation can help save you. Visionary is excellent at this. She can save you from a Jailbreak or she can put Thugs at the bottom of his deck so that he can’t pull them out of the trash.

4. Don’t lose focus. There are many underbosses and thugs to take out almost constantly, but your goal is to knock out the Operative and the Chairman. Be sure that you don’t ignore them.

Many times I’ve seen the Matriarch listed among Sentinels‘ most difficult villains alongside the Chairman and Iron Legacy. I have had several close games against her but never lost one… it always made me wonder if I was misplaying her.

It turns out I wasn’t; I was just frequently using the one hero she can’t succeed against – the Wraith. The Wraith is dominant against the Matriarch for several reasons:

– The most dangerous part about playing the Matriarch is the damage she levies when you destroy her Fowl cards. By using the Wraith’s Stun Bolt power on the Matriarch, you will reduce her damage dealt by 1 until the start of Matriarch’s next turn, allowing the other heroes to pick off the Fowl.

– Once you’ve got the Wraith completely built up with Micro Targeting Computer, Utility Belt, and either Throwing Knives or Razor Ordnance in play, you can hit the Matriarch with a 3-damage Stun Bolt to reduce her damage dealt by 1 then take out 3 Fowl with Throwing Knives or deal 5 damage to Huginn, Muninn or Carrion Fields with Razor Ordnance

– With other heroes, starting a strategy with “once you’ve got Hero X completely built up” can be useless, as this takes time. Not so with the Wraith. You have a very high chance of drawing 3 of these 4 cards in the first couple rounds due to her Impromptu Invention card, which will let you search your deck for one of them and get it in play along with a second card in the same round. And you’ll still have a power or two to use.

– Last, and probably most importantly… the Matriarch attacks hero Ongoing cards, but completely ignores Equipment cards. All of the Wraith’s cards are Equipment, which means once they’re in play the Matriarch can’t knock them out.

The Wraith becomes high-powered extremely quickly against the Matriarch and stays that way all game. As long as she’s part of your team you should succeed.

One of the best and worst cards to play against the Matriarch is “Hair-trigger Reflexes.” A great card that deals one damage to each villain target when it comes into play, it makes for easy removal of the Matriarch’s 1 HP winged minions. However, this comes at a cost as Matriarch damages the heroes for every bird killed. The Matriarch pulls out 4-8 birds on average per turn. While killing them all speedily is nice, my game ended prematurely because I took so much damage each turn. Leave the birds alone and focus on the Matriarch! Hair Trigger Reflexes seems like a great avian removal system, but it will only hurt you in the end.