Cards brutalized the NPCs...

[fougerec]

Group is in London and encountered Storm Break as a group that pulled a robbery at Sotheby's of an eternity shard. Car chase ensues. Grigor (TK from Tharkold) takes the Storm Break folks by surprise when he takes control of the wheel with telekinesis and drives the car into a street light.

Surprise round - Villains don't act
1st round - Villains go first but setback
2nd round - Seize initiative to keep last card (Setback), followed by Master Plan
3rd round - Seize initiative to keep last card (Setback)
4th round - villains finally get to do something meaningful, but by now the heroes have absconded with the mcguffin and are making a break for it and already have A and B on the chase.

I mean I'm super happy my players are starting to (finally) use the cards optimally and pull off more daring things but man was it painful to see my NPCs get treated so poorly by the cards

Oh and when I finally did get to so something meaningful - one of the NPCs disconnected and the other mishapped.

Apparently this session was simply not meant to favor the opposition

[Murcushio]

I'll do you one better. Nile Empire, we're fighting a Stormer who is a high-octane bruiser with his Shocktroopers backup. Pretty typical "beginning-level character boss fight-slash-Nile supervillain confrontation," right?

Surprise Round - Villains don't act.
1st Round - Villain whiffs his attack roll, although the Ords actually manage to screw us up some.
2nd Round - Opponent Fails, Master Plan to reclaim it.
3rd Round - Opponent Fails, another Master Plan to reclaim it.
4th Round, Top - Heroes go first. By now our hands are largely empty; some people have done approved actions to pull more cards, but by and large everything we haven't actually PLAYED is in our pools.

Rally. Hands refill. Two Master Plans are dealt out.

Leadership. One Master Place is placed DIRECTLY into a pool. (I forget what the second card was.) Card is drawn to replace it.

4th Round, Bottom - Opponent Fails, Master Plan to reclaim it.

We COULD have kept doing this for another two rounds, but in the 5th round we clocked the shit out of the guy.

As a sidebar to this: during an extended fight, the Rally + Leadership card engine is NUTS, especially if you have three or four Storm Knights and are only using the standard-sized Drama deck, ESPECIALLY if you're in the Nile with its huge hand size. You can draw through damn near the whole deck, and load the cards into your pools at an accelerated rate.

[Count Thalim]

I feel for your NPCs. I have had several sessions where the Bad guy was supposed to be a serious threat and due to draw of the deck ended up acting like a Weeble who was punched down, stood up only to be immediately punched down again...

On the other side I have seen my players despairing at doing a DSR and just not getting the A/Bs they need to get anywhere at the start and are then hit by a Setback right after they have gotten off the starting blocks.

[fougerec]

I've had games where the Drama deck hated the players as well. A large part of the appeal of the game for me is how much the cards can impact the game.

[Devcon]

Had something like that not too long ago... when the PCs were set to uproot their 1st Stelae.

They were warned. "This ain't gonna be easy. " they were all worked up. Worried. Scared.

With anticipation, they approached the located Stelae. I turn the 1st card... heroes go 1st. A is available. Player in charge of the reality rolls make it easy. On opponents turns, the defenders (controlled dinosaurs hidden in surrounding Living Land vegetation) charge in.

Turn 2. 'B' and 'C' on the card, heroes fo first... with 'Up'. Players slaughter the dinos and easily make Reality Roll 2 due to Up. Gospog get Dimthreaded in but players are ready for them.

Round 3... player uses a Seize Initiative they loaded a previous round. They still have Up and still go 1st. They destroy the gospog and make the 3rd roll (as C was available). The Ravagon is set to arrive.. but another player uses 'Maelstrom'. Ravagon on hold.

Round 4... lasts go 1st and D is available. Roll is made despite Maeltrom still being in effect. Stelae uprooted.

"Wait... we got worried for THAT?!!?"

[Wotan]

My players went into the final scene of the NE Day 1 with 2x Seize Initiative & 2x Masterplan in their hands.
On round 2 the Drama Deck came up with Heroes Initiative & a Flurry. Cue 5 rounds of Hero Flurry, by the end of which the Villains were all Defeated or fleeing retreating to plot their exquisite revenge. MUHAHAHAHAHA! *ahem*