Finally we'll consider the villain portion of our deck. I consider this portion last because, for the most part, it has no connection with the Hero Side. In rare cases, such as with Mot (Servant of Baal) or Fro'tak (Jealous Rival), your hero and villain portions of your deck interact (and when playing complications, of course) but the villain cards are mostly a strategy of their own, and can usually be carried over from one deck to the next.

Adversaries

Adversaries are certainly not necessary to play the game, and I'm sure you can make a good deck without them, but they can add an extra annoyance to your opponent and, if you have enough cards to discard from your draw deck, you can keep them around for another turn. What better than to add another few more difficulty with no power cost? It could save the game for you. To truly take advantage of them, though, sometimes you'll need a bit bigger deck.

When including Adversaries be sure to keep in mind that when you pay to play them, you'll be paying power that you could have spent on an obstacle to stop your opponent, so you'll want adversaries that pull their weight. Compare the adversary cost with what it would cost to play a complication, for example. So, 1 power for 1 difficulty, or 3 power for 2 difficulty would be an average pay off. Be sure to include the adversary's game text in this calculation. For example, Tanith cost's 4 power, and you only get a return of 2 difficulty in Combat and Ingenuity (1 for Culture, but that's even worse). But Tanith (Lurker) lets you play a Complication for free, so that really makes his cost 4 power for a return of 3 difficulty. Anubis (Banished Lord) is a 4 cost for 2 difficulty in Culture and Science, but he lets you destroy a support character right when you play him, which could give him immediate benefits of 4 cost for 3, 4, or even 5 or 6 difficulty, if your opponent has a support character for the current mission.

Obstacles

With your obstacles you're going to want to pay attention to the same power for difficulty ratio, though sometimes you'll take into account a higher cost for a lower return if it has great failure text, or you can stop or block a character. You'll also want a good even coverage of all skills in your obstacles, and obstacles with more than one skill rating are generally better than ones with only one. A strategy to consider is to completely skip a skill when choosing your obstacles, but you could be handing your opponent 3 missions. This strategy relies a lot on luck of the draw of missions and/or luck of the draw of your opponent.

My Example

I like to choose my adversaries first. I usually choose 4 to 8 adversaries. Practice will give you the right amount of adversaries to include in your deck. You certainly don't need as many adversaries as obstacles, as they can stick around for a while.

I like to have a way to get rid of the opponent's support characters or gears, and adversaries are a good way to do that without having to make your opponent fail the mission. Devout Prior (Instrument of the Ori) might be useful in your deck, since you can choose to destroy a character or gear whether or not the opponent failed. I like destroying characters before the mission ends, though, so I would include a Mollem (Duplicitous Diplomat) if I had one. I don't, so I'll include an Anubis (Banished Lord). For your deck, you might consider Nirrti (Goddess of Darkness) as your character destruction Adversary. Frank Simmons (Government Adversary) is almost an auto-include, and can cripple your opponent if drawn early, so I'll put in one of him. Choose from the Adversaries you have, but most are rare or uncommon, so it's hard to tell you what to include. For me, I'm going to include 2 Fifth (Hardened Foe), an Anubis (Galactic Menace) and an Apophis (Enemy Reborn). A total of six Adversaries.

Now to start my obstacles off with a good coverage, I'm going to include 3 Red Skys. Those provide 1 to 1 power to difficulty rating for Culture, and 2 to 3 for Science. For the Red Sky equivalent in the other skill, I'll include 3 Too Close Encounters. We're a little heavy in Science and Combat right now, so I'll include 2 Language Barriers and 2 Harsh Conditions to even it out. Sabotage gives me some Destroy a Gear text and Troop Landing allows me to destroy some characters, so I'll include 2 of each, which also keeps the skills even so far.

I have 14 obstacles, but most of them cost 2 or 3 power. I'll include 2 System Overloads and 2 Serpent Guards to even that out, and I even get some good Failure text with System Overload. I like to incapacitate a character, especially if my opponent is skipping a skill, so I'll put in one Blinded and one Endure the Tests. I have 21 obstacles, and a fairly even distribution of skills. With 21 obstacles and 6 adversaries, I need 3 more cards to reach my 30 card villain goal. Here's where I like to throw in some interesting cards.

Choose from among the cards you have. From my card pool, I would put in one Homocidal Robotic Clone and one Unlikely Friends. I might include a Under Suspicion if I had it, but I don't so I'll provide a Forced Labor Camp instead. As always, my includes are just an example. Feel free to modify your deck, do what suits you. If you include a card that keeps coming up and is not proving useful to you, ditch it and get another. It's okay, to to go over 20 or over 30 cards for your villain pile. You'll have to find the right balance to your deck to suit your playing style.

Well, this is the last article in the series, I hope these articles hav helped you start on the path to building your own decks. Trial and Error is a fine strategy, I'll see you in the Gate Room, have fun!