Tempest Part 2

Variants

Xtreme Prime Wardens Tempest

Base Power Rating: 2.5 / 5

“Thunderstruck” is an interesting power that can prevent certain targets from using their effects. This power is generally useful for minion-heavy decks who have effects that work during the end of their turns. Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

• Chairman’s Under-Bosses
• Matriarch’s “Huginn” and “Muninn” cards.
• Almost every Citizen in Citizen Dawn’s Deck. 
• Almost all of Voss’s Minions and both of his Spaceships
• Apostate’s “Condemnation” and “Corrupted Effigy” cards. 
• Dreamer’s Deck: Whipacorn, Tooth Fairy, Granite Oni, Grotesque Arachnoid, Illusory Demon, Macabre Specter.

You get the point. This card can shut villain minions down. It can be fun preventing villain mooks from using certain effects. Unfortunately, this power has its downsides. Being able to shut down minion effects is nice, but it only works for one target. Minion-heavy decks are good at bringing out multiple minions at a time. Shutting down one effect is okay at best, but it’s usually better to just destroy that target.

Another problem is that this base power is useless against single target villains. This base power only really works against non-character cards.

Prime Wardens Tempest

Base Power Rating: 2 / 5

The base power of Prime Wardens Tempest is lopsided in its usefulness. Playing up to 3 cards is amazing! But being dealt 3 damage each time you play an extra card isn’t. What’s worse is that the text of the power reads “the environment deals damage” so you can’t mitigate the damage Prime Warden Tempest takes with cards like “Mega Computer” or “Mass Levitation.”

This means that “Arc of Power” has to be used sparingly, if at all. Frequent usage of this power forces Tempest’s HP will quickly drop to 0. 

Freedom Six Tempest

 Base Power Rating: 1 / 5

Ew. What an awful base power. The idea behind this power is to destroy a card in exchange for drawing 3 cards. This might sound like a fair trade off in theory, but in practice it’s really flawed. This base power essentially requires Tempest to play a card and then use his power to destroy it. You could argue that Tempest can keep the card and then destroy it at a later time, but that means that Tempest has to use his base power sparingly.

There are ways for Tempest to draw cards that don’t involve destroying one of his cards like Localized Hurricane, Aquatic Correspondence, or Reclaim from the Deep. There’s also the fact that there are multiple other heroes that can provide Tempest consistent cards to draw like Team Leader Tachyon, Freedom Five Wraith, Lifeline, etc.

Having 25 HP also doesn’t do him any favors either. This is the second-lowest base HP of the Tempest variants. When combined with his awful base power, it makes you wonder what the reasons are for using him.

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Synergy  

Synergy # 1 - Damage Buffing

Tempest is the ultimate example of a damage-dealing hero. Like every hero whose main job is to beat down the bad guys, he loves getting his damage buffed. So, Standard Legacy and Parse are the go-to characters here. Legacy in particular can make Standard Tempest’s base power amazing as it can easily turn into dealing every target 3 damage a piece.

Synergy # 2: Deck Manipulation

I already brought this up when I talked about “Into the Stratosphere” so I won’t spend too much time here. Tempest’s “Into the Stratosphere” synergizes really well with other heroes who can manipulate the villain’s deck. The idea here is to send a certain card back to the villain’s deck and then use cards like “like Wraith’s “Infrared Eyepiece,” Visionary’s “Precognition,” or Parse’s “Extraordinary Senses” that can either put the card at the bottom of the villain’s deck or can discard it altogether.

Synergy # 3: Scholar

Scholar has a card in his deck called “Mortal Form to Energy.”

This card lets Scholar deal damage equal to the amount of HP he recovers. Tempest’s “Cleansing Downpour” can easily provide Scholar with a consistent way to recover HP. For Scholar that’s a free 2 damage dealt to any target of Scholar’s choosing during each turn.

As mentioned before, Tempest and Scholar have a great recycle combo in the form of “Reclaim From The Deep” and “Don’t Dismiss Anything.” Tempest lets every hero take one card from their trash and put it on top of their deck while Scholar plays “Don’t Dismiss Anything,” which lets everyone put the card they just put on top of their deck into play.

This combo also works with Omnitron-X and Freedom Five Bunker. These characters have base powers that let heroes put the top card of their deck into play.

Tempest’s Cons

• Low HP: The only Tempest variant who doesn’t have low HP is “Prime Warden’s Tempest.” Having low HP means that Tempest can only take so many hits before needing to heal his own HP.

• Inability to Control Which Targets He Hits:There are some situations where dealing damage to every target is a bad thing, like when fighting against Dreamer. Standard Tempest’s base power and his Grievous Hail Storm card can’t control his targets, which means that he can wind up destroying cards that you don’t want destroyed.

• Variants with Lame Base Powers: For most heroes, it’s not difficult to see which variants are the most useful. That being said, the heroes that I frequently use generally have at least 2 different versions that are fun to play as, and are worth using.

        Tempest is not one of those heroes. I consider Standard Tempest to be the most consistently useful of the bunch by a significant margin. “Xtreme Prime Wardens Tempest” can be fun to use, but his base power comes across as very situational. He also has 2 less HP than the Standard version of Tempest. I don’t even bother to use “Prime Wardens” and “Freedom Six Tempest” anymore as I consider their base powers to be detrimental to them. This means that there’s only one version of Tempest that’s fun to play as, which is a bit of a disappointment.

Overall: Standard Tempest is another example of a hero who’s very fun to use. He’s easy to pick up while also being effective at what he does. If you need a Bruiser that can beat the villain down, then Tempest is a great pick. There’s another reason why Tempest is awesome: “Cleansing Downpour.” That card single-handedly turns Tempest into a one-man medic team. Seriously, it’s the best healing power in the game.

Tempest is another hero that I will continue to use. If you’re new to the game then Tempest is another hero that I recommend using. You will not regret it.