Welcome to Sentinels Spotlight! This series’ goal is to explore each of the unique decks available for play in Greater Than Games’ cooperative superhero card game, Sentinels of the Multiverse. This series will strive to introduce you to the hero, and then give you an overview on their deck – what it is made up of and some basic strategies so that you may sit down at the table and choose the deck that is the best fit for your play style.
It’s not easy being the daughter of a supervillain. It’s even harder when you don’t have any super powers of your own. Just ask Amanda Cohen, daughter of Dawn Cohen, better known to the world as Citizen Dawn. Instead of being groomed for leadership, she was constantly belittled and told she was unworthy. They fought. Constantly. After a particularly vicious battle that ended up costing her her right eye, Amanda left. Now, as Expatriette, she strikes out against tyrants and others that use their power to oppress others.
Expatriette is a Complexity 2 hero from the Rook City expansion of the game. She is another hero that utilizes her equipment cards to get the job done. Obviously drawing from the Punisher motif, her deck is stocked full of various guns and different types of ammunition. At 28 hit points, she’s on the burlier side of things as well. But she doesn’t have much in the way of letting her stand up to repeated blows as some of the other heroes do. Her basic power, Load, allows her to play a card, which is a decidedly odd power given her lack of actual draw power. Still, with her wide array of equipment cards, she is more than likely going to be utilizing their powers instead once she gets them on the table.
Expatriette has ten equipment cards, five of which are classified as guns, and four ammo types. The tenth piece, Flak Jacket, is a limited equipment that instead of simply reducing incoming damage, negates all damage from a single source that deals 3 or more damage to Expatriette. Then the card is destroyed. Submachine Gun gives her a power that deals 1 point of projectile damage to each non-hero target. Tactical Shotgun gives her a power that allows her to deal 1 target 4 projectile damage. Assault Rifle gives her a power that allows her to deal up to 3 targets 2 projectile damage each. The final two equipment cards, “Pride” and “Prejudice” have the same power, allowing Expatriette to deal 1 target 2 projectile damage. The only difference that “Pride” states that if “Prejudice” is also in play, then she may use its power as well. But it doesn’t work the other way around. Each of the guns are limited, except for “Pride” and “Prejudice” of which there is only one copy each in the deck.
Expatriette’s guns are all straightforward in what they do. It’s her ammo cards that make them really interesting. Each gun can have up to 1 ammo card played beside it. “Pride” and “Prejudice” are different in that they can have up to 2 ammo cards played next to them. The ammo cards change how the gun’s power functions and then are used up and put into the trash. Shock Rounds deal each non-hero target 1 lightning damage when the gun’s power is used to damage a target. Liquid Nitrogen Rounds change the damage the gun deals to cold. After the gun’s power is used to damage a target, the damage dealt by the target is reduced by 1 until the start of Expatriette’s next turn. Incendiary Rounds change the power’s damage type to fire and increases the damage dealt by 1. Hollow Points simply increase the damage of the card’s power by 2. As you can see, it doesn’t take overly much to make her a deadly hero. Tactical Shotgun with Hollow Points by itself is 6 points of damage. But if you can get “Pride” and “Prejudice” both loaded with Hollow Points and Incendiary Rounds, you can be looking at 10 total points of damage from a single power. And that’s before any other hero buffs that even higher. With the right mix of characters on the table, that can be increased to 16 total damage of whatever type you choose.
Expatriette also has two limited ongoing effects in her deck. Hairtrigger Reflexes allows her to deal a non-hero target 1 projectile damage as soon as it enters play. While this may not seem like a lot, when properly buffed she can put out some steady damage against a target. Legacy’s Galvanize power will increase that damage to 2. With Ra’s Imbued Fire and Visionary’s Twist the Aether on the field, Expatriette can deal 4 points of damage to a target as soon as it enters play without having to do anything! That’s enough to destroy weaker minions outright and really put the hurt on the stronger ones. Speed Loading lets her take one ammo card from the trash at the start of her turn and put it on the top of her deck. It also lets her play one ammo card from her hand at the start of her turn. This is handy for getting ammo cards out of your trash and back into play as you use them. Even if you can’t make use of the free play every turn, it does give you the benefit of knowing what you’re going to draw at the end of your turn and getting that certain ammo back onto the field the turn after.
As for one-shot effects, Expatriette has five. Arsenal Access lets her reveal cards from the top of her deck until two equipment cards are revealed. She may then put one of them either into play or into her hand. The rest of the cards are shuffled back into the deck. While this does get her equipment, there is no guarantee as to what she’ll get, and it can be frustrating to draw two cards that you already have in play. Quick Draw lets you search either your deck or your trash for either “Pride” or “Prejudice” and put it into play. This is a little more useful than Arsenal Access as it gives you control over what you pull, even if your options are limited to two cards. Reload simply lets you take an ammo card from your trash and either put it into play or into your hand. RPG Launcher lets you destroy an ongoing or environment card and deal 2 targets 2 fire damage each. This is similar in function to Chrono-Ranger’s Temporal Grenade except it doesn’t cost you a power to do so. But you also can’t go digging through your trash to pull it back into your hand, so use it carefully. Finally, Unload lets you use as many powers as you have guns out this turn. If you can get yourself geared up with all five guns and kit them out with various ammo cards, you are capable of putting out some serious hurt for one turn. Unload is potentially a game winner.
Her abilities when incapacitated are so-so. She can let another hero use a power. She can destroy a target with 1 hp. Or she can choose a hero and let them deal 1 target 1 projectile damage the next time they use a power. The target destruction ability is very situational, but I have seen annoying or dangerous villain targets stick around with only 1 hp to harrass the heroes for another turn. Or worse yet, another hero sacrificing a bunch of damage to take out an annoyance with 1 hp remaining when they could have put it to better use elsewhere.
Beyond that, there really isn’t anything fancy to her deck. It is very, very insular. She doesn’t have any cards that support her allies. Simply get your guns out, load them up with your ammo cards, and go to town on the villains and their cronies. Any hero that increases damage is going to get along very well with Expatriette as was shown when looking at Hairtrigger Reflexes. Honestly, if she had some more draw power in her deck, she could very easily be a complexity 1 hero, but Load combined with no real means to get a good sized hand means you’re going to be missing out on some plays unless you simply take the first couple of turns to do nothing but draw cards. She can take even longer to set up than Bunker if you’re drawing poorly. Any hero that lets her draw cards is going to be a very good ally at the table. And, like so many of the other heroes that rely on their equipment, villains that destroy equipment cards are going to be major annoyances. She also relies pretty much exclusively on projectile damage to get things done. So if your opponent is capable of making themselves immune, you could be looking at several turns of ineffectiveness until that is dealt with. She can also prove to be a liability against villains like the Dreamer with several of her cards indiscriminately dealing damage to all non-hero targets. But, if you like to deal lots of damage and don’t mind what could be a slow build-up, Expatriette can be a lot of fun.
Expatriette’s nemesis is her mother, Citizen Dawn, who was introduced into the game in the very first box set. More on her later.
Expatriette Deck List
Arsenal Access x3
Assault Rifle x3
Flak Jacket x3
Hairtrigger Reflexes x2
Hollow Points x2
Incendiary Rounds x2
Liquid Nitrogen Rounds x2
“Prejudice” x1
“Pride” x1
Quick Draw x3
Reload x3
RPG Launcher x3
Shock Rounds x2
Speed Loading x2
Submachine Gun x3
Tactical Shotgun x3
Unload x2
And that was your look at Expatriette. Next time we’ll take a look at one of the other heroes from the base set of the game, Fanatic!
Ben Erickson
One combo that bears mention is Submachine Gun plus Shock Rounds. It’s something of a situational combo, but if there’s a lot of non-hero targets out, the damage can rack up insanely quickly — each target hit by the SMG throws a point of lightning damage, so instead of doing one damage to each target, you do X damage to each target, where X is the number of targets in play! The weakness of this technique is, of course, that all the damage is being dealt in onesies, so even one point of damage reduction puts a stop to the whole cascade.
I never felt her innate Load power is particularly a problem despite her lack of draw, because as soon as you have a gun on the board you’re going to want to be shooting that with your power. In most of the games I’ve played with Expat, Load only gets used once or twice in the whole game — usually once in the first turn if I failed to draw a gun (or a one shot that lets me fish one), and after that only under rare circumstances when I don’t want to deal damage. Even if I get a second power use from another player’s effect, it’s usually going to fire one of my many, many guns rather than do a Load.