Welcome to Arkham:
Bob's Practical Guide to INSANITY

a note on Bob’s Practical Guides: these guides are intended to be as helpful, informative, or at least thought-and-discussion-provoking as possible to a wide range of players, but are primarily for players who DON’T have all the latest-and-greatest, because of limited resources, limited luck, and/or being new players. If these guides are useful or interesting to better-resourced players as well, that is a nice bonus, but not the main intent!

I’m BobtheSnark, and I like to talk about subjects in Empires & Puzzles that can invite a certain level of derision from swathes of the player community:

• snipers ("it's 'only' a sniper, sigh")

• Heroes of the Month (“Heroes of the Month all suck!  ALL of them!”)

• budget picks from the Soul Exchange (“WHERE ARE MY PRECIOUS ‘META’ HEROES?!  I want to clear roster space, even if it means trading 50 for 1 OP-at-the-moment hero!”)

• Fated Summon (“Waaaaay too old to spend precious mats on, except MAYBE like one of the highest Power heroes ONLY”)

And such reactions are perhaps in no small part because some community discussion is driven by those lucky and/or deeply budgeted enough to land a steady stream of The Latest Heroes.

But a lot of us don’t play the game that way, which brings me to the latest taboo topic:

I N S A N I T Y

—

“You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” 

— Linda Woolverton, for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (sorry, not the book)

Insanity, at its base, creates a chance to launch a "reverse Special" -- targeting gets switched, so that anything that would affect allies instead affects foes, and vice versa; the higher the Insanity, the higher the chance.  Many Insanity heroes get a bad rap, because of this additional randomness — and the Insanity wars implementation hasn’t particularly helped.  Adding more luck-based mechanics should be a choice for those who wind up landing some of these quirky heroes, not a “woooo everybody goes Insane all the time” war format.

It’s also the case that luck-based mechanics can feel.. uneven.. almost as if the odds of defenders getting something random that they want (e.g. dodge, revive, chance to fire extra hits, etc.) is, oh, doubled, while the chance of YOUR attacking team getting something random YOU want is, oh.. halved.  But I’m not going to get into a long spiel about negativity bias or loss aversion here; I’m going to talk about how to best make the odds work in your favor.

Of course, one of the reasons the Insanity mechanic has a bad rap is that Those Who Have the latest and greatest heroes don’t need to gamble if they have enough of the most recent OP heroes. But for folks who have fewer or none of those heroes, and who are seeking to “punch up”… added randomness can favor the underdog.

Also, of course, like any other group of heroes, some Insanity are more impressive than others.  Some of the more-likely-to-be-gotten 3* and 4* heroes aren’t big selling points for the Insanity mechanic as a whole.  (One, though — little Cthuwu — can be.  See more below.)  If you have one or more “eh” Insanity heroes that doesn’t mean you should give up on the whole idea.

Furthermore, an issue with Insanity heroes is that you generally cannot just drop them into an existing team the same way that you would a number of other heroes — you kinda have to/have to *be able to* build around them.  Insanity is a weird mechanic and a lot of folks are not only risk-averse, but don’t want to have to wade through the piles of text to make sense of it.

And let’s be fair - there’s already a lot of randomness in this game, from starting boards in any PvP match to, of course, the very heroes you draw (thanks to the hilariously low 5* odds generally, few heroes outside of Fated Summon, Soul Exchange, or Heroes of the Month are even likely, much less possible, for many folks - which is another reason I tend to talk about them).

—

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 

— Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death (sorry, NOT Einstein)

So why would you invest the training time/food/feeders/mats/aethers and extra know-how to get MORE randomness from one or more of these heroes to work for you?

For one:  piercing standard immunities.  Are you sick of even considering a DoT combo, only to be foiled by ailment block you can’t dispel (or can never dispel often enough)?  Or forgetting that a certain hero intrinsically heals from fire damage, is immune to a wide variety of not-explicitly-defined ailments that “prevent Special skills,” or just Monks or Toons their way out of seemingly *everything*? 

Insanity is not an ailment.  It is its own, very special precious separate little mechanic.  You can only get rid of it (1) ten points at a time through each direct healing from a Special, dragon Assist, item, or tiles (healing-over-time effects, passives, minions, etc won't) or (2) by activating Insanity, which does the whole "reverse target" thing and wipes Insanity to zero (though the effect of the reverse targeting may, depending on the Special, add some Insanity back on from the base of zero).

And thus immunity to Insanity is rather rarer than either general "ailment immunity" or most specific immunities.  There are a select few families (Defenders of Atlantis and Nightmares of Atlantis, the Untold Tales 1 families, when costumed; Woodland Fauns) that are natively immune to Insanity.  And Softskin from the “plushie”-style Gargoyles can grant immunity to Insanity while it lasts.  But… that’s it.  And generally speaking (at least outside of an Insanity War), these are not the dominant Borg-tier heroes you are likely to face.  (And in 3* and 4* tournaments where various Toons and Glass and Stylish heroes often dominate defensively?  Insanity doesn’t care about those 60-70% resist chances.  Just go crazy, baby.)

Also: the delicious schadenfreude of making an OP foe punch themselves in the face.  Reflect <color> is an old-school and still excellent way to accomplish this, when you have access to it in a size that fits the scenario you’re in, but it still only works on a single color - so it is limited against most defenses, which don’t usually color stack.  But Insanity can affect nearly all foes, not least of all when your team is built to take advantage of the mechanic and your opponent’s isn’t.  (Which.. is usually the case outside of Insanity Wars — the Insanity mechanic is not generally at the top of what most defenses are built around stopping.)

So what are some broad strategies for making Insanity work generally?

1) Fight the madness.  Under this scenario, you try to manage the backlash as much as possible. 

If you have a number of heroes that do a direct heal in addition to their other function (e.g. hit-and-heal), every heal whittles down your own Insanity.

If you have heroes who are outright immune to Insanity (Woodland Fauns, Untold Tales 1 costumed heroes), or even those that can provide temporary immunity (Softskin prevents Insanity while active), that manages backlash.

Sometimes a single firing of the right Insanity hero at the right time can make the difference (e.g. if you fire Omen once and can contrive to let his spreading Insanity fiends keep spreading for a number of turns before enemy healers have a chance to fire), and you avoid backlash by just rarely firing a second time.

Similarly, if you bring and fire two Insanity heroes in immediate succession, you may be able to drive enemy Insanity high enough that enemy healers wind up healing your heroes (and reducing your Insanity for you).

2) Embrace the madness. Here, you charge directly into the incoming torpedoes, er, Insanity.  Fire early and often.

If you have heroes who are otherwise resistant to your Insanity hero going insane (e.g. if your Insanity hero inflicts status ailments to wing heroes, you put Monk/Toon/other resistant heroes on your own wings), the original Insanity hero takes Insanity lumps when firing, but not the rest.

Also, when an Insanity hero misfires, it dumps a bunch of Insanity on an enemy in so doing.  Between this and the original hit, throwing Insanity everywhere (A) may still wind up with your opponent getting rather more than you do (B) especially if your team is better built to weather misfires than your opponents’ and/or (C) your opponent’s team is made out of heroes who are OP relative to yours, so that you’d have real problems in a straight fight, but if you can provoke them into punching their own faces, it’s far more devastating than when your heroes misfire.

Overall?  A good rule of thumb is, whenever possible, you want to be handing out more Insanity to your foes than your own heroes are having to absorb.  (If you are seriously outclassed, even this may not be necessary — a huge misfire by an enemy may be worth multiple misfires of your own.)  Again, a popular method is to bring a couple of Insanity heroes, fire them together to pile up enemy Insanity quickly, and make them lose it right away… all while you heal (and absorb your foes’ healing). 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  implicitly, I've been talking about actively directing tactical use of Insanity, which means you making careful timing and targeting choices for your heroes on the attack.  Insanity heroes are a different ball game as defenders, as they will fire immediately and haphazardly under the defense program's uncaring hand... so most Insanity heroes are probably poorer prospects for your defense team than for your PvP attack (and PvE) teams.  (This is an important distinction to make explicitly generally about heroes, since many people tend to look at, or outright rate, heroes based on how they perform on defense -- which is not crazy, given that many players will face heroes before they obtain and finish them themselves -- but that's often a different use case than playing with the hero actively on offense.)

But let’s get more specific…

(in each of the following rundowns, follow the clickable link to view the entire card with details, courtesy of empuzzled.com )

Cthuwu

“A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King.” 

— Emily Dickinson

Let’s talk about little Cthuwu.  (I don’t know whose idea it was to make basically a chibi version of a Great Old One, but here we are.)

First of all, this is one of the most likely Insanity heroes for you to get — and of the 3* and 4*, possibly the best.  How is that?

Note that if all of Cthuwu’s teammates are alive, and if all four of the others fire at least once during its (admittedly short, 3-turn) buff duration, then you’re handing out an average of 200 total Insanity (every time any hero fires, all five heroes have a 50% chance to apply 20 Insanity) vs 40 that Cthuwu accrues.  Heck, even if only one hero (out of a full team) fires during this buff, that’s still an average of 50 Insanity, and you’re still coming out slightly ahead.  Note there are some actual hits going on too — Cthuwu’s initial sniper hit and then some 100% free hits.

Sooo… Cthuwu obviously does best with a bunch of speedy teammates (because of Rush or natively) and/or with yellow mono (e.g. Cthuwu is a pretty good candidate for PoG tasks that involve you winning with a mono team plus winning with at least one 3* hero).

And if you want to Fight the Madness, you can make some number of Cthuwu’s teammates healers (or ones who do a direct heal from hitting), cutting down its self-imposed Insanity before getting ready to fire again — but if you want to Embrace the Madness, well, if Cthuwu misfires due to Insanity, it will snipe itself and buff your foes instead (yet tagging one of *them* with 40 Insanity)… but if you have dispel ready against this eventuality, then your foes lose most of the benefit of the misfire, still eat the 40 Insanity, and now Cthuwu is back down to a nice, shiny zero Insanity ready to go again as soon as you charge its (Fast) mana again!

Cthuwu doesn’t even really need Insanity comrades to pile up the madness quickly… but you can!

If you’re not sure about the Insanity mechanic, but you want to dip your toe into these murky waters, try Cthuwu first.  He’s relatively quick and inexpensive to level up and you can get a feel for making him work for you (and making those smug Toon 3* defenses.. or even some bigger prey.. smack themselves silly).

What if you want to try a bit more?

Dolores

“To be an actor you have to have a certain amount of madness in you.” 

— Nicole Kidman

If you like little Cthuwu, wait until you get a load of Nicol— er, Dolores.  Sure, she’s one of the oldest and lowest-Power (…?) Insanity heroes, but don’t let that dissuade you.  Cthuwu gives everybody a 50% chance to tag one foe with 20 Insanity, but Dolores does the smacking herself, always hitting a random target plus nearby (up to 3 total) for 15 Insanity each.  Even just one hit-3 triggered by one ally firing hands out 45 Insanity for her 50; any more and you’re ahead of the game.  

…and Dolores’ buff is 4 turns, not 3.  And her damage is 220%.  And if you’re worried about her stats being a bit old… notice that her “Family Bonus” gives her +20% attack and +20% hp even if she’s the only Investigator family hero.  Hello!  If she has Investigator comrades too, well, scale that on up further!  And while Dolores has any Insanity, it acts as damage reduction for her due to her Passive.  

All of this would make her pretty respectable already, but that she hands out attack-bonus and mana-generation stacks means you’d really prefer to Embrace the Madness with Dolores - the more you fire her, the more stacks you get.  (Titans beware, amongst other things!)  Keep a dispeller or buff blocker around, and when Dolores misfires foes don’t get/get to use the buff (though they do get the stacks)… and when Dolores misfires, one of them is taking 50 Insanity on top of what she’s handed out with her awesomesauce Tesla rifle.

(“but she gives foes attack buff stacks!”  Yeah, well, that also means they hit harder when you make them misfire!  MWU HA HA HA!)

Atwood
"Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "what's the worst thing that could happen?"  

— Howard Tayler, Maxim 14, Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

Let’s shift gears:  Atwood plays a different game.  This steampunk Gentleman Adventurer hands out Insanity by simply hitting people in the face with it — he takes 50 Insanity, but he hands out 45 Insanity each to up to three foes; if you have three adjacent foes to hit, or heck, even two, you’re coming out ahead in this exchange.

That’s not counting a fairly respectable hit-3, which is preceded by a priority dispel, and is followed by immunity for all his teammates to DoT damage.  (Are you sick and tired of taking Resonance damage.. and Corrosive Frost, Corrosive Burn, Corrosive Poison, and whatever other slings and arrows of misfortune?  Let Atwood leap in and cry out, “that’s not cricket!”)

Like Dolores, his family bonus (and Passive) means that his “older stats” are also bit of a deception:  what ho, good sir?  You might need to be a wee bit careful about managing his misfires (though placing him at the edge of your attack team limits him to “hit 2” for starters), so you might consider Fight the Madness with this gentleman — but pair him with a like-minded Insanity dame or sir, and your foes may be going mad in a jif!

Omen

“Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…”

— Carl Jung, The Red Book

Dolores (as well as Cthuwu) hands out Insanity when teammates fire Specials; Atwood just hands it out directly.

But Omen plays a yet another game; his is a creeping madness.  Play your cards and your foes right, and Omen may only need to fire just the once… and then fold his arms and watch with grim satisfaction as his foes are inexorably ground down into madness by self-multiplying shards of cosmic horror and the utter despair of an overwhelming, fruitless existence!  *Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!*

*ahem*

The trick here of course is giving Omen the chance to do his self-multiplying fiend thing — which means you need to watch out for foes who have turn-zero LB2 immunity from fiends (unless you can dispel it quickly first), who have or summon megaminions (which box out fiends), fiend removal, or of course good-old-fashioned healing, since Omen’s fiends are actually pretty small.  (Also, leave any Veggie heroes - or other non-Passive fienders — on the bench, or they might box out Omen’s autoreplicating fiends.)

But if your foe is lacking in burst healing, especially if it’s Slow and *especially* if its away from the main tile rush, and/or you can mana-control the healer… and/or if you bring a Fox with you to Passively cut foes’ healing by half… your opponent heroes may find themselves swarmed under by multiplying fiends.   5 Insanity a turn by itself isn’t a lot, but when it cranks up to 15 a turn on every hero, stonewalling may be your best friend.  Better yet, when your foes inevitably start misfiring and momentarily regain their sanity… the fiends will still be there driving them back down into the depths of madness!

MADNESS I SAY!  AHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Rashan

"Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off." 

— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

Then there’s Rashan, who thinks that others’ approach to Insanity is just too slow, so he hands it out at Very Fast.  With a quick two-fisted leap, he tags enemy flanks for 330% damage, 25 Insanity, and resist-heal-for-damage each.  

This.. might seem a little tricky, since he’s handing out 50 total Insanity while gaining 40 himself.  But wait… Rashan has fixed targeting.

Most Insanity heroes, when they misfire, will target themselves, inflicting damage and Insanity on themselves.  But Rashan always hits flanks — so — if he’s not ON a flank.. but he has some buddies that are immune to Insanity to tank his misfires.

• When Rashan doesn’t misfire, he hands out 50 total Insanity to the enemy team by hitting their flanks.

• When Rashan DOES misfire, he hands out 40 Insanity to one random enemy, and zero Insanity to your own team if you have the immunes to take the hits.  (Allied flanks still take the damage and the heal-resist, but still.)

And this happens every six red tiles (if you’ve got at least +9% mana gen on a supporting troop). Keep Rashan firing and you have an Insanity Machine — so forget calling it off when insanity flirts back: Rashan takes Insanity by the hand out for a tango on the dance floor... as long as you have the right partners for him.

Hunter

"With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.' 

— Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72

If handing out bits and bobs of Insanity, in conjunction with other Insanity heroes or according to other heroes’ hits or the slow spread of fiends just isn’t doing it for you, there’s Hunter.  You don’t need fancy combos here, you need to chew up a target’s hp enough to land a sniper shot for the kill.

And this Hunter is good at bringing the fear and loathing: he never misses, he lowers defense BEFORE taking his shot, and if he lands the kill shot, adjacent foes go straight to 100 Insanity.  Boom. 

The obvious downside here is that if he doesn’t get the kill, he inflicts zero Insanity — though the target is still defense-down and reeling from damage — but that downside is also its own upside if he misfires and can survive his own shot.  (Be extra careful about firing him at high Insanity and low hp though, lest he dump his fear and loathing onto anyone adjacent who’s not immune.  Hey, maybe put him on the edge, ideally next to an Insanity-immune…)

but what about the rest...?

Hopefully, at this point, you're starting to get the idea: Insanity heroes are anything but monolithic.  Just because they all play with the Insanity mechanic doesn't mean that they don't approach it in very different ways.  Arguably moreso than most heroes, they each have their own flavor... and their own way of building around them.

I started this long discussion with a general look at the cons and pros of Insanity and general strategies for using it, and a look at several of the particular heroes.  But these are just some of them -- and the older ones.  The project of this page is not to review every Insanity hero, but to give you a flavor for how they might be used, from experience, and why you might want to consider them.

When looking at other Insanity heroes, in addition to their particular Insanity-inducing mechanic, definitely check out their family bonus and Passive abilities.  These vary, may occasionally be missing (especially for 3* and 4* heroes), but generally
* Investigator family: +attack / +hp
* Cultist family: +defense / +hp
Note that older members of these two families have Passive: Marked which gives them damage reduction based on Insanity, but newer ones (at least at the time of writing, possibly subject to change) do not: check the card!
* The Institute family: +mana generation / +hp; Passive: Pact gives chance to be reborn as Eldritch Host, scaling with Insanity
* Forsaken family: +critical / +hp; Passive: Branded gives +damage scaling with Insanity
These two families generally also have Passive: Minion Corruption (applying Insanity gives passive chance to flip minions/megaminions to fiends/megafiends which cause more Insanity)

But to conclude, consider this: many of the most-chased heroes in Empires & Puzzles can be so because of their latest-release raw Power ratings, because they have a mechanic to further up their raw Power, and/or because they have not-so-passive Passives (and Family Bonuses), much less Specials, that can devastate the battlefield more effectively than many previous heroes' entire Specials.  When your roster is heavily outclassed in sheer numbers by some of your foes', it may feel like strategy is a vain hope when you almost have to field some of your mechanically largest heroes just to survive.

But Insanity can possibly give you a chance to fight back: ironically, the mechanic of (further) introducing random chance, properly managed, can actually re-introduce strategy into what can often feel like a "pay and/or luck, but mostly pay, to get a bigger set of rock'em sock'em robots!" version of this game.

And so, if you've read this far, and this discussion has given you ...
...a hint of horror...

...a taste of terror...

...an inkling of insanity...

And you're looking for something different, something that will let you punch up against heroes who may seem or be out of your roster's league...

...maybe, just maybe, Insanity may give you way to steeple your fingers, grin, and prepare to tell some of your OP foes:

DANCE, PUPPETS, DANCE!!!

“Harley Quinn” by Brett Jordan, CC BY 2.0

finally, a quick word:

if you have any feedback about this particular endeavour, either on this page, or elsewhere on this site: criticisms, praise, suggestions, or otherwise, I can be reached

E&P Official Discord @BobTheSnark

email bobthesnark@gmail.com

Thank you for reading!