I've been dead set on figuring out Absolute Zero and I'm proud to announce that I think I finally got it last night. It was our third game session and my cousin and I finally got a third person to sit down with us. I'd played AZ twice before, but in both games I was playing two characters and couldn't focus on him as much as I'd like to.
In our third session last night, we each got to play one character. I used AZ, my cousin used Expatriette, and our friend used Tempest (it was his first game). We played against Citizen Dawn in Insula Primalis.
Now the first thing I want to note is that having a third set of eyes really makes all of the HP bookkeeping and whatnot more manageable. My cousin and I have been managing fine, but having a third person made me feel confident that we didn't miss anything TOO glaring. We DID forget to apply the nemeses damage bonus for both Dawn and Expatriette, but we remembered probably three or four turns in. At that point, Dawn had only hit Expatriette once (if at all) and we were the only ones suffering from a few lower damage shotgun blasts.
Anyway, on to the questions:
I think I played this right, but sometimes I confuse myself:
AZ has both modules out. There is an Obsidian Field in play. Citizen Dawn, Citizen Anvil, and a dinosaur of some variety are out. I play Hoarfire. I deal 2 cold damage to Dawn (+1 for OF, -1 for Anvil), 2 fire damage to Anvil, 2 cold damage to myself (+2 HP), and 2 fire damage to myself. I redirect the 2 fire damage as 3 cold damage to myself and heal for an additional 3. For my power, I use Thermal Shockwave. So that's 1 cold damage on Dawn, 1 cold damage on Anvil, 2 cold damage on the dino. I dealt 6 cold damage this turn (I didn't include the cold I dealt myself because I didn't think that was actually dealt), so I deal myself 7 fire damage (Is 7 right? I assumed that OF would increase the damage I'd do to myself). I took the 7 fire damage and redirect 8 cold damage (7+1?) at Dawn. Did I do all that right?
*I just realized I've been using the word "redirect". I keep thinking of it that way, but what I really mean is "taking x fire damage, then dealing x+1 cold damage". It was easier to type this note than correct my mistakes above :)
Also, one other question: When I used Thermal Shockwave, it ended up killing Citizen Anvil. Could I have assigned 1 damage to Anvil first, then assigned 2 damage to Dawn since Anvil wasn't protecting her anymore? We decided "no" in the heat of the moment to save time and avoid having a potential asterisk on our game.
Long story short: We beat her without her flipping at all. None of us was particularly close to dying and we made a new SotM fan out of our friend. I would recommend that everyone trying to figure out AZ plays him against Dawn in IP because the sheer amount of fire damage I was taking from outside sources made me feel especially useful.
I only wish I had been as useful in our second game of the night against Voss in Atlantis with Fanatic, Visionary, and Nightmist. He whomped us good. We barely scratched him until Vis and Fanatic were dead and then with a little help from a Kraken and two turns worth of incap abilities, Nightmist managed to get him down to about 20 before Forced Deployment ended it. This game definitely has a learning curve. Either that, or Visionary just really doesn't fit my playstyle...
Infact the damage of cold that you deal to yourself would count towards Thermal Shockwave, since it is orignally cold damage and it just moves your health the wrong way. Think of it as Cold Recovery! Other than that the math looks perfect.
If you would of destroyed Anvil first then attacked Dawn the damage reduction would of been gone, so she would have taken 2 damage rather than the 1 she had taken. Since he is no longer in play no text would of been there, which is the nice thing about doing an attack that hits multiple targets and destroying the thing reducing the damage first if possible.
That looks right to me.
Hoarfire=2+1-1 cold to Dawn, 2+1-1 fire to Anvil, 1+! cold to you which converts from damage to 2 healing, then 1+1 fire damage which triggers you doing 2+1 cold damage to yourself which getc coverted to healing. So 2 cold damage in total.
Thermal shockwave 1+1-1 to Dawn, 1+1-1 to Anvil and 1+1 to the dino for another 4 cold daamge. You then deal yourself 6+1 fire damage and the transducer spits out 7+1 cold damage. Yup, that all looks good to me.
You can hit targets in any order, so yes, you could have hit Anvile to kill him first. This would have Increased the Tthermal Shcokwave damage to Dawn by one, the Thermal shockwave fire damage to you by one and the Isothermic Transducer damage to Dawn from Thermal Shockwave by 1. So Dawn would be two points worse off and you'd be one.
Visionary does have a learning curve but generally, if you're dealing damage directly, something has gone very wrong. Her deck and table control is far more potent at influencing the result of the game than her damage potential.
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Cromium_Man was correct not to count the healing as cold damage dealt.
But you are right on destroying Anvil. Nothing is simultaneous, so his reduction goes away before the next target takes damage. It's always nice to win the harder way when there is doubt though.
except for the fact that you could, in fact, have killed Anvil, you did everything correctly.
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Are you sure about this?
Immunity or 0 damage getting through due to reduction definitely doesn't count, but I could have sworn that it does count as damage as it changes your HP.
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The description on the NPCU says that whenever Ab'Zero would be dealt cold damage, he instead regains that much hp. So cold damage against Ab'Zero when he's got his NPCU out isn't damage, but healing. But in terms of adding up a total for the Thermal Shockwave, I'm not sure - Ab'Zero tries to hit himself with cold damge (he deals the damage) but ends up healing (so no damage is dealt) - damage was attempted, but healing occurred.
He's so complicated even if he is so cool (no pun intended) :P.
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Related thread I asked previously.
http://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/blighted-streets-and-null-point-calibration-unit