That Matriarch can be a bit of an a**kicker! My eldest son and two friends of mine took her on last night and she totally tore us (Expatriette, Fanatic, Bunker, Argent Adept) to shreds in short order. As much fun as that was we could not accept that kind of defeat so we re-tooled the team and went at her for a second go.
This time we were Wraith, Fanatic, Bunker and Nightmist and we were far more successful! There were still some touch and go moments but we finally prevailed and took her down. Bunker actually managed to get a sweet set up this time. The first turn he put down Ammo Drop and when the first wave of Fowl were destroyed he ended up with a mitt full of cards. By the end he had Gatling Gun, Grenade Launcher, Maintenance Unit, Heavy Plating and Turret Mode down and was blasting away like crazy!
Wraith had Stun Bolt out and that was used to nice effect against Carrion Fields and Matriarch herself mitigating the damage we were taking from destroying the Fowl. She also had Throwing Knives and Smoke Bombs out that helped spread the pain around.
Nightmist hit the Environment (Ruins of Atlantis in this case) with Planar Banishment when needed and then made the coup de grace possible with Mistbound on Matriarch's deck for 2 rounds in a row.
I had Fanatic whose Holy Nova cleaned up the Fowl nicely and backed with Absolution and Embolden cards laid it out to Matriarch on a fairly constant basis.
A few of the Enviroment cards helped as well. Mystical Defences came in and shot up Matriarch's bird army a few times and The Kraken cleaned up a few of the baddies as well. On the bad side we did get wacked one turn with the Fowl enjoying the damage bonus provided by Phosphorescent Chamber and the Hallway Collapse nailed us all (Toxic Seaweed and Leaking Room both came up a couple of times as well).
All in all a very satisfying victory after one of the quickest defeats we have ever suffered playing the game so far!
