Sentinels of the Minnesotaverse

Firstly, I have decided I want our new group to be in its own thread, rather than necromancing a player's thread who isn't even with us anymore. First, let us archive our old adventures!
 

 

 
7/31/15: The last time we had a game (15 days back in time!) we (I) did not chronicle it. They were alright games. We fought Deadline after a lot of delays. It went well. We all won, it was scary how close we came to exhausting the environment deck, but Deadline was no match for our team. That brings us to today.
 
Onward!
 
8/14/15: We played a game of Sentinels Tactics to loosen up. First time anyone but the other forum user has played it-- and honestly, I loved it. A ton of fun.
DanMarshall14 and I played two villains (he was Baron Blade, I his for-now cohort of Proletariat-- so long as it benefits me, of course). Opposing us were DM14's girlfriend Leah (who fit in well to the group -- good catch, Dan) and as-always, our local Andy. No offense, Arenson, I'm sure you'd make for lovely company. They took the roles of Tachyon and Legacy, respectively.
At first, it seemed like we might just have them on the ropes. Between Proletariat's ability to spam duplicates while taking less damage, and the aggressive defensive array with a trap-damage effect from Baron Blade (I do not know the card names from Tactics...) it seemed we had great defense and offense. True to form, we lowered them both to low hit points quickly... but not before they took out Proletariat. Legacy's flying punch was able to decimate my entire grouped array of Proletariat's and render me incapped. We responded by incapping Legacy.
Tachyon then was able to take down Baron Blade; Proletariat, back up and at them, was able to then return the favor and take down Tachyon.
I played hard defense as Proletariat, splitting myself across the board and using the power cards to ensure I'd take effectively no damage as long as both didn't die in the same turn. Sadly, they realized Baron Blade was the weak link and turned on him too fast.
Baron Blade was left with one hit point, and they needed one incap to take him out. Legacy had three hit points left. Playing his one shot, knowing Tachyon would go next, Baron Blade went all-offense and wiped three +1s off of Tachyon then rolled three dice with his (fusion cannon?) with a pre-emptive Aim and (organically) had three 5s. He wasted his Aim with an extra attack available.
Legacy rolled a 2, a 4 and a 5; the 5 cancelled out and he was left with one hit point remaining.
Baron Blade used his second attack; 2 and 4 and 6 rolled. The 2 and 4 were ignored, the 6 remained... and Legacy needed one of his three defenses to block it. Failure meant we won. Success meant they did.
He rolled a 4, a 5 and a 6. Completely neutralized the attack.
Tachyon finished off Baron Blade with zeal, and we went home defeated, to regroup and attack Megalopolis another day!
And the dupe sitting on the other side of the map for defensive reasons is still ordering Starbucks for Proletariat Prime and Baron Blade. Nice dude, a little distracted.
 
And then... the Multiverse! We had opted to do a campaign concept. We would play the story of Iron Legacy finding his way through the timeline and attacking Megalopolis to call out the Freedom Four. They responded and met him on ground, to protect the city. This was the start scenario (Iron Legacy vs. Freedom Four in Megalopolis). 
Option 1: IL wins, we would have a rag-tag group of second-line defense siege Freedom Tower where Iron Legacy has barricaded himself as he prepares his takeover.
Option 2: IL loses, we'd have Baron Blade and his team storm Freedom Tower to try to break free this dark Iron Legacy and use him to their advantage (not the best plan, but how would they know he's not actually "evil twin" per se?).
 
It does not start well.
 
VILLAIN: Iron Legacy (normal)
1: Legacy (Dan)
2: Tachyon (Leah)
3: Wraith (Andy)
4: Bunker (Bowie, me!)
ENVIRONMENT: Megalopolis
 
The four ongoing cards: Galvanized, Vigilance, Final Evolution, Demoralizing Presence.
Then he plays Galvanized again.
So at card set-up he has: Increase Damage Dealt By Iron Legacy by +3 (and he's the Nemesis of everyone but Legacy), he deals 3 (+3 +1) Melee damage at the End of Turn to the Lowest Hit Points, deals 2 (+3 +1) Projectile to a player the first time they play a card each turn, whenever a hero uses a Power he regains 2 HP and we all deal ourselves 1 psychic damage at the end of turn.
 
As we play and use powers, he heals and we suffer. 
 
Then Megalopolis takes a Hostage.
 
The next time, Megalopolis has a Reporter.
 
This continues to mount, his one-shots and Ongoings devastating us further, until about the seventh round, when Wraith finally pulls out Grappling Hook. Before Wraith can play it, Tachyon and Bunker are both down-- but they now start cycling Grappling Hook to clear Iron Legacy's board.
 
But not soon enough. IL, at full health, in short order destroys Wraith, then turns his wrathful gaze to Legacy and crushes his noble doppleganger, before striding into Freedom Tower and preparing his siege.
 
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Wraith was able to send a distress signal to Young Legacy before she was taken out, warning her of her evil alternate-universe despot father! She calls for aid and quickly a small group band together to try to surprise this despot as he settles into the Freedom Tower, as the New Freedom Four* (*temp workers, option to hire).
 
The crisis and the heroes...
VILLAIN: Iron Legacy
1: Scholar (Bowie)
2: Young Legacy (Dan)
3: Fanatic (Leah)
4: Tempest (Andy)
ENvIRONMENT: Freedom Four
 
This starts out much better. It's clear he has yet to turn the safeguards on in full, having spent much of the time assuredly disabling many safeguards instead.
 
Villain opener:
Demoralizing Presence
Final Evolution
Superhuman Redirection x2 (which both try to trigger and execute simultaneously, so is only a redundancy).
Plays: Flying Assault. We have no equipment to destroy, so we take some damage, shrug and move on.
He is currently doing +1 damage, end-of-turn he deals 3 (+1, +1 vs. Tempest) melee damage, and also redirects 5+ damage and when we use a power he heals.
 
Scholar does damage, heals, uses a power to neutralize his damage he just did to heal again.
Young Legacy starts hitting, gets on the board her personal Galvanize effect of Surge of Strength and hits him hard. 
Fanatic destroys one of his ongoings, ensuring he no longer heals when we use powers, and damages him; the tide starts turning in time for...
Tempest to deal significant damage.
 
Then the Freedom Tower starts to fight back against its new owner of Iron Legacy and begins to heal us! And him, but a small price.
 
This rhythm builds, as we start beating him down viciously, the despot clearly surprised by our sudden appearance in what he thought was his new Iron Citadel... and then the environment deck spits out three consecutive surprise visits by Fright Train, destroying the Rooms. It appears he has hired some villains to help him take what he sees as his... little do they know they are to be taken out at his first convenience!
 
Now he has +3 damage to all attacks, but our momentum is there. The New Freedom Four start to work together, as the elements obey the Scholar and the Tempest, Fanatic's martyrdom begins to draw forth greater strength and Young Legacy starts punching Fanatic and Scholar to be stronger.
 
Between Scholar's heal-cycle, Tempest's boosts to damage against his nemesis, and low but steady damage from Young Legacy, he quickly flips-- and after a few turns of stalling for time, Fanatic makes a huge sacrifice and channeled a Wrathful Retribution to deal 25 damage to Iron Legacy already on his last legs, devastating him and sending him crashing to the ground, defeated.
 
Grudge match victory from the New Freedom Four!
 
And thus ends the scenario! Great night of gaming and we plan to play again two Thursdays hence again.

Indefinitely? We're hoping to only increase and expand!

 

Also, Dan, feel free to try to write up the report here. I'm not as familiar with Tactics (and am super busy leading up to DragonCon!)

I have learned I need to immediately chronicle or things get blurry.

We played last night, and have tentatively moved game day again to Monday. I think this one'll be the general set date-- every other Monday. It gives a nice feeling for going to work on Monday: "Hey, game night!" which is rewarding.

Game 1: Escrape from the Arena
SCENARIO:
We play out the rescue of Sky-Scraper! Heroes [all ones from the Title Cards] are captured while looking to find Dok'Thorath, chasing rumors of Grand Warlord Voss's defeated army. Forced into slavery amongst the Gladiator pits, you must survive against both her gladiators and her collection of rare and dangerous creatures that add flavor and excitement to the ring [Enclave of the Endlings]. Survive! And more importantly, bring Sky-Scraper with you, who can hopefully help you with her inside knowledge of Thorathian culture...

SETUP:
VILLAIN: Kaargra Warfang (optional: Advanced)
ENVIRONMENT: Enclave of the Endlings
HEROES: Sky-Scraper + Title Card heroes (Haka, K.N.Y.F.E, Expatriette, Tempest, Tachyon, Argent Adept)
SPECIAL: Additional Win Condition: Sky-Scraper must survive!

PLAYERS:
Player 1: Eviltoon (me, Bowie): Sky-Scraper
Player 2: Andy (not Arenson, obviously): Tempest
Player 3: Leah: Expatriette
Player 4: DanMarshall14 (Dan): K.N.Y.F.E.

GAME:
Kaargra starts strong, with a Gladiator dealing AOE damage that racks up favor in their interest and a Gladiator neutralizing Tempest as a damage-dealer for that round, as well as two more Gladiators hitting play that do a lot of damage. We weather this storm, but it hurts.
Sky-Scraper, trying to protect her new allies, goes Huge to tank all damage for a round, while laying down some Sky-Smashering on the Gladiators.
Tempest preps himself for damage, playing his card but using no powers.
Expatriette readies herself, assessing her resources... by not playing or using a power to draw two more cards since she had a hand full of ammo.
K.N.Y.F.E. jumps into the fray alongside Sky-Scraper, getting damage boosts stacking and starts laying into the Gladiators.
The Environment is nice enough to participate, splash-damaging everyone in the game. Fortunately, Sky-Scraper tanks all of this. The villain turn goes and unleashes Hell -- and Sky-Scraper continues to tank all of it. A Title is granted one of her Gladiators who has dealt 1 damage through Sky's DR, making him all the hardier.

The next round things start to go a lot better. Sky-Scraper uses some good Links to do splash damage and does more smashing, Tempest lays down some hits and gains +2 damage on all his Innate Power attacks going forward from a new Title, Expatriette... gets a gun in play, and K.N.Y.F.E. keeps loading up bonuses while cutting down enemies. Between the four of us, we manage to leave only two Gladiators in play, which a new Endling arrives to kill one of before the villain turn. Kaargra lays out two new Gladiators and the pain starts again. We continue this cycle of surviving and killing, racking up every title for Tempest, who now has irreducible +2 damage that leaves targets with +2 damage suffered when next attacked. He's quite the champion of the arena, as with Genebound Shackles he does 5 damage to the highest villain target one after another. The only problem we have is BLOOGO is blocking for some of the villains, leading to myself shouting BLOOOOOOGO and Dan opining "Classic Bloogo".

Finally, we end up with ourselves accidentally nuking all of the Gladiators and so Kaargra enters to face us. At this point, we have 14 points of crowd favor; and she seeks to cut us down before we are rendered free men by vote of the crowds. To help with this, she plays two instances of Get Back In There, bringing four gladiators back in with her, and then shortly adding two more Gladiators before any have been taken down. We are near freedom, lower on health than we'd like, with six Gladiators and Kaargra opposing us and, in a classic Bloogo move, the environment protecting their weakest. Nonetheless, between Link-swap-a-go-go in Tiny mode and the ungodly damage K.N.Y.F.E and Tempest are doing, we are able to keep ourselves alive through Kaargra's attacks, redirect her attacks to herself, and burn her hard. Soon, she retreats from the Arena, providing us two more Crowd Favor points in the process to push us to 21; as she flips, retiring from the arena, surrendering the field to us, she acknowledges our glory and bids us to leave as free men... for now. Sky-Scraper remains standing as well, and she asks them to take them with her. While Tempest is reluctant, it is clear she has proven herself an ally and he begrudgingly allows the rest to bring this rebellious Thorathian with them...

Over-all, game actually played pretty fast. We'd never played with Warfang before, but we enjoyed her immensely. She might be one of my favorite villains now.

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Game 2: It Has Taken Sentience
SCENARIO:
Parse and Omnitron X are responding to some of Parse's studies that Omnitron IV remnants may be replicating again on the outskirts of Rook City. On a fact-finding mission to assess the threat, they are taken by surprise by some of the drones, which attack them-- and taking a damaged piece of Omnitron X's plating, the missing piece clicks. Omnitron IV goes into overdrive, blooming almost instantly to life and building the last proper Omnitron on file; Omnitron II, "Cosmic Omnitron". Calling for any immediate assistance before Cosmic Omnitron and Omnitron IV can sweep over all of civilization, they are given assistance by a few heroes who must face this impossible set of odds now or never, as Omnitron V is born, having learned its lessons and stronger than ever...

SETUP:
VILLAIN: Advanced + Challenge-Mode Cosmic Omnitron
ENVIRONMENT: Omnitron IV
HEROES: Omnitron X + Parse (+any other, do not recommend equipment heroes.)
SPECIAL: If Omnitron X is defeated, disable the Advanced and Challenge Mode as their code begins to fight inside the program; Omnitron plays one card (regardless of rules) during Omnitron X's turn. If all heroes are defeated, a rematch with Normal Cosmic Omnitron with Incap Omnitron X in play (does not count towards H rules) occurs. Omnitron plays one card (regardless of rules) during Incap Omnitron X's turn.

PLAYERS:
Player 1: Dan as (Prime Wardens) Haka
Player 2: Leah as Omnitron X
Player 3: Andy as Parse
Player 4: GUISE! as Bowie. Wait, that's-- NOPE, GUISE IS IN CHARGE NOW! Strap in, Bowie!

GAME:
This was a scenario designed for us to lose like losing losers as a comeuppance for rolling through Kaargra Warfang. So far, it's doing a good job! I'm very proud. After over two hours, we're still playing it, and saved the cards for SAME GUISE TIME, SAME GUISE CHANNEL.

First thing first, we did basically nothing of value, as Cosmitron wrecked house on us gaily for about three rounds as Cosmitron kept getting all his drones back and destroyed all of our Ongoings including Haka's much-loved Savage Mana. We all sucked. Only OmniX was able to keep anything in play-- Equipment! This set us all back quite a bit while we just got hammered, barely able to keep the Components from swarming us while drones just railed us, both from the Environment and the Villain pool.

Finally, Haka got a new Savage Mana, Parse got deck-control of the top three cards of Cosmitron and Guise just kept being THE BEST CHARACTER ON THE TEAM. He even got promoted to Team Leader! All hail Guise!

So, at this point, we started stripping away all of Cosmitron's and Omnironment's goodies and bits and Haka kept putting them under his Savage Mana like a super-fierce Pac Man just om-noming up some ghosts. This kept at it, getting slowly hammered away at on both sides, with Guise heroically taking the brunt of it!

Game was called at 10:00PM.
End Status:
Cosmitron: 58 HP, 1 HP S-83 Assault Drone, Adaptive Plating Subroutine in play. Two rounds of play guaranteed before sedatives could possibly be in effect (thanks, Parse!)
(Prime Wardens) Haka: 13 HP, Te Moko, Savage Mana, Punish the Weak, Teiaha in play. (Haka of Restoration, Elbow Smash in hand)
Omnitron X: 10 HP, Reactive Plating Subroutine, Focused Plasma Cannon, Bio-Engineering Beam, Elemental Biochassis and Defensive Blast in play. (Ablative Coating, Temporal Shielding, Technological Advancement in hand)
Parse: 17 HP, Extrasensory Awareness and Updated Intel in play. (Snap Decision, Data-Mining, Buffer Overflow, Reveal the Flaws in hand)
Guise: 5 HP [cuz of what a great, generous hero I am!], Gritty Reboot in play [for now! I'm hoping for a much happier reboot soon!] (XTREEEEEEEEEEEM!!, Gimmicky Character, Total Beefcake and Selling Out in hand.)
Omnironment: Resource Recycler, Techno-Pursuer in play. Device on top of trash.

 

Now to reconvene to probably lose and GET REVENGE!