I've recently given up on a game but not cause I was going to lose but because I figured that if the game kept going on, turn after turn, I'd eventually win. But I'm not entirely sure about it, if anyone's interested in proving me wrong/right I'm typing up the scenario right now.
In turn order.
Eternal Haka Incapped important action: Reduce all damage by 2
Dark Watch Fixer Incapped important action: Put a card in a trash pile under it's associated deck
Freedom Six Absolute Zero Incapped important action: Enviornment cards can't be played until the start of your next turn
Ra: Horus of Two Horizons up
Enviornment is Megalopolis
Villain is Agent of Gloom Spite, flipped with all of his drugs up
The game went long enough that Ra had his deck in hand and I decided to give up playing.
The strategy at that point was that Haka would keep reducing all damage by two while Ra healed himself by wearing the staff each time it was his turn.
Dark Watch Fixer would eventually force Spite's deck to constantly play his one-shots while Absolute Zero forced the environment to play nothing.
Eventually Ra could heal himself up enough that he could burst Spite for high damage then go back to healing slowly.
What I wasn't sure about, was if Spite would eventually be healing himself too much from the balancing act of him destroying victims and Ra healing himself by constantly picking up his Staff. And if Spite was healing himself too much while Fixer was forcefully giving him a card to play, I could just have him reshuffle his entire deck back in to see if that would give Ra more time.
Let me see if I've got it set up right:
Ra has all his cards in hand, and no cards in play except possibly Staff of Ra
Environment has no cards in play
Spite has 5 drugs in play, nothing under Safe House, everything in his trash except for what cards you've placed under his deck. (And possibly Collateral Damage(s) in play)
H = 4
Effects: Spite's damage +1
First damage Spite takes reduced by 2
If Ra uses a power, Spite deals him 2 toxic damage
SoT: return 2 hero cards to Ra's hand
EoT: Spite deals Ra 3 melee damage
Spite deals Ra 1 infernal damage
Spite deals Ra 0 infernal damage
Environment can't play cards
All damage reduced by 2
Is that right?
Since Spite plays one card per round and Fixer moves 1 card from the trash to the deck each round it's possible to keep Spite from ever reshuffling, which is useful because it allows you to stack Spite's deck with nothing but On the Prowl, which won't do anything. That means that Spite will deal Ra a total of 2 damage every turn. If Ra plays Staff, he heals 3. If he plays Fire Blast, he deals Spite 1 damage. Spite will never heal, because he can't get any victims into play (because they're all in the trash).
So, if over the course of three rounds Ra plays Fire Blast, Staff, Staff, Ra will stay at the same health as before, but Spite will net 1 damage. Repeat 89 more times and you'll kill Spite.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
Thanks for the help Arcanist Lupus, good to know I would have won eventually, and it was a very good lesson in "If agent of gloom Spite's gonna flip, make sure to debuff the hell out of him."
I've got another scenario and this time I'm still playing it and have no clue what's going to happen here.
Iron Legacy
Scholar up
Freedom Six Absolute Zero incap
America's Greatest Legacy incap
Pike Industrial Complex
I have no idea how this is going to end up, my hopes lie in the irradiated cyclohexane vat for me to eventually punch through Iron Legacy's eventual double armored fortitude and then hopefully the enviornment can finish him off because know when to turn loose is out of the equation since he has his superhuman redirection on.
As one might expect, Scholar has to be decked out in 3 Flesh to Irons to even survive and that's what I have him in right now, with AZ and Legacy giving him draws though incap power and Legacy giving Scholar a power use to 'draw' through bring what you need. I have to play truthseeker whenever I see it just in case Iron Legacy pulls out an iron fist strike and three iron fist strikes in a row would surely end me unless I happen to have Keep Movings and/or enough life to withstand the heavy damage I'll be taking because this setup has NO ongoing destruction.
I just had a theory, but it would require intense setup, get two cyclohexane vats up without any biometric plasma vats in play, use expect the worst, have one/two(?) mortal form to energy(number depends on if both redirections activate on a single instance or if the first two instances of 5 damage will be redirected), have all three solid to liquid up, then when the turn begins, use the heal from expect the worst to deal 7 damage to iron legacy who will redirect the damage to scholar which will be nullified(?) then play know when to turn loose to throw the entire deck at Iron Legacy.
The question becomes, will there be enough cards in hand with all those cards in play to floor Iron Legacy with the damage.
Edit: I think I'm done with the game at this point and want to leave it up to puzzle solvers to see which Iron is better, Scholar or Legacy?
Hm... This one is trickier to deal with, since there are so many more variables.
Let's see. At maximum setup, Legacy will be at +4 damage dealt, -2 damage taken, 2 damage dealt when Scholar plays a card, +2 hp when Scholar uses a power, and 2x1 damage Scholar deals himself each turn. Plus 1 one-shot each turn and his in-game effects.
Ingame effects:
Front side: 3 damage
Back side: 2 damage, -1 damage taken, heal 4
Oneshot effects:
1 damage, Scholar can't deal damage if he takes damage this way (x2)
2 damage (destroy equipment cards - irrelevant) (x3)
Discard a card (and chain to something else (x3)
3 damage, discard 3 cards (x2)
4 damage, destroy 2 ongoings (x3)
2 damage, destroy an ongoing or discard 2 cards (x2)
I'm going to assume that IL is on his back side, since we need to get through that in order to get him to zero.
So, on most turns, IL will deal 3 instances of damage each turn (more if you play keep moving), for (on average) 2(+4), 2(+4), and 2.5(+4) damage. It will be less until IL gets fully setup with all his ongoings, but if you don't win fast enough, that will be the end result. 6.5 + 3x4 = 18.5 damage each turn, which is not remotely survivable.
3 Liquid forms + 2 biometric plasma vats adds two points of damage reduction, and two instances of +3 healing each round. That's still not enough, but add one Iron form, and you get -4 damage taken, so total damage is 6.5 - 2x4 = -1.5 damage, or a net positive 1.5 hp per round. That's a good starting point, but requires 4 forms, and AZ's power to lock down the environment to maintain, and leaves you with no way of dealing damage. On average, Former Allies and Iron Justice will have you discarding 0.5 cards a turn. Also, with 2 Biometric Plasma Vats out, IL has -5 damage taken and he heals 8 hp a round (if Scholar is using 2 powers). If we bring out the 2 Irridated Cyclohexane Vats, then that reduces his DR to 3, but it also reduces Scholar's DR and necessitates a second Iron Form.
Now if we wish to deal damage to IL then we need Energy forms. An Energy form will deal IL 4-3= 1 x2 damage each round. 3 Energy forms would therefore deal IL 6 damage each round, for a net gain of 2 HP.
So far, we have Scholar gaining 1.5 hp per round, IL gaining 2 hp per round. This requires 8 forms, which means that Scholar is discarding 8.5 cards each round. This is obviously untenable - even with a double Bring What You Need Scholar can only draw 5 cards regularly (since AZ is needed to lock down the environment. But we haven't looked yet at what cards Scholar can play.
Scholar's most useful cards here are Transmutive Recovery, Proverbs and Axioms, and Expect the Worst. TR nets you 2 cards, 5 hp, and (5-3)*3 damage. Proverbs and Axioms is 1 card, 5 hp, and (5-3)*3 damage. Expect the Worst is 5 hp, (5-3)*3 damage, and removes the 6.5 damage you would take, for a net gain of 6.5+5 = 11.5 HP. If you could play one of those every turn (which I doubt that you can), then you would average +1 card, +7 hp, and 6 damage, for a grand total of -2.5 cards, +8.5 hp, and 4 damage. This is more health and more damage than we need, but not enough cards. If we remove an Iron form and an Energy form, then we net -0.5 cards, +2.5 hp, and +0 damage. Or, since some of IL's healing is tied to Scholar's power use, we can replace the Bring What You Need use that Grampa Legs provides with a simple Draw a Card, and shift that to -1.5 cards, +2.5 hp, and +2 damage. (This is 2 Energy Forms, 3 Liquid Forms, and 1 Iron Form)
I could play with the numbers a bit more, but I don't think that I'm going to do much better than this. When Iron Legacy is fully set up, Scholar simply can't hold enough forms to maintain hp gain and damage dealt. If it comes to a war of attrition, without ongoing destruction the Scholar loses.
But it need not come to attrition. If Scholar were to get multiple energy and liquid forms out in one turn (using Keep Moving) while a combination of Biometric Plasma Vats and Irridated Cyclohexane Vats were in play, then you could probably heal enough to get IL down low enough that a Checimal Explosion would take him out. This requires him not to have much (if any) damage reduction, and using AZ to have him deal himself cold damage will help, but I think that it is doable if you get lucky.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal