Weekly One-Shot #138: Double Jeopardy

First try: Glamour and Revenant on the first turn.  That is all.

Played this one quickly this morning before work - only managed to take out Fright Train and Plague Rat before getting taken down. 

I managed to take down Blade & FT, and was close to taking everyone but Plague Rat down, actually. 

Wow. What a bad matchup.

I've now played eight games. I have yet to drop a single villain. In fact, I've only gotten any of them into single digits a couple of times.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm getting regularly slaughtered. By the time I take out the necessary minor cards (Impulsion Beam, Glamour, Shock Dampeners, Revenant, etc.), all the heroes are hovering around 10 hp.

I HATE this. Maybe even harder than Dark Watch/Rook City.

I even tried with the VAriants. It's a hard match up. Plague Rat is EVIL

Update: Nope. i've given up. I feel that they didn't playtest this match. Unless you're supposed to lose, than i don't see a good way to even get close. I'm waititng till somone finds a way to cheap win this. 

Of course I playtested it, like I do every one-shot. I lost the first game, and won the second with a single hero standing. Sometimes they're going to be difficult =)

Ugh, no kidding.  Having Ambuscade start with Glamour doesn't help, and then they just kept hitting the table.  And most of them have nemeses in the party.  Just grotesque.  Highbrow ripped us to pieces, Ray Manta shut Omni-X down almost completely, and then there were Choke, Re-Volt, and the Hippo.  Oh, and two Impulsion Beams back-to-back.  The heroes were all at or below 5 HP, with Setback down, but it hardly mattered because the Representative of Earth got murdered less than a round after he came out.  First time I've seen that loss screen.  I'm very, very glad that we know step 2 of the Stuntman unlock already and that this is way harder than it needs to be.  Hopefully it isn't required for Benchmark!  (It might be, with the Revo-Corp theme.)

Mint, with everyone single digits >.> <.< *hides*

I dunno, I think what really helped was actually Plague Rat. He Let Loose at just the right time to absolutely wreck everything that wasn't a character card, meaning all the devices, nemesis, whatever that had built up (including Glamour, since its Villain damage it isnt redirected) got eaten. From there, it was much easier to control the field and take down FT, Friction, BB, PR, and !Ambuscade in that order. Other note, on another playthrough on my PC I had Buffer Overflow discard Glamour, which helped :D

~Komori

Haha! Yeah. I know you guys playtest, but this was a VERY mean one. Like, I've yet o even get close after a dozen games

Wow!

The heroes received a severe butt-kicking on that first attempt. Enticing Targets are not my friend. Hardly damaged the villains at all. The game ended (mercifully?) when the earth was sentenced to destuction.

YES! AFTER MORE THAN A COUPLE DOZEN ATTEMPTS I DID IT!

I came here to whine, since I’ve tried it and lost really, really badly 3 times running. Since it’s random I figured it was just me, but no, it looks like this is a really brutal villain team.

I don’t think it’s the heroes, or even the environment (though it’s worth noting that the hero “Called to Judgement” by the Tribunal is quite likely to lose the game for you). It’s just a villain team with some brutal immunities (hello Glamour) plus some serious damage dealers (Engine of Destruction, Plague Rat). There are an absurd number of near-certain loss setups if Glamour is out early. Ray, Revanant, Choke are all bad news if you can’t touch them.

I think Plague Rat’s most dangerous handler is the Restraint handler. Plague Rat can be a solution to Glamour, but only if he’s not restrained. Get 2 of them in play and he’s not hurting any of the villains or his handlers.

I learned a number of things not to do. Like, don’t play Combat Stance, because of the number of bad interactions it has. Wraith hitting herself due to Chemical Frenzy, or giving Plague Rat an extra play due to an Analyst, or hitting another hero because of Glamour.

I seem to recall that this is supposed to be an unlock prerequisite for one of the new heroes, and part of it is that you have to win with all heroes standing. Good luck with that.

After 6 attempts I finally had the game won. I just needed to get to omitrons turn to win. And then a dead FT killed the representative of earth and I lost. 

Its super hard as everyone has seen. Combat stance and smoke bombs were great for me. I had bad luck with Parse and impulsion device timings every game but multiplier is always good. Machine gun + Cryo is useful. 

I think the highest chance for success revolves around defensive posturing while allowing PR to do most of the damage to villains. In my one close attempt every bit of damage on the villain characters all came from other villain targets. 

After 8+ tries, I finally succeeded.

Ideal (villain) setup: Ray-manta/magman, 2 analysts, displacing teleporter/null bracers/Omniblade. 

First turn:

If Glamour is the Ambuscade's setup nemesis, or if she is the first play, reset.  

If Friction plays a Synergy surge, reset. 

My overall strategy tends to be:

Stun Friction ASAP (stun bolts, or smoke bombs/plating), because she has AoE potential.  

Take out Fright Train First (if possible), since he cranks out a lot of single target damage. If you have ablative plating available, stun+plating can largely nullify his damage. 

Baron Blade is the first priority target- he's got so many ways of shutting down heroes, whether through keeping them from doing damage, using multiple powers/playing cards, or just destroying their stuff. 

Plague Rat is the wild card. Ideally, I like for him to start out with 2 analysts, because I want him to start dealing damage to all targets ASAP. It hurts, but it can be the only realistic way to take down Glamour with this crop of heroes- none of them are particularly good at hitting the same target multiple times in a round. I spend a LOT of time micromanaging Plague Rat's targeting priority!

I did it both on Steam and iPad

my technique was the following

1) luck

2) defeat Plague Rat first

3) Get rid of Shock dampemers

4) Omnitron  needs the planting against toxic/projectile/melee

5) assault rifle is your friend

6) keep attacking handlers

7) setback just... let him do stuff that makes sense

The second prerequisite game for Acton Hero Stuntman has been confirmed as defeating mini-Ambuscade with nobody incapped, so this could fit that bill.

However, I wonder if this is also a hint for a prerequisite game for Supply and Demand Benchmark as well (with all the RevoCorp characters) and that the prerequisite is LOSING.

And then in a later game, Benchmark enters and wins. Or something.

After 7 tries, I managed a very tattered Fine. With... wait for it... no one incapacitated. Though everyone was down to 2-5 HP each.

Mostly I credit luck.

However, a few things that helped:

Early Smoke Bombs and Ablative Plating. Some games are a damage race. This one is more about mitigating damage. Plague Rat is dealing out damage to everyone, so a fair bit of it is about trying to keep more damage flowing toward the villains.

Buffer Overflowing Glamor. Because there are a few Nemesis cards with this villain team that are near auto-lose for you, Buffer Overflow is a critical card. Though you have to reserve it for the truly nasty stuff. Highbrow’s a high priority target too.

Lots and lots of AoE. SMG is bettter for Ex-Pat than anything else until very late. Particularly when paired with Hollow Points or Incendiaries. Uh, unless an Analyst is out, but those tend to melt fast since they only have 4 HP.

Exploit Vulnerability is pretty good for encouraging Plague Rat to take out fresh minions. It’s not limited either, multiple copies stack. This helps take out Plague Rat’s handlers as fast as they show up.

Some ineffective villain plays, like putting Envenomed Darts on Omnitron who had -2 DR against toxins.

Wrong Time and Place during a turn when Setback had 9 tokens. That’s 9 points of damage my team didn’t take, and 18 the enemy did take (due to Exploit Vulnerability boosting damage). It burns through tokens, and it’s liability when he’s down to 0, so I got rid of it next turn.

Omnitron-X mostly fed plays to Parse (in hopes she’d get some control), or Setback if he had 8+ tokens.

The Tribunal always summoned Captain Cosmic. Plays from his power followed the same rule, Parse or Setback.

Character Witness is an incredibly helpful card, even if it’s expensive in discards. At least Parse got to hand out a mild bonus from Critical Multiplier from the discard. Multiple Critical Bonuses would have been better, of course.

Multiple copies of Silver Lining (played sequentially, not all at once of course). Otherwise Setback would definitely have croaked.

Target order was Freight Train -> Friction -> Plague Rat -> Baron Blade -> Ambuscade. Plague Rat is bad news, but he tends to clear out all those pesky minions and devices too.

Near Mint. Won on the first try, used a rewind, no regrets. Trying to brain the optimum outcome of a Plague Rat turn in which he is going to kill his only Handler in play, finish off Revenant, and also juggle five characters' HP while Smoke Bombs AND Wrong Time and Place are out was a nightmare. But rewinding that turn and getting it done properly sealed a no-incap win and may have prevented a loss.

I had a great round 1 - almost exactly as Braithwhite spelled out (Magman, double Analyst, null bracers). Omnitron started with the absolutely essential Ablative Coating and never lost it. Expat started with the Shotgun. Wraith Impromptu Inventioned into a Micro Targeting Computer / Razor Ordnance with Smoke Bombs and Utility Belt waiting in the wings. Setback and Parse couldn't get much done early.  

Unfortunately, Glamour and Highbrow both came out round 2 and for the next round and a half, I could barely damage the nemeses except via watching Plague Rat do it for me. I got some card plays out anyway, eating tons of damage from Highbrow. Setback got out Looking Up, High-Risk Behavior, and Wrong Time and Place; Parse got out Snap Decision solely to let other people get bottom deck card plays; Omnitron got out Rocket Punch (to help ping down Glamour) and Reactive Plating. Expat got out Assault Rifle.

I was able to make Glamour eat dirt by redirects from Wrong Time and Place; Highbrow bit the dust with a shotgun to the face immediately afterward. Meanwhile, the environment played Paragon of Sentience three rounds in a row.

Finally, in round 4, I was staring down the barrel of Chemical Frenzy with Revenant in play (who had thankfully eaten a 7 damage punch from Setback off Parse's bottom-deck play) and faced the situation I mentioned above. After a rewind, I was able to more efficiently divvy up the damage such that Baron Blade went from 29 to 12 in one turn, Ambuscade and Friction both dropped from near-full to the low teens, Fright Train was incapacitated, Revenant was destroyed, the handler was destroyed before PR hit the villains but after he'd hit the heroes, and my people came out as well as they could have under the circumstances (Omnitron at 11 HP, Setback at 1, everyone else floating between 5 and 8). Two fortunate things then happened:

1) Villain cards that came out were largely rendered ineffective by the Wrong Time and Place + Smoke Bombs + Ablative Coating combo (Setback doesn't have enough tokens to redirect the damage -> redirect to Setback -> hey, Setback is the lowest HP target -> redirect to Omnitron-X and reduce).

2) The Tribunal's fourth play was Called to Judgment, which dropped F5 Legacy on us for a free card play and 10 extra HP just in case.

From there, I just did all the damage I could as quickly as I could - Omnitron got Defensive Blast out, everybody ganged up on Plague Rat, Setback played a second High-Risk Behavior and punched out Plague Rat, Friction incapacitated herself, and by the time it was Expat's turn, all that was left was a very lonely Ambuscade with 4 HP.

After SO many tries, I finally beat this.  I was able to take advantage of a pretty decent start. First turn, Wraith dropped smoke bombs and stun bolt via impromptu invention, expat got her assault rifle, and Omni had ablative shields.  Setback and Parse didn’t do much the whole game, but they did manage a couple of helpful turns. 

The turning point for for me was when I got a prefect Plague Rat set up, there were a ton of nemeses in play, including Revanant, but thanks to the SB+AS combo, my heroes only took a few points of damage. Then I killed the last Handler, cleared the board of all non-character card targets, hit all the villains for significant damage, then one-shotted Revanant at the very end. 

After that, it was just a matter of keeping my healing / damage mitigation up until I could mop everything up. I did have one final scare though.  Plague Rat had just killed Baron Blade (the 4th villain down), but had hit me pretty hard and everyone was at 2-3 health left. PR took a shotgun blast to the face to drop him to 2 health and I knew Omni could kill him with a rocket punch.  But I had forgotten BB’s incap ability and had a moment of horror when I thought he would kill my chosen rep literally one turn before I could win.  Fortunately, I realized that my rep would still have 1 health left, so I managed to eke out the victory.  

I won by the skin of my teeth after countless failures.

My claim to fame was spamming Setback's cards and getting lucky with all his Risking into High-Risk Behavior. After accumulating 19 tokens, and on last legs, Parse and other heroes coaxed him into an Exceeded Expectations, removing 7 of those tokens to hit ALL the remaining villain targets. This got enough villains low enough for Plague Rat to finish off moments after Omnitron-X installed Ablative Coating. It took out the rest of my team, but when the dust settled it was only Omnitron-X in single digits against Plague Rat at full strength. A completely won match-up for the heroes.

This Weekly One-Shot is a hint for both of the new variant unlocks.

Good to know! Thanks MigrantP

I had REALLY GOOD starting hands.  OX was down to 11 before his first turn. but was the last hero to go down due to playing Ablative Coating and Reactive Plating. 

Once Plaggy took down Glamour, Defensive Plating blasts really helped out.  I actually might have held on for a few more rounds, despite OX being low on HP, but a damage boost from Critical Multiplier + BB's Incap ability...  Oops.

I had a couple of mis-plays, and if it had been my second game, might have actually won, becasue I would have been willing to undo a couple of "wait, I should have chosen the order for Plague Rat" moments.

Edit: my next 3 attempts were... less fortunate.  Less painful openings from Villains (Impulsion beam hurts this team, but It's killable), but, well, I haven't seen an Ablative Coating sense, and I had an entire game where FSParse didn't discard a single card.

Oy! This one is still killing me. A dozen+ plays and the best I've gotten is two villians down.  I'll get it eventually though.

Near Mint.

On the second game, an early Ablative Plating was the key. Smoke Bombs early was good too. Glamour came out early, but that meant Plague Rat took her out pretty quick, and I didn't have to worry about her anymore.

Everybody was getting down to single digits--I got rid of Handlers whenever I could, so that Plague Rat could do most of the damage to everything. With Ablative Plating and Smoke Bombs, I didn't mind too much. I thought a Defensive Blast would have been really cool, but I never found one despite trying pretty hard. At one point, Setback went to 0, but came back with a Silver Lining. He didn't last too much longer after that anyway.

Fright Train went down first, followed by Blade, then Friction. Around the same time, Wraith, Setback, Parse and Expatriette also fell. Expat held on at 1HP for a while....but it wasn't enough.

So it was Ambuscade in mid-single digits, Ray Manta at 2HP, and Plague Rat around 4HP vs. Omnitron X at 4HP. At this time, Representative of Earth came out (at the start of the environment turn because of the Adjudicator), and I chose Young Legacy. Character Witness was out, so Omnitron X got to use the power right away. He took out Ray Manta (because Ambudscade's Deck had only 1 card left in it, and I knew it was a harmless Concealed Pitfall, and OmniX had a harmeless Envenomed Bolts on him anyway to prevent extra card plays from Ambuscade--and I didn't want Ray Manta destroying OmniX's stuff). THEN, the environment played Called to Judgment, which let me use Legacy's power AGAIN (is this legal??) and I hit Ambuscade. I did use Character Witness to heal both Omnitron X and Plague Rat (who were both on trial). This put them both at 9HP. As mentioned, Ambuscade did nothing on his turn (other than hit Omni for 1 damage), then the incap powers let me use Young Legacy's power to take out Ambuscade and damage Plague Rat, and on OmnitronX's last turn, his Plasma Cannons finished the Rat off for the win. 

Whew!

Omnitron X 8 HP at the end, everybody else incapped. ("Pinch Hitter" Represtantative Young Legacy was at 6HP).

I have now lost 25 games. I have only come within spitting distance of winning twice, where I got four out of five villains down before losing.

There are just too many ways to get clobbered. This last game, no Glamour, no Impulsion Beams, no Revenant, but still Omnitron-X was reduced to 8 hp before the beginning of his first turn, and everyone else was under 15. Friction played a Synergy Surge and it flipped high damage cards for every villian. Having ablative armor in your hand is useless if you take 17 points of damage before it's your turn.

It's clear that the way to win this is Plague Rat. You have to get one or more of those rounds where he damages the heroes, then takes out his handlers, then hits the villains with the +2 damage. That's just awfully hard to set up.

I had to redo this challenge many times as well, but I just finished for a "fine", but with all hero's left standing (albeit with one or two hitpoints).
Had pretty much the same as all succesful stories here (no glamour, highbrow or impulsion beam for a start, ablative coating and smoke bombs from the start).
I did however change my tactics somewhat after 1 round. I ganged up on the rat (after first taking out it's handlers). The rat was the great equaliser, but besides that I started playing equipments like there was no tomorrow (CC - requital helped when Wraith revealed a mega computer and two impromptu inventions). At the end of the fourth or fifth round, with every hero almost incapped Omni played a glorious 16 point singularity for the win. All enemies incapped. Never before truly appreciated the power of the singularity...

Ablative coating
plus smoke bombs, helped bring forth the
Singularity

Well, I finally won on game 32, with very, very generous use of the 'back' button.

So I decided to celebrate--same environment and villains, but went at them with Legacy, The Sentinels, Super Scientific Tachyon, Tempest, and The Stuntman. The outcome was never in doubt and it felt so good. <grin>

Oh bloody hell.

Finally done.

Ugh.

Interesting. That says it’s not just the villain group, it’s the heroes.

Some part may be that there are some hero-specific counters in this villain group. Impulsion Beam hoses Fugue Parse and Setback, since both of them have a base power that plays a second card. Many heroes are largely unaffected by Impulsion Beam at the game start. Legacy, for example, never plays 2 cards, and can’t use 2 powers until he gets his ring. Some of the Nemesis cards (Highbrow and Revenant) are boosted by the presence of heroes on this team. Though Re-Volt is actually beneficial - 2 extra unlucky tokens a turn - which is a bit odd.

Other than that, the only thing that crosses my mind is that Wraith is not at her best against villain teams. Infrared Eyepiece, which is super strong against single villains, seems marginal against a team of 5. Stun Bolt is still somewhat useful but not great (though to be fair it’s not great against minion-heavy villains either).

Interesting. That says it’s not just the villain group, it’s the heroes.

It is. I've found I can win pretty much any team game with a hero set like I mentioned. I use:

A. 2 or more "stop all damage" characters (Heroic Interception, Supersonic Assault, Thorathian Monolith preferred, but Grease Gun and Ground Pound can do the trick)

B. 2 or more AoE dealers. The Sentinels have enough cards to do this that I usually include them in this category.

C. 2 or more "kill on-going cards" characters. Parse is probably the best at this, but Tachyon gets her cards often enough to count, as does Visionary and Stuntman. I haven't played enough with Benchmark to know if his cards come up enough.

D. Someone to counter villain damage reduction, usually with irreducible damage abilities or cards. Stuntman and Parse work well here.

Aside: Stuntman is also great against Glamour as a couple of his cards do damage twice, and then he can use a power after that.

Obviously, one hero can fulfill a couple of these roles if the cards come up right.

So in the game I mentioned, I avoided Skyscraper because Thoratian Monolith does not mix well with Legacy's Galvanize. As it was, Inspiring Presence was in his opening hand, so The Sentinels and Tempest were smashing the villains with AoE +2 damage each. Tachyon added a few of her own, including a Hypersonic Assault, and it only took 3 or so rounds to reduce all the villains to nothing.

So--back to the challenge. There is *nothing* that stops all damage in that hero set. The smoke bombs/ablative plating is as good as it gets. For AoE damage, Expattriette's got her machine gun if she can get it out, and O-X has the ones where he discards a plating card, which is a pain to set up. Plague Rat is doing more AoE damage than either of them. It's easy to kill on-goings, but that's just not enough. The lack of protection and AoE dealing means death more often than not.

Fine. Got it on the 3rd try after getting hosed in the second game by Plague Rat spiralling out of control quickly.

3rd game started with a pretty terrible opening (Glamour, Highbrow, Revenant and Impulsion beam were all out super quick) and a frustrating string of handlers that stopped Plague Rat from clearing them out. But I got Smoke Bombs and Ablative Coating (both with search cards) and that helped keep me in the game long enough to clear Glamour and get back in control. I was down to just Set Back and Omnitron X at the end - tough one!

  This was an insane battle.  Thank you everyone for all your strategy suggestions.  This was one of the hardest games I’ve played, but I got an unbelievable Mint.  

  Started with smoke bombs and ablative coating in hand, and let plague rat do a lot of damage to the villains.  Parse helped Expatriate play her sub-machine gun with hollow points, and her Extrasesory Awareness got rid of Glamor before I killed Ambuscade.  Setback started with both Turn of Events, so I just built up to five tokens so the other heroes could do their thing.

  Friction went down first, followed by Baron Blade, then Plague Rat, Fright Train, and lastly Ambuscade.  Omnitron was at 10 hp, everyone else still standing in single digits.

I took a screen shot.  I know there was a lot of luck involved, but the strategies I’ve learned from this post and other weekly one-shots made a definite difference.  Thank you everyone.

Well, this one ended my mint streak at 31.  First non-mint all year.

I still managed to get a near-mint though, so I'm pretty pleased considering how hard this one was.

I had lost the first game, so I made copious use of the undo button on my second game.  The villain cards weren't as bad as they had been in my first game or in my two practice games (like when Baron Blade's "every villain plays a card" card played Friction's "every villain plays a card" card - ouch), but I also never saw Smoke Bombs (or a hairdryer to fetch it), so my team went down pretty quickly...except for Omnitron-X.  He was barely hanging on at 3hp with Fright Train the only villain down.  But somehow through incap abilities and the environment being quite friendly (I think this is the first game I've played in the Celestial Tribunal where I've actually seen Character Witness played, and discarding one card to heal 5 hp is nice, even if it was healing Plague Rat too) he managed to claw his way back up to 18hp by the end of the game and win.

Did this one while on vacation. After SO MANY failures, I had to stop for a few days since I kept thinking about this challenge in the middle of the night. Finally got it this morning.

Ablative coating was key of course. Friction and Plague Rat took out Glamour early and then I could be indiscriminate with my damage. Expatriette’s SMG plus Plague Rat plus Omnitron getting 2 Flechettes cleared out the nemesis and device cards. Normally I try to do large single target damage in villain games, but getting rid of all the small hp targets really helped.

Wraith got a Stun Bolt and hit Fright Train to keep damage down. With Glamour gone , I focused on Ambuscade before he cycled through his deck (as he did in an earlier game). Wraith also brought out Combat Stance which did a lot of damage, as did Omnitron’s reactive defence. After that, I kept hitting everyone as much as I could with AoE damage. Omnitron managed to keep a few devices out, so I could even heal a bit.

Parse, Setback and Expatriette went down. Wraith and OX were at about 3 each, though Wraith had a huge amount of items out. The villains were slowly getting beat down, but only Ambuscade was down when Wraith was left as the only one standing.

Wraith used Throwing Knives and Razor Ordnance to take out everyone but Plague Rat, who was at 17. Wraith was at 4. It was a futile effort as incap’d Fright Train was going to make Wraith hit herself, which would trigger Combat Stance and that would be it. But it was the best I had done yet. Then Fright Train went ... and Captain Cosmic, the Earth’s representative at 7 hp took the damage.

On Setback’s turn, Wraith played Inventory Barrage with 9 items to finish off Plague Rat and win.

Congrats!

That reminds me of when I minted an early Vengence one-shot.  I forget how this happened, but I was down to Fanatic at 1 HP.  It was BB's turn, and Citizen Slash went to attack the Second Lowest HP Hero target.

And that was how I learned that "Second X Target" fizzles if there's only one.

And I got the 1 Hero at 1hp acheivment, to boot.