Weekly One-Shot # 14: Rats and Vats

Near Mint.  First time around, tried to keep people alive. Futile effort.  Second time around I wised up - keep Scholar alive but everyone else do as much damage before dying.  Game went 5 rounds.  Chrono Ranger concentrated on Plague Rat and died in Round 3. Haka Mere, 2 Vitality Surges, then Haka of Battle on Round 4 for 11 damage. Nightmist Enlightened Scholar for 4 cards and not much else. Scholar just had Truth Seeker.  Offensive Transmutation and 2 Expect the Worsts kept him comfortable (no forms).  Incap abilities let Scholar play Know When to Hold Fast Twice.  Had 21 cards so Know When to Turn Loose finished Plague Rat who was also at 21 HP.

Near Mint here, too.  Got Nightmist extra card draws, which lead to getting Mist Form.  Scholar being incapped gaving Ongoing destruction and I had forgotten occasionally that I could use Mist Form Nightmist as a tank so others could heal while infected.  In the end, though, Nightmist with infinite card draw and Scholar destroying Ongoings allowed the environment to beat up Plague Rat until I decided I could heal Nightmist to full and rain Oblivions down on the rat.

There's a way to win on Scholar's second round.

First infect everyone but Nightmist since she won't do damage the first round. Chrono-Ranger plays Eye on the Prize and hits Plague Rat, drawing a second Terrible Tech-strike; then he pulls out Jim's Hat via Displaced Armory and hits Plague Rat, and then plays and uses Compounded Bow and hits Plague Rat again. Haka plays and uses Mere on Plague Rat, drawing Rampage on his second draw. Nightmist plays Amulet of the Elder Gods and uses Attunement to ensure an Oblivion draw. Scholar plays and uses Truth Seeker on Plague Rat, drawing Get Out of the Way and Keep Moving.

On the second round, everybody is infected and Irradiated Cyclohexane Vat is out, giving everyone damage dealt +3, with +4 for Chrono-Ranger damage to Plague Rat. At the start of Chrono-Ranger's turn, Plague Rat is at 65 HP. Chrono-Ranger plays both Terrible Tech-Strikes and uses Compounded Bow for his power, dealing a total of 32 damage to Plague Rat (33 HP left). Haka plays Rampage, and Nightmist redirects her damage (discarding any two that aren't Oblivion) to Plague Rat; then Haka uses Mere on Plague Rat for a total of 18 damage (15 HP left). Nightmist plays Oblivion, doing the 1 to all targets and the 3 to non-hero targets (targeting Plague Rat first when relevant); 10 damage (5 HP left) and Plague Locus is destroyed. Finally, Scholar plays Keep Moving for a Mortal Form to Energy, then plays Get Out of the Way to deal a total of 6 damage (3+3) to Plague Rat.

This is the fastest victory I've had yet in a weekly one-shot!

Very nice!  I was too chicken to play Rampage and Oblivion but looks like the best offensive is a good offensive!

An undeserved Fine here. Due to the Cyclohexane Vat/Sewer Fiend combo, I lost my first game, hit Try Again. Then Plague Rat played Tooth and Claw instead of Ravage, and so since the One-Shot was not randomised, I figured it had just dumped me in a non-One-Shot game with the same characters, and quit out. Sure enough, went back in through the main menu, Plague Rat played Ravage and all was right with the world. Except that when I beat him. second time lucky, I got a Fine. Harrumph.

Lost Mint and didn't have a chance to redeem myself yet. Lots of really careless mistakes.... Mistbound with 1 card in hand, an out of turn Haka of Battle while infected. Yeah, completely deserved this loss. Tonight when I get back from work REVENGE.

"Oh boy, Plague Rat! With Chrono-Ranger! This'll be easy!" NOPE

Hubris got the best of me. :( But all it really takes is using Astral Projection on Plague Rat the first round to bury that Sewer Fiend. After that, I pretty much just accepted that Chrono and Nightmist would die (saving Eye on the Prize for when Cyclohexane Vat came out was a good idea, though) and used their incap powers to let Scholar play out of turn. Lots of Keep Movings, Mortal Forms to Energy and healing cards meant tons and tons of damage! Still took me two tries to figure that out. :|

Mint.

Followed the Jeremy philosophy of "DO ALL THE DAMAGE ALL THE TIME."

Played lots of super-boosted Chronoranger cards quickly, used the Rampage and the Oblivion--CR went down to Oblivion damage. Scholar didn't tank or heal (much)...just Sought the Truth and punched the rat.

It was real fast. 2 or 3 rounds. Maybe 6 minutes? I woud NOT have survived another round.

That would be a bug, we'll check it out.

If it helps, I hit Try Again with no problems for Near Mint on iOS.

First non-mint for me in a while. There is definitely a certain path to vistory and that way is damage. I wasn't paying attention first time around and didn't realize that it was advanced mode until the second round. Hubris definitely got the best of me. 

Near mint for me.  Made some miscalculations early on and lost the team shortly after the rat flipped.  Second try, went full aggro and blasted the rat down in three rounds after losing Chrono Ranger thanks to Mistbind preventing him from getting his Sewer Fiend before the Vat Explosion.

Slow but kind of interesting Mint for me.  I managed to have all but Nightmist be incapped, and just kind of... had her turtle in Mist Form until she was holding her entire deck in hand.  Scholar Incap to wipe the ongoings as necessary, and other than that, it was just a matter of letting the environment eat Plague Rat.  He went down in a vat explosion.

Channelling my inner Jeremy I was able to get Plague Rat down in turn two. The Scholar kept moving twice into Mortal Form to energy, and used a couple of healing cards to smack the rat into submission. A good old fashioned slobber knocker.

My first mint in four weeks. Woo Hoo

Small tweaks to get the two round victory and keep Chrono alive.

Round 1- play Enlightenment for Nightmist. Choose Scholar as the target. For Scholar, you'll draw Offensive Transformation. Play Keep Moving to get Mortal Form to Energy in play, and use Offensive Transformation to shut the rat down. Do 3 damage to self and target with base power.

Round 2 - I skipped Rampage in favor of Vitality Surge. Still did Oblivion with Nightmist. Scholar played another Keep Moving (Mortal Form to Energy), then Get Out of the Way. Accumulated damage wiped out the nest and left Plague Rat at 4. Did Scholar's base power for 4 to self and 4 to rat and a win without losses.

Got the near mint but that almost went south as well, this was a really tough one. Scholar pulled it out as the last hero standing at 2 HP.

Sigh

How did Mortal Form to Energy help you?  This Scholar can't heal, so he can't do the extra damage from MFtE.

Get Out of the Way did 1 fire damage to both remaining targets (rat and his nest), then healed Scholar for 2 (X, where X is the number of targets dealt damage this way). Mortal Form to Energy x2 let him deal 2 energy damage to 1 target twice (once for each card). All the damages increased quite a bit by the cards in play.

Another one of those challenges where the deck seemed "stacked" against the heroes.  I played the scenario out 3-4 times (same villain (on advanced), same heroes/order, same environment) before doing the weekly one-shot, and won every time without having to rewind.  Of course, none of my games involved (a) having 3/4 of the heroes infected on the opening card draw, and all of them infected by Round 2; (b) the vat blowing up before any ongoing/environment destruction cards were revealed; (c) all damage turning toxic conveniently *just before* RatBoy made himself immune to toxic damage; and (d) Haka never pulling a Ground Pound to stop the bleeding.  I don't mind challenges being hard because of an interesting mix of heroes/villains/environment (fighting Dark Legacy with little/no ongoing destruction, or having Unity and her bots in an environment that loves to destroy low HP targets, for example), but *any* villain -- even Blade -- is hard if the decks are set up to put lots of the villain's devastating combos out, and that the heroes can never get their feet solidly on the ground.

Not all one-shots are going to be a walk in the park. There are many ways to win this one-shot, but it's not meant to be easy.

I like how you had to point out a few weeks ago that not all one-shots are meant to be hard when people say one is too easy, and now you have to point out that not all of them are meant to be easy.

I really like that the one-shots vary from easy to hard. It's good variety, and it gets me to play against villains I might otherwise not play against much.

Yes, pretty much any villain can have a lucky draw and unexpectedly wreck face, and that's great. Hell, I got beaten by Gloomweaver the other day! And it was a great game, because it let me see the damage Gloomy (usually a pushover) could do with a good draw. I for one really like this type of One-Shot, as a 'hey, here's what this villain can really do'. Keep up the good work, Handelabra.

For my part, if they pull another "Bunker never gets a weapon out" weekly challenge, I might be done playing them. Perfect villain / environment coordination is annoying to begin with, but stop neutering the heroes.

NightMist for the win!

Got almost knocked out, but went into Mist mode, let the rats chomp on Plague Rat, and came out at the end for a series of heedless lashes and oblivions to finish off the beast.

Reading the other responses, I wish I'd had the guts to go all offense. After Chrono's great start, I thought about it, but didn't think it was possible to win the race, so started trying to get some defense out.

I played again trying to see if I could take out Plague Rat on round two w/out using the exact script written above. I mucked it up a bit, I guess, because at the end of Scholar's second round Plague Rat had one HP left. I was kinda worried because everyone but Haka was in low single digits at this point ...

But then a rat came out and finished off Plague Rat!

Darnit. Lost the Mint because I forgot it was Scholar of the Infinite, so he did himself 4 damage instead of healing 1. Ended up with Fine because he just did too gorram much damage. Finished with CR incapped, Nightmist at 5, Haka at 11 and Scholar at 10, finished on the second round.

I only won once I stopped using Nightmist's first turn putting away Sewer Fiend. It kept ending up as the only thing she got done, because she took too much damage to do much else.

Oh, Gloomweaver can get brutal, especially if he gets all three relics into play. (Such as the one-shot that featured him a few weeks ago.) 

The most brutal opening I ever had with Gloomweaver is Strength of the Grave coming out with five zombies on the board. Everyone taking 8 damage to start off with is rough. Comparable to that is a five-hero game where the first draw is the Cursed Acolyte.

That said, I can't remember ever actually losing to Gloomweaver. Maybe once or twice where I had no deck control and the environment kept boosting his damage.

I only discovered these today, so this was my first try and I had no idea about the mint/near mint thing. Having said that, I went the slow way and should have got myself a mint cover. Everyone died almost straight away except for Scholar and I just turtled up, using "Transmutative Recovery" and "Mortal Form to Energy" to whittle him down, refilling as required through "Know When to Hold Fast" on the other Hero turns. But I got impatient when I got to a point where I could win between a big "Know When to Turn Loose", and when I wanted to skip all my discards to let my forms die I clicked through too many things and lost it. I didn't undo and on my second attempt missed the setup and lost it again, then got it right on the third try, so no NM/M cover for me, but I got through by using the slow process when I did finish.

You mean the one where Bunker can play Adhesive Foam every turn and be the real key to the heroes winning? 

Or the one where you skip and draw two then get a gun and start killing things?

I knew the key to this was going to be all-put damage and I tried for that initially, but some early mistakes cost me the quick victory (including not knowing how to utilize Nightmist properly). Ended up with everyone but Scholar uncapped and a two hour game that I possibly could have won if I'd been paying more attention.

Second game, quick two-round victory. Damage damage damage.