Weekly One-Shot #147 Cause and Effect

Mint. Everyone at 7 or 8 hp.

The "Advanced" destruction of ongoings didn't hurt because Benchmark can get them up so fast. I didn't have to lose anyone else's (like Hippocratic Oath, which I got up immediately and kept up and kept me alive). What does hurt is that she flips immediately, then flips again a few rounds later. She flipped a third time before I got her down.

As usual, the strategy is to take out the ship, take out Mabel if she shows, and then beat on the Captain as hard as possible. I also like to take out L'Episte and Final Breath and her on-goings right away. I also hate Battle Forged, but got lucky and discarded that with a Hyperactive Senses play by the Naturalist.

The key for the win was holding back a Predator's Eye while she was on her back side. I played it just before she flipped back to her front, and then poured on the damage. The Sentinels get a Nemesis bonus against her and Benchmark had both the Missle Pod and the H,U.D. up, so I was able to slam her for about 40 points of damage in one round, between all the heroes and the boosts.

Wow. Wowowow. Mint by the skin of my teeth. The lesson learned here is, once Benchmark is set up, he's unstoppable.

The Sentinels held on until the penultimate round, with Dr. Medico doing his best to keep Benchmark alive. But by that point, Benchmark had 18 HP and his main issue was his buff from Legacy's Landing Pad being countered by La Capitan's. But he had no problems, even in the final round, when he couldn't use powers, taking La Capitan down bit by bit. I've never been so happy to have three "draw a card" incap powers on a team; fueling the Inferno Missile Pod was the key to victory, to say nothing of having enough Software out to sacrifice the lesser ones to her greed.

Mint with everybody in the low teens.

I ended up having to revive Idealist three times in the first half dozen turns, but then all the worst stuff from Capitan's deck had come out and I had control of the game afterwards. Having Benchmark start with Threat Neutralizer and Flash Installation Drive let me get rid of Capitan's nasty ongoings and the Entry Points pretty much at will, and Setback was useful on every turn of the game, starting with Looking Up and then getting to dish out damage, group heals, and group power plays as needed. Naturalist soaked most of the ongoing/equipment destruction for Benchmark by putting out all the useless environment target control cards he starts with, and then kept batting cleanup with Cornered Beast. Not that difficult, but fun.

I’m really not seeing how you guys did it. I got utterly destroyed, doing no damage to La Capitan before her hordes of minions killed everyone.

Idealist gets knocked out over and over, which means that the Sentinels generally don’t get to play their best damage cards. Benchmark doesn’t get time to set up, the time crew is doing too much damage. The Naturalist can’t really tank because the environment has no targets, and can’t just pull out the Rhino because it’s the Hunted variant. The only hero to do much good was Setback because he starts with Looking Up and Silver Linings.

Mint.

I thought it was a lost cause for the first half of the game, but then things got a lot better. I did make mistakes, certainly, especially in the ordering of Benchmark's stuff via Overhaul Loadout. The order of his hardware really makes a difference!

The turning point seemed to be actually when the Naturalist went down--his incap power allowed the Sentinels to get powerful extra card plays (and KEY extra power uses via Sentinel Tactics--spamming Mainstay, essentially making the Sentinels immune to damage. Except for Siege-Breaker, but whatever).

Once the heroes got through the initial onslaught (barely!), they poured on the damage and never looked back.

Sentinels 7/7/9/6HP, Setback 2HP, Benchmark 9HP and Naturalist 0HP.

Tried again, got destroyed again.

I finished in the teens, but I was getting down to about 6 HP on everybody before then. I guess I was playing rope-a-dope. Setback and Naturalist were doing crowd control as best they could while the Sentinels were stuck tanking all the attack the lowest cards, and Benchmark was setting up and recycling Threat Neutralizer. Naturalist was very low on cards since he was using Cornered Beast any time he didn't have two attack cards in hand. Then Benchmark started getting to contribute damage, which let the Sentinels start playing all the one-shots that combined damage and healing. I didn't attack La Capitan at all for most of the game other than getting her to flip back to keep from healing the crowd, which mostly came from Setback/Naturalist one-shots until Inferno Pod and Sentinel Tactics came online. Then she dropped from 75 to 37 in a couple of turns with the worst crowd guys safely dead and Dr. Medico's signature and all the Sentinels one-shots keeping everyone afloat. Benchmark could eventually tank a little at the end thanks to the healing bonus applying to all the Sentinels heals he got, but otherwise it was just Idealist repeatedly taking one for the team until I could get Battle Forged and Final Breath off my back, which took awhile since I needed about three rounds to kill La Paradoja.

I’m not sure what “rope a dope” means in this context. Sure, I know it’s the Ali quote, but I don’t know how that translates.

I did manage a Fine after 5 tries. I destroyed La Paradoja round 2 regularly, but still lost several times.

I didn’t attack La Capitan unless she was flipped with cards under her until her minions were all gone. Even with her flipped, I tended to prioritize the biggest threat unless it was a 1 point plink, or I clearly was going to do less damage to the minion than La Capitan healed.

The first several times I played, I used Threat Neutralizer to get rid of Entry Point repeatedly, but that delayed Benchmark’s build up to the point where he was never getting beyond Legion Core Processor. The game I won, I decided to let Entry Point slide for a couple of turns while I goes Benchmark set up with cards that let him draw and play extra cards. Once I could play Threat Neutralizer from the trash it wasn’t slowing him down to use it.

I decided there was no point in trying to revive the Idealist with both Final Breath and Battle Forged in play, since they’d just knock her down again. What worked for me was getting Caliginous Form into play. That’s usually a lower priority for me than the Idealist’s card-drawing ongoing, or Durasteel Chains, but it meant that Battle Forged kept hitting La Capitan. That only worked because I didn’t revive the Idealist - if I had, she’d be the lowest HP target and he’d hit her instead. Once Final Breath and Battle Forged were out I brought the Idealist back to do her damage.

Since playing Threat Neutralizer early was proving too costly, I reserved Crafty Assault for whatshername’s Revenge. That 3 point retaliation to everyone if you take anything out is brutal, and being ready for it was more important than taking out a Captain’s Orders. The game I didn’t do that, I lost.

Setback was doing an awful lot of the damage, between Looking Up for 3 points and Karmic Retribution for 7 whenever he built up tokens. It required I keep an eye on his token count since it was easy to go over 10. I occasionally used that “spend 2 tokens, heal 2, draw 2 cards” power because using Looking Up would put him at 10 or more. In the game I won, Silver Linings never came into play, though Setback was hovering around 8 HP.

Ongoing / equipment destruction was never a big thing. I had the Naturalist play otherwise useless cards like Environmental Allies and Blend in the with the Pack as sacrifices, and once Benchmark had lots of card drawing and plays available, I’d sacrifice extra software cards.

Near Mint on the first try, thanks to copious rewinding.  So much damage focused on the lowest-HP hero, and so many cards put under La Capitan made her healing really hard to deal with.  And there are so many threats you have to deal with--Final Breath and Battle Forged beating on Idealist, Mabel and La Paradoja of course, L'Epeiste is nuts against these heroes, and they don't have a lot of options for getting rid of Entry Points.

However, I eventually dealt with the ship and crew, although not before Naturalist and Idealist went down (Idealist 3 times--poor planning on my part, and Setback triggered Silver Lining), and even though everyone was down to about 3 HP, then it was mostly smooth sailing.

I do have to admit: if you can get rid of Frost's chamber, Security Station + Inferno Missile Pod + HUD is a whole lot of fun.  I also got to pull the stacked tank trick (Durasteel Chains, Human Shield, and 3x Block), though by then the game was pretty much over.

Okay--seeing the folks struggling, I want to expand on one of my points.

I ignore most of the crew and just pound on the Captain, in any fight with her.

I take the ship and Mabel out first and L'Episte whenever he shows up. After that, it's a matter of opportunity. If I can flatten a crew member, I do. Otherwise, I just pound on the Captain. In this game, I recognized that Final Breath had to go if I was going to keep the Sentinels around, but I ignored TrueShot, Siegebreaker, and Chip and let them plink on me, and then healed back up. True, if the opportunity arrived (like with Fling into the Dark), I'd take them out, but they were usually secondary targets for AOE damage.

She has too many cards that bring the Crew back to spend all your time clearing them out. It becomes a war of attrition. Better to cut the head off.

Mint with everyone all over the place in HP, Naturalist down

I thought the game was lost with all the crew out, La Capitan flipped, Naturalist down, and nothing really built up on my side, but Sentinels and Benchmark can sustain like no one's business. I derped out and forgot how much damage le'Epeste can do with Benchmark out, and ended up eating way too much damage in one round with Naturalist early. However, his flipped Draw or Play a card were super useful for the rest of the game. Playing a Sentinels damaging card, with Tactics out, means an extra 3 healing a round, combined with Benchmark's increased healing and tankability means he was fluctuating between ~20 hp and ~6 hp every round (everyone wails on him, gets down to 6, gets stupid amounts of healing via 2 Dr. Medico powers, Hypocratic Oath, his own healing, and increasing all that by 1, back up to 20).

To get there though, Idealist dropped a few times and I kept bringing her back as a lowest hp meat shield (sorry!). After having played it once, I am wondering if it isnt worth it to Security Station discard someone's hand the first round to destroy itself and keep the Entry Point from being applied just after masses of Crew arrived. However, I did manage to keep Entry Points under control for the most part. Sentinels did lots of AoE damage and healing, Setback was consistent damage and a shield, and Benchmark just built himself up as a massive tank, and eventually a Missile machine-gun. Discarding your hand to destroy an Entry Point doesnt hurt as much if you can put them all into missiles! :D

~Komori

Eating damage before the game turned around, instead of worrying about trying to prevent it too much. Nobody got their tableau developed besides Benchmark; the only relevant ongoings otherwise were Medico's signature, Looking Up, and Cornered Beast, and Medico's sig didn't even come out before I could stop reviving Idealist, IIRC.

I managed Entry Point after the first one by dumping Naturalist's hand since it tended to be small/irrelevant anyway. I did have a lot of hardware put down before I got any software going besides Threat Neutralizer all the same. I had a round or two where I was finessing targets' HP down instead of dropping them because I wanted to develop Benchmark instead of having him dispel Maria Helena's Revenge.

Setback was team MVP for me too. L'Epeiste came out and immediately went down to Karmic Retribution. For some reason I still remember that he was queued up to do 16 damage during Setback's turn. I would have ignored Trueshot, but I had a spare Karmic Retribution sitting around one turn and no major threats to worry about.

I forgot that I had La Capitan's deck on lockdown at the end thanks to Writhe and Threat Neutralizer cycling an irrelevant ongoing, preventing her from bringing back targets or multiple card plays. If I had known it was hiding on the bottom post-Motley Crew shuffles, I could have started doing that sooner, I think. (Benchmark granting him a power after using Threat Neutralizer every turn.)

Ooooh, I never thought of that! :D

Yeah, I didn’t think of discarding Benchmark’s hand for missiles either. He’s so dependent on building up that I’m leery of just throwing away a couple of hardware and software cards he needs.

I tried to do that, but Frost's Cryo Chamber nerfs that move pretty hard.

I just realized that I must be misrembering my endgame with Writhe somehow? I played this one-shot around midnight last night and then did a bunch of others way too far into the early morning, just to confound my memory further. Somehow her deck did start spitting out useless ongoings at the end partly thanks to him, but that was after the worm had already turned.

Mint, but my game was ignore the Captain and get rid of the crew. I took out the ship in the first round and ignored the Entry Points for a while. The Captain flipped right away, but I let her stay there while everyone else built up as best they were able and the Captain didn't attack back. I did bring back Idealist right away since that basically meant "Play this card to avoid 9 points of damage on your lowest hp hero." I also used Threatening Stomp on Naturalist in the second or thrid turn. That brought him down to 3, but it was enough to keep all the Sentinels alive and mitigate damage to everyone else. Benchmark then also stepped in to take damage for the lowest hp hero.

The crew and I kept fighting each other with everyone just hanging on. Naturalist was down to 1hp at one point and everyone else in the single digits. Setback and Dr. Medico went on some mad healing sprees. But soon after, all the crew except Trueshot was gone. Damage was under control and all the heroes were in good shape. After that, Bemchmark did what he does and destoryed everything, including the Captain. Benchmark and the Sentinels ended at full, Setback and Naturalist around 20.

I couldn’t figure out a way to take out the ship in the first round.

Oops. You’re right. I could only get it down to 1. I remembered that wrong. 

Mint with Naturalist at 10, Benchmark at 22, and everyone else at 8.

I feel guilty having succeeded where it seems so many have failed, given how poorly I played in the early game.  I think my stupidity actually worked in my favor, since unlike what I'm hearing from most of you, my La Capitan only flipped once.  She stayed flipped, however, for several turns while I picked off her crew one by one, starting with the ones that were hitting Idealist. 

I got pummeled pretty hard the first few turns, with Idealist getting incapped twice and everyone getting down below 12 health before I stabilized.  I had hippocratic oath out turn one, and once I'd revived Idealist a couple of times, and gotten rid of the immediate threats to her safety, I started to focus on healing with the sentinels (sentinel tactics to enable M.D., Positive energy, then Horrifying Dichotomy).  Once Subcutaneous Cybernetics came out, I started focusing heals on benchmark, and tanking with him.  To this end I immediately focused down anything that targeted anyone other than the highest-hp hero target.  This was especially effective in the last round when I got (almost) everyone to 8 so he could tank everything with Intervening Path Calculator.

The upside of La Capitan staying flipped for so long was twofold. First, I didn't have to deal with her trashing stuff constantly until I was very well set up, which I think let me build a better board state faster than some of you.  Second, thanks to some lucky shuffles, Raiding Party never came up after turn one, but A Motley Crew did, and thanks to constant shuffling, was ineffective (though since it replaces itself, I suppose it doesn't matter at all that it got played).  What slowed me down the most was Benchmark getting Walk the Plank'd 5 or 6 times, including 3 or 4 in a row, at just around the time he was about to start going off.  that's when I flipped La Capitan (which Inferno Missile Battery seems almost purpose-built to do).  One more Walk the Plank got played, but this time it stayed in the discard. then Naturalist played Predator's Eye, and Benchmark discarded a bunch of cards to destroy Entry Point with Security Station, and after a little help from the sentinels and setback, hit her with the full force of a late-game Benchmark Combo: Draw two cards with Load on initialization, then double Multi-point Huds discard them to Secondary Cannon, followed by Intel Analyzer to discard even more, then Inferno Missile Pod hits for about 50 points of damage (possibly more, I only know she was at 46 when it started, and ended up dead).

Edit: after finally reading the cards, I realize that the second benefit I attribute to a flipped La Capitan (the neutered Motley Crews), as well as the constant Walk the Planks was due to the ship staying out way longer than I intended.  I knew something was shuffling the villain trash into the deck, but I didn't know what.  I was actually surprised I survived so many turns with it out (it only died two turns before La Capitan herself), but I guess I must just have gotten lucky.

Bit of a nervewracker, but I pulled through with a Mint there.  Ended with HP counts at 13/0/7/12 on the Sentinels and 10/26/4 on the other party members.

I'm in the "keep La Capitain flipped for a bit" camp here, it made setting up a lot easier.  The ship was priority number 1 of course, after that it was the guys that were attacking my lowest HP guys while chipping away at the stack of cards La Capitan had.  I did mess up though because I forgot the cryo-chamber deals 1 damage to everyone and that flipped her back when I didn't want her to flip  Funnily enough I only ran into one Walk the Plank.

Once she flipped back it was just a storm, but thanks to Benchy healing an extra hit point every time he was healed and the Father/Daughter Jab/Heal combo there was more than enough HP in Benchy's pool for him to take most of it and stay standing.  Those two did the brunt of the damage (Benchy would have done more if I saved his missile barrage for when Legacy's Landing Pad came out.) though Setback dished out semiconstant 3's and sometimes a 7 and he had a really timely Turn of Events at the last round.  Naturalist was just there sitting with a bad hand for most of the game, though he did get in a timely Predator's Eye and he did chuck Mable out of the tower efore she got in the door.

Idealist went down 3 times or so, Writhe went down once and I never bothered to bring him back because I had serious problems to attend to every time I had the oppertunity to.  Threat Neutralizer was brought in and used twice, once to kill an entry point and the other to stop Lady Too Many Names from hurting us when we killed her crew.

All good things must end. A Fine, ending a 10 week Mint streak.

Checklist for a rough one-shot:
1- Villain that drives me up a wall. Check. 2- Hero decks I'm not very familiar with. Check. 3- Environment that seems to help the villains far more than Freedom 5 HQ should. Check. 4- Put it on ultimate. Half a check.

I will admit most of my difficulties came from point number 2. The only one of these heroes I play regularly is Naturalist. So time to practice, practice, practice.

The Sentinels are pretty straightforward. As a group they’re glass cannons, doing a lot of damage with cards, and few moving parts. Sure, collectively they have a lot of HP, but they tend to go down rapidly if the villain or environment does AoE damage.

I find Setback difficult to play, usually. How he plays varies greatly on what cards he draws. For the most part, you can count his tokens as 1 damage or 1 self-healing each, depending on what cards he has. For example, in this setup you start with 2x Karmic Retribution, which translates 7 tokens into 7 damage, or 1 token into 2 self-healing. You also start with Looking Up, which is arguably his best ongoing, 3 damage +3 tokens, which is both decent damage and rapidly builds up to the point where you can use those Karmic Retribution’s for damage. Usually I flounder a lot with Setback, but that combination is easy to understand.

Benchmark is a complicated hero, but usually marvelous and versatile given time. Mostly he’s about getting a lot of hardware cards in play, since software cards self-destruct at the start of his turn if he has more software than hardware. You can temporarily exceed that limit during his turn, provided you play more hardware later, or use something like Threat Analyzer that self-destructs.

He has a fair number of “draw an extra card” and “play an extra card” cards, such as Micro Fabricator, Flash Installation Drive, Load On Initialization, and Upgraded Memory Unit. He builds up rapidly once he gets a couple of those in play.

Once he gets Inferno Missile Pod, discards turn into damage. Sometimes a lot of damage, if he’s got a few +damage bonuses. The main point of Multi Point HUD, which is kind of useless by itself, is that it doubles per-card damage of those missiles. He’s got cards with optional discards, like Micro Fabricator, just to feed cards to the missile pod.

Personally I wouldn't characterize a hero with reliable -1 damage reduction, and a relatively easy to set up -2 damage reduction combo that protects the entire team, as "glass cannon" but YMMV!

-1 DR doesn’t make up for 11-14 max HP. In practice, the Sentinels tend to go down first in most situations. Just look at this thread, for example - “idealist goes down repeatedly” was a common experience, and La Capitan isn’t dealing out loads of AoE like some villains. Put them up against Progeny or fighting in Atlantis, Pike Industrial Complex, Silver Gulch, or the Tomb of Anubis and they melt like butter under a blowtorch. Dawn, Voss, Omnitron, and The Chairman can also put a lot of hurt on them, but tend to be more dependent on card draw. 

Durasteel Chains / Human Shield isn’t that easy to set up. True, you can search for the chains via Unique Abilities, but in addition to requiring two cards, it requires a substantial slush fund of cards to discard. At 2 cards per turn it’s expensive and difficult to maintain.

The Sentinels are very hardy team even with the low max health.   Often the revive cards end up as discard fodder as no one needs flipped back up.    Sometimes they’ll be ganged up by multiple hits to the lowest but that means at least they were a shield for my other heroes.  If they survive I’ve got healing to bring them back up.  

Not at all relevant for this one-shot, of course, but the Sentinels are absolutely brilliant against Progeny. Due to their low max HP he'll flip almost immediately, and if you know what you're doing at that point, he'll never flip back again. As long as it's not Medico Progeny zeroes in and focuses on, the big silver dummy is essentially going to be spending the rest of the game fighting a losing battle against Medico healing and/or reviving whichever of his team mates Progeny's trying to keep down while the rest of your team can pick him apart at your leisure :)

I almost never have any of the Sentinels go down, anymore; my experience is more in line with Powerhound's. Between Writhe Calignous Form and Mainstay Durasteel Chains, plus Medico healing, it's usually not a problem. 

I find the Sentinels can go either way.  In this game, with a whole lot of damage directed to the hero with the lowest HP right off the bat, and a fair amount of mass damage, they can be tough to protect.  If they have time to set up and aren't taking the lion's share of the damage, then yes, they become easy to keep alive.

The Idealist gets knocked down in this one-shot because La Capitan has multiple cards that target the lowest HP, not because of AoE.

As someone that feels Freedom Tower should be labeled as a difficulty 2 envo, it's actually not being that bad in this one-shot.  Benchy gets Threat Neutralizer early enough to get rid of the Entry Point in turn 2 and the rest of them are pretty decently buried under the deck.  Good thing too, this one would be a nightmare if Entry Points kept coming out orif the Training Room was anywhere close to the top.

With the way Benchmark keeps recycling his software cards, he single handedly keeps Freedom Tower under control. If anything, this is a case of the environment almost exclusively helping the heroes. As you expect the case to be in their own headquarters. Like many others, I had the Naturalist sacrifice his hand to take care of any unwanted environment cards, opening up Benchmark to handle business on the villain side of things.

Finally got off my butt and did this today. I don't think I've ever left LC flipped as long as I did in this match. Took out every single crew member once, the ship three times (because OF COURSE it was the top card of her deck when she reshuffled). As I saw someone else state earlier, once Predator's Eye hit my hand, I knew it was go time because I was mostly set up. Benchmark got the party started by finishing off the cards underneath LC and redirecting damage to himself, then Naturalist dropped Predator's Eye - from Naturalist's turn through his next turn, we did 63 damage, then she dropped a Temporal Thief, but it was really easy to get 13 damage done in the next round before she got to flip again.

Benchmark spent a long time just destroying ongoings / environment cards and getting set up. Setback was dropping tons of damage. The Sentinels focused on staying alive unless I needed them to contribute toward one of the ship killings. Naturalist mostly ate things with Cornered Beast until I got the Rhino form out and was able to get some card draw going.

Finished with the Sentinels at 9/9/9/8, Setback at 4, Benchmark at 13, and Naturalist at 12. Only Idealist was incapacitated (multiple times). Benchmark would have been higher, but Intervening Path Calculator saved Setback from being incapped.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I eventually figured out that extract was an easy way to deal with those pesky Entry Points.

I wound up winning by playing to the strength of the deck I knew best. If you dig enough, rhino form and Natural Born Vigor arrive. That generally allows all sorts of fun, especially with the Hunted version of the Naturalist.

I'm actually really annoyed. I should have minted this -- it was hard, but I did it -- but I didn't finish it until the next one came out, so I only got Good.

Forgot to say I had a near mint for this one. First one got away from me with too many crew coming out too fast and it just spiralled.

Second one I focused a bit better, controlled the healing from La Capitan a bit better and was able to stabilise it to a point before piling on the damage.