Weekly One-Shot #150: Spooky Creepy Stuff

Owwwwwwwwwwww.

Going to try round 2 later.

Mint. This was actually a lot easier than I was expecting it to be based on the heroes and the villains.

Unhallowed Halls hurts Bug Bear and Biomancer an awful lot though and Writhe can get a huge amount of damage out with a buff to infernal damage and making Fright Train hit stuff for you.

I enjoyed this one a lot - all 3 heroes standing but low at the end.

Mint.

Ended with Writhe at 5 and Visionary at 6. Was nervous going in to this, but ended up feeling in control the whole game. Unhallowed Halls and Writhe were the MVPs of this game. The one problem I ran into was the amount of discarding.

Mint at 6-7-7. Going by the theme of creepy Heroes and Villains, I would have picked Miss Information with all her weird reality-twisting over Fright Train, but I guess he does have Fright in his name. But I digress.

MVP was definitely Unhallowed Halls, with the Vampires fighting Writhe for 2nd. Keeping Bugbear and Biomancer from healing makes a HUUUUUGE difference in how they usually go. Writhe did as much Infernal damage as I could get, and while I was thinking of digging for Twist the Ether to either make the villains deal nothing but Radiant, or change all hero damage to Infernal, it didnt last long enough. AA played Writhe's deck, Writhe did all the damage and tanked (god Shadow Cloak is amazing for this), and Dark Visionary messed with the environment so cards that hurt villains more than the heroes were coming out. The Vampires ended up incapping Fright Train and Bugbear in the same round, and Biomancer does NOT like Writhe's Nowhere to Hide making all damage irreducable. Was never terribly worried about losing as even with Fright Train's massive damage output, Teams style is great for Writhe's Discard a card to negate damage once a turn.

Fun game overall

~Komori

Near mint as some poorly timed plays of visionary or argent adept had fright train accidentally discard unhallowed halls. Had to stall out to have writhe stab people to prevent healing which made the game a lot closer than some of the others. 

Ouch, had to eat a Near Mint on this one after making the monumentally moronic move of discarding Unhallowed Halls in  the first game (don't know what on Earth I was thinking when I did that!).

Kept it in play for the second game and it most certainly made a difference, though it still got a lot closer than I would've liked with the Adept down, Visionary at 1 and Writhe at 2. Still, finished the game by using the Adept's "Destroy a target with 2 or fewer HP" ability on Biomancer, which felt like proper retribution :)

Mint. AA 6, Writhe 7, Dark Vis 8. My game plan going in was to have Dark Vis dig for Unhallowed Halls, but it was thankfully second from the top, so that was accomplished in the first round. The bad guys all went down in the same turn, thanks to the combo of multiple Vernal Sonatas and Dark Conductor giving Writhe repeated plays of Darkly Dreaming, with Visionary’s mass psychic attacks helping a bit. The initial damage I was seeing from Fright Train was worrisome, but then the whole thing was over surprisingly quickly. I think in five rounds, ending with Adept’s turn.

Is there some sort of protocol about who starts these threads and when? I thought about posting after I played the one-shot last night, but I didn’t want to step on any toes.

Missed my first game by just that much. D: Biomancer and Writhe at 2 each, and Writhe was taken out by the Blood Countess.

I think leaving the Angry Mob in play might actually be a good idea. Vis and Argent will go down regardless, but they won't do anything to Writhe, and they will chip away at Biomancer. Slowly.

But yeah, milling the environment for Unhallowed Halls on its first play made this phenomenally easier than it would have been otherwise. I think Visionary as environment control is the key.

3rd try was the charm, all 3 games came down to the wire. The thing that made the difference was Unhallowed Halls coming into play in the 3rd game, while being discarded by Fright Train in the first 2.

Wow. That was hard, and close. Argent and Visionary both down, Writhe at 4.

Basic strategy was what everyone else did. Get unhallowed halls out. Use Visionary to try to control the environment deck. Use Argent to have Writhe play extra cards. I took down Biomancer first, which may have been a mistake, but I got Writhe's card that makes all future damage indestructible at the right time, and it was irresistable. There were some other misplays with which cards to keep and discard, and I had two rounds where Writhe did not damage because I'd discarded the wrong stuff. That hurt.

But in the end, Argent used his incapped ability to play one of Writhe's cards which took out Fright Train right before Fright Turn would've smashed Writhe for the win.

A rough Mint.

These heroes are fairly light on HP, and like everyone else, I saw right away that getting Unhollowed Halls out was vital to gimping Bugbear and Biomancer. Given how hard Fright Train and Bugbear hit, and how many HP they have, I was sure I was going to lose the damage race.

It really came down to Writhe and the Shadow Cloak. 1 point of damage resistance is nice, but discarding a card to ignore 3-4 points of damage was absolutely vital to keeping the team alive. He was also dealing out most of the damage, too with mass Infernal attacks. 

It helped that Visionary was able to bring out vampires that attacked villain minions rather than the heroes.

Visionary went down to Infecting an Heir. After damaging all the villains she hit herself before she could damage her teammates. Writhe and Argent Adept were in a bad way, but only Biomancer was left at that point, so they managed to take him out.

Only a Fine at the 3rd try. The first one I lost the Unhallowed Halls with Fright Train. Then tried to blitz through Visionary's deck (with AA's and Vis' powers) to find the Cocoon and just sleep it all while the enviroment destroys the world. Never found it. Biomancer and F.Train went down but Bugbear was at almost full health and hammered me (no Unhallowed Halls, remember?).

2nd try kept the Halls, but still got defeated. Don't quite remember the tactics I used and what I did wrong, but I did wrong (and probably won't be able to recognize my tactical mistake, anyway).

3rd time kept all heros at low teens/high single at the end. Enviroment, beside the Halls, was a poor help, for me. Always trying to manipulate it to get the required cards, but always had a menu of poor choices regarding vampires ("hit the hero with highest HP". That's me. "Hit the non-enviroment with lowest HP". That's also me, etc.)

Mint with everyone at 8

Near mint with Writhe at 2.

Ouch.

Managed a mint with each hero at exactly 1 hp, Umbral syphon and Nowhere to hide were definitely lifesavers against Bugbear and Biomancer.

That was always a villain minion for me. Though in fairness, you were in better shape than I was at the end - Visionary was down and Writhe and Argent Adept were about 2-4 HP each.

near mint with vis down.  Lost the first game because I lost wirthe's hand to freight train.

Near Mint with 10, 7 and 6 as my final numbers.

This is really easy the second time around, oh boy. Like people have said, use Argent to give Writhe extra card plays (I looked at the environment every time, and only had one moment where I would have rather had the environment card out) while Visionary concentrates on controlling the environment. I took out Biomancer first thanks to Nowhere to Hide, then the environment finished off the other two, first Katrina against Bugbear, and then Fright Train taking himself out thanks to Infecting an Heir. Remember, he's a great target for anything that makes a target damage itself!

Kind of a sidebar, but...

In almost all circumstances, I use Dark Conductor Argent Adept’s power on two hero decks. That’s choosing between two possible positive outcomes. Villain cards are always bad, and environment cards tend to be bad with rare positive outcomes. Giving either one an extra play rarely makes sense, so you’re effectively robbing yourself of choice by picking either one. If, say, 1 out of 6 environment cards is good, why take that chance vs. a 100% chance of a beneficial choice from a hero deck? A particular environment card has to be absolutely critical to your strategy for that to make sense.

There are some corner cases, of course. There was a one-shot with Spite, Agent of Gloom where using Dark Conductor’s power was the only way to get enough victim cards in play to flip his drugs back. But it’s pretty unusual.

Near-Mint, and considering I was forced to play the complete opposite of my playstyle I'm not gonna count that as a streak breaker.  The rewind button is probably going to file abuse charges as well since I save-scummed with both Argent Edgedept and Vis like a madman for the best possible plays.  Protip, after you get Unhallowed Halls out, ignore the enviroment and just mill Writhe's damagers.

Also try to focus down Biomancer if you can.  If he gets two homoculi out, you're done for.  Writhe at 2 HP and last man standing for me.

I think focusing on Biomancer is a mistake. He’s not doing much damage to speak of, either directly or via his minions, and both Fright Train and Bugbear do a ton. I’m not seeing the issue with multiple Homunoculi - the 1 damage resistance isn’t global, it only affects that card, and doesn’t stack in any way. Homunoculi are mostly a pain because of the combination of healing and damage resistance, but if you’ve got Unhallowed Halls out, they eventually go down.

Really, the worst of his flesh children are The Carbon Adept and Repli-Blade. The former for ongoing destruction, the latter for a ton of damage if it’s late in the game, Biomancer has a large trash, and you don’t take it out before the next turn. Fortunately Repli-blade is in the initial deal and you can easily eliminate him before he’s a real threat.

Yeah, I almost always leave Biomancer until last as he usually is quite hard to take down without a concerted effort. While it’s much easier to kill him in this one, he’s far from the biggest threat.

Bug Bear is usually my first target whenever he is in play as he can get uncontrollable if left until the end thanks to his damage into healing abilities. That’s not such a problem here, and I’d recommend going for Fright Train - he hits hardest overall and you have a couple of good ways for Writhe to make him hit the other Villains for stupid amounts of damage.

Settled for Fine. If you don't mill for Unhallowed Halls, this is not an easy game at all. Because Unhallowed Halls does not come out on its own since Fright Train discards it. This whole game really hinges on you knowing that you need Unhallowed Halls to make it easy and then making your plays about finding it on the first turn. If you don't do that, you're in a lot more trouble.

Normally, I go for Bugbear first and leave Biomancer last. However, in this group, it turned out Biomancer is target number one, especially Advanced version. Writhe is great for soaking up the first damage each round, which is usually enough to seriously hamper Fright Train and Bugbear. But Biomancer has lots of damage sources that plink away at health. And when Bugbear and Fright Train are gone, Biomancer is playing 2 cards per round or having a lot of extra baddies out that made it practically impossible to take him down at the end.

Once I focused on Biomancer first, I won on the first try, but it was close. Argent Adpet gave extra plays to Writhe, Visionary put out Demoralize to soak up Biomancer's first damage reduction and then hit him with whatever was in her hand. Writhe used his one equipment to cancel out healing to stop Biomancer from recovering and he still went down. Fright Train pretty much took himself out by beating against Writhe and then doing psychic damage to himself. (3 points to Writhe, 5 points to Fright Train)

Still, Argent Adept and Visionary went down, but Writhe blocked Bugbear's damage and stopped him from healing. Along with the support from incap powers, the heroes (bero?) won. (finally)

I didn’t know that Fright Train will discard Unhallowed Halls if you don’t look for it. In my single run at this, when it came to use Dark Visionary’s power, the Court was the obvious target, and of course I found and set Unhallowed Halls.

I agree with FearLord that Fright Train should be your first target, but I went after Bugbear first. I had this hazy idea that I’d get rid of Bugbear, and then get rid of Unhallowed Halls and heal. It didn’t work out that way. I never got Sarabande of Destruction, so I had no way of removing the Halls.

Still, it worked out in the end, if barely.

Gods, that was ugly. Fine at 3/0/2 on my third try, and I think Bugbear would have won on his turn (with 1 HP) if I hadn't used Writhe's "use a power" incap to let AA use Scherzo of Frost and Flame.

Ouch. Ended up with fine, and only writhe left standing at low health.

First attempt, unhallowed halls was exploded by fright train before it was played, and I could not get an umbral siphon to save my life. Pretty sure I didn’t take any of them down before I dropped.

Second attempt, made sure the hall came into play, but I didn’t manage the environment well and they are writhe the turn before I could end biomancer.

third attempt things went clean. Both argent and visionary dropped, but I had everyone else at fairly low health by then, and then writhe just started eating everyone. That was brutal. Still don’t know if I hate biomancer or bugbear more.