Weekly One-Shot #154, "Changing of the Guard"

Heh, I took too long between starting my thread on this and posting. Ninja'd by bolnerap.

Fairly easy mint with everyone except Void Guard Dr. Medico near full health. There is way too much healing for Plague Rat's 1 damage per round to do much of anything. Two Dr. Medico's provided all the healing needed and then some while Writhe kept Plague Rat's deck full of ongoing cards that VG Idealist destroyed while delivering some beatdowns of her own. Writhe was the only one who was infected and Caliginous Form redirected his start of turn damage to Plague Rat. Writhe even kept trying to grab a magma hot crystal from the lava, but Plague Rat kept jumping in the way of that. :) VG Mainstay focused on damage, but Plague Rat ended up KO'd before he could even bother playing most of his decent cards.

Mint like the others. A fun trick is to let regular medico get infected with his hippocratic oath out. That's just a bit more icing on the cake of easiness. 

Nothing like a relaxing game of plauge rat, eh?  Mint at 13/14/11/14, 24, 23, 26, 19.  Had a lot of turns where Mainstay sat around doing nothing but swing his belter, and Writhe did a lot of stabbing with the syphon, but aside from that and infecting Medico I pretty much played everyone normally.

A fun and easy Mint. Magmaria wasn't a big problem -- only saw one Behemoth, which was nice -- and I unlocked Cosmic Writhe by the end! :D

I think my favorite thing was leaving the Magma Crystal in play and letting Sentinels Writhe redirect a free 1 fire damage to Plague Rat every round.

Mint.

Didn't really focus on healing in this damage race (though some certainly happened)--mainly tried to do as much damage as possible. Mainstay went Mano a Mano for a while, I liked the image in my head of Mainstay and the Rat trading clobbers at the edge of a pool of lava. Finished at the end of round 4, with the Ember Shaman allowing Writhe to Siphon the last Umbral out of Plague Rat.

Sentinels 5/12/3/4 HP, Doctor Medico 18HP, Idealist 12 HP, Mainstay 10HP, Writhe 13HP.

Honestly Normal Plague Rat is one the damage race fights that you can just stall out after you kill the locus.  Even with his damage being irriducable one cleansing downpour is enough to completely negate his base damage + Infection.  Once you get two or three of those in a turn you can probably sit on this guy as long as you want to.

...

Now I'm wondering what damage races in this game are stallable without the Ra/Visonary combo.

Mint here. I was feeling rather alarmed at first, given how everyone’s HP dropped in the early game due to Plague Rat AoE attacks, but ultimately two Dr. Medicos makes up for a lot of damage. Particularly once Void Guard Dr. Medico gets Healing Pulse out.

I don’t really know Plague Rat all that well, and I stupidly used Giant Floaty Head to destroy an Infection card, and was surprised by the massive retaliation damage. I really should have read his card again.

Speaking of not knowing characters, I still don’t understand Void Guard Mainstay. I’ve played enough with Void Guard Idealist and Dr. Medico to have a solid grounding on how they work, and some vague understanding of Void Guard Writhe, but the benefits of Mainstay’s self-inflicted destruction still elude me. Aside from the obvious ones like “does X damage when destroyed.” Headlock looks incredibly dangerous, since all damage gets redirected to Mainstay and it’s all irreducible. Maybe if Mainstay were totally immune to the damage (ala Next Evolution), but that doesn’t seem to be one of Mainstay’s things.

Headlock is indeed dangerous and should be used with care--it's most useful against targets that have serious damage reduction themselves.  I find it most useful for "tiny tanks" like Hugin and Runes of Malediction.  As for voluntarily destroying his own stuff, it's most useful either for a last hurrah or for when you have a replacement waiting in the wings.

Yeah, I can see how headlock would be extremely useful against a minion or object with high damage reduction that doesn't normally do damage itself. Not really applicable against Plague Rat, but there are cards out there that can be a huge pain. Runes of Malediction probably tops that list.

Mint, and I actually played twice to experiment.  Writhe with Caliginous Form and Infection is pretty funny, but Doctor Medico with Hippocratic Oath, Infection, and two Afflicted Frenzies in play is hilarious.  Somehow I even managed to kill Plague Rat with healing (which I reported).

Mint. Not too difficult to make the healing outstrip the damage here. If you grab Hypocratic oath and put the first infection on Sentinel Medico it seems pretty easy to keep everyone ahead of what Plague Rat is putting out. 

Wish I’d thought of the Hippocratic Oath / Infection interaction.

Easy Mint. Everyone was at full except VG Medico, who was at 20.

If you’ve got Void Belter or Sweet Rhonda out, you can destroy Headlock the same turn you play it, essentially turning it into a 3 irreducible damage one-shot with no risk to Mainstay (except possibly enduring irreducible Mano a Mano if it’s in play on the same target).

Easy Mint.

Re: Void Guard Mainstay, there are enough equipment cards that you can destroy one and get another to play soon thereafter. I'm particularly fond of using Void Belter to destroy itself when I've got buffs from Inspired Presence or something equivalent. 3+buff, then 2+buff, then 2+buff is easily 10+ points of damage in one strike, and I usually draw another Void Belter card soon thereafter.