Weekly One-Shot #229: May The 4th Be With You

The 4th was assuredly NOT with me. XD Took me three tries.

This is the most I've been determined to actually defeat Ambuscade, and it was actually a lot of fun losing to him for once. The main sticking point for me was forgetting that Charged Attacks would proc off of Luminary's targets being destroyed. That was... a lot of damage.

I ALMOST forgot about that. I did forget that All According to Plan boosts ALL Device damage.

That said, I actually had it well in hand, even if health was a little low.

Ambuscade was at 38, but I was going to wreck him the coming hero turn.

Which didn't happen, because of two "hurt everyone" traps killing everyone except for Knyfe, leaving her at 2 and him going invisible.

Ambuscade's "Charged Attacks" card is an evil card.

That is all.

Yeah, and I never noticed that "Charged Attacks" deals *each* target 2 damage, *including* Ambuscade's own devices (or Luminary's devices as TakeWalker mentioned). On my first practice game that triggered a cascade that was just ugly. At the beginning of Ambuscade's turn, when he had several low-hit-point devices out, I thought the heroes were doing okay. After "Charged Attacks" fired off about a half-dozen times on Ambuscade's turn and did about 20 points of damage to every hero target, the heroes were barely standing, saying "what was THAT!?!?!?!?". I've never had so much trouble with that card before.

I am rethinking things and maybe Luminary shouldn't play so many devices next time.

Ambuscade's Charged Attacks is, in general, a card that you need to remove from the board as soon as is practical. Although, Traps spinning through Ambuscades deck are hyper speed can make it difficult to keep it from just coming back.
*Shudders in recollection of Ultimate Ambuscade on the kitchen table.* Empty Villain deck and Villain trash simoutaneously is a rare thing.

Yeah. In all three of my games, I saw Charged Attacks a lot, and it was far more of a danger than any of the Traps. (Though they could set it off if Luminary had any Devices out...) Plus, it showed up rather frequently while ongoing destruction was rather less than frequent and often carried the threat of setting off both Sonic Mines with Omnitron's card. At least that one lets you drop the ongoing first!

My physical copy of the Ambuscade deck had a second copy of “Charged Attacks” in it. Can you imagine...

Funny, based on several practice games of this one-shot, my computer's deck for Ambuscade has about 8 copies of "Charged Attacks" in it, based on how often it seems to come out... ;-)

But hopefully only one at a time!

Mint after a harrowing game at 3/3/4/0.

Spent four or so rounds of setup in a pretty decent condition, although having to deal with multiple Reactive Platings and Sonic Mines, but there was a lot of Environment and Ongoing destruction available. I was in the midst of trying to boost KNYFE and Mainstay to lay the beatdown, with Omnitron-U having Temporal Shielding to block Sonic damage, when the worst thing happened while Car Chase was active.

Thanks to the Challenge rules, Ambuscade managed to chain together all of his Trap and additional card plays to shred everyone down to around 6-7 health, rekit all his devices, and have Omnitron-U get hit by a truck. Charged Attacks only appeared once and never stayed to do damage.

With the survivors hovering around 5 health over the next few turns, I was finally able to pull off damaging combos with KNYFE and Maintsay thanks to setup from Omintron-U's incap, and MVP Luminary had exactly 24 cards in her trash to power an Orbital Death Laser vs a 23 HP Ambuscade to finish the game.

All According To Plan can be a powerful card in this setup, if you know how to properly play around Ambuscade's devices (only Sonic Mine, Reactive Plating and Automated Turret deal their own damage), but it did become a libialty I removed in the last round. Between activating various Devices or using a hefty Empowered Attack, Luminary proved her worth against Device heavy villains, and triggering combos for the team off of card destruction.

Reminds me of when I first got Ambuscade for the tabletop.

He turned invisible something like 10 turns in a row.

Mint, but it was hair-raising. I don't entirely *like* Challenge Mode Ambuscade, but he certainly makes a game exciting. Will this be the round that he drops a handgun and plinks one person, or the round where everyone takes 15 damage and he turns invisible and plays three devices?

I only got one really nasty card chain this time around, and I was able to take out Charged Attacks the one time it came out. But the randomness on this one is going to make Mints hard to get. 

Gotta love it when you die on Ambuscade's third turn.  Can I make it happen on his second turn instead?

I can confirm that I once died on Challenge Mode Ambuscade's second turn, although not in this one-shot. It's theoretically possible to die on his first turn, although that would take just the most incredibly bad luck.

Ugh. Had to take a break after my fourth attempt resulted in him getting his cloaking device every round for about four rounds in a row. Did learn something new on the sixth attempt though: Omnitron-U's ability will go off twice if you use his power to play Singularity.

Took me four tries to win. Lots of Run and Gun and Armed and Dangerous plays getting his cards out, combining with Personal Cloaking Device causing me to waste rounds just tanking damage. Reactive Plating was always a nuisance, especially when multiple were in play. Charged Attack got me once, starting (I think) with him killing one of my devices, leading to a looong chain of devices dying and procing it again and again, and just like that, my team was wiped.

My most frustrating failure was my second try. I had a good start, until the environment played Bottom of the 9th. Then Ambuscade played his Personal Cloaking Device two rounds in a row. I didn't have enough time to kill him, so the environment ended my game with Ambuscade at 6 HP and all of my team around 20 HP each. I really don't like cards that end the game.

My victory was nothing notable, just the absence of terrible combinations.

Turn three mint at 17/17/20/19. Great KNYFE setup, and Omnitron had the Flechettes when Charged attacks came up. He didn't play any traps or disappear.

*Shrug*

Same.

Second game started out with him doing a ton of damage, then me getting him to under 10, then him killing everyone except KNYFE at 1 hp and going invisible.

then my tablet flew across the room.