Weekly One-shot #36: Harbringer of Melancholy

Mint with RC Wraith dying .I quite liked this one ,the drugs flipping being random means no one will get exactly the same experience

Except you can memorize the order if you go back into it...

Two tries got me nothing. I'll wait until someone figures out the secret, I think.

Here is what I did to largely shut Spite down with the characters you have.

First off, get one or two Twist Ethers on Spite asap. Focus on using the tranq dart for Wraith to reduce his damage further. Then there is a link card from Sky to reduce the first damage delt each turn by Spite you wanna keep on him. Keep Sky in tiny form as much as you can, and pump out Compulsion Canisters on Spite (or any link you can really. Compulsion is 100% the best link in her deck for this fight). If you can keep up with getting two on him a turn which should be easy in the mid game, they are PERFECT targets to return to your hand from Spites drug effect so you can place them again next turn! This will give you a consistent source of irreduceble damage that synergizes with the Twist Ethers on Spite. Use Visionary to keep Spites card plays under control. Don't worry about environment cards as they are just gonna blow up anyway. With all the damage reductions from Twists and tranq darts, you should keep his damage output minimal while dealing solid damage each turn. In case you are not familiar with this version of Spite, largely ignore putting things under the safe house. Honestly, just pretend they are not there and use them as free card plays from Spite (just make sure you remove his ongoing that heals him when his prey dies). Flipping is not a big deal at all here. Wraith will likely die at some point, but thats ok. Use her healing incap power if you need. The rest of the game should be smooth sailing. Focus Tachyons power on herself, and keep an eye on her deck count so you dont miss out on her bursts before her trash reshuffles. 

Good luck. This one takes a little time, but it's pretty easy once you get into the pace of the game. Easy mint for me, with Wraith incaped and everyone else around 15hp

Mint, My strategy was to have Wraith and Dark Visionary put Victims on the bottom of Spite's deck and then have SS Tachyon experiment them into play.  This allowed me to get ahead of his drugs so he only had 1 in play.  I found his environment destroying drug and then flipped him.... it was easy going from there on.

Awesome strat! Never thought about using SS Tachyon for that. Brilliant thinking.

Mint. I too utilized Infrared Eyepiece and Dark Visionary to get two Victims on the bottom of Spite's deck, and Experimented on him to get them into play. Then I got him flipped with only one drug in play, the one that just deals 1 Infernal damage to all hero targets. That, coupled with a lot of extra card plays via his flip side rules, made for an easy, albeit sluggish, victory.

That's an extremely clever way to go about it!  Fantastic idea!

What a strategy! Flipped him with only Mind-Phyre in play (for environment control), long slow slog, but the combination of dual Ethers and links galore finished him off. :D

But how does that strategy work?

Do you make sure he only has 2/3 cards ins afe hosue? He flipped and murdered me. I really don't know how that strategy worked so well for you.

Use Wraith's Infrared Eyepiece to put a Victim on the bottom of Spite's deck. Use Dark Visionary's Turmoil to also put a Victim on the bottom of Spite's deck. Then use Tachyon's Experiment on Spite; since you had placed two Victims on the bottom of Spite's deck, they both share a keyword and thus are put into play. Then put all Victims under the Safe House before Spite's next turn.

Technically, this puts only 3 Victims under the Safe House, and so Spite shouldn't flip, but one of the Victims here is a Good Samaritan, and playing the top card of the villain deck reveals another Good Samaritan, and if you were to play another card from the Villain deck you would play a Lost Child, putting 4 Victims under the Safe House, so you can have Spite flipped on his second turn with only one Drug in play. I didn't take that risk (there were too many cards that would've destroyed the Good Samaritan instead of putting him under the Safe House), but there were still 3 Victims under the Safe House, so I had the ability of flipping a Drug face-down (though I ended up flipping the one that was just flipped face-up).

Thanks Powerhound!

This was my main issue, I understood how the strategy works, but getting the victims out again was always a hard thing to do, and he got too many drugs. I just didn't play it right. But I'll try again soon!

Mint.

I made the mistake of flipping Spite at the beginning of his second turn. Not good, Wraith got incapped. Once I had mourned the instakill it plodded a bit, but everyone else ended in mid teens.

Sorry, misunderstood.

I remember seeing someone suggest this was a good strategy for how to lock down Spite: AoG for the unlock conditions of the Skinwalker. After beating it twice, now I'm sad I forgot the condition that you have to be in Rook City.

Whoops. :(

Relatively comfortable Mint here, with only Wraith and Dark Visionary dropping into single-digit HP scores. A pair of very well-timed Hypersonic Assaults shut down Spite when he flipped and robbed him of his damage boost and from there it was just a matter of focusing him down with Razor Ordnance, Stun Bolts and Lightspeed Barrages.

Near mint for me. I misclicked! Totally meant to Experiment on Tachyon's deck but I hit Spite instead, and revealed two Samaritans. In a panic I went straight for the undo button. That was the second round.

Later in the game I realized I wasn't as familiar with Agent of Gloom as I should be, and went to read Spite's card...I should've played those cards! I could've locked away those stupid drugs.

Oh well, Tachyon had a string of three rounds with reliable Hypersonic Assaults and Synaptic Interruptions. And that's the story of how Spite: Agent of Gloom punched himself to death.

Mint.

Similar story to others... Wraith did not go down, but SkyScraper almost did.

Managed to win with a Sucker Punch. I love it when that happens.

No harm done and no offence taken! More help is better than less!

Got my mint here. Took the tack a few others mentioned by having Tachyon science up some victims from the bottom of Spite's deck to keep him to one Drug in play.

I probably should have gone for the tactic of leaving him on his front side the entire time. Flipping caused him to brutalize the team, incapacitating Visionary and dropping Wraith and Skyscraper into single digits. Thankfully, between some lucky Hypersonic Assault reveals, the Stun Bolts, and the Smoke Bombs, my team actually survived long enough to pull it off. 

I'm actually kind of glad it was Visionary who went down. The Micro-Assembler allowed me to fish for all of Wraith's relevant cards from her deck, whereas if Wraith had gone down, I'd have had to rely on Twist the Ether for damage reduction. A fine strategy, but I wouldn't have been able to fish for it, and I find using it to cause an aggonizing slow down of the game's pace. 

I remember when playing with Powerhound, when we got him to flip, Wraith got a little too low health, and Tachyon experimented on ehrself, and accidentally was forced to Sucker Punch Wraith.... yeah..... we won the battle, but lost some dignity.

Mint with Wraith at low single digit hp. Basically ignored the victims and played the damage race. Locked down Spite'spoils damage with a twist the etherialists and dropped a compulsion canister on him almost every turn. 

Finished him off with a 20 point Lightspeed Barrage . 

Reinforced my current Spite stance that there are two ways to deal with him:

1.  Never play him.

2.  [Redacted]

Least fun fight in the game, even in this form.  Played it to get it in before the one-shot ends and it wasn't even worth it.  Don't even have Gloom Spite unlocked because I don't want to play him anyway.  He even sucks the fun out of Omnitron IV, which is one of my favorite environments.  So yeah, screw you Spite.

Well that's enough Spite hatred (although not really, he sucks and deserves all the hatred).

He just brings out the something in you.... what's that word? starts with an "S" ends with an "e", 5 letters.... man I know what it is!

But on a serious note, yeah, I agree. he's a good concept, but not that fun. Sorry this one wasn't for you. 

Spite for Spite's sake.

Spite is definitely my least favorite villain. Spite: Agent of Gloom seems like an attempt to make Spite a bit better, but still falls flat for me.

One of my issues with Agent of Gloom is the flip mechanic. It's actually impossible to flip a drug back face-down with 3 heroes! (Spite's turn 1, he flips one drug face-up, and no victims can be placed in the safe house before the end of the turn, so he finishes with 1 drug in play. Start of turn 2, if you don't flip him, then you had to have 2 or fewer victims under the safe house. He flips a drug face-up, so now there are 2 drugs. End of turn, there are at most 2 victims under the safe house, and 2 drugs in play, so you don't flip a drug face-down.)

With 4 heroes, you have exactly one chance to flip a drug face-down--have exactly 3 victims under the safe house at the end of Spite's second turn (though, unless he plays Forced Entry and thereby removes victims from under the Safe House, or you otherwise flip him, you can keep flipping drugs facedown after that point).

With 5 heroes you have a few more opportunities for drug flipping, but you still have to be fast about it.

Worse yet, however, this version of Spite only plays one card per villain turn, so at the end of the first turn you can only have at most two victims in play. Outside of hero abilities enabling for villain card plays, or environment cards that play villain cards, you can only get a third victim in play if a Good Samaritan is out, and furthermore if that Good Samaritan plays a card that doesn't destroy him first. But then you have to get that third victim under the safe house, which means the third victim has to be a Good Samaritan, who likewise plays a card that doesn't destroy him first... yeesh.

At least this version only plays one card per turn, so you are better able to control his deck, but you'll still be getting one more drug per turn until you can flip him or be lucky enough to get enough victims under the safe house fast enough to flip drugs face-down. On the other hand, even when he has five drugs in play he's still playing cards...

The safe house mechanic on his flip side is interesting, at least, though the turn that he flips is a devastating turn due to all his damage boosts unless you can prevent his damage. It feels dirty intentionally letting victims out of the safe house, though.