Weekly One-Shot # 65: Training Day

Hey, an easy win to make up for last week's travesty. I can dig it.

My advice is don't lose. I compound this by saying: "It's really difficult to lose."

I dunno about "really difficult".  With the worst possible draw, you could lose on turn 4 (assuming his top 3 cards are relics).  Not much you can do about that.  To be fair, I had a RELATIVELY easy Mint.  First card being Profane Zealot had me a little worried, and the second Zealot coming out a few turns later after an Entry Point that I wouldn't be able to get rid off kept me worried.  Only relic I saw was the Pouch of Bones, which was annoying due to the healing, but I was still able to burn him down, mostly thanks to Augmented Ally on Legacy, which resulted in Motivational Charge and Atomic Glare every turn.

Edit: I meant Cursed Acolytes, not Profane Zealots (though they did come out later).

next evolution continues to impress, just get legacy to tank the early turns if you have it and remove cursed acolytes on sight. breezy mint

even without it, chances are you can get one of the naturalist or scholar to tank for a bit.

Mint - All Heroes with 20+ HP. Started with Pouch of Bones and got a little nervous when the Drum came out. Every play could have met flip conditions, which would have made things harder. However, never saw the 3rd relic.

Oh yeah, I missed that this was a random start. I have a feeling it won't matter. Got Vast Following into a Cursed Acolyte the first round, nuked everything with External Combustion, Tome came out and then I made a point of ignoring the crap out of it while beating Gloomweaver's face in. Sneaky sneaky, saddling us with a team with no environment destruction! Easy Mint.

It's funny how certain Challenge modes can actually make villains easier. Relics are indestructible? Okay, great, that just means I don't have to waste time not beating on Gloomweaver to beat on them instead!

Comfortable Mint here as well, though the Scholar did go down thanks to the WORST timed Alchemical Redirection (blind play from the top of his deck) the turn before Gloomy got disintegrated. Environment then plays an Entry Point, and of course Gloomy follows that up with a... wait for it... Cursed Acolyte!

So... Cursed Acolyte + Entry Point + 9 hero targets in play = one thoroughly incapacitated Scholar!

Easy Mint for me after taking 2 weeks off from weekly one shots. Also, my first game in challege mode in the App.... though I never actually saw a relic.

I can see how this can be tough, I was worried it was going to be Ultimate, but thank Gloomweaver, it was only Challenge. 

I was lucky to get a relic on his last turn.

Also an early frost Chamber took care of those pesky zombies.

And (un)fortunately I had no Profane Zealots. I hate those guys!!!

Mint.

Never saw a relic, either. It was a quick one....mostly because Naturalist started with 3 Predator's Eyes.

All heroes on the 20s, except Legacy who ended with 18HP. (She had a Crimson Pin for much of the game).

Well, that was quite possible the nastiest Gloomweaver game I've ever encountered.

1st card, Pouch of bones. 

1st environment, Training Simulator. Further environments were: Legacy's Landing pad, Front Desk, Cryo Chamber, Mission Control, then 2 entry points. 

It just kept getting worse- cursed acolyte, profane acolyte, Chosen acolyte, Cursed Acolyte... and then as soon as I could cover up the training simulator, I got a vast following that brought back EVERY SINGLE CULTIST. with two entry points. 

Every hero took 5/5 (cursed acolyte), 5/5 (cursed acolyte), and then more from the zombie and chosen acolyte. There were no survivors.

It was a totally legit win on Gloomy's part. I got complacent!  Time to try again!

Proof that Gloomy can be nasty!

Hey, the start could still have been worse. In a 5 hero game, having Gloomy pull out Strength of the Grave as his opening card is freaking painful!

I usually try to play some practice rounds before every one-shot, just to get a feel for the combinations/flow.  How do you turn on "Challenge Mode" on the iPhone app?  There's not a clickbox (like there is for Advanced versions of villains), and clicking the "Classic/Team" toggle just toggles between, well, Classic and Team modes?  

My start was horrible, but I still won.  First round was Cursed Acolyte, second was Vast Following plus Cursed Acolyte (for 2 Acolytes).  Third was Vast Following and Profane Zealot (and two Cursed Acolytes).  By then Bunker, Captain Cosmic, and the Naturalist were down.  Legacy had 1 hp and Scholar had 5.  But Legacy had Motivational Charge and Scholar had Solid to Liquid and Mortal Form to Energy.  From there, I carefully tokk out all targets every turn and got both of them healed back up. 

For the "randomized start" challenges, is *everything* (hero cards in hand as well as villain draws) randomized, or do the heroes start with the same cards everytime, and it's just the random seed that changes?

Mint.  After playing a few practice matches, and seeing the potential for shenanigans, the indestructible-relics thing wasn't as daunting a task as it seemed.  Started out with a Cursed Acolyte, which hurt a little, but not too many problems after that.  Young Legacy was the star -- once she had the Legacy Ring/Motivational Charge/Next Evolution/Lead From the Front in play, and with a helpful Augmented Ally on her from CC, she was healing everybody, eliminating damage from the relics, and zapping Gloomy or whichever villain target was the most annoying.  

This was another one of those "gee, I discovered some neat combinations" games -- this was the first game I've ever had where PW CC really came into his own.  The Sable Pin (destroy one of your cards at the end of your turn, or Gloomy deals you damage) and Drum of Despair (destroy/discard cards or Gloomy deals you damage) both work really well with PW CC's base power, particularly with Destructive Response in play.   Add an Unflagging Animation, and discarding cards actually became a *good* thing for him, because it allowed him to put them in the trash to be played later using Unflagging Anmation, while using his base power to shuffle others back into the deck.  He was churning through his deck, plinking damage at Gloomy (or activating Dynamic Syphons and Vitality Conduits), and replacing destroyed constructs with more useful ones at a ferocious clip.  Assuming you can get Unflagging Animation into play, PW CC really becomes a great hero to use against those villains who like to force discards or force destroy cards.

Mint. I got a really nice seed, started with Inspiring Presence and Cosmic Weapon, eventually used both a Take Down and Adhesive Foam Grenade, and neither the enivorment nor Gloomweaver got to play anything actually good. I basically got hit by an unaugmented Cursed Acolyte twice and that was it. He got out a decent amount of dudes on his last turn but at that point I could burn him out through the Profane Acolyte barrier.

This team can really put out the damage but I expected at least one bad beat story like the one above. Freedom Tower is a ticking time bomb without any enviroment destruction and all this team has for environment control is the foam grenades and Hyperactive Senses.

Mint in five rounds despite the fact that Gloomweaver opened with the drum. We were able to dodge the drum damage 3 out of 4 rounds because Legacy opened with double Bolster Allies, and sometimes we had disposable ongoings. After that, he whiffed on a Vast Following into a Chosen Disciple, then two Pins, then a Cursed Acolyte to finish up. 

PW CC started with a Cosmic Weapon and put it on himself, used it every turn, and smacked Gloomy with a Potent Disruption on the final round.

Naturalist opened AOE 2 damage to wipe 3 zombies, then went Croc and did a minimum of 7 damage to Gloomy per round the rest of the way.

Bunker opened Grenade Launcher and pinged stuff.

Legacy, as I said, started with two Bolster Allies in hand. She played Inspiring Presence round 1 and Bolster Allies the next two to keep our cards up, all while zapping Gloomy.

Scholar opened with Mortal Form to Energy and 2x Transmutive Recovery, so that was nice. 

Mint.  Saw the Zealot, and then the Acolyote, and a few Voodoo Pins, but no relics and no problems.  One late game Entry Point, and lots of beats from the heroes.

This team/environment combo worked so well that I tried it on the Spite/Skinwalker Gloomy Challenge Mode combo.  Wiped the floor with them.  The lack of environment destruction didn't matter much against Spite, who destroyed all of the environment cards right after they came out.  All heroes above 20 HP except CC, who was taking fairly steady damage from Unflagging Animation. 

I usually don't play practice games as I like to just jump in and see how I do, but I made an exception since I had never played a single Challenge game and had not played Gloomy in quite a while.
His first card was Strength of the Grave hitting everyone for 8 damage and making it significantly harder to clear the zombies without some set up.
The first environment card was Training Simulator. At the Environment's 4th turn I had 2 Entry Points in play and the Villain threw out a Cursed Acolyte. Luckily I had already killed the Profane Zealot from the last round.
Chosen Disciple and Drums of Despair also showed up before I managed to finish him off.

I still beat him first try without him flipping, but it wasn't the cakewalk everyone else claims to have had.

Now to go do the actual One-Shot...

And I just started my attempt at the actual challenge and his first card was Bag of Bones...

Fun start! Were the next two cards the other relics? 

That was my start too. Not nearly as bad as strength of the grave.

Easy mint, never saw any of the relics. Only real hickup was a Strength of the Grave that stuck around a couple turns before I got Naturalist into Gazelle form (I've taken for granted how easy it is to play those cards with Hunted). And even if the relics had come out, I had Lead from the Front and Next Evolution in play.

Honestly, I think I did more damage to myself with Proverbs and Axiums than Gloomy and his goons did, even with the Entry Points out.

Playing on my iPad got me strength of the grave first turn. Still won

Super easy mint here. Got both Followings first turn, followed by Chosen Disciple. One round he didn't play, thanks to Take Down. Then an Indigo and a Crimson Pin, and finally the book; he was dead before the next turn.

I had a close game due to quite a few misplays on my part -- in the first round I did CC and Naturalist's turns before looking at Bunker's hand (External Combustion), so I missed damage on Gloomy by having them both focus on the T1 Cursed Acolyte. Then, during the second round I had CC use the wrong power (base power rather than Energy Weapon) when Gloomy had nothing to break Constructs with, and skipped Naturalist's attack due to thinking the match was on Ultimate rather than Challenge. At the top of the third round Gloomy played the Drum, to which I responded with a Heroic Interception ... and then had everyone discard/destroy anyway because apparently my short-term memory is shot. When it got to Legacy, I went "oh, yeah ... well, I don't want to lose the Mint by rewinding so I may as well shred the Interception" -- big mistake, since the next card in Gloomweaver's deck was a Vast Following that brought back the Cursed Acolyte AND played the Grimoire, putting half the team in single-digit health.

Fortunately, I had been going all-out with damage after remembering that he was vulnerable to melee, and Scholar had drawn an Offensive Transmutation at the end of his third turn. 9 cards' worth of Omni-cannon shots and an 8-card Turn Loose > Channel combo put Gloomy down for the count.