DST is over, so the one-shot is up an hour early!
Dark Conductor Argent Adept, Nightmist, Wraith, Dark Visionary, and ...Santa Guise infiltrate the Court of Blood to take on Challenge mode Spite: Agent of Gloom and Skinwalker Gloomweaver.
I, uh, don't fight AOG Spite much. And I did this challenge mode once. I do enjoy having Nightmist and Visionary against Skinwalker since they can just sit back and win, but getting there is going to be the "fun" part.
Very comfortable Mint.
Visionary starts with Twist the Ether (or did I drop it off the top of the deck with Dark Conductor? Whatever) and Wraith starts with two Stun Bolts, so you're well equipped for Spite's drug nonsense. With both Dark base powers in play I actually managed to flip him (after Throat Jabbing him first, of course) before he got his final drug, which was the damage reduction one, so I was able to chew threw his health unhindered. Everyone was pretty much full health except Wraith, who had to apply the bolts and deal with the nemesis bonus, so she was down to about 6.
On the other hand, I was set up to high heaven, so this was actually better than a fresh fight against Gloomweaver. Spite even let me bounce my Twist back before he died to I'm That Guy->Combat Reflexes! Honestly, Gloomweaver was a pushover at this point. Wraith was able to heal up quite a bit from Sutures in her hand and Sutures being brought back by Vernal Sonata, and I was able to blow up the Pouch immediately with Cedestic Dissonant, and of course the entire team all have environment control so that wasn't a problem either. Eventually Unhallowed Halls showed up to make things EXTREMELY stupid, but I honestly didn't need it. Ended with the Wraith at 12ish, everyone else ~20.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but fun Mint. Okay, once I got past Spite, it was fun. Dual Twists on the villain, double Stun Bolts got me through Spite, lots and lots of presents shenanigans. (I took out Spite in the middle of Guise's power, which meant it never resolved! Fascinating to note.) But yeah, being way set up against Skinweaver made him a real pushover, and manipulating his damage to hit himself harder than the heroes was just great. :D Also, I love the name of this one.
Mint.
Took two hours, and thought I was done for when I let Spite flip. (Why did I let that happen? Uhhh....dunno. Whoops? It was a rough round, but the heroes lived).
However, once Gloomweaver showed up, and he inherited double Twist the Ethers, and shortly thereafter there were two Unhallowed Halls out...it was cake.
Guise and Argent Adept fell, but Nightmist at 9HP, Wraith at 4HP and Dark Visionary at 5HP watched as Gloomweaver took gigantic chunks out of his own health, while being unable to harm the heroes at all.
I'm Probably screwed, because I turned up the "Bounce back Ongoings" and then "Powers Hurt you" drugs in order. (OW.)
Needed to step away because one of Wraith's presents was an inventory Barrage...
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe
At one point in my run, Wraith opened her presents to find two Inventory Barrages, and a Suture Self--with Unhallowed Halls out.
Sorry kid, there will be no Christmas this year.
In my game, Nightmist opened her presents to find, the Tome, the Amulet, the Necklace AND the Ring. Apparently Guise had stolen all her ancient relics and helpfully wrapped them up for her!
And somehow, I pulled out the win.
But never signed into work's Wifi.
[censored]
I claim Mint. (honestly, the must be logged in for a solo game confuses me.)
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe
I'm used to playing with H=4, so I made a colossal screw-up by allowing Spite to flip. I had Throat Jab in hand, but forgot that in H=5 he resists 3 points of damage, not just 2. Oops. Had to use a victim to Inventory Barrage + Throat Jab to survive that one, but we were in sorry shape going into Gloomweaver. AA and Wraith both got taken down by Acolytes, and when Guise and Gloomy's front side were both on their last legs I had him open Nightmist's presents, which of course contained Oblivion.
However, as others have noted, Hallowed Halls + Twist the Ether + Telekinetic Cocoon is an automatic win against the Rotting God, so I got Mint despite my stupidity.
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Yeah, there's a reason I waited until Gloomweaver came out to unwrap Wraith's presents. c.c
Mint. A LOOOOONG mint. Smoke bombs, one twisted the ether, and stun bolts helped. No flip, but ugh, all the button presses. Spite make games so looong.
Gloomweaver was a pushover.
I THOUGHT I was the the last Scion but it's actually .....
...yeah. I got the 2 toxic / discard 5 cards drug first off, and if I'd had basically any other drug, it would have been manageable. Or if I'd opened my presents on Guise in the opposite order, I wouldn't have ended up being prevented from using the power off I Can Do That Too, and I could have started flipping drugs back. Or if I hadn't played Mistbound round 2, I could have started flipping drugs back. Or if Unhallowed Halls had just come out one round later, I wouldn't have been completely annihilated when he flipped. After over an hour, I'm sitting here with Spite having lost all of 16 HP.
At least I know which drugs come out in which order next time. But this is why I don't play Spite. He is not fun in any of his forms.
Minty goodness, though it was a long slog for me. Due to holding pattern/plinking away at Spite, all heroes were up with double digits at the end.
Flipped Mindfyre first (god I love that so much more than any other drug) which helped make it just a fight between the Heroes and Spite. Couldn't wrangle his deck enough to outpace the drugs with victims so ended up flipping him with 4 drugs up which slowed things down.
Derped hard for a few rounds and forgot that its Wrest the Mind that can't be played on bosses while Twist the Ether can. After two of those and double stun bolts, his defeat was inevitable if slow as we were taking 0 damage. Took a few turns to build up extra ongoings/equipments for bouncing and managed to get healing from AA going to bring everyone up while Wraith plinked away with stun bolts.
Skinwalker Gloomweaver came out to fully set up heroes and quickly became Rotting God Gloomweaver. He quickly ate himself to death.
Note to those having difficulties: Twist the Ether + Unhallowed Halls is awesome. Just change all incoming hero damage to Radiant and it gets nulled. Set all villain self damage to infernal and its increased for free!
For the record, I didn't give up, and I eventually got the Mint after about two more hours of play.
Spite was the real problem. As I mentioned before, my strategy didn't work out and he got away from me, flipping with all five drugs out and five victims under the safe house. At the end of his reign of destruction that round, Wraith and Santa Guise were toast and Dark Conductor was sub-5 HP, with Nightmist in the teens and Visionary at 9. But Spite didn't realize what he was dealing with against me and my girl Nightmist.
Round 1 post-flip, I got everybody out of the Safe House, had Nightmist and Visionary play out more Ongoings, and used AA's equipment/ongoings as the sacrificial lambs to Spite's "put stuff back in your hand" drug.
From then on, every round went something like this:
- Potential Sidekick helps us stay flush with cards.
- Spite whiffs on his AOE damage due to 2x Twist the Ether.
- Spite punches a Decoy Projection, killing it every other round.
- DCAA lets someone play an Ongoing to replace one that Spite forced back into hand.
- Nightmist triggers Lost Child and redirects Spite's damage back to himself. 4 + 1 + two Twist the Ethers = 7 - 3 = 4 damage to Spite. (I occasionally had to adjust this down with Twist the Ether to avoid triggering Collateral Damage from him hitting himself.)
- Nightmist either chips away at Spite or plays out more Ongoings/Equipment, depending on the situation, then heals
- Wraith lets Visionary play an Ongoing or Decoy Projection.
- Guise's incap power typically did nothing, though I occasionally used it to have Nightmist discard and draw to help cycle her deck.
- The environment plays one card and doesn't do much. Bonus if they played Unhallowed Halls, it allowed me to keep the Decoy projection out for an extra round by using TTE to make Spite's damage Radiant.
In the course of running this cycle over and over and over, Nightmist stayed at near full health while whittling Spite down. Visionary took a total of 1 damage over the course of slowly bleeding Spite down from the mid-70s to dead, and that was only because she spied a double Feast of Flesh on top of the environment deck and we couldn't prevent the environment from playing two cards that turn.
Nightmist eventually took out Spite, and Gloomweaver came out. Within one round, Visionary was down to 2, so she parked in her Demoralization / Cocoon combo and never left. Nightmist soaked the irreducible damage pin early and used its damage to help take out Profane Zealots before the environment dropped Unhallowed Halls. At that point, Nightmist went into Mist Form and I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, after lots of skipped incapacitated abilities, skipped turns, and Twist the Ether prompts, Gloomweaver finally succumbed to the onslaught of Relict Dorotya and the angry mobs.
After he flipped, it was a complete joke; he couldn't heal and was doing 16 Infernal to himself every round, on top of the environment hitting him, and Nightmist was able to do two separate rounds of "destroy Mist Form, play Heedless Lash and hit Gloomweaver twice, have Wraith's incap play another Mist Form".
For me, I kept Spite on his front side by not saving any victims. By the time I defeated him, Wraith and AA had no cards in their decks. I then used throat-jab every turn on Gloomweaver and Mistbound on the first 3 turns (got one back thanks to AA), so Gloomweaver did nothing and played nothing. And with the Twist the Ethers, he only dealt damage to what I wanted him to hurt.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Mint. I aimed to flip Spite. When it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to avoid all the drugs, I ditched that strategy and focused on whittling. Locked Spite out of dealing damage, but man does he take a long time to whittle down. Finally killed him, and then chewed through Gloomy in no time flat.
Highlights:
X-treeeeeeeme Guise the Barbarian, using an Infra-Red Eyepiece to make a Blatant Reference
Spite Twisting (the Ether) in the wind
Nightmist Twisting Radiantly to avoid hurting her allies as she blasted Gloomy into Oblivion.
Also, I'm getting coal for Christmas, because it turns out you can totally tell what your presents are when there are 0 cards left in your deck.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
I never could get the Unhallowed Halls trick to work because Myndphyre kept throwing the environment at me. :p
But I finished off Spite with Guise using Selling Out to play Barbarian, Reference, and Let Me See That to "borrow" Wraith's Targeting Computer... then Wraith went ahead and dropped Spite, so we went back to the Villain turn and Guise got to keep shooting for another round!
I couldn't pull it off for Spite, but when Gloomweaver dropped I used Visionary and Argent Adept to rapid-fire through the environment deck until I reached an Unhallowed Halls. (In Gloomy's first turn, AA checked the top card of the deck, then Visionary Prophetic'd two cards to the bottom of the deck and used her power to drop a third. On Gloomy's second turn, I found an Unhallowed Halls).
I have to say, Twist the Ether + Unhallowed Halls is a new trick I will have to remember for any villain that doesn't have heavy Ongoing/Environment destruction. It is pretty much total devastation. Doubly so for Gloomy, because you can flip him to hit his own people for extra damage thanks to the Infernal bonus, and then to Radiant to ignore damage to the heroes.
Near Mint, because the first game I got 616 first. I should have kept it, because the DR was arguably worse. Also I flipped him, which was not a great plan, as he almost wiped us. Fortunately, AA going full healing mode let me bring us from ~5 each (and him at 1) to 14+ each, with him at full.
McBehrer is the sole winner of this game... And McBehrer, I would step carefully should you find your way down dark alleys. More than one vote said simply, "McBehrer must die."
McBehrer confirmed to be Biomancer!
-- Trajector
Easy Mint. I tried to use Argent Adept to pull out victims quickly and keep the drugs under control, but it didn't work out. Soon, he had all his drugs out, but it didn't matter. I used the easy combo of Smoke Bombs and put Nightmist in Mist Form. A few rounds later, everyone except Nightmist was at the same hit points making everyone immune to villain damage for the rest of the game. Dark Visionary stacked the environment deck to prevent environment damage with a few Mega Computers until I pulled out Mass Levitation. After that the heroes were literally invincible and it was only a matter of time and trying to find ways to speed up the damage production.
Santa Guise is less of a Santa and more of a Jokey Smurf. It's far too easy to get cards played out that ruin your setup, like Brain Burn, Inventory Barrage and in my case, Decoy Projection. I popped a Decoy Projection accidentally which opened me up to damage for a round. I quickly killed the projection myself and reset everyone's hit points to match to get back into invincible status. After that, I stopped using his power because Argent Adept and Guise were the only ones to safely use his ability and it wasn't worth it.
Another note to those having difficulties: I had forgotten that in this particular challenge mode, ongoings attached to Spite will stay in play when he leaves and be automatically attached to Gloomweaver. So I could've won much faster if I had played my 2nd Twist the Ether on Spite early, rather than holding onto it for Gloomweaver.
Time for some scientific action!
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Good. Would have been Mint if I had gotten around to it on time. Nice to know that with double Twist the Ethers you only have to pick the damage type once and not twice! Still a pain to go through for every instance of damage, though.