This had got to be winnable

This has got to be winnable ... please show me how.

Visionary, Absolute Zero, Ra, and Haka (in that order) vs The Chairman in Rook City

Had this come up on random. Tried it four times before I ran out of time. Only got The Chairman to flip once. Twice I used Brain Burn to bury most of the Thugs back in the deck, but it was too little too late in both cases. Yes, I tried using Savage Mana to grab Villain targets, but lost so many hit points setting it up that I was just about dead before I got more than a couple of them. I got Twist the Ether on The Operative a couple of times, but too many other things went wrong for it to matter much.

I tried just focusing on The Operative, since I had some pretty consistent damage dealing, but she healed most of the damage I did. I tried just keeping up with the underbosses and thugs, but fell behind and then got hit with a prison break anyway. I tried doing everything I could to avoid playing extra villain cards, but fell behind because of not being able to play hero cards a lot (Visionary and AZ couldn't take out the necessary Thug w/ their base power), and got punished by leaving the relevant environment card in play (Scum & Villainy, maybe?).

Ugh.

Rook City is what will make that rough as any other environment you might do ok with. I'll try that scenario out myself in a bit. 

On paper, it looks fantastic. Visionary brings to the table her TtE on AZ to grant any desired effect at a given time, and protects against the environment with her Mass Levitation. Ra is the heavy hitter, and Haka shuts down the grave, deals massave rounds of damage and nulls it with Ground Pound.

I'll definitely have to try this when I get home.

Keys are going to be Savage Mana, Flame Barrier, and likely Null-Point (mixed with TtE for tanking) in that order.

I managed to win the scenario.   Got an early Brain Burn and some timely Ground Pounds.   The scariest part was getting rid of the two blighted streets but with two in play they had to go.    Once I got the Operative Incapped I could manipulate the villain deck with suggestions for a couple turns .  Sub Zero Atmosphere also meant only the one shots were torublesome as well. Rook City is just rough. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/98lzttixweurh6a/photo%20may%2005%2C%203%2035%2049%20pm.png?dl=0

I just managed to beat it with a practically perfect opening (Rook city revealing both Tremata and Taurus, Visionary's opening hand have both Twist the Ethers, No savage mana, like I said, practically perfect) 

A prison Break/all nearly got me, but haka did two rounds of ground pound and Ra pulled out two Staff boosted Infernos

AZ gets MVP for Thermal/TtE shenanigans against a TtE Operative. (he was healing 10-20 points of damage a turn. Including a 24 point heal on the second to last turn to max out his HP after KOing the Chairman and leaving the Operative with 2 HP so that Haka could get the win.)  

never got Mass lev, TK Cocoon, or Savage mana going.

Final HP: Vis 1 Ra 7 AZ 29 Haka 6. The ground pounds saved me, otherwise AZ would have been trying to fight alone without the benefit of ridiculous level healing. 

Wrest on the thugs is Golden, better on advanced.

Twist on Operative is amazing for AZ heal tanking, and Flame Barrier +1 takes care of hitmen.

Savage Mana of course is incredible, suggestion too.

The worst is Scum and Villainy playing Rook City is Mine.  Once on the app it did that playing another Scum and Villainy which played another Rook City is Mine.

At that point he really did own the city.

The problem is that Mass Levitation rarely helps against Rook City since Rook City itself rarely damages the players (except for the falling statues and gunmen).  Most of the time, Rook City is just beefing up the villain damage (blighted streets) or making you play more Villain deck cards.  Even for Scum and Villainy, the damage source is the Villain, so Mass Levitation does nothing.  

Twist the Ether on Absolute Zero though is quite nasty.  Or better yet, put it on The Operative and kill her minions with zero guilt as all the damage goes to Absolute Zero and heals him, keeping him as the highest HP hero.

And all the other pieces add up just fine.  AZ, Ra, and Haka have enough damage to control the villain targets.  And once the Chairman flips, Ground Pound can buy you a full turn of free damage against retaliations.

I beat it first try, but I had a fantastic starting hand.

Chairman's opening:  Prison Break & Deputy

Amongst my weapondry:  Brain Burn, Prophetic Vision, Precognition, Savage Mana, Taiaha...

I Brain Burned first thing, and then had Haka eat all the underbosses.  Then I puttered around for a while setting up with Twist the Ethers on the Chairman & Operative, Imbued Fire, Flesh of the Sun God, etc.  Then Haka of Battle + Savage Mana to drop the Operative almost to dead and flip the Chairman, and pound until dead.

A first turn Brain Burn really feels like cheating against the Chairman.

Thanks all.

So what if you don't get any of the good stuff early? What if you have no Twist the Ether, Brain Burn, or Savage Mana in the early rounds?

Out of those cards I only got a Brain Burn and that wasn't until the first card draw so it was played on the second round.   Mostly I would say try to mitigate the environment as much as possible.   Sub Zero Atmosphere can also help since it prevents the thugs from immediately coming out.  

Subzero Atmosphere tip noted.

If I 'only' got a Brain Burn on 'the first draw', I'd not be too worried about the rest of the game.

It certainly slowed down the game so I could some setup done but I barely won.   Suggestions , Ground Pound, and Sub Zero Atmosphere were what allowed me to eek out win.  Especially when I could put gunman on top of the deck and have no fear of damage.  

A note on Sub-Zero Atmosphere, The Operative has an end of turn action, which brings Underbosses from the deck into play. This will instead be start of turn, so Underbosses put into play this way will still act, infact this allows The Muscle and Broker to act immediately, rather than waiting a turn.

Yeah sorry I should have noted that I didn't get Sub Zero Atmosphere into play until after the Operative was down.  

So ... imagine you don't get Twist the Ether, Brain Burn, or Savage Mana in the first three rounds. Chances of winning?

That depends.  Did you draw Rampage, Taiaha, Imbued Fire and Coolant Blast?

Is your point that one would do as much damage as they can to the underbosses and thugs until the other cards are drawn? Or would you focus on The Operative first? Would you try to minimize the number of villan card plays at the risk of leaving out dangerous villain and environment targets, or accept that the villain is going to get accelerated? Or is there some other strategy I'm missing?

Don't mean to unnecessarily harp on about this. I'm looking forward to trying again when I have some time.

To me by the second round I was trying to focus damage on the Operative as much as possible and mostly destroyed environment cards when I could discard to Toxic Sludge.  At one point I also did destroy Twisting Back Alley wiht it's alternate condition.  Outside of being Incapped this team has no way of destroying environment cards.  

My point was (more or less, and admittedly cryptic) that if you don't draw the particularly strong cards, then you just play with the cards you have until you draw the strong cards or win without them.

I realize that we've been rather unhelpful when it comes to strategies (in part, I think, because there no single 'right' way to beat the Chairman), but the post I was replying to was merely asking about likelyhood of winning, rather than how it affects your strategy, which struck me as a rather pointless hypothetical.  

What I'm wondering is if the scenario is winnable if you don't have one or more of some key cards early. I take it you think it is. You're probably right, but I've so far failed to prove it for myself. Admittedly, only four fails, but I've always  found The Chairman pretty frustrating and was trying to garner some hope before trying again.

You can do it!

AAARGGGHHHH!

Two more loses. On one of them I started with a first turn brain burn and STILL couldn't find a way to win. On the other I used Savage Mana to grab most of the underbosses and thugs, then unleashed them to take out the Operative. Visionary was in a coccoon and AZ was racking up hit points, but I still couldn't keep my team alive.

I did it.  I beat the Chairman without ever using Brain Burn, Twist the Ether, or Savage Mana (although I had both TtE and Savage Mana in my opening hands).

I was lucky enough to have a forgiving start (Prison Break + the Fence), Rampage when I needed it, and Rook City was fairly forgiving, but it was a close game nonetheless.  AZ bit it, and the others all reached 1 health (although Ra actually ended with 4 health thanks to his Staff).

I actually killed the Chairman first, with a Haka of Battle (nobody could possibly survive the retaliation damage, so I had to deal 24 damage in one shot), and killed the Operative with zero cards left in the villain deck.

I took quite a bit of damage keeping the doctor and the detective alive, but let me tell you - it was worth it.

It was actually rather amusing though, the last turn of the game ended with two Blighted Streets and two Toxic Sludge in play - both usually undesirable cards (although Sludge can be okay), but neither of them affect you in the slightest when everybody's at 1 hp.

Hmmm .... Keeping Tremata and Taurus in play. Interesting tactic!

That’s something I really like about Rook City: for all its awfulness, it’s one of the few environments with cards that explicitly help out the heroes. It’s nice to take advantage of them when you can!

FINALLY won this. 

A relativley early Twist the Ether on The Operative allowed Absolute Zero to tank and gave me time to find Savage Mana and start eating the Thugs. I meant to take out The Operative before putting a third Underboss in the trash, but Rook City jumped the gun on me. I eventually unloaded Savage Mana, combined with a Haka of Battle, to one-shot The Chairman and in the process was able to funnel half of The Operative's retaliatory attacks as fire on Absolute Zero through the Isothermic Transducer, turning them into attacks on The Operative.

Even so, the next villain turn  lead to three underbosses coming out and wiped out everyone but Absolute Zero.

By that time, though, Absolute Zero had a whole bunch of cards in play and it a Hoarfire and his base power via Isothermic Transducer was enough to finish The Operative.

I think part of why I've had trouble with this scenario is that when playing the video game version, I get impatient with doing things like seeing how many cards are left in a deck or exactly which cards are in a trash pile. I got surprised a number of times by which cards were coming up to play or when a trash was shuffled back in to a deck.

Huzzah! I might not have had any comments to help you but I have been watching silently from the sidelines, well done Andy!

Two more losses on this before getting another win. This time I discovered the job of having a 2 HP Visionary go into the coccoon and then tank all the damage that would have gone to Tremata or Taurus. I also enjoyed using a Rampage to take out about ten underbosses and thugs while using Twist the Ether on The Operative to alternately beef up Absolute Zero or hit AZ w/ fire and have it redirected back to The Operative, THEN using Savage Mana to one-shot The Chairman after pulling the same Twist The Ether/Absolute Zero shenanigans. I took The Chairman and The Operative from full health to zero and 4 HP in one round, putting The Chairman under Savage Mana.

So, yeah, with the right card draws I know how to win this now, but I'm still not particularly satisfied. I still haven't figured out how to win this w/out Savage Mana _and_ Twist the Ether.