Impossible combinations?

Are there any teams that straight up cannot defeat a given villain? I know about ones like Wraith, Legacy and Parse against the Ennead if Shu comes out, or the shenanigans with the Final Wasteland eating cards needed to win like Underbosses or Citizens. But are there three-person teams who, for instance, simply cannot reliably come up with enough damage to keep Akash'Bhuta's limbs at bay? Or can't withstand the amount of damage the Chairman's deck puts out?

I would hazard that for any combination of heroes, villain, & environment there is an ordering of decks such that the heroes can win. Perhaps, there may also be an ordering of decks such that the heroes cannot win, though I'm not so sure about that.

Can't?  I would say no.  Given every deck was perfectly stacked, I would say that any combination of 3-5 heroes can beat any villain.  (Even Legacy, Parse, & Wraith vs the Ennead is winnable if Shu comes out last and you are very, very lucky)

That said, there are some combinations that require absurd amounts of luck.  The Play This! thread recently had trouble with AZ, AA, and Bunker vs Advanced Matriarch in Rook City.  I retain my belief that the game is solvable (although I haven't proved it yet), but you're unlikely to see a victory in a normal game.

On advanced I'm not sure every three to five hero combination can beat every villain but on normal they should be able to.    

I recall Christopher saying, a long time ago, that any combination of heroes should be able to beat any villain (on Advanced as well, I think he said). Whether or not that still holds true today, several expansions later, I suppose people will have to test ;).

I feel pretty confident that most three hero teams will not be beating advanced Infinitor without extremely favorable circumstances.

I am pretty sure he didn't say on Advanced...

I second this. Advanced modes are officially "unbalanced"

It's true, Christopher said any hero combination can beat any villain on advanced. Though some will require more luck than others.

I've won with Legacy, Parse, Wraith vs. Shu.  Danger sense and environment damage did the trick.

Try that trio in Megaolopis against Shu.

I think Advanced Infinitor is the most likely possibility to create an unwinnable game, maybe in Rook City. Analyzing that would be a very interesting way to spend an afternoon! But it would be extremely hard to prove the game unwinnable without a computer trying all possible sequences of card plays.

EDIT - Or, yah, Advanced Shu in Megalopolis against heroes that can't harm Shu. How many turns is the minimum before Shu comes out?

I 'beat' Advanced Ennead here with Legacy, Parse, and Wraith.  It's possible, although improbable.  And all other characters can deal non-projectile non-melee damage.  (Well, Setback can't except to himself, but he can redirect villain damage, which works just as well)

I just did the math for the AZ, AA, Bunker vs Matriarch matchup mentioned above, and it's easy.

Round one:
Horrid Cacophony x2, Impale, Syncophated Onslaught (Bunker & AZ), Flak Cannon [4], Toxic Sludge [5].  Matriarch at 61.

Round two:
Darken the Skies x2, ([3] from first Impale), Impale, Xu's Bell, (onslaught Bunker & AZ, [1]), Grenade Launcher (cannon [4]), Second Toxic Sludge [10].  Matriarch at 43.

Round three:

Carrion Fields x2, ([6] from Impales), Cold Snap, <some ongoing or equipment>, (onslaught Bunker & AZ, [1], Turret Mode [9], Dr. Tremane ([10] from sludge).  Matriarch at 17.

Round four: Darken the Skies, Hugin (destroy AA's extra card), [8] from AZ's start of turn, [1] from AA, [9] from Bunker.  Matriarch is at -1.


And I didn't even bother to try complicated shenanigans with AA.

Round four is the sweet spot for the Matriarch.  If you deal 70 damage to her before round 5, then (as demonstrated) you can basically ignore her deck.  Infinitor is probably going to be harder.  

Nice! Really cool analysis.

Now... what would be the worst combo of heroes and environment against Advanced Infinitor?

Well, Infinitor's strength is his shear damage output.  So low powered heroes are probably the weakest.  (Especially as since we're stacking the decks, deck control is rather useless in these scenarios.)  

The easiest way to deal with Infintor is to become immune to damage and then let Infinitor kill himself while you tank.  So an environment with a high amount of ongoing destruction may be the hardest to deal with.  But I'm not entirely sure.  And there's only so many heros that can pull off a full tank.  So if we're using non-tanking heroes, destruction might not be as bad.

I beat Advanced Infinitor with Parse, Fixer, and AZ in Rook City in 6 rounds, pretty handily. Infinitor was on his flip side after the first round and I'd specifically keep out one manifestation so he wouldn't flip back, and he only ever played manifestations. Rook City has 3 Statues, the scientist, and the detective so for 3 rounds it actually helps you and for 2 it is a non-factor. Parse's syntactic analysis is amazing when you can stack the deck and double targeting arrow off of snap decision is crazy. AZ did most of the damage since it is super easy to set up when you can stack the deck and play "risky" with his HP since you know what is going to happen. But even more powerful is 6 grease guns from Fixer due to Salvage Yard... which I realized after I started meant that the heroes would win very easily.

Going through the heroes, I think most of them would make a pretty big contribution against Advanced Infinitor and make the win easy enough in a stacked deck scenario. Many of the heroes can tank or otherwise mitigate a lot of the damage in different ways - Captain Cosmic (due to Cosmic Crest), Legacy, Nightmist, Scholar, Setback (wrong time and place), Omnitron-X (elemental exochassis), Naturalist, Haka (ground pound), Fanatic (Zealous Offense), Fixer, Tachyon (hypersonic assault), SkyScraper (monolith), Wraith (2x stun bolt), Visionary (2x twist the ether). Tempest can use Into The Stratesphere and Cleansing Downpour. The Sentinels have 52 HP (since there isn't a lot of all hero damage in the Manifestations) and some healing/tanking, and start with 4x unique capabilities. Unity would probably be OK due to recurring Stealth Bot.

That leaves Bunker, AA, Ra, Chrono Ranger, AZ, Expat, Knyfe, and Parse. My guess is that slow-build heroes (AA, AZ, Bunker) would struggle the most due to diffiulty controlling the initial wave of manifestations. But stacked deck AA is probably able to pull out pretty much anything. So maybe the team to try would be AZ, Bunker, and Knyfe?

Also - are there any worse environments for the heroes than Rook City? I'm thinking maybe Pike Industrial? The statues in Rook City are very helpful.

Is Omnitron IV worse than Rook City?

Pike Industrial is not worse, the vats can sometimes be helpful.

Just wondering did you play the other one shots that showed up when Infinitor was going through his deck to get four manifestations in play?  It should work similar to the Matriarch with the mask where the one shots resolve after the four manifestations are in play.  

With stacked decks though they can do crazy things, and they'll be getting the best of the Environment too. And Infintor has only 65HP with no way of regaining them, so if each Hero is able to do around 20 damage before they all die (and I guess at least turn 3), it's over for him.
Bunker can be dealing 7 damage from turn 2 with Upgrade, Flak, Grenade, Turret. Or tanking with -2 damage taken and loading up on 6 with Upgrade, OmniCannon, Plating, Recharge.
Chrono can easily deal over 20 on his 3rd/4th turn with Bounties, Eye on the Prize and Bow. . Knyfe too, depending on her heatlh, with her +1 modifiers, Combat thing card and for the Greater Good.
Ra can Scorched Earth all Manifestations. But also reaches 20 damage quite quickly with his One Shots.
AZ just needs Isothermic and blow up.
Expat can get solid 6 damage per turn.
Parse, not sure how, but can stack her deck for one big Critical Multplier shot and get to 20.

Stacking all decks is just huge.

Stacking all decks is huge. But the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that the given combination of heroes villains and environments can theoretically be won in at least one case, so it works.

I stacked Infinitor's deck as well, so he never played any one shots. The only time a one shot came up was for Ocular Swarm flips.

Just tried Knyfe, Chrono Ranger, AZ and won on turn 4. By Any Means from Chrono and the combo of Battlefield Experience + Greater Good (+ BE + GG +...) from Knyfe and 4x Eye on the Prize pumped by Hunter and Hunted makes for a quick game. However, I was fairly low on HP. Without Chrono I don't know if you could deal damage fast enough with just Knyfe. 

Also, probably AZ is the worst against Infinitor (he just takes so long to build up) but Ra + AZ would be an easy win (just don't destroy the fire guys from Infinitor), so that eliminates Ra. 

I'm now thinking this pool of heroes remains to test: Bunker, AA, AZ, Knyfe, Expat. 

Been quite a while, but I finally made time to test AA, Bunker, and AZ in this scenario. It wasn't an easy win, but comfortable enough, and we won on turn 4.  

Who was I to think that AA wouldn't rule in a stacked deck scenario? He handed out so many card plays that AZ was all set up on turn 2, then buffed his damage, at which point AZ just takes over.  

So, only Bunker, AZ, Knyfe, and Expat remain to test.

Achievement unlocked! I was able to beat advanced Infinitor in Rook City with Bunker, AZ, and Expat (due primarily to sub-zero atmosphere, with that card out, flipped Infinitor just deals 8 damage per turn which you can race). Next, Bunker, Knyfe, and Expat combined were able to just finish Infinitor before he ran out of weaker manifestations to play. They could have survived one more round, which meant that really they could have beaten Infinitor even if he had more HP, maybe 100. 

So I do believe that every villian on advanced, in every environment, can in fact be defeated by any hero team! Unless there is a harder combination that I'm not aware of. 

Dark Watch NightMist, Dark Watch Expatriette, and Dark Watch Mister Fixer in Rook City against The Chairman.

I’ve played it upwards of 100 times (on non-advanced) and never even gotten close.

Now that’s persistence!

I wanted to prove it was winnable!

I could not. :(

Wow.  I tried this a couple of times, and it is brutal.  I'm pretty sure that it is winnable, though.

Assuming all decks are stacked to make this winnable:

The simplest way to do it would be to bring out all the underbosses as fast as possible (Using Informants, Rook City is Mine, and Scum and Villany), and get the Chairman to reshuffle while all the Underbosses are in play.  Then Oblivion them all to hell, and let Nightmist sacrifice herself (doing as much damage as she can on the way).  Use Grease Guns to mitigate damage while the underbosses are in play.  When the deck reshuffles, put both Thieves on top.  One of DW Nightmist's incap abilities is to put the top card of a trash on top of that deck.  So, an Aimed Hairtrigger Reflexes, combined with that ability can completely lock down the Chairman.  While Expat is constantly Aiming, she's dropping guns for a finishing Unload, and Fixer is beating on his nemeses.  You're limited by the size of the environment deck, but you should have plenty of time to take down the Chairman and the Operative.  The only concern is the Operative damage from killing the thief over and over, and the Chairman's reaction damage, but those are both small enough that you should easily outpace them.

This one is easier on advanced. (or maybe more likely is more accurate)

Flip Chairman as fast as possible, and you need your redirection in play quickly.

From there you are trying to line up so that Operative damage goes to Chairman for retaliation, and Nightmist should always be set up to redirect a hitman shot to Chairman to clear the biggest threat.

Beyond that hope to heck that Rook City doesn't ruin everything.

I am thinking that Rook City won’t let that situation last very long.

Bring me a win screen if you really want to impress me. ;)

What do I have to do to get a slight nod in my direction?

A screenshot of either The Operative or the Chairman knocked out in that game.

You might think so, but since we're stacking decks already, stack Rook City to give you Dr. Tremata, Tony Taurus, 2x Toxic Sludges, 3x Falling Statuary, and the Ambitious Racketeer, and you can last quite a while before your lock breaks.

This was as close as I could get after at least 20 tries. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661013857

Not close enough I suppose.