Weekly One-shot Week 4

Target Rich Environment

Advanced Akash'bhuta vs Legacy, Expateriette, Nightmist, Tempest and Unity

Failed on my first attempt. 

Looks like this one is a random start, and stuff just went south pretty quickly. 

I couldn't get any of Unity's Bots out until the third round, and I never really got Nightmist going (though an Oblivion when Heroic Interception was in play was pretty nice)

Aki managed to get two Entombs out at once when an environment target was killed, then pulled Primeval Eruption on her turn to get out a Living Rockslide and 2 Arboreal Phalanges. That was all she wrote. 

Second time's the charm. Near Mint and a very different game.

Nightmist could tank a little bit and I got the Starshield out, so I wasn't too beat up to use her spells. Legacy had Legacy Ring and Motivational Charge out by the second turn, so he wa doign double-duty. Got a turret bot and Champion Bot out quick, was able to let the environment chew up a few of Aki's limbs. Used a Bee Bot and a RPG launcher to get rid of Entombs before they could really do any damage. 

Finished it off with a Powered Shock Wave that destroyed two limbs in addition to dropping 8 points of damage on Aki herself. 

So I lost my ENTIRE team except a 4-health Nightmist in round 4ish to an Entomb. thanks to Akash dropping every freaking limb in the game.  I then spent the next hour slowly tanking my way back up to full health with NightMist while the environment went to town on the Limbs.  Thanks to the Ensnaring Brambles, I had NightMist's entire deck in her hand and was pitching 4-star cards constantly and cycling Mistbinds to keep her health up until the Brambles were eliminated and it was safe to start sniping.  Amulet of the Elder Gods is a lifesaver when you're drawing 12+ cards a turn with no drawback.  There were a couple of dicy moments where I had to let Akash play a card or two and she pretty much wiped the board each time, but we got there!

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Technomagus/screenshot/359526927295188334

It should be noted this game is not fixed like prior ones if you didn't read that on the summary page.  Every one will have a different experience.  

Whew got the mint!

Lucky start with Inspiring Presence, Electrical Storm, Submachine Gun so lots of area damage right away.  Too afraid to get Unitys Bots out without any Stealth protection.  Got Amulet right away, but lost all equipment to Rejuvenating Entropy and didn't get another one til way later.  Luckily, had a second Submachine Gun to replace the first and got Hairtrigger Reflexes.  Tempest eventually gets Hailstorm. So Expat and Tempest were doing great area damage on their own and got her to about 118 pretty quickly.  

Unlucky break: double Primeval Eruption so there were 3 Brambles, 2 Rockslides, 2 Phalanges and 2 Carapaces out.  Brambles always seemed to target Nightmist.  Kinda lucky actually; without the Necklace, could hunt for cards with Enlightment or Investigation without hurting herself.  Cleared the Rockslides and eventually the other limbs the following round.

Another unlucky break: Earth's Sacrifice takes out Inspring Presence, Hairtrigger Reflexes, Electrical Storm, Hailstorm. But Akash is down to around 60 HP.  I start playing Tempest defensively and do Cleansing Downpour.  But for the others I go for broke with all the Thokks, Backfisted Strikes, Shotgun, Chain Lightning.  I finally get 2 Raptors but they die to New Jersey Devil right after. Platform and Cryo do come out and help a little and a few Brainstorms.

Final blow: Shotgun kills Rockslide ->kills Akash.

She flipped once in the middle of the game and then one more time just before she died.

Final Wasteland did not appear til late and no cards were lost to the Wasteland.

With Cleansing Downpour, everyone was at approx 10 HP.

I have mixed feelings about Random Start.  I did play duplicate bridge in my day, so I actually like everyone having the same initial conditions.  I feel there is a better common talking point and also a little more meaningful to me if someone else gets a mint, but I lose: since it was the same seed, I'd more feel like I could've made better choices vs. blame the loss on bad card shuffle and draw.

However, with enough strong familiarly with all decks, I believe good players can also play more robustly than others, i.e. try to anticipate certain bad case scenarios and make choices to accomodate; be flexible and adapt, etc.  Hence, Random Start can still be a good way to measure players.  Although extreme bad luck will still feel disappointing.

Overall, enjoying the One-Shots a lot!

This one was much more enjoyable to me than the last one. Action from the start. I too had a turn where she played just about every limb in her deck. Everyone went from mid-twenties to under 10 in one round. Luckily I had motivational charge and was able to weather the storm. Eventually got the mint, but it was a long one.

Got the mint, but it was my closest call yet! Nightmist managed to shut down the villain deck for two consecutive turns, which meant that I could use the Library to draw a bunch of cards (without having to worry about the new monsters bringing out every card in Akash'Bhuta's deck. I also managed to time it so that all of her limbs got killed off (and there were 10+ in play at this point) while she was on her flip side, which...I guess it might not have made that much of a difference, but it felt real good not seeing the -1 every time she hit herself.

Legacy carked it, but everyone else survived to the end! Unity's bots were honestly most helpful (especially Swifty) in taking the brunt of the "lowest hero target can't deal damage" effects.

Mint, by the skin of my teeth -- a thoroughly enjoyable game, all around. 

Akash'Bhuta digs through her deck so fast in the Final Wasteland that I saw numerous 'reset' cards -- Earth's Sacrifice and Rejuvenating Entropy came out on a regular basis, making it difficult to get sufficiently set up to deal with the many limbs. I kept melting down Equipment with Unity's Bot-Hack -- knowing that it wouldn't last anyway -- but so many creatures in the Final Wasteland seem to pick on the lowest target; it was difficult to keep any bots in play for long.

The big break was getting a second Reclaim from the Deep to go with the one I'd been hoarding since the opening hand -- allowing Tempest to Reclaim his other Reclaim every turn and provide infinite cycling for cards like Take Down, Heroic Interception and Mistbind. This would have been a much cleaner game if I hadn't been a fool and shuffled Mistbind back into Nightmist's deck with e.g. Mist-Fueled Recovery. Twice. Man, you never really appreciate that Rewind button until it gets taken away...

I did lose Legacy, and everyone else was in single digits, but he died a hero -- specifically, Heroically Intercepting the damage from a desperate Oblivion play which provided enough damage to close out the game before Entomb killed most of the party.

Minty fresh goodness for myself and Ronway (you can watch us face off against it here).

We were very lucky to have only two of Akash's destruction effects come out, and to have two RPG Launchers to deal with her two Entombs.

We also had a very nice Heroic Interception/Oblivion combo when there were lots of limbs in play… even if it did reveal double 1s!

Although the heroes had low HP at the end of the battle it never really felt out of our control.

Roll on next week!

Mint, Everyone was in their high teens with Tempest being at full health. Nightmist started off with a mistbound in her hand, and Legacy drew two Take Downs keeping Akash from playing a lot of cards early on. I just got really lucky draws.

The fact that this one isn't fixed is definitely an interesting twist.  Up until this point, I've been "practicing" on my tablets before I play on Steam, so that I always get Mint on Steam.  My first game on my smaller tablet, I BARELY won with every at around 5-6 hp.  When I went to my other tablet, expecting the same game, I was CRUSHED.  Two early Rockslides combined with repeated appearances of Earth's Sacrifice and Rejuvenating Entropy made it impossibe to ever get going.  While I will miss my guaranteed Mints on Steam, I do think that NOT going random will actually make Mints the rare occurence they were intended to be.

I got mint again.  It started out badly for our heroes as Akash'Bhuta played six limbs.  They were able to clean them up in two rounds and it was off to the races from there.  Between Legacy's Take Downs and Nightmist's Mistbounds, Akash barely got to play any cards.  Legacy was eventually able to get out his Legacy Ring and Motivational Charge for max damage and some healing.  Expatriette had P&P and her SMG.  Tempest did his usual thing.  Unity had several bots in play.  After a rush in the first few turns, the game felt well in hand and everyone's ending health reflected it.

Mint!

I have to say, Akash'Bhuta is one of my favorite enemies to go against when I'm playing solo because the length of the game is always going to be a longer one than that of Baron Blade or his squishier counterparts, so I've had a lot of experience against this particular scenario. Not to mention two of my favorite characters are Legacy and Unity. :)

The way I won was actual mostly due to my re-use of Take-Down and the many "Reclaim from the Deep" cards I got. I would play Take-Down, kill a bunch of environment targets (so Akash'Bhuta wouldn't get the play advantage), let StealthBot tank enough hits to get to 1 hp so the Phallanges would be preventing no damage and my RaptorBots were happy to eat any limbs that came out of the works :)

I didn't actually realise the wording on the Advanced Akash'Bhuta until this game. The advanced text doesn't hit the bots! Unity so OP in the right circumstances.

Buh? Care to explain?

I misremembered the text on the flip side of Akash'Bhuta. I always remember it hitting "all hero targets" but its been so long since I played it on Advanced. It only deals damage to the "H - 1" Non-Villain Targets, which generally means it doesn't hit the loveable Raptor Bots. lol I didn't word that particularly well. I'm sorry.

Missed mint on this one--boy, it was close.

Nightmist went down early, everybody else was able to make good progress--got Akash down to 33, a few wounded limbs out, heroes all in low single digits except Tempest at 7--I thought it was going to happen, but then that horrid, horrid skunk ape got played...which caused an entomb to come out...took everyone out except for Tempest (now at 2hp). Brambles prevented Tempest from dealing any damage aaaaaand you can all guess the rest of the story.

Again, I really like these one-shots. I look forward to each new issue!

Hopefully I can at least get a Near Mint... we'll see.

I got repeatedly shredded on this one. Ended up with Fine after 4 attempts.

Hopefully I can do better than that in multiplayer & on my Steam account.

Way too close for comfort. Not used to playing Akash on advanced. Lost Expatriette and Unity. Only 7HP left on the other three heroes.

Did not realize that Unity's bots would have likely been safer, or else might have put more of them out sooner. Got wiped of ongoings or equipment four times.

Got Mint in local play, really close game. Got my field wiped early, but kept out inspiring prescence and had enough AOE going around to keep in control. Almost lost Nightmist, who also almost killed legacy with the heroic interception/oblivion move (1 hp left), but Akash'Bhuta had made the mistake of playing like 9 limbs which I was able to destroy to finish her off.

Hoping for some of the same luck online later.

Bah.  Opening with a Primeval Eruption that gave me 3 Living Rockslides and then an Entomb.  Hero opening hands had no damage mitigation or ongoing destruction, so everyone took minimum 23 damage by the beginning of round 2.

Got mint but the Primeval Eruption chain was brutal she played one got multiple limbs out and then got to play another Primeval Eruption which brought out more on the first environment turn.   Her first play was Earth's Sacrifice which I was fine with since nothing had been played yet but I wish I'd have played Take Down in my opening hand just because of what happened with the environment turn.   All heroes alive at the end but in single digits.  

Got a first turn mistbound that helped get us going, used Stratosphere on Brambles and had Bee Bot out round 2 and it never died, so Brambles were allowed to sit around to help flip her back from her second side.

I ended up getting enough damage going with Bots that I let the Mongolian Death Worm loop keep Akash trapped on her second side while Take Down and Mist Bound kept her from discarding it.  Reclaim helped pull off three straight rouds of Akash doing nothing but end of turn damage while heroes dealt her 84 damage to end the game.  Got hit by all 4 destruction cards, but was able to keep Assault rifle the first time (shackles and the Legacy ring really hurt though) and had her pretty well under control when the ongoings got wiped.

Lowest HP Hero was Tempest at 18.  Mint.

So I guess the key here is to just keep Akash from playing cards.

That could be said of any match against her especially in one where the environment has a lot of targets.  

Granted, but it seems especially pertinent here in favor of other strategies – I mean, you could also suggest Legacy with the Ring and two Next Evolutions out, but that's subject to Akash's Ongoing wipes (Unity has none, Nightmist has only two and Expatriet only two – not a lot of cushioning for him except for Tempest) or Equipment wipes. Plus the Equipment wipe will heal all the limbs, and with the rate she'll be pulling stuff out, it's bound to show up constantly.

I would always give preference to blocking Akash'Bhuta from playing cards normal or advanced.   It's a sound strategy against her in any scenario.  If you don't draw Take Down or Mistbound at all I would imagine your odds in this game go down quite a bit. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=599397330

I just barely won. Akash was at 1hp. I was hoping to pop a volatile parts Raptorbot, but the carapace blocked it. Expatriette finished her off while NightMist took no damage in Mistform.

I didn'the use Take Down or Mistbound for my win. I did use Heroic Interception a couple times - right before playing Oblivion or Heedless Lash.

I ended up with Fine. The random seed led to some bad hands. Eventually the right cards came to me and I too kept Akash from playing cards to clench my victory. This one was rough.

Wow. That's horrible!

Interesting. I usually focus on getting Akash to play cards more quickly, so AoE damage can kill lots of limbs, doing more damage to Akash.

I'm just not a fan of out of turn Entombs or either Ongoing/Equipment destruction. 

So, really rough internet connections tonight. Started 3 different games before I had one that didn't drop everyone.

Those counted, so despite a 1st time win with no rewinds I officially received a "Fine"... and that's after annoying my teammates by not letting them rewind so I could get Mint

Really good point. I'm not so sure my tactic has been a good one.

I have played this one about 8 times now. I notice a lot of people seem to be making some fundamental errors in multiplayer. I saw Liquid Nitrogen Rounds played on Prejudice instead of the Sub-Machine Gun with a bunch of appendages on the table; people playing Inspired Repair with no bots in play or in hand; just some very strange decisions.

Take your time guys, make decisions based on what's best for the current situation. We don't mind waiting a little while you make up your mind what you want to play (also, everybody has been very friendly even when people make mistakes. I do love this community. You guys rock).

Inspired repair without bots could be just wanting the card draw and card play, digging for something to help.

Liquid Nitrogen could have reduced the damage Akash'Bhuta deals herself, which is a big way to help defeat her. If you think the limbs are going down anyways, no need to reduce damage unneccesarily.

I like playing devil's advocate

lol. Good on you.

This was one of the best fights I had so far in Sentinels. I was at "okay, I have lost here" about 3 or 4 times but in the end I won with all heroes still standing (at 1-6 HP). Sadly when I first started the one shot the game crashed and I had to restart, therefore I only got near-mint while I would have gotten mint otherwise. I think that's okay though. The game was worth it. 

Near-mint again. First game Akash hit every nasty card at the wrong times, including multiple primevil eruptions back to back.

Second game was easy as cake, as I had Unity set up with 2 platform bots, 2 turret bots, champion and swift bot.

Just an unlucky first game.

Mint last night. Actually was going very well despite a ton of limbs and both ongoings came out early. Got rough when she flipped and brought out many of the damage dealers. Keeping Tempest on dedicated healer mode seemed to keep us going. Chupa-thingy was relentless on the bots, but we managed to win fairly handily.

Mint, with an opening draw that I can't tell if it was lucky or unlucky. Before I had any kind of ongoing destruction in hand, Akash's first three cards were all Entomb. On the one hand, this meant everyone taking 15 HP of damage by the end of the second round (thanks, environment target). On the other, it meant I didn't have to worry about Entomb popping up unexpectedly for the rest of the game. No Primeval Eruptions, and the ongoing and equipment wipes came out early enough that I didn't have much on the field anyway, so it didn't wreck me.

Con's bunker came out the same round Legacy picked up a Take Down, so I was able to start getting the card draw up and running quick. Expatriette spent the whole time plugging away with her shotgun, while Unity had to wait a couple rounds to get bots out because of the Entombs (even though she started with equipment and Swiftbot in-hand; a bit frustrating, but necessary), but by the time she was ready to roll, boy did she roll with Platform, Bee and Raptor Bots doing their jobs. Nightmist dutifully tossed damage back at Akash and her limbs, and Mistbound her three times, which let me keep drawing from the Bunker. Tempest got his Localized Hurricane out early and ended up with damn near all his cards in hand, Cleansing Downpour showing up just in the nick of time. He was invaluable in cleaning up the Environment targets, especially after the first three kept drawing from the bunker, while Unity played clean-up duty and finished her off with a Shockwave powered by Swift, Stealth and Champion Bots.

Everyone survived, and the Environment only claimed one Rockslide.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198100350547/screenshot/364030656452239854

Edit: Forgot to add, but this was my first time ever playing Advanced mode.

I have double mint for this challenge now. Things looked bad when entomb got played on the environment turn and then on her turn an eruption got us two rockslides, but both got taken out. Unity managed to get all three raptor bots out with a champion bot and an inspiring presence doing well over thirty damage to Akash on that turn. It was hard to get going, but once we had all our stuff together, the tide turned.

Mint.

It was the perfect opening draw for all heroes except maybe Unity. Legacy started with a Bolster Allies, Take Down and Heroic Interception. Tempest started with Reclaim from the Deep. Nightmist started with Mistbound and Astral Premonition (think that's right, lets her discard a card to control the villain deck). Expat started with Assault Rifle, Hair Trigger Reflexes, and 2 RPG Launchers.

I foolishly gave Akash'bhuta a free pass on the first round to get a little setup before I started whittling her down. Paid for it with an out of turn Entomb, followed by back to back Primeval Eruptions. Ouch.

Between Nightmist, Legacy, and Tempest who drew a second Reclaim from the Deep on round 3, Akash got to play exactly 1 additional card. That one additional card was the vines limb (forget the name) which was put there by Nightmist and only damaged a single hero before it was taken down.

The environment was a factor as well. The Ancient Library was the first card out and I used it to fill my hands while drawing out beasts, and the Unforgiving Wasteland. The beasts took down the 7 or so limbs Akash had drawn with those two earlier Primeval Eruptions.

By the end of the game, Unity had out almost all the bots and was slamming Akash for 30+ points a round.

I actually felt sorry for Akash. Maybe she can keep Baron Blade company in the perenial loser's lounge.