Weekly One-Shot Week 11: Sleep-Walking Papers

Team Leader Tachyon, Chrono-Ranger, Omnitron-X, and Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero versus the Dreamer in the Block.

I am not fond of the Dreamer.

I am not fond of the Block.

The combination makes for a pretty hard game. My test game started with two Dark Heroes (because you always start with two Dark Heroes) and a Whipacorn (ditto) and proceeded downhill from there. Most of the team had HP in the low teens when Dreamer flipped, and the Block proceeded to murderize AZ just before he got his Thermal Shockwave/Focused Apertures/Cryo Chambers healing engine set up. A pair of Grotesque Arachnids killed off everyone else but Omnitron-X, and then Violent Nightmares hit and OX went down under a wave of projections.

So, does anyone have a clever gimmick for fighting the hardest Difficulty 3 villain?

Well the start for the one shot does start with one Dark Hero and Whipacorn.  Thankfully it hit Tachyon who was not setup to do damage with him out anyways.   Anyways, this was pretty rough but manageable.   Just so that it didn't last any longer after I had eight projections under the Dreamer I used Timeshift to put a Dark Hero out which Absolute Zero proceeded to take out on his turn.   Scariest part was figuring out how I would take Char out who showed up in the second environment turn with a Prison Riot.  Thankfully I had a Displaced Armory and could get a temporal grenade to use on him.  

Near Mint - only because I accidentally hit Choose For Me while Char was dealing damage which I couldn't recover from.  I had actually set him up perfectly.  I had The Whole Gang on a projection.  I had reduced Char down to 4 HP.  With the two Imprisoned Rogues, Char was dealing 8 damage to all.  The plan was, have Char hit all projections, saving the projection with the Whole Gang till last. Then the Whole Gang takes out Char - no damage to Dreamer or Heroes.  Accidentally hitting Choose For Me ruined all that - Tachyon had to eat 16 damage and everyone else ate 8 damage.  Only lasted two more rounds after that.

Second time around I did it right and ended the game with Tachyon incap, everyone between 3-7 HP.  Definitely a tough fight.  Dark Heroes damage reduction nullified Chrono Ranger and Tachyon a lot (couldn't use Hypersonic when I really wanted to).  Getting Masadah helped.  I stuck with Temporal Shielding for Omni-X with Reactive Plating but he still took beatings from Toy Master.  Didn't have time for AZ to do much other than his base power.

Well, that would have been a lot easier if I hadn't kept confusing "Kill on Sight" with "By Any Means".  But I got mint, despite playing the wrong bounty (twice!), stupid Dark Heroes coming out whenever it would have been most useful to use Hypersonic Assault, and accidentally injuring the Dreamer with a Defensive Blast that I thought that she would avoid.

Speaking of which, during the Defensive Blast I had the Treacherous Ape destroy my plating card; I expected that this would turn off the damage being dealt before it got to the Dreamer.  After all, no types of damage are currently being reduced, right?  But that didn't work, and Vanessa took 4 damage.  Is this a bug, or is that how Defensive Blast is supposed to work? 

I minted, despite some horrible sequencing on my end.  Had to kill Dark Hero like three times, and a Hypersonic Assault hit poor Vanessa once, but managed to keep the environment under control.  In fact, the environment dealt damage exactly once.  An Agent shot one of the heroes on the last turn after I had cleared the 8th Projection.  The Inmates never did anything because I kept popping them as soon as they appeared.  It was a little dicy at times, since she wiped Omnitron's components on the first turn and everyone was in their low teens, with a few in single digits, by around turn 3.  It also didn't help that I kept screwing up Crono Ranger's and Absolute Zero's turns, causing the Toy Masters to stay in play far longer than they had any right to be.  I think those guys dealt a total of 20 damage over the course of the game.  Liberal use of "The Whole Gang" via Ranger's Mark and Sudden Contract allowed me to clear out two Projections a round after she flipped, making short work of phase 2.  A timely Defensive Barrier also helped to mitigate her damage after flipping.

Was this a random seed or fixed?

Fixed, I think.  I'm pretty sure that unless it specifically says, then you can assume fixed seed.  Also, someone mentioned getting a Whipacorn and Dark Hero first thing, and I got that too.

Makes sense.  My game started with Whipacorn, Illusory Demon, Dark Hero, and Toy Master, with the first card play being a second Toy Master.

Sounds like a bug! We'll look into it.

–

The Weekly One-Shot uses a fixed random seed unless it says otherwise.

My Dreamer woke up to the smell of minty freshness. For what ever reason we don't play the dreamer a lot so there were definitely some times when I played in a sub optimal nature. The two key card in my game were Hypersonic Assault and The Whole Gang. It is hard to do, but I like holding onto the hypersonic assaults until the dreamer flips. As for the whole gang, just recycle it as many times as possible. 

Mint! That was a juicy one though. I was genuinely unsure whether I'd succeed towards the end.

I deliberately Defensive Plated Vanessa (didn't think of the combo with Treacherous Ape) to wipe out the first wave of projections and then just avoided hitting her again once she was at 2 HP.

While hanging out with MigrantP in Barcelona, I'd commented that I always ended up playing Chrono the same way. I feel like this game was to show me how adaptable he is to different situations; he was definitely my MVP, with The Whole Gang being used 3-4 times to great effect.

I hate 4 vs the Dreamer. My first time with the card game was four vs. the Dreamer. Worst beating I've ever had in this game. Just to be clear I had already fought Baron Blade, Omnitron, Citizen Dawn, Grand Warlord Voss, and Ambuscade in the digital game first, so it wasn't my first game ever.

I will give this a go, however. Defeating Advanced Spite so easily two weeks ago has given me confidence.

Dreamer is brutal - I got buried in the first game but was able to rebound fairly comfortably.  Some tips for people wanting to mint this (this is from memory so I'm admittedly hazy on some details):

- First turn:  Have Chrono take the first hit from the Toy Master(?) so that Tachyon gets Whipacorned.  Tachy's job the first 2-3 turns is to feed people cards and soak Whipacorn damage.  Everyone else's job is to kill the Dark Hero ASAP.  On the first turn, Omnitron's power will flip Reactive Plating Subroutine, so play Ablative Plating on your main phase so you get a few free hits on Dark Hero.  

- General tips:  At some point it may become more useful to soak up Psychic and Infernal Damage so count up the damage Omni will take each turn.  You'll probably lose components at some point so don't over-extend.  For Chrono, Masadah, Whole Gang and By Any Means are your friends.  Absolute Zero's job is finish off stragglers, and play cards so he or Omni can take the hit for the one-shot that prevents the hero with the most cards in play from playing cards.

- This is the critical point in the game:  on turn 4(?) a Prison Riot will flip Char and some inmates.  Tachyon starts with a Hypersonic Assault:  *This is what you save it for*  There will likely be a Dark Hero in play to prevent HSA from hitting the projections but that's fine.  If you let Char and his friends go off you're gonna have a bad time.  Fortunately the environment will take care of the inmates the very next turn.  This is literally the only thing you need to worry about from The Block - use all your other resources to manage the projections; you'll need it

- The Dreamer has 6 hit points:  use them!  On turn 3-4 a second Dark Hero appears; if you let two of them stick around for more than a turn, you probably can't recover.  At this point I'd used every trick in the book to get rid of the first Dark Hero, what I did for the second was:  Chrono replayed "By Any Means" on the second Dark Hero and shot him down to 3.  Omni-X used Defensive Plating to finish off Dark Hero and also hit everything else for 3.  It's OK if you dink the Dreamer, you lose when she has zero HP, not one, nor two, nor three.

- If you get past Char and the inmates and the second Dark Hero the game gets a lot easier from that point.  Without Whipacorn and Dark Hero, the Sonic Vortices and Lightning Barrages that Tach's been hoarding make the rest of the projections very manageable.

Got mint. Chrono-Ranger is definitely the MVP, as has been said.

I used Sudden contract to put By Any Means on the Dark Hero in round 1, and then used Hypersonic Assault early, (round 2, I think) hitting the (1HP at that point) Dark Hero first, then hit all the loaded up Toy Masters and the Whipacorn and whatever other projections were out at the time.

That bought me time to not have to worry about their big damage, or the Whipacorn's effect for a round.  I did use the sneaky "whole gang" trick with Char to have him kill all of the projections, and then have him destroyed before he hit the Dreamer or the Heroes. That was very helpful.

No hero was in big trouble at any point--they all ended up around 10HP.

The currrent operation seems consistent with a similar issue I had a while ago (posted on the video game's forum) about Nightmist's Amulet of the Elder Gods with relation to the Citizen Tears+Citizen Blood combo.  In that case, Citizen Tears must do damage equal to the number of cards discarded by that hero's player during that turn, but Nightmist's Amulet allows her to discard cards to redirect that damage (or to discard 1 card for no effect).  Doing so does not change the amount of damage, even though more cards have been discarded during that turn.

I've confirmed that this hasn't changed, and there are certainly one or two differeneces between the effects (e.g., the effect that alters the damage being done occurs during the attack instead of between multiple attacks), but I thought it might be worth mentioning it for comparison.

The best way to report problems is via the feedback button in the Credits screen, or at http://handelabra.com/contact. That will allow us to track the issue properly.

Well that was a disaster!

Finally achieved a Fine on attempt *cough* six. My first non ipad crapping out related non mint. Oh well.

My downfall was soaking all the damage while letting Char take out the projections and then using The Whole Gang to take him out. The first round after letting the Dreamer flip, everyone was down to less than 10hp and I couldn't recover. After five attempts that way, I realised that I needed a plan B.

Finally, went take out Dark Hero round 1, both Toy Masters round 2, then Hypersonic Assult when Char appears as he is only going to be there for one round. That made my life easier, as everyone was at about 20hp at the flip. The only scary moment was when both Dark Heroes came out on the same round, but Tachyon greeted both with their own personal Lightspeed Barage to the head.

Heroes ended up at 5hp, 7hp, 10hp and 13hp with the Dreamer having 10 projections under her.

Oh and Cryo Chamber didn't seem to act properly after the Dreamer flipped. It added one to AZ hitting himself, but not when using his base power on projections.

Cryo Chamber only affects damage dealt to Absolute Zero.

Forgot that. Thanks for reminding me.

Near Mint :( Everyone was easily in their teens, she flipped, played 2 cards, brought out a tonne of projections out that AoE damaged my entire team. Took her two turns to destroy me while I was scrambling to get past their damage reduction.

My second non-Mint. This one was looking really easy until that one turn took away all hope.

The Char-Whole Gang combo really changes this game from "near-impossible" to "almost easy".

Still counts!

And that is why you never give up! You unlocked the close call achievement as well.

Broke my Mint streak, but finally got it on the third try (as a Fine, oh well). Thanks to schadkehnfreude for the helpful advice.

Didn't get mint. I don't usually mind the Dreamer, but this game was not super fun. I hate Dark Hero. Dreamer has a lot of cards that hit multiple targets, and that plus one can add up really quickly. Having to deal with a second Dark Hero immediately after killing the first one was not enjoyable. Overall, I could see this one being manageable, but I took way too much damage early on.

I have played it both ways now. Once having Tachyon start by taking the Whipacorn damage and the second time having Chronoranger do it. Believe it or not, but that first decision seems to set you on very different paths. Won both ways, but it seemed like it was easier when I had CR take that first hit. Although it may have just been because I was more familiar with the setup.

Argh. My first Near Mint, because I miscalculated and left Char with too much HP before the Environment turn. The Treacherous Ape finished everyone off before I could even do anything on my turns.

I had to settle for Fine on this one.  The first try was the first time I'd played The Dreamer, ever, and I was surprised at how much damage those projections did, and how much damage the Dark Hero soaked (ugh).  One of the inmates blasted TLT for 11 damage - oops.  I was maybe a turn away from clearing the board and winning, but I ran out of HP for everyone.  The second try was worse as I had no answer for Char.  The third try was the charm.  I made all the right moves and had good cards.  It still wasn't easy.

Yeah going blind into the weekly one shot is one thing but not blind in the sense you have never faced the villain before.   This one has a few ways you could win but is not one of the more forgiving ones.  

Not reading this thread just yet because I’ll be streaming this tonight at 8 EST and I don’t want to read any tips ahead of time. Wish me luck!

Okay, that didn't go so well. I got a Fine on my third try - the first one was an unmitigated disaster and the second wasn't much better.

First round was to set up Chrono-Ranger and AZ to take out the Dark Hero, done with a "By Any Means" on him, and getting the Psychic Reduction plating out for Omni-X (or any 4-damage plating). With that done, make sure the Whipacorn doesn't hit Omni on the second turn - he's going to Defensive Blast to wipe out all enemy targets *without* hitting the Dreamer. If you take out Illusory Demon last after all other targets *except* Dreamer, its death effect will destroy Defensive Blast so Dreamer doesn't take damage. You have to throw By Any Means on the Grotesque Arachnoid first so that it'll take 8 damage instead of 4, and make sure everything else is at or as close to 4 as possible - I had a Toy Master still up but AZ finished him right after.

Getting her to flip that early with everyone still at 20+ HP made the game a lot easier. Temporal Grenade removed Char easily; after that it was just killing her projections as quickly as possible to stack them up underneath her. Sucker Punch removed the Treacherous Ape before he could do damage to anyone other than Tachyon (I think I actually got it from playing Nimble Strike while she couldn't deal damage just to get the card draw). The rest was a couple of Sonic Vortexes, lots of little shots and bounties from Chrono-Ranger, and another Defensive Blast (this one actually hit Dreamer) although I think that one wasn't 100% necessary, I just wanted to kill as many of the projections as possible. AZ finished two off with a Frostbound Drain and his power to put her at 9 and that was the game.

Very tough fight but finished it without losing anyone that time.

Finally got around to playing this one, got the mint, Omni went down because of a miscalculation on the Toy master (I let Omni time shift him into play thinking AZ could destroy him.) 

Record : 10 mint, 1 near mint

I played Dreamer twice on my way to and from my SuperBowl viewing last mont and lost both times.

I've tried this one twice too. The first one was a disaster with me playing every incorrect card in round one (Why oh why doesn't the game remind you that you can't deal damage when its your turn?)  The second one was going much better, but her flip is killer with the amount of projections/violent nightmares coming out. I still thought I was going to eke it out with Absolute Zero's incap side killing the environment deck but Tachyon went down too and with 6 buried projections and just one Tooth Fairy in play I had a chance... until I got visited by 3 or 4 more projections including a Whipacorn and Dark Hero and it finished off Omnitron and Chrono.

I think I'm letting the Toy Masters and her flip scare me from playing Omni and AZ's cards.  Might try one more time before the week flips.

The Toy Master act at the start of her turn, so you have a round to deal with him before he does damage. He hits only one target, though, so it's not too bad if he does go off anyway. Her flip destroys H ongoing cards, so putting out more than H of those helps with keeping the ongoings alive that you would want to keep alive.

Honestly, my solution to that was just… not really having any ongoings out. They're not really necessary here.

That's also fair. I'm just trying to provide incentive for playing cards despite looming destruction.

Just uselessly chiming in after the fact:

The worst rating I have on any issue I competed in (I missed two weeks due to crazy life stuff) prior to this was two Near Mints-- one because I accidentally rewound to target someone else when I had misclicked, one because my client crashed which counted as an attempt. Every other was Mint. Those feel like they should've been Mints, too.

Yep, I earned this as a FINE. That was so brutal. Three tries.

Now to try the new one tonight, let's see if I can make Fine an one-off. Also seems brutal. Excited!