Weekly One-Shot #17 - Desperate Measures

Citizen Dawn vs Visionary, Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, Ra, and Dark Watch Expatriette at Silver Gulch 1883.

This game is brutal.  Blood, Sweat, and Tears are the first three citizens, then you get hit with a Blinding Blast.  Good luck fighting back with no hand.

I got a Near-Mint on this one.  Lost the first game due to playing too conservatively, then barely won the second attempt thanks to playing for the 33% chance Tyler would show up in the last three cards.

3 tries later.... let me know when someone gets this. It's brutal. I got her down to 7 HP and Sherrif Pratt came out, destroying a citizen. This caused Dawn to flip and incap my entire team within two rounds. 

The play order for Dawn is Blood, Sweat, Tears, Blinding Blast, Summer, Anvil, Return, Battery, Leadership, Leadership, Assault, IIRC.

Silver Gulch goes Sustain, Stout Barrel, Water Trough, Explosives Wagon, Matthew Hayes.

You can clear two citizens on the first turn by having Visionary Enlighten Ra to draw a Staff, have Fixer Bitter Strike on Citizen to 2, and Ra play Staff and Pyre the other Citizen.  Sustain will then clear the citizens on the Environment turn.

You want to flip Dawn right away so she'll flip back after 1-2 turns, then you can just wail on her.

You guys are terrible people, Handelabra.

Alright, now I'm going to go back and try and pull myself out of this ditch of an opening.

EDIT:  The worst part is that it makes you choose every discard individually, as if we're not going to lose our entire hands.

Fixed that for you!

Edit: Forgot to include my results. I got Near Mint, victory on my second attempt. My first run I put Wrest The Mind on the Explosives Wagon and kept drawing Visionary cards in an attempt to find Telekinetic Cocoon; unfortunately, the round I had drawn the Cocoon, she played Devastating Aurora and destroyed my efforts. I also accidentally had a fifth Citizen destroyed by Matthew Hayes due to forgetting that Water Trough reduces Fire damage to Gunmen cards by 2 in addition to the damage reductions from Cover cards in play. I somehow managed to survive a few rounds after the Explosives Wagon explosion, but Citizen Anvil got played and killed the hero team.

My second attempt was a bit better, since I had learned from my mistake and focused on damaging Dawn instead of trying to wait for a Wagon victory.

When the first Citizen played was Citizen Blood, I had a huge suspicion we were going to see a Blood, Sweat, Tears, Blast opening; and funnily enough, those Citizens were played in exactly that order! The other opening I was expecting was something like Truth and Anvil to really make it tough to get damage through.

For those made upset by this start, bear in mind it could have been worse–a team of base Expatriette, Bunker, Argent Adept, and Legacy, for instance, consists of useless base powers, and you would not have ever been able to draw enough cards to get started–even if you double skip everyone's turns for double card draws, you would proceed to discard both of them due to Sweat and Tears!

Thanks.  I didn't want to play that a third time because I'm still sore from the first beating I took.

Near mint.  First time round wasn't decisive enough about whether to concentrate on Dawn or not or whether I could use the Explosive Wagons and Flesh of the Sun God to my advantage.  The Wagon ended up going off killing everyone but Ra and Dawn who then flipped which I couldn't survive.

Second time round, kept Blood and Spring in play, killed all other Citizens and worked on Dawn. Expatriette mostly played cards for Fixer to destroy. Visionary Enlightened Ra most of the time.  Game ended in Round 8, Visionary incapped, Fixer and Ra at 7 HP, Expat at 5 HP.

Near mint.

I took the route of Wrest the Mind on the Explosives Wagon.  Played Decoy Projection, did the math and realized that it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to keep Visionary alive, and started digging for Telekinetic Cocoon.  Never flipped Dawn.  Killed her the round after Luminous Leadership came out, so never hit Devestating Aurora, but I had Precognitioned it away anyways.

I mostly left the environment alone, exept that in the penultimate round I had to rewind and shoot the Stout Barrel to keep Cyrus Hayes from coming out and killing a fifth Citizen.

The only other thing of note was that at one point I had Matthew Hayes shoot a Decoy Projection rather than hit a Citizen, which almost certainly mattered considering how close I came to flipping Dawn.

Got Mint by a hair's breadth.

Used RPG Launcher on the second Explosives Wagon to come out (the first knocked out Visionary). The explosion actually would have taken out my remaining heroes as well, but luckily it hit Dawn first.

I've calculated a way to win on Expatriette's fifth turn. I'm going to put it in a pastebin so that you can decide for yourself whether you want to read it (imo people should still play their first game honestly, which is why I'm not just copy/pasting it here): http://pastebin.com/bHtrAxF5

Did the exact same thing; Summer was the only citizen out, and would have been the 5th in Dawn's trash if I let Hayes kill her.  Hated to see Decoy Projection go, but not flipping Dawn was more important.

Near Mint, although I'll admit after seeing that the game started with empty hands for the heroes, I came here to read first.   When I saw the order of the day was "Hit Dawn with everything you've got, and only worry about Citizens/Environments that are really killing you," the rest became academic.  By Round 3-4, I had the Staff, Imbued Fire, and the Explosives Wagon out, so every hero was hitting Dawn for at least +2 DMG/hit; Ra (Staff) and Expatriette (Nemesis) were doing +3.  Finished her off in Round 7 with a DW Fixer Overdrive (5 pts each hit), but had 23 more points of pain in store for Dawn on the upcoming turns of Ra (Flame Strike (5 pts) + Living Conflag (4 pts) + Base Power (5 pts)), and DW Expatriette (RPG (4 pts) + Pride (5 pts)).  Could also have destroyed the Explosives Wagon on DW Expat's last turn for 4 more points, if necessary.  

Mint, blind, hero HP in the low teens. An absolutely brutal start, but slowly managed to build up and fight back. Dawn flipped, but only for a round, and then I just wailed on her. Game ended with a Devastating Aurora destroying an Explosives Wagon. When Dawn was on 5 health.

Edited to add: Handelabra, you guys are super mean. Bravo.

We were warned it was an ambush...

Mint - Never flipped Dawn. Focused on her and let the gunmen take out the citizens. Did enough damage that I got the victory before the second explosives wagon people are talking about showed up. Every one ended up below 10 in the end, but no one was knocked out.

Mint
Wrest the mind on Explosives Wagon… then dug out my Cocoon.

After facing my first loss to this one, all I could think was "People are going to howl."

At least it's really easy to take Tears down in the first round with just base powers. It's just a really frustrating setup, all around. Third time's the charm though, right?

EDIT:

I tried this out, and it sure does work! Quite a different experience, playing off a script. Don't think I'll do it again, though.

Mint.

Rough start, clearly. After the initial round, though...it wasn't too bad.

I kept waiting for Devastating Auroura to come out, but it never did.  The Wagon stayed intact the whole game, too. If it had blown, I would not have made it.

The Rise with the Dawn card actually helped me keep Dawn on her front side. I was very thankful that Blood was the Citizen it took back (he had been taken out by Matthew Hayes). I Mental Divergenced it away toot sweet, though.

Once Tears and Sweat and Anvil were in the trash (and it didn't take long to eliminate them once the wagon and imbued fire were in play), I just kept as much focus on Dawn as I could, and she went down hard. 

I started with Visionary drawing cards for Ra, but switched to drawing cards for herself about halfway through.

Fixer had Hoist Chain out for most of the game, and Drving Mantis about 1/2 the time. I mostly had Fixer eat Ra's staves and Expat's extra submachine guns. Expat used Pride with various ammo, and Ra lit things (mostly Dawn) on fire.

Visionary ended at 1hp, others were in high single digits.

Mint. (I wouldn't have minded getting a Near Mint as I really like Dawn's music)

Blood, Sweat and Tears pretty much summed up that start. Took out Tears immediately, so sustain the portal only wounded Blood when it appeared in turn one. Only saw one wagon which survived the game, but generally I left Silver Gulch alone.

Matthew Hayes caused Dawn to flip, but she flipped back the next turn. I used her flip turn to just set everyone up for the second half of the game. I felt sorry for Spring as she kept on Returning with the Dawn and then being knocked back out by Matthew Hayes. Was expecting a late Devasating Aurora but thankfully never appeared.

Ra left on 1HP everyone else around 10.

That was more far more fun than the start promised...

Near Mint. 

1st round was close, but I played too safe. Dawn in teens when wagon nuked my party.

2nd round full tilt towards taking out Dawn. Still played too safe. Won the turn after Aurora, with Ra as the only team member standing. 

I kept failing to manage the environment. First they caused Dawn to flip when I wasn't expecting it, then they caused her to NOT flip when I was expecting it. Fail.

One of the toughest fights yet and only my 2nd one-shot that wasn't mint.  Got it on my 2nd try with 3 heroes incapped and Expat having only 1hp left (she took out mom with a final shot from Pride).

The initial blast from the villian turn is one of the nastiest things I've encountered in the game.  Ooof!

I really wanted to set up a win using Vis Wresting the exploding Wagons from within her cocoon, as that's one of my favorite things in the game, but I just couldn't keep her alive long enough to do it.

What a fanatstic ending to that! She wanted to be proud of her daughter, and she thought her mother was to full into her godhood. Very poetic. 

Ooooof. I'll be feeling the pain of that beating every time it rains. I botched it overall I think, but the deal was sealed when Sheriff Prat (that Pratt) came out and killed a citizen in the same turn, keeping Dawn from flipping back. Why Pratt?! WHYYYYYYY?!

Edit: Phew, squeaked it out just barely. Thought I was done when the wagon exploded near the end, but managed to hang on for the Victory. Boom. \o/

I vaguely recall that there used to be a running joke about how unhelpful the Sheriff could be.  There's often a reason to shoot the sheriff.

Mint.

Ra making everyone immune to fire before the wagon exploded was a key moment. The devastating aurora had one advantage : giving Mr Fixer an opprtunity to overdrive without destroying anything.

I was surprised to win on the first try.

That was a very close Near Mint. Finished with Fixer at 1 HP and everyone else incapped (so yay, achievement!) It would've been a Mint but I rewound when I accidentally played a style from Fixer's hand that I hadn't meant to play. :-(

I've never fought Dawn before, and I misremembered her card a round into it. I thought she'd flip at 3 citizens in the trash, so I was careful to only kill 2 initially, then was surprised when she didn't flip after the environment killed a third.

When she *did* flip and got 2 Citizens out (because Return with the Dawn was in play), I mistakenly left it in instead of destroying it with Visionary's incap power because I forgot she counts as a citizen and she was going to flip back next turn anyways.

The Explosives Wagon was brutal; it kept me from redirecting with Fixer (right after I played that style with him as the highest HP hero), and I had Imbued Fire out when it exploded with no Flesh of the Sun God, so it did a lot of damage. The second one scared the crap out of me; by that point Fixer was at 7 and Ra and Expat were lower, so if I took it out everyone but Fix would die and he'd be at 1, so I had to leave it alone. This was the first game I got to use Expat's Hairtrigger Reflexes, which ended up taking out the Stout Barrel the turn that it and one of the Hayes brothers came into play, but otherwise it didn't do anything. Then Mr. Hayes casually took out Expat and Ra because they were the 2 lowest non-environment targets (1 and 3, I believe).

I thought I was screwed, but Dawn ended her turn at 12 HP with Mr. Fixer at exactly 1, with Ra and Expat giving him a power use each for 3 total Bitter Strikes at 4 damage each thanks to the Wagon. Extremely, extremely close.

This is the first one I'm just gonna skip. I might try it some time later, but I'm usually not so masochistic as to go into the worst possible opening against Dawn on purpose.