Weekly One-Shot #29: The Gong Show

Step right up and see the Amazing Wager Master take on the intrepid heroes Santa Guise, Visionary, and Expat in the most bizarre of locals in the Realm of Discord.   Have fun!

Yikes! Got my Mint, but it got a LOT closer than I thought it would with Santa Guise down and Visionary and Expatriette at 2 and 3 HP respectively. Everything was going just according to plan until What Do You Really Know? hit a BRUTAL streak of hero cards all in a row. I never thought I'd actually be thankful for a Time Crawls, but this game, it saved me!

Well, that was easy. Won by Losing To The Odds on Wager Master's second turn.

Same!

I went through the hard way the first time as I realized I had missed my opportunity to get that alternative win condition.    By hard way I mean beating down Wager Master which took a while since Expat is the only source of regular damage.   

Me too!

It took a while, but eventually (after quite a few missteps) I arranged it so that we won thanks to losing to the odds. 

I too won during the Wager Master's second turn, and those ultra quick games is precisely why I don't care for playing against him. Can I admit that it is the only physical deck I don't own?

Wager Master is one of those villains that doesn't see a lot of play among my friends, mostly because tracking all of the conditions and rules alterations can get tough. 

Playing against him in the video game was a LOT more fun!  I've always enjoyed having the video game take care of the bookkeeping- in addition to revealing new rules quirks (like how Fixer's crowbars work), it lets me enjoy playing instead of trying to make sure that everyone at the table is aware of all the modifiers, rules alterations from the environment, etc.

Wager master kicked that enjoyment to 11. Instead of a team of people all trying to figure out what the rule changes meant, with screw ups, rewinds, forgetting about things like indestructible keywords... I had a great time playing and letting the game tell me when I goofed (in the case of forgetting a condition was indestructible), and a very tense couple of turns when I was focused entirely on figuring out how to beat the odds by anticipating getting hit, or altering damage output. 

I like Wager Master for more light hearted games as you never know what you'll get.  

Wager Master is a box of chocolate.

Exactly he often has a nougat center.  

Incidentally, for anyone finding it hard to win, highlight the text between the spoiler warnings to see the winning strategy:

SPOILER WARNING

1: For the choice in WM's first turn, choose "Condition" ("Ongoing" will work too).

2: Guise plays Best Card Ever and throws his hands in the air.  Choose any target you like for the damage.

3: Guise plays Look What I Found and targets Expatriette (use the Show All Targets button).

4: Do whatever you want for the rest of the game.  I don't believe there is any way to lose after this point, whatever you choose to do.

END SPOILER

It's quite an elegant solution, really…

That's not quite true.  Visionary has a play that would cause the game to go on.  Losing to the Odds counts all hero targets, which includes Decoy Projection if you play it.

I took your idea into account (and yes, I did highlight it).  You have forgotten an important interaction here.

As it's a Distortion, Decoy Projection is destroyed when Imbued Frailty comes into play.

Where someone else has eaten all the nice ones. 

Ooh, I hadn't considered that! Good point!

Near mint.

Didn't try to arrange a Losing to the odds victory in either game.  The first game had Expatriette as the last hero standing with Wager Master down to 1HP.  Unfortunately, with only one hero left, it only takes one wageling to lose....so....

Second game saw Guise opening a huge fistful of damage gifts on Wager Master-- four or five Barbarian infused one-shots in a row took him down from 30ish to zero in one turn.