Weekly One-Shot #50: For the Watch!

DW Fixer, DW Setback,DW Expat, and DW Nightmist against the Matriarch at the Temple of Zhu Long.    Good Luck!

Mint.  Everyone but Nightmist died (Setback died twice), but she wiped the floor with Ms Bird Lady.

Setback was phenomenally useless.  The only unlucky token generation I could find was 1 Reckless Rush and 2 High Risk Behaviors, and it took me far too long to remember that High Risk Behavior can actually give you tokens.

Yeah I really wish Mitigate added a token instead of removing one.

don't be like me and jack handle w/ bloody knuckles and both cohorts in play

it hurts. a lot. 

This is fricking impossible. Matriarch's bad enough, then you add in Dark Watch, THEN you add in "everyone starts with AoE damage" and I just... How are you supposed to beat this?

Very carefully.   And mostly depend on Setback for DW Fixer fodder and Mitigate.  

Yah, whoever stacked his deck is a mean, mean person.

Mint.

Setback ended up incapped--by the end, cards were at a premium, and I didn't want to ditch them to wake him up. His incap power (letting Fixer use his power again) was better than what Setback was doing on his feet anyway.

Key mid-game was using Charge with Alternating Tiger Claw with Jack Handle, then Fixer's power to get rid of the cohorts.  Lots of birds were out at the time, so all the heroes took some pretty big damage, but it had to be done. Huggin and Munnin are too much to overcome if left out together at all.

I used the Mysterious Ceremonies to play cards, mostly (I did draw a few times). It was great to set up Fixer fodder.

It came down to an Oblivion at the end. The last Darken the Skies came out, the field was full of birds, but Matriarch was down to 4 HP. Nightmist had the Amulet and spare cards, so she could redirect to Matriarch before the birds all died, if needed. In fact, the only way I could lose was if the Oblivion flip was double ones. Four out of the fifteen cards in the deck were ones, so I felt pretty safe, but I was still nervous, because I know how my luck usually goes.

I flipped double twos, so Nightmist redirected, and the Dark Watch was able to stand victorious! (Except for Setback, who slipped and fell over).

Fixer=5HP, Setback=0HP, Expatriette=10HP, Nightmist=6HP

Some general hints for people who are struggling:

remember that you get to choose the order in which you hit things with AoE damage. It's not always crucial, but sometimes (such as using cryo ammo in a SMG), you'll want to micromanage the order to make sure to hit things like poisoners, carrion fields, and the matriarch before killing off any birds. 

Shinobi can be incredibly useful in killing off the cohorts. Just remember that they always go after the lowest, so sometimes it can be really useful to wipe the field, even if it means taking a hit. 

Cryo ammo only works if you do damage with it. So you'll need to aim if you want to punch through both cohorts to the matriarch with a pistol or assault rifle. 

Salvage yard retrieves all equipment. Useful for getting back ammo!

Mitigate removes a token, but if you don't have one, you still get the bonus. Cash Out's healing effect works the same way, as long as you have the cards to discard. 

Ammo doesn't destroy itself until after the power is fully resolved. So you can sacrifice it midstream to prevent damage from the matriarch... just remember to micromanage your damage resolution to get the most out of it first. 

Nightmist works MUCH better in a support role with occasional damage in her Dark Watch incarnation.  Take shameless advantage of your base power to set up heedless lashes to get relics and ongoings out faster!

once mysterious ceremonies comes out, stay focused.  It accelerates the environment deck, but you can pull a LOT of clever tricks by having Setback and Nightmist destroy "Master of the temple" before it can activate... or draw cards for nightmist to scout out mistform for tanking purposes, or set up fixer/setback for damage.

hope this helps!

I agree.

Wors comes out later when the environment plays the ENTIRE DECK right after the Matriarch plays Darken the Skies.  coupled wiht the sher amount of times I have to answer the same question, that loss wasn't even close fun.

This is a really good tip. I wish I had realized that during the fight…

oh well, still minted, with everyone alive to boot.

I haven't had a chance for a second go yet, but I'm pondering burning a Mists of Time on him to force a shuffle.  Surely ANY shuffle would be better than what they gave him.

Mists of Time only impacts Nightmist's deck not any other hero.  

Sorry, meant Mist-Fueled Recovery.  Since you shuffle their trash into their deck.

I think they get too much grief on the Internet already, but you can complain to the people in this list. There was no search for a random seed in this game.

Is now a good time to mention I beat this on the first try on Advanced? 

...and also add in "every single bad guy in the deck does 1 HP damage to the lowest HP target on the board"....

I haven't even played the real scenario yet -- just a few practice games, and they're nearly impossible.  Most of the challenges have the decks rigged to make otherwise very beatable scenarios hard on the heroes.   This one, I'm starting to think, needs to have the decks rigged just to make it possible to win.  

Most of the challenges have nothing "rigged" at all.

Just a note that the Mist-Fueled Recovery trick works.  If you use it on Setback on turn 1, you'll get Looking Up a turn or 2 later which (especially combined with High-Risk Behavior) makes him REALLY useful.

I'll buy "most", but there have definitely been some challenges where the villain deck is obviously rigged for a particular start.  I've never been sure about the hero decks, but I guess this answers the question.

That's why I didn't say "all" =).

Most of the time, I set up a game and press play and see how it goes. If it's good, I use that random seed.

Sometimes I am looking for a few specific things. Like the villain starting with a certain card, or heroes having (or not having) something in their hand. I programmatically create thousands of games to find a seed that generates a game with the conditions I want. The more complicated the conditions, the harder it is to find a random seed, so I try to keep it simple.

Last week's would be an example of that, Baron Blade starting with Hasten Doom, Hasten Doom, and Consider the Price of Victory. Everything else in the game was whatever it was. I still play the game and see if it's OK, because 99% of the setup is still unknown to me.

Of course, that won't stop people from claiming that every little thing that happens is a devious trap and I'm the worst person in the world for it =)

I think it's worth reiterating that nothing that happens in a Weekly One-Shot game is any less likely to happen than any time you press "New Game" with the same team. It is literally exactly the same chance.

Bonus numbers! Out of 50 Weekly One-Shots so far:

• 10 randomized starts
• 25 fixed seeds where I just tried the game and went with that
• 12 fixed seeds where I searched for something
• 3 fixed seeds from "what number are you thinking of" on the community one-shot survey

Those are essentially the numbers I was expecting Villain-wise, but I admit, I previously suspected that more tampering was done with hero decks.  I'm happy to be wrong 

How many times have you tried a one shot and said "Nope! That is unreasonable. " and went with a different one?

Hmm.. I think 3 or 4 times. Often it can be salvaged by adjusting the heroes or environment, though. There was a certain Cosmic Omnitron game that the beta testers gave me a lot of grief about =)

There is one that I'm saving for a rainy day that I haven't been able to beat on randomized start after 5 tries or so.

Not too bad,I love DW crew, even if they are tough to play with. Keeping up the Mysterious Ceremonies up is important, they need more plays and draws. Just bank on you winning before you die. Setback and Nightmist where support, set back healed and prevented 20+ damage. Nightmist board wipe a few times and prevent the boss from playing cards. DW Nightmist requires loads of planning and knowledge of what might be needed next turn. Both feed the angry Fixer. A double shot of nitrogen round kept a dangerous round from being to hurting too much. 

I play this group often so I know their limitations and how to work around them. I didn't shuffle any deck so Handelbra could have done worst. Getting Expat to unload on the environment deck was a keep play. My team as at 12+ hp expat took her out with her handgun.

Mint, with Setback at 4 and NightMist at 13.

Setback was mostly useless, but he tanked and healed a lot with his power and Cash Out.

Also, I LOVED the theme and introduction for this one. I am the toe that stubs the feet of men!

Mint.

I had a very easy time with this one. NightMist is awesome with extra draws and plays... target her everytime with Mysterious Cerimonies. The other tip I'd give is play pride and load it up with 2 cryo ammos... when the second darken the sky hits, turn off Matty's damage and play Oblivion.

Tried this again, using the tips above.

Still a massive failure, but it was less unfun, at least.  I managed to bury one of the Cohorts with Nightmist, which helped, but Expatriette shot her load too early, and the double-nitrogen rounds didn't help against the Carrion Field.

I used the Nitrogen on the SMG, so I could do it multiple times. I hit Carrion Fields first, then hit Matriarch; then, I avoided one of the hits by allowing her to destroy Nitrogen Rounds instead of dealing damage. Little cheaty type things like that.

Finally beat this one.  No, I don't want to talk about it.

Nightmist was the only survivor because of Mistform and all the birds getting buried under the resurrection environment.  Obviously my line of play wasn't the optimal one but I tried multiple angles of attack and generally failed a lot.

Well that was a slog, but I got the mint.  I had things set up for Fixer to take out the Cohorts (and pretty much everything else) on his turn, but then the Matriarch started horrifically screeching a cacophony, killing an Apprentice Poisoner, who got revenge by killing off her giant flock of birds.  And since Odin's ravens hadn't been destroyed yet, my heroes were taking a boosted 4 damage for each bird destroyed.  So after all that, everyone but Nightmist was dead, and she was at 2 hp.

Needless to say, Nightmist immediately turned to mist.  And thus began the long process of healing with Starshield Necklace, performing Mysterious Ceremonies to draw lots of cards, and repeatedly reviving Expatriette.  I knew that if I got Matriarch to be lower than me, I could get Zhu Long to start attacking her, but she was at 50 or so hp when this started, so I had a ways to go.

I finally took her out, taking her from the mid 20s to 0 hp in one round.  I became a Master of Magic on my turn to help get my hp above hers.  Then I used my three Mysterious Ceremonies plays to unleash a Heedless Lash which put the Amulet in play, Mistbound Matriarch's deck so she couldn't cause any trouble, and send everything into Obliveon, including three Shinobi Assassins, which leapt off of my deck to finish off the wounded Matriarch when Setback motivated me to use my power.

I don't like Dark Watch or the Matriarch (unless Tachyon is around), and I really thought I had no chance of winning with the way this started out, but this ended up being one of the most intense games of Sentinels I've ever played.

How did anybody beat this, much less get Mint?  

I tried getting rid of the Mask, only to have Huginn and Cacophony take away all of my extra ongoings so Nightmist couldn't peer into Matriarch's deck, and Fixer had no extra stuff to destroy.  I tried getting rid of Huginn, but Muninn came out I tried not destroying Mysterious Ceremonies...only to have it pull out the Ninja and the Poisoner, who proceeded to kill off birds, and consequently my heroes.  Between Huginn and the *conveniently* placed Cacophonies, there's virtually no way to keep Nightmist's Astral Projection out long enough to keep the Matriarch's deck in control.  The Darken the Skies are evenly spread out in the deck, so that even if you do manage to get rid of the Mask...and Huginn...and Muninn...and Carrion Fields....the two Darken the Skies come out and just make you start all over again.   I'm on my 10th try trying to beat this, and still haven't made it past Round 4.

And as for the comment that the decks are rarely "rigged," the Darken The Skies just happen to be evenly spaced throughout the deck, and Setback just happens to be laden with useless cards that require him to discard unlucky points, but no cards that let him *add* lucky points, and both Fixer and Expatriette's only weapons in their deck just *happen* to be the "damage everything" weapons which are the worst to use against the Matriarch??!  

How did you manage to survive long enough to be able to make it to the second Darken the Skies?  By the time that one rolled around, my heroes were all down to single digits, and Carrion Fields was out, so even if I reduced Matriarch's damage, the Carrion Fields would have killed everybody.

How did you even get to use CashOut?  I could never get any tokens into his unlucky pool for him to Cash Out.  The (ahem) "random" card setup has not only his opening hand, but his next three card draws all consisting of cards that don't add any tokens.

Don't bother with deck control, focus first on getting rid of the mask in the first round.  Then, once Carrion Fields comes out focus on destroying that.  Setback is almost completely useless due to an unlucky shuffle so feel free to pile up Shinobi on his deck and skip draw phases until you want the Shinobi in play.  NightMist is the key to winning, in general use the Mysterious Cermonies on her to build up a massive hand or get multiple plays per-round.  WIth Fixer you'll generally want to be redirecting the first damage and using Jack Handle… when Huginn and Muninn are both out switch to one of your styles that make damage irreducible.

You can still use Cash Out for the discard cards to heal part, even if you don't discard tokens to draw cards.

I did that at least once, and I'm pretty sure twice, in this game. The way I read McBehrer's post, Cash Out was used for healing purposes.

Yes. I played this game on Advanced without searching or knowing anything about it, and won on my first try. But as I said above:

Of course, that won't stop people from claiming that every little thing that happens is a devious trap

"It's a trap!"

"Did you see us fight?"

I didn’t say I drew cards. I just healed.