Weekly One Shot #55: Dawn of a New Year

Wraith, F6 Bunker, and Fanatic are trying their hands at stealth in Insula Primarlis but are spotted by Citizen Dawn.   Good luck!

Just looking at the setup screen, I knew I wasn't going to Mint this. I was not wrong!

As far as I got, I can say there are a couple rounds of heavy hits, and don't get used to having cards to play. Getting rid of Return With the Dawn is really important. Equally important is leaving one or two Citizens out at the end of the round for the Velociraptors to feed on. And that's where foreknowledge will probably benefit the most. :/

I Minted, with Bunker incapaciated, the others in single digits. Bunker got incapacitated because I miscalculated an External Combustion on the penultimate round. It was an unnecessary play anyway, but Citizen Dare was in play and I took the dare. :P

A few things to note:

1. Chastise can help with getting Zealous Offense out later. That 2 points of self-damage counts towards the 3-damage condition, and allows for one of the damaging Citizens to be neutered for a bit.
2. Other than End of Days, the first hero to be able to destroy Return with the Dawn is, somewhat ironically, Bunker. Destroy it when you can.
3. Velociraptors are your friends. Let them eat the Citizens for you!
4. Infrared Eyepiece should be played and used as soon as you get it. When exactly you get it comes down to deck shuffles--I had played Impromptu Invention at some point to get Utility Belt into play, so it might be possible you won't see it. However, a certain nasty card is somewhat buried in her deck, so you have quite a bit of time to worry about it.
5. Try to prioritize damage on Dawn, especially once both Obsidian Fields are in play. Fanatic's Zealous Offense helps stop Citizens from harming you, anyway (outside of Tears, of course).
6. Since H=3 in this game, Citizen Dawn flips back to her front side if there are 2 Citizens in play. Since Dawn is herself a Citizen, this means you need only one other Citizen in play to flip her back. Thus you can get it set up so she flips and flips back immediately, allowing you to destroy all future Citizens indiscriminately. (E.g., if there are 4 Citizens in the trash, and Dawn and 2 other Citizens in play, you can have a Velociraptor eat one Citizen, and then on Dawn's turn she will flip and flip back.)

Mint.  I used End of Days as soon as I could, and tossed both Turret Modes to get rid of Dawn's ongoings.  Spent far more damage than I would have liked dealing with the environment, but Infrared Eyepiece made Dawn pretty easy to manage once the initial 3 citizens and Return with the Dawn are dealt with.

A simple mis-click killed me.

I accidentally used stealth instead of the Razor Ordinance on the Pterodactyl (sp?).  With 4 equipment cards in play.

How did you manage to use End of Days, or have any Turret Modes to get rid of?  My heroes were down to zero cards in their hand by Dawn's second turn.  End of Days got taken away as soon as it came out.  

My first few turns were:

Wraith - skip/skip,  Bunker - skip/skip, Fanatic - skip/skip, Wraith - skip/skip, Bunker - skip/skip, Fanatic - play End of Days/skip (or use a power, doesn't really matter).

Doing this, you'll have plenty of extra cards and only have to deal with Tears for 2 turns.

What made you decide to skip a bunch of cards?  I see people Mint-ing these B.S. rigged decks by using completely unconventional strategies – do you play the game on (ex:) Steam, see what cards are coming, then play it on another platform to get the Mint?  

I never had Zealous Offense available to play; between Tears and Blinding Blast, all of my heroes' decks got wiped out.  How did you have it available?

These games aren't rigged against you I'm not sure how much that has to be said.   MigrantP in the non randomized games looks for one or two things in an opening setup and then sees if he can beat it.  This is also a possible setup you could have happen in the physical game or the video game

For me I never skipped.  I took out Truth by Wraith's second turn.   I used Razor Ordance, Flak Cannon, and Smite the Transgressor as my first round card plays.   On the second round I played Micro Targeting Computer, Ammo Drop, and Holy Nova.   This with the Raptor set me up with a clear board and able to more easily take out Truth when he returned.

I got near mint only because I messed up on a power use as I wanted to take out Return with the Dawn using Bunker power and mistakenly clicked on Flak Cannon.  

I got Near Mint.  My first game I used Razor Ordinance and Flak Cannon, but because Fanatic's power wouldn't do any damage, I did skip/skip, saw End of Days, and then did skip/skip for the next round and played it.  Got Dawn to like 20 that game before I finally died.  When I played my second game, I remembered the first few rounds.

Also, I don't consider doing skip/skip that unconventional.  I'm very likely to skip/skip if either the hero's power OR play might not get a lot done, because I prefer to draw a lot to get more options.  That's how I saw End of Days by the end of Fanatic's first turn even on the first play-through.

I'm not going to say this one-shot is a slam dunk but it's definitely mintable without doing things that defy common sense/logic.  My recall is hazy but I only skip/skipped once, with Fanatic since I didn't have a better play to get around Truth's -1 damage resist.

Bottom line is that this is a damage race and you are absolutely given the tools to win it, if not much more than that.  On one hand, yes you're saddled with a pretty bad opening salvo of citizens and only have 3 heroes on your team.  On the other hand, one of them is Wraith who is arguably the single best hero to take to a Dawn fight and the other two will absolutely put in big time work for you as well.  Not gonna say anymore since I've probably already spoilered too much, but reading through it looks like other people also one-shot this doing different things than I did so there are multiple paths to victory

I got Mint as well… didn’t use End of Days though I did skip skip on Fanatic’s first turn.

My general strategy was to get Bunker into Turret Mode with Ammo Drop, Flak Cannon, and Maintainance Unit and have Wraith set up for both Deck control and damage.

Mint.

Whew!  That was close.

I was managing the dinos pretty well (letting them target the citizens) until about halfway through when a surprise Raptor killed the 6th Citizen (I had set up for Dawn flipping and immediately flipping back...until the Raptor ruined my plans...oops!)

As a result, I had to suffer through a round I wasn't expecting, which incapped Wraith and F6 Bunker, and left Fanatic with 2HP after Dawn finally flipped back.

Fortunately, Fanatic had a Wrathful Retribution and enough cards to discard for it at that point. Dawn went from 27HP to -1HP in one blow.

Saved by Wrath rather than Grace, I suppose...

Agreed that skip/skip skipping Fanatic's first turn is not that unconventional.  That gets you to End of Days, at the expense of losing Flak Cannon and Razor Ordinance.   

But skipping Wraith/Bunker's turns TWICE – particularly when they have Razor Ordinance/Flak Cannon available, is super-unconventional…unless you know that within the next 2-3 rounds:   (a) End of Days is coming (so you better not bring out your good weaponry), (b) Blinding Blast is coming to take more of your cards away, and (c) that Return of the Dawn is coming to bring back the dead villains you just killed with Razor Ordinance and Flak Cannon.

I B.S. rigged this one by clicking New Game, choosing the decks I wanted, and then clicking Fight! It was really tough to get all that B.S. in. 

My test run was a win, with Fanatic the last woman standing at 1 HP and only just barely able to pull off a Wrathful Retribution for the win. I figured some of you clever folks would find an easier way or three =)

MigrantP with all the B.S. apparently. 

Look, all I'm saying is that for all of these One-Shots, I run several test games first, getting used to how the heroes interact with the villain, the environment, and each other; keeping track of the major pitfalls to be wary of; and the like.  (In this particular game, I played until I beat Dawn 3 times in a row, at which point I figured it was time to try the actual scenario.)  When I get to a point that I'm pretty comfortable that I have a good strategy to beat it, I play the One-Shot for real…

…and invariably come across some strange combination of cards/bad draws that never came up (or even close to came up) in my practice games, which (a) give all of the heroes awful draws; (b) give the villains completely insane/impractical draws; (c) completely neuter one of the heroes; (d) disincentivize otherwise completely sensible plays that most people would make (like in this game, getting out Flak Cannon/Razor Ordinance) and/or (e) render all of the strategies and gambits from the practice games, or other "conventional" plays, completely useless.  

So I play the scenario over and over and over again, losing and losing and losing again, trying different things until I happen on the one combination of plays/moves that manages to beat it.   And quite often it is one combination, there's no room for error; playing one card differently makes the difference between winning and losing.   And I think, "Well, it wasn't unbeatable," but also "But how in the heck was I supposed to stumble upon that particular combination of moves/plays on the very first try, with no 'undo's?"   

Then I read stuff on the boards along the lines of, "Oh, yeah - I Minted by skipping all of the heroes' first two turns…," or "I Minted by having Argent Adept be my main damage dealer," or "I Minted by using nothing but Wrathful Gaze…," or other moves that defy convention.  My reactions tend to be along the lines of:  (1) "So…beating this setup requires doing something out of the ordinary."  (2) "But how do you know you have to play out-of-the ordinary without playing it and losing, therefore not getting Mint?"   

I go into these blindly and rarely have I needed some oddball strategy.   If you feel what is suggested an oddball strategy then I would boil it down to different people playing the game differently.  

I will say that, half the time, you'll start a one-shot with some obvious strategies in hand. This isn't one of them (Imma try that two-round skip and see what happens, I think), but if you like solving puzzles...

Yeah, that worked. Infrared Eyepiece won me that game, buried both Return With the Dawns, not to mention Aurora and Citizen Sweat. Get those Obsidian Fields out and leave 'em in play, Fanatic can do so much more damage to Dawn than she'll take. Not to mention, once the first one's in play, you don't need Chastise to keep up Zealous Offense. :) I took far too much damage that way before realizing what I was doing, and Wraith got eaten by raptors, but I finished 0-2-6!

Sorry robb8888, but that's all basically a product of your imagination.

Nothing can happen in a Weekly One-Shot that cannot happen in any game you play with the same setup.

There is no Weekly One-Shot where there is "*one* combination" and "no room for error" in order to win. All you have to do is read the threads here and on Steam and that would be obvious; people beat them in all kinds of ways.

The vast majority of Weekly One-Shots have no specific setup in mind at all, and were just a random game I tried and felt had a reasonable challenge level.

The ones that do have a specific setup are typically very limited, to something like the first two cards the villain plays.

There are literally zero Weekly One-Shots where I have in some way planned for there to be a certain way you're supposed to beat it. I cannot imagine ever bothering to try to set up a game like that.

I go into every Weekly One-shot blind, not even glancing at the forum thread until I've played it once.

My first turn I played Razor Ordnance and Flak Cannon, but I skipped for Fanatic because she had in hand a card that would deal no damage and heal us for 1 each, a card which would deal 1 damage and let her use an extra power she didn't have, and a card that would do nothing and get immediately destroyed, and a power that would deal no damage.  Then I drew End of Days, and skipped Wraith's turn because anything she played would immediately get destroyed, and played Ammo Drop for Bunker to get all the card draw.

Knowing when to skip is in many ways the trickiest part of SotM.  But Fanatic's hand was full of good cards that were situationally almost useless, and she had a useless power.  In this case, skipping was definately the right choice.  The fact that skipping in this case hands you Fanatic's favorite cure-all was gravy, but not necessary to make the decision.

Near Mint for me as I lost the first game in the stupidest way imaginable. The -one- turn I get greedy and go for a double-strike on Dawn with Wraith instead of using the eye-piece.... and OF COURSE I get hit in the face with the Devastating Aurora! D'oh!

Yeah, don't ever not use the Eyepiece. Every round, I would find "horrible card" alongside "significantly less horrible card". An easy choice! And it took away most of Dawn's teeth.

I mean, my unconventional strategy was first dropping equipment to kill Citizen Truth ASAP (twice! oy vey!) and then controlling the deck with Infrared and trying not to die and dumping as much damage on Dawn as possible.  =\

Thing is, no matter how many games with the same lineup you run beforehand, those won't tell you anything you don't already know if you've ever played with those decks before.  You know what's in Fanatic's deck.  You know what Insula Primus plays.  

But at the End of Days, you gotta play the cards on the table/hand, not the cards in the deck.  In my case I double-skipped once with Fanatic which drew me into my game-winning play.  Someone else did that and End of Days'd, which I didn't.  Someone else instead used Chastise—>Zealous Offense to control the field.  All three approaches were valid lines of play within what was given to us.  Generally there's enough to work with in the one-shots that you can overcome what the villain throws at you

(The Dark Watch vs Matriarch was still some grade-A bullshit, though )

Mint

Like others, I played the Razor and Cannon to weaken Truth, then skipped Fanatic's turn due to her cards being situationally useless. Drew EoD and decided to sacrifice Wraith and Bunker's weapons to wipe the board.  On round two, I played an Ammo Drop, so Bunker could stock up on cards when EoD triggered. That gave me lots of choices thereafter and B was able to use his base power (which I usually ignore) to keep taking out Dawn's ongoings. 

I took a lot of damage from a round with Cit Winter, Cit Hammer, and an Obsidian Field, but that set up a Wrathful Retribution which took Dawn down to the 20s. After clearing them, I just kept hitting Dawn while ignoring the other citizens so Dawn wouldn't flip.  

Fanatic had her resurrection trigger. Wraith got out the Smoke Bombs, which combined with Bunker's plating for some good DR until Wraith went down, at which point she kept healing Fanatic until F had more HP than Dawn. After that, the pair of T-Rexes munched Dawn to bits.

The unconventional thing for me was NOT playing Wraith's Infrared Goggles! Usually those go right into play, especially against Dawn. But in this game I felt like other choices were always a bit more pressing.

I got near mint because I was a fool. I had a plan for that Wrathful Retribution, but then a Raptor killed the citizen I left alive meaning that Dawn didn’t flip back. And yet for some odd reason, on Fanatic’s turn I played it anyway! Rewind!
I didn’t use the Eyepiece, but thanks to an early incapped Bunker I did use Aegis and Retribution both twice.

Arrrh! On my first run, I got incapacitated when Dawn had 8 HP left. Mostly due to clicking the wrong things…

My first turn I only skipped with Fanatic; the rest were able to keep their hands up, somehow. I minted it, but it was a while ago, so IDK.