Vengeance game: Ermine, Proletariat, Fright Train and Friction head to Silver Gulch and find Chrono-Ranger, Sky-Scraper, Tempest and Omnitron-X.
Proletariat gets both his problem cards out early, but there's plenty of area effect damage and ongoing destruction on the hero's side so you can manage it. Also the environment is fairly helpful.
Mint, but everyone on around 7 hp. Hit hard, hit often and you'll be fine.
Mint here with everyone still standing, HP totals ranging from 7 to 11. Fairly straightforward fight here as already mentioned. Godawful start for Chrono Ranger for me, but he caught somewhat up by the end, at least.
Mint. Don't think anyone was less than 10.
Yeah, and for me, the hat never entered play. But the grendes…
Mint here as well… same 7ish HP others are getting. Even though my final HP was low the game never felt out if control.
Near Mint.
First game, I made two critical errors:
1. I used Micro Assembler on Omnitron X, forgetting that you need to discard a card as a part of its power. I had Defensive Blast in my hand and a plating out, so my intent was to fish for another plating, thinking "WOW, once I get this set up, the game will be a cakewalk! I'll show them how a robot rampages!" and then, since Defensive Blast was the *only* card in my hand at that point, I had to discard it, and Omniton X hung his head and cried cyber-tears of shame and sorrow.
2. I left Ermine for last. Why? Uh...dunno. Lapse of Judgment? Flight of Fancy? Not paying attention? I thought--"Eh, I can ride it out." Nope. Bad idea. Sky-Scraper went down at some point, but I had CR, Tempest and O-X in mid-single digits with only Ermine left. She soon produced 2 Subtle Diversions simultaneously, and I had no way to get rid of them. I watched all the HP slowly go away while I frantically tried to draw some ongoing destruction (which this team has plenty of...I had just squandered it early and wasn't drawing any more).
So Ermine stood victorious with about 5HP left.
Second game went MUCH better. I took out Ermine relatively early, and had almost no problems. Sheriff Pratt ended the game by shooting Proletariat while boosted with 2 Aggression Modulators. That lawman was MAD!
Yeah, Ermine can be super nasty… no idea why she’s classified as a level 1 villain.
My guess is because overall her threat isn't taking out the heroes by damage but moreso screwing up any setup.
With the exception of Iron Legacy, it seems to me that screwing up set-up is what makes a villain difficult, not ability to do damage.
I mean, look at the higher rated villains – Citizen Dawn's "avoid at all costs" card is Devastating Aurora, which does no damage. Gloomweaver was downgraded from a 3 to a 1, and I'm pretty sure the fact he has no forced ongoing/equipment destruction has a lot to do with that. While Voss is still rated at 3, I tend to find him consistently easy, because his deck has one card that does any Ongoing destruction, and it's a unique target with no in-built way to come back.
And of the lower-tier villains, the worst cards to face are the Flechettes and Devious Disruption because they wipe your board.
By this point in the game, there are tons of healing or DR options for most of the heroes, making damage itself less of a threat, while the real danger is losing the cards and combos you've spent the whole game setting up.
Chokepoint only does mess with your setup and she's a one. Ermine messes with your setup but doesn't have much damage behind it. Whereas with Dawn or Iron Legacy they have cards that mess up your setup and a lot of regular damage to go around.
Granted, it's a combination that makes the difficult villains really difficult, but to me, a villain that messes with your set-up is always more of a pain to deal with than one who just hits you. I remember the first time I played Vengeance, nobody was able to get or keep any of their stuff on the table because of Ermine, which is the main reason the game was difficult; the damage was the secondary concern.
Additionally, Ermine’s deck is full of cards that make her harder to kill where as the rest of the Vengeful 5 either damage themselves or increase their damage taken… and don’t get me started on her advanced rule
She is the first target I take out in a Vengeance game with her in it and only with Subtle Diversion out does it become an issue to take her out. Overall, I just find her to be more of an annoyance because she does screw with setup than I do as a real threat. Baron Blade in that set is the hardest one overall to me to deal with and Ermine doesn't quite reach his level. She might be a two instead of a one but it seems borderline at best.
Yah, I always used to take out Friction first, because I didn't want to risk a big hit and/or her giving everyone else plays, but her incapacitated is just freaking annoying. As a result, I now still kill Stolen Gear and Shock Dampeners early, but otherwise I leave Friction alone and either Kill Fright Train or Baron first, with Ermine ususally being second before I kill the other.
That was a fun, easy Mint, and it taught me Omnitron has utility in Vengeance. :D (Granted, a few more games on my own showed he doesn't have that much, but he's definitely playable.)
I stuck an Ablative Coating and a Reactive Subroutine on him early, and he laid waste pretty effectively, honestly. But I think that's probably his best bet with these, unless he gets targeted by an Everyman's Strength Proletariat or a high-Surge Friction.
Mint. ChronoRanger was lost because I was careless and didn't kill Everyman's Strength when I should have. But at that point Proletariat was the only villian left, and he went down easy.
The other thing that makes Ermine annoying, which is easy to miss, is that Constant Prattle fills Friction's trash up with Surges.
Easy Mint with 11/8/8/13 HP remaining. All four enemies went down in my third round.
Tempest was far and away the MVP. Gene-Bound Shackles is total shenanigans in Vengeance as it is against the Ennead. Proletariat got out two extra clones and it didn't matter- between Silver Gulch, Sky Scraper, and Tempest's dueling "2 damage to everything" parties, he was wildly ineffective. In particular, Tempest round 2 was bonkers: 6/6/2 out of Chain Lightning, then 2 to everyone. By the time it came around to his third turn, Fright Train was down and everyone else was at 4 or less, making them easy pickings.
Hopefully I don't have to redo it - I see the latest iOS update is screwy - but I won't mess with anything until it gets fixed, and hopefully my one-shot collection is unaffected.
Third round – how'd you do it? Ermine took away most of my good cards. I had absolutely no way to get Sky-scraper into Huge form until the very last play, when she pulled out a Tectonic Choke-slam to kill off Fright Train. I ended up having to plink away at them with Tempest – took me about 6-7 rounds to finally kill all of them.
How'd you get out the Ablative Coating? In my game, Omni's hand got wiped out early by Ermine and the Fright Train card (the "discard your entire hand unless everybody discards a card" one-shot). I kept trying to get cards out for him, hoping for the Ablative Coating; I played every Reset I could get my hand on, and used his power to play extra cards from his hand every round, and never pulled an Ablative Coating.
Mint, although it was a largely un-fun slog. HP 7/7/7/6.
Despite trying to kill Ermine first, Ermine and Freight Train (Choke, plus the "wipe out one person's hand unless everybody discards a card") left me with few options from the get-go. It's weird -- I hadn't played many Vengeance games, so I played a large number of practice games (7+) before this one. In *every single game,* I managed to get Skycraper in Huge form by her 2nd round, and was able to lay waste effectively. In this game, she never had a single Huge card in hand until the very last turn, when she used Rest and Recover to pull it out of the trash. She was stuck in Tiny form the whole game and couldn't come out, and never even had enough cards in her hand to use her Tiny power effectively; I think she played 3 links the entire game.
Likewise for Omni. His hand was also pretty devastated, and despite playing Reset and using his power on himself every turn to try to pull out extra cards, he never got the Ablative Coating he needed, or any of the "play/draw extra cards" Components. Two Disruptive Flechettes proved moderately useful.
Chrono plinked away every turn, but only ever had one bounty in play, and didn't get his Hat until mid-/late-game. Even then, like Sky-scraper, he never really had enough cards in his hand to do anything super-useful. He did manage to play his one bounty ("By All Means") on Ermine, and between that and Hunter and Hunted, it helped to take her down fast.
Tempest was the biggest damage dealer, via Grievous Hail Storm and the Gene-Bound Shackles.
Cyrus Hayes and the Sheriff were a big help in taking out the Nemeses, the Clones, and Friction's equipment.
Either way, not much fun on this challenge. No cool combos, no multi-card plays, no characters playing off each other...no real strategy at all. Just a battle of attrition: "Heroes take their turn, do some damage," then "villains take their turn, do some damage." The heroes had a few more HP to start, and did a little more damage every round, so they won, but not through any clever or inventive play on my part.
As to your question regarding Sky-Scraper, if you play Neutralizer Resonator instead of something that makes you Tiny, and then use her base power to draw 2, you'll draw Tectonic Chokeslam literally on turn 1.
Personally, I almost always keep SS in normal for a few turns to build up a large hand. In this, game, since Ermine had already make some folks discard, it seemed like a must, and the only link I wanted in play was Resonator for use with ongoing destruction.
Yep, rob, I also played Resonator turn 1 so I could have a floating ongoing destroyer, then used her base power. I might write down my route if I get time, I'm an iPad player so no easy log access.
I might be remembering another Vengence game I played with Omni around the same time. Not sure.
I let everyone discard a card. I've rarely used the "drop your whole hand option" unless one or two people have 1 card hands with cards I REALLY want to play.
Same here – that was how Omni's hand got so low. Someone else got hit, but between Ermine pulling two Long Cons (everybody discard a card) and the Fright Train card (everybody discard a card), that was 3 cards down from everybody's hand.
Maybe the reason I never got any of the force discards that everyone is talking about is that I destroyed Ermine's Ongoing right away? Also learned the hard way that the link for the environment wasn't useful, as the first two rounds did not play gunmen. Though the gunman that came out after killed Friction for me, which was nice.
I think I received one forced discard, but yeah, they werent' bothering me all that much, and I also killed Constant Prattle immediately. (I hate that card so much)
I don't often kill the card (there's usually higher priority Ongoings to kill), but I wanted to keep Engine of Destruction in (man, that hurt FT way more than it hurt me in this game.) when I used a first turn Disruptive Fleschettes.
I made one small change to my Mint run and got the game overwith on Sky-Scraper's third turn. I can post my route if anyone is interested.
I'm interested.