Weekly One-Shot 68- "... it pours."

Yes. Mint. Just. Everyone under 5, Tempest and AZ dead.

Wraith was very useful in keeping the enviornment in check and Bunker let us get through all the guards. Finisehd with a Lightspeed Barrage.

Comfortable Mint here for me, with everyone in their double digits (admittedly, Tempest only barely so at 12). The start looks pretty damn scary, I'll admit, but for me, it might as well just have been a standard "Advanced Voss" game, since the Grand Warlord didn't even flip once. Who'd have guessed World War 2 anti-panzer technology would be so effective against hyper-advanced alien invaders too? :)

HOLY SHNIKIES! 

this was a tad rougher than i was expecting. if it wasn't for AZ(with whom i usually don't play or even desire to) or the Panzer busting Bunker, it could not have happened. that was quite fortunate since Tempest, Wraith, AND Tachyon were all KO'd about 3/4 of the way through.

thanks to absolutely no equipment destruction and AZ having his fire-thingie and ice-heal-a-ma-bob i made SURE to keep the ice beasties and fire minnions all out. constant healing AND damage every villain turn? yes please!

last turn was the final push, and i had sweaty palms, 2 quark drive thingies and a forced deployment just got played(didn't pop, but it was like looking into the face of defeat) which luckily i BARELY was able to take down GWV at the end of AZ's turn.

overall good fight, 10/10 would recommend.

I finally got the minions under control.

And then out came a Forced Deployment, and Earth was overrun.

I took out all the minions but left the a frosthound then I focused on Voss by using GI Bunker's power.   

Really? I left the Firesworn instead. AZ can still neutralise it completely, and it's much less taxing on the HP of everyone who isn't AZ :)

Yes, because then I could hit Voss with Grievous Hailstorm every turn without taking out that minion.  I ended my game with everyone in the teens so I didn't find it to be too bad.  

Near mint. First game I didn’t have a solid plan, but the second time I focused almost exclusively on Voss until I could build up for a Fueled Freeze.

Mint.

I found experiments on various heroes especially AZ to be fruitful. AZ got set up quickly and then the damage was on. I did end up flipping Voss, and found that it didn't get too out of hand.

ended with everyone right around 10HP.

Mint, with a roughly crushed team. Bunker had 1 HP, AZ had 5 (after being at full like a turn or two ago), and everyone else was dead. Rushed Voss out with Deployment #2 on the field. Luckily never had to deal with any spaceships. Tachyon managed to get into a fatal experiment and sucker punch herself to death.

Ah, that makes sense. I used Localised Hurricane instead for Tempest's damage dealing to avoid that problem

Yeah, I did that, too.

That must be a really, really odd scientific process. "Hm… I need to test my hypothesis of what will happen if I punch myself in the face really hard!"

Mint with everyone sub-10 HP. Tempest 5, RC Wraith 2, Tachyon 5, Bunker 3, TNAZ 4. The only reason Bunker and Tempest survived were long-term damage reduction cards

I turned my game into mostly a pure damage race. I used Bunker's power on Voss every round but round 1.  I did a practice game and got a Guard/Guard intro, so I was prepared for how to deal with that.

Tempest got out damage reduction, Hailstorm, and Shackles, and kept going to town on Voss for 5 with Hailstorm and whiffing at everything else.

Wraith brought out both Police Backups with her base power, then stopped using that in favor of Razor Ordnance + Stun Bolt + Utility Belt + Micro Targeting Computer, mostly focused on Voss, but she also helped take down the Bio-Naut eventually.

Tachyon spent two rounds experimenting on other people, then kept using it on herself. I kept Pushing the Limits out for a bit, then let it expire as I ran out of good stuff to play. She ended up hitting Voss with all three Lightspeed Barrages for a total of something like 25.

Bunker got out the Heavy Plating early, then mostly sat around until Turret Mode showed up, then went Flak Cannon / Turret Mode to shoot stuff.

TNAZ spent several rounds not doing anything but trying to get set up, then had one glorious turn where he did 5 irreducible to Voss and healed up a bit. I only used his base power one time. Might have gotten more mileage out of him if I had done more.

The environment may have done more damage to Voss than any one of my characters. Both Police Backups and the Monorail stayed out for the entire match after they showed up; the Monorail hit Voss every round, including the final round where I'd knocked him down to be the second highest HP target. Bunker took a couple of the Monorail hits and Tempest took one because of their ongoing DR. I saw two nasty environment cards - we fought our way through Hostage Situation well enough, and Targeting Innocents went down easily to Wraith/Tachyon having environment destruction handy.

Voss died on the turn after his first Psi-Weaver came out. Never saw Forced Deployment or either spaceship. 

Minted. AZ and Bunker we’re my MVPs.

Minted as well. Just left one minon up and used the panzer stratagy like the rest. My heroes where at high teens and AZ was at 3 after crazy last turn. I love AZ math. Could have done it better if I had made better chooses early.

Never saw Forced Deployment or either spaceship.

Super fun damage dealing fest, after you get past all the DR on his front side (and from the Thoratians).

One of the best things is when your Infrared Eyepiece finds 2 Forced Deployments. Luckily, Into the stratosphere (card I usually don't use) was there to save the day. 

This is one thing I'll admit I've never gotten - Rook City Wraith's power.  Unless I have some other hero who can stack the environment deck, it seems largely useless, and potentially dangerous.

This one-shot is a case in point.  In Megalopolis, there are several cards (Hostage Situation and Paparazzi come to mind) that will really screw your day. However, if you use RC Wraith's power to try to uncover these cards, and you reveal (ex:) some environment card that's not so bad, you can't just leave it there; you have to play or discard it.  You probably won't play it (because most environment cards are not good for the heroes, and the less of them in play, the better), and if you discard it, you've now gotten rid of a not-so-bad environment card from the top of the deck, increasing the chances that the next card will be one of the ones you wanted to avoid.  

Any math/statistics/probability geniuses out there ever work this out?  On the whole, probability-wise, does RC Wraith's power help you by getting rid of bad cards, or does it just work to discard not-so-bad environment cards, and bring the bad cards in the environment deck that much closer?

I look at RC Wraith's power more as "find the good Environment cards" vs "avoid the bad Environment cards".  Examples would be Tony Taurus, Dr. Tremata - maybe you want Volcanic Eruption ASAP if Ra is ready, Fixed Point, etc.

And sometimes you can skip the REALLY bad ones, if your timing is right.

I’ll admit, I would prefer to also have the option to put the card back on top, but I still think it’s far from useless.

I got a lot of mileage out of using it to put Close Quarters Combat into play and benefit from the +1 for the rest of the heroes' turns.

Granted, that sometimes meant the trains were hitting us for 6 a pop, but hey, they hit Voss, too.

By "useless," I mean "puts you in just about the same situation you would have been in if you hadn't used it."

SPOILER ALERT:

Case in point:  On the very first turn in this one-shot, I used RC Wraith's power, which revealed Police Backup.  That's a (rare) good card for the heroes, so I played it.  But, that also meant (a) that I still had a great unknown waiting on top of the environment deck, and (b) since one of the Police Backups had already been played, it meant there was a greater probability that the card actually waiting to be played was a bad one.

Whereas, if I had just left well enough alone, Police Backup would have played anyway on the environment turn, and I'd've had one more turn free of nastiness from the environmental deck.  Playing Police Backup early didn't provide any benefit, and actually hastened (by one card/turn) the coming of the bad cards in the deck.

I'm really curious about the actual statistics/probability analysis behind this – whether, in the long run, it is actually better never to use RC Wraith's power.  It may depend upon the number of "really bad" cards in the environment deck vs. the number of "sorta bad/kinda good" ones.

Well, a simplified example would be if there was exactly one environment card you wanted to avoid.  In a normal game, after 15 rounds there is a 100% chance that you will have encountered that card (barring any other deck discarding effects).  If you used RC Wraith's power every single turn, after 7 rounds there's approx 50% that you dodged that card.  After the reshuffle and another 8 rounds there is another approx 50% you dodged that card again.  So in this case there's a 25% chance you got to avoid the card after 15 rounds as opposed to the base case of 0%.  So it's a relatively minor improvement and unless it's 3 player or Akash, most games don't last 15 rounds and it costs Wraith 15 power uses.  Also consider after 7 rounds, it's 50% chance you dodged the card, but in the base case, it's also 50% chance that that card hasn't shown up yet.  So for shorter games there's basically no improvement.

But consider looking for exactly one good card.  RC Wraith essentially goes through the deck at double speed, meaning you should be able to get your card 1-7 rounds sooner.  For short games that may only last 5-7 rounds that's a great boon.

Mint.  It was pretty tight at first, but I managed to clean up the minions just before AZ would have kicked the bucket.  Everyone was in the low teens except for AZ down at 2.  Then a well placed Hoarfire bounced him back up to 16.  Game ended with everyone around 9-11, just as I got to double Forced Deployments which Wraith's single Infrared Eyepiece couldn't handle.

Regarding RC Wraith, it is perhaps useful to realize that because the environment deck is entirely randomized and the card that is looked at is removed from the deck, a power which looked at the bottom card of the deck rather than the top card would have a stastically identical effect.  So you can see that (at least until around the 7th round when the power use affects whether or not you reshuffle) Wraith's power doesn't really effect the cards that you get.  What it does do is a) gives you a pool of cards that you can put into play if you wish, and b) give you information about what is left in the deck.  

So you can't use Wrath's sleuthing to avoid bad cards, but you can use it to get good cards, and to know how likely it is that certain cards will appear, making it easier to plan around them.

In my experience, Rook City Wraith excels most in Rook City, where you'll want to avoid most of the cards, and popping them straight into the trash avoids the harsher destroy conditions, like those cards that play from the villain deck when they're destroyed.

Not to mention that she makes it far more likely that you get to see the two cards in the Rook City deck you actually do want to see

Barely Minted. I think one more round would have done me in as all characters were at 4 or less except Absolute Zero (who healed a little extra the last round due to the 2nd Frosthound.)

I went with a straight-up beat-down, taking advantage of the Panzer Buster to drive hard after Voss. I completely ignored all other targets, ending with 8 minions in play but no Ships or Translocators.

I did make two mistakes that might have made things a little less close.

First, I messed up Tachyon’s card play order once. When Pushing the Limits, I really needed to deal with the Traffic Pileup BEFORE playing Fleet of Foot.

Second, for some reason I was thinking start of turn effects resolved in the order used, thus meaning I could take advantage of Panzer Buster with Gattling Gun. Not the case, as it’s the order the cards entered play, and clearly Bunker was in play prior to his first turn.

Ah well. Minty first Ultimate, that’s all that matters to me

Mint.  Looked touch-and-go for a little while, and I made some mistakes with AZ (I've never used Termi-Nation AZ before) that resulted in his premature death.  However, his incap powers are so great, especially with this team, that the rest was a cakewalk.  Reducing all but cold damage when you're using Panzer-Buster anyway is just gold, and getting Tempest to play extra cards with Gene-Bound Shackes out speeds up the win by a fair amount.  Got into a nice offensive loop Reclaiming Tachyon's big damage cards, and a nice defensive loop with Bunker with Turret Mode, Maintainance, and Plating, but neither was remotely necessary by then.

So close, twice in a row! Sub-Zero Atmosphere makes it worse, don’t play it!

It works perfectly well in your favour as long as you don't flip Voss, which you really shouldn't do.

I flipped Voss and did just fine.

Not saying that was the optimal course of action, just that you can do it.