Weekly One-Shot #77: System Shock

OG Haka, Dark Visionary, OG Scholar, Freedom Six Absolute Zero, and Omnitron-X against Progeny in the Omnitron-IV Environment: Challenge Edition. (Which means 4 Scions can share the table before they start fratriciding.)

Mint. Surprisingly easy, or maybe not surprising given there was a Twist the Ether in DV's opening hand. That, plus her deck control keeping the Scions to a minimum, let everybody beat down on Progeny pretty hard and not get a whole lot of damage in return. Things got a little hairy in the final few rounds, when DV got incapp'd (she was, ironically, the most vulnerable to attacks, as she didn't have any further damage reduction or reprocessing after Twisting; everyone else had Ta Moko, or Plating, or Nullpoint, or Flesh to Iron) and the environment started getting heavy on the Equipment destruction. But Ground Pound held off the damage long enough for us to finish putting the hurt down.

Mint.

Visionary really helped to make sure Progeny's damage was minimal. That, and she made sure no scions got played. The only scion played other than the initial one was a Scion of Blight at the very end....so challenge mode wasn't much of a challenge.

Visionary did go down, however....when Scholar played Don't Dismiss Anything into a 14-damage Brain Burn.  Whoops! Sorry!  Scholar also depleted his hand with that same play, playing a Know When to Turn Loose off the top of his deck. At least that dealt 6 damage to Progeny.

Things actually got easier after Absolute Zero was incapped, because the environment was completely neutralized then.

Haka, Scholar and Omnitron X did their things, and ended with 14HP, 22HP and 9HP respectively. Visionary and Absolute Zero at 0HP.

Comfortable Mint here. F6 Absolute Zero did what he does best against a tough foe in a nasty environment, namely suiciding as fast as humanly possible which turned the environment into a complete non-factor. From there, it was just a matter of letting Dark Visionary do her thing, while everyone pounded away on Progeny until he got turned into grey goo and flew home.

Finished with Haka and Scholar in their 20's, Dark Visionary on 4, Omnitron on 10 and AZ (obviously) incapped.

Comfortable mint wiht everyone standing here, though it got hairy near the end, ad I had to leave an Obvious Futility out over several turns.

Everyone in upper teens except DV, who was at 5.

I would have won a few turns earlier if I had put out Coolant Burst instead of an equipment on F6AZs first turn.  (Misread the opening ongoing, d'oh)

I had no problems keeping the environment under control, honestly.

Mint.  My game went much like yours, it sounds like, except in my game there was a turn when two Scions of the Storm were at the top of Progeny's deck, so Visionary couldn't get rid of both of them, and then Progeny was playing two cards a turn for a while.  I also had the Don't Dismiss Anything/Brain Burn problem; it didn't kill DV, but it weakened her enough that Progeny killed her a few turns later.  But by that time, he was weakened enough, and everyone else had enough options in hand, that we could take care of him.  

End:  Haka-24 HP, DV-0, Scholar-22, AZ-24, OX-13

Like others, I found the tricky part to be keeping Visionary alive while Twist the Ether saved everyone else's bacon.  She hovered at between 4 and 7 HP for about 5 rounds, between being innervated many, many times between Offensive Transmutations, Ground Pounds, and Decoy Projections.  It really sucked that the two heroes with ongoing removal were last in the turn order or this would have been over a lot sooner.

Mint to run my streak to 19, but I made a couple of silly mistakes and lost Omnitron-X as a result. 

Mistake #1: Not dropping Foresight or Demoralization early so I had a buffer to keep Twist the Ether out.

Mistake #2: pulling out a Techno Pursuer instead of a Mechani-Accumulator the turn Resource Recycler came out. Having RR and Conveyor Panels out was a problem, and I really should have killed them ASAP. I never saw Omni-X's environment destruction card, and, uh, the rest of the team doesn't have any! So I should have taken advantage of the fact that Mechani-Accumulator would eat its own components.

But, it all turned out OK, with Haka and AZ easily in the teens and Scholar in the 20s as usual. Twist the Ether on Progeny was a superstar move by Visionary, and AZ was the damage-dealing star, bouncing stuff all over the place. Scholar tanked and Omni-X helped AZ get more stuff into play. Probably would have been a better idea to continually use OX's power on the environment, though - it would have saved me from at least one "btw I'm playing 4 cards this turn" bit from Omni-IV.

Ah. My memory is off - AZ actually burned himself down to single digits on Scholar's last turn (hi, Proverbs and Axioms) to make sure Progeny didn't get another.

I took a different approach. Twist went on AZ and I used him to do some massive pound then heal cycles to quickly take down progeny. Just goes to show you there is always another way.

PS - Mint

I reran this making a couple of changes, and finished with Haka and Scholar above 25, DV and OX nearly 20, and AZ at 3, but in no danger.  I could have had Zero finish above 10 if I'd waited a turn, but I decided to pop off a (at the end of it all) 10 point Thermal Shockwave instead of his base power, and have OX finish with a 2 point "Self"-Sabatoge, wiping out the only Environment component in play.

Mint, but a tight one.  Everyone was out except for Scholar and AZ.  I made the mistake of letting Progeny get Obvious Futility out early, which really hurt my damage tanking and made chopping him down difficult.  It took me forever to dig up a Fueled Freeze.  But eventually I got to the point where Scholar and AZ had 16 and 17 hp, and Progeny had 15, and the three Techno-Pursuers did my work for me.