Weekly One-Shot #78: Better Late Than Never

Adamant Sentinels, Hunted Naturalist, and K.N.Y.F.E. vs. Advanced Chokepoint in Insula Primalis.  Advanced Chokepoint forces the heroes to put many more cards in front of her much more quickly, so think hard about which cards you're willing to give up out of your hand.  Things to think about:

1.  There is only one copy of each Form in the Naturalist's deck, and only one copy of each Signature in the Sentinels' deck, and none of these heroes has a "dig cards out of your trash" play, so if Chokepoint takes (ex:) your only Hippocratic Oath, you may never get it back in your hand; try not to put yourself in a position where that happens.

2.  No environment destruction for any of these heroes, so you'll need to figure out alternate ways of dealing with Insula Primalis' nastier cards.  

SPOILER:   

Very straightforward Mint.  (To be honest, Chokepoint is the one villain who--for whatever reason--has never even come close to defeating any team of heroes I've ever sent against her.  For the most part, I find her even easier than Baron Blade.  Anybody else have a similar experience?) I had an early turn or two where I failed to follow my own advice, and Chokepoint was able to steal both Caliginous Form and the Durasteel Chains.  However, Hunted Naturalist starts off with three cards in his hand that give him card draw (Natural Form's Power, Primal Charge, and Predator's Eye.)  Those quickly resulted in pulling Rhinoceros Form, which gives him even more draw.  From that point on, he tanked and fed extra card draws to the Sentinels until they had Hippocratic Oath and Sentinel Tactics out.  At that point, the game was pretty much over -- the heroes had so much extra card draw that they soon had most of their good ongoings/equipments in play, Environmental Allies kept the environment mostly in check, and Sentinel Tactics allowed the Sentinels to saddle Chokepoint with a -1 DR every turn on top of healing themselves and drawing cards.  Ending HP:  Sentinels: 12/10/11/10, H. Naturalist: 27, K.N.Y.F.E.: 15

(P.S.  And a huge shout-out to perhaps my favorite hero, the Hunted Naturalist.  He is just an absolute beast (no pun intended).  He has the unique (I think?) ability to be able (via Primal Charge) to draw four cards into his hand, then turn right around and play one, or to churn through a good part of his deck (via Shifter's Strength) to pull out exactly the card he needs for a given situation.   He is one of the best tanks in the game, able to easily heal himself 5-8 HP every turn, and can absorb huge amounts of damage with Blend into the Pack, Resilient Hide, and Rhino Form.  His amazing card draw capabilities mean that he gets access to his Forms and devastating combo cards quickly.  He can turn right around from tanking and flip quickly into damage mode via Crocodile and do 8-12 damage in a turn.  His Gazelle form is a god-send to characters like KNYFE and Sentinels, who depend on getting the right cards into their hand quickly.  Environmental Allies can render the environment largely an afterthought.  To me, Hunted Naturalist is what Mr. Fixer was intended to be -- the guy who can instantly turn himself into an answer for every situation.  Need a tank?  No problem.  Basher/damage dealer?  Got it.  Support character -- how does an extra 2 cards every turn sound?  Villain ongoings bringing you down?  Taken care of.  About his only weakness is his lack of environment destruction, although Environmental Allies can really disrupt many environments.  If I have to have a three-character team, Hunted Naturalist is usually one of my top picks, because he's just so versatile.)

Super-easy. Lost Caliginous Form, didn't matter. Milked that Obsidian Field for all it was worth, and though Mainstay hit 2 HP at one point, I didn't even lose him, let alone anyone with 20+ HP to start.

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To me, Hunted Naturalist is what Mr. Fixer was intended to be -- the guy who can instantly turn himself into an answer for every situation.  Need a tank?  No problem.  Basher/damage dealer?  Got it.  Support character -- how does an extra 2 cards every turn sound?  Villain ongoings bringing you down?  Taken care of.  About his only weakness is his lack of environment destruction, although Environmental Allies can really disrupt many environments.  If I have to have a three-character team, Hunted Naturalist is usually one of my top picks, because he's just so versatile.

While I agree with Naturalist being versatile I don't think the Mr Fixer comparison is needed.   Their playstyles are not meant to be the same and I don't feel they are trying to fill the same roles.   Fixer is about taking his Strike damage and manipulating it.   Naturalist is more about figuring out what Form gets is needed to get the most out of his cards or to help the team.   

As an interesting note, this is the first time Chokepoint has shown up in the Weekly One Shot.  

Near Mint, just because I got bad luck on the first playthrough. Second time I just powered through. Chokepoint flipped once.

Not much to say here, except that I always forget that Primordial Plant Life isn't an environment target and therefore things like Environmental Allies won't stop it. D'oh.

Mint.

Idealist TK THumped Chokepoint almost every turn to reduce damage. Unfortunately, she also fell victim to the Primordial Plant life during the last environment turn.

However, with Naturalist ultra-tanking and KNYFE dealing approximately 1,000,000,000 damage per turn, Chokepoint didn't pose much of a threat.

In the end, Naturalist finished off Chokepoint with the Cornered Beast power.

Medico=4HP, Writhe=3HP, Mainstay=5HP, Naturalist=8HP, KNYFE=9HP with Idealist out at the end.

I feel embarassed.

I lost my first fight.  I was doing good, then Chokepoint did 8 damage to everyone on the heels of a Primordial plant life, taking down all of the Sentinels except the Doc, and then the next turn, all of my heros (all below 5) got killed.

I'll try again soon.

Easy Mint here with only Mainstay getting down in the danger zone below 5 a couple of times, and KNYFE and Naturalist finishing at 20 and 14 respectively. Poor Chokepoint, she really should've just stuck to being a mini-nemesis, because as a solo villain, she's about as far from impressive as you can get.

I did lose Writhe, but the battle really ended up being more against Insula Primalis than against Chokepoint herself.  Primordial Plant Life and a Velociraptor Pack were more dangerous than anything she did past round 1.  On the other hand, the T-Rex and the Velociraptors did a fair bit of damage to Chokepoint themselves, so I shouldn't complain.  But KNYFE, Hunted Haturalist with two Predator's Eyes, Obsidian Field... other than some crappy card draw on the Sentinels, this could hardly be an easier setup.

Chokepoint's Challenge mode isn't bad, for those looking for more of a challenge.  I highly recommend it.

Mint. I went full Jeremy on this one with the exception of playing defense with Naturalist in turn 1. Dead on KNYFE's third turn, didn't lose anyone. This team hits really hard, and the volcano contributed 14 damage as well.

Final HP 4/10/2/5, 13, 15.

I do agree that her challenge mode is good. It forces you to think hard about hero cards that destroy themselves, like knyfe’s equipment, naturalists forms, and omnitron’s stuff. It ends up really nerfing the stronger damage focused heroes.

Mint

He has the unique (I think?) ability to be able (via Primal Charge) to draw four cards into his hand, then turn right around and play one,

Well, there's Team Communications.  Does that count?

The Adept could do it too, for anyone, but it would involve 2 silver shadows (to activate Bulwark for two draws, choose to play a card each time), a polyphoric flare (Use the Lyra to Supertonic into the Bell, gives you two more draws plus a rhythm accompany), and with the real power phase use the Harp to activate Subdominant and you can then chain off some other instruments but no more Adept plays unless using the original. Alternatively, you can use the Drum instead of the Harp and that would allow for a teammate to play, that or just use PW Adept's base power for an accompany. So the Sentinels' and Naturalist's draw 4 play 1 is much more feasible.

Also, Parse can use Snap Decision to draw up to 6 cards through a Recompile and then play 1, and she hopefully boosted damage 6 to 9 times while she was at it!

AA can also chain Arcane Cadences.

Super easy Mint for me. The Sentinels were at 10-7 HP, and the others were above 20.

Easy mint, but the practice game I played was actually close.  Chokepoint had at least one of her -1DR ongoings out for the whole game and later got a second one until I finally managed to fish for a Crafty Assault.  She also flipped pretty much right away and with cards from all the heroes thanks to her card where she takes your cards with matching keywords (which stole the only copy of Sentinel Tactics I saw all game).  Ended the game with Idealist down and everyone else at 4 or less, although a lot of the damage came from the island's plant life rather than Chokepoint herself.

Managed to Mint despite playing rather poorly. KNYFE, Mainstay, and the Idealist were down, Naturalist was at 3, DM 3, Writhe 9.
I could have used KNYFE’s incap ability to have someone finosh Chokepoint off, but since she was at 5HP I let the Trex eat her.

Easy Mint.  For some reason I thought it was Challenge, not Advanced, so my preparations were way overkill.