Weekly One-Shot #95: Leo's Trap

I don’t know who Leo is, but DAMN that was a good trap. I didn’t even see it until it was too late! (Almost.)

Major Flay makes villain Ongoing cards indestructible, and Unshackled Destinies made it so fatal damage for ANYONE was impossible.

Eventually I finished them all off on one fell swoop, using End of Days to take everyone out and blowing up an Explosives Wagon to kill the villains. I did make one mistake, which was not killing all of the agents before setting off the bombs, so I had to undo to save the game. Would have been a mint otherwise, though.

LevelupLeo whom Christopher cursed with the Pin during questions on the Letters Page.  

Mint. I found the less nuclear way to get by that little jerk move, which also happens to be an earlier card to draw (though with both Visionary and Miss Information in play, that's hardly guaranteed to always be true). Zealous Offense was the key card here overall though, letting me clear Explosive Wagons in a lot less messy way.

I had a weird bug happen where, for some reason, when after Internal Collapse destroyed itself, it triggered the "everybody returns one card to their hand" effect twice, when it should have been ZERO times. I have no idea what caused it and the log was very unenlightening.

I had the same thing happen, but it triggered 4 times for me. But then when I hit undo, it didn't trigger at all. So who even knows.

Mint by the skin of my teeth.  I spotted the trap while reviewing the opening cards.  I considered just letting it stick around and protect the heroes, but I decided that Miss Information had too many Ongoings that prevented the heroes from dealing damaget to villians, and chucked Major Flay at Fright Train at the earliest opportunity.  Things rapidly turned into massive explodey damage.  The Arsonist set off the Explosives Wagon (which makes sense, I suppose), and when the dust had settled only Mr. Fixer, Sergant Steel and the Arsonist himself were still standing.  Mr. Fixer was at 1, but he used Mantis Style to survive Sustain the Portal, Fright Train's incap damage, FILTER's attacks, and finally the Hayes brother with the machine gun, only for Steel to get shot by the Sheriff.

I'm mostly just appreciating we've gotten to the level of having one-shots based on forum meta jokes.

You have to imagine my confusion when, after Haka was found on Sunday, I spent the day going, "Wait, there's no new one-shot?" I dunno. D:

And, uh, when the Arsonator comes out and blows up the explosives wagon? There's no recovering from that. Internal Collapse never triggered for me. :(

Fine, after way too many tries. This was just not gelling for me.

What ended up working was taking advantage of the Unshackled Flay Combo to dump all of Visionary’s damage to an indestructible Decoy Projection, including all the high-powered Fright Train attacks, while I set up with Fanatic. When the time was right, it was a Final Dive to take out Flay while Twisted Reality was in play, and then with the second card, a Consecrated Ground to clear out Internal Collapse, and the three damage plinks cleared Unshackled by consequence, then Espionagent, then I took out the Wagon. The cascade of damage cleared Steel’s squad and piled harder on the villains than me (especially because, as discussed, Visionary was at full health), so it was all over but the shouting. Then the shouting was done too.

Mint for me, thanks to a very, very lucky reshuffle. I blew up the Explosive Wagon before realising that the Espionagent would make Steel and his rapidly growing crew immune, and was afraid I'd really dug myself into a hole because of it. But then Miss Information was kind enough to reshuffle Fanatic's hand and provide her with 4 new cards, one of them being Wrathful Retribution. Doing some quick math in my head to be sure, I confirmed that Fanatic had 8 HP left, 4 cards in hand and that Steel was at exactly 21 HP.... and suddenly, I didn't have an Agent problem any longer!

Sadly, Fanatic herself went down almost immediately afterwards, but Fixer carried the fight the rest of the way with some very timely damage deflection from Mantis style. A point of particular hilarity occured when he finished off Miss Information by deflecting the start of turn damage from Steel's incap effect from Fright Train, due to the Nemesis bonus!

Who knew that being Bunker's Nemesis was such a competitive field?

Near Mint because I am a dummy and wasted Final Dive.  End of Days nearly worked out instead--with some very careful destruction ordering--but Steel just barely survived it all.  A correct Final Dive the second time around made it the mass damage and Mantis Style show.

Fine.

the first three tries were sooooo close.

the winning try left Mr. Fixer as the only character standing....with 1HP.

whew.

Mint.  Visionary demoralized the enemy from behind her cocoon, while Fanatic zealously offended the Explosives Wagon and Mega Gunner after final diving Major Flay into nothingness.  Mister Fixer got in a couple of punches, but mainly deflected those from others.

Near mint, because I didn't think to play the projection for a couple of turns, and then when I nuked the board, I only had Visionary at 7 hp and Steel at 16.

Second time around, I Final Dived th Battel Medic, and nuked everything once all the baddies were down around 10.  MI and Fixer didn't survive the Explosives Wagon, and FT and SS didn't survive Visionary's turn.

Mint, but barely.  I won with only Mr Fixer left standing at 2hp.

Spotted the trap late as I failed to think the combination all the way through (causing me to waste a couple of cards and lost the Pipe Wrench that I thought would be safe).  Managed to get and recycle Grease Gun a couple times to keep damage low, but mistimed the Final Dive to take out Flay so that I ended up having to eat a lot of damage from the exploding wagon.  Thankfully, that wiped most of the field anyway and I was able to protect Fixer long enough to take out Fright Train for the win.

Great One Shot.  This one really felt like a puzzle rather than a random game of the week and highlighted some neat interactions.

Can someone clarify what the "trap" is?

The fact that it is impossible to kill any targets using damage until you deal with Major Flay.

Speaking of which, has anybody else spotted the third method of getting rid of him?

Tire Iron?

Yep

Got muh near mint. :B I probably could have milked the invincible Distortion for another few turns, but I didn't want to deal with Heroes Unallied for that long.

When I did it, I waited for all the villains to be at like 2 hp, so I KNEW the wagon would kill them. Also, I got a REALLY lucky Precognition, and prevented Heroes Unallied and A World Improved (I think; the one that makes villains invincible) in one go.

Mint with Visionary at 7 and Mr. Fixer at 4.

Visionary was easily the MVP. Played Telekinetic Cocoon turn 1 and watched a pile of damage get plinked off of it as people tried to hit the highest HP hero. First I focused on getting Fanatic's cards out ASAP until she got Final Dive, then Visionary helped Fixer draw more. 

Fanatic got out Divine Focus on her first power use and piled some damage on Fright Train, then Final Dived away Major Flay so we could start getting stuff done.

I made a potentially HUGE mistake by blowing up the Explosives Barrel when Sgt Steel had Espionagent out. Totally forgot about his rules, I don't play Villains all that often. The Barrel would have wiped his board, but instead they all just sat there. The damage KO'd Fright Train, and severely wounded MI and Fanatic.

Next, I had Visionary Suggest Twisted Reality back on top of MI's deck. This let Fanatic go out in style with back to back Brutal Censures (I'd lost Wrathful Retribution thanks to MI bottom-decking it with her end-of-turn ability), then let Fixer get completely set up. The Environment obliged with a Sustain the Portal, which combined with Driving Mantis got MI dead, destroying Twisted Reality for me.

From there taking out Sgt. Steel's minions and him was pretty straightforward. Vis and Fixer piled on the damage and I used Fanatic's incap to pass Fixer more powers. Never saw any of the gunmen or the Sheriff.

Spent too much time worrying about getting Chrono-Ranger, so I had jumped into this today. Ended up with Fine after falling for the trap the first time. I thought I could work around it with Final Dive and Wrath of Retribution, but Fright Train's Off the Rails took down the team eventually.

Second time, I tried Final Diving Major Flay right away, but just succumbed to the huge amount of damage and didn't come back.

Third time was the charm. Like some others, I got a lucky Precognition to ensure Sergeant Steel could be damaged and then took him down to 2 along with everyone else within Explosive Wagons range of death. End of Days came out and lived up to its name.