Weekly One Shot #101: "Prelude to Darkness"

I get to make the thread for once? :D

RANDOMIZED Ultimate Progeny vs the Prime Wardens (Tempest, Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic, Fanatic, and Haka as their variants) at the Tomb of Anubis.

Good luck, and dont forget that Progeny's Scion cards are indestructable on his front side. That means Into the Stratosphere doesn't put them back on the deck! (Oops)

Still managed to mint (14, 20, 22, 1, 22 hp) mostly due to the only scions he pulled were the poison ones for most of the game. I was hanging onto an End of Days to destroy his Scion cards if he did flip but never got to that point. Also Ground Pound plus Vernal Sonata/Reclaim from the Depths is a useful cycle.

I started with dual Storms and the "can't play cards"

This team actually kind of sucks when they can't play cards and have nothing on the field.

So, I'll try for Near-mint tonight.  Or after I finish reading Oathbringer.

Blargh! I got massacred on my first attempt.

Progeny got out two Scion of Flames, a Scion of the Storm, and Time of Tribulations.  Whalloping me for a ton of damage while I was struggling to get set up. Then, once I started to get some things going, he hit me with Beginning of the End and then pummeled me into submission.

Oof!

I am just going to repeat my distaste fo rrandomized start One-Shots. 

Especially on matchups of this caliber.

It's entirely possible to have zero chance of minting this with a bad enough draw.

That is an entirely reasonable view Blackfang. I have both Android and Steam versions and sometimes on these random ones I get a Mint and a Fine all due to the random start. Thats why I just see these as fun challenges and am not too concerned about getting as many Mints as possible (though I always try for a mint). Besides, they are just pixels on a screen

I almost always play the VG versions as completely random mode (I would love an implementation of also being able to randomize Challenge/Advanced/Ultimate) and try to "Mint" those games so these One-Shots are just continuations of that

I got a mint on steam, and haven't won on moblie yet, but i still have like 600 pages for Oathbringer so i think that i'll join you in the try again after i finish.

I'm just a couple of chapters in, myself (got it yesterday, started this morning.)

If I my fiancee was driving for Thanksgiving, it wouldn't last the weekend.

I got it as an audiobook but my backlog is too big O.o  I think I can squeeze it in after I finish American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I need to re-read (or at least get a Cliff Notes) of the first 2 books as its been too long. Excited though!

Like I said on the Steam forums, I can't believe I Minted this. If I hadn't already gotten it, I would have earned that "win with one hero standing at 1 HP" achievement. All I can say is, hang onto an End of Days for after Progeny flips. Don't worry about clearing your own setup, these guys can bounce back pretty easily from that.

Also, don't Conduct when Argent's deck is empty, that's just dumb. :C

Slow clap for anyone who minted!

I almost had it - Cleansing Downpour and Dynamic Siphon remains a devastating combo - but I triggered Fanatic's power and lost the gamble when she Final Dived my Cosmic Crest, which meant that Progeny piled on enough damage to kill the Siphon despite my healing midway through the match. Then he started healing, and it all went bad. 

Near Mint baby!

For most of the game, he only had Double Flame running, so he wasn’t healing or playing extra cards. Plus we started with Downpour, so I kept people alive for a while.

Then he broke out Tribulations, Double Storm, and a bunch of cards all at once, killing most of the team.

I got a lucky Wrathful Retribution at 1hp, which helped a LOT, and eventually won with everyone dead but Haka, at 3.

Mint.

AA was the last hero standing but he had 24 HP. After Haka went down, Progeny had 11 HP but AA was out healing Progeny’s damage. So I used Tempest’s incap effect to bring out Nomti to fight Progeny for me. It was a pretty entertaining ending.

My randomizer does that, and thanks to Handelabra can now launch the game with the setup you got. Comes with a difficulty calculator, too. The link is in my sig.

I won my practice game on the first try (which since this is a randomized start, should count as an honorary mint) and managed to avoid taking any damage from Progeny for 3 rounds by having an Undaunted Fanatic hit Progeny with Divine Sacrifice to redirect all of his damage to her when Argent Adept had Counterpoint Bulwarked her twice (once on his turn and once on hers) so anything Progeny dished out that was 3 or less became nothing.  And with 2 Vernal Sonatas, I was able to keep it going for 3 rounds.

Near Mint!  

First game was brutal and over pretty quick.  Second game was also brutal, but I was able to get my Cleansing Downpour / Dynamic Syphon combo out early enough to keep me going. Unfortunately, once I realized that I was healing myself enough to not die, but couldn't actually get any damage past his double Scion of Frost, I had to intentionally drop down below 10 hp and then consecutive turns of Hour of Reckoning almost derailed me. But after that, I was able to End of Days all his scions away, flip him again and then Ground Pound + Reclaim From the Deep made it a pretty simple thing from there. 

Mint. It started out decent, but a turn with a lot of card draws took out everyone but Haka and Argent Adept. Argent Adept lasted another few turns and then Haka stood up to the monster by himself. And then it got easy. First, I used all the incap powers to draw Haka's deck into hand, using Vitality Surge and Ground Pound to survive the damage. Then:

Tempest incap to remove bad ongoings or put "Time of Tribulations" out to destroy a Scion. (I made sure to keep Haka at 9 hp exactly)

Argent Adept incap destroyed an environment card to have Haka draw 3 cards thanks to Dominionx3.

Captain Cosmic incap let Haka discard 1 to draw 3.

Fanatic incap let Haka use his base power to play extra cards.

Haka played Ground Pound to stop all damage and then played Haka of Battle just enough so that with all the card draws he got, he always had his other Ground Pound in hand and could continually cycle through his remaining deck.

Haka kept the Ground Pounds going for the whole game. Even with Beginning of the End coming up, I made sure all of Haka's ongoings were out so Ground Pound would never need to be sacrificed. Eventually, the damage and Haka of Battles added up and brought down Progeny.

Oh man, that reminds me of the time I ended up with just Haka vs. Plague Rat, way back when Rook City was the only expansion. That was one of my favorite games ever, because of the image I got of Haka just locked in combat with Plague Rat, each of them pounding on each other and refusing to let up.

I took Plague Rat down from 65+ hp, with just Haka and Incaps. And I think he was at 1, at one point. Haka of Restoration came in handy a LOT.

Near Mint.

First game very close, had Progeny under 10HP, but then the environment played a bunch of Trials and Anubis was not my friend.

Second game I felt very in control almost the whole time.  Lots of Cedistic Dissonant use once Progeny flipped, and when Progeny doesn't have Scions out, and keeps playing the same card over and over again via Into the Stratosphere, and those Into the Stratospheres keep coming back into play via Reclaim from the Deep and Vernal Sonata (not to mention to recurring Ground Pounds)...the big lug mostly sits there not doing anything. Once Captain Cosmic sets up Argent Adept with Dynamic Siphons, and Tempest has a Cleansing Downpour, it's game over for the scion.

All heroes ended near full health, except Tempest who was right around 10HP.

I had a shockingly easy Mint considering the hot mess of starter hands I had where the only hero who could do damage was PW Captain Cosmic, of all people. Thankfully, Argent Adept started with Bulwark / Instrumental Conjuration, so he got set up with the Bell quickly and was directly responsible for Tempest and Fanatic surviving the fight - a triple dose of Bulwark on Tempest and a double dose on Fanatic protected Tempest from death to Progeny's flip side, which as soon as he flipped was augmented by Time of Tribulations, and saved Fanatic from taking 12 damage from Elemental Outburst immediately afterward (instead, she took a cozy 6). 

Everyone contributed, but the biggest factor in the victory was probably Progeny's deck order. He opened Scion of Blight (helpfully countered by having a bunch of relatively useless cards in hand and extra draws from Bulwark) / Elemental Outburst. Round 2, Scion of Flame. Round 3, Time of Tribulations, which I promptly Stratosphered back onto his deck. Round 4, he flipped because Tempest was under 10 HP and played Time of Tribulations into another Elemental Outburst... and then he went down like a sack of potatoes from 50 to 0 thanks in part to a fun Reclaim from the Deep:

Tempest: Reclaim from the Deep to put Lightning Slash back on top. Base power plays Lightning Slash for 5.

AA: Syncopated Onslaught on Captain Cosmic and Fanatic.

Captain Cosmic: Reclaim from the Deep put a Construct back on top. Harsh Offense for 5.

Fanatic: Reclaim from the Deep put Smite the Transgressor on top. Wrathful Retribution for 20, then base power plays Smite the Transgressor for 3, which lets Haka hit for 3, and also lets Fanatic use Absolution for another 4.

Haka: Haka of Battle dumps his entire hand to boost a Taiaha to 10, gg.

Games like this - where I have a ton of fun and get to do cool stuff despite being sick of fighting Progeny thanks to the Bunker variant hunt - are why it's so hard to put this game down.

Just... just all the middle fingers to Ultimate Progeny.

Twice on my second try, I was within an inch of a stable win, and then he invariably played Hour of Reckoning in the instant that I had someone drop to 9 HP, and then as soon as I wiped Scion of the Storm he played another one, and then he played Time of Tribulations and just wiped out that hero and flipped back, and then a chain of "unable to plays" happened two turns in a row while he had two Scions of the Storm out, and then he had all of his scions out, and then it was not possible to win. 

Seconded.

All in favor?