Weekly One-Shot #103: Prelude to Freedom

As those who have been following the variant unlocks have probably guessed, this week's one-shot is the Freedom Five against Progeny in Rook City. Progeny's Advanced rules are in play, and the team order is Wraith / Absolute Zero / Bunker / Tachyon / Legacy. Randomized start.

I had a super easy Mint. Wraith started with the Eyepiece and Throat Jab; AZ started with Module Installation, Null-Point, and Thermal Shockwave; Bunker started with 2x Adhesive Foam Grenade; Tachyon started with Pushing the Limits and Hypersonic Assault; and Legacy started with Inspiring Presence and Take Down. Pretty much everything you need to nuke Progeny from orbit with this team.

I made a math mistake with Blighted Streets and lost Absolute Zero in the final round, but he still went down swinging with Frost-Bound Drain and Thermal Shockwave after two good rounds of piling on the damage with Shockwave. When the environment finally got to play a card, it was Toxic Sludge, which we left out for a second round to help chip Progeny down.

"super easy Mint"? D:

I banged my head against it for an hour until I finally won Fine after like a dozen tries. It was just a matter of everything lining up, and then it still wasn't easy.

This. Though at this point I think we’re all getting familiar with how to fight Progeny with the F5, Rook City is so brutal (S&V has my vote for worst card in the scenario) and Advanced Progeny is annoying because the Scions don’t fratricide.

*table flip*

Scion of Storm & Hour of Reckoning on turn 1.

[Expletive redacted] random start one-shots.

Near-Mint after an owie inducing loss with Progeny at 88.

First game I had all the damage control. Throat Jabs, Hypersonic Assaults, Heroic Interceptions... all the goodies. Unfortunately, that meant that Progeny could slowly build up Scions and kept destroying enough of my equipment and ongoings that I couldn't really beat him down. Once he played Hour of Reckoning and I couldnt stop his damage, he wrecked me the next turn with 6 Scions out, Time of Tribulations as his first play, Form of the Harbinger as his second, (playing another Scion), The Inevitable as his third to play Obvious Futility, dealing stupid amounts of plink damage repeatedly.

Second game I decided on a different tact. Legacy started with Next Evolution and Heroic Interception and I got the idea to let Legacy go sub-10 hp, then make himself immune to Radiant while everyone stays high hp. I had to shoot him with the Flak Cannon (Sorry Legs!) to get it to work when I wanted to, but it worked great. Progeny flipped, started destroying Scions, and was beating futily at Legacy. Smoke Bombs kept any other type of damage from bringing him down and the rest of the team could handle the 1-2 AoE damage he'd throw out occasionally. Lightspeed Barrages and Omni-cannon took Progeny from 65 hp to dead. Hp was mid-teens for Wraith and Bunker, near max for AZ (cuz hes just so cool), and Legacy and Tachyon near 10.

So the last scion is a random start one-shot?

Well, he IS a difficulty 3 card...

Minted this one - it's almost as if Freedom 5 in Megalopolis on Advanced mode is easier than Dark Watch (2 of whose variants are, I would argue, inarguably worse than the base versions) in Rook City on Ultimate.

Ironically this was one of the few times that Scion of Lightning was a good thing, as it played two Hour of Reckonings at the same time.  Still had to work for it and Tachyon and Bunker died for our sins.  But not in vain because on the last two turns, dead Bunker put Throat Jab in Wraith's hand and Dr. Meredith let Wraith play it, which bought me the time I needed to take Progeny from 30 to dead.

Um... this is in Crook City, not Megalopolis.

Ah yeah, my bad, I misspoke - I'd also recently played the same peeps in Megalopolis to unlock the F5.

That said - in some ways, Megalopolis is kind of worse than Rook City to play against with Progeny since it will hit you with Hostage Situations in addition to Progeny playing Hours of Reckoning, i.e. double the chances of no card plays.  That's not to say that Rook City is great but at least the extra card plays that happen before Progeny's turn might spare you the pain of a full turn under his one-turn Ongoings or might knock off a really bad Scion in favor of a merely obnoxious one.

Not on Advanced!  Those extra plays just break your stuff and the Scions stay out.

Near Mint.

First game failed because Rook City is not my friend.

Second game was....dare I say it....kind of easy? Got a lucky draw, Scions did not come out much, and when they did, they weren’t a problem. Rook City behaved, mostly—and Wraith had lots of Grappling Hooks & Tachyon had lots of Blinding Speed to take care of it when it didn’t. Early Inspiring Presence, Take Down, Impales and Turret Mode made the damage come off of Progeny in big chunks without much interference.

Wraith 15HP, Absolute Zero 20 HP, Bunker 7HP, Tachyon 2HP and Legacy 9HP.

Another Near Mint.

My first game failed because of terrible luck at the last possible moment. I had Absolute Zero with 20 HP, Progeny had a Scion of Flame and nothing else and was down to 12 HP, and Rook City had Blighted Streets and nothing else.

So Rook City of course played Scum and Villainy, which top-decked Scion of the Storm and hit AZ for 3 (17). And then on Progeny's turn, he played Time of Tribulations and hit AZ for 5 (12), and then hit AZ for another 5 with his end-of-turn (7) then Scion'd out a Beginning of the End which blew up all of AZ's stuff and also killed the Blighted Streets, which played Form of the Harbinger, which played a second Scion of Flame. Scion of Flame did 5 damage (2), Form of the Harbinger did 5 damage (-3), and that was 20 damage in a single turn.

So bluh.

My second try went much better, with all heroes still alive at the end. 

Finally got around to getting this done. Only Good since it's so far past the deadline, but I did do it on my second try.

I took Wraith down to 9 figuring that of everyone, she could handle it the most even though I couldn't get Smoke Bombs or Lead from the Front out, or at least not for very long. With enough Hypersonic Assaults and Throat Jabs, she stayed safe while the Scions could finally be destroyed. Suture helped keep her health up when she dipped and when she finally did get damage done to her, (thank you Hour of Reckoning) Stun Bolts and building up her base power damage reductions kept her alive, if sometimes only barely.

I kept the Fire Scions out compared to the other ones since I was negating damage so much, but when Progeny did hit, it hurt a lot. AZ started pouring on the pain and when it looked like everyone was getting close to knocked out, Tachyon let loose with a pair of Lightning Barrages for 32 total damage. Then everyone but AZ and Bunker went down, but Progeny was at 10 hp. From there, it was trivial for AZ to finish him off.