Weekly One-Shot #105 - Winter Is Coming

Declining their offer to join forces agaist OblivAeon, Ultimate Baron Blade faces off against the Freedom Five in their F5 variants on Insula Primalis.

And let me say, Ultimate Baron Blade with this setup is some word removed by mod. I am convinced anyone who goes in blind and gets a mint here must be psychic.
However, once you know what to expect, he's fairly manageable. I got the win on my second try, securing a Near Mint. At the end I had Absolute Zero with 5 HP and everyone else in the low teens - I could have taken one or two more turns to defeat him, depending on what he would have played next, so technically I suppose it was a fairly comfortable victory. His countdown is so frantic though, that any win against him feels like it's snatched from the jaws of defeat at the last second.

Mint.

A narrow victory, as Absolute Zero went down, and Blade had 15 cards in his trash at the end, but AZ’s damage increase incap power gave enough of a boost for Wraith to use a Throat Jab and her Razor Ordinance/Utility Belt/Stun Bolt combo and take the last 11HP off of the Baron for the win.

biggest D’oh of the game was near the end when Devious Disruption came out, and I carefully calculated how many ongoings and equipments to destroy, destroyed them, and then was reminded that Wraith had played a Throat Jab on her turn, so no destruction was necessary at all. Oopsie! Wish I could have rewound that one...

All other heroes ended around 10HP, while Absolute Zero had absolutely zero.

I haven’t used these variants before— they were fun!

Fine, because argh Baron Blade adding three cards to his trash per turn, plus needing to destroy two MDPs, plus chains of Doom. Took a while to find a rhythm.

Mint by sheer luck!

First turn, I search for sub zero atmosphere, which lets me avoid a Chains of Doom attack while both MDVs are in play. I get to play Takedown out of turn so Legacy can avoid the damage in addition to buying me an extra round. And Devious Destruction comes up the first turn after Baron flipped. Now I thought that was bad luck, because that was the 15th card in his trash and I knew i didn’t have a chance to kill him in one round if I blew up all my stuff, so I just said fuck it and let it hit me full force. I was very surprised when I saw that Tachyon still had a Synthetic Interuption up and let the Baron get hit for 17.

The Wraith somehow also survived the attack, was too surprised by Tachyon to notice where she got the damage reduction from, but she only took 8. With the Baron  now being low on HP, Legacy and AZ’s uncap Powers gave me just enough of a boost to have Wraith end him.  

Near Mint. The Sub zero atmosphere to avoid the multiple Hasten Dooms was key I think. I got close on the first attempt, but didn't flip him quite fast enough. Second attempt was fairly comfortable with no one dead (Absolute Zero was on 3, everyone else was pretty healthy), and I took down his robot suit body side in one round (Wraith flips him with Razor Ordanance, hits him for 2 with her stun bolt, Legacy hits him for 3 with Motivational Charge with his strength upgrade, Bunker shoots him for 11 with Omni Cannon, Tacyhon doesn't really do anything, Absolute Zero plinks him for about 7 between Impale, Frost Bound Drain, and Coolant Blast before Wraith comes in to finish with Throat Jab, Razor Ordinance and Stun bolt) but I had another turn I expect based on how many cards he had in the discard pile.

I enjoyed playing with these variants. Tachyon didn't get to do an awful lot, but I could see how her power could be pretty interesting in the late game vs anyone without damage reduction / when combined with some damage buffing…

> biggest D’oh of the game was near the end when Devious Disruption came out, and I carefully calculated how many ongoings and equipments to destroy, destroyed them, and then was reminded that Wraith had played a Throat Jab on her turn, so no destruction was necessary at all. Oopsie! Wish I could have rewound that one...

Hah, that almost happened to me too! I remembered the Throat Jab in the nick of time though. But if you took that on the chin, and had never played with these variants before, and still got a Mint... wow. Teach me, sensei.
 

> Mint by sheer luck!

First turn, I search for sub zero atmosphere, which lets me avoid a Chains of Doom attack while both MDVs are in play. I get to play Takedown out of turn so Legacy can avoid the damage in addition to buying me an extra round.

Anyone who mints this clearly has more than luck going on. : ) Well done!
But I'm wondering about a couple of things: how does Sub-Zero Atmosphere interact in any way with Hasten Doom? Hasten Doom does all its stuff in the play phase regardless, and Blade's countdown is checked at the start of his turn anyway... right?

And, where did you get a Takedown from that early in the game? I wasn't exactly focusing on supporting Legacy in my game, but i did draw a fair number of cards, and I didn't see one all game.

Baron Blade hates cookies in milk! That's how you know he's a villain! XD

First go was a bust, will probably try it again later. Oddly, though AZ was MVP, Cold Snap was apparently a bad play (off Bunker's power, I think). It killed a Blade Battalion the round Blade flipped, giving him the 15 cards he needed to win. :/

Blade’s 3 card discard is an end of turn effect, and pushing it to start of turn changes which card he plays.

Essentially, it makes Baron Blade discard 3 cards at the start of his turn instead of the end, so he discards all the Hasten Dooms and so only plays a device on turn 2, which slows down his card play by a lot.

I also managed a Takedown out of turn towards the end of the game, but I think it just sped things up rather than being key.

I managed a Mint with everyone but AZ above 10 (AZ around 7.) Didn't think to use Subzero. 

For those looking to play Cold Snap (which I did,) use Tachyon's Blinding Speed to destroy it before it damages anything you want to keep around.

Near Mint, but only barely missed the Mint.  I evaded all but one of the Hasten Dooms with Infrared Eyepiece, which of course cost me some damage output.  My other mistake was playing Adhesive Foam Grenade, which lost me the opportunity to reflect environment damage with Synaptic Interruption.  F5 Tachyon is frustrating in this scenario, since Blade's reverse Advanced text turns Blitz off entirely--use it early to small effect or save it and hope for a Lightspeed Barrage?  In my win, I did the latter, which I was only able to pull off because I skipped an Infrared Eyepiece to use Wraith's base power, then had Legacy let her play Trust Fund and hand Tachyon a fistful of cards.  And I had a tight moment where it was Legacy's turn, Blade was on his front with 7 HP, and Bunker had a loaded Omni-Cannon but not much else, so I had to figure out how to deal 7 damage before using the Cannon.  Poor AZ--he never did get Null-Point, so he was hurting pretty bad the whole game.

Near Mint, but only missed Mint by the skin of my teeth. When I had to avoid Devious Disruption, I miscalculated by 1 and so Tachyon ended up with only 2 hit points at the end of the turn. I missed the fact that her base power was useless against Baron Blade's flip side and with only 2 hp, I had to discard Push the Limits. That meant playing only 2 Lightning Barrages and leaving the 3rd one in my hand. (which would have finished off Baron Balde) In the second game, I made sure to calculate correctly and use Lead from the Front to ensure Tachyon was left with enough hp.

In both games, I used Wraith, Legacy and Bunker to let Tachyon draw and play cards like crazy. Even though Wraith didn't have much else to do on her turns, Tachyon racked up huge lightning barrages in no time and AZ did his normal job of pushing out damage with Pilot Light and Impalex2.

Jay

Near Mint for me as well.

Came up just short in game 1. At the end of wraiths turn, I was going to survive, and then obsidian field boosts the powered remote turret enough to finish off the team.

Game 2 went off without a hitch. Dealt with hasten dooms via sub zero atmosphere, and finished the job with lightspeed barrage. Did get a little hairy late with 2 powered remote turrets, backlash field, and obsidian field on the board. Bunker and wraith in the teens, everybody else single digits

Fairly comfortable Mint here. I sold out for damage with Tachyon and Absolute Zero on the front side after dropping Subzero Atmosphere turn 1. AZ burned himself out using Frost-Bound Drain and searching Impale. Wraith quickly ended up with Micro Targeting + Throwing Knives + Utility Belt (thanks, card plays from Legacy and Bunker), so she tacked on her base power to help Legacy draw cards faster, which gave me Motivational Charge to pile on more damage. Tachyon burned out her base power to flip Blade, then sat there and watched while Legacy and Bunker annihilated him with Motivational Charge and Omni-Cannon + Flak Cannon, assisted by Turret Mode. 

I did that too! But I decided, eh, rewind anyway.

In the end, I lost to the impulsion beam, with all my team in the teens HP (except Abs, who blasted his shockwave at the Baron in a last ditch effort) and Baron Blade at ONE HP. I was begging the environment for a velociraptor pack, but no, all it had for me was an Obsidian Field. If I had been just a little more focused on quantity than efficiency with my damage earlier in the game, I woulda nailed it. (I had Abs heal himself instead of hitting Blade for 9 when he was on his front side at 3, knowing that Wraith would do 3 + 5 on her turn - should’ve just done it!)

I blame all these battles against Progeny where we are more focused on locking Progeny down and slogging it out instead of bringing the beatdown as fast as we can.

Yeah, a big part of this one is just beating as quickly and efficiently as possible. You do have to do some manipulation tricks (either Baron Blade’s deck or the heroes) but there isn’t a lot of set up time here - if you don’t get him off his front quick, you lose...