Weekly One-Shot #119: One Stop Shopping

Its that time of the week again. This time Handalabra has given us a Challange Mode Vengeance match up. 

The Vengeful 5 vs Hunted Naturalist, Fuge State Parse, The South West Sentinels, Rouge Agent Knife, and Setback. Baron Blade has decided to bring a mobile defense platform to this particular showdown. 

This game was tremendous fun after the awfulness that was ultimate Apostate 2 weeks ago... 

I went for the fun way of killing everyone and then Baron Blade. There were some awkward moments (looking at you destroy x hero ongoing/equipment cards)  and early misplays (forgetting how challenge Freight Train worked). But otherwise, Naturalist played tank until Mainstay decided it was his turn. Sentinels and Setback did all the punching a player could want. 

Mint with everyone between 9-12 HP   

Mint with only Parse down.

Using lots of AoE damage to kill Freight Train fast, a couple of Ongoing destruction from Naturalist helped remove the more annoying ones.

Minty Flawless Victory

Fright Train (Of Course) -> Friction -> Ermine -> Proletariat -> Baron Blade

Main strategy was just feed the Sentinels all of the card plays I could. Parse was Destroy fodder farmer, Naturalist tanked, KNYFE fed Sentinels plays, Setback punched things. Sentinels' AoE brought down the mini nemesies pretty quickly and Fright Train especially since All hero damage is redirected to him. Also used that to use For the Greater Good as a direct damage attack :P

By the time I brought Proletariat down, I was in such a stable position that I decided to heal everyone back up for the Flawless Victory from the ~10 everyone was hovering at. Environmental allies took care of the environment, Baron Blade really only works as a team villian and isnt scary by himself, and even Fright Train's incap was beneficial. I would have Mainstay take the self damage to allow Sentinel Tactics to M.D. for 3. Took a few rounds but everyone finished fine.

~Komori

Mint.

Hey! It's everything that comes in the Vengeance box! All in one place digitally! FInally, no more stress or hassle of tracking them all down in several different locations!

Anyway--fun romp in the MDP.  I took out Fright Train first (because you have to), then Friction, then Baron Blade, then Proletariat and finally Ermine, who was hiding behind double Subtle Diversions for the whole game. Actually not very subtle on her part, but effective.

Naturalist at 12HP, Parse at 8HP, Sentinels at 8/9/7/9, KNYFE at 4HP and Setback at 4HP.

I was a little scared when I saw the setup, but that was a fun mint, owing mostly to a really strong hero team. :) Also, the challenge rules aren't nearly as bad, overall, as the advanced rules for the Vengeful Five. c.c

Mint here, much the same as everyone else. 

When I finally got the Gazelle out, I was in a very happy place.

I was also reminded how Proletariat has my favorite Out of the Fight art.  He just looks so... bummed.  It's almost adorable.

Siiiigh… Back to Mother Russia, I guess…

Really thought I'd get them this time…

Pretty much.

I just imagine him pouting under the mask in that pose. 

My fiancee agrees with me.

Mint.

Relatively easy, because it’s a strong team. Target order was Freight Train (no choice there) -> Friction -> Ermine -> Proletariat -> Blade. Friction because she has some scary damage if she has enough cards in her trash, Ermine because she tends to screw things up with ongoing destruction, Proletariat because he does more damage than Blade, and Blade is not so scary on his own anyway.

I went looking for Ongoing destruction first because there were some nasty ones out. I was looking in Parse’s deck for Segment Fault, but Naturalist got Craft Assault first. That’s not repeatable like Segment Fault, but gets the job done anyway. Next priority was Blend Into The Pack so Naturalist could tank. After that is was pretty straightforward “do as much damage as possible.”

No one fell down, though Setback did use Silver Lining to not die and reset to 9 HP. Toward the end it was as stable as Starkenburg said, but I didn’t think to milk it for the Flawless achievement. I’m not entirely sure I could have managed it, anyway, since Parse was down to 3 HP. Blade kept hitting her and I kept healing her, but I wasn’t really making forward progress on taking her out of the Lowest HP spot.

Straightforward Mint.

The only problem for me this game was it took forever to draw cards that would let me destroy on-goings. When I finally did, I realized I had to take out Strength of Everyman if I wanted to survive. That meant Ermine had double Subtle Diversions out for way too long.

So I took out Fright Train and Friction first. That's about when i killed the last of the clones and was staring Strength of Everyman +7 damage in the face. Proletariat fell next and, while I usually prefer to leave the Baron until last, Ermine still had those Subtle Diversions out. So I went after the Baron and finished with her.

It was never particularly scary. All heroes ended above ten. None dipped down low for long. Overall quite fun.

My expereince was that it didn’t take too long to get ongoing destruction, but you have to make an effort to get to it. Both Parse and the Naturalist have it, and both have cards that let you draw cards rapidly (Recompile, Shifter’s Strength, Primal Charge, Quick Calculation, Gauge). KNYFE can help look on the bottom of either hero’s deck.

I had that problem, too, which is why Ermine went down last for me. There was at least one solid round of just digging for ongoing destruction.

Mint. Nobody lost, but several got very low before I got things into a better place and Medico got taken out and revived.

Went with Fright Train (who fell quite thanks to lots of AOE damage from Sentinels turn 1), Proliteriate (Everyman strength was too big a threat and I usually try and take the opportunity to punch him when there are no clones), Friction (annoyingly smashed all my ongoings the round before she went down), Blade (because of too much protection on Ermine) and finally Ermine (everything was clear by the time Blade went down).

Not too much struggle and while I had a few hero’s on 1 hp at one point, everyone was relatively healthy by the end as Mainstay started doing some serious tanking work.

That was one of the strangest games I've ever played.  Took me a while to get rid of Subtle Diversion, and then Ermine immediately played another one.  Then even when I destroyed that, she kept healing herself, shuffled her deck, and played Subtle Diversion yet again.  So she was last to go down by a lot.

I made a few mistakes, but the big one was Threatening Stomp with Everyman's Strength in play.  Blade let Proletariat get an extra play and Naturalist went from highest HP to well into the negatives.  But that's when things got really weird, due to Hunted Naturalist's incap that lets the highest-HP environment target hit all nonhero targets for 2 damage.  Crazy powerful, especially with the Bridge in play.  The Shield Generator ended up as the damage MVP, taking down both Blade and Proletariat, and Ermine finally went down when she got sucked into the Propulsion System.  Considering I wasn't able to keep any cards at all in hand for the last chunk of the game, that incap ability was a godsend.

No issues here. Easy mint. The only two heroes who went down were Idealist and Dr. Medico, but I saw two copies of Second Chance, so they popped right back up.

This was largely the Naturalist show for me. He got a ton of cards very early, including lots of ongoing destruction, so Ermine never got a chance to be a problem and Proletariat only got one round out of Everyman's Strength. I got Snap Decision out early for Parse and made sure to use her power and KNYFE's power on Naturalist after I got him going. The first time I got Parse's power to play a free card, I used it on the Sentinels and was happy. Setback also had some good times, getting out High Risk Behavior and spending two rounds tanking behind Naturalist while punching very effectively with Looking Up.

Fright Train went down in one round; Friction went down the next round; Ermine went down very quickly afterward. That left a very sad combo of Proletariat and Blade against a very well set-up Naturalist and, by that time, Parse, with the Sentinels bearing down for tons of damage as well. 

The only character who didn't do a whole awful lot was KNYFE, who dropped For the Greater Good as a 4 damage one-shot in turn 1 and mostly sat there looking for things to do otherwise. But I didn't need her to do much, this team was really, really good, and as Takewalker noted above, Challenge vengeance 5 is probably easier than Advanced.

Very unlikely Mint.  At one point, I was down to only Mainstay (at 3 HP) with Ermine, Proletariet, and Baron Blade all still on the board.  Fortunately, there were plenty of incap abilities that gave me extra Power uses so I could stall long enough to get Dr Medico and (eventually) Writhe back in action to close things out.  However Naturalist was probably my MVP for his insanely useful incap ability.  Until I got into position to get multiple Sentinels online again, that was basically the only damage I was able to do.  

Ugly Mint. Naturalist at 6, Mainstay at 3, everyone else incapped. Went Fright Train, Friction, Ermine, Proletariat, Blade.

Fun, mostly easy mint. As is usual with Vengence mode, the heroes took a mess of damage early, but then were able to turn the tide.

With Parse and KNYFE farming extra card plays for the Sentinels, hero damage was flying everywhere and it was just a matter of taking the V5 down one at a time.  Extra card plays also meant that I had more than enough ongoings to toss as needed so those cards rarely bothered me.

Naturalist and Writhe tanked (via Caliginous Form), with Mainstay pitching in a bit.

Order was Fright Train (obvs), Proletariat (as his clones were wiped early by AoE damage and I didn't want him getting them back), Friction, Blade, Ermine (who would have been earlier, but she had Subtle Diversion in play for most of the game which slowed me down).