Weekly One-Shot #122: The Final Round

Guise, Scholar, and Unity vs. Challenge Wager Master in Final Wasteland. Randomized start.

Welp. Not much to say about my Mint run. I drew Not All He Seems, The New Deal, and Losing to the Odds, and he played Unanswerable Question, so it was super easy to get him flipped and wait out Losing to the Odds showing up. I kept hitting myself to get Guise's HP to odd and the others to even and praying, and eventually LTTO finally flipped over with Guise at 8 HP. Good luck, team.

Was a bad opening for me with most of them if a card flips punch a hero for lots. Or punch all the heroes for some. This, however, went well for me after the start of round 3 got me losing to the odds to win the game.

Mint.

I lost my first try by 3 HP. D: Guise did so much damage, but it didn't matter, because the New Deal came out before Losing to the Odds, and What Do You Really Know pounded the team into submission. :(

Mint.

Losing to the Odds was the first pre-game Condition to come out, and I won at the beginning of Wager Master's second turn. Guise did have to punch Unity to make it work. Sorry, Debbie.

Guise 26HP, Scholar 28HP, Unity 20HP.

I also had that starting set up, but it included New Deal and Wagelings at the end.

So I was guarenteed to end his turn with even HP, and then took no damage and won on his turn.

Easy mint.

I just beat him down, ignoring everything else. He had 2x Wagelings at the start, so there was the possibility he’d get out a 3rd wageling and outnumber the heroes, but with Unity on the team I figured I’d generally have at least one bot in play. He did play Losing To The Odds on turn 2, and I did the “punch Unity with Guise” thing to even out everyone’s HP, but a Skunk Ape came out and upset the math. I realized that there were too many damaging Cryptids in the environment deck to make HP-stacking for Losing To The Odds to be a decent bet, so I just concentrated on damage.

It helped a lot that Guise got the Guise the Barbarian / Blatant Reference combo early. With Wager Master as a nemesis, that meant 4 points of damage a turn, for a total of 16 including the 4 from Tough Choices. Scholar had a couple of Grace Under Fires, which were good for 4-5 damage each between the Wagelings and environment targets. Unity finished him off with Turret Bot and Platform Bot.

He did get a couple of What Do You Really Know?’s in play, which between them knocked Guise and Unity down to 4-5 HP each, which could have been bad if I took much longer to knock him out.

To my AAR I have to add:

I don’t much like randomized Wager Master challenges. Given how ridiculously random Wager Master games are, with turn-2 wins from “Losing to the Odds” being fairly common vs. games which are nigh impossible because of Who Are You Fighting, a randomized start means that comparing war stories  after the challenge is pointless. Some people are going to have trivial games which teach nothing, and some are going to Kobayashi Maru games which no amount of clever play can salvage. With most villain match-ups we can talk strategy and clever tricks, but with Wager Master strategy doesn’t rise much above plays to take advantage of Losing To The Odds.

Won through losing to the Odds at the end of Wager Master's second turn, thanks to a skunk-ape. Thanks you loveable little cryptid!

First few goes on that reminded me how annoying I find WM. On the plus side, that added to my satisfaction as I eventually just let the environment cards pile up, allowed Wagelings to stay alive to get chomped on by beasts, and brought Cryo Bot out to help seal the victory with a flurry of attacks on WM.

Second try got me a Near Mint. It was hairy, though, with Unity going down due to lots of flipping needed to get rid of Who Are You Fighting. :B

Took me 3 tries. I almost had him on the first try, getting him to low health and then pulling Guise's +2 to damage, shoot stuff at the end of each turn combo. Then I flipped Wager Master to get rid of his "lose if Wager Master is at 0 health" condition. Unfortunately, Guise pretty much buried himself by damaging himself for 3 on each of the conditions that flipped. I lost shortly thereafter.

Game 2 was nothing to write home about. Everyone took a lot of damage and that was that.

Game 3, Stealth Bot and Scholar tanked a lot. With Stealth Bot, it's easy to redirect damage as needed to get everyone at even hit points at the right time, which is what happened, and I finally won.

I enjoy Wager Master, but it is completely unpredictable what's going to happen.

Oh geez. I just decided to replay for fun. For his initial 3 conditions, Wager Master pulled out 3 Wagelings. I lost before the first turn started.

Well, that was unusual. I minted this by beating Wager Master down to 0 HP. I think this might actually be the first time that this has happened to me.

Essentially, I opened with the two conditions that let you win by running out the deck, and make you lose if Wager Master dies. I started to run out the deck, and then a bunch of cards flipped face-down so I said "Heck with it" and unleashed an uber-combo from Guise. Two turns later, the Master was down.

MVP of the round was the Stealth Bot, eating challenge mode damage over and over again. 

This happened to me but unfortunately it was on my first attempt at the oneshot.

Pulled three Wagelings out and I just sat there for a few minutes, not ready to slide the confirmation "you lost the game" button yet.

I admit to being annoyed enough to cheat a bit during my second play through  - Losing to the Odds came out pretty quickly but flipped at the start of the turn so I couldn't win with it (since it needs to be at the end of the turn to win). The Scholar used Offensive Transmutation to make sure Wager Master wouldn't do anything to mess up my HP. Everyone was at even numbers until an Amphibious Chupacabra showed up and did 3 points of damage to Unity. So I had no problem with rewinding to her turn and having her lightning damage herself for one point of damage to make sure she'd be back at even during Wager Master's turn.

If he can cheat and take away my Mint, then I'm going to make sure I take advantage of the ability to rewind.

Near Mint.

The first game, he started with The New Deal, Not All He Seems, and A Burning Sense of Failure out.  Ow. You hit him, Not All He Seems flips, you take damage, and he heals. The the Wagelings came out and it was a slow slow slide to death.

The second game, Losing to the Odds came out immediately and it just took a round or two to manipulate everyone's health to win. 

Fine on Mobile, Mint on PC, cuz thats just how Wager Master Rolls.

Getting What do you Really Know as a starting card really hurts O.o

~Komori

Fine on my 4th attempt... some crazy bad luck on a couple of these - the 3rd go I had him on 1 hp before losing...

This one-shot taught me that despite all his shenanigans, Guise isn't a fan of Breaking the Rules.  Most of his cards get destroyed immediately because of it, but I kept it out anyway for the extra card draw.