Weekly One-Shot #131 Thick as Thieves

This week brought to you by a burning hatred for La Capitain. 

Ermine, Freight Train and La Capitain vs Guise, Scholar of the Infinite, and Extreme Skyscraper in Rook City. 

Strangely I was mostly ok with how Rook City was messing with me. Fright Train went down around turn 3 or 4 but that was when things just went wrong. 

So Turn 1 La Capitain used off tempo on Guise to make him discard all but 1 of his cards, the lesson here is spaff all your cards turn 1 as Guise. She then did this to the scholar about 4 turns later. Both times just... 

So lost game one.

Going to be less overheated and sleepy going into game two but am fully expecting those who are better with these three heroes to say how I ballsed this up. 

Ugh... this was freaking brutal, but I got my Mint in the end. Guise and Sky-Scraper both at 3 with Scholar at 7. I focused down Fright Train first, which wasn't too much of a problem (and produced a nice little amusing mental image when he was taken out by a Falling Gargoyle. I assume he ran into the side of the building it was perched on and dropped on his head! :P ). Ermine was next to go both because she's a SUPREME pain in the rear to keep around, and because La Capitan was just too well-protected by her damn space monkey at that point.

After that, it was mostly just grinding, with the environment being surprisingly helpful for Rook City, as Toxic Sludge took some solid chunks out of La Capitan's health for me. I would definitely caution against trying to maintain more than one form in play at a time with Scholar in this game, as the amounts of stuff causing you to discard is just too massive to keep pace with. I went into Iron form with him as early as possible and never looked back after that.

Mint, didn't lose anyone, but it wasn't exactly easy.

The main thing was having two characters (well, three if you include Colossal Left Hook) whose best tactics involve discarding cards, and Chiquito. Usually I focus fire on Fright Train when he's on the board, but La Capitan was a big threat, and Ermine is always bad to have around. At least we weren't dealing with Friction! The constant shuffling of trash into decks meant that there was pretty much a neverending supply of Retcons for Rook City's worst, but also that there's not really any major strategy that I think can be gotten to.

Mint, but barely.  All 3 heroes in single digits at the end. Fright Train, Ermine, La Capitan, ignored the mini-nemesises (thank you autocorrect). 

Holy [insert appropriate blasphemous swear words here]!

Mint, literally "by the skin of my teeth." Guise and the The Scholar both down, Extreme Skyscraper at 1 hp. Yep, got the Mint and the special award for Skin of Your Teeth.

Fright Train, Ermine, then Guise and the Scholar. Then a lot of crying as the @#$# Monkey snagged two cards right before what was obviously Skyscraper's last turn. BUT it turns out that Explosive Reveal hits Chiquito twice, which got both of those cards out and let me do just enough damage to the Capitan to win.

This had the feel of a wild melee because there was no way to plan, given how cards kept getting stripped away, decks reshuffled, etc. Planning ahead? Who needs that?

Not again, thank you.

Mint.

FInished the game with each hero at 1HP. Not quite skin of my teeth...but it sure felt like it :)

Lots of reshuffling, so lots of variation here...I took out Fright Train first, but then I took out La Capitan second, because Chiquito didn't get too out of control, and Ermine had Subtle Diversion out for a while.

Ermine had Calyspo and the Seer active at the end, and had played Long Con to get back up to 8HP. Scholar hit her for 3, and then it was up to Sky-Scraper. I had Tectonic Chokeslam as the only card in my hand, but with each hero at 1HP, I thought I couldn't afford to play it. I stared at the screen for longer than I should have before it dawned on me that I get to choose the order of the "everyone takes 1HP damage."

Duh.

I chose Ermine first, and won.  Heh.

All heroes at 1HP.

Mint with Guise down, Scholar at 8, and SS at 2

Similar to above, I didn't have a coherent strategy for most of the game, just playing what was best at the time and hoping things worked out. Brought down Fright Train, then Ermine, then La Capitan. Using I Can Do That Too on Intravenous Assault just made me think of Guise in the SC version of the Fantastic Voyage submarine, pew-pewing red blood cells while dressed as the pirate from Sell-Out :D  Also using Beefcake to make the Racketeer incap Ermine was fun.

No real MVP here, everyone did something. Guise did a lot of damage from one-shots, Scholar tanked enough, though with all the ongoing destruction it was unusually hard to do so, and SS threw around Rook City and kept playing destroy fodder.

~Komori

I’m really not seeing how this one is done.

I’ve lost two games now, and came here looking for insight or tricks. No clues in this thread, unfortunately. The obvious order seems to be Freight Train (because he dishes out damage and is vulnerable), Ermine (because she’s a pain), and then La Capitan. In my games I can manage the first 2, but La Capitan is never in danger from this team afterward.

This is a remarkably weak team, particularly with La Capitan on the opposing team because everyone, and I mean everyone on the hero team wants to discard cards. Guise’s signature Blatant Reference combo has no effect against her since he has to discard a card every turn he uses it.

I’ve come to really like Guise, but there’s just nothing here for him. No ongoings to copy, no equipment to use, and very few innate powers he wants to copy. He never wants to copy Scholar’s self-harm power, and Sky Scrapper’s normal size power is of no use to him, since he can’t play links or draw links from his trash. Her Tiny power is good, but I never seem to draw any cards that let me switch to Tiny. Her Giant power damages the heroes too much unless she’s got Thorian Monolith up, and she usually doesn’t.

I’m not seeing how Guise does a lot of damage from one-shots here. Except to Freight Train, of course, since he takes extra damage from everything.

EDIT: Game 3 went worse than games 1 and 2. I didn’t even really hurt Ermine before everyone went down.

EDIT: Won game 4. Barely. Guise had 2 HP, everyone else was down. Temporal Hotspot killed both Scholar and Sky Scrapper, and I had no way of removing it. The only reason I won was I put Total Beefcake up on Guise’s last turn, and re-directed La Capitan’s attack to herself.

I wish I could provide some strategy, but I feel that I did exactly what I did in games 1-3. Obviously I did little variants or I’d have gotten the same result each time, but I wasn’t employing different tactics, just varying slightly the order of my plays. Mostly it’s an approach that got me killed, but squeaked by in game 4.

Some things I can remember doing include copying a single Flesh to Iron with Uh, Yeah, I'm That Guy, on more than one occasion, which really helped keep Guise's HP up. I also didn't really focus on any of the villains, doing my best to keep them more or less even in HP. Fright Train ended up going down first, but by the time he did, the two ladies were around half each. Guise has lots of little pings that are good for stripping La Capitan of her stolen cards, to say nothing of the utility of Tectonic Chokeslam.

There's so much top-card discarding that it's unlikely anyone will play the same game with this one. :/

I copied Flesh to Iron once, in my 4th (and successful) game. I probably could have done it at least 1 more time.

4th game I got lucky with Guise, and played Guise the Barbarian -> Best Card ever -> draw Best Card Ever -> play Say Cheese on a almost-out Ermine -> Play lucky 2nd copy of Best Card Ever. That’s 16 points of damage, including the 1+2 from Tough Choices. I had a copy of Blatant Reference in hand,but I knew Ermine was going down, and that the discards would render it pointless against La Capitan.

I’m not sure of the utility of spreading the damage around, aside from AoE attacks, of course. Maybe as attacks of opportunity against La Capitan when the monkey isn’t holding a card? Otherwise, you really do want to stop at least one of the villains from playing cards. Arguably, maybe Ermine’s a better first target, since her incapacitated ability doesn’t do damage, and Freight Train’s does.

I tended to view Freight Train as the main damage source, but in truth the other two were handing out 3+ damage a turn as well. La Capitan’s base ability is what really hurts, not so much her cards which often do little or no damage, and Ermin kept playing Heavy Hitter for 3 points. Plus of course her frequent Ongoing destruction. Which isn’t really so bad in this matchup, since Guise’s ongoings usually self-destruct anyway, and the Scholar can’t afford to keep multiple ones up due to discards and the grabby monkey.

Fright Train's incap ability shouldn't be much of a concern for this game either. As long as you keep a Flesh to Iron up, Scholar is just going to tank it anyways.

If everyone is still alive, I agree that Freight Train’s incap isn’t so bad, since the Scholar can tank it, and then pick off the the card he gave to the monkey via his base power. It doesn’t work out so well if he’s dead (which is what happened to me) or he’s alone.

Though in hindsight, I seem to recall that I let Flesh to Iron lapse because I was trying for the Get Out of the Way / Energy combo, which can deal out a good bit of damage if there’s a lot of targets. I suspect that was a consistent mistake that was making the game difficult for me, and why the Scholar ended up incap’d when I finally did manage to squeak out a win.

Ermine will also zap Flesh To Iron now and then, and you may or may not be able to replace it. You’re only going to get it back if you’ve managed to knock off Constant Prattle at some point. Or, as I saw repeatedly, La Capitan plays that card that destroys villain Ongoings and plays a card from the villain deck as a replacement. I can never remember the names of the Spanish cards she plays.

Mint. Guise at 3, Scholar at 2 and Skyscraper at 1. Fright Train, Ermine, La Capitan. Focused down Fright Train quite quickly and did a shed load of damage to Ermine with Guise’s Barbarian + Blatant Reference combo - this got Chiqito to about 4 cards, but I can’t say that ever gave me too much trouble as there are quite a few opportunities to plink all enemies for 1 with these guys, so that kept the damage manageable. My last turn saw Skyscraper plink off the last 2 cards and kill the monkey which meant I had basically a full round to pound on La Capitan with everything I could, which was more than enough to win.

Near mint.  La Capitan, Ermine & Fright Train.

I never kill Engine of Destruction, but this game,  I did.  Wrecking LC first let me use BR/GtB with impunity.

Yah, “shoot the monkey and her owner first” might be the best strategy. Normally I’m not too fussed about her since most of her cards do little of import, but this team really, really doesn’t deal with discard-grabbing well.

Near Mint because my finger slipped when choosing Guise's power option.  Oops.

Sky-Scraper went down, but otherwise I wasn't tremendously stressed.  With Fright Train down, the villains don't have a lot of damage output, so it was just a war of attrition.  Scholar constantly feeding Chiquito was annoying, but not game-breaking.