Chairman vs Stuntman, Sentinels, Mr Fixer and NightMist in Pike Industrial. Randomised start.
Mint. But I’m not entirely sure how. Caliginous Form and the Amulet certainly helped, as did the Chemical Explosion that wiped out all the bad guys (and Idealist, Mr Fixer, Stuntman and Dr Medico) after the second prison break.
Fine. Man, I loathe randomized games…
Got the Chairman down to single digits, died to rats. :( This is gonna be another slog like last week.
Okay. So. Here are a few things I learned:
Writhe's power can be useful if you've given up on Mint. If you can trash a Prison Break or two, you're in much better stead. And if not, rewind.
Nightmist's Astral Premonition can help you avoid the worst, but unfortunately, it does not synergize with Writhe unless the Operative is already incapacitated becasue she shuffles the deck.
I'm still learning to play Stuntman, but one thing I've noticed is that there aren't many cards in his deck that let you play cards out of turn. Plenty that let you use powers, but it definitely looks like In Medias Res is designed to key off of Dramatic Cliffhanger. (Seems apropos.) Pull that off and you can do a lot--jump straight over a Chairman turn? Yes please. (This would enable Astral/Writhe synergy.) Also, don't overlook that he deals irreduceable damage.
It goes without saying that this game is a setup to allow you to unlock Action Hero Stuntman. Still, I'll say it.
Fixer: Dual Crowbars or Jack Handle or GTFO.
Mint with Stuntman (at 5) and Fixer (at 8) as the only two men left standing after a final, dramatic cliffhanger allowed Ansel to roast the operative (and 3 seriously ticked-off super rats) with his trusty flamethrower.
The two main reasons I survived this one by far would be getting lucky with Writhe, grabbing and thrashing one of the Prison Breaks and Fixer's Wrench+Redirection style which is pure gold against Chairman. Sure, Jackhandle and Crowbars look good, but the sheer amount of damage AND tanking you can do when Fixer can redirect the Operative's retaliation damage onto the Chairman (getting the Nemesis bonus in the process), which causes him to punch her right back (again, with Nemesis bonus) over and over again is simply priceless (and fun!)
Mint.
All of the Underbosses came out early due to the Informant, and Oblivions and Checmical Explosions put them all into the trash. Then, Writhe spammed his power to get the Prison Breaks into the trash (took a while, but was successful). Then, Nightmist used Mistbound repeatedly to paralyze the Operative and the Chairman, and everyone else pounded on them. Fixer was particularly brutal with Dual Crowbars and dual toxic vats out. There was one doubly Mutated angry Rat that was pesky (a proto Plague Rat?), but once the Underbosses were safely imprisoned, the heroes didn't have much to worry about.
Stuntman had one fun exchange with the Chariman when No Time to Bleed, Moving Target and Violent Escalation were all happening--"Take that!" "Ha! Take that!" "No, you Take That!" etc. etc.
Stuntman 12HP, Sentinels 7/9/3/11HP, Fixer 3HP, Nightmist 14HP.
Mint with Medico and Writhe at 8 each. I made sure to use Writhes power to avoid chemical explosions when they were unwanted and managed to deal a lot of damage with Stuntman before he went down due to his own hidden mine.
Mint by Cheese. I went into mist form after playing all of NM relics. The eviromment took care of everything on the board, every couple of turns. Everybody else died. Once I was back to full health and had drawn most of my deck, I came out of mistform and repeateadly hit the chairman. retaliatory damage was Redirected to the operative. Any Operative damage was redirected to chairman and they kept punching each other for nemesis damage. I certainly lucked out, because I was able to bring them to 0 before the next prison break came out (with the assistance of a 7 point vat explosion at some point).
I was blasting through, but I saw when my heroes were getting pretty low, and when the environment was starting to deal 6+ damage per turn, I would have to resort to drastic measures. So I rewound to Nightmist's turn and plopped down Mist Form. That got me the win, and a well-deserved Near Mint.
Mint here! Got super lucky. Had Nightmist go into mist form first turn then had the other heroes and environment wipe out the Operative. Then after I had almost her whole deck in my hand,and Amulet of the Elder Gods out, Nightmist just dismantled the Chairman.
Mint!
Astral Premonition and Writhe's power helped get rid of the prison breaks. A couple of well timed Grease Guns helped a lot!
Mint by shenanigans, but I’ll take it because randomized starts are hard to mint 
Ended with Writhe and Nightmist bring the only ones alive with about 10 hp each. Caliginous form and Elder Amulet saved the day.
The two healing vats came out early, so it was a long slog to start, and by the time I was set up enough to Usual Solution/Lance Flammes (pronounced like jammies according to Word of God)/Dark Delusion/Oblivion the entire Organization away, it was basically the entire Organization on the board. I made sure that the Prison Breaks were in the discard and used the Informant to cycle his deck down to one card so the minions would be out of the trash by the time Underbosses were coming out again. Cleared the board, flipped the Chairman, and shuffled the deck, them managed to bring down the operative with focused fire. I was sitting pretty good with low health on everyone but just the chairman and the acid vat out, when disaster struck.
A coolant vat came out and dealt 6 to everyone, bringing down Stuntman, Idealist, Medico, mainstay, and Mr fixer. Then, the Chairman played Rook City is Mine! To draw the other acid and coolant vats. Staring at Writhe at 7, Nightmist at 2, Chairman at almost full, and 6 instances of 3 damage heading my way at the end of the environment turn, I thought about quitting and restarting. Thought to myself “the only way I can stay alive is if the next environment card is a vat explosion, as both of them can redirect the one instance of damage”. Lo and behold, a miracle. I was still in the game after a vat explosion did absolutely nothing to anyone.
Lots of redirecting any and all damage later and slowly healing, I managed to bring down the chairman mostly through pinging him, then redirecting the counter damage back to him. Though there was the fun time of redirecting a lone Hired Gun to the Chairman, using the damage boost he gives against him, then retaliating to kill the Hired Gun.
No unlocks for me though. Must have missed some requirement somewhere
~Komori
Quick and dirty Mint here, it was over in four rounds. Highlights included:
- Prison Break / Muscle off the top; round 2 was a Prison Break that only brought back the Muscle, along with bringing out the Fence.
- L'Embuscade KO'd the Broker at the end of Chairman's third turn before she could pull the Informant.
- Grease Gun on Fixer's third turn stopped the Contract and Hired Gun from ripping us up at the top of round 4, as well as let Stuntman and the Sentinels wipe the board and beat on Chairman with no fear of counter damage.
- A Crowbar and Cyclohexane-fueled Fixer did 10 damage to each of Operative and Chairman with Overdrive, followed by a 4/5 Oblivion from Nightmist to end it. The poor Chairman never stood a chance; he flipped and got KO'd in the same round.
Mint again on steam!
Even with a few mistakes (should have killed contract first). Stuntman didn't do that much. I didn't have Amulet of Elder Gods for long.
But Human Shiled is your friend.
First game: Chairman played the Contract and the Operative pulled the Fence. It was over practically before it started.
Second game: I was doing pretty well until Prison Break hit right after I killed the last underboss. I managed to trash one PB with Writhe but the other one was just too far up the deck for me to get to before a reshuffle.
Third game: Nightmist Heedless Lash’d into a Mist Form early on (24 hp) and she pretty much stayed like that for most of the game. I could kill thugs and underbosses with Impunity and was able to throw undivided attention to the top of the deck with Writhe while I fished for the Prison Breaks. Damage reduction and Hypocratic Oath took care of the Chaiman’s rebound damage and, although I did get the win for a Fine, it was still a close one.
Vat Explosion took out three of the Sentinels, then I had to pull Nightmist out of Mist Form once some underbosses started coming back in to wipe with Oblivion. The Chaiman was already down at that point, but it caused the Operatice to hit NM hard and then a double mutagen with three rats made short work of her and Fixer. But Stuntman and Mainstay were able to hang on long enough to take the Operative down.
Relatively easy Mint. Everyone was badly injured but still standing. This team has a lot of AoE damage, which is a big help with the minions.
@SciFantasy: The way Stuntman plays cards out of turn is the machine pistol. Use a card that lets him use a power out of turn, and he does damage and plays a card. If you don’t have the machine pistol, destroying his armor lets you search for it.
My SOP with the Chairman is to leave underbosses alive until both Prison Breaks are in the trash. Taking out an underboss before then just means he comes back at full health from the break. I pretty much assume I’m going to see a full board of underbosses at some point unless I get lucky and the prison breaks come out early. So mostly it’s eliminating the minions repeatedly, and hoping The Contract comes out late.
I’ve come to accept that Informants are actually somewhat helpful until the Prison Breaks come out, since they help run through the Chairman’s deck. I also used Writhe’s power repeatedly just to reduce his deck size and thus the delay until the Breaks.
This means of course the Operative is dealing out damage repeatedly as I take out minions, which means some form of damage resistance or redirection is really helpful. Mainstay of course has his base power, Stuntman has his stylish armor, Fixer has Mantis style, and NIghtmist has Mist Form or the Elder Necklace.
In my game, NIghtmist didn’t get Mist Form until quite late, but I did get the Necklace early enough to do some redirection. Fixer started with Mantis and Stuntman started with his armor. His armor has the useful property of letting me draw whatever equipment I wanted when a Thief destroyed it.
A couple of times I managed Training Montage -> Steal the Scene, Steal the Scene -> do 1 damage to all hostiles with the machine pistol + play Cliffhanger, Cliffhanger -> Draw a card, play a card, do 1 damage to all enemies, play another card. Spread out over several turns, of course, since Steal the Scene happens during another hero’s turn and Cliffhanger happens during the environment turn. Really, Stuntman was the MVP this game.
The environment was mostly helpful. Mutated rats helped control the minions, and the healing vat came out the same turn The Contract did, mitigating the extra damage. Naturally I got rid of it ASAP when it was my turn with Stuntman’s Usual Solution. Once the Breaks were gone on the minions out of play, Stuntman and NIghtmist cleared the 2 copies of Experimental Mutagen.
Since I’m aware this is the setup to unlock Action Hero, I was even tempted to use it for that. I took out the Chairman first and was a bit too enthusiastic damaging the Operative before going after my own team. Eventually I was in a situation where a supercooled vat was going to take her out, so I finished her off to prevent any surprises during the environment turn.
EDIT: typed “starshield necklace” (the healing one) when I meant “Elder necklace” (the damage redirection one)
Seconded.
I've voiced my opinion on them before.
It doesn't help that many of them have been for diffcult Villain/Hero matchups. (Chairman v pre-Setback Dark Watch for example)
Typically the random games are for unlock hints and that is the case here. So while it may be a rough matchup it is one you’d go through if you were attempting to unlock Action Hero Stuntman
This is definitely not a team I would have chosen for that unlock unless the exact team was critical to the unlock.
That’s your choice if you want a different team but that changes nothing about my point.
Doesn't mean I have to like it.
It doesn't make my chief complaints about the randomized one-shots go away. (that it's impossible to have a real discussion about the one-shot itself when it's random).
And it doesn't make it any less frustrating to have every. single. randomized one-shot starts me off with a hand that's about as bad as possible for each character, and not have a chance of winning, only to have a bunch of people come out with "Easy mint." I don't begruge them their luck, but that doesn't mean I have to like mine.
If it's not fun for you, then why play them?
It’s true that it’s much harder to talk about a randomized one-shot than one with a shared starting setup, and I agree it’s a problem, but it’s not really impossible. It’s just that the discussion tends to be a bit more vague, since you talk about synergies within the team that will probably show up, and vulnerabilities you’ll probably encounter, rather than what to do with the first few turns.
For example, last week’s was random and brutally hard. Even so, we did talk about key villain cards to watch out for, and what you can do about them, even if it’s unknown when any particular player will get them.
Even fixed setup games have considerable variance once deck shuffling kicks in, and normally that’s not a big deal. The Chairman is a significant example since the Operative shuffles the Chairman’s draw deck every turn. Even if this weren’t a random setup, there’s just no way to know when the Prison Breaks are showing up. Uh, unless it’s turn 1.
Honestly, because they're there.
And it's not that they're not fun for me. It's that I, personally, find them considerably less fun than the non-randomized starts, and higher pressure than just setting the same match up outside of a one-shot.
Mint. Avoided a Prison Break and crushed most of the underbosses as they came out. Surprisingly everyone was still standing (although Idealist was at 1 hp).
Mint. I’m still not sure how.
Started off well enough, with a turn one prison break doing absolutely nothing. Operative went down before finding all the underbosses, having skipped one round due to In Medias Red.
Now the bad stuff. Nightmist had one of the worst setups I’ve ever had with her, Fixer was stuck with no equipment for most of the game, (aside from a fortuitous Grease Gun), and Driving Mantis didn’t help much as most of the damage was 3 or greater. I need more practice with Stuntman, as I’m pretty sure I misplayed all of his turns.
Sentinels carried the game, especially Mainstay. Turn one Sentinel Tactics was probably my saving grace, as Medico was able to buy everybody time while Mainstay Blocked every turn.
Then Chairman makes his appearance. Operative still up at this point, though she fell to Stuntman this round. Doing okay until Rook City Is Mine plays Vat Explosion followed by Experimental Mutagen, wiping out almost everybody, good and evil alike.
Eventually Mainstay and The Chairman are the only ones standing. Sentinels are eventually able to revive, and Caliginous Form finally turned the tide.
Ugh. I really hope next week is easier, but I’m expecting Benchmark related stuff.
P.S. I got Action Hero Stuntman as well.
P.P.S. If my After Action Report seems disjointed, some of my memories of the game are a little fuzzy, as I think I dozed off a couple times during the proceedings. No more one-shots at 4 in the morning.
Near Mint, but only because I tried to unlock Stuntman at the same time. I had Chairman down to 5 hp with everyone at good health. But when I finally managed to get everyone to kill themselves off, I had 2 Toxic Wastes and the cold vat come out with Mainstay at 4hp and I couldn't do anything to finish him off. The next game I got into the same situation, but was more careful about when to perform the final blow and got the unlock and the win.
For the random missions, I don't quite get the hate on. These are clues for the unlocks. If they make them non-randomized, then it will be far too easy to find the unlocks and get them as the game sequence is deterministic. They can't make it too easy for us.
That being said, last week's randomized game was brutal, but this week's was pretty easy. I saw the comments on here and replayed the game multiple times to see if I was just getting lucky. Besides the first loss which was due to me trying to get the unlock, I played 5 other games and only lost once. This is a pretty good team to take on the Chairman. And I am loving Stuntman- that guy is a lot of fun.
The reason the hint one-shots are randomized is because if they weren't, people would assume that the initial shuffle is a hint (which it wouldn't be, but that wouldn't stop them).
Pulled off a Near Mint by getting extremely lucky with Chairman's deck.
I tried running it out with an Informant for a second Prison Break with all the Underbosses in play, but didn't quite make it. He plays a card, it's not Prison Break, and suddenly Writhe's dumb power is very useful. :) Lost Mr. Fixer, but at least he died taking the Chairman down a few notches.