Weekly One-Shot #149: Less Is More

Challenge Chokepoint vs. Adamant Sentinels, DW Fixer, Legacy, Tempest, and Ra at the Celestial Tribunal.

Mostly painless Mint: 8/7/7/8/16/23/23/20. Challenge Chokepoint means that once she flips, she effectively won't ever flip back, so be aware of that. If you can weather Chokepoint's second turn, when she destroys a bunch of environment cards (and a TK Thump will go a long way to helping that), you're largely set.

There's some discussion in the Idealist variant unlock thread about this potentially being a hint for that variant.

Easy Mint. Never used Mr. Fixer. And used Idealist ability often to reduce her damage, and never played ongoing that went away at start and end of turns.

no unlocks though.

Mint, with everyone 1 HP below max. Same as UXM266, I avoided giving Chokepoint cards and kept spamming TK Thump. I had Tempest healing since none of his damage powers came up. I thought maybe I could put Void Guard Idealist on trial for the unlock but the opportunity never arose. I finished off Chokepoint with TK Thump, but no unlock there either.

Mint with the Sentinels pretty low and the rest of my team in the high teens. Never played any ongoings or equipments, just for laughs - figured I'd take the one-shot title literally. It worked out just fine. As noted, though, TK Thump kept us from taking too much damage.

I played Driving Mantis round one and then gave Fixer the finishing blow through Dual Crowbars.   Otherwise didn’t use his power. 

Mint. Fairly easy with TK Thump controlling the bulk of the damage. I used Fixer only at the end, but searched out his style that redirects damage. Hyppocratic oath helped keep everyone healthy as well.

Fairly easy mint, though the Adamant Sentinels weren’t so adamant, and took a lot of damage. Nobody went down, though.

Despite the title, I went with More Is More, and played lots of equipment and ongoing cards. The advantages more than outweighed the drawbacks.

Chokepoint does a ton of damage on her 2nd turn by playing Stripped Resources and destroying 4 environment cards. Turn 1 Durasteel Chains + Human Shield + TK Thump absorbed all of that. It didn’t last, though, she took away the Chains her next turn and after that it wasn’t worth maintaining Human Shield.

Yes, I flipped Chokepoint, but I was focused enough on damage that her damage reduction didn’t matter too much. Legacy’s Galvanize meant that even low-damage attacks like TK Thump were landing. He got out Inspiring Presence soon enough, which meant +2 damage all around.

I did use Mr. Fixer’s Strike power, after building him up with a style, tool, and Harmony. Even used Overdrive. I chose Grease Monkey Fist for the extra damage instead of Driving Mantis, because I figured that it’d be over long before damage to Mr. Fixer mattered. By the time he started attacking he was doing 6-7 damage per hit, which was worth taking Chokepoint’s counter-damage and her healing for destroying a card.

Mass healing between Cleansing Downpour and Dr. Medico’s base ability was mostly enough to offset those AoE attacks. TK Thump helped significantly cutting with all that AoE damage.

Mint. Usually, the idea of challenge Chokepoint is scary, but Adamant Idealist was MVP here with TK Thump. Ra won me the game with Flame Barrier. He lost a lot of staves, but it turns out, once you get his retaliation going, you don't need to worry about her stealing your stuff. Let her! It just means 2, 3, 4 more damage from Ra. :)

Mint.

I did the same thing as TakeWalker with Flame Barrier -- I didn't worry too much about destroying things, because it hurt Chokepoint, and with TK THump, it hurt the heroes, but not too badly. I used Fixer's power every turn to destroy something (his own stuff) and I think that made the game quicker.

Ended with Sentinels at 2/8/4/3 HP, Fixer at 13HP, Legacy at 22HP, Tempest 20HP and Ra 19HP.

Yeah, I didn’t mention that I played Flame Barrier turn 1, which meant that every time she healed from destroying a card, flame barrier was there to take away those HP again. Galvanize + Inspiring Presence meant it was worth 4 points even without Ra’s staff.

Mint with 8/11/9/7-19-30-26-25

Pretty simple mint, with Challenge just making me a bit more cautious on using equipment. I will admit, I dont know Chokepoint that well simply because she is always such an easy beatdown and was more cautious than I needed to be with ongoings as well. She got the annoying Flipped/Kinetic Looter/Challenge combo going, where she destroys a face-down card hero card, then puts it back face-down in her play area because it left play and heals/deals damage, but TK Thump and Clensing Downpour made that pointless really.

Whittled her down over time, using Ra as the primary damage dealer with direct damage and the flame shield with Legacy buffs. Wasn't ever really in danger, although if you don't TK Thump on the first round, that environment chain she pulls will hurt :P

~Komori

Mint. But I didn't have nearly so much prep as I should have, so it was Mint with Tempest the Last Hero Standing, and a lot of the incap powers given over to healing with Downpour. And Grandpa Legacy in the Representative slot so I could use an incap power to tell Gramps to heal Tempest and give him a power (which was either a heal, or, eventually, base power + Shackles).

Mint, same deal as everyone else.  Tried to set up Fixer before using his power, but his tools just kept getting stolen.  Once his Dual Crowbars got animated and I tried to "fix" them by playing Tire Iron instead, but I didn't notice that Shocking Animation gets triggered on the equipment being removed from play, not just being destroyed.  He did Mantis a point of damage back in Chokepoint's face every round.

But yeah, T.K. Thump and Cleansing Downpour make this game pretty painless, and Flame Barrier sure didn't hurt.  Because I was playing conservatively, I actually did nearly flip her back, she only had one face-down card left.

What's this?  Cleansing Downpour and Lightning Storm in the same starting hand?  And it's not even my brithday!

Since I was playing cautiously she never had any of my cards on her board.  She did threaten to flip after the card that attaches to equipment was ut facedown, but I KOed her thanks to a lucky Flame Spike draw from Summon Staff.  Other than that, TK Thump and Cleansing Downpour, baby!  Ending HP count is 14/13/12/15 on the sentinels and 27/30/26/30 on the rest of the party.

Some day I will lose to Chokepoint. That day was not today. Easy mint. 9/8/9/9 21/20/23/20

My standard strategy in most games is to play Heroic Interception immediately. This time I deferred, and that nasty feedback loop of her destroying environmental targets, then them playing more cards, then repeat, freaked me out. Fortunately I'd TK Thumped her and it wasn't too bad before she ran out. Then I just smushed her with Idealist doing most of the damage and Tempest healing everyone back up. Mr. Fixer didn't do much but the Sentinels kept thumping her and doing one-shot damage while Void Guard Idealist and Ra did the damage.

Mint, but apparently not as easily as you guys. Sentinels all does, Fixer was at 4, others in low teens.

I didn't realize that Kinetic Looter kept her from EVER GIVING YOUR STUFF BACK

A good mint.

Was over cautious since I don't have experiance with Chockpoint (had 2 dry runs with Chockpoint and the team before actually trying the challange). Was quite easy in those random-deck games and in that challenge. 

Wanted the Mint so did not experiment with the "Less is More". Used the sentinels' 'Sentinels Tactics' to another power use every turn. Used (almost) always the famous TK Thump, and mainstay's irreducible attack. Legacy helping with Galvenize, once with Interception.
Mr. Fixer almost always kept to himself, except first turn (when did not notice we were on Challenge mode and Chokepoint got distroyed card) and last turn (where it did not matter, since she was bleeding hard and fast).

Tempest was not really necessary ("you want to join in and hit a 2 point? Or heal a 2 points? Yeah, why not. You can come along").
RA with the barrier, staffs etc. 
Really not the Less is More. She flipped on enviroment cards and some of mine. 

So of course I had not achieved the unlock. Did not do any heroics on this challenge.