Challenge Ambuscade vs Setback, Wraith, K.N.Y.F.E., and Sky Scrapper in the Temple of Zhu-Long.
I can see why nobody's made anything yet considering it's not only the Ambuscade that throws out his entire deck at once but it's also randomized. Does anyone know how to deal with the guy with these heroes?
I’m not sure which thread to post in, since two people made threads at the same time, but...
I got a mint. Ambuscade is generally not too hard because he doesn’t blow up equipment or ongoings. I had a few brutal rounds where he played cards in chains because of the Trap rules of Challenge, but it’s not a night and day difference.
You don’t want to play anything that discards Ambuscade’s cards or looks at his deck unless you get a major benefit. So, Fumbling Fool is OK, but Infrared Eyepiece is too dangerous to use.
Wraith gets the biggest benefit from Ambuscade’s lack of card destruction here, since she gets very powerful if she gets a targeting computer, a couple of weapons, and a utility belt. Skyscrapper can lend her a Micro Assembler if she isn’t getting the cards she wants. Note that “Catch a Ride” does 2 bonus damage if Wraith’s assisting and has a computer in play.
One problem with talking about this one-shot is that Setback’s play depends a lot on what cards you draw, and of course it’s a randomized game. You can’t exactly count on taking one approach or another. Me, a built up a lot of tokens early, and did a big Cash Out because I didn’t have cards that were working for me, and High Risk Behavior was making that many tokens dangerous. One advantage of doing this is that Setback can do pretty much anything after drawing 10+ cards.
The Temple of Lao Tzu can be your friend. Put up even one Mega Computer and most of the damage goes away. If you’re not concerned about AoE damage from the Master, you can leave Mysterious Ceremonies in play and get an extra card play for one character, or 3 extra cards. Or even twice, though the game was almost over before that happened for me.
An Aggression Modulator on the True Form can make the Master work in your interests, though it doesn’t really help much if you’ve got a Mega Computer in play. It depends on which one you draw first.
You’ve got some options for defense. Thoraxian Monolith shuts down a lot of Ambuscade’s damage for the turn, and is particularly helpful against Sonic Mines. Wraith has Smoke Bombs. Setback has Wrong Time and Place if you get a lot of tokens. I personally used Setback almost entirely on offense, though he did take out Charged Attacks a time or two with Cause and Effect.
All your heroes can do some significant damage. Compulsion Cannister is particularly effective with the Reactive Armor in play. 2 irreducible damage to Ambuscade, 2 to the armor (or something else), and then a couple of reaction hits between Ambuscade and his armor.
"Randomized start" and "Challenge Ambuscade" are not things I generally want to see in a one-shot, but I made an easy Mint. Mostly, it was thanks to him never flipping (I discarded the cloaking device with a Link!), not to mention I never saw a Trap. I just had the heroes beat him down, even when it meant taking damage from the Reactive Plating.
Mint as well. A pair of Aggression Modulators in Skyscrapers opening hand, combined with an early Master of the Temple, meant the True Form essentially became a fifth player second turn. That said: Ambuscade started chaining, and I was lucky to have hit him with both a pair of stun bolts and have a Thorathian Monolith out to soak all his damage.
Mint now at 4/13/9/11. I couldn't get Zhu-Long to help in that fight, but an apprentance poisoner did her best to break Amby's stuff. Setback started with Looking Up so he just came out swinging alongside K.N.Y.F.E. for 3 damage a turn or more. Only Wraith had a bad opening hand and SkySky was thre to help fix that.
One tip I have for this one is that stun bolt's damage reduction doesn't care if you actually damage the target, so you can still drop Amby's damage by two even if he's hiding. Trust me, it's a lifesaver.
Fairly easy mint for me. You can theoretically get some bad/long runs from abuscade triggering traps with his various shuffle cards, but early stun bolts and thorathian monoliths to soak the hits while I stabilized made things fairly straightforward. Seconded that aggression modulators and megacomputers make it fairly trivial to keep the environment rites in play for massive card advantage on your side.
Mint. Had a pretty terrible start - Ambascade started with plating, turret, charged attacks and Sonic mine and quickly played another plating and sonic mine. He hit me with pretty much all his traps at once which played a lot of stuff, but I turned it around from there and Wraith recovered from a slow start to blow him away quickly.
Fine. Lost the first two games due to bad draws. Won the third. First game, I went 5 freaking rounds without Wraith getting an equipment card. Meanwhile, I got sonic mines three turns in a row along with poisoners. Second game was trap after trap after trap. I lasted three rounds. Finally in the third game I got stun bolt, microtargeting computer, razor ordnance, and utility belt up. I still finished with everyone at 5hp or less.
Since this thread went live while I was typing my writeup in my ill-fated thread, I'll move mine over here. Missed it by that much, as it were.
I got a Mint, but it could have been a lot worse than it was. The first couple rounds were relatively docile for Challenge; he opened Cloak / Mine / Hand-Cannon, then played Reactive Plating. Round 2? Vanish, like a punk. Round 3, I played a Thorathian Monolith expecting the worst and got it; he played a device search card that tore through about 2/3 of his deck and hit me with several traps. Sky-Scraper went down to single digits while everyone else was relatively healthy.
He played the Cloak one more time in that segment, but after I finally killed it the third time, it stayed dead. I have never been happier to see the flamethrower; it only took me two rounds to blow him away once he stayed on his front side. High-Risk Behavior / Looking Up / Karmic Retribution, Razor Ordnance / Micro-Targeting, Energy Burn + Conduit-Blade, etc.
As others have noted, one Mega Computer was enough to severely nerf the environment. I left one Mysterious Ceremonies out the entire game and got a second one just as Ambuscade finally flipped back for good. Used it for extra card plays every time, since I always had something relevant to do. True Form only got to do damage twice, and one of those iterations was to Ambuscade, which was helpful.
Final HP 16 / 18 / 22 / incap.
Suuuuper frustrating one-shot.
On my first attempt the trap cards probably came out a dozen times. Amby's opening hand included both reactive platings, charged attacks, the Cloak, and a half dozen other devices. This meant that there were considerably more one shots to play, searching for devices that weren't there, which just caused more traps to come out. It didn't help that Wraith didn't have any equipment in her starting hand. All dead on Ambuscade's third turn, with Ansel at full health.
Round 2 was a cakewalk with no traps at all. Beat him before his third turn.
Near Mint .This is a game of random luck and minimal? skill :P
Starting Setbacks first turn with everyone on less than 5 hp... Hurt my feelings. Stupid charged attacks followed by alternating damaging one shots and traps.
Game 2 was just a bit more painful ambuscade game. There was nothing special about it beyond many monoliths and stun bolts
Yeah, Challenge Ambuscade really is a complete and utter crapshoot. I got a Mint myself after a harrowing start with Skyscaper dropping on Ambuscade's second turn, but her heroic Monolith sacrifice probably saved the game (and everyone else).. After that initial flurry of insanity, his deck calmed somewhat down, and Wraith and Knyfe managed to pound him into the dirt for Setback to finish with a solid Cause and Effect. Everyone still standing was in single digits, with Wraith down to 1 at one point before a self-suture let her bounce back to 4.
…Holy crap.
This is Ambuscade. c.c
Villains that have cards that read “play the next card” - either by design (Infinitor) or variants like Challenge Ambuscade - are just a pain and hugely random.
Near mint.
First game the Heroes were doing pretty well, got Ambuscade down to about 20HP, and then there was a run of traps that wiped everyone out in one fell swoop.
Second game, The heroes didn’t find any traps until the game was almost over anyway. KNYFE used Mystical Ceremonies multiple times to set up Primed Punches, the environment was more helpful than harmful, and the heroes didn’t let up. All ended the game in the mid-teens of HP.
Near Mint after a confusing sequence of events.
Basically, what I could tell was as follows: After a few rounds, Ambuscade gets out 2x Charged Attacks, a turret, and a pistol. KNYFE has her Gauntlet out, so I ping the pistol down to 2 and let her crush it. This should allow her to destroy at least one of the Charged Attacks before it goes off, but it doesn't. I dont know if the gauntlet or the charged attacks came out first, but I thought the gauntlet did, so it should take effect first, or at least have given me the option. However, it did not. That meant I had to eat two sets of Charged attacks, which was then enough to destroy the turret, which meant ANOTHER round of Charged attacks. The heroes did not have enough HP remaining to survive that round.
After that was a simple Ambuscade "mint" with Stun Bolts and MegaComputers.
~Komori
Ambuscade only has one Charged Attacks Ongoing in his deck so if you had two in play that is clearly a bug. As to the Gauntlet the Ongoing destruction would occur after any text that cares about the destruction of said card. In that case Charged Attacks goes off first before the Gauntlet checks about a target being destroyed.
Got a mint, but it was messy.
I managed to get Aggression Modulators out early, which meant that the True Form was slapping Ambuscade around while ignoring us, and I could leave all the Mysterious Ceremonies out to give me more card plays and chain into more Masters of the Temple. On the other hand, Ambuscade hit a nasty trap chain that left my whole team at 4-6 HP, and then killed KNYFE.
I eventually managed to bring KNYFE back to life while dropping party heals and damage reduction like water and finished our would-be Kevin off with everyone still in the 4-6 HP range.
I was on vacation, so I didn't do this until today. And it surprisingly turned into the Steback show, which was a nice change of pace.
Setback had two High Risk Behaviour cards, so I threw them out right away and got Fumbling Fool off his base power. Before I knew it, Reckless Rush was doing 6 and then 8 points a turn while only doing 2 points back and pumping up the Unlucky Tokens, taking out the Cloaking Device on the one turn he had it and hurting Ambuscade on the other one. Next turn, Exceeded Expectations did 9 damage to both Reactive Plating cards and took them out. Karmic Retribution did 11 damage, followed by Cause and Effect on the same turn for another 12 damage.
Wraith had Smoke Bombs, which would have protected Setback since he was soon the lowest hp hero, but Ambuscade was so damaged, I didn't even bother and used the other heroes to finish the cleanup.
Some days, he just ... works.
I still don't really have Setback down cold. I thought that High Risk Behavior increased damage Setback took from all sources. What it actually says is "increase damage done to Setback by villain targets." So self-inflicted damage, damage from teammates, and environment damage doesn't get boosted.
Truth be told, I thought exactly the same thing you did until I played this game. He just bumped up my list after playing these cards the right way.