Weekly One Shot #161 "Gone Without a Trace"

Ultimate Kismet vs. Hunted Naturalist, Requital Captain Cosmic, Chrono Ranger, Setback, and Guise in the the Carnival with the Overly Long Name.

When I saw "ultimate" I thought this was going to be tough. Particularly since the Carnival can be really brutal. Not Rook City brutal, but still bad.

It was a surprisingly easy mint for me. Mainly because I was taking out what jinxes Kismet was playing to keep her damage down, and of course I didn't touch the talisman since it's in hot potato mode. Naturalist has Crafty Assault, Chrono ranger has his grenades, Setback has "Whoops Sorry" to take out ongoings.

I pulled a lot of stupid moves, like screwing up discards with Hyperactive Senses. I often find cards which say "put multiple cards on the top / bottom of a deck" confusing because it's not clear if I'm choosing the top card or the bottom card. In this case, I reversed it, and put the cards I meant to keep on top, and the cards I meant to discard next.

Even so, it was fairly low pressure. Kismet doesn't do a lot of damage until she gets several Jinx cards out, and I was keeping her damage down anyway with Neurotoxin Dart Thrower. Guise got Guise the Barbarian / Batant Reference early, which meant a cool 15 points of damage, and Naturalist fed him extra cards to discard for that.

I actually got some use out of Uncharmed Life. At one point You Won't Believe Your Eyes was out, and Setback used that to tank a hit so only 4 targets did themselves damage, and the card self destructed. It would have been 7 targets except that Kismet was toxined and Captain Cosmic had a bracer out, and there was only 1 attraction out.

Things did get a little dicey toward the end because Kismet drew Karmic Disjunction and played 4 Jinxes at once, but she was low enough that I could take her out before it became a problem.

Easy mint here, too. The environment had zero effect on this game. A quick hint to consider is that this environment has no targets within it.

Naturalist played Hyperactive senses early and often. Besides that, it was a simple damage fest. Captain Cosmic played and destroyed lots of constructs and took a bit of damage from them, but an Energy Bracer kept that reasonable. By the end, Kismet had time to get one Jinx out which Setback got rid of. Guise drew cards until he got the standard Blatant Reference/Guise the Barbarian combo, at which point Chrono-Ranger had already put his +1 damage bounty on Kismet. Guise didn't even have time to get through a whole round of shooty fun before Kismet was out.

Easy mint.

Ultimate Target + Neutrotoxin dart neuters Kismet, since most of her damage comes from herself. Environment opened with two useless You Won't Believe Your Eyes. Hunted Naturalist and Fusion Cosmic are just absurdly powerful.

Guise was there too.

Yeah, “no targets in the environment” is something worth remembering. Inconceivable Obstruction has no effect, for example, but Gimmicky Character is unlikely to turn over anything for HP either.

I feel like I lucked my way into a Mint. Hilariously, I felt really smart for thinking to check for bad cards with Extrasensory Awareness right off the bat, and getting to discard Inconceivable Obstruction. And then someone reminded me last night that it's a worthless play for her in the MMFFCC. XD

I assume you mean Hyperactive Senses, since Extrasensory Awareness is Parse’s card.

I felt like I lucked into my mint as well. Just sort of muddled through and won despite not really knowing what I was doing or having a plan. Which is kind of appropriate since this is a Setback vs. Kismet fight.

Which makes me think we should have a one-shot expanding on that, but Setback and Guise are the only heroes who feel really random thematically. Maybe Setback, Guise, and the Idealist vs. Kismet in the Realm of Discord?

Mint with something like 24/6/24/18/23

I also was expecting a much worse game, but I refreshed myself on what Ultimate Kismet does. I realized all I had to do was NOT do my normal strategy of keeping the Talisman away from Kismet as much as possible and ignoring the Jinxes, and instead do the opposite. I just burned Kismet down with everything I could. I used Hyperactive Senses to keep a tab on what was coming up, and will admit I also forgot that MMFFCC doesn't have any targets for Inconcieveable Obstruction so was focused on discarding that. She hardly did anything to the heroes (beyond her old boyfriend) and only got out a singular Jinx I believe. CC only got so low because he likes to live on the edge, but was otherwise a very comfortable game.

I was actually surprised at how little use I got out of Guise this game. Usually he's one of my main shenanigans/damage dealers, but the game was over before he could get going.

~Komori

Easy mint.   Nice and refreshing after the last few weeks of pain.

Got a relatively close mint. I misplayed hard a few times and then had a minor hiccup when she got a bunch of jinxes into play. Relatively straightforward if you don't get into an unlucky (hah puns) chain. 

Mint at HP 20 / 20 / 21 / 21 / 18. Was only that low because Shooting Gallery came out with Guise at the lowest and Guise the Barbarian in play. Whoops.

Regardless, I won on Chrono-Ranger's third turn. Kismet never got to play a card that I didn't know what it was going to be; Hunted Naturalist used Hyperactive Senses both turns, stacking Inconceivable Obstruction on top for round 2 and never discarding... and she was KO'd before really getting to do anything. Selling everyone else out for damage was the way to go.

There are no mistakes only happy little holes shot into their chest 

I’m going to split the difference and assume I meant Hypersonic Assault.

Honestly though, I was shocked. The worst bits of this one come from the environment, and since I got a few card plays off Alzrabar, I can’t even be mad at it.

I was really, really low on cards when Alzrabar came out, so I felt I couldn’t afford to discard any in the hopes he might play something good for me.

Misplayed that and still got a Mint, 13/9/11/12/2. Bleh.

Wait, people forget that The Funhouse (TM) is a no target enviornment?  That's honestly one of its more notable features of it.  It's why it's the prefect place to fight Akash'Bhuta if you don't want a 33% chance to power up her everything each enviorment turn.

Either way, easy mint at 22/18/23/21/21.  Not really much to say other than RIP Setback's streak of being super good in the one-shots he shows up in.  Is it me or has he been appearing with the Naturalist a lot recently?

I minted it with fairly low HP. No one less than 10.

But once I got the proper bounties I was clear

Mint with pretty high health all round. 

Mint, at 11/1/5/3/16 because I was stupid.

I started the One-Shot, then got distracted and came back to it later. I'd forgotten that I'd used a different power for the Naturalist, and so he didn't have any forms activated. Then I played Crafty Assault. So... I didn't destroy two on-goings.

Then Setback had to take out Hall of Mirrors and I'd already used the Temporal Grenades I had access to, so Lady Luck stayed up. I'd beaten Kismet down to 5 hp, when she had an explosion and played both Fortune's Smiles, Unlucky Break, and both Karmic Destructions in the same turn. She healed 9 points, took out all my equipment and on-goings, and had two rounds of +5 damage to all heroes. Ouch.

Fortunately, she was down low enough that I was able to win. But man, I kicked myself hard for not checking whether I had forms activated before playing Crafty Assault.