Weekly One Shot #180 All the King's Horses

Ultimate Apostate (so starting with the Tome and palying more cards when demons appear) vs the Prime Wardens in the Block. Order: Haka, Tempest, Fanatic, Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic

Skipping this one. If it’s anything like Ultimate Apostate usually is, I’ll finally kill the stupid Runes, revive like three Demons, Apocalypse will come out from the extra plays when I have no ongoing destruction, and he’ll just stomp. It’s not worth it.

Actually, that's precisely what happened to me and I still won, unlocking Completionist Guise with a Mint. :)

If you haven't played Ultimate Apostate, this is like a textbook-perfect game against him. His advanced rule isn't particularly scary (especially since you can kill the Book with no problem right off the bat), but those extra Demon plays are intimidating. But then he starts doing nothing out of the ordinary for a while... until you drop the Runes. Then you suddenly understand that Apostate is a force to be reckoned with.

Back to back Apocalypses used up my single Consecrated Ground and lost me everything but Absolution and the Aegis. But honestly, that was key. Everyone was in single digits by the end, but no one died mostly because Aegis. :B Once he shuffled his trash into his deck (that has never happened to me against Apostate before), it became a matter of taking out the last few relics while bouncing Apocalypse onto his deck with Into the Stratosphere. Finished him off on Argent Adept's turn with a 28-point Wrathful Retribution, and it felt so good. :D

But yeah, things were hairy for a while there, and I had a number of highly technical Argent Adept turns, trying to maximize chances for everyone to do what they could to help out.

Tried it on your advice, it didn’t go well. Whatsoever.

Four Apocalypses. Go to hell, Apostate. Thanks for another week of no Completionist Guise.

Mint with everyone near full expect Fanatic who was around 10.

Was very scary at one point, with Tempest down to one (Apparently, when his power states The Environment hits him, it is not a card so Ground Pound doesn't stop it O.o). Early profane summons means he got a lot of relics out early, but Rampage and Final Dive are pretty good at clearing them out. Apocalypse wasn't actually too scary but that's because I oopsed into End of Days first via Fanatics power. 

From there, tempest used cleansing downpour every round, sometimes two or three times via Fanatic and Agent Adept. While it hurt and was hard to control Apostate for those rounds, healing 4-6 hp a round for each hero is hard to beat. I managed what I could until his trash shuffled, at which point a savage mana rampage took most of the board and flipped Apostat . Turning around and using Savage Mana brought him back under 10, and Fanatic finished him off. 

~Komori 

Mint, which I didn't expect.

I lost count of how many things AA destroyed by breaking his instruments. It was like The Who had come to town. Final Dive and Rampage worked well too, but Dissonance helped me avoid Apocalypse and take out the Runes/Effigy combo and all that jazz.

When I did drop Apostate, he had at least one Relic Spirit in play. Chastise on that definitely helps.

Sorry. D:

Mint. Went a lot better than I expected. The tricky point (Getting passed Runes) was tricky, and he did shuffle his deck, but I’d kept damaging him while waiting for a good combo to break the Runes so I was able to bring him down before his Relics became an issue again once I was able to finish them off. Got a lot of use out of final dive and into the Stratosphere in this one.

Near Mint. The first game, the Relic Spirit/Apocalypse combo slaughtered me. Two Relic Spirits out brings all the relics back. The second game, I focused on having AA cycle cards out of everyone's trash and get extra plays. Fanatic got to use Dive more than once to take out relics. Tempest healed. Captain Cosmic got his sword out and he and Haka beat up on things.

Comfortable Mint here with everyone in high double digits except for Fanatic who was at 10 because... well, Fanatic :)

He did try the Demon Spam into Apocalypse in response to the Runes being destroyed, but I was prepared for exactly that and had Argent Adept get rid of it. Other than that, there wasn't much to it really, Used Cleansing Downpour twice every single turn at a minimum (thanks again Fanatic!) and there's just no way Apostate can dish out enough pain to keep up with that.

I remember suddenly one thing that saved my butt:

At the point where I was despairing of ever beating the thing, I destroyed the Runes with no cards left in Apostate's deck. I put a Pugilist into play from the trash, which played the top card of his deck, shuffling his trash into his deck and stopping the whole "put demons into play from the trash" thing. But you gotta wait until the deck is empty for that to work.

Mint with everyone near full health.

Tempest was the healing machine all game with Cleansing Rain. Fanatic played Absolution first turn and used it all game, never using her base power once. Captain Cosmic was fairly low key, putting out Constructs to blow them up with Potent Destruction for 5 damage each. With Block Guards around, they were often picking on the Constructs instead of the villains anyway.

The big game changers were Haka's Rampage, Tempest's Into the Stratosphere, Fanatic's Final Dive and Argent Adept's Cedistic Dissonance. Argent Adept especially got rid of all the Apocalypse's that came up and he kept a fresh supply of instruments with many Instrumental Conjuration. Vernal Sonata and Reclaim from the Deep let me spam all these cards and I managed to freeze Apostate for quite a few turns at the end with Into the Stratosphere by putting his sword on top of his deck.

Relatively easy Mint, final HP 17 / 14 / 6 / 19 / 14.

Haka nuked the initial field with Rampage and did plenty of damage by recycling Elbow Smash. Only saw Taiaha on my last turn.

Tempest was MVP, dropping tons of damage and at least three uses of Into the Stratosphere to stunlock Apostate into playing Apocalypse over and over. By the time I was out of ITS recycling, Apostate was dead. He did heal a couple times too, but it wasn't necessary.

Fanatic used her base power and Absolution a bit, but also got a couple turns' mileage out of Zealous Offense after Apostate's one big turn, paralyzing the Pugilists. Key for Fanatic was passing the first power use to Argent Adept, which saved him a play on his first play phase. 

Argent Adept got Bulwark out off the initial power usage from Fanatic, then quickly got the Bell to reduce damage to Fanatic and whoever was the highest HP. All card draw was passed to Tempest to make sure he got to Into the Stratosphere as soon as possible, then by the time he had it, I was able to recycle them, play them off-turn, and draw into more at will.

Captain Cosmic was almost completely worthless and I would have won easily without him. Every time a construct got out, it was immediately nuked by Apostate AOE or the Block.

Comfortable Mint.

Haka was MVP of Relic destruction thanks to rampaging 3 or 4 times.

Sadly, this one is glitched out. He flipped twice on me even with his entire playfield cleared, before wiping all my characters out.