Weekly One-Shot#293: Industrial Automation

“Let the robot run the factory! Just think of all the costs we’ll save on labor!”

It has been 0 days without accident.

Omnitron is operating Pike Industrial! Can the hero team of F6 Tachyon, DW Harpy, Eternal Haka, Black Spot Commodora, and F6 Absolute Zero shut it down and get OSHA to close the plant?

Turns out yes, they can. First go on round 4, everyone in single digits. Knowing what I do now, I probably would have La Commodora discard from Pike 1st, Omnitron 2nd, and Pike 3rd. That would have probably been a better outcome.

I probably could have come out a little more cleanly (lost Harpy), but I got a Mint despite making a number of boneheaded decisions.

Like throwing out Synaptic Interruption on turn 1 instead of playing it so I didn’t have to wait 15 damage on the Explosive.

Mint, with Haka in the high teens and everyone else low teens to high single digits.

Synaptic Interruption was definitely a first round lifesaver, what with the EPE coming out right off the bat. Most of Omnitron’s most annoying cards never showed up or, like EPE, were handily countered by cards already in hand.

Paradoja Figureheads went to Tachyon and Harpy, specialists in plinking for 1 or 2 damage; Harpy has never been one of my go-to characters, but she acquitted herself surprisingly well.

La Comodora mostly provided damage buffs and card retrieval, but did deal the final blow with Flintlock And Cutlass.

Haka collected cards using his base power, until he finally got the chance to play a Haka Of Battle to smack Omnitron for 16 HP, setting up La Comodora for the aforementioned coup de grace.

Absolute Zero was glad to have a straightforward base power, since his setup never really got off the ground - my own fault, really. Had I played my cards right, the Technological Singularity could have worked in his favor.

Overall, a pretty straightforward fight, one of the easier Omnitron battles I’ve had.

Omnitron as a foe? Very variable, especially depending on the makeup of the hero team.
Pike Industrial Complex? It’s not as bad as a few environments I could mention (lookin’ at you, “Rook City” and “Madame Mittermeier’s”), but it is not the hero-friendly. Together? Actually not too bad.

Got a “Mint” on the fourth round, with the heroes in the upper-teens to lower twenties on hit points. I got very lucky with La Comodora’s base power, getting rid of a couple really bad cards (“Technological Singularity”? shutter).

I learned a few things. Like many players I suspect, Tachyon played “Synaptic Interruption” on round 1 to rebound and destroy “Electro-Pulse Explosive”. However, I panicked when the environment played a “Chemical Explosion” card on its first round, thinking it would take out Tachyon’s “Synaptic Interruption” and leaving the heroes vulnerable to the “Electro-Pulse Explosive”. That’s when I realized that destroying “Synaptic Interruption” is optional. So Tachyon let it stay in play, took the damage from the “Chemical Explosion” and then had “Electro-Pulse Explosive” attack Tachyon first and rebound its attack back to it, destroying it. You live and learn.

Tachyon did some respectable damage. She saved her “Sonic Vortex” until the last round, even when she could have used it earlier. This was key in the last round when Omnitron played “Adaptive Plating Subroutine”, so Tachyon could do a melee attack, then “Sonic Vortex” (doing sonic damage) and then play a big melee attack again with “Lightspeed Barrage”).

Harpy really shined this game. But she had great cards right off the bat, and got set up quickly to do a lot of ping-attacks that quickly wore Omnitron down.

Haka, you big lug, we love ya, and you helped out here, but you just couldn’t keep up with your teammates on damage. But you’re always fun to have around.

I played La Comodora a bit differently than I usually do. She played her “Figurehead” cards her first two turns, keeping one on Harpy (which doubled all Harpy’s many ping attacks) and moving the other between Haka and Tachyon, depending on who I thought would make more attacks.

Absolute Zero just did not have time to really get set up in this fast match, but he did respectable damage, playing “Cold Snap” on his first round and using his innate attacks as much as possible.

“Pike Industrial Complex”? Man, you need to get Heath and Safety inspectors in there pronto. Those vats were exploding left and right! Actually, I was not happy for the hero damage, but they did as much damage to Omnitron and his drone as they did to the heroes, so it could have been worse.

Fun match. 5/5. Would fight again. Some of the card orders made for a straight-forward game.

Well that was an easy Mint…my first as it happens, as I have seldom played the weekly challenge right as it comes out, since first gaining access to the game in April or thereabouts. I skip a lot of weeks, because I’m slowly “premiering” the expansions for myself in reverse-chrono order, and not playing challenges that include one I haven’t “premiered” yet (although I relaxed that rule for Unity a little while ago, and am close to being done with this rollout anyway, so it’ll only be a couple more weeks when this might happen). And I habitually make decisions impulsively, then rewind when I screw up, so on the few weeklies that I have done, I usually get Near Mint. This nearly happened today, as I accidentally discarded my Synaptic Interruption on the very first hero turn (I hate how “discard” and “play” are the same physical action and only separated by game state). But I decided to press on despite this and a few other errors, destroying the Big Bomb the hard way, and otherwise having a fairly typical Omnitron game.

AZ would have definitely picked a different Module to Install Onboard if I’d realized this game was going to be nothing but exploding coolant vats. And since I’m kinda still learning how to play Harpy after all this time, I had a lot of miscalculations with Uncontrollable Flock that resulted in doing more damage to my own team than to Omnitron and the one Drone he ever had at once (especially a problem when I hit Commodora for nemesis damage). One Sedative Flechettes would probably have kayoed my entire team except for Haka, whose Ta Moko was invaluable; fortunately, my sloppiness was only mildly punished with a TechSing, which nearly took out AZ and screwed up Commodora’s effort at double-Figureheading for 4 damage a turn minimum. Other than that, the robot wasted a Terraforming on some just-exploded Vats, and played a lot of Components without ever once firing them, so the whole game was kind of a cakewalk apart from the hazardous environment, which I was careless with but still managed to survive. Really helps reinforce how Omnitron is usually not that dangerous in his vanilla mode (or even with Advanced or Challenge versions; only the promo version really makes him a serious threat most of the time).

In other news, after this weekly, I decided to go back and play the very first one (I did it and a few others earlier this year, but a phone malfunction wiped out my achievement history as I’ve mentioned before, so now I’m doing them all in order, without skipping a bunch due to the rollout listed above). I read the thread for that one, and would happily have necroed it if not for the moderators’ policy on doing so; instead, I have to mention my observation here.

Something nobody seems to have talked about before is that Weekly Challenge #1 is a great illustration of how multiple redirection effects can interact. After three failures of Super-Science Tachy trying to give more punching to Young Legacy, so that we could score a quick victory against Blade, SST finally gave Pauline a Lead From The Front, and meanwhile one of the first things that Wraith did was play Smoke Bombs to deal with the Mad Bomber’s global damage. So when Blade popped out a Backlash Field, some interesting things started to happen.

Young Legacy would hit him, and he’d try to retaliate, but Felecia was the lowest HP, so Smoke Bombs would redirect to Wraith, who was the highest HP. Wraith would then drop below Bunker’s HP, Combat Stance Blade for more damage, and trigger Backlash Field again; Legacy would volunteer to take that hit with Lead From The Front, and then the Smoke Bombs would direct it onto Bunker instead, where his Heavy Plating would mostly negate it. Thanks to shenanigans like this, I didn’t even bother removing the Backlash Field until shortly before the kill.

Definitely a fine illustration of the power of the Freedom Four’s teamwork (it would have pretty much worked the same way with the standard versions of the characters, though Young Legacy definitely got more mileage out of the Nemesis rule than her dad usually can).