SotM Event #11: My Turn!

OK, time for a SotM event where you actually play SotM. The goal of this event is to have every hero beat every villain (normal of advance). If you play a game and win, just put your name down in the column. Then post comments about the game in this thread. That's it.

Instead of having a time limit, the goal here is to finish as fast as possible. I am thinking we need about two weeks.

SotM Event #11: My Turn!

I decided to display the information based on expansion with mini-expansions and promos at the end. If anyone has a better idea, please speak up.

I see you have a section for promo villains, but what about promo heroes?

Wow! I completely forgot about those. They should be in there too. Anyone know offhand all the promos and there names?

I sure do!

Young Legacy

Rook City Wraith

Ra: Horus of Two Horizens

Redeemer Fanatic

Dark Visionary

Eternal Haka

Engine of War Bunker

Team Leader Tachyon

Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero

Price of Freedom Wraith

Freedom Tempest

Golem Unity

Dark Watch Setback

Dark Watch Expatriette

Dark Watch Mr. Fixer

Dark Watch NightMist

Greatest Legacy

G.I. Bunker

Thanks, put those in.....Hmmmm.....this might take longer than I thought.

That'll take no time at all!

Just to be clear, a single game can count for multiple heroes, right? With 5 heroes per game, we need a minimum of 9 matches against each non-Vengeance villain. That makes a total of at least 207 matches. Get on it!

You got it!

I tbought there would be something by now.

Thursday night, probably!

Initial game entered!

Voss vs Argent Adept, Wraith, and Freedom Tempest in The Final Wasteland.

Things started fairly poorly for the heroes, but turned around as Wraith built up equipment.  Infrared Eyepiece buried both Forced Deployments and it became a battle of attrition to whittle Voss down and take out minions and both ships.  The Adept contributed with plays for other heroes and single-handedly destroying a space dreadnought.  Tempest took a lot of damage early, but took out monsters and minions galore with Grevious Hailstorm and Localized Hurricane. 

Played a teaching game against advanced Blade in Megalopolis. Tachyon, Bunker, Wraith, and Scholar took him down fairly easily. Rooftop combat helped out quite a bit for getting through his DR after he flipped.

After getting outpaced by limbs in a game last night, tonight's match up of industry vs. nature (Omnitron-X, Unity, and Bunker vs. Akash'bhuta) fared much better when the force of elemental destruction dared to attack the Freedom tower instead of turning the lush Insula Primalis against the heroes.

Even getting two Primeval Eruptions in a single turn and going from 0 limbs to 5, whittling the environment deck down to a single card left, wasn't enough to save her.  It helped that she never got to destroy hero equipment this time, unlike the previous beatdown she delivered.

Edited to ask - if multiple people use the same hero, do you just want them to put multiple names into the cells or leave the first entries alone?

I am thinking to just leave them alone. It will keep the spreedsheet the cleanest and easiest to read. If wrap text is on, we will have a bunch of cells with different sizes, if it is off, the text can easily flow into other cells. If someone has a nice way to do this, please speack up.

Vengeance Combat!

Proleteriat, Friction, and Fright Train vs. Wraith, Unity, and Greatest Legacy on the Mobile Defense Platform.

Wraith had an off game and mainly did Stealth and rolled out minor equipment that Unity converted to bots.  Unity rolled out a half dozen bots and then started steamrolling villains.  First bot was Cyrobot and Radioactivist hitting low HP hero for 1 was essentially not a good play for the villains in the first couple of turns.  Greatest Legacy tanked for the heroes by playing Take Down twice and Heroic Interception before finishing off Friction.  Otherwise it was Gung-ho on Wraith to help her HP and allow her to Stealth or use Infra-red Eyepiece to tweak villain decks.

Proleteriat got a good 1-2 by playing Recoup and Recover immediately followed by an Everyman's Strength to clobber Wraith.

The MDF did not do much at all.  Power Generators and Skydeck. 

Put in a couple games from a week ago. Could not use last night's games because custom heroes were used. 

Hopefully, you still had fun.

Game 1 for me:

DW Nightmist

Visionary

EOW Bunker

Golem Unity

vs.  Mad Bomber Blade on Advanced.  In the Tomb.  (bad move)

I had run Bomber normal not that long ago and was unimpressed, I've never had a phenomenal game against him, even on advanced it had been a wash.

Until today.  Wow, the man threw down.  we got Hasten Doom, Disruption 5 devices and Force Field in the first first two rounds, and we were really, really hurting when he flipped.  Then first card was. . . Consider the freaking Price of Victory.  Then Baron started destroying all his targets and Anubis starts crushing my heroes mercilessly.  Swinging Blades comes out right after DW Mist gets the Amulet out, and she redirects to live so it is her at 2hp, everyone else dead.  She redirects Baron's blast with 2 of her last three cards and luckily survives the round with a target and Force Field being played and Starshield Necklace in her hand, 7 cards under Baron.

Then EOW Bunker let's her draw Mistform, Vis destroys the shield and Nightmist plays the Necklace, Gunity lets her play mistform where she stays while Baron get's crushed by Shamise, the Challenge of Fire, Swinging Blades and Judgement of Anubis finishing him off.

So even in her DW form, Nightmist is still ridiculous, it just takes longer to get Mistbound and Mistform, and you can't really fuel the Amulet.

Omnitron defeated by Dark Visionary, Omnitron-X, and The Naturalist in Pike Industrial Complex.

Vat explosions did most of the damage to the heroes.  Dark Visionary buried the nastier Omnitron cards (EPE and Tech Singularity) buried using Turmoil.  Plus playing Twist the Ether on The Naturalist to help with damage and avoiding Adaptive Plating Subroutine.  OX got a fair number of components in play eventually as well.  The Naturalist spent a lot of time in Crocodile form as he inflicted most of the damage on Omnitron. 

The oddity in the game was Omnitron's components being taken out by ongoing removal effects rather than damage to Omnitron for most of the early rounds.

Another game in.  Drawn-out affair between Apostate and Visionary, Legacy, and Parse.  Once again in the Pike Industrial Complex.

A recurring issue with some 3-hero groups is too much support and sometimes a lack of damage capacity when you need it.  That's when you end up depending on those one-shot damage cards of Visionary and Legacy for some extra pop at the right time.  And Parse's ability to make damage irreducible is quite useful against relics when they pile up and protect each other.

Apostate was eventually flipped and holding out fairly well.  However, Legacy was established and was intercepting damage and using Next Evolution to avoid damage and keep the heroes in the game.

At this point the environment took an active part.  A pack of mutated lab rats put in an appearance.  In one round they chewed Visionary into incapacitation.  In the next round they got an additional damage bonus and proceeded to chew up relics and demons.  Which left Apostate vulnerable to Legacy and Parse to finish him off.

Man, you need to stop taking three epic supports in the same game.

Throw a EOW Bunker or Expat or a alternate wraith in there, if you are rocking some top support throw in some lesser played damage.  We don't want to be stuck playing really crappy teams at the end of this.

My good friends from Portland came East Coast side and we got in a very good game vs Voss. Young Legacy (new player), DWFixer (new player), Redeemer Fanatic and Setback (me).

Things looked really bad early. Both starships showed up within the first 3 rounds and they bashed on us good. Everyone was around 10-14 HP by the time we got Voss to flip still at full health. But we pulled out a win just as Voss played his first Forced Deployment. It was a nailbitter, but Wrathful Retribution and Wrong Time and Place at the 11th hour changed everything. I love when games turn out this way, especially when playing with new people. They are always very memorable just because of how bad it looked early on. 

Setback has been growing so fast on me since release. So much fun. And everytime I'd Risk a "Whoops, Sorry!" it would draw some good laughs from the new players who really got into the thematics of it all.

There's no rules against re-using the same hero. Just wait for G+ games to begin, we use random set-ups, meaning were bound to use heroes that have already been used against certain villains!

I'm doing random 3-hero teams via Spiff's randomizer.

It must have heard you since next game is GI Bunker, DW Expat, and Golem Unity vs Ambuscade.

An ageless warrior who teaches kindergarten and a blind mechanic still aching from violence in his past spoke with a mercenary who could've used a helping hand when she was a child.  They all sought to save a young girl from the terrors of her own mind, terrors that took on a life of their own amidst a mindscape of twisted reality.

Expatriette, Haka, and Mr. Fixer vs. advanced Dreamer in the Realm of Discord.  Game ended with Expatriette at 1, Haka at 6 (solely from a last-round 4-point Haka of Restoration just in case), and Fixer at 2.  Luckily timed Grease Guns and a Ground Pound, and some help from the environment reducing villain damage or providing additional hero targets via Imbued Vitality were the only things to keep the heroes alive.  I admit that I cheesed it by using Savage Mana to destroy a bunch of projections right after she flipped, but Expatriette having nothing but ammo, Reloads, and an SMG for the first three turns makes me feel less bad about it.

GI Bunker, DW Expat, and Golem Unity just mopped the floor with Ambuscade in Rook City.

Ambuscade wasted 3 card plays on traps.  Bunker shutdown Rook City with foam grenades the last two rounds and just popped away with the Flak Cannon.  Expat got an assault rifle out in Round 1 and primarily used that.  Unity got two Platform Bots out in Round 1, and Swift Bot out in Round 2.  The bots got clobbered in Round 4, but had already done a good bit of damage by then.

I wasn't able to join the G+ games, I was however at a friends house playing lots of games, though only 2 sentinels.

First being The Scholar, The Sentinels, Bunker, DW NightMist, and K.N.Y.F.E. in the Freedom Tower against Matriarch. We whooped her so bad!

Second was Absolute Zero, The Naturalist, G.I. Bunker, and Fanatic against Ambuscade in the The Block. We also whooped him so bad!

Sorry, didn't feel like providing details!

What you missed was a long game of Horus Ra, Naturalist, and Scholar against Akash'Bhuta (she flipped 4 times!) in the Tomb of Anubis.

Then Price of Freedom Wraith, Tachyon,Chrono-Ranger, and the Naturalist totally shut the Chairman down in the Final Wasteland. It wasn't even fair.

Obviously, it was because Wraith was wearing the Operative’s pants.

Nightmist, The Sentinels, and Fanatic just took on The Chairman in The Block.

Nightmist did an Oblivion on the first few underboss-thugs to show up, and The Sentinels weathered the all-hero damage pretty well.  After that Nightmist went into Mist Form while high HP hero and tanked retaliation damage from the Operative while Fanatic and The Sentinels kept pace with the underbosses and thugs.

Things got a little wild with the appearance of a Prison Break - which put all five underbosses into play by the end of the villain turn.  Fanatic countered with an End of Days, but that pulled Nightmist out of Mist Form and cleaned out whatever ongoings the heroes had, such as Sentinel Tactics.

With a short villain deck the heroes and The Chairman flipped the heroes changed tactics.  Nightmist Mistbound the villain deck once, and beyond that an Enboldened Writhe was checking the bottom of the villain deck every turn for the other Prison Break.  It was eventually found and discarded.

The environment had been relatively benign so far, but now had two Time-Crazed Prisoners in play and a 9-card trash pile.  They proceeded to obliterate the Operative's hit points over the next two rounds.  Nightmist went back into Mist Form right before they finished with the Operative and started on her.  The Environment then cleaned itself up with a Lock Down on the last card in its deck.

The heroes started on The Chairman himself with a vengeance after finishing off the crippled Operative.  A turn later Fanatic drew Wrathful Retribution and finished The Chairman off the round afterwards.

A solid team effort where each hero pulled their weight and made an important contribution to the victory.

Gloomweaver taken down in Insula Primalis by a support team; DW Nightmist, Argent Adept, and Omnitron-X

Hero team weakness early on was simply inflicting damage.  Nightmist handled the initial set of zombies, but after that Voodoo Pins accumulated on her and she soon couldn't keep a hand in play.  Heroes did a lot of healing as Gloomy's cultists and some zombies did limited damage - mainly due to OX having high HP and the right plating in play. 

Argent Adept built up songs and instruments and OX accumulated a component set.  Sarabande of Destruction kept the dinosaurs in check and OX was keeping the zombies in check.

The game turned once OX got a Defensive Blast card in play.  With a +1 damage bonus from the Adept OX played Flechettes and triggered a defensive blast that swept out the voodoo pins, cultists, and zombies that were active.  This allowed Nightmist to get back into action.  From there Gloomy's relics were rapidly trashed; either immediately by Argent Adept after coming into play, or detected by Nightmist on the top of Gloomy's deck and then TImeshifted to the trash by OX.

Standard quick fight involving Plague Rat vs. Bunker, Scholar, and Eternal Haka at Freedom Tower.

All the heroes infected early on - and two of them took the damage to remove Infected once Plague Rat flipped.  Scholar played support, tanked a bit, and generally just held on.  Bunker got Flak Gun, Omni-cannon, and Grenade Launcher out and then sat there in Turret Mode and pounded away.  Haka mainly used Taiha, but also played Ground Pound twice in order to reduce the damage taken somewhat.  Also noted that Punish The Weak is not that bad a card for Haka in this situation since it reduces damage being inflicted on other heroes while infected.

Heroes were down to 5-8 HP each when Plague Rat went down.  Lots of ongoings into play and the heroes were all infected again by then as well.

Scholar, Nightmist, and Parse vs Citizen Dawn on a Mobile Defense Platform.

Scholar played tank for most of the game with a Iron Form that shrugged off minor attacks thoughout the game.  He did Truth Seeker and other attacks as opportunity permitted amidst plays to keep his hand size built up.  MDF supplying a large quantity of harmless targets helped him out as well.  His team support cards mixed well with the other heroes, especially allowing Nightmist extra plays to get equipment out or cast additional spells.

Nightmist rolled out Master of Magic and the Necklace and then started casting Oblivion repeatedly to pound on non-hero targets.  Lost everything to THAT CARD, built it up again, did a Mist Fueled Recovery to get HP back up, and then back to Oblivion or Planar Banishment when Dawn started rolling out ongoings.  The Amulet was out by then as well and Dawn caught quite a bit of redirected damage.

Parse did a mixed support role.  She discovered early that a Aurora was on the bottom of Dawn's deck (and it was left there).  The other Aurora wiped out her Critical Multiplier cards.  Targetting Arrow on Dawn helped quite a bit in the late game running down of Dawn's HP - especially since Nightmist was using Elder Ring to boost damage even further. 

And I'd argue that Dawn's citizens helped the hero cause.  Initial citizens where Truth and Spring.  Initial villain card play was Dare blowing Truth away.  And the ongoing for bringing citizens back from the trash never made it into play.

Cosmic Omnitron attacks Freedom Tower, and is opposed by Dark Visionary, Golem Unity, and EOW Bunker.

The Giant Robot is essentially owned by Visionary while Unity arranges for a bot posse to tear up any drones that appear.  Bunker did a good tank role by playing Heavy Plating and using the Repair Module to heal up and stay high HP. 

Visionary buried Omnitron's "good" cards with Turmoil, and had Wrest The Mind cards available for dealing with both of Omnitron's EPEs and using them to wreck havoc on Omnitron itself.

I figured people wouldn't be running to play against Miss Info, so I took her on. Tachy, Vis, Parse, Omni-X, and Horus of Two Horizons (figured people weren't running to play him either) took her down.

Weekend update!

We have 1003 matches left, hooray!

Most played hero: Vanilla Wraith (20/27 matches left)

Most played villain: Voss (29/41 matches left)

Heroes that were never played (27 matches left): Vanilla Ra, Vanilla Tempest, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Rook City Wraith, Dark Watch Setback.

Villains that were never played (41 matches left): Spite, Iron LEgacy, Kismet La Capitan (probably scared of Siege-Breaker), V5 Blade, Ermine, Agent of Gloom Spite

Good work so far, everyone! We just have a little more to do! 

My 3-character solo matches have not been going well of late, unfortunately.  Had a teaching game with some friends last night using regular Baron Blade in The Final Wasteland which was pretty much a walk in the park though.  The Naturalist went into Gazelle form on the first turn which I believe was mostly an experiment to see what could be done in that form, and all three MDPs came out before Blade flipped so he did have 13 cards in his trash before we finally stopped his terralunar impulsion beam.  The Gazelle experiment worked out exceptionally well once he convinced all the monsters that we were Environmental Allies and they stopped constantly chewing up Unity's golems.  By the end of the game the entire environment deck was in play but mainly just lounging around watching Nightmist and the golems beat down Blade.

Woohoo! Leas than 1000 matches left. (Fortunately, I have a lighter.)

I have had terrible luck, I've lost three straight, I'll report as soon as I win one.  Maybe I'll stop playing advanced for the duration.

Hmm... I haven't been able to make the G+ games recently, but very few games are being added. I wonder if we're on a major losing streak, they aren't playing very many games, or it's not being added. Looks like we have a mystery on our hands.

sigh

Our game against Miss Information last night went very poorly. Like Expatriette was the last hero to fall, and Miss Information had only 3 HP left.

We'll see if we play SotM or Tactics at tonight's gathering…

Spite (Agent of Gloom) vs Eternal Haka, Omnitron-X, and The Scholar in The Final Wasteland

Game starts in Spiite's favor as he gets three drugs flipped before enough victims are in the Safe House to flip him.  And then he knocks the heroes around a bit more before they empty the Safe House back out.  Omnitron-X has some components out and thus is playing an extra on-going every turn for one drug to put back in his hand.  Haka is doing some damage, but taking punishment.  The Scholar is tanking, and helping out with some support cards.  But the tide seems to be running against the heroes and OX is about to go down.

And Spite simply got crushed after that point.

Between Scholar playing a card that stopped Spite from causing damage for a turn and Haka playing Ground Pound Spite spent four turns not touching the heroes.  He also was pretty inefficient at taking out victims since Potential Sidekick sat out there and gave the heroes extra cards repeatedly.  In that calm OX assembled a full component set and just chipped away at Spite while providing healing.  Haka played Haka of Battle to boost Taiha damage three times.  And Scholar eventually discarded a 19-card hand to set Spite up for the killing blow by Haka.

(Aside: Looking at the drugs in play I also think I could have kept Scholar in play indefinitely.  Two Flesh To Iron would soak Spite's attacks and he'd need an extra ongoing in play each turn for a drug to push back to his hand.  Incap plays from OX and Haka get him a draw and a card play to put the extra ongoing back out.  With Scholar's draw that would give him enough cards for the discards to keep both Flesh To Iron cards out.  Not a lot of extra space to kill Spite, but I think he'd eventually win out - especially with a card like Potential Sidekick out there helping him with additional card draws to help power an attack or build a LEE engine.)

Two wins tonight -- Ambuscade tried to catch Haka in the F5 tower, but Unity and Dark Visionary were there to help him, and Kismet messed around in Megalopolis while the F5 were away, but Setback, Expatriette, and The Sentinels saved the day.

Ambuscade in a shoot-out with Ra, Haka, and Bunker on Insula Primalis.

Haka got the cloaking device via Savage Mana, but Ambuscade's Charged Attacks made taking out equipment painful.  Everyone was running low on hit points... and then the volcano ate Ambuscade and his devices while the giant eagles appeared to carry the heroes to safety.

A very pedestrian trouncing of Citizen Dawn by Rook City Wraith, Team Leader Tachyon, and Tempest at Pike Industrial Complex.

Wraith triggered an Inpromptu Invention chain in the 2nd round and had Infrared Eyepiece, Utility Belt, and so on going from there.  IR Eyepiece pretty much crippled the villain deck.  Team Leader Tachyon kept the heroes up with cards, hit citizens, etc.  Tempest got Electrical Storm and Grevious Hailstorm going, plus a handful of one-shot attack cards.  In addition every hero drew their ongoing/environment destruction cards.

The environment played one vat explosion early, and from there mainly tossed out Mutant Lab Rats.   Soon afterwards Wraith played multiple copies of Mega Computer and neutered that as a threat as well.

After some failed attempts at taking him on in Advanced mode, the team of Absolute Zero, Mr. Fixer, and Ra faced off with Grand Warlord Voss back in Silver Gulch of 1883 and had no problems keeping the situation well in hand.  

We beat Advanced Ennead for the very first time! Tachyon, AbZero, Chrono Ranger, and Ra fought them in Insula Primalis.

It felt like a really cheap win though, as we got a first round Volcano and Ra managed a second round Flesh of the Sun. So we just sat back and cruised into victory. 

Edit: Added more games from last night. EmoSpite bit the dust in Rook City of all places at the hands of Haka, Omnitron-X, and Scholar. Then Apostate rolled over for a very quick and easy game in the Tomb of Anubis against Tachyon, Tempest, and DWExpatriet.

Ok, asking for a bit of help here. I made a second sheet that lists all of the villains and all heros that haven't beat him yet. If you edit the main sheet, it will automatically edit the second sheet. At the bottom of each columm there is a list of random heros that you can pick to fight that villain. In order to regenerate the list, simply select the first box, then click and hold the little box on the bottom left corner, while holding drag it down all five boxes and the formula will pick new heroes (the same method as if you were copying a formula to multiple boxes. Don't worry if you mess up, just click undo.

Here is my problem, and if someone can help, it would be great. I want the formula to ignore blank boxes and "reroll". I, also, want the boxes to "reroll" if a hero was already chosen. Not sure if this would work in googledocs, but I figured someone might know.

I just minorly changed the formula because as written it could pick from the list of randomly generated heroes; still working on the blanks.

Thanks!

Played 3 games tonight.

Game 1:  Apostate in Rook City vs. DW Mr. Fixer, Parse, KNYFE, and Setback    -   Hero victory.  Apostate didn't stand a chance.  Only two relics came into play (Pendant and Orb of Delusions).  The rest was one Apocalypse on round 3, a few direct damages and some Fiendish Pugilists.  Special Recognition goes out to Tony Taurus for helping avoid an Apocalypse and some "play the next villain card" cards.

Game 2:  Miss Information in the Realm of Discord vs. Setback, Omnitron-X, DW Expatriette and the Sentinels.  DW Expatriette dropped, making Setback cry, and everyone except Writhe dropped below 5 hp at one point, but they soon rallied thanks to some lucky flechettes and defeated the nefarious secretary.

Game 3:  Matriarch in Insula Primalis vs. Tachyon, Chrono Ranger, Haka, and Setback.  Haka played an Enduring Intercession as card fodder for the Cohorts just before a Primordial Plant Life came into play, dropping him to 10 hp, which he wouldn't recover from.  However, his KO abilities helped boost Chrono-Ranger's damage to extremes after Chrono played Hunter Hunted.  A few dud plays by the Matriarch and a mask being put in the bottom of the deck helped the heros win a game I was sure we were going to lose.

Played around with the spreadsheet a little. Now there are no more blanks, but I still have to work out how to not have the same hero selected twice. I moved the random selection part to the top of the spreadsheet. To reroll, simply drag that "t" (or do anything else that rfreshes the document).

Here is the link again, so you don't have to go back to the other page.

It was a close match, but eventually Chrono-Ranger, Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Omnitron-X and Absolute Zero were able to defeat La Capitan.

And by close, I mean everyone was below 5 health at the end.

La Capitan appears at the Pike Industrial Complex and is opposed by Golem Unity, Freedom Tempest, and Omnitron-X.

Crew pours out quickly as the heroes can't take the ship down quickly.  Battleforged adds to this by thumping lab rats in order to get more villain cards into play.  On the fllp-side some early bot plays by Unity (Champion Bot, Swift Bot, Turret Bot) take up damage otherwise aimed at heroes. 

Unity gets more bots out using Construction Pylons and the Modular Workshop, and Bee Bots prove vital in that they prevented extensive hero damage from two of the three vat explosions that occurred.  Bee Bots also took out villain ongoing cards a few times as well.  A few Platform Bots, Cyro Bot, and a Raptor Bot also turned up.

Tempest played an early Electrical Storm, but later had it stolen.  He also got Grevious Hailstorm and Cleansing Rain into use as well, plus his usual blasting one-shots.  He also used his default power to destroy cards sitting under La Capitan after she flipped.

Omnitron-X helped out with extra card plays for himself and the other heroes.  He also got the Ablative Plating out early and tanked a lot of shots from La Capitan and Trueshot as a result.  A few Defensive Blasts were triggered, and he also managed to build up a good component stack.

La Capitan flipped once with four cards beneath her, and immediately added three more via a Temporal Thief play.  However, she was flipped back two turns later and wasn't able to keep any crew active for more than two turns.  Damage coming at her from all three heroes, plus vats inflicting damage as well.

Bomber Blade attacks Legacy, Absolute Zero, and DW Expatriette in The Final Wasteland.

Blade rolls out on-goings and one shots instead of targets to charge his bombs.  By the time he does the heroes flip him.  On his flipped side his gets flabbergasted after he death rays Expatriette twice for no apparent effect (Thank you Flak Jacket twice over).

Legacy rolled out Inspiring Presence, Motivational Charge, and the Legacy Ring, after which he played a one-shot now and then and otherwise Galvanized and pummeled Baron Blade for extra damage.  He also had Danger Sense in play and soaked environment attacks multiple times.

Absolute Zero rolled out his modules in the first two turns and then used one shots and base power to alternately blast Baron Blade and heal.  He also got a very useful one shot in that stripped Baron Blade of Living Forcefield and Backlash Field.

DW Expatriette started the game with Tactical Shotgun in hand.  She used that until it was lost when Baron Blade flipped.  Added a Flak Jacket and also used Shock Rounds with it.  With the damage bonus Legacy was supplying she simply blasted Blade's HP down.  After Blade flipped she played an Assault Rifle and pinged away at Blade and the Wasteland monsters that had turned up.  When she lost the first Flak Jacket to Blade's attack she played a second one that was in hand.

The Wasteland Monsters were not that dangerous to the heroes. Legacy's Danger Sense avoided damage, Baron Blade was low or 2nd low HP multiple times, and the Snowman was attacking AZ without any net effect.

Slugfest in Freedom Tower;  Ermine, Friction, and Proleteriat vs. Rook City Wraith, Naturalist, and Haka.

Heroes concentrated on taking a single villain down at a time - Friction first, then Ermine, and then Proleteriat last.  Which generally worked out since when each went down they took the largest villain stack of ongoings and nemesis cards currently deployed each time.  And Proleteriat never unleashed his mass damage card.

Wraith mainly used targetted Throwing Knives and eventually shifted to Razor Ordnance with the Utility Belt eventually coming out and making the reduction of Proleteriat's clone force much easier.  Naturalist started in Crocodile form, and then shifted to Rhino to help tank damage.  Haka just beat on things and never managed to get a Rampage card.

A near run in a contest I'd normally consider to generate a blowout.

Ambuscade in Insula Primalis vs. Mr Fixer, Expatriette, and Freedom Wraith.

Ambuscade starts with 2 Reactive Platings in play.  Cloaking Device came out by Round 3, and came out of the trash twice as well.  He stayed hidden and chipped away at the heroes while letting the dinos do the dirtly work of wearing the heroes down.  Then he started rolling out devices and pounding away directly.  Plus a late play of Charged Attacks - which actually proved to be his undoing.

The environment played a part from the beginning.  Enraged T-Rex in the first round, and the second T-Rex came out in Round 4.  Raptors, poisonous plant life, and the Volcano as well.  Constant damage to the heroes, as well as a distraction from trying to hurt Ambuscade's devices or him when the cloak was down. And Obsidian Fields building up and making cards like Driving Mantis useless.

Fixer was... Fixer.  Dual Crowbars and a style depending on what needed hammered on.  Some vital card plays as well.  Grease Gun, Salvage Yard, and Grease Gun again late to get the heroes a touch of breathing room.  Expatriette rolled out guns, some ammo, and just blasted away constantly - mainly with the Assault Rifle.  Unload got played and resulted in the use in a single turn of Pride, Assault Rifle, and Tactical Shotgun in order to sweep out some dinos and also take down three devices.  RPG never turned up, which would have been useful.

Wraith had what I consider an off game.  Just couldn't get equipment out that quickly or use it that effectively.  Base power (hit two targets for 1 melee) was used a lot more than I expected to.  Grappling Hook only came up once, no Impromptu Invention cards, no Throwing Knives, just mixes of her non-weapon and support equipment.

Last round came around with each hero at less than 4 HP (1, 2, and 4).  Ambuscade has about 20 HP left, Charged Attacks, and two Automated Turrets in play.  Two Obsidian Fields are adding to the fun.  Fixer does a few damage to Ambuscade and one of the turrets.  Expatriette plays Hollow points, and uses the Shotgun on Ambuscade since using the Assault Rifle would kill a Turret and trigger Charged Attacks to kill all three heroes.  Things are pretty grim. 

Wraith plays Inventory Barrage and blows up five pieces of equipment to take out most of Ambuscade's remaining points.  Base power hits Ambuscade for 3 points, and the second attack kills a damaged turret - which triggers Charged Attacks and is used to take out Ambuscade (and win the game).

I taught Sentinels to a couple of kids today, and was happy to see that despite using a pretty basic game against BB with only EE heroes, I was still able t add a couple to the spreadsheet.

EDIT: Playing with someone who is more interested in having fun than winning can be amusing. In this case it was a 9 year old who was more excited to play interesting looking cards than to worry about what exactly the cards did. Tempest played Reclaim From the Deep when Blade had just a couple of hit points left, as well as using Tempest's base power when Grievous Hailstorm was in play *shrug*

Used the sheet to roll random heroes against SPite (seems like nobody wanted to play with him). I beat him with Eternal Haka, Unity, KNYFE, Expatriette, and Freedom Tempest.

After some consideration, I decided not to try and eliminate duplicates on the random roll. If only becuase I have no idea how to avoid have promos of the same deck in one game. So if you get duplicates, just keep the ones you want a reroll.

If you are not sure how to reroll, just refresh the document. It might be slower than other methods, but it will reroll the random teams.

Base Spite, base GloomWeaver, and Miss Information are villains I will not contribute to on this at all. If G+ adds a game against one of them, that means I was not in it!

I didn't know you had villains you didn't play against. The games aren't fun? Not even with the Cursed Acolyte?

Omni-X, Tachy, Engine of War Bunker, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, and the Horus of Two Horizons took down Kismet. This means that only Darkwatch Setback has yet to be played (and still nobody has beaten Iron Legacy or V5 Blade).

Even the Cursed Acolyte couldn't save the punching bag that is GloomWeaver. Which is why I am not a fan of playing against GloomWeaver, I have only lost once out of I can't even remember how many games, with the main reason I lost being an environment kept screwing the heroes quite a bit and the Relics and Cursed Acolytes would not stay dead. Luckily, Skinwalker does a nice job patching it up, so I am willing to play him.

Spite, it's just a game where you wait for Spite to flip, unless you have a way to lower his damage output. Then post flip, he does the samething he does every game, even making the environment do almost nothing, unless what came out does something upon entering play or end of turn. The most problematic games against Spite are the ones where he takes forever to flip. Best strategy to beating Spite is building up and not laying a finger on him. Like GloomWeaver, the promo actually allowed to use his deck again!

Miss Information is a lot like Spite, but much worse. You go through a big portion of the game without anything to hit, your cards in play are constantly destroyed, and you discard from hand a lot as well. Her difficulty comes from the length of time it takes her to flip, which I don't find fun. Two things you do before her flip, draw tons of cards or play enough cards to outpace her destruction.

Basically, yeah I don't find these villains very fun to play against. But I was a playtester on all these, so I blame myself partially for how they turned out. Such as actually enjoying games against Spite early on, until the realization that Spite makes all games the same. Not being vocal enough about how I actually enjoyed GloomWeaver before the nerfing. And not actually playtesting at all when it was Miss Information's turn.

Great, now I don't have a desire to play them either.

Sorry man!

Random team of Wraith, Dark Visionary, Tempy, Scholar, and Young Legacy took down Iron Legacy.

Rolled Gloomy against Horus of Two Horizons, Redeemer Fanatic, Freedom Tempy, KNYFE, and the Scholar. Figured I would try adance. In my opening hand I got an Imbued Fire. At least we are five matches closer.

Randomly rolled Sentinels and Visionary against randomly rolled the Chairman and Silver Gulch; Legacy was picked deliberately because I absolutely refuse to play against the Chairman unless Legacy is involved. The Chairman’s first cards were Rook City Is Mine! and the Broker, which put a copy of Sustain the Portal and Sheriff Pratt into play. It wasn’t the worst possible set-up.

I wasn’t willing to play the top card of the villain deck just yet, so I didn’t play a card with Legacy and just Galvanized everyone. The Sentinels came up next and played Horrifying Dichotomy, prompting the Chairman to get a useless copy of Perfect Human Specimens before the Sentinels destroyed the Informant and got in four points of damage to the Operative, prompting Legacy to take a single point of retaliatory damage. Mainstay buffed the Sentinels, then Visionary, who had no useful cards, put out a copy of Psychic Maelstrom to beat down the Broker enough for Sheriff Pratt to almost definitely target and kill her during the environment phase and to hit the Operative for three more points. She used Enlighten on Legacy to try to get a copy of Lead From the Front out, since he already had Next Evolution and the Legacy Ring in his hand, but no luck.

A copy of Explosives Wagon came out on the environment phase; I groaned a little in anticipation of suckage to come but took consolation in watching Pratt kill the Broker for me. Legacy took two points of spiteful revenge. Another copy of Rook City Is Mine! came out, bringing out a Water Trough and Cyrus Hayes. The Muscle and the Enforcers followed, which I thought was pretty lucky, though it kind of broke my heart to discard Aura of Vision to keep the Idealist from taking 4 HP of damage from the Enforcers.

I weighed my options carefully and decided the best long-term strategy for survival was to play Next Evolution and immunize Legacy to melee damage, since Explosives Wagon was basically Galvanizing everyone for free anyway. The Sentinels played Unique Capabilities because I was pretty sure they were going to play Dark Delusions anyway, but it never hurts to have two extra cards in your hand before committing to that. I pinged the Underboss and the Thug so Cyrus and Pratt could do the wetwork for me, and hit the Operative for another 4 HP before buffing their armor again. Visionary had nothing useful to do again, so she tossed out a Mental Divergence just in case we needed an card to sacrifice to a Thief later and again failed to give Legacy a Lead From the Front.

I don’t honestly remember the next several turns in that kind of detail, and you probably don’t need the specifics anyway. Gunmen and Cover came out in roughly equal proportion, so they were effectively immune to all but the most concentrated attempts at damaging them and finished off the villain targets I’d softened up; Legacy got out his ring and his Motivational Charge so the heroes were only losing a little HP very slowly while he was more or less immunizing the team to the Operative’s counterattacks (I never did draw Danger Sense, go figure); the Sentinels were my primary damage-dealers, carefully wearing the villain targets for the environment targets while maintaining armor at all times; Visionary didn’t get many useful cards and did whatever seemed least stupid at the moment, mostly manipulating the environment and always trying to get Legacy the life-saving Lead From the Front. It didn’t come out until the neighborhood of round 8. By the time it came out, everyone’s HP was low enough that Writhe with his Caliginous Form was doing most of the party-shielding anyway. Visionary started getting Suggestion cards around round 6 I carefully stockpiled for later.

With the help from all the cowboys, I actually flipped the Chairman at the beginning of round four. The environment cards couldn’t help me against him, so the heroes focused carefully on him while still trying to leave henchmen for the environment to handle.

Probably my favorite moment in the game was round five, when Tyler Hayes was going to kill off the Explosives Wagon and I very cynically manipulated the damage distribution to be wipe out as many henchmen as possible, then attack the wagon to blow it up so the other cover cards would immunize the rest of my teams of gunslingers from the damage, and only after the damage buff was gone did I allow him to hit the heroes. They were limping along after that, but a steady stream of HP from Legacy and the Sentinels kept them limping rather than falling over while Decoy Projections kept Visionary alive a lot longer than she deserved to live and kept the Contract buried under the essentially useless Enforcers. He did come out eventually, but Visionary managed to keep the deck from shuffling with all those stockpiled Suggestion cards until after the Operative died.

I was on my game, but I don’t delude myself: it was at least fifty percent luck I won. Extremely lucky early draws from each and every deck and some very well-timed cards later in the game meant only the Idealist died from a bad combination of Tyler Hayes and the other Sustain the Portal (while Caliginous Form kept up a steady stream of ping-damage on the Chairman that would make him retaliate against his own henchmen and kill them, which I will never stop thinking is funny), but in the final round, with the Chairman at 1 HP, the Sentinels played Second Chance just to get her back…so she could zap him and end the game.

Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, Ra, and Golem Unity just pretty much mudstomped Baron Blade in the Mobile Defense Platform. I feel kind of bad about how easy it went. Mr. Fixer had a Pipe Wrench and a Jack Handle in his hand in the first draw, Ra got out his stick and his Flame Barrier, and Golem Unity was able to get out garbage cards to sacrifice to Mr. Fixer while Bee Bots blew up Baron Blade’s Backlash Fields;* but since Ra was counterattacking Blade’s counterattacks, I was actually kind of glad the Backlash Fields stayed in place as long as they did. Mr. Fixer was the damage magnet with his Pipe Wrench to keep him from getting hit too hard. All was said and done in fourteen rounds, though a big part of that was Blade never finding a Devious Disruption, an Elemental Redistributor, or a Slash and Burn. Everyone was at either 6 or 7 HP when the battle ended.

*EDIT: Say “Bee Bots blew up Baron Blade’s Backlash Fields” five times fast.

I hope you don't mind, but I put the data in the spreadsheet for you.

Isn't it really a hornet?

And Raptor bot. . .

I just added my name in  squares from two games I played:

Tight match against Ennead with Parse, Scholar, KNYFE and Fanatic in The Block

And a good old curb stomp on Advanced Apostate with Scholar, Elemental Wrath AZ, Dark Visionnary and O-X in the Ruins of Atlantis.

I just put my name in the grid numbers of matches left and other stuff might need to be updated

All the other sheets update automatically if you edit the first sheet.

Very close match

Argent Adept, Tempest, Nightmist, and the Scholar managed to best Ermine, Fright Train, Proletariat, and Friction in the Block.  We managed to whittle down most of them, but it looked likely that Ermine would outlast us all.....until we combined the healing powers of Argent and The Scholar so that the Time-Crazed Prisoner hit Ermine for 9 :)

We were SO close to beating Advanced Ennead last night in the Time Cataclysm. Gah it hurts to even think about it. Redeemer Fanatic, Tempest, Naturalist, and Omnitron-X managed a really good game. Everyone was up and running really well, had great draws, and got mostly help from the environment. We even made good use of Fixed Point, having Omnitron go double plating and Naturalist went Gazel/Croc. Everyone had the cards in play you wanted to have. Couldn't ask for a better hero situation.

But in the end, Shu was the last one standing. With 1 HP.

Losses like that really make you think. Everything went so well except for the winning. Maybe Naturalist (myself) shoulda went Rhino/Croc. But opening hand was Gazel heavy and Fixed Point happened to be the first environment card played. Maybe if Fanatic didn't discarded that card for Divine Focus, she would have had three cards in hand when a dead Set forced Fanatic to play her Wrathful Retribution. Maybe if Omnitron didn't timeshift out the melee/projectile plating first turn but had the Infernal plating instead, he wouldn't have lost his damage output halfway through the game.

I will beat them someday. Just gotta bring Setback and Scholar I guess.

Cryo-Bot - Legacy - Ra is my favorite Advanced Ennead strategy.  They are really beat up by the time they flip.

Doing random until I get at least two new combos.

(EDIT: Dammit - I played against the wrong villain - should have been Plague Rat!  Oh well, still a decent match for the spreadsheet.)

Ennead vs. Absolute Zero - Elemental Wrath, Chrono-Ranger, and Freedom Tempest at The Block.

Ennead had Nephtwys, Atum, and Isis out - and never got reinforced.  They tossed some minor damage out, and then Atum tried tossing fire damage AZ's way while he had both modules and a Focused Apecture out.  Bad idea.

AZ got a Cold Snap out the first turn, and then rolled out modules and other equipment while using base power to run Nephtwys down.  From there it was damaging one-shots until the villains were gone.

Chrono-Ranger got Jim's Hat out right off, played By Any Means on Isis and then just pinged away.  Once Isis flipped he used Jim's Hat to move the bounty to his trash and then fished it back out.  He also played Hunter and Hunted for good effect, but also got beat up a bit due to it.

Tempest played an early Lightning Slash, then went to Grevious Hailstorm and Cleansing Downpour.  Between Hailstorm and Cold Snap the villains were losing 4 HP each per round.

The Block rolled out two agents - who targetted Isis for the most part.  They eventually went away as a Riot brought out two Time-Crazed Prisoners.  Atum dispatched them shortly later with a one-shot.

(This has only been my 2nd or 3rd game against the Ennead.  Not sure if it was a bad villain draw, a particularly good hero team against them, or whether the Ennead need advanced play to be a more serious challenge.  However, I suspect that Advanced Ennead might simply overwhelm three heroes in solo play.)

Are you using the random teams on the sheet?

The Matriarch invades Megalopolis and is opposed by Argent Adept, Ra, and Young Legacy.

Game 1: Fowl, fowl, more fowl, and the damned Mask coming back three times immediately after being taken out due to Darken the Sky.  And did I mention fowl?  Perhaps a different approach is needed with these heroes?

Game 2:

Matriarch waits her first turn with two Darken the Sky plays.  Heroes roll out some cards and work on both the Matriarch and the Mask.  Adept is using Scherzo of Frost and Cold, and Ra uses a Fire Blast and Pyre to finish off the Mask.  That leaves Young Legacy opportunity to hit the Matriarch and get Motivational Charge into play.  Police Backup arrives and shoots the Matriarch as well.

Matriarch rolls out 5 fowl and a damaging one-shot.  The Adept plays an instrument, and damages the Matriarch for a few points.  Ra does Inferno to hurt the Matriarch and take out the deployed fowl.  Ra and Legacy split the retaliation damage.  Ra Pyres the Matriarch as well.  Young Legacy plays The Legacy Ring and hits Matriarch with both Motivational Charge and Atomic Glare.

The Environment plays Plummeting Monorail.  The police shoot the Matriarch.

The Matriarch plays a Carrion Field.  (So the heroes get another turn without worrying about getting hurt.)

Adept gets Young Legacy a free play - and Inspiring Presence comes out.  Scherzo of Frost and Cold nows does 4 damage.  Ra plays Imbued Fire and all the hero damage gets another +1 damage.  He Pyres the Matriarch for 4 HP as well. 

From there the heroes (and the Environment) just pound away at the Matriarch.  Cohorts come out next, but it's too late by then as the heroes just ignore them and concentrate on taking the Matriarch herself out and have enough extra sacrificial ongoing cards to handle her one-shots that destroy them.

===

However, an interesting comparison in seeing the same hero, villain, and environment combination play out completely differently in back-to-back plays.

In a fight of truly epic proportions, the Freedom Five (though Tachyon had been temporarily replaced with her alternate universe counterpart) were atatcked by a very well trained (read: Advanced) Vengeful Five in their own home!

The fight was difficult at first, with Fright Train beating the unprepared heroes to the ground, and Ermine stealing anything and everything she could see. However, a combination of Legacy's Galvanize, Bunker's Grenade Launcher and Wraith's laying out of (relatively) useless gadgets to protect more important ones put a stop to that!

Highlights included Legacy locking down the villains, twice, Tachyon Hypersonic Assaulting almost every target that could possibly be in play, and Absolute Zero being buffed up by enough sources that he dealt all targets 4 damage through Cold Snap, and then another 6 through Fueled Freeze, killing two villains and I don't even remember how many smaller targets in a single turn.

The final blow was dealt by Wraith, who used her Throwing Knives to take out both Friction and Baron Blade himself in a single hit.

Counting themselves incredibly lucky, every member of the Freedom Five survived the attack, but they may need some time to heal before their next encounter.

TS, how did Razor Ordinance kill 2 villains. Just curious

Oh, I wrote the wrong card down, sorry. I have fixed it now.

A friend and I got in two games yesterday: the Sentinels, KNYFE, Expatriette, and Legacy beat the crap out of Grand Warlord Voss in five rounds (Legacy got out Inspiring Presence in the first round, and Expatriette got out a Submachine Gun in the first and Hairtrigger Reflexes in the second, so all Minions died instantly); then the Naturalist, the Scholar, Omnitron-X, and the Wraith took a considerably longer time beating up Ambuscade.

Testing a theory I formulated yesterday about whether more heroes make the game easier, Legacy, Chrono-Ranger, KNYFE, and Fanatic just squared off against Citizen Dawn in Insula Primalis. It was over in five rounds, though I got very lucky in that KNYFE kept punching Citizen Dawn so hard her Healing Light flew right out of her deck and into the garbage.

Dawn is one of the few villains that the game might not be easier with. once she flips, you are sitting there getting hit by many more cards, which can really hurt. Dreamer and Miss Info are similar.

Just beat regular Apostate with Bunker, Ra and Fanatic in Megapolis.

Apostate opened with a Pugilist, which allowed the heroes to build up a bit, Bunker got his Grenade Launcher out, Ra used his staff and Fanatic was able to draw some with Brutal Censure. The demon was dead and the sword had taken a couple hits.

Unfortunately, Hostage situation came out after that and that set the trend that the environment wanted to mess with us the whole game. The best it did for us was Close Quarters Combat and Rooftop combat , both of which helped us take down the huge amounts of relics that came out. 

Luckily, we had the orb come out early, so it really didn't affect anything too much beyond stalling us killing the sword. The Effigy came out at the same time as the first Gauntlet, which also meant the Runes came out. This was a pain because despite the massive damage Ra could do, Bunker was reduced to plinking Apostate with his GG and drawing from his Power supply, which was a good thing because the next 2 rounds there wasn't any drawing due to a traffic pileup followed by the tome. 

Bunker had a grenade Launcher, Ammo Drop, heavy plating, and Gatling Gun up most of the game. This kept his hand stocked, for Gatling Gun, but he didn't draw a turret mode, flak cannon or Omni Cannon til the last round. When the runes and the periapt were out, he sat there and twiddled his thumbs because he couldn't draw due to having a traffic pile up there 1 turn and the tome out the next. That said he did kill several relics and set Ra and Fanatic up to kill others, and tanked a good amount of damage, though whenever he was highest there was also a damage boost for Apostate, meaning he still took damage. He did avoid Gauntlet damage though.

Ra was mainly on damage duty, despite only have 1 damaging one shot. He set up fanatic to kill both the effigy and the Runes, when the heroes were not able to do much because Apostate was already at a low enough health that he could be burned through in a turn or 2. He also was on destruction fodder duty, losing a living conflagration and 2 staves. He was the one to do most of the burning through Relics dr. His Imbued Fire really powered Bunker up.

Fanatic was a bit of a jack of all trades, and often was the one to kill a tricky relic, due to being last in the order. She was always on guard with her health because she was getting hit so hard. Her sword killed both the periapt and the runes because it was able to get through the dr. She also did the second most amount of damage to Apostate due to her nemesis bonus. She also healed a bit. Ultimately, other than getting important Relic kills, she seemed a bit underwhelming. I wanted to final dive Apostate into the sword but it doesn't work so instead I just killed the sword and then chopped his head off.

You had Ra in your party, so you didn't need to attack the relics. Just get him down to 2 or 1 and use Wrathful Gaze, game over. Wrathful Gaze is so limited, I don't mind exploiting it here.

I didn't even think of that. I could have killed him 3 or 4 rounds earlier, because Wrathful Gaze was in my hand that long and I had plenty of damage, at least on Apostate, to wear him down to that point pretty quickly. I need to remember that trick. I've sucker punched for the kill but never actually got to use Wrathful gaze that way.

Oh great, now you've done it.   (it doesn't look like it but that's the emoticon for frown, not sadness)

Here comes Ronway to tell us all how he once played a game and used Wrathful Gaze every round.

Psst, don't tell him but it was pretty effective. And it was fun to be part of that game too!

Limited? You serious man? I once played a game where Wrathful Gaze was the first card I played and then proceeded to successfully use it every round until the game was over. Including even using it on the big bad for the win.

One game is still limited.

I can see how that would be the case, though in this particular instance, having an extra body on hand to beat her up worked out in my favor. It helped that two of the four Citizens drawn at game start were the fairly harmless Citizen Sweat and Citizen Autumn, both of whom can really ruin a hero’s synergy but are two of the best to get out in the first round when they can’t do anything to anyone.

So I looked at the Google sheet and noticed how few people had tackled one of my favorite villains, Skinwalker Gloomweaver. The dice decided Chrono-Ranger, Tachyon, Expatriette, and Omnitron-X would deal with him, and deal with him they did. Chrono-Ranger maladicted Gloomweaver all to heck and gone* while Tachyon did what she could when she could, Expatriette was on crowd control, and Omnitron served primarily as a damage sponge/healer who could mostly only chip at villainous HP. The venue was Freedom Tower, which was way more good for the heroes than for Gloomweaver. Probably my favorite moment of the fight was in round seven when Tachyon had zero cards in her deck and used a Lightspeed Barrage to inflict 18 points of damage on Gloomweaver, knocking him down to two for Expatriette to mercy-kill.

I’m feeling so cocky I may just go for Cosmic Omnitron next.

*I cannot bring myself to write such a horrible pun as “Hell and gone.”

So here’s a lesson I learned that you might not credit me for because I apparently forgot to click the save button on my previous post an hour and change ago: do not get cocky. It pisses off Jesus or Buddha or whoever’s actually up there running the show.

It took four tries to beat Cosmic Omnitron despite a kind of dream team random roll of Legacy, Omnitron-X, Unity, and the Naturalist, and I place the blame squarely on the also randomly chosen environment Insula Primalis. When I first rolled it, I was stoked at the thought of dinosaurs taking care of drones for me, but no, all the Insula did was hurt the heroes with poison plants and volcanoes. I never got Cosmic Omnitron to half HP before a complete party wipe. At the end, I had to swallow my pride and replace the environment with the fairly toothless Mobile Defense Platform. After that, Inspiring Presence and Galvanize made sure the heroes were all doing just ridiculous amounts of damage while Omnitron-X mostly used his Rocket Punch (I’d been burned too many times to even try putting out any of those “destroy these cards if X takes damage” cards) to inflict an average of 9 points per hit, which I am totally petty enough to have taken a lot of satisfaction in. Turret Bot plugged away gamely while Unity kept throwing out Brainstorms in hopes of getting some equipment she could turn into a bot (didn’t happen), and I tried not to picture exactly how the crocodile in the corner was managing to do at least 5 points of damage to a flying spaceship-factory-thing every round.

I think having more heroes might actually work against the heroes in Omnitron’s case, because let me tell you, those Sedative Flechettes doing 5 HP to everyone frigging hurt, particularly when Unity’s bots would get wiped out by them.

Omnitron is much easier with more heroes. Much easier to hit 7 damage, much easier to take out the EPE before it does damage, much easier to avoid Adaptive Plating.

But with Cosmotron it is easier to win because he deals much less end of turn damage. With three heroes, the Scholar can just sit in Iron form all day and the other heroes can focus on dealing the damage

If we are talking specific heroes, then choose whatever three hero team you want and add in Visionary and Ra. Then Omnitron deals absolutely no damage.

Ok, Rhino form and the card that prevents any exactly 1 damage in the Naturalist's deck. That would do it too and that was one of the heroes he mentioned

Good god. Took forever, but a team of Legacy, the Wraith, Setback, and Parse took out Spite in the Final Wasteland. As usual, Legacy was MVP, using a combination of Next Evolution and Lead from the Front to first absorb the toxic damage Spite wanted to do every time someone used a power so we could damage him without trouble; then the Wraith finally got a Stun Bolt out and was able to knock his damage down by 1 so Legacy could absorb all of it harmlessly thanks to his Fortitude. Setback was there for a little bit of damage here and there, and Parse was fairly helpful early on when she was able to make damage against him irreducible or put Victim cards atop his deck (I had six under the Safe House when he finally flipped), but she didn’t have any useful cards at all in the last two round and was just crapping out Ongoing cards for the sake of sacrificing them at the start of Spite’s turn.

Really, the only thing I did that I’m actually proud of–attributing them to skill rather than luck–were my strategic choices here and there to redirect damage to Legacy so it would at least be reduced and Spite couldn’t vampirize as much of it.

I realized I’d been handling Spite wrong this whole time and had been allowing him to vampirize damage even after he had flipped. Annoyed, I decided to try a shot again. I rolled randomly and got Legacy, Chrono-Ranger (I need to check my dice; these two are way more likely to come up than anyone else), Fanatic, and KNYFE stomped him pretty handily in the Time Cataclysm. Legacy never got out a copy of Fortitude, so I wasn’t able to use him to make the whole group passively immune to Spite’s flipped damage, but he did get out a ring, a Lead from the Front, and a Next Evolution to stop Spite from poisoning everyone any time they used a power and to buff the party continuously; plus when Spite started putting Ongoing cards back into hands, Legacy always took back Inspiring Presence so he could heal everyone each round. Chrono-Ranger kept the pressure on Spite with bounties and his Compound Bow, which quickly got frigging ridiculous. Fanatic’s base power was obviously way better than her sword, but she kept putting it out every round so it could go back to her hand every round because I am a punk like that. KNYFE did exactly what you expect KNYFE to do and put out shameful amounts of HP damage. She tanked when she could with her one shield card whose name I forget, but it really didn’t amount to much except denying Spite one extra HP of healing for a few rounds prior to flipping.

After beating Spite like a redheaded stepchild, I thought Gloomweaver hadn’t been played against enough. The dice told me he was getting into shenanigans in the Ruins of Atlantis, so a time-traveling cowboy,* Baron Blade’s lab rat, a cyclops with mommy issues, and a janitor stapled to an Iron Man suit decided to give him what-for. What-for was given, to the surprise of no one. Krakens did a lot of the work for the heroes, honestly, but the biggest surprise was how quickly Absolute Zero got out his perpetual motion setup: in order, he got out Cold Snap, Null-Point Calibration Suit, Isothermic Transducer, Thermal Shockwave, Focused Apertures, and Cryo Chamber, so he was gaining at least 2 HP per round while picking away at all bad guys everywhere.

*I told you he’s way too likely to come up.

Citizen Dawn and RISE invade the Freedom Tower.  Opposing them is GI Bunker, Haka, and Expatriette.

See-saw fight as heroes build up equipment and then Dawn strips them away with Devastating Aura.  Citizens are generally kept in check in the early game, but an accumulation of Dawn's ongoing cards led to an accelerated run through her deck along with ressurrecting citizens out of the trash.  (The second Devastating Aura freed four citizens that Haka had accumulated under Savage Mana.  Dawn then flipped and then immediately flipped back.)

Haka was using Rampage repeatedly to keep the citizens in check, plus Ground Pound to give the heroes a bit of relief as they chipped away at Dawn's HP and kept up with her occasional heals.

The environment deck was mainly helping/hindering by putting rooms into play for a round or so, and then having them breached to add to Dawn's damage.  Which was not necessarily good for her as she had two copies of Channel the Eclipse in play and was thus inflicting extra damage on herself as well.

Last round was Dawn and some citizens incapping GI Bunker and running the other heroes down to 2-3 HP while Dawn herself was down to 2 HP.  Couldn't quite trigger GI Bunker's "destroy a 1 HP target" incap power for the win, but instead ended up giving a power use to Haka for him to do the honors.  (That Expatriette didn't go first due to nemesis damage bonus was sort of surprising.)

Someone let Danny Torrance watch Jurassic Park at way too young an age, and he started having bad dreams about it. America’s Greatest Legacy, Ra, and Doctor Sleep went to the Savage Lands to punch little Danny’s nightmares until Danny felt better.

Akash’Bhuta decided to take over Megalopolis, which I’m pretty sure is the plot of an M. Night Shyamalan movie I’ve never seen. Dark Watch Punisher, one-armed Kit Fisto, Katniss Everdeen, and Jesse Quick mowed the lawn until it learned to behave itself. It went exactly as anyone who’s ever played the game would expect, so I don’t have an exciting story; hence the dumb jokes to try to make this sound interesting.

Although I've contributed plenty to Event 11 through the G+ games, today I contribute one of my own!

It's 3 in the morning and you can't get to sleep, what better thing to do than to play a 5 player game of Sentinels solo.

Fanatic, Ra, Tachyon, Tempest and the Wraith took on the mad bomber what bombs at midnight.

9 cards beneath Bomber Blade before he flipped, it wasn't helped by two-in-a-turn Hasten Dooms, followed by a Backlash Field, the heroes were really feeling the hurt. Ra felt the burn the most keeping both Solar Flares around, only for them to be destroyed because I forgot that Blade destroyed stuff when he flipped, 8 points of damage for no benefit, Guh.

Baron Blade was whittled down to 2HP and the heroes thought they had it in the bag only for him to heal himself with nanites. Backlashfield was still out and thanks to a devious disruption at the wrong time any body who hit Blade would fall in the aftermath. Heroes sacrificed themselves willingly to knock him down a peg or two until Wraith's turn when she just sat back and watched. The heroes secret backup plan of the Crushing Hallway was enough to see the Baron's plan fall flatter than the man himself, Huzzah for over-elaborate death traps!

A better thing at 3am when you can't sleep would be to play Sentinels not-solo.

The Freedom Five’s secretary sent a team of three people to help an old woman cross the street, which sounds kind of suspicious until you understand the street being crossed is in the ruins of Atlantis…or actually, I guess that’s suspicious too, but maybe it’s the kind of thing you need to be Parse or maybe the Wraith to notice. Anyway, Team Leader Tachyon got together the Naturalist (makes sense, because he can probably turn into fish) and KNYFE (makes sense, because you often need someone in a jillion dollar suit of hydraulic armor to punch things when helping old ladies across the street) for the job. Hijinks ensued; their secretary showed up wearing a domino mask and a one-piece bathing suit; KNYFE cut her into small pieces with a lightsabre and fed the chunks to the Naturalist. I worry about KNYFE. She…overreacts.

Guh.

After four tries, I finally got lucky playing Team Leader Tachyon, Legacy, and Mr. Fixer against Iron Legacy in Freedom Tower. Next Evolution and Lead from the Front took the worst of Iron Legacy’s brunt (though I’d occasionally let seven or eight points hit Tachyon for the sake of using Synaptic Redirection to bang it against Iron Legacy), and an eventual second copy of Next Evolution took care of all his projectile damage too. Iron Legacy never got more than one armor card out at a time, so Riveting Crane was able to make sure Tachyon and Legacy were punching him as hard as possible. At the end, Tachyon had 2 HP to her name, three cards in her hand, and one card in her deck…and one of those three cards in her hand was Lightspeed Barrage, which ended the game.

No wonder so few people have fought this yutz.

Wow. Maybe it was just a lucky draw, but Dark Watch Nightmist makes Iron Legacy look like a punk. Planar Banishment absolutely ruins his game.

America’s Greatest Legacy, Fanatic, and Haka were also there, and AGL did well to eat everyone’s melee damage while Fanatic and Haka pounded him down, but seven rounds is all it took. I was deliberately damaging Nightmist just to make sure she’d be the hero with the lowest HP so flipped Iron Legacy would target her and I could use her Amulet of the Elder Gods and direct all his hate back at him.

Dark Watch Expatriette, Unity, Tachyon, and Price of Freedom Wraith got within sniffing distances of being wiped out by Skinwalker Gloomweaver, which surprises me endlessly. Expatriette and Wraith are both pretty much easy mode for the game, but Skinweaver’s damage was almost impossible to avoid.

Then again, it probably didn’t help that Unity couldn’t get a bot into her hand until round six.

Chrono-Ranger and KNYFE will probably have words for Dark Watch Nightmist when and if they ever return from the void between voids to which she condemned them (and Visionary likely has something to say too, since she only avoided that trip down Cthulhu’s gullet by virtue of a Decoy Projection), but they only had one HP left, Cosmic Omnitron only had two, Nightmist was the last hero in the turn order, and Oblivion was the only enemy-damaging effect Nightmist had available.

She did it for the greater good…but still, it’s possible she’s going to Hell when she dies.

(Wish I’d noticed someone beat Cosmitron with Chrono-Ranger while I was setting up. He tried his best to help with his bounties, and he did more good than Visionary did, but he really was a drag and fewer people might have died if I’d been able to skip him and play, I dunno, Ra or someone.)

I…wow. Greatest Legacy, Omnitron-X, Ra, and Tempest just utterly wrecked the Chairman. Legacy never even got out any of his cheating cards to nullify the enemy damage; he just had Inspiring Presence and Motivational Charge in play, and after that it was all pounding away with the damage until all the bad guys fell down in six rounds. I was sure I was going to lose, too, because in round one X got out his Ablative Coating and in round two a Thief stole it (you probably heard my shrieks of rage), but I never got another copy out and it ended up not mattering. The heroes were all neighborhood of 10 HP at the end, because Ra got out his fancy stick and Imbued Flame to make everyone’s damage even more ridiculous and…well, yeah. I guess when you have Tempest doing at least six points of damage to all targets every round (Electrical Storm), that’s to be expected.

Horus of the Two Horizons, the Sentinels, and Golem Unity went up against the Dreamer in Rook City. The most interesting things about it were all Unity-related:
first, the Whipacorn attacked her, leaving her unable to deal damage, which I shamelessly exploited to use a no-cost Golem-Spawn; the other was the turn when the Dreamer flipped and I realized her Platform Bots and Turret Bot inflict damage whether I want them to or not, so I had to turn them on one another to keep them from obliterating the Dreamer and losing the game. Live and learn, I guess.

Mr. Fixer, Fanatic, Visionary, and Argent Adept heard a rumor that a transhuman serial killer was plotting an escape from The Block.  Not trusting F.I.L.T.E.R. to handle things, they ensured that Spite was put down and back into his cell.  Oddly enough, there were a lot of innocent bystanders and lost children running around such a high-security prison.

Note to self for future games against Spite - when I know that he'll flip the next turn, I really shouldn't play cards that prevent him from dealing damage (or force a redirect of his damage to a soaking character.)

…oh, ouch. I just got what you were talking about.

Ouch. We did that on our last game against Spite, too.

Dark Watch Setback came back from the future to tell Nightmist that Gloomweaver was trying to take over the Final Wasteland, which seems like kind of a wasted effort on his part but I guess whatever, your only chance to conquer the Earth is after the apocalypse when you suck as bad as he does. Going up against a god, she decided to bring a god of her own–Ra–and that god decided to bring along a weather-controlling alien because why not. About eight rounds in, the game was over because all the relics were in the trash (Setback had out his “bonk you and get some unlucky tokens” and his “eat everyone’s hits unless you spend unlucky tokens to redirect them” cards out, so he was inflicting about eleven points of damage per round), but Gloomweaver still had almost 60 HP to go, so I kept the game going just to rub his nose in it and smashed him down to nothing.

One of these days, I need to remember that Advanced Mode is a thing. It would have made this bout more interesting, at least.

Omnitron flattened by Golem Unity, Bunker, Chrono-Ranger, The Sentinels, and Dark Watch Nightmist in The Final Wasteland.  Details over in Play By Forum Game #30 thread.

Cultists attempt to summon Skinwalker Gloomy in a Megalopolis cemetary.  With other heroes busy Scholar uses an experimental time device to draw GI Bunker from the past and Eternal Haka from the future to aid in defeating this menace.

Battle is joined.  Bunker ends up in Turret Mode for a while with only the Grenade Launcher going, but it's useful for damaging pins and cultists in addition to some damage to Gloomweaver himself.  Haka gets Savage Mana out early and with the help of the other heroes starts burying all the cultists, the zombies, a relic or two, and even a couple of cards from the environment deck.  The Scholar spends a lot of time early on in Energy form doing heals and damaging Gloomweaver.

Gloomweaver flips and starts doing mass damage as he manifests.  However, he does suffer from a lack of allies to draw HP from.  Bunker is still dealing out damage, but running low on HP.  Haka is still accumulating victims under Savage Mana as he also pounds on Gloomweaver.  Scholar is in Iron form to tank hitpoints and do what damage he can.

Gloomweaver is weakened, and then finished off by a 38 HP toxic blast from Savage Mana.

Took two attempts to beat Bomber Blade in Megalopolis with Redeemer Fanatic, Ra - Horus, and Scholar.

First run was the environment deck messing with the heroes.  Ra got Flesh of the Sun God out and was giving the heroes fire immunity - two turns in a row the environment put out Close Combat and converted Blade's bomb damage to melee from fire to the detriment of the heroes.  Fanatic and Ra eventually get incapacitated; with the Ra incapacitation useful for getting rid of Blade's Backlash Fields.  However, Scholar alone was not able to take Blade down, especially once Hostage Situation and Traffic Pile-Up both came out and crippled Scholar's ability to draw cards.

Second run was a much tamer environment deck.  Blade's bomb damage ramped up a little slower, and the heroes had a better card selection to use against him.  After Blade flipped it became a race to knock him down before he took out the heroes.  Fanatic played End of Days once to clear out a couple of villain ongoing cards plus a Plummeting Monorail.  Final round was Fanatic playing Sancrosanct Martyr for 5 damage, Ra playing a Fire Blast for 5 damage, and then Scholar playing Knowing When To Turn Loose and discarding his hand to finish Blade off.

Chairman is immune to damage from Environment cards.

Nice session report.

Also, you can pick any hero combination you want, but if they already won a game against that villain, you don’t mark it again.

Ah, of course...  Didn't end up hurting anything though, as Nightmist was about to nuke him anyways ;)

Good thing is I didn't make that mistake the first time the Rat swarm came out...  Only slipped my mind in that last turn.  Probably because the game had gone on for so long I was starting to get a little tired :-P

Legacy, GI Bunker, Tachyon and the Visionary went up against la Capitan in the Time Cataclysm. Pretty straightforward; the most interesting thing to happen was during the final round, when the Atlantean Font of Power was in play and Bunker got out his Turret Mode after seventeen rounds. Between that, being Galvanized, and his Ether getting Twisted, the amount of damage he was putting out with his Gatling Gun, Grenade Launcher, and Flak Cannon were all kind of ridiculous.

Tachyon ended up responsible for about two thirds of la Capitan’s HP with some late-game Lightspeed Barrages, of course, but all in all it was quite by the numbers.

Oh, and DerpTheBugbear? Thanks for tackling the Chairman. I wasn’t looking forward to another round against him.

(Not looking forward to Iron Legacy either, but whatever. I’m kind of morbidly determined to figure out how the eff anyone beats him with the Sentinels on board.)

I should probably stop doing random rolls and start using the promo characters more, just so people who don’t have them can still get in on the game with the characters they have.

At a weekend trip full of tobacco, whiskey, and gaming, I introduced some friends to Sentinels and probably got them hooked - they were asking about price when we were getting ready to leave.

A lot of these combinations have already been done or mostly done, but I added a few.  Some of these were player choice (Oooh that guy/girl sounds interesting!) and some were completely random.

Voss in Insula Primalis (the introductory game for the new people) vs. The Sentinels, Fanatic, Ex-patriette, Omnitron-X, and Mr. Fixer.  There were a few comments of "This is supposed to be an easy intro game?" due to one of the flagships and two enraged T-Rex's, but overall it was fine, of course.  Never did get to show them the potential horror of Forced Deployment.

Gloomweaver in the Realm of Discord for some folks who've played SotM before but not that villain, squaring off against Unity, Absolute Zero, and the Argent Adept.  Pretty much a cakewalk.

Ambuscade ambushed the team of Parse, Tachyon, Bunker and the Scholar in the Ruins of Atlantis.  Again there was some disbelief when I said that Ambuscade was one of the easiest villains by a long shot - between him being cloaked for the first several turns, two Krakens, and a complete lack of healing or damage redirection cards until the end of the game, Parse ended up cheering on the rest of the team from her bloodied spot on the floor.

Finally, Apostate had some devious plan involving the Block, but Fanatic showed up to stop him accompanied by Setback, Absolute Zero, the Argent Adept, and Tachyon who ended up Sucker Punching Apostate to avoid having to deal with the three relics that were out.

Correction: that was Engine of War Bunker. I confuse them often.

Honestly Derp, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual narrative goes down exactly like this. From story hints droped during the Tactics KS, the Dark Watch are the team that takes down Pike's Organization for good. The Fence's card shows him holding a jewel. Now, this could be just an expensive diamond or something that was stolen. Or, it could be something more. Kinda bears a small similarity to the jewel we see Naturalists nemesis holding in his deck and on the WotC box art. Thats all most likely rubbish, but I guess my point is that your story makes a lot of sense and I'm just building ideas around it.

This time, Spite was seeking victims in...the Tomb of Anubis.  Who can understand the mind of a drug-wracked monstrosity?

Haka, Omnitron-X, Nightmist, and the Sentinels were feeling pretty smacked around by the end of it and the Idealist had to be the target of a Restorative Burst, but they prevailed and prepared to drag him back to his cell yet again.

I compromised: I rolled randomly, but picked whichever version of the rolled character had more games left to go. That is how the Argent Adept, Tachyon, Horus, and Dark Watch Expatriette ended up going against Spite, Agent of Gloom. I hated that game; taking on a monster like Spite with a team one hundred percent reliant on luck of the draw to deal damage is an enormous pain. Argent Adept had 2 HP at the end, Horus 3, and Expatriette 1; had it not been for a very early Imbued Flame, no one would have been able to damage Spite at all and the game would have been lost. I had hoped this would be one of those games where playing someone I previously hated would reveal to me some incredible tactic I hadn’t known before that would make me like the hero, which is what happened with Setback but had not yet happened with the Silver Singer. I still hate that guy.

“Aminia? What are you doing in an extradimensional prison for supervillains?” Young Legacy asked.

“Oh, uh, I’m…looking for paperclips for the office, and I got lost in the closet and ended up here?” Miss Information said.

“Well that makes sense to me, because I am extraordinarily thick,” said Young Legacy.

“Nothing at all about that story sounds suspicious to me either,” Expatriette agreed. “Did I mention I am intensely stupid?”

“Yee haw! Ride em cowboy! I’m plumb loco! Don’t touch my spurs!” were the sum of Chrono-Ranger’s thoughts.

“Uh huh. Hey, Expatriette, would you mind going to the shower room alone and helping Char find his soap? Alone? Without anyone else there to help you if he decides to set you on fire and/or poison you?” Miss Information asked.

“It would be very nice of you to accept this very straightforward request, Expatriette,” Young Legacy before being distracted by a very lickable part of the wall.

“I do spend a lot of time just plain shooting people,” Expatriette admitted, momentarily pausing in her efforts to wear her left boot as a hat. “Maybe it would feel nice to help someone who surely isn’t a psychotic murderer and is probably imprisoned in this extradimensional pocket for tax evasion.”

“Get along little dogie! Let’s giddyup back to the Ponderosa!” Chrono-Ranger said, then sat down because he was dizzy from all the spinning around he was doing while trying to bite his own ear.

Some time later, after everyone had been hit with moderate radiation burns on top of having been shot at a few times by jumpy prison guards, Young Legacy said, “You know, I’m starting to think Aminia might be a bad person.”

“My hair is falling out and I have blisters inside my organs, and I don’t know if that’s Aminia’s fault but I want to shoot someone because that’s the only method of emotional expression I know,” Expatriette said.

“I demand to see the long form birth certificate! 9/11 was an inside job! Obamacare has death panels what for killin’ your granny!” Chrono-Ranger said.

Then everyone shot Miss Information a lot and she fell down.

Have Parse in the party to wipe out Iron Legacy’s buffs, have Greatest Legacy in the party to manipulate party HP in concert with Doctor Medico to make sure Writhe is the lowest-HP character, and get Caliginous Form out so Iron Legacy mostly just punches his own dumb self to death. My original strategy had, predictably, been to get Lead from the Front and Next Evolution out, but neither of those ever happened, so I kind stumbled onto this strategy by dumb luck.

"Well that makes sense to me, because I am extraordinarily thick," said Young Legacy.

I very much enjoyed this, as well as the rest of your write-up. 

I very much enjoyed this, as well as the rest of your write-up.[/quote]
Heh, you’re welcome. I seem unable to keep myself from lampooning the heroes when they’re taken in by their evil secretary.

Anyway, in the far future after all life has been reduced to mutant monsters, Cosmitron tried to commit genocide against the inhuman freaks that live there, so from the considerably less far future Team Leader Tachyon, GI Bunker, and Horus grabbed Fanatic from the present to beat Cosmitron up. Went pretty smoothly thanks to some hoarded Hypersonic Assaults, but I sweat quite a bit with so few heroes capable of inflicting steady damage on the robotic turd.

I also speak for all iterations of the Freedom Five, past and present, when I say the future is full of jerks who deserve to be wiped out if they’re so dumb they keep trying to eat the people who want to save them from global destruction.

I remembered, and Dark Visionary, the Naturalist, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, and Eternal Haka went up against Gloomweaver on his home turf. Since two of the biggest bruisers rely so heavily on melee damage, I thought this might be a tough fight, like maybe the Naturalist and Haka would be limited to pounding on mooks, but in the second round I was able to play Twist the Ether on Haka to change his damage type (could have done it in the first, but I chose to put Demoralization out there first), and the Naturalist got out the card that lets him deal toxic damage to two targets while croc-ified in round three, so…yeah. No drama to be seen here, particularly since the first card the Naturalist played is the one that lets him use two powers per round.

It wasn’t a cakewalk by a long shot, but Expatriette, Parse, Setback, and Rook City Wraith beat the Chairman pretty handily. An early play of Parse’s Extrasensory Awareness was critical to making sure they didn’t play any cards I didn’t want them to, and Rook City Wraith’s powers made sure the environment (Freedom Tower) did what I wanted, too. Expatriette did the most damage (obviously), but Parse is definitely MVP for keeping those bloody damned Prison Breaks out of my way.

I really hate the Matriarch.

Dark Watch Setback, Dark Visionary, Omnitron-X, and Nightmist just went up against her. It was frigging grueling, but Setback’s Wrong Time and Place was the key to victory; just piling on all the unlucky tokens I could get my hands on to counterattack as often as possible per round, struggling to keep Setback’s HP above the brink (thank god for Innervation Ray), and finishing her off in the final round of 22 HP with 10 HP of Self Sabotage and two 2 HP draws on an Oblivion spell, all 8 of which Setback was able to bounce onto the Matriarch before the spell itself piled on the final 4 HP and killed her.

Seriously, though, I do hate her. The amount of paperwork on those fowls is just unconscionable.

Legacy, Rook City Wraith, and Freedom Tempest got together to beat up Skinwalker Gloomweaver in the Time Cataclysm. They brought along the Naturalist because they thought it would be funny to bring him to fight zombies when his primary method of attack is to bite things. Wraith got out Throwing Knives and a Utility Belt in the first round, and Tempest got out a Grievous Hailstorm, so damage was pretty well covered, though it took forever to flip Gloomweaver because he had two relics out in the first round and after I killed them, they of course came right back out again with a Vast Following. It was for the best, though, because the extra time to beat up Gloomweaver gave Legacy time to get out a Next Evolution and a Lead from the Front to immunize the party from Gloomweaver’s various infernal attacks. In the end, though, they showed Gloomweaver the error of manifesting in a physical body in this world, because physical bodies mean high winds, lightning strikes, hail, and pointy bits of metal all hurt.

So do crocodile teeth, but I’m sure Gloomweaver took some comfort in the misery the Naturalist endured from the flavor of eating zombie meat.

Greatest Legacy, Golem Unity, Engine of War Bunker, and Eternal Haka just delivered an absolutely humiliating defeat to Akash’Bhuta in the Time Cataclysm.* Next time I try her, I need to do advanced mode.

*I need to switch my d20, because it keeps coming up 12.

Final round of the game. The Scholar (25 HP), Fanatic the Redeemer (9 HP), Dark Watch Setback (1 HP), and KNYFE (10 HP) are going up against la Capitan in the Realm of Discord. La Capitan has Siege Breaker, l’Episte, Battle Forged, the Amazing Mable, Final Breath, and Chip in play, which has reduced the heroes to the above HP totals; she has 27. Two Portal Fiends are in play with six cards in the environment trash. There is no way this is not the last round of the game. It’s time for a blitz.

The Scholar leads with “Get Out of the Way!” He inflicts 8 total points of damage, heals that much, and hits la Capitan with the backlash from Mortal Form to Energy, knocking her down to 18. Fanatic the Redeemer has a ton of cards that could inflict one or two damage, but she wisely elects to play Embolden on KNYFE and just hits la Capitan with Absolution to knock her down to 15. Dark Watch Setback plays Exceeded Expectations and activates Looking Up, putting her down to 7. Knyfe has a Prototype Servo-Gauntlet in play and Amplified Combatant (la Capitan is now down to 4), hits her with the Prototype Servo-Gauntlet’s power (down to 1), and finishes her off with an energy lance.

I think I’ve stress-sweated right through my shirt.

I should have kept count, because I think it took eight rounds max for Eternal Haka, the Argent Adept, and Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero to beat Miss Information into so many horse apples in Silver Gulch. The Argent Adept wasn’t totally useless–okay, let’s be fair, he was pretty key; he kept Absolute Zero drawing cards and, after the first round, playing them as well to get his setup in place.

The Dreamer probably would have wiped out the Argent Adept, KNYFE, and Price of Freedom Wraith in the Block if it hadn’t been for a Block Guard shooting her dangerously close to death so she couldn’t hit everyone with her psychic damage.

Bookkeeping question: How do Vengeance fights work? Like, let’s say I have a five-hero team of Absolute Zero, the Argent Adept, Bunker, Chrono-Ranger, and Expatriette. Do all five of them count as defeating each villain, or is it one-on-one (so Zero only wins against Blade, Adept only wins against Ermine, and so on)?

Do I fill in five squares, or twenty-five?

Four games completed during the afternoon hanging out at a FLGS.  Not much on details since I was just doing random gens from an iPhone app.

1) DW Nightmist, Team Leader Tachyon, and Chrono-Ranger defeated the Matriarch in the Time Cataclysm.  Matriarch finished off by a Sucker Punch by Tachyon.  Hypersonic Assault only played once. (0 new combos for the challenge)

2) Redeemer Fanatic, DW Nightmist, and Setback defeated Apostate in the Time Cataclysm.  Pretty straightforward game though Fanatic never got Absolution into play.  She did, however, hammer Apostate for 21 points with a Wrathful Retribution on the last round.  Left him with one HP for the others to get the kill.  (1 new combo for the challenge)

3) Tempest Freedom, Wraith, and the Scholar defeated Kismet (adv) in the Freedom Tower.  Heroes ongoing destruction tested early with Lady Luck coming out in the 2nd round.  Jinx cards built up and Kismet's damage got dangerous.  The Scholar, however, tanked damage and smacked Kismet a few times with the one-shot that prevented her from doing damage. (2 new combo for the challenge.)

4) Tempest Freedom, The Sentinels, and Eternal Haka defeated Apostate (adv) in the Tomb of Anubis.  Apostate got a tricky demon/relic self-recovering combination out early which left the heroes hitting relics with high DR a lot.  The heroes kept up DR -1 as well for most of the rounds, but managed to handle things and take out the last few relics and Apostate in the same round. (2 new combo for the challenge.)

Can anyone join in at any time? I'll hopefully be playing a few games tonight.

Also, does putting your name count for the hero you played and won with, or simply a hero in the game that you played and won?

Sure, anyone can join in.

If you win a game, put your name by the heroes that were in the game, regardless of whether or not they were active at the end.

I didn't get to play those games after all, but I'll be sure to keep this in mind for when I do.

While my computer is down I have found time to play extra Sentinels!

Baron Blade, Ermine and Proletariat tried to take vengeance on the Realm of Discord, why, I have no idea but they did. Fanatic, Tempest and the Naturalist took on the defence of the realm, and triumped with no incaps and only 6 HP between them(!). With a lot of people hitting the second highest or the second lowest Tempest remained the highest HP hero for the majority of the game, something of a rarity for him in my experience.

The Naturalist kept taking his form cards from in play to the top of his deck and then discarded thanks to Ermine, so a lot of her power was neutered by his sacrifice.

The environment also helped out immensely, with a Negative Energy Field hitting the Villains and a Positivie Energy Field two turns later healing the heroes, though Ghostly Images did force Fanatic to discard 3 cards from her hand to do a 9 point Wrathful Retribution, not the best use I have ever seen of that card.

Despite returning to his preferred hunting grounds of Rook City, Spite was taken down without significant worry by Tachyon, the Naturalist, Tempest, and the Scholar.  That just leaves promo characters for that villain now.

In a game mostly comprised of us messing around, Grand Warlord Voss attacked Megalopolis!

Defending the city were Absolute Zero, Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Watch Mr Fixer and a home-made character who really had no right to be there at all. (No seriously, we don't know how that particular character could have gotten to that location)

Mostly we were testing to see if said character was balanced enough to work in the game, and poor Voss and his minions suffered through our attack!

Never having more than six minions in play at any time, Voss couldn't seem to contact his Lieutenant or his ships, and had to do most of the work himself.

We are under 500! 499 to be exact! Hooray!

Let's look at some stats:

Most played hero: Scholar - 3 games left.

Least played hero: DW Setback - 20 games left.

Most played villain: Aposate - 0 games left.

Least played villain: V5 Blade - 29 games left.

So the girlfriend and I ran a random game that knocked down two more of your slots.

The Chairman versus The Eternal Haka, Wraith, Omnitron-X, and Tachyon ON MARS!

Eternal Haka and Wraith needed the win.  I played Haka and Omni, she played Tachy and Wraith. 

Just how the murderous Chairman, The Operative, and a variable army of criminals managed to make it to the Wagner Mars Base is something of a mystery.  Luckily for the scientists on staff Doctor Meredith Stinson was on hand performing some infistructure upgrades with the assistance of her compatriot The Wraith.  Still vastly outnumbered and out gunned the two members of The Freedom Five were relieved when stepping out of a blinding flash was Omnitron-X!  The reformed killing machine had not come alone however,  he brought with him a powerful ally from the end of time, The Eternal Haka to turn the tide!

The match was brutal, Red Dust kept wrecking Omni and Wraith's set ups.  Haka finally managed to pull Savage Mana and we were able to start putting thugs away each round.  By the time every thug was under Savage Mana, and villainous upgrades, the heroes were on the ropes, all under 10 HP.  The Chairman had yet to flip, he and the Operative still had full health, and all the Under bosses were in play.  That's when The Chairman declared "Rook City is mine!" Which is odd, as he was on Mars, which caused two massive meteor swarms to start.  Taking cover our heroes decided to wait a few rounds heal up get massive draw hands, and have Omnitron-X, handle any pesky extra environment cards draws, withy Tachy and Wraith occasionally helping out.  

Finally the heroes were ready.  They stopped the metor swarms and unleashed the dogs of war on the under bosses finally getting the Chairman to flip.  After Haka dragged a few more Underbosses under savage mana, Tachyon, with her HUD goggles, Fleet of Foot, Lightning Reflexes, a couple copies of light speed barrage and some other things Tachyon laid down 45 points of damage her turn taking out The Chairman.  The Eternal Haka finished the fight with the Haka of Battle, sacrificing his entire hand to pump Savage Mana to 51 damage utterly destroying The Operative.

Thus the day... Was saved.

Nice. Fights with the Chairman always seem tense, but that was well done.

I played a couple of games tonight, yet sadly only filled in one square since I didn't have the list with me so far.

Game 1 was Akash'Bhuta in the Pike Industrial Complex vs Tempest (the one I get to add), Haka, Ra and Unity (me). This was kind of hard as everytime we thought we had something good going, it would go away. Haka had Savage Mana, villain card would make us destroy on going. Finally got out Stealth Bot, an amazing amount of damage would be dealt. I remeained mostly useless, not dealing damage, but level heads meant we took her town without a hero dying. Final blow was dealt by Ra's Flame Barrier.

Game 2 was Kismet in the Ruins of Atalantis vs Fanatic, Omnitron-X, Price of Freedom Wraith and G.I. Bunker (me again) (nothing new added, but why not mention it?). This was really easy, as things just let us flow off each other. Fanatic was mostly dead weight, but Bunker and Omni-X got out some good equipment quickly, and some fletchette's with the ammo drop not only kept her jinxs at bay, but also got Bunker some extra cards for a decent Omni canon.

Asked friends what games I should bring tonight, and they said Sentinels.  I asked about GSF and they said "Oh, no, we'll only have five people so we can do Sentinels and we played GSF last week."  Turned out to be six of us there after all...but anyway, two elected to go out on the deck for cigars while the rest of us got a pair of fairly quick games in.  Unfortunately we didn't add much to the spreadsheet because I wasn't looking at that ahead of time.

First game was Citizen Dawn vs. Parse, Chrono-Ranger, Setback, and K.N.Y.F.E. in the Tomb of Anubis.  Parse's player had Extrasensory Awareness out in the first turn, so that certainly helped smooth things out.  We were trying to leave some Citizens active rather than intentionally flip her, but that didn't exactly go as planned.  At one point there were something like nine environment cards in play, but nothing truly horrendous.  Poor Anubis had to give out his treasures and then sit there handing out congratulations notices for the victors in later trials.

Second game was advanced Baron Blade (we had someone who'd never seen him) vs. the Sentinels, Chrono-Ranger, Visionary, and Haka on the Mobile Defense Platform.  Alas, Visionary didn't get any of her villain trash manipulation cards until after Blade had flipped...but it was still a bit tense, as he ended his turn with 16 cards in his trash and 19 health.  We could imagine the glowing red numbers counting down...

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SYSTEM OFFLINE

We are just over half way down, and random teams might not help out as much as they used to.

Quoted for truth. I’m taking a frustration break right now because I lost six games in a row, three each of randomly chosen Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Engine of War Bunker, Young Legacy, and Unity against Agent of Gloom Spite (never bring in that many slow build, low damage characters against Agent of Gloom Spite) and of Parse, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, and Dark Visionary against Baron Blade, Ermine, and Fright Train (never bring in a team of 66% deck manipulators with piddling damage potential against that many villain targets).

I wanted to reduce the number of games left for Spite: Agent of Gloom, so I did. Random dice rolls came up with Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero and Engine of War Bunker again, as well as Expatriette and Rook City Wraith. I said some bad words but toughened up and stuck with it for reasons I cannot, in retrospect, be sure were actual reasons and not just sheer bloody-mindedness.

Spite whupped me pretty bad the first time (he has 40 HP left), and not so bad the second time (he had 4 HP left). I was resigned to failure nevertheless in the third game, but the first card he put out was a Good Samaritan, and Wraith’s Infrared Eyepiece put another Good Samaritan on top of his deck so that at the beginning of the second round, two victim cards were under the Safe House and his only drug card, the one that does damage whenever you use a power, was turned face-down again. With him unable to get any drugs turned up, the game was over in six rounds (Absolute Zero’s first played card was Impale, Bunker’s was Gatling Gun, Expatriette’s was Pride, and Wraith got out a Utility Belt and a Razor Ordinance in round two, so damage was plentiful). Everyone had at least 20 HP at the game’s end.

It bothers me that only an unlucky shuffle for Spite enabled me to beat him. I still haven’t figured out any reliable way to handle this jerk.

I really wish I’d paid more attention to how I did it, but I checked the records of HP loss against the number of environment cards played (Freedom Tower being what it is, it serves as an excellent round counter), and…yeah. Young Legacy, Eternal Haka, Dark Watch Expatriette, Price of Freedom Wraith, and Horus just destroyed the Vengeance Five in six rounds. A first round Rampage on Haka’s part was extremely helpful, of course, as well as a couple of turns of Shock Rounds even from poor little Pride, a Grappling Hook to get rid of Blade’s Genetically Enfused Physique,* and Drawn to the Flame while four villain Ongoing cards were in play all helped…but I really have no idea how I did it.

*I like to try to picture in my head how this happened. It involves Wraith getting Blade pinned down and performing a lobotomy with the sharpest end of the grappling hook.

I got tired of always going for the villain with the most rounds left to go, so I decided to tackle a villain I haven’t played in so long I wasn’t even sure I remembered how to fight her: Kismet. Randomly determined Team Leader Tachyon, Golem Unity, Dark Watch Setback, and Greatest Legacy fought her in the Mobile Defense Platform. Between Golem Unity and Dark Watch Setback, the heroes ended up doing way more damage to themselves than Kismet did. Unity got out her Stealth Bot in the second round, so between Bee Bots and “Whoops! Sorry!” cards, the only times she had enough jinx cards in play to boost her damage above what Stealth Bot would soak, Tachyon would punch her ability to do damage right off her. Over and done with in five rounds.

Dark Watch Setback, the Argent Adept, Freedom Tempest, and Greatest Legacy had a bit of a nailbiter (everyone’s in single HP), but ultimately they beat the crap out of Cosmitron. Took forever to get Tempest a card with a power that deals damage, but Cosmitron played Sedative Flechettes in his first round and Tempest put out Healing Downpour, so everyone stayed pretty high until the last Sedative Flechettes at the bottom of Cosmitron’s deck. Setback put out some fair tons of damage, though, and Tempest would get out a one-shot damaging card now and then, so all was well.

I really do hate Iron Legacy.

He decided to invade the Mobile Defense Platform, presumably to kill Baron Blade. Redeemer Fanatic, Visionary, Freedom Tempest, and Horus all tried to stop him. He had two damage buffs out in play from setup, an armor, and the one that gives him HP when heroes use a power. He proceeded to beat the everloving hell out of the team, inflicting at least ten points to everyone before his first card was played. Fanatic’s first play was Undaunted because she didn’t have anything better to do with her time (at least it would take care of that psychic damage); Visionary put out a Decoy Projection and tried to get Fanatic to draw an Apocalypse (didn’t happen); Tempest put out Vicious Cyclone, again for want of a better idea; Horus summoned and played his staff.

A mechanic came out of the environment deck.

Iron Legacy dealt seven more points of damage to everyone.

Fanatic threw out Divine Focus for want of anything useful to do and tried to draw Apocalypse (again, nope); Visionary had nothing to play and tried to give Fanatic an Apocalypse; Tempest dealt Iron Legacy three points from a Vicious Cyclone and five more from a Lightning Slash. Horus blasted Iron Legacy for five points, which would have flipped him, but by then I had an idea and used Horus’s power to heal Iron Legacy back up to 21.

Another mechanic came out of the environment deck.

Legacy killed Tempest and did everyone else another seven or so points of damage. Fanatic was down to 9 HP. She played Wrathful Retribution, knocking Legacy down to 2 HP. Visionary panicked and put up a Telekinetic Cocoon; Tempest rotted a bit; Horus played Imbued Flame and destroyed his staff for 5 HP, which even with Iron Legacy’s two points of healing was enough to wipe him out.

Three rounds. Yeesh.

Well, the Vengeance Five got their frigging vengeance, killing Dark Visionary, Expatriette, Redeemer Fanatic, and Freedom Tempest in the Final Wasteland. In the end, Ermine and X were the only ones left, and X was being fed a steady stream of HP while X’s Ablative Coating took care of any damage Ermine could inflict. It still took eight turns to knock off her final 5 HP, though, because she had her damnable Subtle Diversion out and all he could do was ping her with his Rocket Punch.

Miss Information did…whatever she does on the crowded streets of Megalopolis. Engine of War Bunker was there to destroy her Diversions, Dark Watch Setback was there to do that as well as inflict damage, and Rook City Wraith was there to do pretty much everything at all times because she’s awesome like that but mostly to make sure Megalopolis didn’t screw us. Because of Wraith, two police officer cards were in play tearing Miss Information down when she flipped, and their efforts were appreciated even though the Gatling Gun, the Flak Cannon, the big dummy’s fists, and even the skinny chick’s throwing knives were all doing better jobs. She fell down fast once she flipped.

Not much to say. GI Bunker, Dark Watch Nightmist, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Mister Fixer, and Visionary just beat up the Vengeance Five in the Ruins of Atlantis. It was over in five rounds. The Kraken was a big help.

Weekend Update:

Total Matches left: 368

Hero with least number of matches left: Omnitron-X with 2.

Hero with the most matches left: EoW: Bunker and DW Mr. Fixer with 16

Villain with the least matches left: Apostate - 0,  Proletariat with 6.

Villain with the most matches left: Ambuscade and the Dreamer with 20.

Just the Dreamer now! Dark Watch Setback, Horus, Team Leader Tachyon, and Dark Watch Nightmist just took him on in Pike Industrial Complex. Advanced Ambuscade is actually a villain to bother taking seriously; he killed Setback and Horus, though Horus was my fault for hoarding staves instead of exploding them to bring more in for HP. Setback was nothing but bad luck. Six rounds went by without him getting a card that generates unlucky tokens, and by then, well, it was too late.

It also didn’t help that Ambuscade got out two Reactive Shields and a Cloaking Device in the first two rounds, so I had to leave him invisible just to keep the DR on his Reactive Shields low enough to actually hurt them, which meant he just kept plugging away at Setback until there was no saving him. Of course Pike Industrial is just murder for everyone, though Pike isn’t quite as bad when you have Tachyon and Nightmist both fully capable of taking out environment cards.

As would be expected from a team of Tachyon and Nightmist, Ambuscade mostly killed himself. He would try to shoot someone and Tachyon would run forward, grab him, and throw him in front of the bullet like Bugs Bunny, or Nightmist would just bounce bullets back at him from her +1 Choker of Evil.

It was interesting to watch two heroes die to Ambuscade. I will have to stop making fun of him.

Just be happy you haven't lost to him in 2 rounds. Curse you Sherriff Pratt!!

I want to see another black line across the grid, so I’m going to do Omnitron-X’s two remaining fights. I just did Bomber Blade in Insula Primalis with Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, Haka, X, and Nightmist; and let me tell you, Dark Watch Mr. Fixer made this kind of embarrassing to take part in. I felt bad Blade. Pipe Wrench, Grease Monkey Style, Harmony, and Obsidian Field…Blade never had a chance. Over in five rounds.

I never thought about it before, but the Dark Watch have some pretty okay teamwork going on. Between the team, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t have some piece of crap ongoing or unnecessary equipment you can’t sacrifice to Mr. Fixer.

There we go. The first pony has crossed the finish line. Hit the showers, Omnitron-X, we’ll call you when it’s time for you to receive your medal.

Citizen Dawn in the Tim Cataclysm versus the Naturalist, Ra, and Omnitron-X. She won the first time, but I accidentally put too many citizens in play during setup so that may have been my fault. Second time, a magic crocigator, a god, and a Terminator messed her up. X was actually the least useful character–his biggest contribution was blowing up environment cards with that eye-beam of his–but Steve Irwin and Carter Hall really pounded the damage down. I honestly have to award MVP to an environment triceratops, though, who was extremely helpful about mowing down citizens for me so the other two could focus on their business.

I swear to god I love the frigging Sentinels.

Plague Rat went to the Final Wasteland to hunt down Chrono-Ranger, who was actually in the past hunting Plague Rat so they just missed each other. Instead, the rat found the Sentinels, Dark Visionary, Tachyon, and Engine of War Bunker. I was worried that the Sentinels wouldn’t last, but their constant teamwork (Sentinel Tactics and Hippocratic Oath both got out in the first round) ensured that they’d always be capable of both inflicting damage and healing. Dark Visionary was far and away the most important member of the team, though, using a combination of her base power, Precognition, and Suggestion to make sure Plague Rat only ever got to play useless ongoing cards that either she, Tachyon, or the Engine of War would destroy.* Tachyon was the biggest damage dealer due strictly to her late-game Lightspeed Barrages, but the Engine of War pounded away pretty hard first with a Flak Cannon, then with a Grenade Launcher when one would become relevant, and after round four with both thanks to a Turret Mode. The environment spat out a few monsters that didn’t impress anyone and were destroyed quickly by barrages of telekinetic force and heavy artillery.

The game was over in eight rounds. All the heroes were down by a maximum of nine HP.

*Technically not true. He did get out one Tooth and Claw, but Tachyon made it completely useless with a Hypersonic Assault the round before, so as far as I’m concerned, the only card he played during that round was an Infection Dark Visionary destroyed before it could even affect the Engine of War.

After two failed attempts to save The Dreamer from succumbing to whatever the Treacherous Ape is trying to get her to do (according to conversations elsewhere on this forum) in Megalopolis, the team of Parse, Absolute Zero, Setback, and the Scholar had better luck in the universe where the little girl was roused from slumber while on a tour of the Freedom Tower.  Sadly for Setback, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when there were two Entry Points and a Dark Hero active and got overloaded with psychic damage, but that did allow Absolute Zero to take out the last two projections needed to save a young girl from her own nightmares.

After getting stomped into the ground by Iron Legacy a few times I decided to change tack and make myself feel better by beating up gloomy.

Seems a cult following for him had sprung up in The Block of all places.  Rook City Wraith, Dark Watch Expatriette, a time displaced and confused Engine of War Bunker, and Dark Watch Mister Fixer showed up to sort things out.

I initially thought it was going to be a real quick game as the Drum and Book pulled in the first rounds.  Set ups went fairly well for everyone but Bunker, couldn't pull any power cards so he mainly functioned as Dark Watch Mister Fixer's ammo tank.  After the first two relics dropped I got nervous that Vast Following would pull, so everyone started unloading on Gloomy.  Classic throwing knives, razor ordnance, micro on Wraith.  Shotty with speed loading and a hollow point/shock round rotation going on DW Expatriette.  Gattling Gun and Flak Cannon on Bunker.  Grease monkey fist and dual crowbars on Fixer... Holy crap can he lay down punishment like that if properly supported.  Bloody knuckles, overdrive, charge all saw use in the last few rounds too.

The pouch did pull eventually.  On the last round.  Gloomy only had 7 hp.  Buuut as Wraith could do 8 damage to it, and Expat 6, EoW 5, and Fixer could do 9 (charge, plus monkey and crowbars) I decided to go ahead and take the relic win...  Just cause.

Skinwalker Gloomweaver rose from one of the corpses in the morgue of the Block, but didn’t realize the pocket dimension would contain his newly corporeal form long enough for a group of heroes to mount an offensive. Fittingly, it was Fanatic who led the charge against the Qlippothic monstrosity; Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, the Sentinels, and Haka were all on hand to join the fight.

It was frigging grueling. Twenty-one bloody damned rounds, and I blame every last one of them on Dark Watch Mr. Fixer. Haka and Fanatic were both knocked down to the absolute minimum possible efficiency as each one had to spend at least one round in two crapping out some card to sacrifice to Bitter Strike; I exempted the Sentinels from this because they don’t have that many cards and needed every one they could pull. It took ten rounds to flip Gloomweaver, and would have taken longer if Fixer’s first card hadn’t been Riveting Crane Style, his second hadn’t been Jack Handle, and his third hadn’t been Harmony. His ability to hit all enemies simultaneously and knock any DR off them was key enough to compensate for how much he reduced Fanatic and Haka to a crawl. The round before Gloomweaver flipped, Fanatic got out her Zealous Offense, which put an even greater burden on Haka to be the one to sacrifice his cards to Mr. Fixer’s blind rage since she couldn’t afford to lose Absolution or Zealous Offense if she wanted to keep Gloomweaver from destroying everyone, but he got by, and Fanatic eventually started getting out a few cards here and there to help; a Sacrosanct Martyr, an Undaunted, whatever.

The Sentinels were the steadiest source of damage, but they didn’t get out Sentinel Tactics until he’d flipped, so a lot of their early damage was stunted by being required to spend their power phase on Mainstay armoring them all. Haka got out a Taiaha fairly early and didn’t have to sacrifice it until he got a spare in his hand, so he was reliably inflicting three points of damage to two targets pretty much all the time.

The inmates in the Block never inflicted any damage. They were either destroyed by a Jack Handle as soon as they got into play, were shot down by agents, or were prevented form inflicting damage by the various cards in the hero decks that prevent bad guys from doing damage.

At the end of the game, thanks to an early play of Hippocratic Oath, the Sentinels were all at max HP, and the rest of the team was in the high teens, save of course for Fanatic, who’d been spamming Sacrosanct Martyr to inflict maximum damage on the zombie-god. I like to think that holy light shattered his spirit beyond reconstruction, but he’s a villain and they seem to have Get Out Of Oblivion Free passes, so probably not.

Setback, the Scholar, Expatriette, and Tempest all got shockingly lucky against Cosmitron in Freedom Tower. I was sure I was gonna die in round three when both Electro-whatever gates came out, but concentrated pouring-on of damage knocked it down to only sixteen HP of damage to everyone, and by then the Scholar had Mortal Form to Energy in play, Tempest had Cleansing Downpour, and Setback had no offense but three cards in hand that would heal the entire party; so everyone was healing back 4 HP per round for three rounds (more when the Scholar got out that one that heals everyone). I was actually being real careful not to inflict too much damage on Cosmitron himself because the only components he had in play were those wussy railguns and I was happier with them in play than a potential army of frigging drones as might happen if he flipped.

Around round ten, the Freedom Tower card that deals everyone 2 HP of cold came out just after Setback had put out the one that lets him absorb and/or redirect damage dealt to other heroes, and he had a good store of unlucky tokens stockpiled, so Cosmitron was taking 8 HP per round from that card (by my reading, Setback still has to suffer damage that targets him and he can’t redirect that; am I wrong?). That helped a lot. Setback was down to 3 HP at the end, but everyone else was at least in the teens when Expatriette played her final Unload with a shotgun, an Uzi, a pistol, and some flaming ammo in one of them to blow the robot apart once and for all.

With Cosmitron reduced to so much crackling rubble, the heroes then all went to find Unity and kick her ass for her, because her Playground came into play and turned all ongoing cards into equipment cards exactly before Cosmitron destroyed all equipment cards. It wasn’t really her fault, but it wasn’t really not her fault either, so I don’t want to hear anyone complaining about fairness.

Completely unrelated to the game I just played, I wonder if the upcoming character Captain Cosmic’s nemesis will be the currently unnamed jerk who decided to power up Cosmitron.

The only requirement is a hero target, Setback is a hero target, so he can redirect his damage aswell.

One should never be surprised when they run into The Ennead at The Tomb of Anubis.  Least of all the paranormal investigator Faye Diamond, the Dark Watch member known as Nightmist.  She was however surprised when the ritual performed by the Ennead tore open a hole in the fabric of spacetime and she recieved help from those thrilling heroes of yesteryear America's Greatest Legacy and G.I. Bunker!

The only members of the Ennead that made it out to play were Nephthys, Geb, and Tefnut, none of the others got a chance to come out to play.  Bunker got his grenade launcher out early, and with Greatest Legacy's support he was able to lob a ridiculous amount of grenades at the egyptians.  Throw in some inspiration, the flak cannon, and turret mode and the vintage artillery fell like rain. 

DW Nightmist meanwhile managed to play lockdown on the villain deck, while they did get a few cards out they never got another of their ilk out to play. 

The environment helped out as well dropping several trials that beat the Ennead as badly as the heroes.   In the final environment turn The Lord of the Underworld Anubis made his grand entrance, just in time to collect Nephthys personally when G.I. Bunker Flak Cannoned her to death.

The heroes never didn't get to recover any artifacts, none the less Faye considered the expedidtion a success.

Wanting to finish off the Scholar just because seeing those black lines makes me feel as if we’re progressing, I threw him against the Chairman when a thought occurred to me: when I started playing this game, I only played three characters at a time because that’s all my space can afford. It wasn’t until I decided to start wiping Vengeance Five games off the map that I cleared a big ol’ space off the living room floor, arranged things in a circle around me, and hunkered down in the center. Now that I know I have room for five heroes, why not try five heroes against the Chairman, since almost nothing in his deck scales with hero numbers, and see if that doesn’t work?

Well, it worked. It worked fast. Six rounds and he was down, after flipping at the start of the third. Team Leader Tachyon kept everyone drowning in cards; Unity was lucky enough to get out Swift Bot and a Platform Bot in the first round; Freedom Tempest had roughly two third of his deck in hand at the end of the game when his first play was Localized Hurricane that just wiped out the mooks; Absolute Zero almost didn’t even have time to get his setup in play but did manage to Impale the Operative in the first round; and the Scholar…well, actually, the Scholar didn’t have anything to do. The Chairman’s first card was “Rook City Is Mine!” which put Mission Control in play, so since the Scholar had no good cards in hand his first play was Know When to Hold Fast, and then Mission Control put Know When to Turn Loose into play. I didn’t mind hitting the Operative for 9 HP, but it sucked not having any cards in his hand.

Oh, well. The Chairman learned a valuable lesson about trying to acquire superhero real estate when they’re home and have something to say about it.

Mission Control CAN'T put Turn Loose into play. It discards one-shots.

Aw, crap. Well, I better go delete the records, then.

Just played a game solo controlling 3 characters. Chrono-Ranger, Legacy and Ra fighting Ambuscade on the Wagner Mars Base.

Man this was easy, but still long for some reason. I felt like I was getting all the right cards and started getting my equipment pretty early. Even an early Countdown didn't hinder me. For example, Ambuscade had his explosive launcher out, but soon enough Ra got a card that made everyone immune to fire. A couple of bounties on Ambuscade and a "Hunter and the Hunted" and Chrono-Ranger became the one taking care of everything coming out. Legacy just had all the right equipment and took most of the damage whenever possible, especially for Chrono-Ranger (instead of having it increased by Hunter and Hunted, it was decreased). Really, the biggest problem was the environment making me discard cards constantly.

Actually, upon thinking about it, I should have won sooner. I forgot Galvanize a bunch of time and that due to a few of the bounties, Ambuscade was taking more damage than others... Regardless, its 2 more down for Ansel Moreau.

I did it right this time, no accidental cheating that I know of, and it was still almost play by play exactly the same as the first time I tried putting Team Leader Tachyon, Unity, Freedom Tempest, Absolute Zero, and the Scholar against the Chairman. Tachyon was probably the reason everyone won, since the other four are all desperately dependent on getting cards into hand, but a big part of the play was Cleansing Downpour to keep Unity’s bots alive and to hit the Scholar with two Mortal Form to Energy cards in play so he was zapping back 4 HP per round, while an early draw of Frost’s Cryo-Chamber meant playing Null-point Calibration Suit early on left Absolute Zero tanking villains who really couldn’t hurt him much faster than he was healing.

While reading a weathered copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the far off wastes of the far future the Eternal Haka was surprised to find a time rift opening in front of him. It had been decades since the last one. He considered it good to take a walk about in the time stream now and again, one gets to be around people again, a chance to see old friends possibly, pick up some more books, and maybe even a cupcake if the time was right. Thus he walked through the time portal to find himself on an old familiar battle ground sadly bereft of cupcakes. The pike industrial complex, where he heard a villain monologuing.

It was Kismet, standing across from her ready for battle were two members of Darkwatch, Nightmist and Expatriette, as well as Rook City’s own Wraith! One would have thought the villainess’s unnatural luck would have kept an additional opponant away, but time has a way of evening out luck. Perhaps that’s why it had to come from so far.

Things went pretty simply. Set ups were fast. Expat had Pride in the starting hand and quick draw so she was able to bring the heat. Haka also therw down punishment and managed to keep himself healed. Wraith played deck manipulation which kept Kismet in check and kept the rats from mutating. DW Nightmist was able with the neckless and deck stacking to keep blasting Kismet’s ongoings and occasionally deal damage while healing herself.

That just leaves 4 base set heroes left to face Kismet! So by all means someone take her out!

Because I am arrogant and stupid, I wanted to get as many slots cleared off as I could. Only six heroes left hadn’t fought any of the Vengeance Five yet, so of them I picked Engine of War Bunker, KNYFE, Dark Watch Mister Fixer, the Sentinels, and Dark Watch Setback (the last choice was agonizing, but between him and Parse, I figured I needed more HP to soak up the hits). The five of them boarded the Mobile Defense Platform, figuring it would just be Baron Blade pulling his usual Bizarro-Murphy-from-Sealab-2021 shtick,* but instead there was a bloody damned army of villains in there that the team was, frankly, woefully unprepared for. The Engine of War was pretty useless; after destroying a couple of enemy ongoings, he didn’t get a weapon car in hand for almost six rounds and was lucky to get a few External Combustions he could use. KNYFE was slightly better, though her first two cards were party-damaging Incidental Contacts because she too couldn’t get any equipment in hand until the end of round two. Mister Fixer tried to keep putting his own style cards in play to sacrifice for punches, but he did end up having to dip into Bunker’s Ammo Drop for the sake of keeping his own Dual Crowbars in play; the Sentinels were, as usual, MVPs with a fairly early play of Sentinel Tactics combined with some lucky draws of their various “damage everyone, or at least more than one person” cards to keep them going at a good clip. Dark Watch Setback contributed slightly more than the Engine of War did, mostly by putting out useless ongoings to sacrifice to either Mister Fixer or Ermine (whom I will hate forever), though he did get off some very well-timed Exceeded Expectations to wipe out his unlucky pool before playing a previously suicidal Cause and Effect.

The Vengeance Five were screwed by, paradoxically, a lucky draw. At the start of round one, Baron Blade helped Proletariat get four clones into play, so of course the heroes pounded on him as hard as they could to make sure he’d finish himself off in round two with his own psychic damage. He put out ten HP of damage in round one, but killed himself off in round two. After that, it was a matter of focusing on whoever was screwing the group more (looking at you, Revenant) or whose death would screw the party least (looking at you, Ermine), and just hoping to get good cards in hand.

Around round six, Writhe was the hero with the most HP left (he had 13) and I finally got Caliginous Form into play, nearly immunizing the entire party from damage. Since everyone else had in the neighborhood of six to eight, that was extremely important. In round nine, the villains were defeated. I’d been delaying killing Friction for as long as possible because when Dark Watch Mister Fixer is in your group, you don’t need anyone’s help wiping out the party’s setup, so a final play of Horrifying Dichotomy wiped her and the Baron out in a single blow.

Sparks: Why would we want to blow up the Earth, where we are right now?
Bizarro Murphy: Because it is…BIZARRO!
Sparks: It’s STUPID.

I will never understand why anyone, supervillains or otherwise, would have any interest in Insula Primalis, but the Vengeance Five did, so Fanatic, Parse, Unity, Haka, and Wraith decided to go stop them because no one needs an army of villains with mind-controlled cyborg dinosaurs or whatever they were actually planning to do. It was a tough fight made easier by a friendly Tyrannosaurus Rex, and by Parse getting Swift Bot and Stealth Bot out for Unity in the first round (I never stop thinking it’s funny when Unity gets to play a bot without having to sacrifice anything), the latter of which was able to absorb a whole lot of damage for the party. Haka was damage guy, as you’d expect, and Proletariat was the first to go down, as you’d also expect. I don’t know whom to award MVP to, but let’s say Unity for her army of bots countering the army of villains and and giving Fanatic a cyber-arm with which to zap-punch villains.

Niece and I playing a game.  (Her 2nd or 3rd time playing.)  Eternal Haka (her), Scholar (her), Naturalist (me), and Absolute Zero (me) verses Advanced Baron Blade on a Mobile Defense Platform.

Due to initial slow damage ramp-up Blade got 15 cards into his discard pile the round we flipped him.  Very few Hasten Dooms, and he played Blade Battalions a lot it seemed.  Niece had fun running Scholar - who mainly tanked damage with Iron Form and played support cards.  Haka got a few weapons out and pounded on stuff - and niece didn't quite finish off Blade with a 10-point Haka of Battle play.  Absolute Zero got his modules and a Focused Apecture out early and did a fair amount of damage.  The Naturalist did a fairly simple play and stayed in Crocodile form most of the game to nom on Blade and his minions. 

The Environment Deck did not really do much.

Baron Blade, Friction, Fright Train, and Proletariat got together in Rook City to try to free their pal Ermine from state prison where she was serving time for being a generally awful person. Nightmist, Setback, Golem Unity, and Ra were on hand to stop them. During the first round, after Nightmist unleashed the most powerful portal possible to the darkness beyond time on all enemies, after Setback pounded on Proletariat’s head, after Ra used his fire to burn the collective villain, Fright Train’s rampage critically weakened the support structures of an old cathedral Proletariat was standing near, causing a gargoyle to fall on the Russian villain’s head, killing him.

Nothing else I can say about this match compares to that. That is all the information worth imparting. All the heroes lived, and all the villains lost, but that is of strictly secondary value to the fact that Proletariat basically died because Bugs Bunny dropped an anvil on his head.

My god. I think I’m done with this game for a while.

Grand Warlord Voss in the randomly chosen Tomb of Anubis vs. more or less randomly chosen Price of Freedom Wraith, Eternal Haka, Bunker, and Nightmist. Voss’s setup cards are one Gene-Bound Frosthound, two Gene-Bound Psi-Weavers, and one Gene-Bound Shock Infantry; his first draw is TCF Conqueror. First round, every hero has taken at least 9 HP.

Wraith plays Throwing Knives and plinks away. Haka plays Ground Pound, thank god. Bunker plays Grenade Launcher and plinks away, finishing off a Psi-Weaver. Nightmist has nothing good in her hand, so she plays Heedless Lash and puts Mist Form into play, which she just does to have something to sacrifice to the warship. Luck of luck, one of the two cards she draws is her Amulet of the Elder Gods.

Shamise comes out of the environment. “Okay,” I think, “I can deal with this.”

Playing two cards because of his warship, Voss plays a Gene-Bound Guard and Field Lieutenant Tamar. All villain targets save for the warship have DR 2; Wraith and Bunker cannot hurt them. I begin to cry very softly to myself, but carrying on is really my only choice, so Wraith plays a Utility Belt to inflict two whole points of damage to Shamise. Haka plays Taiaha and knocks Shamise for three, then the Gene-Bound Guard for one. Bunker plays his Gatling Gun and inflicts one whole point of damage to the warship and two to Shamise, finishing him off. Wraith takes the Rod of Anubis for the sake of having something to hit with. Nightmist plays her Amulet, then damages herself with Investigation for the sake of bouncing it back as one point of damage to the Guard.

Judgement of Anubis comes out, hurting the whole team but luckily finishing off that damned guard so one point of the two points of damage can leak through to the minions. There’s no stopping the hail of damage coming out, though, and Wraith loses her Utility Belt. Everyone is down to about 11 HP.

Wraith has zero effective damage potential, so she plays Infrared Eyepiece to at least bury one more Gene-bound Guard. The minions have to go, so the party grits their teeth and take it as Haka plays Rampage, wiping out the minions and taking a lot of punishment from Anubis for it. His Taiaha finishes off the lieutenant and takes a chunk out of Anubis, though a bit late. Bunker focuses fire on the warship, finally killing it, and getting out some Heavy Plating a bit late to be useful. Nightmist plays another Heedless Lash and bounces the damage at Anubis, and putting a useless Scouring Mists into her hand.

A Swarm of Scarabs come out and I curse every known deity, then make a few up to curse them too. Voss flips and gets a Forced Deployment because of course he does. Wraith tosses out another Utility Belt and starts chucking knives and zapping Voss for an overwhelming three HP. Haka puts out Ta Moko and finishes off Anubis, then wallops Voss, who is not amused. Bunker shoots the alien warlord twice, plays Auxiliary Power Source because what else is he doing with these cards, and passes to Nightmist, who plays Planar Banishment to get rid of the Swinging Blades and the Forced Deployment. A few tons of minions come out, none of whom Nightmist is capable of damaging any longer, so she draws her card and hopes for the best.

Mdjai comes out to ping all the heroes, which annoys me.

When Voss’s turn comes, the damage Nightmist inflicted to herself with her early spells is enough that the rush of minions wipe her out. The rest of the group is anywhere between four and one HP. It seems like game over, but I am stubborn, and I have an ace up my sleeve: Wraith’s Smoke Bombs. Almost any damage anyone would inflict should be reduced to nothing by them. She has nothing useful to do now, so she halfheartedly zaps Mdjai with the Rod of Anubis and peeks at Voss’s deck. Haka plays Punish the Weak and can now inflict three points of damage to a minion, which he uses to wipe out the Gene-Bound Guard first and that Gene-Bound Shock Infantry Next. Bunker shoots as many people as he can. Nightmist’s ghost uses some mojo to heal Wraith up to 2 HP in case something happens.

It carries on like that for four more rounds, with damage being diverted to armored targets and reduced down to nothing so the whole group is at no higher than 4 HP at any time. Wraith gets out a Stun Gun eventually but can’t penetrate Voss’s armor for two rounds until she finally gets a Micro-Targeting Computer and can stun him to the point that he can no longer damage anyone very much and Nightmist’s ghost keeps healing as best she can. In the final round, Voss pulls out another Forced Deployment and, with 24 HP left, that’s pretty much game over. It is not physically possible to deal that much damage with the cards I have, so all I can do is play and hope for the best.

Wraith plays a second Infrared Eyepiece because there’s nothing else to do. This brings her up to eight pieces of equipment in play. She hits Voss for 6 HP with a Throwing Knife and a Stun Gun, and draws an Inventory Barrage.

One of Nightmist’s incapacitated powers is to allow a player to play a card. If Wraith plays that, she’ll inflict up to 16 points of damage. Haka only needs to hit for 2 to finish the game.

So, with Wraith at 1 HP, Haka at 4, and Bunker at 2, the heroes manage to kick the alien out of the Tomb of Anubis.

I should feel exhilarated, and maybe I will tomorrow, but for right now? Yeah, enough is enough.

I wanted just a quick game, so Dark Watch Mr. Fixer and Haka just beat up Miss Information in the Time Cataclysm. So did Dark Watch Expatriette, but only because I misread the chart. Oh, well.

I probably played this horribly, considering how things ended, but...the Dreamer decided to throw a psychic tantrum in the middle of Pike Industrial Complex.  Rats and vats are great playmates.  Legacy, Bunker, Chrono-Ranger and Nightmist sought to prevent things from getting out of hand.

Between Legacy's galvanizing presence, the damage of the other three, and an early chemical explosion of a supercooled trisolvent vat, the projections were gone by the end of the second turn and the Dreamer flipped.  Since the only ongoing in play was Danger Sense, I didn't think it was going to be too bad.  A few turns later, the heroes were down around 5 health, and Nightmist went into Mistform with a Starshield necklace to heal up and build up a bit.  Chrono-ranger bit the dust and I probably shouldn't have tried to manage the flood of projections with only Legacy and Bunker, but eventually things degraded into the projections shaking their fists at the mist while escaped lab rats chewed futilely at those same projections who were strengthened by the presence of two dark heroes and the other three heroes played the waiting game from the ground.  Eventually, two mutagens let the four rats actually take down a treacherous ape and tooth fairy to get the last two projections under the Dreamer's character card and...the day was saved?  It felt like a very bizarre way to succeed.

Plague Rat was causing trouble in the Realm of Discord. I don’t know how it happened, but since Dark Watch Mr. Fixer, Dark Watch Expatriette, and Dark Watch Setback were involved in chasing him down, I will assume Dark Watch Nightmist had something to do with it. The Dark Watch also invited the Argent Adept along, I guess to bolster their suddenly lacking magical might.

I have to say, I have been pretty vocal about disliking the Argent Adept, but in this fight he was key, all thanks to a lucky draw: his first three cards were Rhapsody of Vigor, Sarabande of Destruction, and Drake’s Pipes. With those in play, he was able to keep the party healthy, completely hobble Plague Rat’s Infections and/or the environment deck (first two cards out of it were Portal Fiends, so it was nice that the Adept was able to just make them go bye-bye), and was just in general the main reason everyone survived. Of course Setback was there primarily to give cards to Mr. Fixer’s Bitter Strike, though to be fair Mr. Fixer only cannibalized the team’s equipment when it was necessary to keep his own Driving Mantis out. Expatriette’s first play was an Arsenal Access, which revealed a Tactical Shotgun and an Assault Rifle; an agonizing choice, but I had to go for the shotgun. Plague Rat did not appreciate its effects as it was blasted into his face every round for seven rounds, and she was maybe the single biggest contributor of damage.

In retrospect, I wish I had let Mr. Fixer get infected so he could keep redirecting the damage back to Plague Rat. Ah well, live and learn.

I’ve played…well, I don’t know how many games with Dark Watch Setback now, but you can go to the Google document and count if you’re curious. I just have not figured out what to do with him. He is crippled by the loss of his power to add unlucky tokens to his pool, forcing him–and me–to wait endlessly for a card that will add rather than rely on removals, and I don’t want to derail the thread, but if anyone has an idea of what to do with him, I’d love a private message.

Another Miss Information in the Block. GI Bunker, Ra, Dark Watch Nightmist. Ra fell, which is the first time any hero has ever been incapacitated by Miss Information before. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, though. It took six rounds to get her to flip, and inmates were whaling on him without the defenses Bunker or Nightmist could erect, and he couldn’t draw a staff to get for HP, and that was that. The heroes still won, and good for them, but still, I don’t know what to make of Miss Information actually incapacitating a hero. My world view is shattered.

Just two games left each for Chrono-Ranger and the Naturalist, both of whom were on hand along with the Argent Adept and Unity to beat the crap out of Bomber Blade in the Freedom Tower, who learned it just plain doesn’t matter how many bombs you set if you’re the only target to aim at at Unity has the chance to put out a Turret Bot and two Platform Bots. The bots might not have lasted as long had Chrono-Ranger not been sedating Blade at every opportunity, but still, five rounds and out. The only hard part of it was figuring out which cards to sacrifice to Devious Disruptions.

Chrono-Ranger and Parse are both very good against Grand Warlord Voss. You just keep your portals and your spaceships and whatever to yourself, sir, while my ally makes everything we do hurt you more. Then Nightmist will sit there with her chin tilted forward, begging, “C’mon, hit me, what are you, a wussy or something? My necklace? Don’t worry about that necklace, just hit me, puss,” and Golem Unity’s bots will wreck your onslaught while absorbing a lot of punishment.

Seriously, after you’ve tried to punch Nightmist three times and each time that damage has bounced back at you, I feel like everything that happens to you from there on out is your own fault.

In my quest to clear some heroes off the board, I just threw the Naturalist, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Mister Fixer, and Price of Freedom Wraith against Plague Rat in the Ruins of Atlantis. It took a while because none of them are heavy hitters…or at least, the Naturalist wasn’t, because he spent all time in rhino form with Resilient Hide out so Wraith’s Smoke Bombs would more or less immunize the whole team from damage. His bigger cards could still break through, of course, but preventing all that damage…tasty.

A storm just knocked out my power for half an hour as well as the record of an absolutely cataclysmic beating Chrono-Ranger, Fanatic, KNYFE, and Price of Freedom Wraith laid on Spite, Agent of Gloom. As best I remember it:

The first victim played was a Lost Child, and the first card played was an Innocent Bystander, so the team was able to flip his drug, “Mynd-Phyre,” before it even had a chance to do anything. Chrono-Ranger’s first play was a double-play of Eye on the Prize and “By Any Means,” so everyone was doing plenty of damage right from the start, except for Wraith, whose Infrared Eyepiece made sure Spite only drew the cards the heroes allowed him to. Chrono-Ranger got out a Compounded Bow in round two, so he and Fanatic were both putting out at least 5 HP per round, and KNYFE, with her Prototype Servo-Gauntlet and her two Battlefield Experiences, was generally doing more. Chrono-Ranger’s third and final card was “the Ultimate Target,” but it barely had a chance to matter; Wraith, with a combination of of Utility Belt, Razor Ordinance, Micro-Targeting Computer, and Stun Bolt finished off his final 10 HP with something to spare before the environment phase.

I am immensely pleased that Chrono-Ranger’s final event in this marathon should be one he can hold his head high from.

Trying to whittle a few more off of the list: 

1. [Extra-]Advanced Voss attempted to invade the Final Wasteland, but was thwarted by Dark Watch Expat, Argent Adept, Tachyon, and EOW Bunker. It was hardly a contest at all.  Mr. Graves, sitting first in turn order, had all of Voss' nasty plays covered with ease. Both times that a Forced Deployment came out the man in the suit was waiting with a mode card in hand to destroy it and was then so inspired by AA that he dropped External Combustions on both resultant swarms of minions. A loaded Omni-Cannon fired from turret mode also made short work of the dreadnaught.
2. The young Vanessa Long was found dreaming her horrid dreams in the Time Cataclysm by Redeemer Fanatic, GI Bunker, and Young Legacy. Between =3 and their massive damage output, they quickly cut those pesky nightmares down to size. At the end of the third round they had Inspiring Presence, Embolden, and Sacrosant Martyr all sitting on the table -- none of the baddies really hung for around for long after that.
3. Akash'buta dared to show her face in Rook City and was promptly Taken Down by Legacy, Wraith, Nightmist, and Setback... Just look at that team. Look at it. I don't think I even need to describe the beating that poor goddess took. She didn't help herself any when she discarded some of the scariest cards in Rook City while letting both the private eye and the good doctor come into play, either.

Did the order just change?

Yeah, sorry - my  attempt at a ninja edit was thwarted by a telephone call.

I just thought I was going nuts. I am really glad there was an explanation.

Well, just having an explanation doesn't neccesarily mean you're not going nuts...

Over the weekend, I tried…five, maybe six times to throw Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Dark Watch Expatriette, Dark Watch Setback, and the Naturalist against Iron Legacy, in an effort to get the Naturalist finished. None of the attempts worked. Every attempt sucked. Every part of every attempt sucked, and I eventually realized the only way it would work is if Expatriette got an RPG Launcher and the Naturalist got Crafty Assault both in their first draws, which was statistically inevitable but grueling to consider. Tonight, I rolled more or less randomly (the Naturalist was picked deliberately, of course), ending up with Golem Unity, Dark Watch Expatriette, Price of Freedom Wraith, and the Naturalist against Iron Prick. I was about half boned from the start when three of his four starting ongoings were Demoralizing Presence, Armored Fortitude, and Armored Fortitude; but his last one was the fairly useless Superhuman Redirection, and his first draw was another, so I decided to stick with it, not least because one of Wraith’s hand was an Infrared Eyepiece.

Unity got out a Bee Bot in the first and second rounds, and Expatriette played an RPG Launcher in the second, knocking first his damage buffs off and then taking down his armor enough to bother with hitting him. Wraith took only three rounds to get out her Infrared Eyepiece + Utility Belt + Stun Bolt combo, all of which everyone appreciated, though by then it was too late and Unity, at 1 HP, died instantly to his flipped fury. A first-round play of Natural-Born Vigor made sure the Naturalist could armor himself and attack in the same round, and he played as many ongoings as he could to sacrifice to Iron Douche’s cheap shots. Golem Unity’s death is the only reason the Wraith survived, letting Wraith play two Impromptu Inventions before her turn to get a massive setup in play and then elbow Legacy in the throat to make sure he didn’t inflict any damage that round. In round six it was over, and the Naturalist has cleared all events.

Agent of Gloom in Megalopolis. You’d think that would suck, right? Well, there’s no problem that having a Legacy, even Greatest Legacy, on hand for won’t make at least three times easier; particularly when the rest of the team is Wraith, Setback, and Freedom Tempest. I consider it an insult to your intelligence to describe how it went except to say that Spite’s first played card was a victim card, Legacy’s first was Inspired Presence, and Wraith’s first was Razor Ordinance. At the end of the game, the whole team was only down by 9 HP, and Setback had inflicted most of that on himself with frequent use of Looking Up.

The Chairman attempts to extend his operations to Megalopolis.  Initial opposition from KNYFE, Redeemer Fanatic, and Dark Visionary is easily crushed.  The heroes regroup, call on Haka as a reinforcement, and reengage the villain before he is ready for them.

With the additional hero the underbosses and thugs are more easily handled, and Haka takes great glee in pounding on the Operative after she retaliates on him repeatedly for Organization thugs being taken out.  The Chairman himself joins the fray after a number of underbosses are removed by KNYFE and Haka's assaults.  (Fanatic is getting chops in, but not quite like KNYFE's combos or Haka.  Dark Visionary is demoralizing the Organization psychically, and also manipulating their plans without their knowledge.)

The Chairman and his Organization are defeated.  It seems he miscalculated about a few things between Megalopolis and Rook City.

1.  The jails are more secure.  (The first Prision Break was played as the first villain card play.  The second discarded later on due to a Wrecking Uppercut by KNYFE.)  So the underbosses never got back out into the fray.

2.  Rook City doesn't have a monorail, but Megalopolis does.  A play of "Rook City Is Mine" brought out *both* Plummeting Monorails.  And they proceeded to plummet onto The Chairman and The Operative for two turns.  This accounted for 20 damage on The Chairman, and at least 10 damage to The Operative.  (Helped on the second turn by Dark Visionary playing Wrest The Mind on one so that one of it's attacks finished off The Operative rather than hitting a hero.)  The Chairman himself went down on the next turn as KNYFE worked him over with a combo and Fanatic finished him off.

(Edit: Well, I messed that up.  The Chairman is immune to environmental damage.  I set things back up and finished him off again since the heroes were able to generate the damage on him before the villain deck recycled.  Was much closer though due to some additional healing and retaliation damage.)

I think I dislike la Capitan with H=4. All those crew members ripped the team up. Rook City Wraith went down pretty hard, but Bunker, Dark Watch Expatriette, and the Argent Adept did eventually toss her punk ass back into the Time Cataclysm. The Argent Adept was fairly key here, getting Wraith to throw out a Micro-Targeting Computer-enhanced Throwing Knives twice per round (then Expatriette using her Assault Rifle or Pride and Prejudice twice, depending on circumstances), and Bunker was throwing out a fairly steady string of damage with his Grenade Launcher. The most interesting thing to happen is how many of la Capitan’s good cards were buried by her “keep drawing until you get some crew cards” cards. Woo.

Sadly, as was pointed out to me earlier in these forums under what possibly could have been the same situation (I am just sure it was a Plummeting Monorail), the Chairman is immune to environment damage. After all, why would he be anywhere near a monorail? Trains are for poor people.

I just realized that independently.  Luckily I still had the set-up out and was able to recreate the conditions and pick things back up.  The heroes still won.

Aw crap, I picked heroes for Cosmitron but played regular Omnitron (in Pike Industrial Complex) by mistake. Oh well, at least I get to count Ra off the list, though Tachyon and Rook City Wraith participated.

Yeah, I was in the same position. Even if he wouldn’t take damage, his HP would still draw the monorail’s fire, so all you had to do was keep hitting him.

Yep.  Once I took The Operative out using it I did take out the monorails shortly afterwards.  Haka finished one off and Fanatic had an card that could destroy the less damaged one once Wrest The Mind was no longer going to be useful via it.  I haven't played KNYFE a lot, and she was getting good effect from having equipment out for extra damage and occassionally destroying a card to trigger additional draws and plays.

There. Got it done right this time. I never got out any of Tachyon’s Lightspeed Barrages, which really dragged things out, but a couple of Hypersonic Assaults and Throat Jabs kept things from getting too nuts when Cosmitron had Adaptive Plating Subroutine and an Electro-Pulse Explosive in play while an Irradiated Cyclohexane Vat was turning all damage toxic.

I thought maybe the Tomb of Anubis would make it harder for Dark Watch Nightmist, GI Bunker, and Price of Freedom Wraith to beat up Akash’Bhuta. It did not. It made it longer, but not harder. Akash’Bhuta really is not the equal of a few well-timed Oblivion spells and an External Combustion.

Tempest, Wraith, and Nightmist against the Ennead in Silver Gulch. The only interesting thing to happen was Lost in Time getting played the same round heroes flipped Nuit, but a quick scan through the deck after the game indicates it’s impossible for Nuit to end the game that way, so whew. Otherwise, it was just all about spending the first round reducing Nuit to the lowest HP of the group just in case a gunman came out to target low-HP targets (and he did; fortunately, Set had also been whittled down to take fire). In an H=3 game, Wraith’s Smoke Bombs took care of a lot of damage, sooooo…yeah. That was that. Everyone survived fine. The biggest damage to the party may have come from Nightmist spamming Oblivion spells.

Engine of War Bunker, Greatest Legacy, and Price of Freedom Wraith vs. the Matriarch. Heroes won in six rounds, thanks almost surely to Legacy having a Take Down in his opening hand so Bunker could play a Flak Cannon, shoot her mask, shoot it again on Legacy’s turn, and then Wraith could throw knives at people. The heroes ate her psychic retaliation. In round 2, Bunker, now the highest-HP hero, put out armor to immunize the party from further retaliation and finished off her mask, then started shooting the little prat herself on Legacy’s turn when he got out Inspiring Presence. Wraith got out a Micro-Targeting Computer to start tearing up the Matriarch and her Carrion Fields. The party ate a little more HP, and then Wraith got out her Smoke Bombs and a Utility Belt, which was pretty much game over.

Big props go to the fine police of Megalopolis, who did their duty shooting that little skank. If they hadn’t, her final-round play that got her mask back in play would have made round 7 extremely painful.

I thought maybe I got off easy with the Matriarch, so I tried it again. Random rolls bring out Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Legacy, Golem Unity, and Parse.

The only thing anyone ever needs to say to or about the Matriarch is, “Stealth Bot.”

“But I have counterattacks,” she might say.

“And I might care, if I actually had to kill your birds because their damage wasn’t being eaten by Stealth Bot,” you say.

“But sometimes I do direct damage and destroy ongoing cards,” she might say.

“You know what eats damage and isn’t an ongoing card? Stealth Bot,” you would say.

“But–” she might say.

“Stealth Bot,” you will say.

Then she will shut up and you will win the game.

Engine of War Bunker, Expatriette, and Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero took on Iron Legacy in Insula Primalis. As usual, it was just a matter of losing games until I finally started with enough ongoing-destroying cards in hand to have a chance. Probably wouldn’t have been as bad if I had ignored the random roll environment and just picked one less evil, but meh.

I dunno, I really haven’t figured out what’s supposed to be fun about this guy, since the entire strategy seems to be to rely on luck to skunk him right out of the gate or just concede after round two. Maybe if I fight him enough, I’ll figure out the strategy, but so far it seems to be, “Break his toys in the first round or die.”

I had a marathon game against him using Legacy.  Got damage redirection going and Legacy immune to melee damage; which is 90% of Iron Legacy's attacks.  Key from there is Legacy keeping his stuff out to keep the defense up for the heroes and then the other heroes being able to build up and trash Iron Legacy, or at least knock his ongoings out and make him easier to defeat.  (A similar strategy is having a hero incapped early who has an incap power that protects the heroes.)

The other games have been quick losses, or an early ongoing-stripping card play followed by a beatdown.  You just don't tend to get middle-of-the-road games against him.

KNYFE, Parse, and Setback beat up Baron Blade in the Block. It was shockingly hard, given the only thing KNYFE is good at, but what can you do.

Dark Watch Nightmist, Engine of War Bunker, the Visionary, and Horus versus Skinwalker Gloomweaver on Mars. It was really grueling there at the end, mostly because I gambled badly on Nightmist needing to wipe out a relic and a bunch of voodoo pins with an Oblivion spell enhanced by Imbued Flame…and she drew two 4-point cards. I really need to learn to count cards with her. That knocked everyone down from a comfortable teens to single digit HP, and from there I was quite a bit like a cornered rat, just biting as fast and hard as possible. If it hadn’t been for a very early play of Twist the Ether, with Visionary cynically and gleefully increasing Gloomweaver’s damage against Nightmist (so she could reflect it back at him) and reducing it against all the other heroes, then increasing it when it was time for him to devour his own cards, the team would have lost. Everyone was between 2 and 5 HP in the final round.

Advanced Ambuscade against Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Greatest Legacy, KNYFE, and Tempest in Freedom Plaza was over in about eight rounds, even though Legacy was immunizing the group against projectile damage by round 3. As usual, Mister Fixer was the biggest stumbling point, delaying everyone’s growth with his Bitter Strike. There were three rounds of unmitigated fire damage from his grenade launcher or whatever that card is called, but everything got beat down pretty rapidly.

Wraith, Mister Fixer, and Bunker against Miss Information in Silver Gulch. Her first diversion is “Diplomatic” Envoy and her first draw is Misplaced Memo, so the Envoy is immune to damage and I’ll lose at least one card if I play anything. Fine. I play Wraith’s Stun Bolt because it doesn’t have to inflict damage to reduce damage; Mister Fixer plays Mediation to get out Driving Mantis so at least he can redirect some of that critter’s damage; Bunker puts out Recharge Mode for the cards and so he’ll have something to sacrifice to Miss Information.

“I’m doing fine,” I reassure myself.

The environment deck plays a Prickly Cactus. “Good,” I say to myself, “now I can take down that Envoy card.”

Miss Information kills Bunker’s Recharge Mode and plays “Cat” Stuck in a Tree. I groan, but whatever. Mister Fixer bounces a point of damage back to the Envoy and takes 3 HP because there’s nothing he can do about it.

Another round goes by, everyone’s inflicting damage as best they can…then the environment screws everything with an Explosives Wagon. Suddenly, the only defense the team had–Mister Fixer catching the first hit and sending it back–is worthless, because every damage instance is above 3 and Mister Fixer can only draw style cards and Bloody Knuckles.

Mister Fixer goes down first. The Wraith follows. Enemies keep getting immunized from damage by that damnable Misplaced Memo, which I never have the time to destroy because everything else–a Suspicious Malfunction, a What Doesn’t Kill You–is more dangerous and needs to go first. Wraith’s final act was self-sacrifice; with 1 HP left, anything she did would have killed her, so she played Inventory Barrage to inflict 9 HP to the 10-HP Miss Information. Mister Fixer killed off Misplaced Memo, and Bunker took her out.

Dark Watch Expatriette, the Wraith, Young Legacy, and Horus versus Spite in Rook City because of course it would roll Rook City. With four heroes in play, I wasn’t really worried, especially after discovering Young Legacy had her party-immunity setup in hand before play, so it was mostly just a matter of praying he didn’t draw that one PL531 Compound Upsilon before round 3.

He didn’t.

Horus, however, did get a Burning Tornado out, and Wraith’s plays were, in order, Razor Ordinance, Micro Targeting Computer, Trust Fund, and Impromptu Invention + Utility Belt + Infrared Eyepiece.

Yeah, Spite never really had a chance.

The Visionary, Haka, and Horus just whupped the Matriarch in the Block. I gotta say, she’s kind of a pushover if you have a single high-HP dude with a point of armor to eat all the damage. I never once felt bad about Visionary’s Demoralization…though to be fair, that’s because I destroyed her mask before her second Carrion Fields came out, and the second Carrion Fields was the first and therefore only card drawn on her turn that round. I rested a lot easier when Visionary put that newly-destroyed mask at the bottom of Matriarch’s deck.

Pretty straightforward game of Dark Watch Mister Fixer, GI Bunker, Fanatic, and Nightmist against Omnitron on the Mobile Defense Platfrom (I assume he was trying to cannibalize the technology). Not much to see except a bunch of dudes whaling on a robot, or occasionally a winged dude dropping much smaller robots onto the big one’s head, which is probably not as funny as I think it is but I still laugh. The best moment was when an Electro-Pulse Explosive came into play after Nightmist had her Amulet of the Elder Gods out, so everyone got to safely ignore it and just let her kill it with its own damage. Hee.

Team Leader Tachyon, Young Legacy, Freedom Tempest, and Golem Unity went up against Advanced Gloomweaver in the Final Wasteland (that last combination of two sounds familiar) and whupped him with depressing ease. Thanks in part to Tachyon, it only took Young Legacy three rounds to get out a Motivational Charge and a Legacy’s Ring, so she was healing everyone, punching whatever seemed squishy, and healing everyone every round. At the end of the game, the team was only down by a total of 6 HP.

Two games involving Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Absolute Zero (god do I prefer him to the Elemental Wrath version), Visionary, and Nightmist against Agent of Gloom Spite in the Block. The first one was a massacre. Spite’s first victim card was a Good Samaritan, and by a freak of chance, every time we let him play the top card of his deck to put the Good Samaritan in the Safe House, he drew a card that destroyed a victim–bye-bye, Good Samaritan–and put another in play…and of course it was another Good Samaritan that got destroyed while trying to put him in the Safe House by a card that put yet a third one in play, that then got destroyed by that one ongoing effect of his. Between that and his first drug being the one that deals damage if you use a power, it was impossible to catch up with either the drugs or his HP, and it was over in round 5.

The second attempt was much smoother. Everyone was fine. Nightmist did way more damage to the team than Spite did.

Greatest Legacy, Dark Watch Setback, Dark Visionary, and KNYFE against Bomber Blade in the Ruins of Atlantis. Dark Visionary kept Blade crippled by burying his good cards, Legacy made sure KNYFE was hitting often, and Setback got lucky enough to draw Looking Up in his opening hand so he could participate in the game. It was pretty much a matter of making sure Blade’s HP were the lowest so the Kraken, which everyone knew was coming because Visionary checked with her Prophetic Vision, would deal with him for us.

Redeemer Fanatic, Dark Watch Expatriette, GI Bunker, and the Argent Adept took on Baron Blade in the Mobile Defense Platform (heh), and boy I’m glad I had four of them, because it was a nail-biter to get him flipped before he destroyed the planet Earth. Expatriette did her best to keep the damage going on, but Fanatic really wasn’t pulling her own weight for the first five rounds while we waited for Absolution to get into play. Everyone eventually succeeded, though, and I never even got to bring out the big guns (rimshot) of an Unload, a Turret Mode, a Wrathful Retribution, whatever.

The environment was completely toothless. I didn’t even draw a damaging effect.

Fanatic, Mister Fixer (oh thank god for once it wasn’t Dark Watch), and Dark Watch Expatriette just fought the Matriach in Silver Gulch. Mister Fixer got out a Pipe Wrench in the first play and Expatriette got out a Submachine Gun, so really, nothing worth talking about happened. It was all just a matter of deciding whether Fanatic and Mister Fixer would be hitting a Carrion Field and/or a cohort while Expatriette made every bird that entered the field useless.

I did have a pretty hilarious mental image of an angel, an ancient sifu, and a cyclops with every kind of gun in hand all desperately whaling on the dirt of a Carrion Field until it stopped being evil (as indicated by a ring of stars circling over what counts as the dirt’s head), but yeah, it was all just pounding HP and letting the Matriarch be completely ineffectual against the team with her counterattacks.

Team Leader Tachyon, Rook City Wraith, and Bunker: EOW are called to Wagner Mars Base to deal with "ghosts".  There they find the phenomena is due to a young child.  Combat against The Dreamer's projections begins!

Early rounds are projections coming out faster than the heroes can stop them since no one has a base damage power and are not getting good early draws.  However, they get some equipment built up* and deal with the initial group of projections before too much damage is done.  Wraith's default power has been used repeatedly essentially to discard a number of environment cards due to limited attack options.  TLT's default power has been useful for making up for the damned Tooth Fairy projections.

The flip side battle is relatively short since only six projections need to be killed for the win.  This is slowed for a round by The Dreamer not playing any projections for three villain deck draws in a row.  A Meteor Storm helps the heroes by preventing projections and The Dreamer from doing any damage for a turn as well.  Both Whipacorns appear late in order to delay the inevitable.  The game ends on a Macabre Spectre attack (supported by Villainous Weaponry) being deflected back on it by TLT.

* - This group is relatively unaffected by The Dreamers flip since it destroys on-going cards and not equipment.  One Red Dust came up early, and Wraith caused the other to be discarded.

Expatriette and Setback (in Dark Watch mode) figure on taking a few days off in the Greek Isles.  Things go wrong quickly as an earthquake reveals the Ruins of Atlantis, a bunch of Egyptian gods arrive to loot the place, and Haka turns up looking to have "fun".

What proceeded was an endurance contest.  Haka's early play of Ta Moko proved key since he avoided a lot of the Ennead 1-damage attacks, and also took less damage when the attacks were assisted by the environment deck.  Atlantis rolled out a Kraken tentacle early, as well as Mystical Defenses, and both the Ennead and the heroes were getting pounded on.  Lucky for the heroes Shu did not come at as the Ennead got reinforced and soon has six opposed to the three heroes.  Some early equipment destruction slowed the heroes.  Haka rampaged twice to weaken the Ennead.  Expatriette got the SMG out and fed it hollow-point or incendiary ammo consistently.  Setback had issues getting an Unlucky Pool started, so he destroyed annoying environment cards (Toxic Seaweed!) until Looking Up eventually appeared.

Late in the game as the Ennead started dropping, so did Expat and Setback to a reinforced Ennead one-shot (each took 2 cold, 2 fire, and 4 lightning damage) from a 1+1+1 one-shot that was bonused by a Phosphorent Chamber and a Water Leak.  Haka rode it out, and then got benefit from getting Taiaha out and getting to use it repeatedly in a round due to the incap turns.  At that point he essentially beat the remaining weakened Ennead into the dust over the next two rounds.

Kismet (advanced) finished off by Legacy, Ra, Tempest, and Visionary in The Block. 

Too much hero firepower for Kismet to deal with.  Lady Luck and Inconceivable Obstruction slowed things for a bit, but Visionary eventually destroyed them.  Legacy had Inspired Presence going, did a Motivational Charge every so often, and got a key Heroic Interception in play.  Ra got his Staff out, played Imbued Fire, and then pretty much rolled out one-shots (Scorched Earth) and did Pyre shots at Kismet.  Tempest had Resilience and the Shackles out, plus Electrical Storm while doing Squall on most turns for considerable damage to the environment targets.  While not going after Kismet's ongoings Visionary had Demoralization going, and tossed out Decoy and one-shots as needed.   By the later rounds the Talisman was bouncing across and back every round from all non-hero targets damage from Tempest and Visionary.  (Though a one-shot by Kismet got Ra to shoot Visionary for 5 fire damage once - which did destroy a jinx card as well.)  The Block didn't do much.  Inconceivable Obstruction and Prison Riot got more environment targets into play - but either a Kismet one-shot or the Tempest/Visionary blitz would clear them out about as fast as they accumulated.

Alien grudge match in the Freedom Tower! Grand Warlord Voss tried to lead an entire army into a single skyscraper to get Tempest, and it didn’t really work out for him. Legacy, Expatriette, and Horus were on hand to repel the invasion, and, well, when Legacy gets out Inspiring Presence in the first round and Expatriette gets out Hairtrigger Reflexes in the second, that’s basically it. It’s over. His minions died as soon as they came out, leaving the Punisher, the Human Torch, and Storm to just pound on him until it was all over while Superman made sure Voss was hitting him with a damage type he was immune to, not that the last had much of a chance to matter. Five rounds and out.

I don’t know why the Dreamer, Freedom Tempest, Dark Watch Expatriette, and Dark Watch Setback were all in the Mobile Defense Platform. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe none of it happened. Maybe it was all just a dream sequence. Psychics, amirite?

Anyway, Tempest wasn’t as useless as you’d expect him to be, starting off with a strong draw and getting more single-target one-shots in hand than I’d have bet on. Dark Watch Setback was pretty much just there to destroy environment cards. The heavy lifting was up to Expatriette, but turns out that between an Assault Rifle and a Tactical Shotgun, she was pretty much up to the task. All the projections were destroyed in fairly short order, and then Link climbed the mountain to play the Ballad of the Wind Fish on the eight divine instruments, or whatever.

Oh my…

Luckily John McClane was there to stop them. Also, Voss had a British accent.

GI Bunker, Ra, the Argent Adept, and Setback took on la Capitan in the Realm of Discord. It was a long game, but one of the easiest bouts against her I’ve ever had, assisted by lucky draws or, in the case of Setback’s Fumbling Fool, lucky discards; la Capitan only got to play a single one-shot that stole equipment and/or ongoings. It was just a matter of wearing her down and making sure there were plenty of cards for her to steal so she couldn’t have Bunker’s Turret Mode setup of Flak Cannon and Grenade Launcher.

Hej! Just finished a game in which TL Tachyon, DW Mr. Fixer, K.N.Y.F.E. and DW Setback took on Akash'Bhuta on Insula Primalis. Started off quite smooth with Tachyon, Fixer and KNYFE dealing nice bits of damage to Akash'Bhuta, who herself only put Brambles and Entombs out, and Setback taking some Friendly fire to build up his pool, being in the Wrong place most of the time, Mitigating incoming damage and Cashing out to heal the team. Luckily AB kept discarding Primordial plant life in favor of Raptor packs that were happy chewing on her appendages. However,things became ugly when AB flipped and DW Fixer decided to Jack Handle a row of appendages and dinosaurs to allow AB to heal all her appendages, destroy all hero ongoings and ruin everybody's day. Setback repeating this a turn later did not help, although him returning to Cashing out and Mitigating damage kept the team barely alive until his team-members could finish AB off to save the day.

Citizen Dawn decided to set up her nation on Mars, which I have to admit would not have bothered me. Screw those guys; let them have Mars, for all I care, if it gets them out of my hair. Unfortunately, they decided to take over the Wagner Base, which is not theirs to take, and it offends me to see thieves get away with their prize, so the Sentinels, Horus, Dark Watch Nightmist, and Golem Unity were dispatched to take care of the problem; the Sentinels and Golem Unity were sent on the principle that if the heroes are facing down a nation of super-beings, the heroes should probably try to match the enemies in numbers, heh.

Citizen Dawn had only begun ferrying her subjects up. Citizens Anvil, Battery, Hammer, and Tears were there when the heroes arrived. Doctor Medico and Writhe beat the stupid out of Citizen Hammer and put a hurting on Citizen Tears so Horus could finish her off with a Living Conflagration, then accepted Mainstay’s armoring; Nightmist didn’t have any good spells prepared or relics in hand, so she took a moment to remind herself she’s a Master of Magic; Unity cannibalized a seemingly useless pylon to put out Speed Bot and Champion Bot, but that turned out to be a bad idea because that pylon set the biosphere on fire.

Citizen Autumn ferried herself to Mars. No one cared, though the Sentinels were slightly miffed it meant they couldn’t work at full potential. The heroes focused on beating up Citizen Battery, then went about whupping Citizen Dawn. By round three, Unity had out Speed Bot, Champion Bot, Stealth Bot, Raptor Bot, and usually a Bee Bot as well, so she was really tearing Dawn up, and Dawn was too dumb to stop aiming at Nightmist when the bigger problem had metal teeth latched into her femoral artery, though maybe that’s unfair of me; maybe she was woozy and confused from blood loss. To emphasize the point, Unity put out a Platform Bot and another Raptor Bot, so she was suddenly and reliably inflicting 20 HP per round. Citizen Dawn did not last long once the other Raptor Bot got her other thigh.

I don’t know what Geb, Tefnut, and Nephthys were doing on the Mobile Defense Platform. I have no idea why they would ever even be there. Engine of War Bunker, Setback, and Dark Visionary were involved, though, so chances are the last two of them had something to do with it.

Setback and Visionary whupped on the bad guys as best they could, while Bunker kept yelling, “My guns won’t initialize! Nothing’s working! I need to try an Auxiliary Power Source! Hang on!” Visionary kept giving Setback suspicious looks he missed because he was busy whimpering and dancing like a monkey in a fez away from all the bursts of fire and magic and whatnot that the Ennead (and, occasionally, Baron Blade’s guards, who I guess just obey whatever order is given to them by any tosser with an evil smirk who wears a costume) kept trying to aim at the heroes but somehow always got aimed at Setback before hitting one of their own.

Geb and Nephthys were down, and Bunker had finally been able to initialize his Omni-Cannon, albeit to minimal effect. Visionary glared at Setback and said, “I don’t know how, but this is your fault. Bunker’s guns, the Ennead, all of it.”

“What? No it isn’t oh my god duck!” he yelled as Set came out of the elevator, hucking lightning at everyone. Nuit was behind him, surrounding the Ennead in an unearthly glow bullets bounced off of.

“So your fault,” Visionary muttered.

“So not!” Setback yelled back.

“Are you guys talking? I can’t hear anything! My head is under several inches of metal!” Bunker yelled.

Everyone focused fire on Nuit for a little bit and put her down at the exact moment Atum came up from downstairs.

“How are you even–I don’t get how you make these things happen!” Visionary complained, planting a palm square in the back of Setback’s head for emphasis.

“I am so totally not doing it! Also, ow!” Setback whined back, his tone perhaps justifiable given that he’d been perforated quite a bit in the last fight and his regeneration wasn’t really keeping up with it.

“What?” Bunker yelled.

Atum coughed, embarrassed. “Um, are we going to fight here, or do you guys need a minute?”

“Oh, shut up,” Visionary groused, and stuck invisible fingers into Atum’s brain before wrapping herself in a cocoon of pink energy that drew all of Atum’s flames and unholy power toward her, then bounced it back at him. He burned quite nicely. A few of Blade’s goons came out with marshmallows and hotdogs just in time to see Bunker, whose Flak Cannon finally started working, mowed down Tefnut.

“That’s only five,” Setback observed, accurately. “Should we go find the rest of them?”

“I will kill you in your sleep,” Visionary promised.

“What?” Bunker yelled.

Cosmitron touched down in Megalopolis, and only Price of Freedom Wraith, Dark Watch Expatriette, and Ra were on hand to deal with its shenanigans…and by “its” I am of course referring to Megalopolis, which did way more work to cripple the heroes than the genocidal alien-tech robot did. Wraith had to use up all her Grappling Hooks just dealing with the environment, which left nothing behind for Cosmitron’s plating cards (can’t be bothered to look up the names right now), and that sure did suck having Wraith and Expatriette on the same team. The general strategy was for Wraith to tase Cosmitron, a mental image I will never stop finding funny; Expatriette to shoot it, preferably with an elemental bullet if possible, or to just shoot some drone if not possible; and for Ra to burn whatever would burn. It was a nail-biter having the team so desperately crippled, but good team communication skills and Ra being willing to blow up his staff just to change up the damage type made sure the heroes survived with HP ranging anywhere from 1 to 4.

The Chairman was in the Final Wasteland for…reasons. He’s a murderous dictator and probably insane; I’m sure it makes sense to him if no one else. Mister Fixer, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, Horus, and Golem Unity decided to take care of the problem. It was okay. About the only clever thing that happened was Absolute Zero playing Sub-Zero Atmosphere to deny the Chairman one mook per round. Near the end of the game, Horus kind of screwed up Zero’s perpetual motion build with an Imbued Flame, but it just did more good than harm with Unity’s Raptor Bot and Platform Bot in play. A late-game Grease Gun made sure no one took any harm from a focused blitz to inflict about 18 HP on the Operative and 15 on the Chairman, and from there, everyone saw the writing on the wall.

Took two tries to beat basic Baron Blade with Ra: Horus, Dark Watch Nightmist, and Dark Watch Setback.

Main issue in the first game was getting damaging powers into play for Ra, getting a unlucky pool started for Setback (which seems to be a recurring issue with me playing him), and DW Nightmist simply not being able to carry the load single-handed.  They managed to flip Blade with 14 cards in the trash, but were so weakened at that point that an Elemental Redistributor and an array of Blade Battalions took them down.

Second go-round started better for the heroes.  Ra got Flaming Tornado and Staff of Ra out early.  Setback got Looking Up in play in Round 2.  Nightmist didn't start off as well, but she caught up quickly, and was essentially playing tank due to having the Amulet in play.  With more firepower bearing on Blade the heroes kept up with him, flipped him in Round 4, and then unloaded on him to finish the game by Round 7.

The Chairman again, this time going up against Freedom Plaza (I need to print off those downloaded environment cards; I’m getting sick of the ones I have). GI Bunker, Young Legacy, the Argent Adept, and Nightmist took 'em on. It took forever because of strategizing the Argent Adept’s many many many combinations of powers, but ultimately it turned out okay for the good guys. That Inspiring Presence made Nightmist’s last Oblivion spell really hurt, but it hurt the bad guys worse, so all’s well that ends well.

Yeah, same here. I really hope I don’t end up playing him again before this thing ends.

To everyone! We are under 100 matches left! Let's get this thing finished!

Matriarch and her birdies are in the Realm of Discord - harvesting apples I think.  Fought there by Absolute Zero - Elemental Wrath, Freedom Tempest, and Rook City Wraith.

Standard opening with Mask dying, and immediately coming back.  Along with a Carrion Field and fowl, fowl, and more fowl.  AZ gets a module out and starts chipping away at the Mask and the Matriarch.  Tempest plays some one-shots and then gets Cleansing Rains out since it is obviously going to be needed.  Wraith starts pouring equipment into play (thank you Impromptu Invention); she starts Stun Bolting the Matriarch and reducing fowl with Throwing Knives from her Utility Belt.  The Realm of Discord is annoying, but not amazingly so, until Time Speeeds Up.

More fowl pour out, along with both Cohort Ravens at once.  The Matriarch has DR -2, damage +2, and one raven starts eating equipment cards.  (No ongoings about due to a one-shot.)  The only thing keeping the heroes upright by then is Smoke Bombs bouncing damage around and reducing it, plus Tempest's Otherworldly Resilience.  The Realms next curveball and the one making all but low HP immune.  (yay)

Tempest finally gets Electrical Storm out and zaps a big pile of fowl.  Retaliation damage bounces among the heroes and they are all under 10 HP.  Tempest then destroys a few environment cards to get the distortions out of the way.  More knives and stun bolts at the Matriarch and the ravens trying to whittle them down to being killable.

More fowl come out and the villain deck is close to empty.  AZ shoots at the ravens (one shot for cold damage to bird, fire damage to himself - converted into cold and healing a point.)  Tempest zaps the four birds and the retaliation damage goes around.  He then Chain Lightnings the ravens and the lone remaining Carrion Field.  Plus Cleansing Rain to get the heroes some healing.  This sets up Wraith - knives drop the raven supplying DR; the next knife gets the other raven; and the third is the Matriarch's.  Followed by a Stun Bolt. 

The race is on see if they can drop her before a pile of fowl heal her up.  First card off the reshuffled villain deck is - The Mask.

Which makes things a bit anti-climatic.  Tempest has a supply of Into the Straosphere cards.  The Mask goes back on top of the villain deck for the next two rounds while the heroes pound on the Matriarch and whatever other targets come up.  (looking at you annoying Explosive Bubbles.)

Heroes win with about 6-8 HP each.

As an aside, I really want to thank JimB for the hilarious descriptions of his battles.

You’re welcome. I’d like to do another funny little story here, but I can’t do it. I just spent two bloody damned hours in a single game of Wraith, Setback, Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero, and the Argent Adept against Skinwalker Gloomweaver in the Time Cataclysm. Everyone’s damage output was so low, and everyone had so many conditions by which they regained HP, the game became physically painful. My back and butt hurt from sitting there for so long. Oh well, at least it’s done now.

The Matriarch is finished. She tried to take over 1863 (it should surprise no one that a person who thinks you can take over a year is not effective at carrying out her goals), so Absolute Zero, Tempest, Unity, and Engine of War Bunker decided to take her on. In round one, Zero played a Cold Snap to make sure birds died before they could attack, because the counterattacks generally hurt less than leaving the birds in play. Tempest knocked the mask back atop the Matriarch’s and wiped out the birds, triggering a lot of evil responses from the Matriarch and a Carrion Fields, but the team sucked it up in time for Unity to get out a Bee Bot and Stealth Bot, which instantly cured almost everything I was afraid of from then on out. Bunker got out his armor, a time portal appeared to zap the Matriarch and the Carrion Fields and the Bee Bot to destroy it before it could zap any of the heavily bruised heroes. The Matriarch impotently put her mask back into play, everyone got to work on their builds except Tempest, who bitchslapped the mask back atop the deck one more time while I cackled.

Pretty standard after that. Zero had out his Focused Apertures, Tempest never got out a good power but had plenty of useful one-shots, Unity…actually struggled a bit to get a half useful card in hand, and Bunker shot everything he could. Stealth Bot didn’t last forever, but it lasted long enough to do some good while everyone, including a kindly sheriff, focused fire on the Matriarch. They got the job taken care of, though HP were getting to be a rare resource there at the end.

Also, I am pretty sure one of the bystanders was a young Alfred Hitchcock. Temporal paradox averted by fulfilling circumstance, yo.

Iron Legacy is surveying locations for internment camps in the Final Wasteland when a group of heroes appear.  (GI Bunker, Eternal Haka, Ra, and DW Setback.)  Haka is annoyed at the falling property values due to IL's interest in the area.

Match #1 is a 4 round trashing of the heroes.  Ok, rematch.

Match #2 see-saws, but goes the heroes way.  Iron Legacy starts with Galvanized, Superhuman Redirection, Demoralizing Presence, and Armored Fortitude.  During the battle he added a 2nd Superhuman Redirection and Armored Fortitude.

GI Bunker works on getting an Omni-cannon shot going, some armor, and stopping the environment deck.  Plus he Panzerbusters IL every so often to help the others when IL's DR gets to -2 (and eventually -3).  Haka does some initial damage, loses his Taiha, and settles on playing Ground Pounds and drawing cards up to power a Haka of Battle.  Ra plays Drawn To The Flame and IL's DR is just enough to pull the damage under the Superhuman Redirection trigger amount.  So Ra does this or Pyre depending on IL's DR at the time, and he also uses one-shots to augment the damage.  (Ra was the one keeping IL's healing from simply being unstoppable.)  DW Setback gets Looking Up out early, and also is the only one with one-shots that can take out IL's on-going cards.  He gets one of the Superhuman Redirections early on, and takes out the other one when he has 7 HP left and 7 tokens in his unlucky pool.  Iron Legacy takes a nice shot and Setback goes down… oh wait, he played Silver Lining the turn before.

And the Ancient Library comes out.

Iron Legacy gets free of the Ground Pounds and levels Ra while he also heals 14 HP back to get up to 24 HP.  The heroes other than Ra have 7-8 HP each.  He also plays anoter On-going to inflict projectile damage on those heroes who play cards.  (Pity Ra and Drawn To the Flame are gone.)

GI Bunker Panzer-bust IL to make hero damage irreducible (IL is currently DR -3). 

Haka has a Taiha out.  He draws two more cards via Ancient Library, plays Haka of Battle - draws 2 more and then discards 12.  Taiha does 15 damage to Iron Legacy; dropping him to 9 HP.

Incap Ra grants Haka a power use - Taiha again to take IL to 6 HP.  Over to Setback.

Setback plays a fairly meaningless one-shot after drawing two cards for Ancient Library.  He gets hit for 5 HP dropping him to 2 HP.  For power he does Looking Up and takes IL to 3 HP…

At which point an Abomonible Snowman eats Iron Legacy.    Ancient Library draws were putting environment deck cards in play.  And the Snowman goes after 2nd low HP - which Setback set Iron Legacy up for.  Victory!

Miss Information on a shopping trip to Megalopolis - time to purchase some diversions and some clues for a set of hapless heroes.  On her gift list this month are Legacy, Bunker, Freedom Tempest, and Golem Unity.

Diversions early and one-shots; not so many clues.  Unity loses her golems in hand.  Then everyone else loses their on-going cards.  Legacy starts playing equipment to be sacrificed and galvanizes for the others to fight diversions.  Bunker manages to keep a Flak Gun out and blasts a branch so that a stuck 'kitty kat' can fall to the ground.  Freedom Tempest ends up playing one shots for damage or utility value - like Reclaim From The Depths.  Golem Unity quickly gets some new golem cards and then rolls out Swift Bot and Stealth Bot.  Champion Bot and Cryo Bot turn up a short time later.

Some clues appear, as well as another diversion.  The bots suck up damage, and Unity feeds a Platform Bot and Raptor Bot into the fire to help kill diversions and be sacrificed.  Unity repairs bots twice to keep some in the fray.

More clues show up.  More bots die. With four clues in play Miss Information flips and the final firefight starts.  She zaps the heroes with one clue; the heroes discard cards to kill another.  Shortly afterwards Tempest Ball Lightnings the other two.  Unity is down to Champion Bot and Cryo Bot, but every time Cryo Bot gets hit he is hitting back for 3 cold damage. 

Two diversions come out.  They work over everyone and in turn get hammered by Legacy, Bunker, Tempest, and Cryo Bot.  Miss Information takes Legacy out, but she is weak enough (and the heroes have enough HP left to withstand retaliation) that Bunker's Flak Gun and a Chain Lightning from Tempest bring her down.  (Bunker at 6 HP, Tempest at 2, Unity at 3 - and no live bots.)

Those sound like good games, Oaktree. Also, thanks for tackling Iron Legacy a little.

I'm trying at this point to make sure I fight all the different villains possible at this point.  Game against Spite sometime tonight is the last, and then I just help with the clean up.  I think with that I will have fought all the villains but three at least once during the event (missing Akash'bash, Ermine, and Vengeance Blade.)

Ugly game against Spite in Insula Primalis using Freedom Wraith, GI Bunker, DW Setback, and DW Nightmist.  Typical in that the early stage is seeing how much damage the heroes have taken and how much equipment/ongoings they can keep deployed by the time Spite gets all five drugs out and flips.  (With a secondary challenge of whether they try and can keep any victims in the Safe House until then.)

Answer was not much equipment, and three victims.  Plus having Spite down about 10 HP by then due to Wraith giving him a few Throat Jabs under the theory that if he is not causing damage he is not healing either.

Flip-side turns into the race to wear Spite down before he finishes rubbing the heroes out a few points at a time.  The race results:

Wraith - Went down quickly due to nemesis bonus.  While she was active she was putting Stun Bolts into Spite to reduce his damage and due her part to take him down.

GI Bunker - Went down second from taking damage for using powers.  Never got an Armor Plating card to help with that.  But his consistent use of Panzer-Buster was helping with the damage the others were inflicting.

DW Setback - Helped heal the group a bit, inflicted a little damage, and lasted longer due to reduced use of powers.

DW Nightmist - Ultimate winner with *1* HP left.  Spell use got her around the toxic damage from power use.  She could also run out the Necklace and heal 4 HP a round if necessary (which essentially was how much damage Spite did to her most turns.)  A Mist-Fueled Recovery put her back near full HP once, so she could afford to cast Oblivion shots to wear Spite down, and then try to hold on while she drew cards back up (via the other hero incap abilities mainly.)  And once she got above Spite in HP the various dinos tryed to gnaw on him instead of her.

Not near as exciting as it may sound.

50 matches left!

Ambuscade hiding in Silver Gulch and nuked in under five full rounds by Young Legacy, EoW Bunker, and Elemental Wrath Absolute Zero.

Highlight was AZ's turn in Round 4 after Ambuscade had been stripped of Shield, Cloaking Device, and a few guns.  Damage was +2 (Inspiring Presence) and Cold Damage an additional +1 (Focused Apertures).

a. Impale triggers on Ambuscade for 5 cold damage.

b. Frost-Bound Drain one shot.  6 cold damage to Ambuscade.  5 fire damage to Absolute Zero.

c. Isothermic Transducer kicks in for 8 cold damage to Ambuscade.

d. Elemental Wrath hits Ambuscade for 5 more cold damage.

Roughly half of Ambuscade's HP in one turn.

I went to the sheet to see what game to play, and I wanted to finish off Plague Rat, but someone beat me to it. Oh, well. Still had fun.

La Capitan brought her "B" game to the Ruins of Atlantis to face Tempest, Wraith, Eternal Haka, and Parse.

The ship was under Savage Mana by the end of Round 2.  Only one crew seen and he ended up there as well*.  La Capitan spent cards on revenge, more revenge, plunder, more plunder, and one theft of four cards so that she could flip for one round.  In the mean time she got pounded by Mystical Defenses, the Kraken (in the next to last round), Tempest (squall, Grevious Hailstorm, and multiple times by Chain Lightning), Flying Wraith hardware (mainly Stun Bolts), Taihia thumps, and Pinpoint Shots.  Salvage from the Deep was played twice - which Parse used to get Syntantic Analysis back twice.

* - Well, Battleforged turned up in the last round, but La Capitan had about 3 HP at that point.

The Dark Watch team failed to take out Advanced Omnitron in the Wagner Mars Base.

The game was going swimmingly until Omnitron went on a terraforming spree and bulldozed a Self-Destruct Sequence that had just been played. One of the cards that came out was an Electro-Pulse Explosive. The next turn, it sprayed the heroes with Sedative Flechettes and then went through a Technological Singularity. The heroes managed to hang on for a bit under cover of a Meteor Storm, but it was heading downhill.

I found the team fun. Figuring out when Dark Watch Mr. Fixer should use his power was interesting; probably he should have used it more often, given the destruction potential in Omnitron's deck.

Woohoo! Only 25 matches left!

We must have been playing at the same time - sorry. You did still get to play Sentinels, though, so all is good, right?

So Setback, A0, and Ra against Advanced Plague Rat in Metropolis was suprisingly tough. Metroplois had the team locked up for 2 of the first three rounds, and Plague Rat came out swinging hard. Zero didn't find an IT until after the Rat had flipped and incapped  Setback . Once Zero finally got set up  and had both Ra and Setback giving him out-of-turn powers, however, he burned (froze?) it to the ground  (IT, NPCU,  Apertures,  Shockwave, Impale) . Three shockwaves per round got ugly quickly.

I thought about being awful to myself and playing Gloomweaver on advanced vs. Papa Legacy, GI Bunker, and POF Wraith, but my wife staged an intervention and I sobered up. I suppose I could have brought along Ra and hoped for an Imbued Fire, but melee & projectile were the order of the day. Not an exciting game at all - a grand total of one cultist and one relic, and it was over in 4 (5?) rounds.

And it happened again with Omnitron! Oh, well.

Advance on Gloomy doesn't always matter even with that team, since his Relics don't gain the immunity.

Oops, that was me.

Bunker needs some love against The Chairman.  It will take two games unless someone has multiple Bunker decks and decides to fight him with multiple Bunker suits at once.

That's ok. Yeah, the Chairman will take two games, but all the other can theoretically finish in one if you want to take all those heroes.

CRAAAAAAAP, I drew heroes to finish off Skinwalker Gloomweaver but played against Agent of Gloom. Oh well, at least with Team Leader Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Bunker, Dark Visionary, and Golem Unity, it only took four rounds.

Finished off Skinwalker Gloomweaver. Team Leader Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Bunker, Dark Visionary, Golem Unity. The venue was Pike Industrial, and I’m sure you can all imagine Visionary was way more worried about controlling the environment deck than the villain’s or any hero’s, so she made sure the worst environment cards stayed buried, and Unity made sure her first two golems were Speed Bot and Stealth Bot to handle all the damage coming from a Supercooled Trisolvent Vat we actually left in play for Absolute Zero’s sake. Other than that, it was all pretty standard: everyone did what they could to shoot bad dudes or beat bad dudes up, Unity made careful use of the Inspired Repairs she was lucky enough to draw, and everyone just laid it on as hard and fast as they could. The heroes, it turns out, laid it on harder and faster than the zombies could.

Omnitron going down verses DW Expatriette, DW Setback, and The Sentinels not very noteworthy.

Noteworthy was the first match which was Omnitron in Rook City trashing them in three rounds.

1.  Round 1 - Omnitron plays an Assault Drone and a Terminator Drone - Expat and Setback get hit for some points.  DW Setback is DW Setback and can't do anything really - so he puts an on-going out.  The Sentinels draw more cards, put Sentinel Tactics in play, damage Omnitron for a few points, and Writhe trashes a Terraforming off the bottom of Omnitron's deck.  DW Expatriette puts out a Shotgun and blasts the Assault Drone.

The environment deck plays Scum and Villainry -- and play an EPE off Omnitron's deck.

(The Sentinels grab their heads and go "Oh NOOOOOOO" in unison like lemmings.)

2. Round 2 - Sentinels go BOOM.  Expat and Setback take 15 as well.  Omnitron plays Technological Singularity and blasts the shotgun (+ 2 more damage to Expat).  Then puts the Assault Drone back in play from the trash.  More damage for Setback and Expat.  Setback is Setback and can't do much of anything.  Expat fishes Pride out using a card and fires a few futile rounds downrange as the mechanisms close in for the kill.

The environment drops a statue on someone and laughs.

3. Round 3 is mop up for Omnitron.

Finished off the Agent of Gloom too. Tempest, the Sentinels, Dark Watch Expatriette, and Dark Watch Nightmist went ahead and took him down. Two victim cards out in the first round, so Spite never got to flip his drugs, though I almost ran out of victims because Tempest and Nightmist got kind of crap draws all game long and had no real damage output. The Sentinels had to pick up the slack, and Expatriette’s first-round Tactical Shotgun is always a welcome sight. The fight’s length probably owes something to the Realm of Discord, though, since a lot of time had to be spent dealing with environment cards.

Oh crap! Yeah, remind me never to allow that combination of decks in any game I’ve ever in. Screw that noise.

One fight left against the Chairman. Random dice rolls got me Bunker, Mister Fixer, KNYFE, and Dark Watch Expatriette, though it took four fights and after the third one I just said screw it and threw him into the Freedom Tower. Took Expatriette forever to get a gun, but she did get out Hairtrigger Reflexes, so she spent a few rounds just buffing herself and taking shots at all the punks who came into play.

Looks like it’s GI Bunker, Fanatic, KNYFE again, and Setback against them in Silver Gulch.

Only 5 matches left. Just one game against Iron Legacy.

Good god.

Only Engine of War Bunker survived the assault on the Chairman in Silver Gulch. No one had the ability to inflict damage across wide groups of targets, and of course they kept slamming out underbosses and thugs and bringing them back out with Prison Breaks. At the end, the villain deck had been shuffled, and a desperate Bunker had nothing out but a Grenade Launcher, a Maintenance Unit, and a Turret Mode, and he was very lucky that each of his flipped teammates had the ability to let him use a power. He was regaining 6 HP a round and generally losing slightly less than that from counterattacks until finally the Chairman fell down and Sheriff Pratt could stop being, well, a prat and aim at someone who could actually be shot effectively.

Who’s left? Iron Legacy? Ugh. Well, there’s a lot of damage potential (Bunker, Setback, Dark Watch Mister Fixer, Tachyon if she can bury enough cards) and ongoing-destruction potential (Tachyon, Argent Adept, Setback) in that remaining five-person group, though probably it’s just suicide, but who knows, maybe I’ll give it a shot tomorrow.

Finished off Miss Information on advanced mode with NM, Papa legs, Redeemer Fanatic, and Unity in Atlantis. It was a long slow slog, but they got it done.

The real story was in their first failed attempt, however. Ms. Twain opened with a Diversionary Tactics, chaining into another Diversionary Tactics, and then a Missing Resources. At the end of the first villain turn the heroes were running in circles trying to deal with a "Cat" Stuck in a Tree, an "Old Lady" in the Street, a "Diplomatic" Envoy, and a "Threat" to the President. Oh, and every one-shot in their opening hands had been discarded. They chased the "Cat" into a Phosphorescent Chamber and got so confused by all the shiny lights that they dropped even more of their stuff on the ground. They began to get a clue about their demure seceratary shortly thereafter, however, when they began to hurt even worse than before. "Oh," said Miss Information, "What Doesn't Kill You just makes you... <snigger> stronger <snicker>."

So at the end of the second villain turn (remember that that each hero had already discarded 2-3 cards at this point):

1. Destroy 3 hero ongoing or equipment cards.
2. The player with the most cards in play must destroy 1 of their non-character cards.
3. Deal the 2 hero targets with the highest HP 6 melee damage each.
4. Deal the 2 hero targets with the highest HP 5 melee damage and 5 energy damage each.
5. Deal the 2 hero targets with the lowest HP 5 cold damage each.

Yeah, they don't really like to talk about "that one time in Atlantis." Tempest will never let them live that one down.

Congratulations, everyone! WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congrats everyone!

It's all black, well done people!

Jeez! Only 423 of those matches were played by JimB, were you slacking? Is there some sort of award we can hand out to JimB for entertaining session reports/endurance?

After some formulas, I got all the people that contributed and how many matches they had:

Congratulations to everyone, and especially JimB. Amazing job!

That number is probably quite inflated by me playing as many five-person games against the Vengeance Five as I could manage. A more accurate number would be reflected by counting my posts in this thread.

All the same, thank you for the notice. I’m glad to have participated, and a little sorry the game ended. It was fun while it lasted, though.

It was great fun reading all of your reports, JimB! I'm just sorry I never got a chance to contribute beyond the PBF game.

This event did get me playing a bunch of heroes I haven't played that often.  Plus it's always fun (sometimes) to try out new combinations to see some thrilling victories and some crushing defeats.

Though I am thoroughly sick of DW Setback right now.

Thank you. Most of them aren’t very good, but there are three or four okay ones in there.

Say that twice, brother, because I am right there with you. Say it twice.

I see that.  You played him 15 of the 29 matches he was in.  I did another 7.

Well someone had to be last, lol (I joined pretty late)

Good work everyone. Especially Jim B, he came in like a wrecking ball.