Fun interactions you stumbled upon

Random picks pitted Legacy, the Sentinels, Captain Cosmic, and Ra against Plague Rat (in the Mobile Defense Platform, for the record, though that never amounted to anything). It’s not the best possible setup, but far from the worst.

Now, I’m sure I’m not the first person to realize that Imbued Flame + Flesh of the Sun God doesn’t just de-fang Plague Rat, it grinds his fangs into powder, mixes the dust with kitty litter, and flushes the mixture down the toilet, because all heroes become immune to the damage they’d inflict on themselves while infected or that another card would make them inflict on one another. It was still a delight to discover, though, because it freed Legacy up to Galvanize people without me having to worry about suicide pacts.

What really made it fun, though, was Captain Cosmic deciding to buff Ra with Augmented Ally to make sure he could still deal damage while more or less immunizing the party from harm, Autonomous Weapon so that power would hurt even more, and Dynamic Siphon to punish Plague Rat for damage he inflicted directly.

I almost wish I’d left Plague Locus in play to put the screws to Plague Rat just a little harder.

I’m not totally sure this one is legal, but…

Setback, Tempest, and Omnitron-X took on Kismet in the Block. Setback had Wrong Place and Time in play, allowing him to spend tokens to redirect damage to targets of his choice. While the Talisman was in the hero play area (Omnitron’s, if you were wondering), a Block Guard came into play. It wanted to shoot the Talisman for 1 HP and render it incapable of inflicting damage; because of Wrong Place and Time, it was redirected to Setback; because he always had at least one token in his pool, Setback redirected it to Kismet and she was left unable to inflict any damage to the heroes for the final 44 HP of her criminal career.

I’m still chuckling.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the Talisman is still a villain target, even when it's in the hero play area.

I like the Plague Rat one turning an infedtious disease into "harmless" fire. The Talisman is still a villain target so Wrong Time and Place would not be able to help the Talisman.  

When speaking of fun interactions, there's always the obvious two: Mister Fixer in Time Cataclysm's Fixed Point being able to use multiple tools/stances at once, and The Naturalist in a Fixed Point being able to morph into all three forms at the same time.

Another obvious one that has led to many trivial games is Ra's Flesh of the Sun God + Insular Primalis's Volcanic Eruption. The first time we fought the Vengeful Five, this combo happened on turn 2 (first environment card), totally wiping the board of non-character card villains and crippling all the character-card villains.

Legacy's Take Down + Atlantis's The Pillars of Hercules is a wonderful one, especially if you have multiple Take Downs or you have Visionary use Mental Divergence to recycle them.

Absolute Zero in Atlantis's Phospherescent Chamber is pretty fun! It buffs his self-healing via cold damage by +2.

Tsk. Oh well, it was all in good fun, and we got a laugh out of it. Thanks for the clarification, though.

It IS fun to play against challenge mode Kismet with Setback, though, and redirect the fire damage from the talisman to Kismet. I just imagine Setback holding a practically molten talisman but not feeling anything, and going, “hey, does this feel warm to you?” and pressing it against her face, causing her to scream in comic agony.

Since Omnitron-X was the one actually holding it, I have to imagine the scene was actually a buff moron and a skinny robot each standing ten feet away from Kismet, playing Keep-Away with the Talisman and her trying to frantically to hit the Talisman with her mind-beams that she just kept blasting herself in the backs of her own eyeballs.

Also with Plague Rat, an Infected Dr. Medico with the Hippocratic Oath means he runs around healing everyone while utterly rabid. When this happened at our table, I maintained that it must have "felt like being bitten by Listerine."

One of my favorite shenanigans was in a forum game vs. La Capitan with Dark Visionary.  I put Wrest the Mind on Siege Breaker, Twist the ether on myself.

Oxygen Leak was in play, so I could turn the Wrest damage to fire so I wouldn't hit my favorite toy or myself.  Then I put Mass Levitation into play to stop the toxic damage from Oxygen Leak.

It was fantastic because Siege Breaker was destroying his fellow citizens (Including Mable before she could even act) and beating on La Capitan.

Sky-Scraper + Mr. Fixer turned up another nuance.  I had Tiger in play, pulled Jack Handle with a Micro-Assembler, and Sky-Scraper put Cortex Hyperstimulator on Fixer.  The damage reduction was ignored because of Tiger, and the lightning damage at eh end of the turn was beautiful.  Compulsion Canisters finding their way to Fixer meant the Ennead was taking a lot of damage, and the game didn't last long.

She also blew up all her links multiple times, Salvage Yard is epic with Tiny Scraper.

With Argent Adept starting with two Vernal Sonatas and Nightmist starting with two Mistbounds, our group's first fight with Deadline devolved into his deck being locked for 5 out of the 6 rounds it took to beat him. We just kept cycling those cards in and out of trash with a back up in hand already. If we were to put it in narrative context, I'm sure the superheroes looked liked a bunch of bullies beating up on a perma-bound Deadline. Seriously. Nightmist and KNYFE started having a context to see who could end the fight with the lowest HP. Unity was half considering not deploying her bots because things seemed so unfair for the Villian. Consequently, I am expressly not allowed to do that anymore.

Baron Blade with a Backlash Field and Omnitron-X with a Reactive Plating Subroutine turns into a very contentious game of, "No, YOU take the lightning damage!"

Oh yeah I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned, but there is a ton of fun that can be had with Fixed Point + and getting multiple Mr. Fixer Tools and Styles/Omnitron-X Platings/Naturalist Forms. 

Naturalist + Fixed Point + Guise is amazing.

Self-Destruct Sequence and Take Down, Ground Pound, etc.

Take Down is probably the best. Unless the villain can destroy ongoing/environment cards, or requires you to play villain cards in order to win, You basically just automatically win.

Take Down is especially effective in a Vengeance-style game. It blocks ALL the villain decks from playing cards.

How were you cycling Vernal Sonata? It can't retrieve itself from the trash.

Even without cycling it is 4 turns without villain play enough time to squash many villains

Tempest + Argent Adept = Infinite Vernal Sonatas and Reclaim from the Depths.  Add Setback, the Scholar, Legacy, or Nightmist in there and you can get some fantastic results.

…My god.

A combo that I find funny is when you fight a Baron Blade with Backlash Field and you have a way to redirect that damage.  BB not only gets hit by his Backlash Field damage but it triggers the Backlash Field to hit himself again with since it's the first time BB is hitting himself that turn.  

Huge Skyscraper + the title card that gives +2 damage with your base power = insane amounts of crowd favor in the Bloodsworn Arena. Each concussive clap hits all non-hero for four (1 point each), probably get the damage two by two in one turn favor (1 point), and sends some targets to their grave (1 point each). So what if your team suffers from the friendly fire!. 

i must be missing something…

If SDS is in play before the others, you can skip your turn before their destruction events trigger, keeping some majorly useful cards around in perpituity. It kind of breaks the game a little bit.

When fighting Ambuscade tonight Skyscraper used Compulsion Canister on him while his Reactive Plating was out. So he hit himself, then his plating hit him because he hit himself, then the plating hit itself because it hit him. After all that he then hit the plating because of the canister.

Guise loves SDS, he'll never lose any ongoings once that comes out.

To really make it sweet, make him target someone else with a damage shield for his damage to another target

Had an amusing combo last night...

Captain Cosmic got lucky, had 3 Dynamic Syphons in play: 1 on Wraith, 1 on Guise, 1 on Captain Cosmic. Also has Cosmic Crest in play.

On Wraith's turn, she used Throwing Knives to do 1 damage to each other Dynamic Syphon.  Captain Cosmic's Dynamic Syphon would be the last to take damage and then use the Cosmic Crest to heal all the damage done to the other Dynamic Syphons.  If the Wraith had out a second set of Throwing Knives you could actually allow everyone to use two powers before Captain Cosmic healed all the damage.  This of course all revolves around not having Micro-targeting computer out and each character having enough powers to actually use.

Alas, Throwing Knives is Limited.

Haha, narratively, it really sounds like the Compulsion Canister got caught in a gap somewhere in the mechanism of the Reactive Plating and caused hilarious short circuits as it rattled around in there.

Just thought this would be even funnier if he had both Reactive Platings out and they'd end up hitting each other as well.

Similarly, putting it on the Chairman and making him hit himself for retaliation. QUIT HITTING YOURSELF

In addition to the 'Vernal Sonatas + Reclaim from the Depths + Take Down' combo above, I had a pretty good run with Argent Adept on a different game by comboing off of Scholar. Specifically, using Inventive Preparation to let the scholar play extra cards.... repeatedly.

Fun cards to play from Scholar:
Expect the Worst when Alchemical Redirection is in play (all damage goes to the Scholar, reduce all damage the scholar takes to zero)
Know When to Hold Fast - lets him draw 5 cards without ending his turn (amy of the cards that end your turn are good targets, Mr. Fixers Grease gun also comes to mind)
Don't Dismiss Anything - turns one card play into one per deck, albeit unpredictably. In a 5 player game this can be epic.

The king of the  combos, however, is Proverbs and Axioms. Everyone draws one card, then either heals for two or uses a power and hits themselves for 3.... and then Argent Adept takes the hit and starts the play over again.
By chaining together cards like that, and using the Prime Warden Agent Adept,  and/or using Silver Shadow, I've been able to use every instrument in Argent Adepts deck in one turn. Works exceptionally well when Scholar has enough card draw to cycle through cards relatively fast.

First time I played Guise had Mr. Fixer and Tempest on my team. Borrowed Fixer’s dual crowbars then used I can do that to to copy Tempest’s power. The resulting chaos took about 5 minutes to resolve.

Imagine if it'd been Jack Handle instead of Dual Crowbars.

…what WOULD happen in that case? Other than 'everything dies'.

In the simplest case, all N non-Hero targets would take N points of damage (in single-point packets).  If multiple targets have <=N health, then timing matters, and you may not be able to do that much total damage.

Since the damage is delivered in 1-HP packets, the effect of buffs and damage resistance are also (approximately) multiplied by N.

Spite's drug that returns Ongoings to hand, plus Omnitron-X with Slip Through Time.

Absolute Zero being hit with Imbued Fire out, realising there's not enough damage returned from Isothermic Transducer to win, so hitting himself a couple more times to cycle up the damage.

A couple of damage boosts plus the challange mode rule for Fright Train (All hero damage is redirected to Fright Train) leading to KNYFE destroying him with one play of Incidental Contact.

Also, Guise in general vs. Spite.

Naturalist and any environment filled with enemies that damage everyone. Nice to let someone else do the work for a change.

Immutus from Enclave of the Endlings and Prime Wardens Tempest. Card explosion time!

Prime Warden Tempest is Naturalist's biggest fan. 

The Naturalist only makes heroes immune to damage from environment targets not the environment.   It's the same reason why Ground Pound from Haka doesn't stop PW Tempest from getting hurt either.  

I don’t think that works, actually. Naturalist protects you from Enviroment targets, which doest affect PW tempest

Yeah, I know I was not protecting Tempest with the Naturalist in that game I just played, it was the Endling that took the hits for him. Also, in a previous Naturalist game with Dol'Thorak as the environment, I noted that you're not protected against orbital bombardment. Alas!

(which means I've probably incorrectly protected the heroes from a volcano or similar card in the past, learning all the time...)

Yeah incorrectly used the grease gun on the volcano at some point...

Mr. Fixer: "I got this!!!" [sprays inflammable solvent all about as the volcano rumbles]

Ra: [facepalm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mD2hsxrhQ

Played a game with Parse and Guise where Parse had two Critical Multipliers on the field and Guise put down Yeah I'm That Guy and Blatent Reference in one turn. Basically giving him 3 free damage every turn. It's not game breaking but it was a cute interaction.

Eat Ambuscade's Personal Cloaking Device with Savage Mana.

Use Suggestion to put Vanish on top of his deck.

Snicker as Ambuscade panics and wonders where he put his cloak, wasting his draw.

Done after I'd just destroyed the device once, and the booger promptly played Vanish on his turn to go back to stealth mode. :)

(hooray for mini pack 1 on the iPad version!)

That's quietly brilliant trolling. Haka in the corner whistling like he didn't do anything.