Rook City Rampage: Dark Watch Vs Skinwalker

Environment: Rook City

Villain: Gloomweaver: Skinwalker

Heroes: Darkwatch Mr Fixer, Darkwatch Expatriette, Darkwatch Setback, Darkwatch Nightmist

We had just introduced my sister to SotM, and set her up with Expat. My wife had Mister F, and I had Setback and Nightmist.

We got spanked. Really, it was a disaster in slow motion - about three hours. Most of the time, we had no cards in our hands and < 10 HP. We even tried adding the vanilla versions of the DW characters' powers as a second option for "Use a Power" phase, but still totally ate crap.

We weren't just beaten, we were demoralized, too. Big thanks to Toxic Sludge, villain damage reduction, and that friggin drum for making things extra desprate. Plus, ol' Gloomy looks totes presh with that purse. He didn't even flip, BTW.

Fixer was a damage-redirecting champ, expanding it to all non-hero targets; Expat got Pride & Prejudice fairly early, but failed to get any good damage output from them due to environment and relics forcing her to constantly discard; and Setback resurrected three times, but was pretty useless overall. Nightmist might have technically been able to win by spamming Fixer's incap power to play his card that makes the villains unable to deal damage, all the while whittling them down and healing herself, but we didn't have the patience to watch somebody solo for another three hours.

Could we have done better?

I'm pretty confident that if we set up the exact same game again we would see improvements and definitely flip Gloomweaver, but we'd probably still lose... Like, by a lot.

I hate everything forever.

Maybe try it somewhere that isn't Rook City - that is, after all, probably the worst possible environment in terms of difficulty ;). Somewhere like the Freedom Tower, for example, against that version of Gloomweaver would probably be pretty good as it has no targets for him to attack on his flip side (though the Entry Points probably wouldn't be much fun). We've fought Skinwalker Gloomy a few times (I think three or four in total) and while it's come close I dont think we've managed to lose against him yet. I've always enjoyed the games we've had against him because I find them challenging in a fun way. Last time we fought him, in fact, he did absolutely zero damage on his flip side (it took a while to get him there, though) thanks to Tachyon playing Hypersonic Assault on the two or three rounds it took to kill him. I think we did about 92 damage to him in just two rounds, it was cool :D.

Yeah, we were really going whole-hog with the thematic matches. I really don’t see how the Darkwatch could ever stand up to Skinny and Zombie Spite, especially on their home turf of RC.
Have you played themes like that, or am I the only one that masochistic?

We've never done anything thematic, no. I just roll dice to determine the villain and environment and then we pick our heroes...though occasionally we'll roll for those as well (sometimes rerolling if we don't fancy playing that particular hero at the time ;). At the London meets everything gets randomised but there are a lot more hero decks as there's all the Cauldron stuff and other bits and pieces as well. But I always try to have a game as the Adept (my favourite) so if he hasn't come up by the time our last game comes along (he usually hasn't) then I'll specifically ask to play him :D.

I've done thematic games occasionally, but mostly I go for random.  I did just get the Dark Watch promos recently from a friend who had a spare set, so I was able to try out Skinwalker vs. the Dark Watch (albeit in the Tomb of Anubis rather than Rook City).  I was playing that with one other friend (each of us playing two characters) and just before Gloomweaver flipped I said "Sorry, but I really have to do this." and put Nightmist into Mistform.  A few rounds later all the rest of them were incapacitated but Nightmist had enough options in her hand to finish out the game for a win.

Now I want to try it in Rook City because that does sound entertaining, even in a loss.

The deeply thematic game I really want to get my daughters to try with me is Sky-Scrapper, Tempest and Captain Cosmic against Voss in the Dok'Thorath Capital.

Anything’s possible, but I have to say, the only Dark Watch power I like is Expatriette’s, and there is no environment I hate more than Rook City. I find Dark Watch Setback crippled by a lack of a base power that can give him Unlucky Tokens, Dark Watch Nightmist severely hampered by losing a power that gets cards into her greedy little hands, and all teams hampered by Dark Watch Mister Fixer breaking their stuff (though to be fair, if you have to break anyone’s stuff, Setback is the most likely to profit from the deal; throw out a “High Risk Behavior” long enough to hit someone really hard, then have Dark Watch Mister Fixer break it before you can get bitten by it).

I feel like the odds were against you. Too much of your time was being spent in set-up, and you had too little damage going out.