Smoke Bombs and Ties for Lowest

This came up last night; it was more or less academic when it finally came up so I went with the nicer answer, but I wanted to see if there's any official wisdom on this point that I've missed.

The question: If Wraith has Smoke Bombs out and multiple hero targets are tied for lowest HP, can all of them be treated as "the target with the lowest HP"?

In this case, Wraith and Unity were in the same game, and Unity had out two Raptor Bots, both at their full complement of 2 HP. An environment card dealt 2 damage to all hero targets. We knew everything but the Raptor Bots was taking 2 damage (modified appropriately by whatever they had in play), but we weren't 100% sure which of these two scenarios played out with the Raptor Bots:

1 - We designate one Raptor Bot as the lowest HP hero target; its 2 damage is redirected to the hero target with the highest HP and reduced by 1. The other Raptor Bot takes 2 damage and is destroyed.

2 - We declare the first Raptor Bot is the lowest HP hero target and the damage is redirected as above; then declare the second Raptor Bot as the lowest HP hero target and redirect the damage as above.

Both have things about them that are counterintuitive; on the one hand, Scenario 1 makes the most sense in that only one target is ever the one with the lowest or highest; on the other hand, when there is a tie you get to pick who is highest or lowest for purposes of that effect, and you determine low and high HP for every iteration of damage.

Again, this did not change the situation in the game significantly - Unity was rolling so many bots at that point that the loss of one Raptor would not prevent her from KOing the villain during her end of turn phase - but I realized I wasn't sure what was correct.

2 is correct. You evaluate each hit individually, so if the card has the lowest hp, it will redirect regardless of who else does. If you have ties for highest HP you cn also choose which of those to redirect it to, but you work this out each time you apply the damage.

neither is correct, because smoke bombs does not redirect damage from the environment. Only villains.

Other than that, 2 is correct.

Ugh. Smoke bombs. Personally I think smoke bombs are the worst card in the game. Not power-wise, but gameplay-wise. It’s just such a hassle to keep track of, and because the effect is mandatory, you can’t just say ‘whatever’ and only use it when it’s really important. I’m still trying to come up with a simple houserule that makes them less of a headache but keeps the general spirit and power. Something like making them ‘once per turn, you may’, which might be a bit weaker (usually), but so much nicer to use.

Thanks! I genuinely may have had a premature senior moment and it was a villain card that did the damage; or maybe we screwed up and let her redirect an environment card. One of those.

I personally find many villain cards to be far more cumbersome and frustrating than any of the hero cards.  What do you find so cumbersome about it?  I usually find it pretty easy to figure out how to redirect the damage, even with AoE or multiple attacks in a round.

I find it a bit annoying too. If something hits everyone, and everyone is at similar hp (such that someone being hit will change who has the highest/lowest hp) you have to keep re-working it out.

Also, I'm not sure if i've been doing this right, but it comes up when we're fighting Spite. Wraith Stun Bolts him twice, nerfing two points of his damage. On his turn, he does a lot of hits of one or two points - nerfed by the Stun Bolt, except for when he would hit Wraith for two points, in which case the Nemesis bonus increases this to three. If Wraith is at the lowest hp (and in the last game or two we've played, she has been due to the Nemesis bonus hitting her harder), this redirects to someone else. I wasn't sure whether the Nemesis bonus still applied in this case as the damage wasn't hitting the Nemesis any more, but decided that it would. Either way, the one point is redirected and reduced by one, to zero. So Spite becomes totally useless once he has all his drugs out and you Stun Bolt him twice (other than the annoyance of having to discard five cards from the top of your deck every time you use a power) :D. Mind you, last time he only got out four drugs before we kicked his arse (and the last drug was the toxic-damage-and-discard-five-cards one). Wuss :D.

Ameena,

If the final target isn't the nemesis, you don't get the nemesis bonus, so if Wraith is thel owest and Smoke Bombs are in play, then Spite's Nemessi bonus wouldn't apply.

Oh okay, I thought that a new target (after damage redirection) would get any damage intended for the original target, since the one doing the damage isn't going to go "oh oops, someone else just got in the way" and hit a bit gentler just because their blow was redireced in some way. Still, good to know :). There are a few other minor things that occasionally come up which I'm not sure about, but generally they're rare enough that I don't remember them until they come up again (which isn't usually very often).

I am still, slowly working on refining my 'master plan' for how to resolve an attack.

The latest:

Given the source of an attack, the destination of an attack (target), the type of an attack, and the amount of an attack:

1) Apply all cards that affect the type of the attack in card played order.

2) Apply all other cards in card played order. If a card changes the destination of the attack (target), reset the amount of the attack to the original amount and return to the beginning of this step, but don't consider that card again.

I rather like the above. I'm toying with extending it to include a couple of other things -- when and how the highest and lowest targets are determined, the order of attacks if multiple attacks are done, and dealing with card played order for multiple cards in play at the start of the game. After that, I'm considering broadening it to be about generally resolving actions, instead of just resolving attacks, dealing with such things as effects that occur when a card is played or when a power is used and dealing with such things as the ambiguity of dealing damage -- initiating an attack versus causing HP to be lost.

I'm with the people who say "ugh" to this card.  I'd rather not play it even if it might help, just so I don't have to continually monitor each and every bit of villain damage to see if it hits the right people and needs to be redirected to someone else, both of whom are continuously shifting into/out of the top and bottom slots.  It's an easy discard, if one is needed.

>G,

Next token set include some highest-lowest tokens. you'll sell loads of them. ;-)

Ameena, that's totally my experience with Wraith vs. Spite. Double Stun Bolt + Smoke Bombs means he's completely shut down. It was even worse in the first edition where Stun Bolts reduced damage of the target by 2. So 4 points of damage reduction on Spite, and Wraith doesn't even have to eat the little bit that gets through from the nemesis bonus because Smoke Bombs. It was just sick.

Double Stun Bolt is pretty good in any situation where the villain is the main damage dealer. Not so good against, say, the Matriarch (unless there are no Carrion Fields in play and you're able to kill all the birdies before the Matriarch's turn) or Akash'Bhuta, whose main damage is dealt via other cards and not themselves. I reckon the pairing whcih results in the lest likelihood of any Nemesis damage is the Adept and Akash'Bhuta, since he very rarely deals damage and her only damage is to herself when you destroy her limbs :).

Wraith is probably one of the best all-rounders in any situation though, even without the Stun Bolt. Tempest is the other really good all-rounder, I reckon. Everyone else is a bit more specified in what they can do (and even Tempest is probably more damage-focused).

Actually, Akash'Bhuta has a couple ongoing cards which has her deal damage, as well as some other cards can force the villain card with the highest HP (used to be the villain character card) to deal damage, such as certain hero and environment cards.

Double Stun Bolts are great against the Matriarch.  You have to manufacture some circumstance in which you can kill the birds without dying.  Unless your plan is to weather the birds all the time… like with Smoke Bombs. 

Yeah that was what I meant - it'd be good against the Matriarch as long as there are no Carrion Fields in play (to deal damage even if hers is nerfed), or the cohorts (especially Muninn) to block the Stun Bolt damage and increase the Matriarch's so that she still hits even with two Stun Bolts in play. We were going okay against her last time (no Wraith) until she pulled a Horrid Cacophony which blew out most of our Ongoings (four), then Huginn who destroyed the last couple of the Adept's belongings (Muninn was already out). That left us with nothing in play and we never recovered. The two Mystical Defenses that were out didn't help much, nor did the three Krakens that came out not long afterwards :P.

Incidentally, how do you pronounce the names of the two cohorts? I've come up with numerous ways but since I don't know which is right (if any), I just call them by about three or four names each every time I mention them :P.

So far I've got HOO-gin, HUG-in, HOO-jin, MUN-in, MOO-nin, MEW-nin…and probably one or two others. Why couldn't they have come up with some less complicated-to-work-out names when inventing these two guys, lol ;).

Well, they didn’t come up with these, technically. It’s a reference to Norse mythology: Huginn and Muninn - Wikipedia

Or Stealth Bot. Man, that game got dumb fast.

On the subject of nemeses damage bonuses… I hope Chrono-Ranger has lots of HP recovery, because that seems like a nightmare scenario.

Being foreign words it is possible that the true pronunciation involves sounds we don't quite get, but I believe it is roughly HOO-gin and MOO-nin.

Yes, but with more of a "y" sound in the first syllable. Like "HEW-gin" and "MEW-nin".

Oh cool :). So it's a hard G then (as in "begin") in Huginn's name, rather than a soft G (as in "age")?

Yes, exactly. "-gin" like "gun", not "-gin" like, well, "gin".  

*grin*

Hooray, now I can call out just one name per bird when those two do anything, rather than going through about five different pronunciatins before ending in "whatever" :D.

I just call them "the blue @$$#*!&" and "the red nuisance". ;)

Oh yeah, they're both a couple of total sods. It's just nice to get the pronunciation of their names right in between swearing at/about them ;).