Flawless Victory

I totally got it. Victory with all heros at full hp. And somewhat by accident. IE: I did not go into the game trying to do this, I realized when I had the villan beat that it was possible to score a flawless victory, and I got it. I’ll explain how I did it below. Requires RC. Also, this was done on Advanced Mode.

Villan: Spite.
Environment: Industrial Complex
Team: Mr. Fixer, Expatriette, Tempest, Ra.

If I was going to attempt this again, I’d put in somebody with an armor card in their deck instead of Expatriette. Possibly Fanatic or Bunker, but most likely Legacy for additional healing from Motivational charge. Expatriette is great though, and was critical in actually dealing the damage to get the villan down to a defeatable stage in the first place.

Part 1; Spite. Why Spite? Well, because Spite happens to be great for this. You’ll see why in a moment. Suffice it to say, your goal is to get him beat but not kill him. Let him flip, hopefully with several victims in the safe house, and bring him down to 5-10 hp. For those of you who dont know, Spite starts out playing villan cards and acessing his Drug cards, which are not ongoing cards and cant be destroyed, and if they would be destroyed (End of Days) they go back into play instead. However, once Spite has all his drugs out he flips and NO LONGER PLAYS VILLAN CARDS. (dealing 1 damage to all but the lowest hero instead, which is buffed by some of his drugs).

Part 2; Industrial Complex. Actually this worked out pretty good. Ra was eventually at the point where he had his whole deck in his hand, so he could keep playing Excavation and putting the Biometric Plasma Vat back on the bottom of the environement deck, which was eventually pretty much also the top of the enviroment deck. Biometric Vat heals all targets for 1 hp. As I said, once his whole deck is in his hand, you can play Excavation as much as you want to keep the Vats more or less on top (I used a rat as insurance for the 3rd card).

Part 3: the team

Expatriette: Not necessary. A great character, but you could sub in anybody you want for her. As I said, maybe Legacy would be a good choice. However I must say, her Load power is quite useful in the beginning when you’re trying to buff and you have to return equipment to your hand, you can get stuff back out again.

Mr. Fixer: Not necessary either, but a good choice. Mantis Crane style helps to keep him alive and not take too much damage, he also has a tool that reduces damage to himself by 1. Your favorite cards here are going to be Grease Gun (nonhero targets cant deal damage) and Salvage Yard (get back Grease Gun).

Ra: Ra’s primary use was environment control and damage, you probably could sub in anybody for him… His lack of an armor card hurt quite a bit. He was the hardest to get up to max hp.

Tempest: Tempest is your lynchpin. He does literally everything that makes this work. You’re going to want Cleansing Downpour (obviously), as well as Otherworldly Resilience. Buff all characters as much as you can, don’t worry about taking too much damage until after he flips… but once he does… You play Into the Stratosphere on his drug cards. This puts them back on top of his villan deck, it does not destroy the card, so it doesn’t come back into play. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, once Spite flips, he no longer plays villan cards… so he cant get them back. I got rid of Compound Upsilon first, followed by Compound XI, followed by Demons Kiss (and left Compound Omicron and Mind Phyre in play). Use Reclaim from the Deep to retrieve this card from your trash if possible.

Ideally you have a vat healing you for 1 damage, Mind Phyre dealing 1 damage to all targets, and Spite dealing 1 damage to all but the lowest target. Using Grease Gun can prevent some damage and helps a lot. Eventually Cleansing Downpour will top everyone off, and then you just go crazy with all your characters who by now have their ultimate setup. It might be more effective to also Stratosphere Mind Phyre and just have Ra put rats on top all the time, whose damage ideally will be absorbed by armor. Your team should have no problem killing the rats so they go back in the trash for Ra to retrieve.

Congratulations! I’m jealous. Nice job man.

Very, very cool, but …

Is using In to the Stratosphere to put Spike’s Drug cards back on his deck legal?! I don’t know of a rule that says it’s not, but it feels wrong (like Tachyon sucker punching Blade so that Blade is just destroyed, never reaches 0 or fewer HP, and never flips).

Seems legit to me… Of course, you probably expected I’d say that. =p

As far as I can tell, according to the current rules and game text of the drugs, I don’t see why you couldn’t. I never really played Tempest against Spite because he doesn’t have any other targets, thus gaining no benefit for his multiple attacks. Also, I’ve never heard of this “Spike” person.

This looks like prime errata-bait to me. There’s no way this is how this is supposed to work. Indestructible cards shouldn’t be able to be put back on the deck, right?

Kudos to you for finding it though!

Kudos indeed!

Now, where’d I put that nerf bat…

Does that really count for a flawless victory, though? The Story Challenges were created before Rook City, so our group plays that no RC elements can be involved in beating the Story Challenges. Of course, we haven’t had our flawless victory yet. We are at 1015 SP, though. (Assuming I can add…)

you’re just jealous =p

I was thinking about using the same plan, well with Tempest anyways, wasn’t sure who else I was going to use which is why I delayed it so much. It’s nice to know that it works.

Not jealous, we did the same thing! I am just a bit of a Sentinels purist.

The Rook City rulebook defines “Indestructible” as “Cannot be removed from play.” Sorry, I think this covers Into the Stratosphere as well.

You’re right dragonlord, missed that one. In It seems this thread is a bit out of date, so here’s another method of Flawless Victory against Spite that does work.

Team: Legacy (either), Visionary. Ra, Wraith
Environment: Any. I used Atlantis.

Wraith: Did stall tactics at first. with her eyepiece was able to delay play of drug cards for some time, allowing my team to go into battle pretty well buffed. Big damage dealer later on. She’s Spite’s Nemisis (remember), so +1 for damage dealt and damage taken. Stun Bolts are great to use on him, and I ended up using a lot of Razor Ordanance as well.

Visionary: Primary goal: draw Twisting the Ether and play it on Spite. Secondary goals: Assist Legacy in card drawing, use Mass Levitation to allieviate damage from Environment cards.

Ra: Pure damage. Could be any hero, but Ra is great in the damage department. If you get enough time, maybe you can get out his setup of death. I did with little problem. Tempest remains a good choice instead of Ra, he has plenty of damage capability, and though Into the Stratosphere might not work, he still has cleansing downpour.

Legacy: Will be tanking and healing primarily. Primary goal is to get out Next Evolution and Lead From the Front, Visionary will change all of spites damage into Puppy Dog damage, and Legacy will make himself immune to said damage type. Beyond that, Legacy Ring so you can use Motivational charge to heal up any damage you take in the beginning of the game.

I employed a similar idea to achieve a flawless victory against Advanced Plague Rat.

Team: Ra and Visionary are required, as is somebody who can heal others. I used Tempest and Wraith.
Environment: Theoretically, any of them work. Mars is probably easiest, Megalopolis and Pike Industrial probably the hardest.

The basic plan is as follows. You get a Twist the Ether on Plague Rat, and from then on all damage he deals is fire. The heroes are conveniently immune to this as Ra is powering Flesh of the Sun God. But what about the infections? That’s hero damage. If Ra plays Imbued Fire, all damage the heroes deal to themselves is fire, to which they are immune.

Once the damage is frozen in this way, just heal up and dispatch Plague Rat at your leisure. Watch out for Afflicted Frenzy - if Ra is infected and he does not have the highest hit points, he will still deal what is likely a ton of damage to whoever does have the highest hit points. Because of this, I would either make sure Ra is the highest, or make sure he’s not infected.

I used Horus of the Two Horizons Ra - he’s sickeningly good at assembling combos. I employed Tempest as the healer. Beyond finding Twist the Ether, Visionary uses Enlighten to help the heroes find the cards they need, and Mental Divergence to off troublesome Ongoings - including Infections themselves, once the combo is set up. If you want a fourth hero, environment control, healing, or damage freezes could be useful. I used Rook City Wraith to help find the environment card I wanted - see below. Don’t use Absolute Zero. He’s not very good when he’s immune to his own damage.

Mars is the easiest environment for this since Meteor Storm gives you the time you need to set the combo up, and the rest of the environment cards aren’t too hard to deal with. (Just have a Flash Flood or a Grappling Hook ready for Self-Destruct Sequence.) In this game, I used Sleuth on Wraith’s first turn, and put down Meteor Storm right away. Other environments are heavier on damage, but Visionary has Mass Levitation to cut down on that. Megalopolis and Pike Industrial are much harder to use because of the cards that change damage type.

I got a flawless victory against the Matriarch on Advanced, on Megalopolis. The team consisted of Visionary, Wraith, Tempest, and Absolute Zero.

Visionary’s primary function was 3-fold. A.) Put Twist the Ether on the Matriarch and Absolute Zero. B.) use Demoralize to obliterate her birds. C.) put out a bunch of ongoing cards so if Horrid Cacophony comes up, I won’t have to get rid of anything useful.

Wraith was there for Smoke Bombs and Villain Deck control, with two Infrared Eyepieces and a utility belt.

Tempest was there to be a healer (turned out to not be necessary more than once or twice), provide cover fire for cohorts and the like, and use Reclaim from the Deep if anything good gets destroyed.

AZ was there to be… AZ, really. I turned the Matriarch’s damage into fire and increased it by one, equipped him with Focused Apertures (not cryo chamber though) and Coolant Blast. With the Matriarch spitting out lots of birds and having them instantly die, she dealt him a lot of fire damage, which he shot back at her on his turn.

ARg! I set it up like you said. I got the cards out, that worked. I actually drew both Horrid Cacophonys on the first turn, that was great. Alright, the big turn arrives. Wraith Smoke Bombs, Visionary Demoralizes, Zero starts Coolant Blasting, and Megalopolis plays Cramped Quarters Combat. Then 15 birds come out to die and the Matriarch inflicts 60 MELEE damage on the heroes. (Not to mention that boosted Carrion Fields.) ARG!

I can see it working, though. Good show.

Thus far, The Matriarch is the only villain I know of that can create a two round shutout (though Ambuscade may have this potential as well), but then only if something is reducing maximum HP, or if something is automatically attacking for one HP each time a target enters play. In the case of Pike Industrial Complex, it’s difficult to control when the “reduce max HP by 1” comes into play, but in the case of Visionary and Expatriette, it would be best to wait until you are further setup before autokilling the birds.

2 round shut-out meaning what? All heroes dead with no damage to matriarch? Well that depends on what your heroes do first turn, but sure I can see that. However,

Omnitron can definitely play Electropulse Explosive first turn, and then have Atlantian Font of Power play Terraforming (to knock out AFP) and then another Electropulse Explosive, and deal each hero 32+ on turn two. Something similar might have happened to me once =p, although in that particular instance it actually happened on turn 3, with Sedative Flechettes thrown in for good measure.

… I don’t remember any card like that in the PIC. Or in any environment deck we currently have.

Did you mean the Supercooled Trisolvent Vat?

Actually, it was with Playtesting cards at the time, and I haven’t played much with the official release, so yeah.

Ah. Well, I never had the issue of Close-quarters combat. (My house rules are that cards that let you choose damage type like Twist the Ether and Grease Monkey Fist trump mandatory type changes, like the vats or CQC, regardless of the order in which they are played. Still, I don’t think CQC ever even came up. Also, it MAY not have been Megalopolis. In fact, it was probably Primalis.)

It makes some sense if the ones that let you choose trump the mandatory ones. After examining all the conversation about the topic here and seeing no final ruling, I went with the consensus ruling, which was play order. Of course, in a world where Twist the Ether wins out, I won a staggering (though not flawless) victory with that strategy. I was going to try it on Primalis instead.

Alright, next challenge. Win a Flawless Victory WITHOUT the Visionary.

that would be a hell of a thing. I believe you’d have to play for the late-late game. The only way I can think of to do it would be to take on Voss, and go with Legacy, Haka, tempest and either Zero or Wraith.

Your goal would be to get literally every card in Voss’ deck other than Forced Deployment underneath Savage Mana, and then use Legacy to LFTF and dual-nextEvo to absorb Voss’ fire and energy damage on his flip side. Then it would be a massive heal-fest. Wraith would be useful for mega-computers to stop environment damage, Zero’s own healing abilities along with Subzero Atmosphere would be helpful during play.

Legacy with Lead From the Front, Legacy Ring, and two Next Evolutions is probably the linchpin of most Flawless games if you can’t have Visionary. Doesn’t Plague Rat only deal toxic and melee? So Legacy could hold off Plague Rat, while Ra uses fire to “cleanse” everybody of infection. That could also work against the Chairman, since his deck only deals projectile and melee. Or call energy and lightning (to avoid Devious Disruption) against Baron Blade, and heal the rest of the damage he deals you.

You would also need Tempest or one of the upcoming characters, since Legacy’s power usage is spoken for.

Providing that no environment deals damage that seems a solid set up for Legacy, it might even be better to play with Young Legacy to start dealing out some damage early on as whichever Legacy it is is just going to be a support role after set up.

How does Ra cleanse the infections? He has no way of destroying ongoings.
EDIT: Ah! Make everyone immune to Fire damage and have Imbue Fire out too, infections neutralised!

Reread my fight against Plague Rat. (Or don’t, 'cause I’m about to summarize it. ) If Ra has Imbued Fire out, all hero damage is fire. If he powers Flesh of the Sun God every turn, then the infections cause the fire-immune heroes to deal themself fire damage. Win! This is a very useful combo against the Rat even if you aren’t aspiring to a Flawless Victory.

Your point about environments is a good one. As awp points out, Mega Computer would help, as would Mass Levitation, but we aren’t using Visionary. Careful environment choice depending on the heroes and villain involved makes a big difference, or you might just expect to heal it away.

An alternate route, instead of immunity, would be to reduce the damage dealt by the villain as much as possible, using cards like Hoist Chain, Stun Bolt, and Speed-Loaded Liquid Nitrogen Rounds. This way, you might be able to cheat the villain out of damage indefinitely and heal up that way.

Plague Rat deals irreduceable melee damage at the end of his turn, so I’m not sure that would work… You kind of need the immunity.

Well, for Plague Rat, sure. Damage reduction would work well against Voss, though. It just depends.

Between Ra, Visionary and Tempest, there’s no problem with the Plague Rat.

Ra makes everyone immune to fire.
Visionary converts all the Rat damage to irreducible fire (which everyone is lol-immune to (Twist the Ether))
Tempest heals everyone up to full (for any damage taken before the above setup was complete)

True, but the point was to do it without Visionary.

Damage reduction vs. Voss is going to be very difficult to pull off, too many targets to use individual targeting (like Hoist Chain) and those that hit everyone need to deal damage to work, very vulnerable to an untimely Gene-Bound Guard.

I think the idea was to use Savage Mana to take all of the Targets out of Voss’ deck, then have wraith spam Stun Bolts on Voss in order to null his damage and use Tempest to heal. So your team would be Tempest, Wraith, Haka, and likely Expatriette. This could work. The DR isnt for the minions (though it can help), its for Voss. Essentially, you’ll need to have Voss completely at your mercy, and then simply heal up the damage. Only problem I can forsee is that you’ll need to be careful you dont actually kill Voss with stun bolts or nitrogen rounds before you can heal to max.

Ah yes, I had forgotten the good old standby of Savage Mana against Voss, always fun to have a forced deployment come out and no minions left!

I wonder if it might be better to leave a minion in play to have him not flip and just dealing with the (minimal) damage, or leave a guard out until you are ready to deal a killing blow (via Savage Mana).

Yes, that is my general strategy against Voss. But sometimes things can go poorly, Atlantis and the Industrial Complex have about a jillion and a half ways to kill that last minion that you need. I think what you’d want to do if you could manage it would be to leave a minion in play for as long as you could until you built up the right stuff [need Savage Mana, need Stun Bolts, etc], then alllow him to flip once you know you can handle him.

I had another one; a really easy one against Plague Rat. Visionary, Fanatic, Ra, and Haka, at Insula Primalis.

… Kind of speaks for itself, really.

Yeah, its almost trivial to get these now if you have the combo of Visionary + Zer0/Legacy/Ra if you fight either Plague Rat or Spite.

How did you heal Visionary?

Probably first achieved a lock on plague rat and then had Visionary go into Telekenetic cocoon. After that it can be assumed that you will eventually play enough Holy Novas to heal her to max.

Nope. I let everyone get infected, then just used the infection powers to heal.

Nice!

Touche.

Also, I just finished a SUPER easy one against the Matriarch on Insula Primalis.

Legacy and Young Legacy.

I managed to get both Fortitudes and Surges of Strength, a Danger Sense, and Inspiring Presence. Also, Young had Motivational Charge and the Ring, so she was dishing out lots of damage and healing on the rare occasion we took damage.

Were there any other characters? What value did H equal?

Nope, just those 2. H = 2, with the H-2 and such having a minimum value of 1. So on her flip side, H-2 healing became 1, because honestly, that’s just no fun otherwise.

That being said, the only bird-killing happened when we got Volcanic Eruption, so she didn’t actually play a whole lot of birds.

H is strictly 3,4,5.

It says no such thing in the rulebook. It’s made to be played with 3-5 players, but they said you could set H to whatever you want. I set it to what it SHOULD be, which is 2 for Horrid Cacophony and 3 for her innate abilities.

Here you go. http://greaterthangames.info/forum/index.php/topic,445.msg4388.html#msg4388

I refer you to the last post there. “It’s your game. Do what you want with it.” H = however many heroes you have. If I play with 2 heroes, I’ll set it to 2. It is none of your business, so kindly refrain from telling me how to play.

If you’re going for the story mode challenges and you’re saying “It’s SUPER easy” because you’re not playing by the rules then kindly refrain from telling us how easy it is.

Getting a Flawless Victory is a great achievement and I want to hear about your stories of victory (and defeat) but I don’t want your commentary on how easy the game is now you’ve house ruled it all (and not mentioning that fact) while others are playing by the rules and finding it difficult, think of how you… devalue (?) others’ hard fought battles.

I did no such thing. I didn’t say ALL flawless victories were easy. I just said this one was. According to the rulebook, H is however many heroes you have, so – having not seen that thread – I wasn’t breaking or changing anything.

Uh, I really don’t want to get into the argument, but I did want to make sure you understood you are changing the rules, because the rulebook also states it’s a 3-5 player game - so by definition, H is from 3 to 5. :-\

But I totally agree you should play it however you want! You’ll just want to make sure you’re relating it appropriately to others when you do.

(We never play 2 hero because we can play 2-player, 4-hero games, with each of us controlling 2 heroes. It’s a lot more fun, in our opinion! 8) )

Rabit

I still want to try to play one on one rival matches, where H = 1 (which causes H - 2 to equal 0, and H - 1 to equal 1, due to the nemisis bonus). If you say the crazy reduced attacking makes it too easy, I’ll say only one hero being able to attack brings back the challenge. I’ll have to actually try first though.

I’m looking at the box, and it specifically says “2-5 players.” And that’s Rook City.

Somewhere in the rules (probably near the end) it states that, when playing with two players, you still play 3 or 4 heroes, where a player or both play two heroes. Game hasn’t been designed for two heroes in a game. But nothing is stopping you from doing that (in fact, it’s a challenge in the core set challenges).

Ah. Well, I didn’t see that bit.

Got it today. I played Warlord Voss in the Realm of Discord with Argent Adept, Young Legacy, Haka, and Ra. Due to the initial selection of baddies, Argent Adept got hit early and then I kept flipping baddies that targeted the lowest or all targets. However, Haka got a first turn Taiaha and a second turn Savage Mana, so fairly quickly, he cleaned the board, and he started stacking baddies under Savage Mana. Unfortunately, a clean board meant that Voss started pounding on Argent Adept even harder. He was actually down to 7 at one point. Thanks to Haka, the first Forced Deployment only brought back 4 minions, and the second only brought back 2. I actually went through both battleships too. In the end, what enabled me to win was a particular environment card that aids in healing (sorry I can’t say more); Argent Adept got a really good set of cards out that allowed him to heal some (don’t think I’m sharing anything Christopher hasn’t already revealed in saying that), and Young Legacy helped out with Motivational Charge. Haka healed himself to full twice and with the help of Ta Moko stayed there.

The reason I feel really good about this one is that I didn’t use any special combos or “locks”. I just trudged on, and given that one of my heroes was down to 7, it wasn’t a given that I was even going to have everyone live, much less finish with full hp.

P.S. I’ll probably come back and edit this post once I can reveal the cards that were instrumental (pun intended).

On the contrary, I just read through the entire thing word-for-word. The only mention of the (H) modifier is on page 1, and it says this: “It always equals the number of heroes in the current game you are playing. Thus, in a game with 3 heroes, it equals 3. In a game with 4 heroes, it equals 4. In a five hero game, it equals 5.”

Nowhere does it say that it HAS to be 3, 4, or 5. In fact, every thing it says directly contradicts that. It only mentions 3, 4, and 5 player games, but it doesn’t say it HAS to be that. They are listed as examples. If you are in the situation that you are playing with 2 or 6 heroes, it is only logical to conclude that it would equal 2 or 6, because of the very specific and all-inclusive line “It ALWAYS equals the number of heroes involved in the current game.”

But 2 or 6 heroes is not supported, in fact the rules say 3, 4 or 5 heroes.

Page 10 of the base rules
“The game is optimized for four players, but three or five player teams make relatively little difference in game difficulty. Two experienced players can play a two player version of the game if one or both of them play as two heroes each.”

If you are bending one rule, why do you expect the other rules not to bear the additional weight (and possibly break)?

Some of the villains can’t really support more than 5 heroes without being broken. The two examples I can think of are Plague Rat and GloomWeaver.

A friend and I played The Ennead with Ra and Visionary last night. The H mechanic really doesn’t work the way it is supposed to unless you’re playing with three to five. Two heroes make most any H mechanic insignificant, or downright useless.

We still played it with an H of two because we wanted to whomp some baddies. Did we think it would count as a two man victory? Goodness no! Regardless, good times were had.

And that is what matters!

Well, like I said, I used (H) of 2, but for all of Matriarch’s “H-2” effects I used H of 3. I pretty much just used H = 2 for Horrid Cacophony.

Nog, I think using H=2, but H-X = minimum of 1 is pretty reasonable.

I just got a CLASSIC flawless victory, using nothing from any expansion!!! I used Legacy, Visionary (barely used, in cocoon for most of the game), Haka, Wraith, and Tempest against Voss in Megalopolis. It worked out great!!! I just didn’t do much until Savage Mana came out, then I just used Throat Jabs to hold off Voss’s damage and healed up the team!!! I am entirely too excited about this. The game took forever, though, because I did it myself since I couldn’t find anyone to play with me. For some reason, there is no one in my area who likes games like this, so I only get to play while I’m away at school…

What area?

And are you sure you have 1370 Sentinel Points, Not 1337?

I’m in Pittsburgh… And the only story challenge I have left is the one with the pillars… I haven’t checked my adding. I might be wrong about that!

'Twasn’t an arithmetic question! 1337 would be ‘leet’, you see. Sorry for my poor attempts at humor.

Hopefully someone else from Pittsburgh will see this and give a shout …