I've been dead set on figuring out Absolute Zero and I'm proud to announce that I think I finally got it last night. It was our third game session and my cousin and I finally got a third person to sit down with us. I'd played AZ twice before, but in both games I was playing two characters and couldn't focus on him as much as I'd like to.
In our third session last night, we each got to play one character. I used AZ, my cousin used Expatriette, and our friend used Tempest (it was his first game). We played against Citizen Dawn in Insula Primalis.
Now the first thing I want to note is that having a third set of eyes really makes all of the HP bookkeeping and whatnot more manageable. My cousin and I have been managing fine, but having a third person made me feel confident that we didn't miss anything TOO glaring. We DID forget to apply the nemeses damage bonus for both Dawn and Expatriette, but we remembered probably three or four turns in. At that point, Dawn had only hit Expatriette once (if at all) and we were the only ones suffering from a few lower damage shotgun blasts.
Anyway, on to the questions:
I think I played this right, but sometimes I confuse myself:
AZ has both modules out. There is an Obsidian Field in play. Citizen Dawn, Citizen Anvil, and a dinosaur of some variety are out. I play Hoarfire. I deal 2 cold damage to Dawn (+1 for OF, -1 for Anvil), 2 fire damage to Anvil, 2 cold damage to myself (+2 HP), and 2 fire damage to myself. I redirect the 2 fire damage as 3 cold damage to myself and heal for an additional 3. For my power, I use Thermal Shockwave. So that's 1 cold damage on Dawn, 1 cold damage on Anvil, 2 cold damage on the dino. I dealt 6 cold damage this turn (I didn't include the cold I dealt myself because I didn't think that was actually dealt), so I deal myself 7 fire damage (Is 7 right? I assumed that OF would increase the damage I'd do to myself). I took the 7 fire damage and redirect 8 cold damage (7+1?) at Dawn. Did I do all that right?
*I just realized I've been using the word "redirect". I keep thinking of it that way, but what I really mean is "taking x fire damage, then dealing x+1 cold damage". It was easier to type this note than correct my mistakes above :)
Also, one other question: When I used Thermal Shockwave, it ended up killing Citizen Anvil. Could I have assigned 1 damage to Anvil first, then assigned 2 damage to Dawn since Anvil wasn't protecting her anymore? We decided "no" in the heat of the moment to save time and avoid having a potential asterisk on our game.
Long story short: We beat her without her flipping at all. None of us was particularly close to dying and we made a new SotM fan out of our friend. I would recommend that everyone trying to figure out AZ plays him against Dawn in IP because the sheer amount of fire damage I was taking from outside sources made me feel especially useful.
I only wish I had been as useful in our second game of the night against Voss in Atlantis with Fanatic, Visionary, and Nightmist. He whomped us good. We barely scratched him until Vis and Fanatic were dead and then with a little help from a Kraken and two turns worth of incap abilities, Nightmist managed to get him down to about 20 before Forced Deployment ended it. This game definitely has a learning curve. Either that, or Visionary just really doesn't fit my playstyle...