Today I played the most mentally challenging solitaire game of Sentinels I've ever taken on - the Argent Adept, Nightmist and the Scholar! (Next time I'll throw in Omnitron-X, since I know I can handle it...eventually.) These three magicians took on the relatively weak Gloomweaver, and in their absence of heavy hits, he was a real challenge, tough enough to make the victory feel like an actual triumph.
For an environment, I had picked the Pike Industrial Complex, partly just because I was due to visit it, but really, it's a pretty fitting place for Gloomy to turn up. (I should probably mention that I'm an old Werewolf: the Apocalypse fan; the idea that eldritch extradimensional evil is responsible for corporate pollution and social despair comes naturally to me.) The game started out with first one, then two Supercooled Vats, doing as much as 6 damage a round to each of our unarmored heroes; Argent got the fabled Arcane Cadence into Arcane Cadence opening, but he didn't find any Instruments in those first several turns, and when I retroactively realized how much damage he volunteering for with those Cadences, he dropped in HP rather quickly. By about round 4 (after a Rat came out and was instantly frozen to death), Argent was down to 2 HP, and the Scholar, whose Liquid Energy form had him sitting pretty at around 12 HP, volunteered to protect Argent with Alchemical Redirection...that might have gone down better if not for a Checmical Explosion. Dying in a massive flood of toxins, Scholar would spend the entire rest of the time activating Powers for Argent, who finally had Instruments by then, and getting four Supertonic accompanies per round, Argent was soon at full health again! It didn't hurt that we got a reprieve from a Bioplasmic Vat, although this got annoying once Gloomy had his guardian out. Still, with two activations of Counterpoint Bulwark, Argent and Nightmist were even tougher than Gloomy's team!
After that, one Irradiated vat came out, and damage totals returned to normal for a round, and then another Irradiated vat appeared and damage was increased...at which point Nightmist was finally getting set up enough that Argent Sarabanded away the Irradiated Vat, just so some damage could start getting through. Having been plinked at for about 5 damage a round by Scholar's energy forms and Nightmist's spells, Gloomy suddenly found himself in a world of hurt as Oblivion was played, with Misty redirecting her damage onto him and first killing his guards. The nemesis bonus and the two Vats added up, and Gloomy plummeted rapidly, ending a round on 13 HP. And then...another Checmical Explosion! Misty redirected the damage onto him again, so he dropped to 3, and then she redirected 2 damage from his one and only Relic to him during his turn. The Argent Adept strummed a Syncopated Onslaught, and that was the end of an epic game!
I've now gotten to beat Gloomweaver both directly with damage and by destroying his relics, and I still have saved his second form as a surprise to himself. I intended this to be an advanced game, but since nobody in the game was capable of dealing physical damage, and he never flipped, I don't consider it to count as scratching his advanced mode off my to-play list. Next time I fight him, I'll see what a mostly-physical party can manage to do against his advanced mode. While I agree that he falls short of his intended steep difficulty, he's a rather fun villain who really gets the "dread cult" flavor going right, and I'm glad I got this chance to really appreciate him.