Want a hug? I hate that that happened
I had to retry this fight WAY more times than I care to admit. But the Jack Handle + Driving Mantis combo worked miracles. Fixer and Nightmist tie for MVP here. Grease Gun, MIstform, Mistbound and Astral Preminition are great. The latter will help bury any unwanted Prison Breaks, which is basically game over unless you've managed to go through the entire villain deck.
Handelabra sure knows how to make us work for these unlocks!
Christopher decides the unlocks.
It's not Handelabra. Christopher supplies these unlocks and originally it was supposed to only work on advanced. Which is and isn't harder. The sacrificial Setback with Friendly Fire and Dual Crowbars is the only way I've been able to beat this.
I wonder if Christopher actually attempted this one... :P.
it IS doable, but WAAAAY hard.
My favourite thing? The unlock condition for this was discovered quickly, but taking a while to unlock. The one for Santa guise was quickly unlocked, but hard to identify the conditions....
Aaaand the very next fight, I had Hair-Trigger Reflexes, Mist Form, Friendly Fire and Dual Crowbars in play.
Perfect villain plays; everything came together perfect. I actually spent four turns just building my play areas, once Operative went down, waiting for him to flip. I finished with Setback at 24 HP because he happened to survive killing Operative and then, with 18 tokens on him, I easily worked to have him bring himself back to life with Silver Lining. He was my highest HP! No one KOd, lowest was Mr. Fixer with 3 when he hit the Chairman for 7 overkill.
Work of art.
This is a pretty straight forward one. To be honest I'm still surprised Santa Guise unlock hasn't been figured out.
Apparently Handleabra actually asked Christopher to let them tone it down from what he originally specified… 
Yep. I still pleaded for different conditions after that. As I'm still lost on how the story behind it since Setback was a member of Dark Watch before they went after DW Fixer
Yes, but he was also the most reluctant member of the team. Maybe he was saying something along the lines of "Yeah, I'm fighting with you, but I'm totally not a member of this Dark Watch team" until they had a big fight against the Organization, and he finally admitted that he was a part of the team.
The bio for the team says their first threat was DW Fixer
Yes, but just because they were fighting as a team doesn't necessarily mean they considered themselves a team.
It's a stretch, I'll admit. But without having the comics, or an ear in Christopher's brain, anything could have happened.
The bio says the team formed before Fixer joined
>
The hero team known as Dark Watch has gone through a lot. They were originally formed by Expatriette, Setback, and NightMist who were seeking to uncover the truth behind the events of the death of their friend, Mister Fixer.
I do not know the inside of Christopher's head. However, keep in mind that not all variant unlock conditions are "the thing that happened to make the variant exist."
Well, now that I've beat Dark Watch versus Chairman in Rook City, I never plan to do that matchup ever again.
Same. I HATE Dark Watch NightMist.
I won this with Jack Handle and Friendly Fire. Also had Mist Form for Nightmist. Lots of double-strikes with the Jack Handle and Nightmist tanked all the damage from the Operative.
You and me both. She really needs that extra draw to feed all her discards. That said, there is an argument to be made that she can start going off before regular nightmist, because she can play the spells that damage her (and redirect) without then having to damage herself with her power, which in turn reduces the need for healing options. That said, DW Nightmist definitely loves Enlightenment a lot more than regular Nightmist. It's funny, I stopped playing for a while and came back, and I seem to remember that I used to prefer DW Nightmist to regular, but she just feels worse to me now. I feel like there was some trick to using her that I just can't remember.
Not sure if I like the variant better, but I definitely enjoy it. Might be bcause I would use the Tome over Investigation anyway, and often prioritize the Necklace over the Amulet.
It definitely changes your priorities. Regular Nightmist, my first goal is always the amulet. DW Nightmist, I tend to start casting utility spells sooner and looking for Master of Magic instead.
She's also fun with characters like Omnitron-X or The Scholar.