Flawless Victory

Other Games SotM Story Challenges
#1

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.

#2

Congratulations! I’m jealous. Nice job man.

#3

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).

#4

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

#5

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.

#6

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!

#7

Kudos indeed!

Now, where’d I put that nerf bat…

#8

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…)

#9

you’re just jealous =p

#10

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.

#11

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

#12

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

#13

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.

#14

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.

#15

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.

#16

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.

#17

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.

#18

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.

#19

… 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?

#20

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