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.