So, I’m more or less signing up for this site (which I likely should have done long ago anyway) to describe one of the most amazingly impossible games of Sentinels I have had the pleasure to be a part of.
Five players - three of whom, including myself, are long-time Sentinels players who have played very nearly every hero, villain and environment available; the other two comparatively new, though still with at least ten games under their belts. The new guys want to see what’s so bad about this ‘Chairman’ fellow we keep freaking out about all the time.
So, we set up the Chairman - in Rook City, naturally, because we’ve already proven that we have absolutely no respect for our lives in the first place, why not just really screw ourselves sideways. Not advanced, not for first time up against the guy, but still.
Our heroes are, in order of play: Mr Fixer (Because gotta have the nemesis), Ex-Patriette (Because Rook City), Wraith (Because Rook city and we want to win), Haka (Because we want to win!), and Parse (...Because the player likes Parse? She’s handy, regardless.)
The first couple of rounds go fairly well. The first card was a Prison Break, completely useless; The Operative brings out the the Broker. A quick discussion is held as to our strategy, whether we want to try to run out the deck as fast as possible or try to avoid that entirely - in the end, we decide the latter. Fixer takes out the informant before she can bring out multiple villain cards; Ex-Pat gets a tactical shotgun out and starts laying out the pain.
Haka (played by myself) gets an amazing luck of run and gets Savage Mana and two rampages in hand by the end of turn one. Our strategy for this game is quickly discussed and confirmed - Haka gets to break everything forever. Everything looks to be going smoothly.
Then Rook City ruins everything.
With the Villain deck’s help, we quickly find ourselves inundated with Blighted Streets, Scum and Villainy, and Alleyways - one of which plays the top card of the villain deck, which happens to be “Rook City is Mine!”, which then plays two more environment cards. Soon enough, villain targets have -2 damage reduction, heroes have +1 damage taken - which was destroyed, and replayed immediately. Parse spends several turns doing nearly nothing but desperately destroying environment cards. A beautiful combo is developed, where Parse’s secondary effect of giving +1 to next damage dealt allows Fixer to squeeze past the damage reduction, deal one damage, and make all subsequent damage irreducable. Ex-pat and Wraith are both spending most of their turns trying to chip away at villain targets, getting them ready for Haka.
Both rampages went off, dealing unconscionable amounts of damage to the heroes - both from Haka’s collateral damage (with damage boost!) and the Operative’s counterattacks, but finally managing to get every single one of the underbosses under Savage Mana. There will be no further summons, or summons of summons. Four cards remain in the villain deck.
Unfortunately, everyone in the party has about five HP at this point, and two horrible realisations occur: First, the Chairman won’t flip until we use Savage Mana, and using Savage Mana will destroy every card under it again, which will cause the Operative to flip out and annihilate all of us before we actually manage to get off the resulting attack.
Secondly, the environment is beginning to bring in Toxic Vats and Falling Statuary since we’ve worked our way through just about everything else.
The toxic vats knock us down to either three or four hit points each, and suddenly we come to the realisation that all of those Undivided Attentions we had pushed to the bottom of the deck with Wraith, Parse and the environment card are coming back to haunt us. With so few HP remaining, we have to juggle like crazy to keep the card from killing two of us each turn.
Fixer is the first to go, that extra +1 damage from the nemesis making it impossible to save him. Expatriette is reduced to one hit point. Wraith is the next to go, but then we finally manage to take out the Operative, so thankfully Undivided Attention only hits once, now. Haka falls next, Savage Mana being trashed in the process, and the remaining players have one round of preparation before the chairman flips.
At this point we have two toxic vats out, dealing 2 damage to anything with 5 or higher HP - which is not us. However, they have the amazing secondary ability of being able to trash environment cards by discarding a card, making them invaluable for preventing horrific env cards from happening. The chairman is, naturally, immune. He flips with two cards remaining in his deck.
At this point, some players are ready to call the game lost. At least play it out, say the others. We decide to at least see how bad it gets.
So, to paint the situation: The chairman has 35 HP remaining. Parse and Expatriette have 3 each. Expatriette has her assault rifle and tactical shotgun out, but the chairman counterattacks any attack made with 3 damage, +1 from the Operative’s incap power. Any attempt to heal either of them above 5 HP will mean they are once again vulnerable to the toxic vats, and be immediately damaged back to 3.
Then a piece of falling statuary hits Parse, killing her instantly, before she could even fire a single arrow.
This whole situation sounds impossible, except for one fact: Mister Fixer has an incapacitated power: Take a piece of equipment from another hero’s trash, and put it into play.
A piece of equipment like, say, Expatriette’s Flak Jacket. Any damage of 3 or more is ignored, instead destroying the jacket.
Thus followed the most insane hit-and-run assault I can imagine. Haka’s incap power was used to reduce attacks by 2HP; Wraith’s to play cards, Parse’s to draw cards, and Fixer to just keep bringing back that flak jacket, turn after turn. The environment would bring out horrific cards, but nothing capable of actually hurting Ex-Pat before the start of the next turn, and they would be trashed by the Toxic Vats. The Chairman had his trash shuffle back into his deck, then brings out a prison break (no trash, nothing happens) and an enforcer (damage ignored by discarding cards). Ex-pat gets her flak jacket repaired by Fixer, then immediately shoots the chairman in the face with hollow-point ammo from her tactical shotgun, gets hit back, the flak jacket is destroyed, and then she plays another copy of the card on Wraith’s turn, while Haka reduces the next damage by 2.
And over several unbelievable turns, Expat slowly solos the chairman down. 30… 20… finally down to 13 hit points remaining.
And then draws an Unload.
She has ALMOST but NOT QUITE enough guns to one-hit kill him… so she uses her turn to play and then fire the hollow points, taking the damage to her flak jacket and losing it. Wraith heals her by two… then Haka allows her to play a card, where she unloads, using the shotgun again, takes the final retaliation blast reducing her from 5 to 1 HP, then cheerfully unloads the rest of her arsenal.
Four heroes incap, the last one on 1HP. All damage dealt to the final target by one hero with no more than 3 HP remaining for almost the entire period.
Total victory.
This game is amazing. And always remember - never give up and assume a game is unwinnable. The only HP that will ever matter is the very last one. =D