Justifications #33
This episode sure didn’t keep its “longest ever” record for long.
The cardboard cutout goofiness probably only literally happened once; my assumption whenever I’m playing against “Ambuscade” in a Villains game and this card comes out, it represents some kind of misdirection tactic or another, but it looks different every time depending on what Environment you’re in, what other Villains are present, and in general what’s going on in this fight. I love the idea of, for example, the heroes are in the Tomb of Anubis fighting Ambuscade and Miss Information et al, and when the cutout shows up, it’s actually the heroes discovering a life-sized Egyptian-style painting of Ambuscade, and instantly uncritically accepting that Ambuscade has transformed himself into a hieroglyphic to try and hide from them, so they start disassembling the wall before they suddenly figure out that Missy’s powers made them accept a nonsensical premise as being reasonable. If Miss Info wasn’t there, the cutout might instead represent Ambuscade leaving his mask on a statue or something, so that the heroes would turn a corner, see the statue at the end of a shadowy hall, and snap off a quick shot at him before realizing their mistake. And if it was in Megalopolis or Rook City instead, then the cutout might represent the heroes mistaking a civilian who coincidentally looks like Ansel Moreau as being Ambuscade with his costume off, or even some crook who Ansel paid to impersonate him for an hour so he could get away.
The part about his energy powers fading makes me think that his first appearance might have been Challenge Mode, with the traps shuffling in and constantly accumulating; even though this wasn’t anywhere near being a thing when he first came out as the original mini-expansion villain, I feel like Ambuscade is one of those villains who somehow came out of playtesting (assuming 2011 C&A even playtested stuff) feeling much more potent and relevant than he has since been proven to be. Like Gloomweaver and Chokepoint and debatably Spite, Ambuscade almost never gets a win normally, and so his challenge mode is outrageous; thusly, it seems like it should retroactively explain his energy powers when they were brand new and at their peak, and that by the time they fade and you fight him on Mars, they’re down to the base deck again and he’s kind of pathetic.
As an alternative challenge mode, I’m a huge fan of the idea of having Ambuscade win if even one hero is incapacitated (similar to how Greazer drives away if he gets his bounty, but even more extreme). It doesn’t line up with the character as presented, but it could work as an alternate game mode. This mechanic was only ever used in Wager Master’s deck, which I found to be a tremendous waste, given how many other things are going on in that match (I don’t hate Wags as much as I used to, having seen him occasionally output an actually satisfying game; he just has a high probability of randomly aborting the game before it gets anywhere…it’s still more fun than fighting Spite). Moving it to Ambuscade instead seems both flavorful and a mutual benefit.
I remembered from my first viewing of the Visionary episode that it ended with the Lazer Ryders theme song, but I forgot that this episode also had a custom piece of music in place of the usual Progeny ending. It’s really cool, and I’m assuming it’s Ambuscade’s victory music, which I may have to wait a very long time to hear, since I always (well, almost) play with the intention of winning, and with my reverse-chronological rollout, Ambuscade will be the last villain I premiere, probably only fighting him a couple of times before financial and time constraints will probably force me to discontinue playing the app. At least I know Jean-Marc puts much of his music up on YouTube, so I’ll probably listen there.
Another pretty short one; my future looks bleak, so I may well never have time to finish this series, and am going to try not to linger perfectionistically over future episodes as I have done in the past (listening through six or so times to try and ensure that I get whatever point I half-noticed during my distracted initial listen). I hope at least someone is reading these giant walls of text that I put so much effort into; I do them for my own benefit and would even if I knew for a fact nobody ever read them, but I rather would like it if they did.