Now I fully understand why Absolute Zero can be awesome

I just received the Rook City expansion (first one!) in the mail today, so I tried a solo game with 3 heroes against a new villain and a new environment. This time around I chose Tachyon, Absolute Zero and Expatriette vs. the Plague Rat in the streets of Rook City. 

It was pretty ugly. Now keep in mind I'm a new player, so I might have played things wrong, but I welcome all feedback. Also, this is just one long, LOOONG ramble, but I tend to get a bit wordy; apologies in advance!

I had no way real way to get rid of the infections (and the Blinding Speeds/RPGs I hoped for didn't draw, so the infections stayed), and within a few rounds everyone was infected, so the Plague Rat flipped and started doing even MORE damage to me per round. Granted, for awhile the Environment cards I could tolerate; falling statuaries, Blinding Back Alleys and the Scum and Villainy that kept arriving to make more trouble (I like to imagine it's the Operative on behalf of Chairman Pike keeping tabs on the escaped experiment and making life tougher for the Freedom Five and Expatriette); I even welcomed Inspector Taurus, who helped me delay some of the nastier effects. 

Still, Expatriette fell first due to only having one HP left from the infection. Thankfully by then I had the Null-Point (Cold = HP) and the Calibration (the +1 Cold) equipment on Zero, so she immediately let him zap himself for 2 HP restoration, barely keeping him in the fight after the Plague Rat dealt out the usual 2 Toxic and 1 Melee (on top of playing even MORE infections chained from Ravage!). Then the Plague Rat played Afflicted Frenzy, but it didn't matter since that turn Tachyon also fell from the infection due to only having 1 HP left, but she allowed Zero to draw a card. Isothermic, the Fire redirection.

It went very, very poorly for the Plague Rat after that. Had that immediately installed, and then I immediately dealt out Hoarfire, which allowed me to target myself for 2+1 Cold, dealing Plague Rat 2 Fire, then dealing myself 1 Cold and 1 Fire, which turned into 1+1 Cold and 1+1 Cold again from the Fire, healing myeslf up 7 HP. Later rounds with help from the fallen heroes allowed me to draw and keep playing more cards (including Cryo Chamber, letting me deal another +1 Cold to Zero), which also resulted in using attacks such as Thermal Shockwave to keep myself pretty much back up at full health. Didn't matter how much damage the Plague Rat or Rook City did to me, I simply froze/burnt Zero back to full health. Eventually, the falling statuary finally collapsed on top of the Plague Rat, giving me the game.

I played this game initially to try out Expatriette, but she and Zero are very similar in one way: they NEED the right cards to get the equipment they need. She started out promisingly enough with Quick Draw, so I could immediately snag Pride so she had a constant 2 Projectile power, but I only ever drew one effective ammo round (Incendiary) before the infection got to her. Granted, she can't heal herself like Zero, but with the right equipment (and on the turn before she went under, I got the tac shotgun. Sadface), she could do a horrifying amount of damage, I think. Tachyon as always was enormously helpful; she mitigated a lot of the damage (thanks Hypersonic Assault!) in the beginning before the card draws couldn't keep up with the damage. She at least dealt a total of 21 damage from the one-shot that deals as much damage to the target as cards in the discard, but wasn't enough on its own.

Zero? He's a Big Damn Hero (tm) in my book now. Though I'm hoping for a better showing with Expatriette next time. 

Yeah, sorry about taunting you with decks you couldn't play. Glad you enjoyed the experience, though.

And yes, AZ can tank with Null Point. He can also be  damage beast with Isothermic Transcucer as long as you don't mind running his HP down to fumes, similar to how Fanatic can be played.

A couple of clarifications, though.

1) Infections stay on incapaciated heroes and Afflicted Frenzy affects them. Which makes Plague Rat MUCH nastier as your downed teammates are still trying to gnaw your leg off.

2) With the Isothermic Transducer, it's not redirection. You take the fire dmage, then you lash out with cold. So it would still have hurt Zero by 1 after all the healing. So only 6 points ahead. Poor thing.

Zero and some of the other heroes are kind of gambles. Sometimes they have a big pay off and sometimes they don't. But when they do pay they pay off pretty big.

Ohhh, ok. I didn't realize the afflicted heroes still damage you for a toxic point (even if they cheer you on...somehow...that's definitely a snark commentary Zero makes in the narrative). And thanks for the clarification on Isothermic; I'd better be careful about not killing him trying to tank the fire next time! 

That being said, it's still a very cool mental image seeing Zero just simply taking whatever the Plague Rat (and downed/afflicted heroes) try to throw at him, and simply not caring by flashfreezing the entire city block or section of the sewers. That being said, all it would have taken was one effect destroying my equipment to utterly wreck Zero. But since apparently Rook City and the Plague Rat are not able to do so...

It was a point of discussion around here a while ago. I didn't realise it either but there's no text on them like Impale to suggest you remove them when the target is incapacitated,