So, one of the best things about SotM for me is the way it evokes drama in gameplay. I thought it would be interesting for us to share some of those stories, if folks are interested in doing so. It's not just that games are close, but that the activity of trying to take down the villain before they eliminate the heroes (or otherwise win) give us an interesting and dramatic narative.
A recent game really brought this home. It was against a home-brewed villain, unfortunately, so this won't be as clear-cut of a situation, but basically once the heroes reveal his fiendish nature to the world, he became a rampaging beast, killing and eating everything - and everyone - in his way. Unfortunately, we got our evidence of his infernal nature earlier than we would have prefered, so we hadn't weakened him enough to make the game manageable. (In other words, we flipped him before we were ready and paid the price!) It was really scary and down to the wire, with a lot of damage being thrown around. We didn't know if we could pull it off - and honestly we were sure we were going to lose just two turns earlier, making for some exiting and energetic game play. The last active hero, Naturalist, was down to 1 HP, and successfully took out the villain before being taken down on the villain's next turn. (Not the closest game we've had, but it was impressively dramatic nonetheless!)
What kinds of dramatic moments can you share? Looking forward to hearing them!
Last night the Girlfriend and I went up against Iron legacy with Wraith, Tempest, Ra, and EoW Bunker. By the end of turn 4 only Wraith was alive with just one hp.
But Tempest Incap of immune to type of damage is brutally effective, and we pulled out a win because we never saw the projectile damage one shot (and the psychic damage ongoings had been played at the start, and Bunker had already destroyed those
So we pulled out a win with 1 Hp left on the heroes.
I once had a really fun solo game where it was ExPat, Ra, someone else, and Haka against Plague Rat in Insula Primalis. All of them but Haka died early on, meaning it ended up being a solo punch out with a single-digit-HP Haka and a 65-HP Plague Rat. And some dinosaurs. Haka won.
All of the incaps involved using powers -- and one let me destroy environment cards, I think -- so I was punching him and drawing cards about 5 times a round, allowing me to heal frequently. Plus whenever a dinosaur would get in the way, someone would just get rid of it, and I'd draw 3 more cards. It was great.
I was completely struggling against Advanced La Capitan; wittling her down while getting completely slaughtered by her crew. My team was DW Mr. Fixer, The Scholar, Tachyon, and Wraith. We were playing in Realm of Discord, and I used Wraith's Eye Piece to put Portal Fiend on the bottom of the environment deck. I thought the game wouldn't last as long as it did, but of course, we finally get near the end of the RoD and I know that Portal Fiend is going to pop up and completely destroy us (seeing as like 13 cards would be in the env trash).
Capitan is at like...35 health or something and is Split Across Time, meaning we can't hurt her until all of our cards are removed from her. So, I spend the next two turns taking risky moves just so I can hurt her, removing cards from under her. Portal Fiend pops up, Capitan finally flips, and we're just barely hanging on (we're all at like 2 HP). Portal Fiend is about to kill one of us, unless we can quickly get Capitan in range of Portal Fiend's impending 13 damage attack (he hits the 2nd highest HP non-environment target, if I recall). Wraith and Fixer do as much damage as they can, but it's not enough. Scholar burst heals to get back up to 10 HP; Capitan is at around 25. We need to hit her for at least 16 damage to get her below Scholar so Portal Fiend will hit her. Finally on Tachyon's turn, last turn before the environment, I play her bursty card to get Capitan down to 17; still not enough. I use my second Play (HUD goggles) to play her "Draw a card, play a card" burst. And what do I happen to draw? Another bursty card; target her for 9 damage, bringing her down to 8 HP.
Environment turn; Portal Fiend kills Capitan.
I swear, I was sweating nervously from that one; it was incredibly suspensful.
Just played against the advanced Ennead with Haka, Fanny, nipple ra, and expat at silver gulch. Ra is incapped round 4. The other heroes fight bravely and manage to take out all but Tefnut, Shu and Isis. Expat falls next followed quickly by fanny. Haka against three villains! he takes out Tefnut and Isis without a problem. Haka against Shu. Does anyone else see the problem? Due to a large amount of environment destruction and (yay portals! and Osiris!) Dominion Haka begins to grow his hand size. Haka slowly is pegged down until he has three life left. Savage mana has zero cards underneath it but with an extra from punish the week and two extra from fanatic Haka uses Savage mana toxic damage to kill Shu! 24 damage! It was exhilirating!
I fought Spite recently, He started with the Upsilon Compound so we couldn't play more than 1 equip/ongoing card per turn, (really weighing us down) after a while all but Haka was dead, Spite lowered me to 1 but luckily I pulled a Haka if battle, (thanks to fixer) and Taiaha'ed him to death, with 1 HP.
Had an really close match vs. the Dreamer today, we thought we had won with everyone under 10hp, but we had miscounted and only had 7 under her, the next turn only one hero was alive and had 3hp.
Two Tooth Fairies and an ape were in play, but with Rooftop Combat Ape would kill me and we'd lose. An incap card play won us the game.
During the Villain Beatdown Nemesis Edition, I had a mammoth solo run where in a team of Legacy, Unity, Nightmist, AZ, and... Tempest, I think, had a fight against Advanced Blade in which they did not manage to flip him until after he had 16+ cards in his trash. (He started the villain turn with 14, played at least one, and then had the standard mill). In the contest against Advanced Omintron (used as Unity's nemesis since I don't own ST), it was the Megalopolis Police Backup who took Omnitron down, with everybody except Tempest incapped and Tempest hanging on by a thread.
Apostate vs DW Nightmist, Tempest, and Absolute Zero - EW in the Time Cataclysm.
Apostate went relic heavy early including Runes of Malediction. Tempest played Into the Stratosphere twice to allow the heroes to damage relics and were also chipping away at Apostate at the same time. Without Investigation available Nightmist was using the Tome to draw additional spell cards and try to build up a supply for attack and potential discard. AZEW just chipped away at targets.
Things got dicey as HP ran down. Nightmist opted for an Oblivion attack figuring for Tempest to get Cleansing Rains going right afterwards to help the recovery. The two cards drawn had spell values of "4", and "4". Oops. Since Elder Ring was in play as well Nightmist proceeds to blow away her two fellow heroes. She redirects the damage on herself to another target and actually does quite a bit of damage to Apostate and his collection of relics and demons, including totally blasting Condemnation. The game turns into a 1-on-1 duel for the next couple of rounds.
Trouble for Nightmist at this point is generating offense since she had been burning through her Heedless Lash and Oblivion attacks earlier. She ends up for the most part just redirecting Apostate's attacks back at him while working on card draws.
The game ends with a Mist Fueled Recovery giving NIghtmist a solid advantage in HP. And Apostate goes down by being crushed by a Collaspsing Hallway (courtesy of the environment). Done in the right order, of course, in order to not bring a relic into play for Apostate to use as a substitute victim.
The most dramatic moment I've had so far was when I introduced the game to a couple of friends last week and we decided to fight La Capitan. I had never fought her before and it was a five hero fight. Tachyon, Chrono Ranger, Wraith, Fanatic and Tempest vs La Capitan in the Time Cataclysm. I thought as a Rank 2 villain she would be a nice step up from Omnitron who we had just fought previously as a way to introduce my friends to the game. How much harder could she be? Oh dears, how wrong we were.
When she drew the raiding party on her second turn we knew we were in deep trouble as she summoned 4 crew members to her side. But it got really nasty a few turns later. We brought down half her crew when she plundered enough of our equipment and ongoing cards to flip next turn. We figured this was bound to happen, but hey it was onlyfour cards underneath her, we could flip her back over pretty quickly right? Nope, on the turn she flipped she drew her temporal thief card taking a card from each of us. SHE HAD 9 CARDS UNDERNEATH HER AND 2 CREW STILL ALIVE. We had to wtch as she went from 50 HP back up to full. And then she drew another raiding party it took roughly an hour before we actually could do damage to her. Her crew was absolutely brutal. We only won in the end thanks to Fanatic basically nuking herself to flip La Captian and then burst her down along with late game Tachyon burst damage we FINALLY managed to bring her down, but we all had single digit HP remaining.
La Capitan is not to be taken lightly Rank 2 my arse!
The nice thing about Raiding Party is that ALL the revealed cards looking for crew members get put in the trash instead of back into the deck.
In high [H] games, usually this means she has a large chance of discarding a ton of her really nasty stuff stealing oneshots. If you can time that with destroying the ship, her deck can become very managable.
La Captain, the more you play her, you start to see why she is rated at lvl 2. When she combos, she combos very hard, and that kinda gives her an elevated sense of danger. If you can manage to destroy the ship early and keep it in the trash, even her nasty combos will not give you much trouble. I have had so many games where she never flips at all, so she can be very swingy.
Her advanced mode takes the swingy-ness out of her and gives her a decidedly mid 3 difficulty
Looking forward to hearing them!
