No, because while cards under Savage Mana maintain their card type (e.g. environment card), they have no text so they are no longer devices.
That’s what I was assuming, but I also know Handelabra supplies some digital-only quality-of-life features that mutate the card type line (e.g. how Caspit’s Playground in Freedom Tower adds “, equipment” to ongoing cards) and I noticed the type line of cards under Savage Mana were not blanked out, so it seemed they might still be registering in-game as devices.
Finally got it! Played with Operative over Ambascade and Legacy in the ‘non-Revocorp’ slot at Omnitron IV to get more devices (as I needed 10 and to play 20 equipment). Crushed the fight down until we got to just Benchmark and Expatriate at low health vs the Operative. I used redeploy loadout to play lots of equipment and then I just had to keep them alive while I waited for the environment to supply the last 2 devices. It wasn’t too bad once I could have Benchmark cover Expatriate with his damage reduction and healing out. On the final turn he was easily set up to crush everything left with Flybe’s, but he could have done a lot more damage over his whole turn...
Both of these make sense. I’d be interested to see what it officially is.
Edit: but I’d have to say, I think Pydro has the right of it.
The Fireside chats piece has not updated in regards to cards under Savage Mana or cards under other cards. If an updated ruling was made MigrantP would have posted that in his recent update to his Fireside chats.
I just got an unlock.
Played with Benchmark, Dark Watch Expatriette, Visionary Unleashed, Fugue State Parse, and Setting Sun Ra .vs. Challenge Fright Train, Friction, Ambuscade, Plague Rat, and Baron Blade in Omnitron IV.
On my first turn I played a Twist the Ether on Plague Rat, which pretty much gave me the upper hand for the rest of the game. I ended up with all my characters near 8 HP, and Baron Blade at 10. I already had tons of set up, and could have finished the game at anytime, but was way under my 30/15 quota. So for the next 30 or so minutes, I just kept playing Equipment and destroying Devices, until I was sure I had enough Equipment and Devices.
What? What even IS this unlock requirement?! Besides PATENTLY RIDICULOUS
You can thank Christopher for this and I suspect future unlocks will be just as devious.
It's MATH!
I did this on my iOS installation using all of the available RevoCorp decks except Expat (who I'll likely bring back in when I try for the Steam achievement). My two non-RC decks were Omnitron-X and Freedom Six Unity. This meant that I needed 20 Equipment and 10 Devices to be destroyed. The latter being the sticking point as I wound up needing to wait out some deck reshuffles just to get enough in play at some point.
The plan was to intentionally knock out Unity as quickly as possible and hope for a Meteor Storm soon thereafter (which I finally got on like my 5th attempt at the setup). Why knock her out? So I could use her incap ability to kill devices while the Meteors prevented all damage. I brought Omnitron along to both speed up the Environment deck plays to find the Meteors and in the hope that I could pull off a Singularity while all available Equipment was in play to take out just about everything as soon as I stopped the Meteors. What I hadn't considered while setting things up was the headaches that Choke and Ray Manta would cause with Equipment destruction in the meantime.
In the end it was really just a slog - in retrospect I should have changed all of my display settings to speed up the constant "try to hit every target in every deck for 0 damage" kinds of things happening. I'll probably bring Expat along instead of Omnitron next time. She'll still have plenty of Equipment for the villains/environment to blow up and/or destroy on her own, but just knocking the number of Devices necessary is enough of a time saver that it's likely worth needing multiple games to get the right Environment plays. I'll probably keep Golem Unity around to get around Impulsion Beams slowing everything else down.
The trick to it turned out to be using a bunch of Tactical Communicators and Critical Multipliers to increase damage the bad guys would take and the heroes would do so that I could basically one-shot everybody as soon as damage could happen again. Piling up something like 70 Unlucky tokens for Setback to bounce damage back to baddies and having this set up to turn off the Meteors just before Plague Rat's turn helped too as he could set off all of these irreducible, instantly fatal pings.
Lots of boring setup leading to an extremely satisfying 2 minutes at the end.
Ok, it took me all day, but I finally got it. I shuffled my heroes around a lot, and reset a bunch, but here’s how the winning game went.
Villains:
Baron Blade - Fright Train - Ambuscade - Friction - Plague Rat
Heroes:
Sentinels (Adamant Idealist, Medico; normal Writhe, Mainstay) - Benchmark - Setback - Parse - ExPatriette
Environment: Temple of Zhu Long
I reset until he got something other than Impulsion Beam. I think I ended up with Omni-Blade this time.
Focus down Plague Rat, Friction, and then Ambuscade/Fright Train. Using Blackout on Plague Rat is super effective.
The main challenge was killing enough devices. I was sitting at 3 (the ones that start out in play) until Blade was the only one left. I actually had to heal him a bunch and creatively set people’s health to keep him alive until he played the last 2, and I would have been unable to keep him around long enough if he hadn’t done so on the last turn.
In retrospect, using Normal Dr. Medico would have been better, so I could heal him for more than 1 per turn.
I'm slogging through an attempt using Meteor Storm & zillions of Unlucky tokens on Setback. Just want to verify that I understand the wording correctly: I win this game (meeting the math criteria), then I play an equipment card in a different game, right? I'd hate to mess this up and have to try again....
You play an equipment card in a separate game.
I may just wait until Luminary's out digitally to get this one. c.c
I followed the advice upstream re the Biomancer/Benchmark method. It was easy, though a tad tedious. I almost lost Haka at one point, becasue SM took forever to get out.
I tried a more Revocorp heavy version of that strategy. Basically, just took all 9 Revocorp characters + the Naturalist in Omnitron IV. Got wiped by the villains repeatedly, generally only taking down maybe 1 or 2 before losing. Clearly they Revocorp heroes need a lot more help, but I’m wondering if it can be done with more Revocorp decks (and thus fewer equipment plays required).
Maybe switch Plague Rat for Grezer?
Honestly, once you're set up, it really doesn't take long. I just had a dickens of a time setting up, becasue Haka's SM was about halfway through his deck.
Edit: accuracy
Finally finished the slog. PW Haka, Expat, Benchmark, Fugue Parse, & Setback vs. Friction, Blade, Fright Train, Ambuscade, and Plague Rat at Wagner Mars Base. After dying horribly in the first attempt (didn't bring any villains down), I survived long enough for Meteor Storm to come out, then built up. Eventually, Haka and Benchmark had all of their cards in play or in hand, and Setback was close, and had over 100 tokens. Once there were enough devices out (and 2x High Risk Behavior), Haka dropped a Ground Pound, Expat skipped her turn to end the Meteor Storm, and Benchmark took out some Enticing Targets and hit Glamour a couple of times.
Silly me almost did myself in by forgetting about the two copies of Looking Up I had in play (to rack up tokens earlier in the game, and for fodder for ongoing destruction), and had to undo when he died. Fortunately, Parse's Between the Lines allowed Benchmark to burn a Threat Neutralizer on one, and Segmentation Fault took out the other one.
Then Setback Exceeded Expectations and then some, with 2x +29 to each villain target -- taking out 5 devices, an Enticing Target, and the last four villains. But crap, Glamour + Friction + Hippo is a problem.... Haka dropped another Ground Pound, but Baron Blade's incap spelled the end of Setback and Parse (all of those Critical Multiplier pumps I distributed among my heroes throughout the game...). Expat Unloaded her Assault Rifle, Tactical Shotgun, & Prejudice to take Glamour off the board & weaken Hippo. Now that Benchmark wasn't hindered by an Impulsion Beam, he could cut loose, and had no problem finishing Hippo & taking down Friction for the win. One new game & equipment card later, and I got the variant. After that slog, I think I'm going to have to take a break from Sentinels for a while.
Hmmm, I wonder if Wrong Time & Place would have been easier...
With 100 tokens and lots of time to set up, I would have thought you’d have a Silver Linings in play, giving Setback 100+ HP if he fell down.
Honestly, I think it’s quicker and easier to scrap Ambascade and play at Omnitron IV. Benchmark makes the equipment requirement easy (His loadout Card lets you replay a bunch of equipment freely) so you basically just need to keep the game going long enough for the environment to play 7 devices.