Unexpected combinations

And if so, that’s a combo with regular Void Guard Medico’s Clinical Consult as well. Or hey, maybe use Second Opinion to replace it with a third power usage?

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Now that’d be a really interesting case to test…

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Desperate Prey at the start of each turn, alternating between the two forms you don’t have in play. Each round can have two card plays with all three form effects, then use the full effects on both copies of Natural Form’s Power! That’s what we call Chimera from the Mist Storm Verse! :rhinoceros::goat::crocodile:

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The hard part is just managing to actually draw one of the three Form cards…

Confirmed, he heals 2 and keeps the card!

Same deal, not a surprise now.

This was the one I was most interested in, since it doesn’t follow the pattern of the others. And it turns out, the card does get destroyed! So I guess he has to heal at least 4 HP!

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I figured as much. Just brought it up for argument’s sake. @The_Justifier did have a good point about Second Opinion that I hadn’t considered before, though. I’d often take a 3rd power over some healing anyway!

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Now that kind of bugs me a little, because there’s nothing on the card text to indicate that gaining between 0 and 4 HP would have a different result than gaining >4 HP. I guess the video game is implementing the spirit vs. the letter of the card, but that leaves some interactions that are otherwise unclear to the players.

(I do see there is a Fireside Chat clarification on the wiki that says “at least 4.” Looks like something they’ll clean up with The Naturalist: Definitive Edition. :wink:)

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I know that if they wanted to prevent free-healing, they could have used the text “if he regains HP this way”, which would still allow the Second Opinion and Red Right Hand combos, but not the Operative and Smog interactions. If Savanna Nocturna doesn’t work, then presumably Clinical Consult won’t either. But I don’t recall the order of operations; can Operative reduce an amount to 1 and that amount then be boosted, or does a “set value equal to” always override all other operators?

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Almost certain it’s “Hero targets heal only 1 HP” regardless. Not sure if you can apply Experimental Medicine / Red Right Hand before that effect and damage more than 1.

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“Damage dealt by Dr. Medico cannot be increased”, so my guess is that RAI would be “no”.

This is probably not that unexpected, but I’m still finding details about Benchmark which are surprising to me. If you have a Legion-Core Processor to activate an Intelligence Analyzer (it analyzes intelligence, you know), or a Load On Initialization to do it that way, you can play a Software during your start phase to trigger Onboard Cooling Systems. Then, in your play phase, play Overhaul Loadout, pick up the Cooling System and any Software, put them back down, and you can deal your “once per turn” cold damage a second time that turn. Combined with Fly-by, that could be as much as 10 damage to the main villain and to a secondary target, before you even get to your power phase!

The more I play Benchmark, the more I think of him as Bunker 2.0. The flavor isn’t that far apart; if anything the Hardware/Software mechanic feels more like something the Army would actually build, something really complex with a ton of moving parts that works best when used according to a carefully calculated (and well documented, and not to be deviated from) plan. He combos really well with AZ too, so the two ironclad members of the F5 could at least have some decent synergy with each other (and Unity kind of). Bunker meanwhile is really showing his age as a core set hero, seeming much more like a fairly generic superhero rather than specifically an Iron Man type, with the mode switching kinda seeming like a trap that Revocorp built into the suit to keep it from being too useful. I might just have to kinda headcanon the two into each other’s suits a little.

Would you say that he is, perhaps…the NEW STANDARD™? :wink:

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Well, for Armor Suit Guys, certainly…

Natural-Born Vigor from the Naturalist can allow you to gain 4 life at the beginning of his turn.
If he does so, the card is destroyed.

The card is destroyed if he gains 4 life … if he gains 1, 2, 3 life (because he did lose that much life sofar for example), the card stays in play and it’s a free heal

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Works great with Redico as the healing is prevented

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This was already mentioned just a short distance up the thread, Hankroyd.

One small detail that I noticed recently: if Haka needs to deal damage, and he can’t hit something for Melee (whether because of a target that’s immune, such as Voss’s ships, or because you’re playing a version other than basic Haka and you can’t keep a Mere or Taiaha in play), Savage Mana can be “dry-fired” for 0 toxic damage, but you can boost that up quite a lot with a Haka of Battle. I love the idea of downing the Dreadnought by just vomiting a gigantic column of bile into the sky, destabilizing the craft’s orbit by the sheer mass and velocity of the belch.