Weekly One-Shot #138: Double Jeopardy

Games SotM: The Video Game
1

Ambuscade, Fright Train, Friction, Plague Rat, and Baron Blade against The Wraith, Setback, Fugue State Parse, Expatriette, and Omnitron-X, fighting in the Celestial Tribunal. It's a Revocorp Brawl.

Randomized.

 

Aieeeeeeeee!

I lost count of how many times this game went absolutely sideways for me. And of course, with randomization, tips are of minimal use. But here's what I found:

Ablative Coating and Smoke Bombs (if you can get Omnitron-X to be the highest-HP character) are a great way to tank. The vast majority of the damage is melee, projectile, or toxic.

Nemeses to avoid/remove at all costs: Glamour (as always), Highbrow, Revenant. Many of the others (The Hippo, Choke, Ray Manta, Omni-Blade) are certainly annoying, but not nearly as devastating.

Never let the system choose targeting order. Especially if you can arrange things so that you neutralize much of Plague Rat's all-targets attacks on your heroes, then the Rat offs the last Handler and goes on a rampage through the villains.

For Expatriette, a shotgun is a girl's best friend.

Device to get rid of: Impulsion Beam. The rest are dealwithable.

Setback is going to get hurt a lot this game, as it seems half the cards have his nemesis icon. Silver Lining can be very useful. Cause and Effect can at least make the damage work for you, too.

Let the heroes do a lot of the work for you. Many of them attack themselves or each other; try to make those count. (Shock Dampeners should go quickly.)

Parse could do a fair amount of discarding this game, as usual, so get the Multipliers out.

I got a Fine with everyone standing and I'm just glad it's over.

2

First try: Glamour and Revenant on the first turn.  That is all.

3

Yeah, that's a reset and bye-bye Mint.

4

Played this one quickly this morning before work - only managed to take out Fright Train and Plague Rat before getting taken down. 

5

I managed to take down Blade & FT, and was close to taking everyone but Plague Rat down, actually. 

6

Wow. What a bad matchup.

I've now played eight games. I have yet to drop a single villain. In fact, I've only gotten any of them into single digits a couple of times.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm getting regularly slaughtered. By the time I take out the necessary minor cards (Impulsion Beam, Glamour, Shock Dampeners, Revenant, etc.), all the heroes are hovering around 10 hp.

7

I HATE this. Maybe even harder than Dark Watch/Rook City.

I even tried with the VAriants. It's a hard match up. Plague Rat is EVIL

8

Update: Nope. i've given up. I feel that they didn't playtest this match. Unless you're supposed to lose, than i don't see a good way to even get close. I'm waititng till somone finds a way to cheap win this. 

9

Of course I playtested it, like I do every one-shot. I lost the first game, and won the second with a single hero standing. Sometimes they're going to be difficult =)

10

Ugh, no kidding.  Having Ambuscade start with Glamour doesn't help, and then they just kept hitting the table.  And most of them have nemeses in the party.  Just grotesque.  Highbrow ripped us to pieces, Ray Manta shut Omni-X down almost completely, and then there were Choke, Re-Volt, and the Hippo.  Oh, and two Impulsion Beams back-to-back.  The heroes were all at or below 5 HP, with Setback down, but it hardly mattered because the Representative of Earth got murdered less than a round after he came out.  First time I've seen that loss screen.  I'm very, very glad that we know step 2 of the Stuntman unlock already and that this is way harder than it needs to be.  Hopefully it isn't required for Benchmark!  (It might be, with the Revo-Corp theme.)

11

Mint, with everyone single digits >.> <.< *hides*


I dunno, I think what really helped was actually Plague Rat. He Let Loose at just the right time to absolutely wreck everything that wasn't a character card, meaning all the devices, nemesis, whatever that had built up (including Glamour, since its Villain damage it isnt redirected) got eaten. From there, it was much easier to control the field and take down FT, Friction, BB, PR, and !Ambuscade in that order. Other note, on another playthrough on my PC I had Buffer Overflow discard Glamour, which helped :D

~Komori

12

Haha! Yeah. I know you guys playtest, but this was a VERY mean one. Like, I've yet o even get close after a dozen games

13

Wow!

 

The heroes received a severe butt-kicking on that first attempt. Enticing Targets are not my friend. Hardly damaged the villains at all. The game ended (mercifully?) when the earth was sentenced to destuction.

14

YES! AFTER MORE THAN A COUPLE DOZEN ATTEMPTS I DID IT!

15

Still, that's better than I would have managed.

16

I came here to whine, since I’ve tried it and lost really, really badly 3 times running. Since it’s random I figured it was just me, but no, it looks like this is a really brutal villain team.

I don’t think it’s the heroes, or even the environment (though it’s worth noting that the hero “Called to Judgement” by the Tribunal is quite likely to lose the game for you). It’s just a villain team with some brutal immunities (hello Glamour) plus some serious damage dealers (Engine of Destruction, Plague Rat). There are an absurd number of near-certain loss setups if Glamour is out early. Ray, Revanant, Choke are all bad news if you can’t touch them.

I think Plague Rat’s most dangerous handler is the Restraint handler. Plague Rat can be a solution to Glamour, but only if he’s not restrained. Get 2 of them in play and he’s not hurting any of the villains or his handlers.

I learned a number of things not to do. Like, don’t play Combat Stance, because of the number of bad interactions it has. Wraith hitting herself due to Chemical Frenzy, or giving Plague Rat an extra play due to an Analyst, or hitting another hero because of Glamour.

I seem to recall that this is supposed to be an unlock prerequisite for one of the new heroes, and part of it is that you have to win with all heroes standing. Good luck with that.

17

After 6 attempts I finally had the game won. I just needed to get to omitrons turn to win. And then a dead FT killed the representative of earth and I lost. 

 

Its super hard as everyone has seen. Combat stance and smoke bombs were great for me. I had bad luck with Parse and impulsion device timings every game but multiplier is always good. Machine gun + Cryo is useful. 

I think the highest chance for success revolves around defensive posturing while allowing PR to do most of the damage to villains. In my one close attempt every bit of damage on the villain characters all came from other villain targets. 

18

After 8+ tries, I finally succeeded.

Ideal (villain) setup: Ray-manta/magman, 2 analysts, displacing teleporter/null bracers/Omniblade. 

First turn:

If Glamour is the Ambuscade's setup nemesis, or if she is the first play, reset.  

If Friction plays a Synergy surge, reset. 

 

My overall strategy tends to be:

Stun Friction ASAP (stun bolts, or smoke bombs/plating), because she has AoE potential.  

Take out Fright Train First (if possible), since he cranks out a lot of single target damage. If you have ablative plating available, stun+plating can largely nullify his damage. 

Baron Blade is the first priority target- he's got so many ways of shutting down heroes, whether through keeping them from doing damage, using multiple powers/playing cards, or just destroying their stuff. 

Plague Rat is the wild card. Ideally, I like for him to start out with 2 analysts, because I want him to start dealing damage to all targets ASAP. It hurts, but it can be the only realistic way to take down Glamour with this crop of heroes- none of them are particularly good at hitting the same target multiple times in a round. I spend a LOT of time micromanaging Plague Rat's targeting priority!

19

I did it both on Steam and iPad

my technique was the following

1) luck

2) defeat Plague Rat first

3) Get rid of Shock dampemers

4) Omnitron  needs the planting against toxic/projectile/melee

5) assault rifle is your friend

6) keep attacking handlers

7) setback just... let him do stuff that makes sense

 

20

 

The second prerequisite game for Acton Hero Stuntman has been confirmed as defeating mini-Ambuscade with nobody incapped, so this could fit that bill.

 

However, I wonder if this is also a hint for a prerequisite game for Supply and Demand Benchmark as well (with all the RevoCorp characters) and that the prerequisite is LOSING.

 

And then in a later game, Benchmark enters and wins. Or something.