Action Hero Stuntm, Legacy, Freedom Five Tachyon and Scholar of the Infinite vs Plague Rat, Citizens Hammer and Anvil, Proletariat and Ermine on Advanced in the Final Wasteland (do de do dooooo, do de do do do, do de do dooooo).
So more damage and harder tot hurt from H&A, irreducible from the Rat, Proletariat clone fishing and Ermine wrecking your setup even more than usual. Sounds “fun”. Let’s do this thing.
Near Mint:
Start out with two RevoCorp Restrainers and Bastion. Moral of this story is do not kill the minions (apart from the shield). With that much villain DR, having Plague Rat deal you 3 irreducible damage vs 1 at best to them is just a bad idea.
Stuntman is king of the disposable ongoings and equipment and Action Hero version can play through them fast enough to keep up with Ermine. explosives are especially handy once Bastion is gone.
Proletariat gets Everyman's Strength out early so don't kill the baby Proles until you're ready to deal with that (Synaptic Interception works wonders for this).
Kill order: Anvil, Ermine, Anvil, Hammer (mostly by Plague Rat, area and environment damage), Plague Rat and finally Proletariat.
All heroes alive but very low health.
Near Mint 6/9/9/2
I got Near Mint because of rewinds.
This one starts harsh. Not only is Bastion up, but there are two Revocorp Restrainers. The starting hero cards aren’t great, but the strategy’s obvious. Start chipping away at Anvil to get rid of Bastion. Hold Hidden Mine until Bastion is gone and then let Stuntman do his thing.
That said, Offensive Transmutation is a must that first round on Plague Rat if you’ve gotten rid of the Restrainers (which I did because I wanted him to hurt villains too). His next card is Let Loose and combined with his damage being irreducible, it’s a huge smash. So that’s why I rewound.
The other place I rewound was when Hidden Mine went off. I also had No Time to Bleed up, and figuring out the sequence of which targets to hit when which thing took a few tries (use No Time to Bleed first, then when the Hidden Mine hits Stuntman, destroy No Time to Bleed to do more damage. Keep track of which targets haven't been hit with Hidden Mine yet and you can drop more than one. I took Anvil, Ermine, and Hammer out the same turn).
Once Ermine goes down, it gets a lot easier since your on-goings stick around.
Mint here.
While the obvious strategy is hit Anvil first because of Bastion, I decided to take out Plague Rat first. Among other things, Advanced + Hammer and Shield means that Anvil’s at 2 DR, so you’re not doing any more damage to him than to Plague Rat. So I decided to take out the main threat first, and that worked well for me.
I took out the Revocorp Restrainers, but it didn’t matter because I used Offensive Transmutation round 1 to block Plague Rat’s damage, and took him out round 2. I did an early Know When to Cut Loose to ping him down to 3, and Infinite Scholar’s base power to take him out with damage boosted by the discarded cards from Know When to Cut Loose.
Everyone contributed significantly. Legacy was the most passive, doing little beyond contributing Galvanize most turns. But without that bump in damage, the other heroes would have been doing much, much less.
Stuntman did a ton of damage, mostly with No Time to Bleed. 1 point of damage isn’t much to start, but a couple of My Own Stunts and a Galvanize later, that’s 4 points of retaliation damage. Sometimes it was 3 My Own Stunts, and eventually Legacy got Inspiring Presence out. Because Stuntman’s damage was always heavily boosted, I avoided Hidden Mine. Too much friendly fire there, and there’s that self-harm from No Time To Bleed.
Ermine’s usually a huge problem, but Stuntman turned all her ongoing and equipment destruction to his advantage.
The Scholar shut down Plague Rat round 1, and took him out entirely round 2. Once Ermine was gone he put up Flesh to Iron and tanked all the damage. He’s also really good in team fights because of Grace Under Fire and Get Out of the Way, both of which did a lot of damage due to the number of villain targets. Proletariat’s clones helped with that.
Tachyon had some troubles at first, but got a timely Hypersonic Assault after Bastion was out of the picture, and did some significant hits with boosted Blitz. She ended up being the one putting out last minute blast of damage to take down Ermine and Proletariat.
Target order was Plague Rat -> Ermine -> Anvil -> Hammer -> Proletariat.
Near Mint with everyone around 10 hp
First game I went too Ham with the Stunts, trying to kill everything quickly, even through Bastion. Got down to just scholar left and the villains fairly low, and thought I could tank through with Flesh to Iron and a sequence of "Get out of the Way" to heal, then have Tachyon put it back in his hand with her incap. Unfortunately, with the Advanced Ongoing destruction from Ermine and Irreducible damage from Plauge, I couldn't make it.
Second game, I was much more defensive to start. With a turn 2 Let Loose and Everyman Strength, I actually left every minion I could on the board and just Flesh to Iron tanked most of it. I set up a couple of combos for Stuntman, and once Bastion was replaced by Wildfire, the game was all over for the Villains except for the dancing. 3-4 Turn uses for Stuntman per round, combined with Galvanize and Inspiring Presence, meant I could keep playing/destroying cards and did massive damage doing so. Mines hurt heroes, yes, but they hurt villains way more ;)
~Komori
Mint at 8/9/10/9.
Who let Action Hero Stuntman have his mines with Legacy and Ermine around? Even with my focus on the Rat to take it out first I still took out all the baddies at around the same time due to the sheer AOE blast those mines have. The Rat, and Anvil died on the same turn due to it (Anvil died twice to the same mine), Hammer got hit with scholar's void energy, Proletariet got hit with the invisibility trap, and Ermine just got shot. As usual Stuntman stole the show with Legacy pumping him up, though Scholar did keep the rat from doing anything past turn 1.
Tach just kinda stood there and watched because f5 tach is...well she's not SS tach and she's not TL tach I'll say that much. It's why I had Ermine put her stuff on the top of her deck rather than any of the other heroes.
A very messy mint at 0/6/8/11.
I made the mistake of focusing Rat without killing his handlers, effectively erasing my first round of damage, but he went down on round 3 or 4. H&A died to AOE damage (Anvil going first), Ermine was cleaned up by Stunt’s final boom, and Pro was just there to pass out damage to the heroes until he dropped.
Stunt tried to keep out No Time to Bleed, and was able to boost his damage a few times each turn. I held his Mine way too long, killing himself with 5 damage after wiping out most of the enemy targets.
Legacy boosted and healed. I should have put out more ongoing cards to feed Ermine, since she kept eating No Time to Bleed.
Tach did some work when the damage resistance dropped. She was able to push Rat and Anvil far enough toward death for others to finish them through redirects and her power. She wasn’t too impressive early on, but she contributed enough. I wish I’d held off on draining her trash until using Lightspeed Barrage, which would have killed Hammer or Ermine at least 1 turn sooner.
I never Cut Loose with Scholar. Turn 1 he turned off Rat’s damage, and in future turns he held off Prolit with Flesh and enabled some good top-deck plays. In hindsight, I should have left out more clones so that Prolit wouldn’t bully Tach so much.
I really don’t like team mode, but this was a fun puzzle.
To the contrary, F5 Tachyon is stronger than either Super Scientific or Team Leader Tachyon if she has damage boosts and the target doesn’t have damage resistence. She pairs very well with basic Legacy because of Galvanize. She’s usually doing an average of 4 points per round plus whatever her card play does, right from the start of the game. Not many heroes can boast that kind of early, repeatable damage.
F5 Tachyon is frankly the version that’s closest the her obvious archetype The Flash, because she can do a lot of rapid hits on demand, rather than having to wait to draw the right cards. Like any hero that does a lot of 1 point hits in rapid sucession, such as Chrono Ranger, her effectiveness goes up dramatically with +1 or +2 damage, and sinks to zero if she’s facing any kind of net damage resistence.
In this game her problem with damage resistence means she can’t touch the villains until Bastion goes away, but she has no trouble taking out secondary cards like Rat’s handlers and Anvil’s shield. Super Scientific Tachyon would have the same problem, no cards that can get through Bastion. Team Leader would of course be drawing cards for everyone, but she wouldn’t be taking out the minions the way F5 Tachyon does.
Once Bastion does go away, she’s only second to Stuntman in her total damage output. She unloaded on Ermine for 12 points in my game, and was in a position to unload on Proletariat for 18, but didn’t have to because Proletariat didn’t have that much HP left, even with clones to absorb Tachyon’s hits. Ermine’s incapicated deck-milling helps out any version of Tachyon, but it’s particularly good for her F5 variant.
F5 Tachyon can be a fantastic finisher, either taking out a villain with lots of health in a team game, or outright ending the game if it’s a single villain or the last villain on a team. Any version of Tachyon likes to hoard Burst cards in her trash and then use a bunch of Lightspeed Barrages to end things, but F5 Tachyon can do that and use her base power as an extra Barrage afterward. Or 3 extra Barrages if she’s doing 3 points per hit.
Messy near-mint. Offensive transmutation on turn one is super helpful, but some weird plays left me in a precarious position.
F5 tachyon is great once she's gotten going, but she doesn't have the acceleration/fill potential of the other tachyons. I used her to trim off ermine in my game but her contributions were largely minimal other than that. There was a funny interaction where H&A seared legacy and he didn't do damage again until he tried to heroic interception so that was free.
I mean maybe F5 tach is good for Death of a Thousand Cuts playstyles but every time I've played her (which has been in a weekly one shot mind you) she hasn't had the time to get a good blitz going either because the game ends too quickly (such as here where she got two turns and Bastion only went away after the second one) or she gets murdered too quickly and I have to just use what I got before she dies (such as that one one-shot with Iron Legs in the block.)
I did that too. Once Legacy was seared I always had something better to do than throw away a card just to burn off the sear. I was aware that sooner or later I’d probably get to burn off the sear with a Heroic Interception, and sure enough, that’s what I did.
I was also kind of planning to use Stuntman’s Hidden Mine while Heroic Interception was up, so he didn’t hurt anyone with the friendly fire but Legacy, but by the time that came up, Ermine was down and the Scholar was tanking all the damage, so I didn’t think I’d actually trigger the mine.
Mint. I managed to lose Legacy to a full strength Everyman Strength hit from Prolitariet into Scholar top decking Heroic Interception leaving him on 1 before the environment card took him down. But otherwise, not too bad - Stuntman was doing a lot of damage and an early boosted mine took down all the extra targets and left both Plague Rat and Anvil taken out on the second turn. Ermine followed shortly after. Prolitariet took a little longer - I miss played an out of turn card play from Stuntman that would have taken him out while he had no clones and he then played 4 on his turn, but I had multiple goes with his Flame thrower a round which meant this only really bought him a turn during which Hammer went down as well. Game ended with Stuntman destroying the last 3 clones and the original with one blast of his flame thrower - all from 3 HP.
No idea what I did differently on the Near Mint than the first attempt, save for blocking Plague Rat's damage with Scholar.
But oh boy, a couple rounds of +4 damage Mines going off, and the villains were just toast. Stuntman did nearly as much damage to his teammates, sure, but it was just sad how much he annihilated the villain team.
Mint.
Only used one mine, and man, it was a doozy. Inspiring Presence, Galvanize, and at least 2, maybe 3 AMOS's.
Everyone was in pain at that point, and f5 Tach knocked PR and Proletariat out at that point.
Close fought Mint with Stuntman at 5, Legacy at 6, Tachyon down and the Scholar at 4. Took down Plague Rat first, followed by Anvil, Hammer, Proletariat and Ermine in that order. The first of Stuntman's mines was poorly timed and mostly got blocked by Bastion, but the second one MORE than made up for it. KABOOM! :)
Done on Ermine's second turn when her Advanced rule blew up the second Hidden Mine of the round. Plague Rat, Hammer, Proletariat, and Ermine all went down at the same time. AH Stuntman did pretty much all the work, as you might guess. As others said, a critical portion of damage prevention was using Scholar's one and only turn to poke Plague Rat with Offensive Transmutation.
Final HP 12 / 12 / 7 / 8.
Mint turn one was getting stuntman to +5 with mine out by ermine's turn. Mine and PR put all the villians super low, easyish mop up later. Stuntman did more damage to his team than the villians but everyone was up.
I just tried out the “play a mine early” approach, and yeah, it works. All the villains are badly injured during Ermine’s first turn, and a second mine played during her second turn will wipe them all out.
I didn’t really quite grasp until now how important the second half of “All My Own Stunts” is. Sure, the +1 damage is important, but playing a card’s pretty powerful too. It’s the “play a card” part that lets Stuntman play ongoings that give him 3 additional power uses by the middle of Ermine’s first turn.
I had to rewind a couple of times before I got the chain right, though. Those power uses have to be spread out over several turns, after all, and destroying a card that gives you a power use isn’t helpful if you’ve already used All My Own Stunts this turn.
I played this match and won it in three rounds, which I thought was pretty fast for a SotMV game. I was then wondering *how* fast I could win the game.
On my next attempt at this game I leaned on Stuntman a bit harder, and he almost took out all the villains on the environment turn of round 1. Stuntman setting off "Hidden Mine" when he is +5 on all attacks is a sight to behold. Legacy finished off the last two villains standing (Plague Rat and Ermine) on his card play of round 2.
I don't think I can win this fight (or any normal match [looking at you, Wager Master]) any faster than this: round 2, hero turn 2.
Final hero HP were 6/12/10/8, and a lot of this damage to the heroes was from Stuntman setting off 2 "Hidden Mine" cards in the first round (désolé, mes amis)