Step right up, ladies and germs, to the place where the fun never stops.
Madamme Mittermeir's Fabulous Festival of Conundrums and Curiosities hosts the rockingest hepcat and his band: Greazer, Plague Rat, La Capitain, Hammer and Anvil, and Bugbear vs those squares who just want to stop the rock: the Wraith, Redeemer Fanatic, Haka, Ra Horus of Two Horizons and the Visionary.
Good luck, heroes.
Shockingly, I Minted this and I'm not sure how. It was a brutal fight, and I lost at least Wraith, but everything seemed to line up well with constantly having AoE damage available. It's just a matter of weathering it and directing it where you need it to go. Also, make good use of Freak Show, it interferes with a lot of negative effects.
Mint at 0/2/0/2/2. It should not have gotten that close, but this is the sort of setup where one moment of inattention can spell unmitigated disaster. Not to mention several. The heroes survived by the grace of Freak Show and finished the job.
I made the decision to let the Festival run wild and live under Maze of Mirrors, and it made the game a headache, but a fun one. That card almost entirely blunts damage from Greazer, La Capitan, and Anvil. With Flesh of the Sun God and Telekinetic Cocoon, about the only thing dealing damage was Plague Rat. I tried hard to find Twist the Ether to neuter Plague Rat and Imbued Fire to cancel all the self-damage, but they were not forthcoming.
I always forget about the Villain to Hero clause of Maze of Mirrors. This game it changed Infrared Eyepiece and Smoke Bombs. They were notably not useless in their altered states. Meanwhile, Drawn to the Flame became amazing. Ra eventually erupted with two rounds of massive Scorched Earth and hero-powered Drawn to the Flame, taking out Greazer, Anvil, Anvil again, Hammer, and Bugbear. Then I entered a bit of environment hell, but managed to get Plague Rat then La Capitan the next round.
This was also a game that cares a lot about card order, with lots of tricky ways to alter it. I stared a long time at End of Days in Fanatic's hand t1, knowing that it probably would not survive La Capitan's turn. Ultimately, though, if Fanatic isn't all-in, you're probably not playing her right. Accordingly, I didn't have any regrets... But if you're asking, Brutal Censure is probably the correct play.
Minted at 0/0/0/0/4
Got everyone except Hammer/Anvil and LC down, then put Visonary in a Cocoon when she was at 2 hp. THe fortune teller helped a lot, letting Visionary soften up everyone with free card plays, and the environment killed Anvil, Anvil (stupid Bastion), Hammer, La Capitan, in that order over 2-3 turns.
I found that getting the Cocoon out super early worked wonders. It neuters the terror of Bugbear and the chippy shots from Capitan. But it was still a brutal fight, lost everyone but Visionary and she won by the skin of her teeth
You know, upon seeing "Telekinetic Cocoon" in Visionary's initial hand, I was sure my strategy was going to be:
- Visionary plays "Telekinetic Cocoon";
- Leave game run with a book holding down the "enter" key;
- Come back some time later and see if the environment has killed the villains yet.
But every turn, there was just something a bit better for Visionary to do.
Mint at 10/12/10/11/8.
Really pushing the necroposting here, but I think it’s worth it for a game as crazy as this one gets. Bugbear is usually my prime target, and this was no exception; Fanatic did Wrathful Retribution for 15 when he was at 12, ignoring other targets at 14 or 16, just to be rid of him. Then the name of the game was watching Plague Rat mess up Greazer’s hair, get punched for it, and occasionally also hit Anvil and be burned by Hammer. Greazer fainted into a weeping puddle on the floor after enough hairs were ripped out, and the Rat spent a lot of time bashing his own face into various carnival posters for 3 self-damage, before his handlers showed up, and forced me to put him out of his misery to get rid of them. Capitan was a nuisance who kept dodging right when I was about to kill her, but finally she went down, and it was just the Citizens. Surprisingly no Bastion all game, but I did manage to forget that Anvil can full-rez Hammer, so I was stuck with Tuck still ticking long after the rest of the game was over.
I really suffered for letting the environment get out of hand all game. Gone Without a Trace took out both Haka and Fanatic after they self-endangered recklessly with Enduring Intercession and Divine Sacrifice (annoyingly, Haka even had Ground Pound up when he was nuked by a card that does self-damage and thus isn’t stopped). Then Wraith with her Micro-Targeting Computer got stuck in the shooting gallery, and had to take herself out in order to spare Ra and Visi. Ra finally switched from offense to survival mode and played Flesh of the Sun God, making him immune to Hammer’s attacks, and a lucky Scorching Snap kept Ra from not believing his eyes for 5. Hammer got a bonus play from Greazer’s exhaust fumes, and it was a Citizen’s Imperative to take Visi out, the only hero casualty all game that came from the villains, rather than from the environment making a hero give up. Then with Haka’s incap card play plus his own turn, Ra finally managed the win. Alzrabar showed up in the fourth to last round or so, with at least Haka already down, and I wasted huge numbers of cards on him while virtually never getting anything.
It’s worth noting that because of the video game having a fundamental decision in effect, where incapacitating a hero does not count as destroying a target, Gone Without a Trace works differently in the app than I’ve always played it at my home table, and IMO differently than how it should. Just as the entire point of Unforgiving Wasteland, IMO, is the risk of a hero being removed from the game, which can’t happen in the app (at least not unless you allow it to), so too “should” Gone Without a Trace always remove itself from the game when it incaps a hero or a Vengeance villain. In this game, one copy of Gone took out a Decoy Projection and vanished, but the other was free to incap both Prime Wardens in this battle, and still stayed in play to threaten Ra and Visi with obliteration as well. The defanging of Unforgiving Wasteland is part of why I think of the Final Wasteland as being one of the game’s safest and hero-friendliest environments, which is obviously off theme, and conversely, with the Maze of Mirrors alone already making MMFFCC one of the least pleasant environments to fight in (great soundtrack, though), the fact that just one copy of Gone could potentially wipe out an entire party further renders this a troubling place to fight. I don’t know all the card interactions around this “incap =/= destroy” ruling; maybe it’s in place for good reason. But based on these two cards, both of which I find pretty iconic, the ruling seems questionable to me.