This is about as cool as Spite ever gets. Like most of those who fought him back when this came out, I found Benchmark tremendously useful, Ra did relatively little, and AZ never once used Violent Shivers and would much rather have had any of his other versions. Unlike several others, though, I suffered no casualties, with the Sentinels dropping momentarily to 2 or 3 HP, but creeping steadily back up thanks to Hippocratic Oath. The key to this victory was Sentinel Tactics, Durasteel Chains, TK Thump, and Human Shield, eventually backed up with Intervening Path Calculator. Thump meant that Mindphyre and Demon’s Kiss entirely bounced off the Durasteel Shield, and thanks to the timing of Sentinel Tactics, as long as my card play for the turn didn’t do damage, Spite’s retaliation damage for my two powers didn’t happen until it had been reduced by 1, meaning that even with his +1 drug, Mainstay took only 1x2 damage each turn, so playing numerous healing cards on him kept him very safe. Aura of Vision kept me drawing cards as fast as I could discard them to Human Shield, and of course Team Communication got me there.
But why am I blabbing on and on about strategy? I’ve got a story to tell!
The one really rough turn in my game was when Rooftop Combat came out; thanks to Mindphyre, I’d never get anything out of it, but it just so happened that during this one turn while it was out, the Thumped-as-usual Spite not only “played” a Lab Raid, dealing 2 net damage to everyone, but then managed to somehow land a hit for 4 despite my various armors. This triggered the two Ongoings I had ignored since they were played, and Thiago was killed on this rooftop, triggering another round of 2 damage. Having lots of healing but no armor, Benchmark dropped from full HP down to about 7 Intervening to save all the Sentinels from this double shotgun blast of damage. It was the only truly scary moment in a game that was otherwise mostly tedious (not in an unfun way, just a “I wish this interface were more streamlined” way, where I had to spend way too long picking among multiple redirection prompts and the like).
One thing I had hoped to end up doing, except that I won before it proved necessary: while Benchmark can do a lot of damage with Inferno Missile Pod, he can do even more as a game-ending alpha strike if he bounces those firebombs off a sufficiently healthy Absolute Zero, thanks to Isothermic Transducer and Focused Apertures (but NOT Cryo Chamber, which I had been using to stay healthy). Throw in double Multipoint HUD, and each discard of Benchmark’s turns into 3 damage to Zero who then Transduces out 4 to Spite. But if AZ starts to die from this, he can use some of these outputs to heal with NPCU, then go back to freezing Spite again. (As I run through this in my head, I realized that it’s not really any competition for Imbued Fire, but this combo is still something to keep in mind for games not featuring Ra. It gets even better if you throw Legacy in, and I for one kind of think of Benchmark as a “fixed” version of Bunker, so I’d count it as a sausage-party Freedom Five theme game if just these three were used.)
