Weekly One-Shot #276: Ships Shipping Ships

Games SotM: The Video Game
#1

So, Challenge edition Apostate is taking over one of Baron Blade’s Mobile Defense Platforms. The Baron’s crew sent out a general distress call, leading to the arrival of the hero team of La Comodora, Akash’Thriya, The Best of Both Worlds Chrono-Ranger and Tachyon. What schemes is Apostate up to? If the heroes are lucky, they will never know.

Won with the heroes at 19/14/22/19, with the game over on the sixth (I believe) round.

Okay, I was a bit worried about Apostate at Challenge level, and my worry didn’t get any better when he played “Profane Summons” on his first turn. So he’s starting the game with four relics in play. Great. The heroes started out getting pretty beat up.

But La Comodora was quickly getting set up to let the heroes get lots of extra card plays. So of course Apostate plays “Tome of the Unknowable”, which shut that card-drawing engine pretty hard. But the heroes rallied (thanks to Chrono-Ranger getting “The Masadah” into play and torching the “Tome” with its irreducible damage). And after that things turned around for the heroes and it was a pretty fun fight.

La Comodora let lots of heroes get lots of extra card plays. She also let Tachyon get useful cards from her trash back into her hand the following turn (first few rounds it was “Fleet of Foot” and then later “Lightspeed Barrage” when Tachyon had a good number of “Burst” cards in her discard pile).

Akash’Thriya took a LOT of damage for the team early on, but then started getting her seed pods into the environment trash, and got VERY lucky getting a “Strangling Roots” into play on several rounds, which really cut down on the damage Apostate and his Gauntlets were sending out. Oh, and two rounds in a row Akash’Thriya kept Apostate from playing a card (via “As the Earth Turns”), which was I suspect very useful.

Chrono-Ranger was very useful, playing bounties to keep relics and demons out of Apostate’s trash, and then later either knocking down Apostate’s damage with his “Neuro-Toxin Dart Thrower” or doing big damage with his “Masadah”.

Tachyon was also really useful, giving lots of card draws to her teammates and then shutting down villain damage via “Hypersonic Assault” and then later doing big hits with “LIghtspeed Barrage”.

The environment did not have much of an impact, and was actually a bit useful in that I was able to redirect environment attacks directed at the heroes to seed pods in play, letting me get them back into the environment deck when they were destroyed. I imagine the Blade Battalion were trying to help out the heroes (or at least defend their MDP) against Apostate.

Fun game. Would fight again.

#2

Made mint, with all heroes in the teens or just below. Chrono Ranger shone as I’ve rarely seen him shine, with No Executions defusing Apostate’s nasty Runes Of Malediction and Relic Spirit, and Hunter And Hunted boosting his Masadah and Danny Boy to deadly effect late in the game, when a Profane Summons brought the Orb Of Delirium into play, much to my chagrin. My favorite twist, though, was when, on the last environment turn, with Apostate down to 3 hp, an Apocalypse started to play out - triggering Akash’thriya’s Strangling Roots and taking the baddie out in his own final conflagration!

#3

I had a fun time with this one. :slight_smile: As intimated, Masadah was MVP here, especially after I got Hunter and Hunted in play out of turn at some point. Then Chrono was basically able to nuke one Relic a round right after it entered play!

#4

Mint, pretty much the same as everyone above.

Only reason I’m chiming in is I accidentally unlocked Team Leader Tachyon on this one via La Comodora cycling so many Fleet of Foots. Wasn’t expecting to see an unlock screen at the end of it :stuck_out_tongue:

~A-Kat

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#5

Congrats on the variant unlock. Yeah, La Comodora’s innate power would really simplify that unlock. (Kids these days, with their extended range of heroes really makes some variant unlocks easier. Back in my day, all we had was Legacy, a stick and a rock… :wink:

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#6

Supply & Demand Benchmark without Luminary… shudder

#7

Try “Settting Sun Ra” before Dr. Medico M.D. was a hero character… That was a LOOOONG game.

#8

Yup. Although likely not quite as long as my reasonably foolproof, but insanely time-consuming method for SADmark (involves incapping Golem Unity, hiding behind a Meteor Storm, using her incap to take out Devices as they come up, and using Benchmark and Parse to arrange damage increases to melt any villain in one hit once the Storm is over and Setback to provide redirects to deal with Glamour).

#9

This was the first time I’ve ever really used Best of Times Chrono Ranger effectively, given over 800 hours of gameplay. He got to pop True Purpose when Apostate punched stuff, and marking the Runes with a copy of +2 damage from the bounties on Big A made it easy to Masadah them away when it was CR’s turn.
The biggest threat was Tome, so I had Commodora slash and shoot a Root to destroy it without worrying about damage reduction. Not gonna disrupt my sweet, sweet card draw!
On top of all that, thank the Baron for Sky Deck! Basically acted as No Executions on anything, and kept both demons and relics out of the trash.

#10

Thunderbird, “Best of Times” Chrono-Ranger can be a lot of fun against villains with many small minions. Give him more chances and he’ll really come through for you.

And destroying a “Strangling Roots” to kill “Tome of the Unknowable”? Brilliant. That’s so obvious once you see it. Good job. Wish I had done that.

And in my game, “Sky Deck” only stayed out for one round before another environment level card came out and destroyed it. (I used Akash’Thriya to manipulate the environment deck a lot, so that’s probably why we had different results). I made use of “Sky Deck” that one round, but then had to rely on Chrono-Ranger’s “No Execution” bounty card to keep demons and relics out of the trash. (see? Another reason “Best of Times Chrono-Ranger” is useful; put “No Executions” on “Condemnation” and use his innate power to have it also affect another villain target.)

#11

Yeah, I guess everyone is going to have a slightly different game with relic and environment shuffling happening. I must’ve just gotten lucky, because it went Sky Deck, Mechanic, Turbolift (to Propulsion system), then seeds from there out. Between Strangling Roots and Hypersonic Assault, I was barely tickled for the second half.