Weekly One-Shot #277: Safety Margins

Games SotM: The Video Game
#1

This was a cruel, cruel match, and the person who set it up should feel bad.

Won with heroes at 7/5/8/0/4, and the only reason they won was a very well-timed “Ground Pound” play by Haka on the penultimate round.

Spoilers below.

Wow, was this is a cruel game. The environment plays two “Leaking Room” cards in a row the first two rounds, so it wasn’t until round 4 that the heroes really started getting set up. By this point they were all over half-dead. I was afraid this was going to be a very short match. The only “good” thing was that the heroes not being able to play cards the first half of the game meant that the “Technological Singularity” cards (yes, plural) and “Sedative Flechettes” didn’t have much to destroy. So yay.

Rounds 4 and 5 the heroes started getting set up (which was good, since now they were mostly 2/3rds dead) and led to a wonderful round 6 where they did almost 80 points of damage to Omnitron (“Omni-Cannon”, “Taiaha”, a barrage of “Lightspeed Barrage” cards and “Wraithful Retribution” - neat thing is that when Fanatic is down to 4 hit points, that card does a lot of damage).

Final round could have been scary if Haka hadn’t played “Ground Pound” on round 5 - that’s the only reason I didn’t have a TPK (thanks to “Atlantean Font of Power” playing “Electro-Pulse Explosive” on the environment turn - surprise!). As it was, the heroes were able to clear out a lot of drones, the EPE and take down Omnitron on the final round.

Special shout-out to Visionary. She’s not normally my favorite hero, but she really pulled her weight here. She let Fanatic draw “End of Days” on the first round so that Fanatic could clear out all of Omnitron’s Component cards and the first “Electro-Pulse Explosive” card in play the first round. She also manipulated Omnitron’s deck a few times that really helped and did good work on the environment deck as well. Her final action was playing “Prophetic Vision” to get rid of some nasty environment cards (two “Toxic Seaweed” cards) but that put “The Kraken” (again!) on top of the environment deck, even though she knew that it would be her doom (she was the lowest HP target and the Kraken’s attack incapacitated her). That is true heroism right there.

The Ruins of Atlantis is the friend of no hero…

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#2

Lost the first game due to Leaking Rooms and being unable to play anything. Yay, isn’t lack of options fun?

#3

I will say two “Leaking Rooms” back-to-back right at the start REALLY made me very frustrated, like there was little I could do. But, trying to be philosophical about it, sometimes random bad stuff happens.

BTW, I played a second time, correcting some things I did wrong in my first game (like having Haka discard a “Haka of Battle” with his innate power to get a few more card draws instead of saving it to, you know, use AND deciding having Visionary keep a “Toxic Seaweed” on top of the environment deck and lose her hand was better than, say, losing her life) and was able to put Omnitron down a round sooner, dropping it from 82 hit points to I think -6 in one round.

Better. I prefer a win when all the heroes are still standing. They were all barely still standing, mind you, but still standing.

#4

Oh wow. Round 1 End of Days is the game-changer! :open_mouth: Everything after that pretty much just fell into place!

Also, Experiment on Haka round 1, Fanatic rounds 2 and 3, and then just stick to Tachyon to dump cards in her trash.

#5

It’s the reason I hate Ruins of Atlantis and never play it if possible. Got a near-mint on the second run, so I’ll take it.

#6

What a pile of hot garbage. I got utterly wrecked on the first game, don’t know if I’ll even bother to go back and try again. This game has everything there is to hate - mass card destruction and play prevention. :-1: :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

I have been thinking of another bad scenario, if the sadists who designed this are listening:
Chairman in Megalopolis, environment plays Traffic Pileup first round, Chairman plays “Rook City is Mine!” round 2, out comes Hostage Situation and Paparazzi on the Scene! Heroes have to skip their second round with nothing to show for it. You’re welcome. :smiling_imp:

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#7

Here’s how I, the evil, cruel, sadistic, not-feeling-bad-at-all person set it up:

  • Chose the villain, heroes, and environment
  • Pressed Play
  • Won the game
  • Thought to myself: “easy mint” /s

Was it difficult? Yeah. It’s Advanced Cosmic Omnitron in Ruins of Atlantis, it’s going to be difficult no matter what. But it’s certainly winnable. And you start with the tools to win immediately, despite whatever the environment does. Just like every single weekly one-shot, there is nothing that happens in the game that can’t occur if you set it up the same way and press Play.

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#8

On MigrantP’s point, Mint with Bunker down but the rest ~8 hp. I didn’t even realize it was cosmic omnitron for a while, which shows how much I was paying attention and why I don’t remember HOW I got mint.

I do know that a lucky Experiment put Synaptic Interruption into play before an Electro-Pulse went off twice, saving the team from them. I also put the Seaweed into play over the Kraken and discarded Visionary’s hand. End of Days ended up coming out after the two leaking rooms, so it destroyed even more.

Beyond that, Tachyon go boom with 3 Lightspeeds and Fanatic with a Wrathful Retribution destroyed Omnitron in a single round.

~A-Kat

#9

Oh, strongly agree. I have been wrecked by randomly-generated games in SotMV before, including losing at the start of the second round a few times (lookin’ at you, Progeny).

For me, it was just frustrating having two “Leaking Rooms” at the top of the environment deck, so the heroes were really slow getting set up (they didn’t play much on round 1 since I was mining Fanatic’s deck like crazy looking for - and finding - “End of Days” for her to play on her first turn). Also at the same time Omitron was playing “Rope a Dope” with the entire team.

Also strongly agree that after a slow start the heroes really can dish out the damage (I think my second game they did over 90 points of damage in one round to Omnitron). However, they were barely standing at that point, so they had to put Omnitron down because they weren’t gonna last another round.

Nobody said being a superhero was gonna be easy; I think we all know that. It just feels worse when you go down before you can start swinging.

And I apologize for all the things I swore about you about midway through the game. Most of them are not physically possible anyway. (joking! mostly!)

#10

Oh, I don’t begrudge anyone a little bit of schadenfreude every now and then. Just thought this was a good place to whine and commiserate. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play my tiny violin. :violin::cry:

And yeah, I probably will finish it eventually just to feel some degree of satisfaction. :smirk:

#11

I used Precognition and ditched the Sedative Flechettes, and played Chastise on the EPE, which self destructed because of Fanatic’s power the second round.

When the second Leaking Room came up, my tablet nearly went across the room.

I won with 2 or 3 heroes down.

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#12

I literally lost this game like six times back when it came out; I think it was the first weekly I ever played, though it probably wasn’t the most recent one, just the newest core-set-only one that featured a promo villain I couldn’t fight otherwise. After my first three losses, I started writing down all of the revealed cards from all the decks, and started trying to figure out the ONE path to victory which obviously existed. While there apparently are other ways to do it, I have one definite formula that I can describe, if anyone just wants to cross this off their list. In brief, it revolves around having Visi feed cards to Tachy, who uses Synaptic Interruption to tank, and having Tachy use Experiment on Fanatic while she digs for Wrath. Knowing exactly when the Krakens come out tells you when not to kill the drones, although my formula does require allowing one hero to die in the last round (either Haka or Visionary) when a Kraken pops out.

#13

To be fair, there’s more than one solution to this match. There are not MANY, granted, and they are fairly frustrating, but there’s more than one.

This was a heck of a weekly one-shot to have started out on. Glad you stuck with the one-shots.

#14

Yeah, I know, there isn’t just one solution, having read this thread; I was saying that had been the way it seemed to me at the beginning.

But yeah, the one-shots give me a way to get a game in a hurry without just pressing random, and lets me work toward something over the months of playing, as I slowly fill my collection in. So I was highly incentivized to batter my way through this tough obstacle, even if it took way too much effort.