Ultimate Dreamer is having spooky dreams of a giant sword that is going to crash into the Earth! Can Cosmic Inventor Writhe, Harpy, Benchmark, Extreme Fanatic, and Sky Scraper soothe the child before the green robots Damocles her home?
Good luck heroes!
Ow ow ow ow and more ow.
H=5 Dreamer hurts.
Ultimate Dreamer hurts.
H=5 Ultimate Dreamer really hurts.
None the less, near mint after a game where, if I had had 1 more hit point, I would have won. Final round, Fanatic had an End of Days that would have put enough Projections under the Dreamer to win. However, Requital CC was up for judgement with 5 hp. Things would be fine as Writhe had Cloak Projector’d the Dreamer 3 times with help from a downed Harpy and SkySky, so she wouldn’t hurt much, only doing 1 damage. However, she then played 2 Dark Heroes and a Macabre Specter… 4 damage was just enough to execute the Earth.
Second round went fairly similar to the first, though Writhe and Benchmark ended up going down as well. Managed to not get judged this time, and End of Days wiped the board in time to wake up the little one.
HUGE DISCLAIMER!: End of Days ONLY WORKS if there is a Illusory Demon in play! Otherwise, End of Days will ALSO DESTROY all cards that are ALREADY UNDER THE DREAMER! Target all non-buried Projections and any environment cards you don’t want, then lastly the Demon. He destroys an ongoing, which can be End of Days to stop it there.
General strategy as this one is rough: Skysky needs to find and repeatedly play Compulsion Canister. This irreducible damage is great against the Dark Heroes, as they increase the damage dealt. I placed the two early Paragons on Benchmark and Fanatic as they are the most likely to win if the others go down, and discarded to heal them every round. Also, DISCARD ALL AOE DAMAGE, as the Dreamer is fragile.
Writhe’s power is useful for keeping low people up for a while, and remember that Oni will target the environment if they are the lowest. Harpy did most of her work by helping others with Swift Summoning, Benchmark tanked with Subcutaneous Cybernetics + Upgraded Memory Unit. Also, Tactical Communicator is great this game. Writhe’s power was great, and he also did decent damage and Cloak Projector on Dreamer once she flipped.
SkySky helped with the compulsion canisters, then died to give Writhe more power uses. Fanatic was mostly there to dig for End of Days, though Zealous Offensive/Chastise is useful for keeping big damage minions away.
~A-Kat
I was doing alright, and then forgot how Proportionist worked and played Rest & Recover while small.
I took Dr. Medico as my star witness, but by that point, it was basically just him and Writhe, and 3 HP a few times a round couldn’t keep Earth from being sentenced to death.
I’ll have to try the Cloak Projector next time. That’s not a card I generally use, so it sounds like I missed an opportunity.
So is this one where there are any allowed errors? I’ve already used a Compulsion Canister to make one Dark Hero kill itself without hurting another 
and tried to Magically Bequeath Harpy two ongoings when she was paralyzed. 
That was just by round 3.
Wondering if it’s even salvageable from here, or if I need to know when to fold 'em and restart… Also, my desktop runs this game painfully slowly. Not sure if that’s Steam’s fault or an aging PC, but I didn’t think this is the most taxing game out there. Just don’t want to slog through if there’s no hope at this point.
What are anyone’s thoughts on the best Representative of Earth? I’m leaning toward Captain Cosmic: Requital for 3 extra plays.
P.S. Okay, not Mint. I reiterate my facepalm. Had some amazing setup, got a little carried away and Harpy Called Out the Flock. 
Had to undo there, but thought I could still finish. Nope, soon as Dreamer flipped she pings the Harpy and the Flock’s Care hits back. So basically bird stuff is a liability. Oh well, try again for a Near Mint now that I kinda have a plan. 
I was able to get mint, but holy cow was that a close game! I ended up using End of Days with EIGHT projections in play! But there was also nine projections under the Dreamer already, and I lost all that progress. In the end, Fanatic had 4hp and everyone else was incapacitated.
One of the biggest helps for me was using the environment to discard the cards that hit all non-hero targets like redeeming light, sky-scrapper’s huge cards, etc. That way I couldn’t even accidentally hit the Dreamer. Also, I had Sky-Scrapper hold onto Emergency Evacuation for when I didn’t think I could sustain the damage to the 10hp Dr. Medico I chose to rep earth.
“Ow” is right. And “Ugh”.
LOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG game. It seemly took forever to flip the Dreamer. By my memory, she played “Violent Nightmares” 3 turns in a row on her front side, each time playing 3 new Projections.
Once she flipped, I thought I had a pretty good plan, that actually worked pretty well until it didn’t. The heroes had to shut down the Dreamer’s damage output, and Writhe got 2 “Cloak Projection” cards in play. With cards that gave him extra powers and extra powers from Benchmark, he would hit the Dreamer with “Cloak Projection” 3 or 4 times a round, which mostly or completely shut down the Dreamer’s AoE damage output. The heroes got 9 Projection cards under the Dreamer at the start of the final full round. And the Dreamer played 5 additional Projection cards, several of which hit all the heroes. One final Ugh.
The heroes only had to destroy one more projection, but darn it, it was now pride on the line and they cleared the board with them. So the heroes won with 14 Projections under the Dreamer.
The environment started out okay, got really scary in the middle and then the final third of the game was a big help. The heroes only ever got two “Paragon of Sentience” cards on heroes, but after a while the heroes discarded every turn to heal those heroes. That probably kept Harpy and Sky-Scarper in the game. Oh, and Legacy too, who showed up as a “Representative of Earth” (because who else would you have represent Earth?).
Benchmark, the original OP character was the hero of the match, but it was weird old Writhe that let the heroes survive the last third of the game.
I could probably perform better on a second play through (I know I made mistakes) but I think I just take my win and walk.
Requital CC is a frequently valid choice for Representative of Earth, and someone I use in that position a fair bit. But with his power you have to play all three cards off the top of a hero’s deck, and with fragile Dreamer on the table and with many heroes have “hit all villain targets” cards, I didn’t want to risk it.
Yeah, I tried CCR the first time and was okay until I failed due to the Hitchcockian horror described previously. The Near Mint used Grandpa Legacy, giving Writhe a 4th cloak projection after Embolden and Ally Matrix. Dreamer never got to deal damage at all! The only thing really painful thing there was Thorathian Monolith that made Skyscraper soak up all the boosted damage from 6 projections plus a Dark Hero. 
She barely survived to see the End of Days!
You can still use him, it’s just that you really only want to have Benchmark use the power. He’s got no auto-area damage cards.
I managed a Mint, although one with half the team dead. I stuck Representative on Benchmark and Fanatic, and Character Witness probably healed each of them 30-40 HP over the course of the game. Harpy and Sky-Scraper went down midway through, but they bought time for Benchmark to power up to full force, and Writhe was able to apply damage resistance to keep my Representative of Earth alive (I went with Legacy for the damage boost, which turned out pretty good.)
Nope, I got nothin’. Too many moving parts, too many ways to do something different and completely mess up. I don’t see how anyone’s beating this.
Been going through back issues to complete my collection, just played a couple Dreamer One-Shots. Most recent was Platform on a Cloud (Advanced Dreamer on MDP, way back in '17), where after reading that topic I employed a “turtle” strategy and had nearly full deck set-up before I allowed her to flip.
Similar thing can work here. Leave out an Oni, but make sure it has a Celestial Adjudicator or Executioner to beat on. Three of the heroes have DR (Shadow Cloak, Reinforced Chassis, Flock’s Care - make sure Harpy doesn’t go below 3 arcane tokens). I put Paragons of Sentience on Harpy, Skyscraper, and Writhe in that order. Benchmark has enough healing with hardware, and Fanatic has Aegis for backup. I had Benchmark’s full hardware and equal software deployed before I allowed Dreamer to flip. Most damage comes from Compulsion Canisters thrown out and retrieved by Skyscraper. Once she went tiny I pretty much left her there the whole game. Dark Heroes can actually help you take things out with irreducible self damage. And as mentioned, Cloak Projector 3-4 times as needed via Embolden on Writhe, Ally Matrix, and maybe Greatest Legacy if you choose him to represent Earth.
Once she flipped, I was able to knock out three projections one round. Then she played enough Violent Nightmares to have 7 more in play, including an Illusory Demon. That was time for End of Days as written above, and put just enough under her to win!
All that said, it was my second try after initial complaining. And I made use of undo a few times since it was only gonna be Near Mint anyway. Definitely check Effects in Play frequently so you don’t waste damage or plays due to Whipacorn or Projected Paralysis like I did the first time. I realize it’s a lot and I don’t remember the play-by-play exactly, but once things started falling into place I felt like I had a pretty comfortable buffer.
That took a good hour, but I finally got it. x.x I guess slow and steady wins this race! Thanks, Thunderbird.
I took my second crack at this one, and they both ended the same way… after struggling mightily to keep all heroes just barely alive, she plays her damage=projections card and the Representative of Earth bites it.
Thinking about this match in flavorful terms, I think these are some of the worst heroes that could possibly try to help a child with an out-of-control subconscious. Writhe is a living nightmare, Sky is an alien from a species that famously tried to take over the world, Harpy is a former villain who is dangerously unstable and chaotic at the best of times, and Fanatic (to say nothing of Extremiverse Fanatic) is incredibly intense and belligerent, not directly to the Dreamer perhaps, but it’d be hard to tolerate being around her even if she isn’t “aimed” at you directly. Benchmark is really the only one of these who probably scans to kids as an actual hero, although Sky might have gotten enough good PR by the time Benchmark exists that nobody confuses her with Voss anymore. But of course, having a generation of kids grow up idolizing Benchmark and barely knowing who Legacy is would certainly work in Revocorp’s favor.
Point being, if you made a list of heroes from most intimidating to most cuddly, I’m pretty sure Writhe would be #1 scariest, Fanatic in the top 5, Harpy the top 10, and Sky above the midway point (which is #19 if you stick with the number of hero decks, rather than distinguishing character cards that represent different individuals, such as Young Legacy or the Xtreme Prime Wardens). Even Benchmark would only be middling in his approachability, although virtually never actually frightening. I wonder if it would be an interesting intellectual exercise to spell out this full list; it could be an interesting variation of the “who would win in a fight” game, since you’re measuring interpersonal presence rather than combat prowess, and it could potentially be retrofitted into a useful new stat for an RPG.