Much better this time. A little cheaty due to my knowledge of the future, most notably when I used Gimmicky Character to prevent Rooftop Combat from removing Police Backup, which ended up taking the last HP that the Rat had left after Harpy’s devastating Direct Strike with Hugin and Muninn in play was short one card, so it was only 8 damage instead of 10, but with 2 more from Harpy Hex, plus 1 on the otherwise useless Power, and 2 from the Cohorts). The Monorail arrived just in time to see him go down.
Last time I had Tachy liberally use Blitz, yet still managed to string together 7 Bursts for a Lightspeed Barrage, plus one from Rooftop Combat. This version of Tachy only did 4 with her Barrage, but he was already down to 30 in both cases, so the difference mattered little. Both times Expat got nowhere near needing her Unload; her participation in the battle seemed slightly perfunctory. And while Harpy did have an amazing turn with full-power Arcane Explosion and Lash of the Elements while Infected, for 13 damage to Plague Rat and one-shotting the untouched Locus (then going on to give Guise three extra Gritty Reboot cards with the Lash leftovers), doing a slightly lower power version in the previous game, neither version of her pulled off the ultimate Infected single card play with the Plague Locus present: Mystical Outburst from 5 purple tokens, flipping them for 8 Harpy Hex damage, then the blast itself for 6. Had to settle for the Locus-less version of this play, for a mere 9 damage instead. Wah-wah…
Still no shenanigans with the flipside powers, and no Guise collecting himself, so a third playthrough is possible, but not tonight. As I’ve mentioned before, the Megalopolis song is among my favorites, so hearing it back to back didn’t bother me a bit, but three would be pushing things. I’m eager to try other heroes against Plague Rat soon; with my villain rollout basically complete, this standout among the new arrivals is definitely my current favorite opponent. I just wish he had more HP so we could really enjoy the long game. Hm, perhaps The Block for Defensive Displacement…