Man, that was close. Very violent game without much buildup, just a crazy damage race. Other than hard-playing Infection a bunch of times, PR was practically all damage. And Reconning the Shadowy Ambush seemed like a good idea until I realized that 2x Afflicted Frenzy was coming up. I’m certain I recall seeing that deal damage on the turns of heroes who died with an Infection still on them, and if that had happened here, it might have been game, depending on whether the count of Infected heroes counted the incapped ones.
You know, somehow I don’t think I’ve ever before noticed that a Plummeting Monorail can hit itself. Seems obvious now that I think of it, but I’ve certainly played this wrong in tabletop a time or two.
This was my intro to Completionist Guise, but I was hesitant to make use of him. Switching normal Expat for her Dark Watch version would be super helpful, except I haven’t unlocked it. And switching off of Freedom Five Tachyon to one of the older versions is the exact opposite of what you want to do. Infected Blitz with the Plague Locus is great, but after that, no other Tachy (except maybe F6 who I also don’t have) is going to be much use. So really I should probably have just switched Guise to his normal self and called it a day.
I am proud of Guise though for having a turn in which he reached over into Harpy’s play area, flipped one of her control tokens, then played Lemme See That, reached into Expat’s PA, took Pride, fired it, reached over to Expat again, and fired Prejudice while she was still holding it. That was one classy turn there, Guise. No wonder the flavor text for the game doesn’t even mention him, the little perv.
As a huge fan of the Rat’s flipside minigame, which I rarely get to indulge in for long, my happiest moment was to have Guise bite the much healthier Harpy, who took only 2 damage while donating 3 HP. This would have been even better if I had been successful in playing Uh Yeah I’m That Girl on Harpy to double up on Applied Numerology, so I could have dealt just 1 damage, but alas this is only possible if a player predating Guise in the turn order, or Guise himself with a Retcon, has removed the Infection on Harpy, which UYITG copies along with every other Ongoing she has. (It would also work if Guise destroyed his own Infection, using UYITG to replace it for the round so that Rat stays flipped even with Guise only pretending, very convincingly in the short term, to still have an Infection.) Not realizing this, I not only wasted UYITG but gave the Rat a bonus card play, which further ravaged Guise’s HP; I think he only survived the start of his turn due to the mouthful of Harpy’s blood he drank.
Not counting the aforementioned Uh Yeah bungle, or the choice to skip using Guise’s unfamiliar Power on turn 1, I made a bare minimum of two play mistakes this game, probably more like three - playing Pride instead of Tactical Shotgun, then playing Prejudice and firing it instead of Pride, and meanwhile not noticing that I was promo Harpy, so I played Applied Numerology and then Harpy Hex rather than the reverse. Given that Rat’s last turn had him at 5 HP, these errors cost my two surviving heroes at least 4 HP each, and might well have been part of why I lost the first two instead of them using the Numerology Bite trick to heal (at least in Tachy’s case, once all her promos with good powers have been yoinked by Completionist Guise).
Now that I have my Mint, and am free to abuse Undo as much as the program will permit it, I think I’ll play this for a second time in a row (an unprecedented act upon winning). Harpy with her Hex and her Calling the Flock and her green-tokens version of The Flock’s Care would really like to abuse the Plague Locus’s bonus. I’m not going to deliberately lose, but I think I’ll risk keeping the Locus out in hopes of a quick victory, at least until after the flip. Then I’ll see about pulling off the “feeding frenzy” with Numerology power, see if it ever starts to work in my favor. Probably not with no Throat Jabs or Heavy Plating to get ahead of the Rat’s 3 damage a round minimum, but we’ll see.
