A tough but fair battle which I managed to Mint, but never felt confident I was going to. I love playing the Void Guard, and Parse is pretty cool too, although all of them are pretty useless when dead, so avoiding even one casualty is a priority. And as usual, I felt extremely safe in the Final Wasteland; apart from Skunk Apes, I don’t think a single Cryptid ever hit me (in other words, the heroes were never specifically targeted), but they were a crucial resource in picking off minions or whittling away at the two Bosses. As usual when trying for Mint, I made a few small tactical blunders which tempted me to use the Undo button, but I managed to resist and pull off the win.
Spoilery comment below the image!
I thought for sure I was dead when Prison Break brought out all five Underbosses! Hired Gun plus a flipped Chairman is not something you want to see when your H heroes are all at single digits. Fortunately, Writhe had Darkly Dreaming, and while Operative’s retaliation damage was awful, Medico was able to keep everyone up. Writhe was a superstar in this match, able to Shadow Cloak away some of the big hits, using Umbral Siphon to keep Chairman from healing (except during the Darkly Dreaming, when he couldn’t avoid triggering the Fence by destroying the Cloak), and even punishing Chairman’s retaliation damage with his own, thanks to Unnerving Target. But above all else, what made Writhe the Wruin of the OWrganization was that sweet, sweet Umbral Spike! Healing? What healing? Sadly I never did manage to time one of Dr. Mexico’s power grants for when it would let me Spike the Operative, so she continued to be basically invincible until I finally got rid of her Guy in the Chair.
Earlier in the game, I used Snap Decision to get a double Syntactic Analysis on Mainstay, getting a lot of mileage out of a random Bad to the Bone when it wasn’t his turn. I also twice used Sweet Rhonda to destroy Shard Strength the same turn it was played, though I always forgot to save a power usage for these occasions. Despite knowing that the Challenge mode gave Oppy extra healing, I wasted some serious dakka on Mainstay’s early turns trying to bring her down; had I lost this first play, I’d have gone through again and been more conservative with him, perhaps not coming so close to disaster on the Prison Break turn.
Mongolian Death Worm was BAE in this match, since he never targets the heroes as long as Chairman is up, despite being unable to actually hurt him. Three turns of not having to worry about other monsters coming out, and of Operative playing Perfect Human Specimens instead of doing anything useful, made the game pretty stress free except for the turns when the Contract was out, with the Broker being a distant second for how much of a problem she caused, simply from forcing Parse to refrain from card plays. The other three Underbosses were mere speed bumps, who had entered play in two rounds, accomplished almost nothing, and been swiftly fed to a Chupacabra and a Yeti, before dying even faster in their second appearances.
For all of her healing, Opps was quickly left alone, with Writhe tricking her into hitting the Chairman with some retaliation damage, while he was in the process of being finished off with a one-two punch by Miranda. Sofia’s 30 HP being little protection against the fully set up Void Guard Plus One, she wasted her last opportunity to summon some more backup. After everyone else had finished thrashing the villainess down to like 9 HP, I could have had Idealist just deal 3 more damage to her, then spend all remaining attacks on the two heroes who had gotten above that, so the Death Worm would finish the villain off. But hitting her own allies isn’t very “Idealist”, and I like to try and have as much HP as possible when I finish a game, so instead I had her crater the Operative straight into the floor with a fully loaded Karate Robot. Took a little extra effort, but totally worth it.
One of the best recently Weeklies; I’m glad I waited until after Thanksgiving to give it my Undivided Attention (a card which was ironically never played). Still, fighting these two is seldom exactly fun, so I hope next week will be a tough but super enjoyable match, perhaps something like Ultimate Deadline in Insula Primalis, with an Auto-Armor Caster on turn 1.
That’d be a fun battle even if I lose, while this one was only partially satisfying even as a win.
Didn’t hurt that Dr. Medico had a fairly easy time keeping people alive!