Personal issues caused this hiatus. But we are so back.
After one more re-evaluation, I have determined that we have two more villains than environments to work with here.
I put the villain list through a spinner to find out which two are getting repeats. This guy's variant is one of them - so you'll see this same villain/environment combination twice.
You will also see the same lead hero twice. I definitely plan to change the team up from there, but this base version of the fight calls for a special type of team to face it...
Before I begin today's episode though, a rule with hero deployments. I am setting it so that I can use the same hero a maximum of 5 times in the classic mode. Right now, that means Tachyon has run her course and Legacy gets one more shot at a classic villain. Many other heroes get to play a maximum of twice more. We have enough heroes available that I will literally never be starved for options and I need to do as much team variety as I can.
This limit will not, however, carry over into team mode. For team mode, I have a total of 6 matchups planned and I use the same hero a maximum of twice.
None of these limits will apply to OblivAeon. I only concern myself with winning against each shield. I just don't start with the same team against them.
We'll see in regards to Earth-Prime.
But enough about that. You're here for the mission report about the latest villain I'm facing. So let's get on with it.
Villain: Infinitor
Difficulty: 3
Nemesis: Captain Cosmic
Deck Gimmick: Energy manifestations of all kinds in this one. The only other cards are one-shots - three of which are about bringing in more manifestations, and the fourth (of which there are three copies) is about dealing widespread damage and healing all manifestations to full. The manifestations only have 4 HP each, but there's one that prevents card play and one that summons more manifestations when destroyed. When there are too many manifestations on the field, Infinitor flips to a state where he destroys one each round but deals lots of projectile damage to multiple heroes.
Advanced Mode: A lot more manifestations come into play when there's few on the field, and when Infinitor flips all villain targets do more damage. This is... bad, but it's not quite as relevant in Challenge Mode.
Challenge Mode: At all times, reduce all damage dealt to manifestations by 2 points. In the normal or advanced battle, you could just burn down most of the manifestations as they appear. Not any longer. You're not destroying them without irreducible damage or a huge number of buffs.
My Team:
Captain Cosmic (complexity 2)
Play Style: So, Captain Cosmic is Infinitor's brother. However, Infinitor's constructs are all offense whereas there's plenty of defense in Captain Cosmic's deck. No ways to reduce the enemy's damage output though, just how much it actually affects us. There's very little true AoE in Infinitor's deck although there's plenty of high single-target damage (and two cases of high dual-target).
Variant?: We're actually going to try Extreme Prime Wardens again. Deal damage and so does every construct.
Stuntman (complexity 2)
Play Style: The French action star returns for an encore performance. I only notice now that he's got about seven different ways to use powers outside his turn, reliant mainly on cards getting destroyed by specific circumstances. Only one of them will not apply here due to Infinitor's lack of card destruction - in fact, some are easier against Infinitor with a big team because they're dependent on damage.
Variant?: We're actually going to use the Action Hero variant today. We can increase damage dealt and play a card. Do a few of these in between turns and suddenly his powers can cut through even Infinitor's hordes.
Absolute Zero (complexity 3)
Play Style: Infinitor actually has one manifestation that deals fire damage. That helps for Coolant Blast. Other than that, depending on how fast the modules come out Absolute Zero may very well be the party tank for this fight.
Variant?: I'm going to use his base variant this time. He deals himself 1 cold or 1 fire damage, and that plays into the modules (which have no chance of being destroyed by Infinitor), so as soon as I get a module out I'll have healing access.
Ra (complexity 1)
Play Style: With the kind of target-rich environment we have today, we need lots of firepower. Lots and lots of firepower, especially when it can be directed at a single enemy. But it's even more this time...
Variant?: Okay, now we're going to try out the Setting Sun variant. 2 damage to himself and all non-hero targets, destroy one of his own ongoings, and remove cards in deck and trash from the game. And when he's incapacitated, he has a couple more hard nukes - but if you use one of them, he is removed entirely and can do nothing else. Very high-speed.
Guise (complexity 2 5/9)
Play Style: So in a party like this, Guise needs to be kept very far away from Stuntman. If I pull out In Medias Res, I want a little more time with Guise's ongoings before I lose them. Also, this large of a team gives Guise more turns to work his magic.
Variant?: As much as I want to use Santa Guise or Completionist Guise, we really don't have that kind of time against this villain. We need the basic "play or draw a card and deal damage" version of Guise in order to make it through this.
Environment: Final Wasteland (difficulty 2)
Environment Gimmick: This is an "after the end" scenario where the world gets overrun by cryptids. The cryptids largely get worse with larger teams, as a number of them deal damage depending on team size. There's not much hope - especially if you're Chrono-Ranger because one of the cryptids actually has a nemesis icon for him. Aside from the cryptids, there's a few points of note: a library that allows massive card draw but attracts the cryptids, a bunker that heals every hero but also draws cryptid attention... and a special environment card that removes any target killed by a cryptid from the game entirely. The easy solution is to never let any cryptids get kills.
My Strategy:
The manifestations (3 of each):
This means we have yet another DPS race on our hands as Infinitor deploys 4 immediately (it's actually team-dependent - if you use less than 5, they're smaller numbers), will flip if he starts the turn with more than 5 out, and since we have Advanced mode he will end a turn by playing until there's 6 manifestations out.
That is an absurd amount of damage flying your way. I basically have no time to set up anything, I just need to target Infinitor with all I've got and start praying we can deplete his 65 HP before we all fall. We will have hero casualties no matter what this time, which is why I had no shame deploying Setting Sun Ra.
How Did it Go?:
Well, the setup brought Captain Cosmic below half HP and put a lot of hurt on everyone else, as well as getting a Crushing Cage right on Guise. That should be a telling sign right there.
I knew I was going to have casualties right off the bat, so I'm basically trying to lay down as much smackdown as fast as I possibly can. Stuntman was one of the better choices for this, and I wound up drawing In Medias Res right away. I didn't use it immediately though - I instead used Steal the Scene into Violent Escalation so that after Ra used his Setting Sun power, I could destroy the cage and free Guise immediately.
And that was a wise move, because during Infinitor's turn he got Whispers of Oblivion, which hit Cosmic's Dynamic Siphon on Stuntman. And that was the time to play In Medias Res to immediately end Infinitor's turn and nullify over half a dozen manifestations. That combined with another Setting Sun gave me room to destroy a bunch of the manifestations to keep damage to a reasonable level - but it did result in huge amounts of backlash damage.
By the end of the villain's third full turn (second if you don't count setup), Absolute Zero and Ra were both down. Absolute Zero's incapacitated power let Stuntman use Lance-Flammes (that's "flamethrower" in French, in case I missed any accents) to wipe out many of the remaining manifestations (and stop another Crushing Cage from showing up). At this point, I had Ra use one of his incapacitation nukes - one hero does 10 irreducible fire damage. That was done by Stuntman on the boss - combined with Stuntman's boosts, that brought the villain to 2 HP. I followed up with Guise's I Can Do That Too! to copy Stuntman's ability, then used Say Cheese! for the win. Literal photo finish. And I had 11 HP total between three heroes so I WOULD have been annihilated next time.
The environment literally did not matter this time around. It got to draw an abominable snowman, Unforgiving Wasteland, and that's literally it. Absolute Zero was also basically irrelevant in this battle as I underestimated the sheer speed of it all. Captain Cosmic's only real contribution was Dynamic Siphon, but it was just so perfect that he was worth it for that alone. Stuntman... the Action Hero variant works best with a large team to allow him as many chances as possible to buff himself.
Probably not a battle I'd do again, but one of the more thrilling ones.
Would any other heroes work?:
This is the kind of battle where you bring out your heaviest single-target hitters. That, or anyone that can delete targets with 4 or less HP - which makes Fanatic's Final Dive or Luminary's Triple Cross viable options. Those will only take the pressure off at most. If you can nail the Ocular Swarms with Haka with Savage Mana out, that's also an option to be able to get the manifestations down to a reasonable level.
This was probably the perfect battle to show off Ra's Setting Sun ability because in Challenge mode, when the villain's on his starting side the manifestations are basically untouchable.
On the next episode: Bad luck strikes again! A villain we defeated before has learned some new tricks and wants to give us another go, and she will be much more difficult to stop this time.
After one more re-evaluation, I have determined that we have two more villains than environments to work with here.
I put the villain list through a spinner to find out which two are getting repeats. This guy's variant is one of them - so you'll see this same villain/environment combination twice.
You will also see the same lead hero twice. I definitely plan to change the team up from there, but this base version of the fight calls for a special type of team to face it...
Before I begin today's episode though, a rule with hero deployments. I am setting it so that I can use the same hero a maximum of 5 times in the classic mode. Right now, that means Tachyon has run her course and Legacy gets one more shot at a classic villain. Many other heroes get to play a maximum of twice more. We have enough heroes available that I will literally never be starved for options and I need to do as much team variety as I can.
This limit will not, however, carry over into team mode. For team mode, I have a total of 6 matchups planned and I use the same hero a maximum of twice.
None of these limits will apply to OblivAeon. I only concern myself with winning against each shield. I just don't start with the same team against them.
We'll see in regards to Earth-Prime.
But enough about that. You're here for the mission report about the latest villain I'm facing. So let's get on with it.
Villain: Infinitor
Difficulty: 3
Nemesis: Captain Cosmic
Deck Gimmick: Energy manifestations of all kinds in this one. The only other cards are one-shots - three of which are about bringing in more manifestations, and the fourth (of which there are three copies) is about dealing widespread damage and healing all manifestations to full. The manifestations only have 4 HP each, but there's one that prevents card play and one that summons more manifestations when destroyed. When there are too many manifestations on the field, Infinitor flips to a state where he destroys one each round but deals lots of projectile damage to multiple heroes.
Advanced Mode: A lot more manifestations come into play when there's few on the field, and when Infinitor flips all villain targets do more damage. This is... bad, but it's not quite as relevant in Challenge Mode.
Challenge Mode: At all times, reduce all damage dealt to manifestations by 2 points. In the normal or advanced battle, you could just burn down most of the manifestations as they appear. Not any longer. You're not destroying them without irreducible damage or a huge number of buffs.
My Team:
Captain Cosmic (complexity 2)
Play Style: So, Captain Cosmic is Infinitor's brother. However, Infinitor's constructs are all offense whereas there's plenty of defense in Captain Cosmic's deck. No ways to reduce the enemy's damage output though, just how much it actually affects us. There's very little true AoE in Infinitor's deck although there's plenty of high single-target damage (and two cases of high dual-target).
Variant?: We're actually going to try Extreme Prime Wardens again. Deal damage and so does every construct.
Stuntman (complexity 2)
Play Style: The French action star returns for an encore performance. I only notice now that he's got about seven different ways to use powers outside his turn, reliant mainly on cards getting destroyed by specific circumstances. Only one of them will not apply here due to Infinitor's lack of card destruction - in fact, some are easier against Infinitor with a big team because they're dependent on damage.
Variant?: We're actually going to use the Action Hero variant today. We can increase damage dealt and play a card. Do a few of these in between turns and suddenly his powers can cut through even Infinitor's hordes.
Absolute Zero (complexity 3)
Play Style: Infinitor actually has one manifestation that deals fire damage. That helps for Coolant Blast. Other than that, depending on how fast the modules come out Absolute Zero may very well be the party tank for this fight.
Variant?: I'm going to use his base variant this time. He deals himself 1 cold or 1 fire damage, and that plays into the modules (which have no chance of being destroyed by Infinitor), so as soon as I get a module out I'll have healing access.
Ra (complexity 1)
Play Style: With the kind of target-rich environment we have today, we need lots of firepower. Lots and lots of firepower, especially when it can be directed at a single enemy. But it's even more this time...
Variant?: Okay, now we're going to try out the Setting Sun variant. 2 damage to himself and all non-hero targets, destroy one of his own ongoings, and remove cards in deck and trash from the game. And when he's incapacitated, he has a couple more hard nukes - but if you use one of them, he is removed entirely and can do nothing else. Very high-speed.
Guise (complexity 2 5/9)
Play Style: So in a party like this, Guise needs to be kept very far away from Stuntman. If I pull out In Medias Res, I want a little more time with Guise's ongoings before I lose them. Also, this large of a team gives Guise more turns to work his magic.
Variant?: As much as I want to use Santa Guise or Completionist Guise, we really don't have that kind of time against this villain. We need the basic "play or draw a card and deal damage" version of Guise in order to make it through this.
Environment: Final Wasteland (difficulty 2)
Environment Gimmick: This is an "after the end" scenario where the world gets overrun by cryptids. The cryptids largely get worse with larger teams, as a number of them deal damage depending on team size. There's not much hope - especially if you're Chrono-Ranger because one of the cryptids actually has a nemesis icon for him. Aside from the cryptids, there's a few points of note: a library that allows massive card draw but attracts the cryptids, a bunker that heals every hero but also draws cryptid attention... and a special environment card that removes any target killed by a cryptid from the game entirely. The easy solution is to never let any cryptids get kills.
My Strategy:
The manifestations (3 of each):
- Crushing Cage: The hero with the most cards in hand can't play cards, and slowly gets crushed by the cage. In Challenge mode, the reduced damage to manifestations mean that unless you have irreducible damage or target destruction effects, this one isn't coming off for a long time when it's out. This card is the entire reason you don't want a small team for this battle - in Challenge Mode, if you're using a team of 3 it is possible for the whole team to get locked out of card play, which is devastating.
- Lambent Reaper: Massive damage to the lowest-HP hero target.
- Ocular Swarm: The demise of any manifestation can call more of them. By far, this is the most dangerous one - but at this difficulty, you need to leave it alone as it won't do anything if you don't attack it.
- Recalescent Hellion: Two big shots of fire damage a turn.
- Twisted Miscreation: Team-dependent energy damage and even in normal mode, you can't damage this thing for more than 1 damage at a time.
This means we have yet another DPS race on our hands as Infinitor deploys 4 immediately (it's actually team-dependent - if you use less than 5, they're smaller numbers), will flip if he starts the turn with more than 5 out, and since we have Advanced mode he will end a turn by playing until there's 6 manifestations out.
That is an absurd amount of damage flying your way. I basically have no time to set up anything, I just need to target Infinitor with all I've got and start praying we can deplete his 65 HP before we all fall. We will have hero casualties no matter what this time, which is why I had no shame deploying Setting Sun Ra.
How Did it Go?:
Well, the setup brought Captain Cosmic below half HP and put a lot of hurt on everyone else, as well as getting a Crushing Cage right on Guise. That should be a telling sign right there.
I knew I was going to have casualties right off the bat, so I'm basically trying to lay down as much smackdown as fast as I possibly can. Stuntman was one of the better choices for this, and I wound up drawing In Medias Res right away. I didn't use it immediately though - I instead used Steal the Scene into Violent Escalation so that after Ra used his Setting Sun power, I could destroy the cage and free Guise immediately.
And that was a wise move, because during Infinitor's turn he got Whispers of Oblivion, which hit Cosmic's Dynamic Siphon on Stuntman. And that was the time to play In Medias Res to immediately end Infinitor's turn and nullify over half a dozen manifestations. That combined with another Setting Sun gave me room to destroy a bunch of the manifestations to keep damage to a reasonable level - but it did result in huge amounts of backlash damage.
By the end of the villain's third full turn (second if you don't count setup), Absolute Zero and Ra were both down. Absolute Zero's incapacitated power let Stuntman use Lance-Flammes (that's "flamethrower" in French, in case I missed any accents) to wipe out many of the remaining manifestations (and stop another Crushing Cage from showing up). At this point, I had Ra use one of his incapacitation nukes - one hero does 10 irreducible fire damage. That was done by Stuntman on the boss - combined with Stuntman's boosts, that brought the villain to 2 HP. I followed up with Guise's I Can Do That Too! to copy Stuntman's ability, then used Say Cheese! for the win. Literal photo finish. And I had 11 HP total between three heroes so I WOULD have been annihilated next time.
The environment literally did not matter this time around. It got to draw an abominable snowman, Unforgiving Wasteland, and that's literally it. Absolute Zero was also basically irrelevant in this battle as I underestimated the sheer speed of it all. Captain Cosmic's only real contribution was Dynamic Siphon, but it was just so perfect that he was worth it for that alone. Stuntman... the Action Hero variant works best with a large team to allow him as many chances as possible to buff himself.
Probably not a battle I'd do again, but one of the more thrilling ones.
Would any other heroes work?:
This is the kind of battle where you bring out your heaviest single-target hitters. That, or anyone that can delete targets with 4 or less HP - which makes Fanatic's Final Dive or Luminary's Triple Cross viable options. Those will only take the pressure off at most. If you can nail the Ocular Swarms with Haka with Savage Mana out, that's also an option to be able to get the manifestations down to a reasonable level.
This was probably the perfect battle to show off Ra's Setting Sun ability because in Challenge mode, when the villain's on his starting side the manifestations are basically untouchable.
On the next episode: Bad luck strikes again! A villain we defeated before has learned some new tricks and wants to give us another go, and she will be much more difficult to stop this time.