Deck Manipulation Tricks

[Foolswalkin]

I'm definitely in the control archetype of Sentinels players, focussed more on preventing loss and triggering a win-con rather than racing for the win. I thought I would share a few deck manipulation tricks I've been playing with and see what other tricks others are using.

I. Deep Extraction
Needs: Classic Writhe, Dark Visionary or Wraith with Infra-red Eyepiece
Wants: Sentinel Tactics, Utility Belt, 2 attack powers, & Micro-Targeting Computer if Wraith, ongoing Visionary power if Visionary

Dark Visionary's Turmoil and Wraith's Infra-Red Eyepiece provide strong control of the villain deck by moving one of the top two cards to the bottom. This is not without flaws, however. First, if your game goes long it does not allow you to ever remove a card from the enemy deck so you're going to face all their cards eventually. Visionary has Brain Burn or Suggestion to put their trash back in their deck, thus allowing you to keep reshuffling the enemies best cards down to the bottom of their replenished deck, but Suggestion is only stop-gap and Brain Burn does significant self damage. The Wraith has no tools to solve this problem directly, although her damage output does help reduce the chance that the game will go long.

Second, when using this form of control against enemies that play more than one card per turn, if you don't get to move one of the cards you're most worried about down to the bottom of the deck, you've actually gotten closer to one of them instead.

Classic Writhe's Extract power can work well with either of these, allowing Writhe to either trash a powerful card off the bottom of the opponent's deck or return a benign card to the top of the villain deck again. Even if your opponent isn't capable of playing more than one card per turn, returning a benign card with Extract can allow Visionary or Wraith to take a turn off of controlling the enemy deck, allowing Dark Visionary to Turmoil the environment deck/use one of her ongoing powers or the Wraith to focus on her damage output or Stun Bolt enemy suppression.

II. Deja Vu Target Lock
Needs: Adamant Writhe, Parse with Updated Intel, some ability to play out-of-turn powers (Parse's Between the Lines, AGL's Gung Ho, Argent Adept Inspiring Supertonic) or Sentinel Tactics + ability for Sentinels to play out of turn damaging cards (Argent Adept's Inventive Prep, Parse's Syntactic Analysis depending on contents of Sentinel deck), target-rich villain deck
Wants: Extrasensory Awareness, Tempest with Into the Stratosphere

Adamant Writhe's Shroud allows you to move the next non-hero target destroyed to the bottom of its deck. Parse's Updated Intel allows you to check the bottom card of any deck and optionally move it to the top of its deck whenever a villain card is played. Together, the two of these allow you to:
1. Use Shroud and then destroy some weak villain target (Target X) to the bottom of Villain deck
2. Before next villain turn, use out-of-turn activation of Shroud again, destroy another weak villain target (Target Y) and send it to bottom of villain deck
3. On next Villain play (optionally chosen through Extrasensory Awareness), use Updated Intel to send Target Y to top of villain deck
4. When Target Y is played, send Target X to top of villain deck.
5. Use Shroud, destroy Target Y, send to bottom of villain deck
6. When Target X is played, send target Y to top of villain deck
7. Use Shroud, destroy Target X, send to bottom of villain deck
8. Repeat 4-7 indefinitely

It is much more difficult, but you can do this against villains that can play more than one card per turn if you can send (number of cards they can play per turn +1) to the bottom of the enemy deck before the first villain play and then sustain sending (number of cards they can play per turn) back to the bottom.

While in no way required, Tempest's Into the Stratosphere can make the initial setting of the lock much easier, as you only have to send one target to the bottom of the deck, as Tempest can put the other weak target you wish to juggle on top of their deck. It can also let Writhe skip a power activation if you need your Sentinels activations for another purpose.

Once this is done, the lock is set, with the hardness of the lock determined by the ability of your control heroes to withstand any damage from the villain or targets remaining in play, as well as the X-factor of the environment deck. This is especially good against Citizen Dawn (as Extrasensory Awareness is less valuable control against her, due to not wanting to fill the trash with Citizens) and, when released, for Fugue Parse (as she will be able to maintain villain deck control without using a power, thus being able to maximize Neural Processing).

III. Speed control for Dark Visionary:
Needs: Dark Visionary with Suggestion in hand, out of turn play after Dark Visionary's turn (such as Inventive Preparation from Argent Adept)
Wants: Recursion tools (Vernal Sonata, Reclaim from the Deep)

Dark Visionary has consistent out-of-the-box control of the top card of the deck of her choice with her Turmoil ability, and that puts her in a good position to control the output of most enemies. However, neither Turmoil nor her Precognition card (unless there's only 3 card in the villain deck) let her control the second-from-the-top card in the villain deck, which gives her a control gap against enemies that can play more than 1 card per turn (lots of them can, but Advanced Voss for Forced Deployment or Cosmic Omnitron for Technological Singularity or Sedative Flechettes are some of the worst). However, she can fill that gap in temporarily by virtue of Argent Adept allowing her to play Suggestion after Turmoil. It won't last forever, although recursion cards can help stretch it out as long as possible.

IV. Stop. Just Stop.
Needs: Nightmist and/or Legacy (any, but AGL best for AA synergy)
Wants: Visionary (any) with Mental Divergence, Team Leader Tachyon, Argent Adept, Tempest (any), Omnitron-X, Scholar

It's obvious, but worth including - Take Down and Mistbound can allow you to lock out enemy plays for as long as you can chain them. Everything else, then, is tools to allow you to draw or re-draw these tools:
- TLT gets you drawing them faster
- Dark Visionary gives Turmoil control until you draw your lockdown cads while regular Visionary lets you draw them faster. Either can provide ongoing Take Down recursion with Mental Divergence, and if you're using America's Greatest Legacy than Gung-Ho can target Visionary to activate Mental Divergence. This will put Take Down on top of Legacy's deck, where he'll draw it again at end of turn. (You'd then ideally want AA to help him play if off turn. Note also that if you have Inspiring Supertonic up and the ability to play it, Gung-Ho can pass through AA to trigger extra Accompanies before using Inspiring Supertonic to hit Mental Divergence.)
- Argent Adept lets you play Take Down off turn to remove its damage, off-turn plays allow you to play cards drawn during the character draw phase on the same round, additional draws get you critical cards faster, and Vernal Sonata gives you recursion possibilities
- Tempest's Reclaim from the Deep cycles with itself and also with Vernal Sonata
- Omnitron-X going after Argent Adept, Tempest, or Visionary allows heroes to immediately play cards that have been moved from trash to top of deck. In particular, Take Down -> Mental Divergence -> Timeshift is an infinitely replicable lock.
- Scholar's Proverbs and Axioms gives draw and facilitates Adept play, while Don't Dismiss both is recursion itself and follows well on the heels of other recursion

[powerhound_2000]

I'm a bit surprised Parse is only listed in one of these. Interesting write up and hopefully shows people Writhe in either form has a good power for deck manipulation.

[Foolswalkin]

Yeah, I don't talk too much about Parse because Extrasensory Awareness doesn't have much hidden awesome that I'm aware of (its awesomeness seems overt to me). Except for interacting with villains who benefit from filling the graveyard it doesn't have much of a gap in its control, save for "you have to draw and play it before you can use it," or perhaps "against villains who can play multiple cards in a turn you will rarely want to be able to repeat it if you don't have Buffer Overflow in play."

But if people have more non-obvious Parse tricks I'd love to know. There are lots of ways to make damage absurdly large in the game, I'm looking for the "make control absurdly oppressive" options.

[Mitillos]

You can also use Super-Scientific Tachyon instead of Writhe, for your Deep Extraction method.

[Foolswalkin]

I don't see it...?

If they're different keywords she can trash them, but she can't bounce it back up unless I'm missing something.

[KellyR]

Just to give explicit clarification for the best versions of Stop, Just Stop:

If you have TL Tachyon, any Legacy, and any Visionary, in that order... Once Visionary has Mental Divergence in play, and Legacy draws both copies of Take Down, you have achieved a permanent lock on the villain ever playing cards again. Period.

1. TL Tachyon does whatever.

2. Legacy plays Take Down A

3. Visionary does whatever.

4. TL Tachyon uses Team Leader

5. Legacy's turn, Take Down A is destroyed. Legacy plays Take Down B.

6. Visionary uses Mental Divergence to put Take Down A back on top of Legacy's deck.

7. TL Tachyon uses Team Leader, causing Legacy to draw Take Down from the top of his deck.

8. Legacy's turn. Take Down B is destroyed. Legacy plays Take Down A.

9. Visionary uses Mental Divergence to put Take Down B back on top of Legacy's deck.

10. Repeat steps 4-9 until you've managed to win the game.


Alternatively, you can use Legacy, Visionary, and AA in that order, and you can manage this with only one copy of Take Down drawn, but AA needs to have the Lyra, Bell, Inspiring Supertonic, Counterpoint Bulwark, and Inventive Preparation in play, at minimum.

1. Legacy plays Take Down.

2. Wait for Legacy's turn to come again.

3. Legacy's turn. Take Down is destroyed. Legacy can do whatever he likes.

4. Visionary uses Mental Divergence to return Take Down to the top of Legacy's deck.

5. AA plays Lyra->Inspiring Supertonic->Bell->(Anything)->Counterpoint Bulwark(Legacy draws Take Down->Inventive Preparation(Legacy plays Take Down).

6. Repeat steps 3-5 indefinitely.


Obviously the most reliable way of pulling this off is TL Tachyon, Legacy, Visionary, AA, Omnitron-X. That way you can use option 1 if you can't manage to get all the cards AA needs into play but draw both copies of Take Down, or option 2 if AA gets the right set up. And as a clutch option you can cycle Take Down with just Vernal Sonata, having Omnitron-X put it back into play.

This is also one of the VERY few situations where a strong argument can be made that standard Visionary would be a better choice than Dark Visionary, as she can give one hero per round an extra card draw in addition to 2 card scry.

Frankly though, people generally avoid using this team lineup because you'll pretty much never lose :D

[Foolswalkin]

Take Down -> Mental Divergence -> Timeshift loops endlessly. Tachyon is helpful but unnecessary, and you only need 1 copy of Take Down if you've got Mental Divergence. Have Legacy, Visionary, and Omnitron-X in that order. Take Down is destroyed at start of Legacy's turn, Visionary's Mental Divergence puts it back on top of his deck, and Omnitron plays it off the top of his deck.

The other loops are good to have options if you can't make this work, but I think the above is the cleanest.

[Mitillos]

@Foolswalkin: Correct. It's not quite the same as with Writhe, but she can get rid of the bad stuff, so that you never see it in the game.

[Foolswalkin]

Gotcha. I can definitely see combinations of cards I'd be happy to spend a power to trash off the bottom of the deck (although you have to sort carefully to not trigger, say, Technological Singularity and Sedative Flechettes).

---

Note that Stop. Just Stop. can be used on Heroic Intervention instead of Take Down, and if you're running Next Evolution you can do so without self damage. If you want to run permanent Take Down AND permanent Heroic Intervention together, you've got to work a little harder and manipulate the heck out of your own decks.

V. Don't You Think You've Done Enough?
Needs: Greatest Legacy, Visionary (any), Omnitron-X, and Argent Adept (any) in that order, copy of Heroic Intervention and Take Down in trash by AGL's power phase, Visionary with Mental Divergence, Argent Adept with Inventive Preparation and ability to use it
Wants: Inspiring Supertonic, as many more instruments as you can get + Alacritous Supertonic, Legacy Ring & Next Evolution

1. In Legacy's Power phase: iff you have the Legacy Ring use Next Evolution on Melee, then use Gung Ho on AA iff you have Inspiring Supertonic and enough instruments to make playing them profitable while still passing off Inspiring Supertonic. Gung Ho Visionary otherwise
2. If you Gung Ho AA, trigger instruments however you want, but you need to use an Inspiring Supertonic perform on Visionary to pass her a power use. (Lyra Supertonic -> Inventive Prep is simple, Harp Inspiring -> Lyra for the extra Harmony Accompany is better, and you can loop in a lot of instruments with a destroyed Alacritous if you've got that)
3. Whether by Gung Ho or Inspiring Supertonic, use Mental Divergence to put Heroic Intervention on top of Legacy's deck
4. Legacy's Draw phase happens and he draws Heroic Intervention
5. Visionary and Omnitron-X take their turns and complete Stop. Just Stop. on Take Down with Mental Divergence and Timeshift
6. On Argent Adept's turn do whatever you like until you use Inventive Preparation -> Heroic Intervention. With the ring/next evolution combo, Legacy's Melee immunity prevents him from taking any damage, making this indefinitely sustainable.

What's nice about this double combo is that if you use Dark Visionary and Prime Warden Adept you've got a well rounded 4 hero team that functions just fine without it. Their one-shot based damage is admittedly poor, but Omnitron-X can become an absolute powerhouse of damage output if he's protected and allowed to develop his component offense (which suits a control style just fine), and a damage boosted Defensive Blast is one of the strongest AoE attacks in the game (played before the above combo normally, or after via Slip Through Time). During the early turns Omnitron-X can focus on Timeshifting Prime Warden Adept, which along with Conduct and Gung Ho will get him set up very fast, and once he's adequately set up Omnitron can start Timeshifting Legacy to dig for the needed cards faster. Dark Visionary's control shuts down many enemy decks and will buy you time.

[DMAN222]

You could use Wagner Mars Base's Self-Destruct Sequence to your advantage too. Bring the Wraith that has enviro deck scrying to get it out sooner. Bring Legacy for Take Down and Heroic Intervention. Bring AA so that he can play the second of the two once he starts skipping his turns for the first. Then you don't need to keep bringing cards back. This all works because start of turn effects take turns in order of which card comes out first.

[KellyR]

If you're gonna do that, you wanna bring The Sentinels and have them play Human Shield. You don't even have to skip their turn.

At that point your team can't be hurt, period.

Damage directed at any character other than Legacy is nullified. Damage directed at Legacy is redirected to Mainstay and then nullified.

The villain(s) can't play cards, and Wagner has no ongoing destruction effects--Pervasive Red Dust only destroys equipment--so this state can't be broken unless you allow it, or the villain has an effect inherent to their card or some other card they've already got in play that destroys ongoings. So if you're playing vengeance mode, don't flip Friction until you've flipped the other villains.

Hell, bring Nightmist and have her put Mistbound on the environment deck, and have her skip turns too.

Naturalist or Scholar can also pull this off, but they need to skip turns. Fanatic can manage it, but only for a limited set of targets. And she has to skip turns too.

Haka or Mr. Fixer can do it with Ground Pound/Grease Gun, but they too must skip turns, and also Ground Pound/Grease Gun makes Heroic Interception irrelevant. Which can be handy if you don't want to have to bring AA for the extra card play. However, if you DO bring AA, you should probably pick Haka and not Fixer, as AA can make Haka continue to play cards and use powers through the rest of the game even though he's skipping all his turns, so you don't lose his damage output. Grease Gun prevents Fixer from playing cards or using powers.

Additionally, there's a loophole in using Ground Pound or Grease Gun which a villain can use to hurt your heroes. It stops non-heroes from dealing damage, it doesn't stop you from taking damage. Therefore any effect which causes heroes to deal themselves, or other heroes damage, will still work.

The Heroic Interception + Human Shield/Alchemical Redirection/Indomitable Force combo is impenetrable, as Heroic Interception simply states "Hero targets other than Legacy are immune to damage", and all three of the others are unconditional "Whenever a hero target would be dealt damage" cards, so they don't care about the source of the damage at all.

Using Human Shield has the advantage that you don't have to skip the Sentinels' turn unless you don't have the cards to discard to keep it in play, but the disadvantage that it's an optional redirect, so any time something tries to damage Legacy, you have to click "yes" to redirect it. The others are unconditional and mandatory redirects, so you don't have a problem unless you also have Lead From The Front in play, in which case you have to make two clicks or taps every time ANY of your hero targets would be damaged (To pick which effect takes place first, and then "yes/no" for the other).

And of course, this only really works in Wagner. Is there any other environment that allows you to skip turns at-will?

I mean... It's theoretically possible that you could manage it in Time Cataclysm, if there were a hero who could get a card out of the Environment trash during their turn... Then you could destroy Fixed point, have him pull it from the trash, and use Visionary to put it on top of the deck or something like that, but... It would be a pain, you'd need Visionary to have her whole deck in hand, and... yeah, it'd be complicated. And I'm not sure whether there is a hero who can affect the environment trash that way.




Edit: Oh, oh! Wait! I know how to do it!

Like all the best things in life, it needs The Sentinels :D

Specifically, you need Adamant Writhe.

What you do, is you use Shroud during the Sentinels' turn. Then at the end of the round, on AA's turn, you use Sarabande to destroy Fixed Point, which, because you used Shroud, sends Fixed Point to the bottom of the environment deck instead of the trash. Then you use Inventive Preparation or Alacritous Subdominant to play Prophetic Vision, and bring Fixed Point to the top of the environment deck.

As noted before, this requires Visionary to have basically her whole deck in her hand (So that Prophetic Vision cycles), and the environment deck to have no more than 2 cards in it.

Oh! Or, rather than Visionary and AA, you could bring Omnitron-X and Rogue Agent KNYFE. Still uses Adamant Writhe for Shroud, but basically with Omni and KNYFE as your last two characters, in that order, you have Omnitron-X use Bio-Engineering Beam to destroy Fixed Point, sending it to the bottom of its deck, and then KNYFE uses her inherent, and plays the bottom card of the Environment deck.

Easy peasy.

Parse or AA would work in place of Omnitron-X too, you just need someone who has an ongoing that can nuke arbitrary environment cards at will, and Saraband or Segmentation Fault can do that.

So yeah, can be done.

[Ghost in the Machine]

Adamant Writhe's power only affects targets, so it wouldn't put Fixed Point on the bottom.
The only hero card I can think of that affects the enviro trash is Ra's Excavation. If you have a way to cycle one-shots (Veranal Sonata or similar, or getting Ra deck-in-hand) you could keep putting Fixed Point on the bottom with that, and then Rogue Agent Knyfe could play it again.

[KellyR]

Ah, you're right.

Also, I'm a moron, because KNYFE playing Fixed Point as your last action before the environment turn would just result in it being destroyed again at the start of the environment's turn. Obviously.

So you need KNYFE to be either the first or second hero in your play order, so that she can bring Fixed Point back from the bottom of the deck before you reach Legacy's turn.

Putting her in first place means that the Sentinels don't have to discard for Human Shield... But it also means your team is a bit weaker until you get your infinite Fixed Point nonsense into play, because normally you're using her "play from the bottom" to trigger Sentinel Tactics and buff Mainstay's damage resistance, but if she goes before the Sentinels, that will evaporate when their turn comes up.

So it's a trade-off.

Cycling Excavation would be the hard part... Vernal or Reclaim from the Deep would work, but then you have to be able to cycle *that*...

Using Horus of Two Horizons would make it a little easier at least.

Too bad Suggestion can't be used on heroes.

Yeah, I think you pretty much would have to get Ra's whole deck into his hand to get this working.

And any time your goal is to have a character draw their whole deck, that means you want AA and TL Tachyon...

But we already need Legacy, KNYFE, and Ra... so... Either we have to leave the Sentinels at home, and miss out on the Heroic Interception + Human Shield abuse, or we can't get both AA and Tachyon in.

We have Ra, so we don't actually need the Sentinels for damage, and we have Legs for tanking...

Ehh... Not sure. It's a pretty solid trade in either direction.

Alternatively... Parse can get her whole deck into her hand fairly rapidly, and once she does, she can play Syntactic Analysis twice per round, which is four cards drawn for the target of her choice...

If Legacy is Grandpa Legacy, and we have AA... We can boost that at least a little... Yeah, we could bring it to more like 8 card draws... While adding some damage resistance... Lyra->Inspiring->Bell->Counterpoint->Counterpoint->Counterpoint draws the two Syntactic Analysis cards (And gives two heroes 1 damage resistance each), and then Lyra->Inspiring->Bell->Counterpoint->Inventive->Inventive plays them both.

And that set up lets AA give Parse 4 card draws per round while she's trying to get her deck in hand.

Not sure which would statistically come out ahead though, just having AA draw 4 for Ra every round all game, or having him draw 4 for Parse until her deck was empty and then switching to Parse and AA cooperating to draw 8 per round for Ra...

[KellyR]

Tested out the infinite Fixed Point cycling... It does work, but it's such a pain to set up that I don't think you could really use it effectively except as a fun trick.

Did learn what should have been an obvious conclusion, that AA can use his long "play all the things" chain as much as he wants with Fixed Point in play, since Alacritous can't be destroyed.

And while it didn't come up because Fixed Point was locking Take Down in place (And because Fixed Point was always in the environment trash during the villain turn), it did occur to me to wonder... If Fixed Point is in play, and Parse has Buffer Overflow in play... Can Parse simply refuse to allow the villain to play cards forever? It seems like Buffer Overflow triggers *before* the card reaches play, which would mean you *could* discard it... But Buffer Overflow itself could not be removed from play, so...

To arrange that you'd need your team order to have Ra and say, the Sentinels at the end. So Ra could put Fixed Point on the bottom of the environment deck, and Writhe could then move it to the top.

I might have to set up another test game to see.



Edit: Just tested it, and it worked the way I thought it would. While Fixed Point is in play, Buffer Overflow allows Parse to prevent an unlimited number of card plays by Villains.

[Foolswalkin]

On the topic of environments, worth noting that certain environments have card playing environmental effects that become super powerful hero buffs with Take Down or Mistbound in play, notably Ruins of Atlantis (The Pillars of Hercules) and Realm of Discord (Time Flies). Both allow extra hero draws and plays, and Pillars of Hercules allows extra power uses - this, among other things, allows Dark Visionary to keep recurring Take Down while also filtering out Leaking Room from the Environmental Deck (though if it comes down to it, AGL can Gung Ho a power use over to AA or Omni to use power-based environmental removal).

[KellyR]

Also certain environments are flat out lulzy and basically on your side if you have the Naturalist along.

Final Wasteland in particular becomes a playground, as it only has 3 cards that aren't straight damage dealing targets, and two of those cards give beneficial effects, with the only downside being that they cause the environment to play more cards. And if the targets can't hurt you, that turns into a good thing instead of a bad thing. You end up being able to draw two extra cards on each Hero's turn, and then each hero gets healed for 1hp during the environment's turn.

And any target that gets destroyed is removed from the game, which neuters villains like the Chairman and the Matriarch.


Enclave of the Endlings can be fun if you have Take Down in play, as Slamara plays the top card of the villain deck, and then every hero deck, on the environment turn. So Take Down turns her into a mostly helpful thing. Just probably bad to bring Fanatic.


Temple of Zhu Long is good with Naturalist of any other means of soaking environment damage (As long as you can also protect the Shinobi Assassin cards, as they're annoyingly disruptive if they die). There are three copies of Mysterious Rituals, and each of them allows one player to either draw three cards or play one card. It also has the unique distinction of being the only circumstance in which an incapacitated hero (That isn't one of The Sentinels) can be revived.