[Puzzle] Fastest Kill

Codex
1

What is the absolute fastest you can deal 20 damage to your opponent’s base?

There are some rules to make it more interesting. There are also 2 versions, “As Player 1” and “as Player 2”.

As Player 1:

  • After your first turn, your opponent will always play and patrol a 1/1 rabbit mercenary patroller, but otherwise does not do anything or have any board or buildings. The Merc will patrol wherever you wish. Only 1 Merc will ever exist at a time, if for some reason you don’t want to kill it.

As Player 2

  • your opponent will always play and patrol a 1/1 rabbit mercenary patroller, but otherwise does not do anything or have any board or buildings. The Merc will patrol wherever you wish. Only 1 Merc will ever exist at a time, if for some reason you don’t want to kill it.

Other Rules

  • You may steal the opponent’s floating gold, using the appropriate spells/abilities of course.
  • If you want to steal something using Community service, you can assume it will always work and get whatever thing you wanted. Limitations of the opponent having only 3 possible spec combinations still apply.
  • The goal is in the fewest total actions, get 20 damage on your opponent’s base.
  • You may select the cards that you draw to optimize your damage, but used cards still goto discard.
  • Actions are counted in discrete game terms, meaning everything that results from the player initiating an action is 1 action. leveling a hero 1 step is 1 action. Leveling a hero the last step to maxband, triggering a maxband effect, is still only 1 action. So leveling zane from 5 to 6, triggering the maxband effect and killing the opposing merc would still all be 1 action. Playing a spell is 1 action, even if it has multuple effects. Playing a unit or hero is 1 action. Attacking is 1 action.

One Possible solution:

MonoRed
P1T1
Hand: x,x,x,Mad Man, Makeshift Rambaster
get 4g
1 worker, 3g
2/3 Mad Man, deal 1 to base, 2g
4/5 Rambaster, deal 3 to base (16), 0g
float 0g, discard 2, draw 4
P1T2
Hand: x,x,x,Nautical Dog
Tech: lobber,lobber
get 5g
6 worker, 4g
7/8 zane, kills Merc, 2g
9/10 mad man and Rambaster, base to 12.
11 Nautical Dog, 1g
12 Tech 1, 0g
float 0g, discard 2, draw 1, reshuffle, draw 3
P1T3
hand: x,x,x,lobber
tech: x,x
get 6g
13-17 max Zane, move merc to scav, we both get 1g, 2g
18/19 lobber, hits base to 10, 1g
20-23 zane 4, Dog 2, rambaster 3, Mad Man 1, destroys Base.

23 actions, Turn 3.

5 Likes
2

Sure, I’ll have a go!

Growth spec, 11 actions, Turn 4

P1T1
1: Ironbark Treant, 1g
2. Merfolk Prospector, 0g

P1T2
Tech 2 x Dinosize
3. Argagarg, Wisp arrives, 2g
4. Merfolk Prospector trades with Mercenary
5. Ironbark Treant hits base down to 17
Reshuffle before draw, deck size 10 allowing even split on Dinosizes

P1T3
Tech whatever, draw one Dinosize
6. Dinosize on Ironbark Treant, 2g
7. Argagarg kills Mercenary
8. Ironbark Treant hits base down to 8

P1T4
Tech whatever, draw the other Dinosize
9. Dinosize on Ironbark Treant, 2g
10. Argagarg kills Mercenary
11. Ironbark Treant hits base down to -1

Alternatively, skip one attack with IT, and put both Dinosizes and Rampant Growth on it on Turn 4. Same number of actions, but you spend all your gold and deal exactly 20 damage to the base, so it’s neater.

2 Likes
3

Don’t forget you can also solve for player 2.

4

The easy (boring) way to do this, of course, is to Maxband Grave and play True Power of the Storms twice, for 10 actions, but hopefully there’s a faster and more interesting way than that.

… Oh, and Onimaru + 7 General’s Hammers, 8 actions. Same for Jaina.

5

The number of turns doesn’t explicitly play into, but when i was framing it i briefly considered earliest turn instead of least actions, but thought number of actions would be more interesting.

In any event, waiting till turn 9 to kill someone is hardly considered “fast”

Maybe I should adjust to just add turn number plus actions for total scoring.

2 Likes
6

Combine Growth with the Red starter and you get almost the same number of actions in 3 turns:

[Red]/Growth/X
P1T1
get 4g
1 worker, 3g
2/3 Mad Man, deal 1 to base, 2g
4/5 Rambaster, deal 3 to base (16), 0g
P1T2
Tech DinosizeX2
get 5g
6 Arg, 3g
7 Mad Man trades with Rabbit
8 Rambaster deals 3 to base (13)
Discard, reshuffle, draw both Dinosizes
P1T3
get 5g (8 with float)
9/10 DinosizeX2 on Rambaster, 0g
11 Arg kills Rabbit
12 Rambaster deals 15 to base (-2)

Edit: actually, you can just skip the Mad Man and workers entirely and save another couple of actions.
P1T1
get 4g
1/2 Rambaster, deals 3 to base, 2g
3 Arg, 0g
P1T2
Tech DinosizeX2
get 4g
4 Arg kills rabbit
5 Rambaster deals 3 to base (14)
P1T3
get 4g (8 with float)
6/7 DinosizeX2 on Rambaster
8 Arg kills Rabbit
9 Rambaster deals 15 to base (-1)

2 Likes
7

Skip action 3, and it’s exactly the same!

1 Like
8

Do you count sacrificing things to Omegacron as multiple actions?

You can get a P2T3 kill with Verdant Tree + Merfolk into double Omegacrons, but if you count each sacrifice as a separate action it’ll take quite a few.

9

Yes, Omegacron’s ability is a one for one. The same thing happens with Tricycloid

1 Like
10

It seems most reasonable to define “fastest kill” in terms of earliest turn, with actions as the tiebreaker between solutions on the same turn. If there were some convoluted combo that could win on turn 2, it seems plainly wrong to say that’s not fastest just because there are many steps to it.

2 Likes
11

7 actions (as either player)

  1. Play Jandra, the Negator (3 gold spent)
  2. Summon Arg (5)
  3. Dinosize Jandra (9)
  4. Attack, overpowering 8 damage
  5. Reshuffle, Dinosize Jandra (13)
  6. Dinosize again (17)
  7. Attack, overpowering another 14 damage

The gold and card draws line up to make this happen on turn 5 going first, and still turn 5 going second, since you have to wait until then for a reshuffle when you don’t make workers.

2 Likes
12

The Community Service kill is even faster, though (actually turn 6):

  1. Bigsby
  2. On turn (3), take a gigadron with Community Service
    3-5. Attack with gigadron, overpowering 7 damage each time

To do it on turn 5 requires 1 extra action (2nd community service on T3 to enable 2 attacks on 4)
You can get it down to turn 4 with:

  1. Bigsby
    2-3. Community Service for 2 Gigadrons
    4-5. Attack for 7 and 8
  2. Attack with Bigsby for 2
  3. Use Jurisdiction for General’s Hammer, spending your last 4 gold.
1 Like
13

Gigadon would win on turn 6. Turn 3 to get the gigadon, unless you spend an action on lawful search to draw into a reshuffle.

14

Even if you draw Community Service on turn 2, you need your opponent to have already teched the Gigadon, so it wouldn’t work as player 1.

15

Another 5 but kills on turn 5 instead of 6 (also with a nice 10 overkill…).

  1. Bigsby
  2. Community Service for Terras Q
  3. Jurisdiction for Discord
  4. Tq Attacks, deals 15
  5. TQ attacks, Deals 15
2 Likes
16

Ok, so I will extend this by organizing the solutions into fewest actions by turn 3, turn 4, turn 5 and turn 6. Past turn 6 we won’t worry about. Doesn’t look like P1 or 2 matters after T3.

P1T3 Solutions
Red starter Dinosized, 9 Actions

P2T3 Solutions
CS into Rampaging Elephant, Jurisdiction Dinosize, 7 actions

T4 Solutions
CS into Gigadons + JS into General’s Hammer, 7 actions
Dinosized Ironbark, 11 actions

P2T4
Young Treant/Lawful Search, CS into Terras Q, 6 actions.

T5 Solutions
CS into Terras Q, 5 actions
Jandra Dinosized, 7 actions

T6 Solutions
CS into a Gigadon, 5 actions

1 Like
17

Player 2 can win on Turn 4 in 6 actions with a CS’d Terras Q, by playing a Young Treant on Turn 2 to draw the Community Service.

18

P2T3 kill

T1 Bigby (2 gold spent)
T2 young treant into reshuffle for Community service, get Rampaging Elephant (9 gold spent)
T3 Jurisdiction for Dinosize on Elephant (15 gold spent)
Bigby kills soldier
Elephant attacks twice for lethal

7 actions

4 Likes
19

Let’s revisit this puzzle, but with a twist. What is the fastest kill with a single spec, a 1 hero matchup. Cooperative opponent, but still patrols a single soldier every turn. First, what is the earliest turn, then what is the least number of actions. Attacks, spells, summoning hero or unit, are all actions. Triggered effects (arrives: attacks: etc ) are not actions.

20

As a baseline:
Bigby, Community service, attack with Gigadron 3x is still a legal 5 action, turn 6 solution.
Playing a second CS makes it 6 actions, turn 5