Bank
Just a Scratch
Really Annoying
Safe Keeping
Repeated Jabs
Thinking Ahead
One True Style → Iron Defense → Dashing Strike
Mix Master
One-Two Punch
One of Each
Degenerate Trasher
Thoughts for vs
The puzzle combines strongly favor Lum, as Midori gets his :ps2gems: for free; I don’t see either player doing much wounding; and the One-Two Punch and One of Each are great for consistency which favors the Midori. Overall, I think it’s Lum-favored.
Game 1:
Midori received the strongest aggro opening: turn 1 Purge to buy Crash Gem and turn 2 Dragon Form to buy Safe Keeping. Lum got a turn 1 combine, set up a basic combo with Thinking Ahead, Repeated Jabs and One True Style, and went mono-purple for the rest of the game. The combination of Jabs and heavy purple overwhelmed Midori’s defense despite Midori’s pigs for crash-spacing.
Counterpick: One True Style → Iron Defense
Solid on both sides; One True Style did a lot of work through multiple roles game 1, and isn’t particularly useful for Midori; meanwhile Midori needs extra Dragon-friendly defense.
Game 2:
Midori simply steamrolled Lum with One-Two Punch, Iron Defense and pigs for consistency. Acrata did buy a double crash gem, but still didn’t have the raw pile control to survive, lacked forks to multicrash and was in any event suffering poisoning from using Safe Keeping to survive that long.
Counterpick: Iron Defense → Dashing Strike
Iron Defense definitely needed to go. Dashing Strike is a good defensive Lum option, but it’s also a 4-cost chip that Midori can use in this bank.
Game 3:
Acrata chose a first turn Really Annoying+:ps2gem: double buy over a combine. Zeromh drew a weak opening, with T1 Dragon Form and no Purges in the first two cycles, but Acrata fixed it somewhat by playing into Rigorous Training for Combine. That left the Midori’s economy weakened. Acrata barely stabilized in the face of a 4-crash by, 3 turns previously, dropping Panda’s Bargain for two purples and appending a Dashing Strike. But zeromh dropped Dragon Form at about the same time to buy a crash. By the time the Dragon pressure resumed, Acrata had the critical mass of washers and Dashing Strikes to overpower zeroth’s still fragile defense.
CP: Random bank. I don’t understand why.
It’s a Trap
Sale Prices
Improvisation
One-Two Punch
Ouch!
Self-Improvement
Punch, Punch, Kick
X-Copy
Degenerate Trasher
The Hammer
This would favor Midori, as there are few low-end chips to dodge Rigorous Training, and no defense for Lum; however Sale Prices lets Lum cheat that for combines if he’s willing to ditch Bargain. Midori has somewhat better access to the high end, but Lum can use it better. Overall, I think it’s slightly Lum-favored.
Game 4:
Acrata threw down a gauntlet with a turn 1 Ouch! buy. Zeromh got an economic draw and used it on a turn 2 Self-Improvement. Zeromh dropped Dragon Form after only a couple of turns and snowballed the economic opening into two DCGs. Acrata collected combines with Sale Prices, but with only a single for passive money, couldn’t afford forks afterwards and quickly choked on the extra enders. Ultimately, the DCGs went unanswered.
CP: Switch to Valerie, probably for the pressure-relief of Chromatic Orb and the innate fork to support Ouch!
Game 5:
Acrata once again pursued an Ouch!-centric plan; however, this time Acrata was also aggressively thinning out :ps1gems: with Self-Improvement for the entire game. Zeromh’s first Dragon Form lasted for only two turns, used to establish a strong economic base, which was followed by combine and crash buys.
Acrata wasn’t prioritizing defensive minicrashes after Dragon Form dropped, then died suddenly the following cycle to severe arrow trouble. The first hand was all enders and the second all forks and the lone combine.
My biggest surprise of the set was nobody touching Mix Master in the first bank.