So there’s a few things going together into Balance-Truth-Bashing.
First, the green starter offers some respectable openers against most things, between the econ pressure you can add via prospector/rich earth depending (OR BOTH), and a respectable defensive setup that can go offensive between young treant, panda, tiger, forest’s favor and rampant growth.
Midori brings one of the STRONGEST tempo vs heroes tech 1 units in basilisks, and can be a threat himself between mid/maxband effects, and FF/RG. Midori also has one of the best answers to unit based strategies with his spell moments peace. While throwing mirrored basilisks at your heroes was fun it probably wasn’t the absolute most effective stuff I could’ve been doing (mostly because I wasn’t getting levels or damaging your tech/base/anything or threatening to, nor particularly protecting myself strongly enough to really make you work to trade stuff off decently). With FD, Mimic and Basilisk at Tech 2 Balance there are some very problematic units for various strategies.
Quince brings a VERY specific unit-based offensive, and is one of the few heroes who can turn gold advantage directly into ‘more stuff’ at almost tech level, which makes him and his mirrors a persistent threat/annoyance. As he doesn’t target (so he can mirror his own illusions), he also able to abuse holes in typical responses to “Make use of your opponent’s resources”. Free speech is particularly strong against specific styles of hero responses to his shenanigans.
Hound, Flagbearer, Macciatus and Reteller are all quite solid units as long as you don’t need to be fighting into 4/4 or 4/5s or the like (in which case Quince probably wants to be copying and trading or mind controlling). Honestly I was specifically forcing a game of Truth//Quince as much as I could to see how it felt. A 3 cost tech III haste+evasion also VERY strong, even before it is “UUU”, when you consider Quince is often doing a lot with his mirrors throughout the game.
Torq is probably the outlier in that he may not immediately appear to fit in. He plays a supporting role though I will admit I was tempted to try and bring him in sometime earlier with intimidate//final smash. While expensive to level, intimidate, and final smash are all quite strong at preserving your own units and his readiness means he can be both aggressive and defensive.
I likely should have used at least an Iron Man at some point (respectable mirror target, and midori-midband buffs, survives attacking a hero unlike my TBs). For a very different gameplan bashing’s tech 1s are standard enough to get you into most midgames respectably and the tech 2 is varied and respectable enough to respond to a variety of threats – suppliment some of the bigger butts with mirror pseudo-haste and harvest reaper/eggship are much better than generically played. Duck is also an EXCELLENT arrival mirror target with obliterate, big body and direct building damage on attack (plus the arrival trigger)
I think back on P1T5 I also had at least one route to break either graveyard or verdant tree?
8 gold, mirror, prospector, quonce, tiny basilisk in play.
Tiny Basilisk, Hound, Reteller in hand.
Prospector+quonce kill imp, basilisk for vir, hound+mirrored, send mirror’d hound into graveyard, tree or onimaru was even an option. Probably the graveyard all things considered. 7 gold left over, tech 2 truth down to 3, mirror #1 down to 1, worker either Tiny Basilisk or Reteller (Probably Tiny in this world, you don’t know it is a TB that I worker anyway so possibly keep you sweating about surprise basilisk into hero from a mirror). Discard remaining card, draw 3.
Leaves board of:
Hound Tech or Squadleader
Mirror’ed Hound (3/1) – dies if hound dies
1/4 Quince
Mirror #2 as (0/1) tech, resist or scavenger.
Against Onimaru+Pestering Haunt+Tree+Heroes Hall
Not sure if it would’ve gone better taking that route, but I would’ve been able to actually have a hand sometime.
I enjoyed watching it!