Monster Train - All 'Choo'se puns are banned

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ugusername: Jul 5, 2013

Finally got my first C25 win! It was late into the night so I was absolutely memeing. Figured I'd try to find an Incant Siren against Cleanse Seraph and only ever saw one early that proced with Rage so passed it up. Well I got some Incant after Daedalus but for whatever reason it didn't registered in my brain that he cleanses Sap too at first. When I finally realized it I just stared at my incredibly mediocre deck that is completely countered by endboss. Then it just clicked: I have 5 ember, there is like 3 Hellvents left, bring it on! Guess what bitch 3 Totem lane doesn't care for your stupid bullshit. Shoutout to Cutieflex for freezing Ice and Pyre for giant finisher.

Stygian is probably my favorite. Also first fully golded clan after that run!

# ? Aug 4, 2020 10:42

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 00:38

Ranzear: Jul 25, 2013

lol

Torching my prince adds 40 damage. I have the trample card too.

It was into Purifying Seraph, but that didn't matter.

It was only a Cov1 run because I forgot to turn it back up from just wanting logbook clears.
DL

I thought this was my new high score run, but I guess this was last week:

DL

Snuffer and Resin Block with Largestone Legion. Holy poo poo. I think my plan at the end was to Stygian Spike it to ramp up the damage faster.

Ranzear fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Aug 5, 2020

# ? Aug 5, 2020 15:02

GodFish: Oct 10, 2012; We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

Khorne posted:

I play mostly hellhorned+umbra and it is the most consistent combination in the game I've found. I usually win 4-6 games before taking a loss at cov25, and a lot of the time the losses are because I decided doing something would be fun rather than correct. That's without resetting for starting cards. If you reset away really bad starting cards (1-3 resets) the win rate goes up way higher.

I usually aim for brawler 1 + reaper 2, with preferred order reaper 1 -> brawler -> reaper2 . The main problem is if you miss brawler at the second upgrade you better have something going for you or you're going to be in for a hard run.

I try to just draft 2 banner units: morselmaker & crucible warden. Fallback drafts of morselmaster & crucible collector or just random good stuff. Sometimes you miss and need to adapt, and other times you get game changer artifacts like morsels have divine shield 1. It's somewhat flexible with the only awkward part being summon order to get the maker+hellhorned+crucible on the same floor. You can sort of make that work in your favor by having 2-3 crucible guys and 1x morsel guy or it's possible to run no morselmaker/master at all, but if you are offered one and already have a crucible then you should probably take it because it's extremely ember efficient and its power level spikes hard with certain artifacts. Hidden Passage, the dazed card, and cave in also work great for getting everyone on the same floor.

The best card in the game with this strategy is the rare pay x to double trigger devour card. It's worth duplicating over pretty much anything with no spell upgrades except for the x divine shield x card with doublestack which is equally as strong and a common. Spike of the hellhorned or whatever it's called for x armor/x rage is also okay, and a lot of the time you want to force draft at least 1 defensive spell so your champion doesn't die to sweep. The best defensive spell being the divine shield one, but you can't always get it despite it being a common.

Besides that strategy, the real power is the flexibility and baseline strength of the hellhorned champ. As long as you can frontline for him he will single handedly carry. Especially if you hit furnace tap or the trample card. Sometimes you clown car with random good stuff hellhorned/umbra units, sometimes you have the divine shield morsel artifact and morselmakers/morselmasters are busted, sometimes you have holdover inferno, sometimes you can go shadowsiege, sometimes you get early multistrke on crucible guys and duplicate them and fill a few floors with them, sometimes you end up with 30 mana per turn and are slamming 60 divine shield stacks or +300 attack/+300 health from a single morsel. If you miss one thing you hit another, and the decks function well whether they're 18 cards or 34 cards because you mostly want to hit everything once.

I admittedly don't draft wrathful often. I draft it the 1/x games I have not hit the combo I want by the second or third pick. It's fine, but with umbra it's unneeded to frontline the hellhorned champ and actively works against the crucible gorgers.

Gave this a try and even with a really unlucky draw pattern on seraph I steamrolled it easily on cr23! Can recommend.

# ? Aug 5, 2020 17:14

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Khorne posted:

I play mostly hellhorned+umbra and it is the most consistent combination in the game I've found. I usually win 4-6 games before taking a loss at cov25, and a lot of the time the losses are because I decided doing something would be fun rather than correct. That's without resetting for starting cards. If you reset away really bad starting cards (1-3 resets) the win rate goes up way higher.

I usually aim for brawler 1 + reaper 2, with preferred order reaper 1 -> brawler -> reaper2 . The main problem is if you miss brawler at the second upgrade you better have something going for you or you're going to be in for a hard run.

I try to just draft 2 banner units: morselmaker & crucible warden. Fallback drafts of morselmaster & crucible collector or just random good stuff. Sometimes you miss and need to adapt, and other times you get game changer artifacts like morsels have divine shield 1. It's somewhat flexible with the only awkward part being summon order to get the maker+hellhorned+crucible on the same floor. You can sort of make that work in your favor by having 2-3 crucible guys and 1x morsel guy or it's possible to run no morselmaker/master at all, but if you are offered one and already have a crucible then you should probably take it because it's extremely ember efficient and its power level spikes hard with certain artifacts. Hidden Passage, the dazed card, and cave in also work great for getting everyone on the same floor.

The best card in the game with this strategy is the rare pay x to double trigger devour card. It's worth duplicating over pretty much anything with no spell upgrades except for the x divine shield x card with doublestack which is equally as strong and a common. Spike of the hellhorned or whatever it's called for x armor/x rage is also okay, and a lot of the time you want to force draft at least 1 defensive spell so your champion doesn't die to sweep. The best defensive spell being the divine shield one, but you can't always get it despite it being a common.

Besides that strategy, the real power is the flexibility and baseline strength of the hellhorned champ. As long as you can frontline for him he will single handedly carry. Especially if you hit furnace tap or the trample card. Sometimes you clown car with random good stuff hellhorned/umbra units, sometimes you have the divine shield morsel artifact and morselmakers/morselmasters are busted, sometimes you have holdover inferno, sometimes you can go shadowsiege, sometimes you get early multistrke on crucible guys and duplicate them and fill a few floors with them, sometimes you end up with 30 mana per turn and are slamming 60 divine shield stacks or +300 attack/+300 health from a single morsel. If you miss one thing you hit another, and the decks function well whether they're 18 cards or 34 cards because you mostly want to hit everything once.

I admittedly don't draft wrathful often. I draft it the 1/x games I have not hit the combo I want by the second or third pick. It's fine, but with umbra it's unneeded to frontline the hellhorned champ and actively works against the crucible gorgers.

I just used this strategy to beat cov12 with a 4 turn boss rush using shadowgorger, morselmaker, and R1-B-R2 with no railspikes at all and the only defensive card until lategame being a single fortify

it helped that i found enough tomes to end up with multistrike 6 and trample at the end as well as having a gauge from the start and an anvil in the middle, but still, it was really, really powerful

# ? Aug 6, 2020 05:36

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

New expansion just got announced, and one of the features is alternate Champions for each tribe.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:19

Hackan Slash: May 31, 2007; Hit it until it's not a problem anymore

I wish morselmaker created during the relentless phase. It's probably op, but because it doesn't it feels real bad on things like shadowgorger or construct.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:36

No Wave: Sep 18, 2005; HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

Hackan Slash posted:

I wish morselmaker created during the relentless phase. It's probably op, but because it doesn't it feels real bad on things like shadowgorger or construct.

The issue is it would be absurdly broken with crucible (it kind of already is but whatever)

Those units are still really bad though so I would like to see some more balance changes, like making construct start with some fuel (I still would not play it). And making shadowgorger proc before the attack phase.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:43

The Maestro: Feb 21, 2006

Construct blows. If they even just tweaked it slightly so that it only used fuel when it attacks, instead of every turn regardless, it would help (did they change that in the last patch?) but it would still be too limited

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:52

DoubleT2172: Sep 24, 2007

Jedit posted:

New expansion just got announced, and one of the features is alternate Champions for each tribe.

Where is this announced? I'm not seeing anything

# ? Aug 6, 2020 21:57

sparksbloom: Apr 30, 2006

DoubleT2172 posted:

Where is this announced? I'm not seeing anything

They have a weekly developer stream where they talked about it.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 23:05

Hogama: Sep 3, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSZsdPtlZh8
The stream in question.

Update will be called Friends and Foes, the marquee feature is going to be alternative Champions and Bosses.

Left is Shardtail Queen, the Hellhorned alt (in addition to different mechanics, she will have different starting cards - wouldn't say what, but Hornbreaker Prince apparently is tied to the Torch cards so it won't be those.)
Right is Talos the Architect, third-ring alt to Daedalus (again, different attacks, but wouldn't say what)

# ? Aug 6, 2020 23:20

Gyshall: Feb 24, 2009; Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

Oh hell yeah.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 02:53

Chairchucker: Nov 14, 2006; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

They're really following the StS model of a bunch of new stuff for free, ey. Rad.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 06:11

Gyshall: Feb 24, 2009; Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

This game would be nuts if they have a clan for each circle plus multiple heroes for each clan. Wild.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 11:27

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Neat!

# ? Aug 7, 2020 15:35

DrManiac: Feb 29, 2012

All they need to do is add mod support so this can be a sts tier forever game.

# ? Aug 9, 2020 01:35

Ranzear: Jul 25, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_nUMXlBzdM

Proud of my boy making the big plays.

I still did not know spike kills count as slay.

# ? Aug 10, 2020 02:35

Solemn Sloth: Jul 11, 2015; Baby you can shout at me,
But you can't need my eyes.

Ranzear posted:

I still did not know spike kills count as slay.

Well poo poo

# ? Aug 10, 2020 02:43

GodFish: Oct 10, 2012; We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

Awoken/Stygian is such a powerful combo, it's letting me plow through cr25 wins. Get the card draw champion and use that to setup a siren behind a regen tank. The +armor/+health version of each ideally. Get multistrike or something on them and whatever else you get on other floors, cleans up easy.

# ? Aug 11, 2020 02:28

Solemn Sloth: Jul 11, 2015; Baby you can shout at me,
But you can't need my eyes.

Ranzear posted:

I still did not know spike kills count as slay.

namaste

# ? Aug 11, 2020 06:54

Prokhor: Jun 28, 2009; In one moment, Earth; in the next, Heaven.

Ranzear posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_nUMXlBzdM

Proud of my boy making the big plays.

I still did not know spike kills count as slay.

Helll yeah this was sick as hell I can't wait for multiplayer trains

# ? Aug 11, 2020 21:05

Chairchucker: Nov 14, 2006; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Mask of Penumbra (draw one when you summon your first morsel) + holdover cannibalise + endless capacity summon Penumbra + Wickless Baron is a good time.

# ? Aug 12, 2020 11:33

Vegetable: Oct 22, 2010

Haven�t heard this combo here yet but it seems sort of obvious.

Morselmaster + morselmaker with a damage shield/life steal gorger in front. Park them on the second or third floor so you have time to draw them all. Guaranteed 4 morsels for the Gorger every turn.

For the ground floor I like the champion with 70 attack and Trample.

# ? Aug 12, 2020 15:28

Solemn Sloth: Jul 11, 2015; Baby you can shout at me,
But you can't need my eyes.

Vegetable posted:

Haven�t heard this combo here yet but it seems sort of obvious.

Morselmaster + morselmaker with a damage shield/life steal gorger in front. Park them on the second or third floor so you have time to draw them all. Guaranteed 4 morsels for the Gorger every turn.

For the ground floor I like the champion with 70 attack and Trample.

Lifesteal boi is generally better for this, fewer stacks needed to stomp on the boss and only loses 1 stack each combat pre-boss. Only trick is making sure he doesn�t get killed from full health by a mob wave so I usually chuck 2x +25 health on.

# ? Aug 12, 2020 15:34

Dalaram: Jun 6, 2002; Marshall/Kirtaner 8/24 nevar forget! (omg pedo)

Vegetable posted:

Haven�t heard this combo here yet but it seems sort of obvious.

Morselmaster + morselmaker with a damage shield/life steal gorger in front. Park them on the second or third floor so you have time to draw them all. Guaranteed 4 morsels for the Gorger every turn.

For the ground floor I like the champion with 70 attack and Trample.

Yeah, this is the fairly standard play with Unbra.

I�ve tried it with the Shadowgorger to use it as AOE, but it doesn�t scale up enough to tank the bosses, because he starts off with 0 attack. Better to put shadowgorger on floor one, get a morsel holdover card to feed him once a turn to nuke the low HP back rows, and let someone else grow from the master/maker combo.

# ? Aug 12, 2020 17:36

dyzzy: Dec 22, 2009; argh

Yeah and even then you could probably get similar utility from an AoE damage spell vs burdening your ramp up with another banner unit. Shadowgorger just doesn't ever seem worth it to me

# ? Aug 12, 2020 18:06

Inadequately: Oct 9, 2012

Jarvisi posted:

What's so great about summoning four random units to the middle? It seems like it would gently caress up the order and get your units killed

It's not the best artifact if you get it late-game, but it's amazing if you get it early on and can plan your run around it. I got it on my last Hellhorned run and ended up with three Quick Multistrike Alpha Fiends, with a Largestoned Consumer of Crowns tanking for them. The rest of the deck was built around buffing them with rage and armor, though it barely mattered given how quickly they demolished anything.

Inadequately fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Aug 13, 2020

# ? Aug 13, 2020 05:06

dyzzy: Dec 22, 2009; argh

So the challenge where all units take damage every turn, have multistrike, and you lose gold when your units take damage is basically custom made for a wrathful hellhorned run. Was smacking seraph in the face for 570x2 at the end, and he was the debuffing variant too

# ? Aug 13, 2020 05:10

GodFish: Oct 10, 2012; We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

Speaking of challenges, anyone have advice for the heartless, perma-death one? I've been trying to set up a damage shield crucible with some hellhorned behind it but I've had horrible draft luck.

# ? Aug 13, 2020 06:35

ugusername: Jul 5, 2013

I managed it first try with Conduit Tethys and large early game +2/+2 incant Siren. Incant in general is super strong at he moment imo.

# ? Aug 13, 2020 11:58

Hogama: Sep 3, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7Ni0lwI2MY

Archus, alt for the sixth ring boss.
Brand-new mechanic: can summon in "dark shards" (working name) that can't be attacked or targeted by spells, one floor at a time, with triggers that do different things. Like one is "cast a spell in the room a dark shard is in, your Pyre takes damage". They're all room-oriented effects to play around.

Left is Little Fade for Melting Remnant, right is Primordium for Umbra.
Little Fade's still having her third path worked on but she's got one path where she self-buffs whenever she dies with the drawback of increasing her ember cost. She's also 1 capacity. (May or may not have a path tied to Subsuming Blade which she appears to be holding.)
Primordium is made up of multiple Morsels and has an upgrade path of "Buffet" where being eaten doesn't immediately result in death (can be eaten multiple times, in other words).

There's a lore reason for all the "crystal" themes of new characters. Unlock conditions for the exiled champions: level 5 with that clan.
There'll be a new imp in the update, and Shardtail Queen starts with it (wasn't revealed this week) instead of Torch.
There will not be new "basic" bosses in this update.
They're hoping for a release within weeks, but no definite date.

There's also a contest thing they're doing for Shark Week, share your favorite Stygian deck, they'll pick among them, and the winner gets a free copy of the soundtrack.

# ? Aug 13, 2020 22:46

dyzzy: Dec 22, 2009; argh

GodFish posted:

Speaking of challenges, anyone have advice for the heartless, perma-death one? I've been trying to set up a damage shield crucible with some hellhorned behind it but I've had horrible draft luck.

I used stygian/Umbra, with attack/health sirens as my draft unit. The permadeath doesn't matter when your units just don't die (RIP to a ton of sacrificial morsels though). Plus your stewards purge themselves for free and you can focus on drafting enough card efficiency to feed the sirens.

# ? Aug 13, 2020 22:53

Ranzear: Jul 25, 2013

Me and my boy and my boy and my boy and my boy and my boy and my boy and my boy went on a rager. DL

# ? Aug 14, 2020 03:07

Hackan Slash: May 31, 2007; Hit it until it's not a problem anymore

For the purge modifier gets overwritten by endless, which makes any of those challenges much easier once you know.

Grinding challenges I find Stygian to be the most consistent, frost shark is an amazing tank/sweeper and and tethys can pivot to either sweep or tankbust depending on whether you got frost sweeper lady or siren.

# ? Aug 15, 2020 19:18

ThermosAquaticus: Nov 9, 2013

If anyone is after the Score 50k points in a daily challenge I'd recommend todays. It's a Sketches of Salvation run with an early Consumer of Crowns, so I ended up killing Seraph on turn 2 of the fight.

3 hours left!

# ? Aug 16, 2020 09:04

Pigbuster: Sep 12, 2010; Fun Shoe

ThermosAquaticus posted:

If anyone is after the Score 50k points in a daily challenge I'd recommend todays. It's a Sketches of Salvation run with an early Consumer of Crowns, so I ended up killing Seraph on turn 2 of the fight.

3 hours left!

Jesus christ and Grrrg's Goad in the 6th floor chest on the left. Pyrestone housing as a challenge reward. Two largestones and two multistrikes

My beautiful boys. Alpha Fiend is trying his best.

# ? Aug 16, 2020 10:00

Lozareth: Jun 11, 2006

Turns out the achievement isn't limited to what you put on the daily's scoreboard. I only managed 49k my first playthrough yesterday and decided to try it again after finding out there was a Goad, got the 50k, and got the cheevo.

# ? Aug 16, 2020 11:36

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Hogama posted:

Primordium is made up of multiple Morsels and has an upgrade path of "Buffet" where being eaten doesn't immediately result in death (can be eaten multiple times, in other words).

Look, how do we know that Primordium is actually a Champion, not just three Morsels standing on each others shoulders and wearing a trench co- ... Oh.

# ? Aug 16, 2020 20:36