Puzzle update

Yesterday was quite the mixed bag.  I found that Hawkeye (modern) and Magneto make for one hell of a team, using Maggie's purple power to make critical tiles out of blue ones.  They pretty much decimated the opposition, which was awesome.

In fact, I even managed to finish the final mission, facing the Hulk.  I was about to say at level 322, because that's where he was when I first looked.  But when I finally tried it (right before bed), he had increased to 330.  He had somewhere between 18-20k hit points, and it was a ridiculously close battle.  What saved me was that Magneto was doing most of the damage, but had the lowest tile-damage, so he hid in the back until the other two were both downed.

I got, I think, four 5-matches before Hawkeye went down, and those provided the bulk of the damage.  I also got off one of Magneto's red explosions before they went down.  Hulk was still ahead on hp when they were the only two left, but Magneto had a lot of blue AP and a little red.  He triggered his blue power a couple times (three, actually, although the third one was destroyed by the second before it went off), and finally finished it off with one more red blast.  I wasn't watching AP, but I think Hulk was only a couple turns from toasting Magneto when that happened.  Ugh.

It was ridiculous, though.  I pounded all the missions until the points were ridiculously small, even putting some time in to space things out a little, and I still was only able to squeeze into the top-50 (barely; I think 48th or 49th) for the day.  That doesn't bode well, although it's true that the last several events I've had my worst day on the first (so maybe there's some hope).

I'm kind of pissed that they limited available covers on Jean Grey, though.  The last several, top-150 was good enough for a single cover, now it's back down to top-100.  More annoyingly, I think every event I've been in has had top-50 be good enough for two covers, while this one requires top-20.  I suspect, as with Ant-Man, I'll have to be happy if I can get one (although that was actually two, since they had the separate Ant-Man event, from which I got a second.  Both of those were a lot of work, though).

Anyway, getting to Deadpool, a couple things.  One is that I was wrong that the prize cover is also the character leading the second wave in the two-wave mission.  That can be the case, but isn't necessarily true.

Two, yesterday was a bitch.  I was able to get through the first four missions with a minimum of hassle, but the fifth had an absolutely ridiculous first wave.  They had three Teisatsu, one kind of hand ninja that is normally only annoying, who were just pumped up to a ridiculous degree.  Starting on turn three, they were just pumping out an attack every round that did an insane amount of damage.  And when you finally killed them, they dropped two attack tiles that did over 100 damage per turn.

The first time I tried it, I eked out a win in the first round, but Storm and Black Widow were both below 300 hit points (remember, multiple 100+ pt attack tiles in play), Thor was down to half of his, and I had very few AP.  I managed to take out one second-rounder, but even that was a close call.

The second time, I prepared a little differently, waiting until attacks appeared to match red tiles.  Actually, I waited until they were about to explode.  In that way, I was able to defuse the first five or six attacks, but the next one got through and left Widow with less than 200 hit points.  Somehow, despite Storm and Widow both going down, I managed to squeak into the second round (yes, despite the apparently-better start, I still did worse overall) with Thor.  But it was with virtually no AP, and so, it was not at all surprising that he went down without even seriously challenging the second round heroes.

Basically, it was ridiculous.  I think, to win that one, you'd need a super-high level group (think three four-star heroes at level 200+), and you might still have trouble.  I wish today's, with Deadpool as the prize, was like that (since, not having Deadpool, I wouldn't see it).  Very annoying, since it was a cover I wanted and because I could seriously use the 2k Iso-8 prize for doing all five missions.

Today's Hulk missions are quite a mixed bag.  Most of them have been pretty easy, although the last one was absurd.  It had Yelena Belova with two snipers, which doesn't sound bad.  But the snipers do 4550 damage per shot.  That's enough to take down Magneto or Hawkeye with one shot.

And they did take Hawkeye down with one (the first one, actually).  I was unable to destroy it, and on the turn before it went off, I only had one move, which was moving yellow tiles, the only ones for which Hawkeye would have to move them.  I was able to win, eventually, but it was a close fight.  Two more of those shots, and I'd've been gone.

I haven't finished the day's missions, but I'm off to a good start.  I hope I can finish them, and finish the day at least as high as yesterday (although having depleted my health packs getting there, this morning, does not help.  Nor did that near-loss)