This is a question I see pop up from time to time, and there are a few threads on it but no unified source of information, so lets make one. Question 1: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal? Spoiler Infinite! Bludgeon them, end the round, draw attacks, bludgeon them again. You never specified a time limit. Okay, smartypants. Question 2: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one round? Spoiler Still infinite! Build an infinite draw deck, hit them, draw back, hit again. Question 3: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one round with a draw limit of 100? (More than 10 so you can try a few more shenanigans if needed, but low enough to stop infinite draw from being dumb.) Spoiler Still infinite! Use Mimetic Armor to generate infinite bludgeons and get around the draw limit. Okay, allowing you to have infinite cards is getting kinda stupid. So Question 4: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn? (No draw limit since there doesn't seem to be any way to exploit being able to reuse cards.) Spoiler Hey, guess what? Still infinite! Generate infinite bludgeons, then Punishing Bolt. Okay, allowing you have infinite cards is *still* stupid. Question 5: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn if your target has no cards in hand? Spoiler Pretty damn high... we'll get back to this later. So this time there's no obvious solution, but the question is pretty big. Lets try some smaller puzzles to get a feel for what we're dealing with. First off: Question 6: You are allowed to have any ten cards in the game in your hand. What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn with those cards? (Assume your target is a dummy which has nothing.) Spoiler Depends whether you allow monster cards. With them, you have Almighty Hack and 9x All Out Attack for 10240 damage. Without them, you have Pulverizing Hack and 9x AoA for a still quite solid 8096 damage. Also technically the question didn't specify attachments, so if you allow those you can add 10 damage to whichever answer you got from Wellspring+Savage Curse+Unholy Frenzy. Knowing this, it's pretty obvious that the solution is going to be some ungodly AoA thing. In fact this text is getting kinda long, lets stick in an image that doesn't actually explain anything but looks pretty. Well that sure was pointless, lets move on. Question 7: You have one character, and are allowed to have every card in your deck (all 36) in your hand together. What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn with those cards? Your target is still a dummy. In fact from now on, assume your target is always a dummy. Also assume that all characters must be MP legal, I forgot that and now there's no convenient way to edit it into the question. Oh, the woes of not thinking things through. Spoiler Clearly we want to have as many AoAs as possible, which is 5 (2 from weapons, 1 from helmet, 1 from martial skill, 1 from human skill). We can't have a sixth because we don't have a fifth major to equip another AoA weapon. We then want a big base attack, but we can't fit in Pulverizing Hack because we don't have a fifth major. So we'll have to make do with 14 damage - and in fact we already have this from one of our AoA weapons, Cat'Leth, which gives Push the Button to find Laser Whip to roll 6 to hit 14. We were assuming perfect luck this whole time anyway. And then we want as many buffs as possible, but warriors are kinda limited in buffs - all we can get is Blind Rage from Cat'Leth and some number of Frenzy Auras or Horned Plates. So we use our fourth and last minor token on Cuirass of Froth for two extra Frenzy Auras, and then have (14+3+3)*2*2*2*2*2+2 = 642 Question 8: You have one character and must draw your cards as a normal character does (draw 2 plus a racial move per turn, discard down to 2 at the end of each round). What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn? Spoiler It's clear that our goal is to draw as many AoAs as possible, since AoAs dwarf any output from other cards. We can put 5 AoAs in our deck but we can only ever have 4 of them in hand - in fact, only 3 if we want to have an attack with higher base damage to play. So knowing this, our maximum is the Laser Whip from before with 14, for 14*2*2*2+2 = 114 That +2 is blind rage, the only buff we can get on a warrior (Frenzy Aura doesn't fit since our hand is full of AoAs). But as it turns out, there's a better way! Warriors aren't exactly known for their card drawing abilities, but there are two cards that let us have an extra: Inspirational Thinking and Forward Thinking. It doesn't really matter which one we have, either lets us have 5 (non-racial move) cards in hand for an extra AoA. Note that using our human skill on thinking gives us one fewer AoA, but we still have 4 so it doesn't matter. Knowing this we can get 14*2*2*2*2+2 = 226 I'm actually not 100% sure this is the highest, if you can get higher, please tell me! There's not much more to say about having one character, so lets double the fun. Question 9: You have two characters and draw cards normally. What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn? Spoiler Again, our goal is to get more AoAs. There are two clear possibilities here: either help the first character draw more cards, or actively pass them extra AoAs with BT/ABT. Going with the first, we can use, say, 4x Inspiration (we could in fact go a lot higher with Demonic Powers but it won't help) to let them draw into Laser Whip+AoA+AoA+AoA+AoA+AoA+Frenzy Aura+Frenzy Aura (and a Blind Rage somewhere) for 14*2*2*2*2*2+3+3+2 = 456 This number look familiar? Yes, it's just the number we had before from one character with unlimited cards in hand. In fact we can go a little higher since the priest doesn't have to just be a drawbot, he can also apply a buff or two. But this method seems like it's not going to yield any significant increases. Lets try the second. As it turns out, a minor token buys us one ABT and a major buys us two. But we're limited by hand size, we can only pass 2 AoAs from a 4-card hand. If we try the trick from earlier and Think to get a fifth card, we can pass a third AoA... except that unfortunately the way the math works out, we can't. With our human skill Thinking, our helmet has to have the ABTs, but then we're forced to use our weapon slots for the AoAs... and end up forced to use all four majors on weapons. Hence our helmet can only fit one ABT, and we end up passing two AoAs anyway. So we can only pass two AoAs... except that still works out pretty well, since combined with the first warrior having four AoAs (see question 8), we get at least 14*2*2*2*2*2*2+2 = 898 Okay, so six AoAs is the max we can have for around 900 damage. Now lets do some optimising. The second character is forced to be a warrior to pass any AoAs at all - a priest can have one AoA from the skill or can have one BT/ABT (even two ABT, in fact) but cannot possibly have both. We'd like to either have some extra draw or some extra buffs to apply to the first warrior on that second warrior, but since he's not a priest it looks like we're out of luck. But wait! There's one secret card that we can have which leaked from a priest's buff/draw arsernal into the warrior. So secret, in fact, that we're going to have to have a spoiler within a spoiler. Spoiler Leadership! Okay that was actually incredibly pointless. But we can in fact eke out an extra draw from that. We're allowed to have Leadership because the second warrior is only using three of his hand slots to pass two AoAs. The fourth is free. Unfortunately, however, this trick doesn't let us sneak in a seventh AoA because the first warrior has already drawn all four in his deck - and if we stop Thinking to get a fifth AoA, we lose a draw and so still only have four. Except note here that we can stop Thinking and not lose anything! So what we can do is replace the Thinking with an AoA again, and then we have a redundancy with five AoAs of which we can only draw four. It's logical, then, to sub one of them out for a bigger base attack - so replacing one AoA weapon with a Hackmaster, we get to unlock a new digit with 16*2*2*2*2*2*2+2 = 1026 Knowing this, we're ready to return to the big question. Question 5: What is the largest amount of damage you can deal in one turn if your target has no cards in hand? Well it's kinda badly phrased because I was being kinda lazy with my wording when I made that. I could go back and fix it but don't really feel like it, maybe I'll edit this post at some point. But just so there's no confusion, it means we have three (MP-legal) characters. Which is like three times as bad. Are you ready? I'm not, brb. Okay. We're doing it, man. We're making it happen. Spoiler First off, be aware that this might be wrong. I consulted with some guys on world chat and although I'm like 60% sure this is correct or really close to correct, I'm not promising anything. So the first thing we have to think about is AoA. Our first warrior has 4. If we want to have 5 without passing, we have to have 6 cards in hand and without Thinking - so we need to add at least 2 draw. That's kinda too much - we can add 1 from Leadership but not more. So there are two choices that stand out - add a second warrior and pass enough ABT to make up for only having 4, or have a priest and use the draw to achieve something good. To decide which one is better, we have to figure out how much the drawbot helps. The first warrior gets to fit in a fifth AoA since he no longer has to Think when there's a priest to do it for him. The second warrior can't get said five AoAs since he needs to have an ABT, but he can still have four. Except there's an issue. If he wants to pass four AoAs, then he needs to use both weapon slots on AoAs - and then he has no more major tokens. So then he can only get a single ABT with his remaining slot, which can only pass a paltry two AoAs. It seems like even with extra draw, we can't pass more than three AoAs (which we can do by leaving back a weapon and using a 2 ABT skill) - but hey, that's still an improvement over the two we could pass without it. Which means that with a priest, we can get 8 AoAs - and without one, we could get 4+2+2 = 8. Hey, it's fair. It seems like the warriors are better, then: we get 8 AoAs either way, but since in using warriors the first warrior only needs to have four AoAs himself, he can switch out his base Laser Whip for a Pulverizing Hack as we did before. But wait, here's where shenanigans come in. I claim we can in fact get nine AoAs. Okay, lets think about this. We've proved beyond a doubt that an undrawbotted warrior can only pass two, and also that a Leadershipped warrior can originally have no more than four. So unless we're missing another source of draw from warriors, that's no more than eight - and I will tell you now that we're not, warriors are hardly kings of drawing. So the magic must lie in some other class. Jk, it's not wizards. Man how weird would that be. So lets look at the priest. He can't possibly pass any AoAs himself, he can't have both AoA and BT/ABT. The first warrior is already drawing his full complement of 5 AoAs. How can he make the second warrior pass a fourth AoA. The solution: Spoiler Perfect Flexibility But wait. What's the point of this ABT when we don't have an AoA to pass? Why, we're going to use one ABT to pass the other one to the second warrior. So we put four AoA and one ABT on the second warrior, use the priest to hand over another ABT, and then pass all four AoAs to the first warrior to complement his 5. Of course, being the optimising people we are, we'll also make sure to draw into a few Frenzy Auras and stick on a few buffs. And then, putting it all together, we'll found ourselves dealing (14+3+3)*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2+2+4+4 = 10250 And that, at last, is enough power. Edit: timeracers has pointed out a much better solution with shenanigans involving reusing the same ABT. It's glorious enough that I'll quote it directly: Spoiler
Objection, those frenzy auras can activate before AoA if it the correct place in hand(Left to right(newest to oldest?)). Also that last part made the same error.
Oh, huh, never knew that. K, fixed. I'm pretty sure this doesn't change any of the solutions since you can't get frenzy aura beyond cuirass without losing AoAs.
Related nonsense -- it should be possible get a ridiculous number of attack cards in hand, with the cooperation of the other player and specific cards, even with the draw limit. - It's possible for each warrior have two copies of Mimetic Crown even w/o Advanced Battlefield Training. - Each copy of Mimetic Crown has a 2/3rds chance of producing an attack card -- a Trained Bludgeon, for instance. Because it's creating a card rather than drawing a card, AFAIK this is completely immune to the draw limit. - Mimetic Crown checks whether it reduces damage and should create a card *before* attachments process, like Impenetrable Nimbus. So, if each player has two warriors w/ Ewix's Evolving Ensemble (only non-helmet with the crown, AFAICT) and, say, Terminator Mask, then each will have two Mimetic Crown and it's theoretically possible to use Advanced Battlefield Training from the mask to put all four on one warrior. The third character slot goes to a priest with Impenetrable Nimbus and Purge, and something like Attack, Soldier! so that one warrior will be able to kick off the sequence. Two warriors beating on each other, each with Mimetic Crown x4 and Impenetrable Nimbus -- any attack that does at least four damage might trigger all the Crowns, and will on average generate 4*2/3 = 2 2/3rds attack cards. Then, Nimbus zeroes any damage that made it past the Crowns. Since cards will be expected to be created more than twice as quickly as they're used, the number of .attack cards that will be created is effectively unbounded -- the risk is mostly of early termination. Then one priest Purges the nimbus of the other side, and, say, hits with a Punishing Strike of some kind. Or the warriors simply beat each other down 6-point attacks at a time. NB: You do want Mimetic Crown, not Mimetic Armor. While both have a 2/3rds chance, and you can get the latter from more slots sometimes with more copies (torso, boots, and head) the former stops only 1 point of damage instead of 2, and it generates a 6-point Trained Bludgeon. So you get plenty of Mimetic checks this way. The latter generates a 4-point Bludgeon which means that it'll generate at most two cards per go, lowering the average.
Three months late, I'm afraid. http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/mimicry.7615/. Although admittedly at the time I didn't have enough mimetic crown items to do it the stylish way.
You forgot that you can use Duck to get AoAs from your opponents, unless the dummy thing applies to the other team in question 5 retroactively.
Eh, if all 6 characters standing in a cluster, Berserk Spin will do a lot more damage than Pulverizing Bludgeon. Make sure some have Raging Strike in hand, and everyone's Vulnerable and/or Squishy.
The major flaw I see in your argumentation is that the damage you can do in one hit is capped to the target's hp (and sadly there is no dummy in game that has anything close to 10k hp). So I think the max damage relies more on healing than on hitting hard. And if participation from the ennemy is accepted, let me remind you that dealing infinite damage has already been done.
Now if we were fighting 1 enemy that has infinite health that always passed(unless required to do something(maybe you gave them retaliatory mutation and hit them with laser spray)) with a 0 card deck. I can do {{{[(14+3)x2]+3}x2}+3}x(2^8)+2 damage. which is 19,714. Spoiler: How it works Now let me get to how, first off we are using 3 dwarf warriors because they have dwarven battle cry. So the main has 2 AoA weapons with a push the button giving a laser whip, the helmet has 1 AoA, the martial skill also has 1, and the dwarf skill has 1 battle cry and the blind rage, and a cuirass of froth for frenzy auras. The side characters have the same equipment except replacing the helmet with an ABT(advanced battlefield training) helmet. Holding 2 cards from last turn and drawing 2 cards each put us at 4 cards each, the secondary characters pass 2 AoAs each with having the last card in hand an battle cry, while the main character starts with 3 all out attack and a battle cry. So at this point the each character has a battle cry and the main also has 7 AoAs, then they all cry and draw 3 cards, the main draws his last AoA, push the button, and a Frenzy Aura while the secondaries reshuffle their decks and draw their last AoA, ABT, Frenzy Aura. The secondaries then pass their AoA then Frenzy Aura, and the main pushes the button drawing a laser whip. The hand now is: Laser Whip, Frenzy Aura, AoA, Frenzy Aura, AoA, Frenzy Aura, AoA, AoA, AoA, AoA, AoA, AoA, AoA, AoA. Now he attacks with the Laser Whip rolling a 6, (8+6=14) Frenzy Aura buffs the damage(14+3=17), AoA doubles the damage(17x2=34), Frenzy Aura buffs the damage(34+3=37), AoA doubles the damage(37x2=74), Frenzy Aura buffs the damage(74+3=77), 8 more AoAs doubles the damage(77x2^8), of course we have blind rage on so we get (19,712+2=19,714)
I don't follow. From what I can see, the secondaries are using two AoA weapons, which takes up all four majors. So how are you using the helmet slot to get two ABTs?
You don't get 2 ABTs in deck, but because you reshuffle your deck after you used the ABT it is shuffled in and you drew it.
