I've been smacking my head against this level over and over and over. I've never used the hint system up until now, and the best advice they can offer is terrible advice. Problem 1: The Rumbling Mutants The Rumbling mutants have a charge attack that deals damage based on the distance charged, like Bull Rush, but with an AOE at the end. Not only is this a dangerous attack, but each of the two mutants gets many of them, so unless you load up HEAVILY on movement impairing cards (And draw them) there's nothing you can do to avoid this attack besides be right next to them. (Which is suggested by one of the hints) It's worth noting that The advice of being close to the rumbling mutants is terrible advice because they're a melee unit. Their most dangerous attack would probably be whatever your most dangerous attack is since they're able to use cards that you use on them. This would be survivable if the mutants weren't single units, allowing them to attack multiple times per turn. But don't worry, you won't have any attacks anyway, since one of their cards is an AOE that damages and destroys a card and gives you a random trait. The excessive randomness brought about by this means that winning against them is more luck-heavy than Hearthstone. So you either have to hold them off at range via tile cards, or beat them in a tank-off. Oh wait, option one isn't viable since they can teleport. So you have to run away. Oh wait, that's also not viable since they have many more movement cards than you and deal damage when chasing you. So Tank off it is. Oh wait, did you not bring a tank in your party because you never thought you'd be in this situation? Well, you could always go for a DPS race. Except they have 35 health and can use any attack that you throw at them against you. SOLUTION: Make the rumblers a single unit. They'll still be able to attack multiple times because movement cards do not count as an attack. This way you at least have a chance in melee range. Problem 2: The Mutant Gunners As if the Rumbling Mutants weren't bad enough, the gunners ensure that no matter what meaningless attempt you use to fight the rumblers, you'll be taking extra damage the whole time with their high damage single-shot attacks, or their medium damage cone attacks. But hey, they're just rangers, right? Surely you can just take cover? There are four pillars in the map. That's all the cover you get. Four single-tile pillars, two of which are on their side. So no, there's literally nowhere to hide from that damage. So that would make them the obvious priority, right? Well, since they outrange most attacks and adapt to damage, no. They take considerable time to deal with, time which you don't have because you're being destroyed by rumblers, and you've lost all your cards to radiation pulses, plus you probably have a trait that prevents you from attacking or something. SOLUTION: Change one of the Adaptable cards in their deck to another copy of an attack, diluting the chance of them drawing it, and giving armor removal cards more of a chance. Problem 3: The Board As mentioned above, there's nowhere to take cover. nowhere to hide, no terrain to use to your advantage. You're in what may as well be a perfect box, with no difficult terrain, no impassables, and a pathetic suggestion of cover. SOLUTION: Create a 2x2 space in the center of the board to act as a divider. Or create some naturally impassable or difficult terrain between the player and enemies. Or create a more distant spawn for either the gunners or rumblers.
@Rehtael I didn't find this module to require that much luck, but I might have used hard to find equipment at the time, which makes my strategy more reliable. You should request for a Penniless Peasant build for this so that you can get a fairly reliable build that doesn't require hard to come by items.
@timeracers As far as luck, I'm mainly referring to the effects of radiation, where a success or failure can hinge on what kind of handicap card you get.
You might not be looking for tips for beating the adventure, but it's the only thing I have, since I think that the map is quite okay currently. Bring a priest with lots of Impenetrable Nimbus Retaliatory Mutation should be purged or ignored, unless you have Nimbus on the attacker. Path Of Knives works quite good against Retaliatory Mutation since you can choose to stay still. Flash Flood works fine at keeping the Rumblers at bay. If you're not running Boiling Armor against Adaptable, just bring enough different damage types. CM gave a new damage type (silver). Vengeance seems like a good card against ranged enemies. You can't draw Ethereal Form reliably, but it could be an option. Armor 4 against everything except Shotgun Slug and melee attacks. Acid is good against both enemy types. Doom gets around Retaliatory Mutation.
This is the hardest of the EttSC modules (I think the next map is even worse), and I almost never replay it. My hints: Don't put the terrain around the mutants, put it around your chars. Nimbus. Purge. Armor destruction. Note that if you're standing next to a mutant, there's a good chance it will get hit by the other's charges and the shotgun sprays.
One more tip not noted above: Encumber tends to mess with the AI's ability to judge charging distance. They move to max distance of the charge even when encumbered, therefore they can't actually reach you with a charge. Not 100% reliable, but a pretty consistent trick.
I appreciate the advice, though much of the issue has been luck of the draw. =/ And while yes, there are some counters to this mode, it does seem a little odd how much you have to tech against this fight. And even then you're still very dependent upon luck of the draw. Both of my mages have a crapton of armor removal/ countering, yet due to interference and just plain bad luck I'm not getting to use it much. I'm aware that the level is not unbeatable, but it still seems much more daunting than it should be for the first encounter in the module.
@Kalin I'm aware of the terrain placement deal, I think I only have one nimbus item, Purge, while useful, is still subject to luck of the draw and is hard to put large quantities of in your deck without also adding a bunch of really lousy moves, I've got about 8 cards of direct armor destruction between all my characters, and a few acid squares, and I wish they were using spray more, I've been getting hit by slugs more often. =/