Today I decided to attack Black Plume Mountain for the first time. I had avoided spoilers (sorry helpful person who tried to warn me about stuff in my thread about the previous adventure, but I like surprises). The first battle wasn't bad. I was a little concerned about the movement-confusing card and how it might thwart my many step attacks, but I worked around it. Victory! Fight #2! I was concerned about the fact that the lightning idols seemed to be building to...something, but I didn't know what. They discarded at the end of the round and I read their discards, including Totem Blast, and did a bit of a horrified double take. It does how much damage?! Oh, my. Well, if I get shot at early enough in the round my human warrior can survive one blast. I guess. Hmm. On the bright side, though, I was trying out my shiny new Heartripper for the first time, and I realized that with a well-timed Flank Move I'd be able to throw Punishing Bolts that would smash an idol in one blow. So that was cool. Alas, I couldn't pull off this trick before they'd accumulated too many VP from control spaces. Attempt #2! I tweaked my equipment a bit, including swapping in 2 Duality Maces for Nimbuses, which seemed a vital part of making my warrior useful for smashing idols. Alas, I had a brain misfire and thought Lifesaving Block (which came with the Mace) would save me from 36 points of damage, forgetting that it has to be the printed damage that would kill you. So I lost my priest early on, and that fight went downhill quickly. Then attempt #3 also went poorly. I decided that encounter #1 wasn't so bad, so I just restarted the adventure rather than pay to keep beating my head against encounter #2. Naturally, this meant that did terribly and lost encounter #1. That movement-confusing card was much worse that time. This would have been a good time to take a break for a while, but I foolishly pressed on. I brought a few Cleansing Rays and whatnot to make sure I didn't screw up this time, and defeated encounter #1. Then, armed with a glorious new plan of attack, I advanced to encounter #2. I got to splatter the idol on the far right with a Punishing Bolt, and then the next one at the top with an invulnerable priest who could just hammer on the thing without being killed. Then I got lucky and got to Telekinesis one of the idols at the top that wasn't Immovable at the time off of it's space and behind a wall so that it could neither shoot at me nor occupy the control space. After I killed another idol that left three of them that couldn't shoot at me and one Umber Bulk who sat on a control space. I had my warrior and priest sit on the two other control spaces that I'd cleared while the wizard took potshots at the Umber Bulk. I was just about to win my 6th round of this or whatever when I finally managed to kill the Umber Bulk anyway. On to the final battle, with no losses for this run! Wow. The dragon is...challenging. Perfect Block?! Perfect Block makes me sad. Then Reflecting Block, then a round in which it had 3 copies of Alabaster Wyrmhide. Oh, and Blackhammer was there too for a while, but I managed to destroy him without too much trouble. I thought I'd prioritize killing him because I knew from the win-this-item bit at the beginning of the adventure that he had at least one healing card. Anyway, I got killed by the dragon. And then in attempt #2 I didn't do as good a job killing Blackhammer, and I lost a character to him fairly early on and didn't kill him or the dragon. Attempt #3 went poorly as well. I seriously began to despair at this point. Not interested in fighting idols again now or in the future, I paid the 15 gold to try again. Up until this point I had been showing up with many copies of Impenetrable Nimbus, even though I knew they might get blasted off by the dragon, but this time I said to heck with them and went for healing effects and Talented Healer instead of Altruism. This served me pretty well for a while, but ultimately I lost my warrior and then my priest. My wizard had 20 HP left and very few damaging attacks (loaded as he was with 12 anti-armor cards), but it was all down to him. I drew a timely Missile Block and some lightning and both survived a round and did some damage. Then another round in which I made gradual, desperate progress and lost a bunch of hit points. In the end I was down to 5 HP and had to throw a Dissolve Armor at the beginning of a round to try to deal the last necessary point of damage to the dragon, hoping that it didn't have either block, Toughness, or more than one armor card, which seemed like bad odds. But yes! Victory! Victory at last! The dragon dies an ignoble death to Dissolve Armor! Thank the merciful Card Hunter gods! So...11 total fights and about three hours. Ouch. That one was tough.
Very nice, congrats!!! You've probably thought of it by now, but if you choose run it again, Spoiler Volcano is phenomenal against the idols.
Scarponi, I think you used that to abuse me in the league last night. But I love that tip for the idols. My brain forgets there are attacks without LoS needed. I really need to start to embrace wizards more for cards other than Punishing Bolt and Telekenesis.
Hah, that does sound like the perfect solution! Alas, I do not currently own any items with that card. I do think it would be fun to go back and try some other things...it's vaguely tempting to Whirlwind them when they aren't Immovable, for example, and see if I can simply outmaneuver them rather than come up with ways to kill them without being killed. But if I happen to land an item with the card you mentioned I'll gladly go back and kill them with it.
