Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Sape Oasis Heroic

This is a tale of two maps.  I initially started working on this map right before Christmas.  I got through the first four or so heroes and everything was looking good.  It was looking to be another of those maps where the low end heroes got 'B's and everyone else got an easy 'A'.

Then 12/27 came.

If you're not aware, a minor update for Vengeance came out on 12/27.  The patch notes are pretty short, but there was definitely something that got changed that didn't make it into them, and that's Genie behavior.  Before 12/27 on Sape Oasis, when a Genie would appear at the bottom middle it would immediately use its power to turn towers into sand, then walk up to join the path.  This was fine, as it only would catch the tower just to the left with this power.  However, post update, the Genie now waits until it gets on the path to use that power, at which point it catches all three nearby towers.

This was a problem.

Before there was plenty of time for the tower to the left to turn back from sand and, along with the other two nearby towers, take down the Genie.  But with this alteration the game has changed, at least on heroic mode.  Now there's just not enough time for the towers to take down the Genie before he makes it to the exit, even if you build a supporting tower right next to the lower exit.  And all of this is to say nothing about the other enemies that are coming from the right constantly.

So this map took me quite some time before I came up with a solid strategy.  In the end, the solution was to build a Shadow Archer with Blade of Demise to insta-kill the Genies.  The problem then becomes you have to build a complete prevent defense up the path to the right, making sure that no enemies pass your chokepoint and accidentally use up the insta-kill right before it's needed for a Genie.  This is pretty hard to do considering there's not much gold left over after setting up the insta-kill. 

Impressions

So all in all this map turned into a pretty fun challenge that actually made me think and work hard for once.  I mean, in the end it's once again only the low-end heroes who struggle, but I appreciate a heroic mode that's not a braindead repeat of campaign mode.  The only other subtlety to the heroes on this one is that only high-end heroes can instantly call wave 3.  The sudden onrush from the wave will overrun your chokepoint with a weaker hero, and I docked Margosa, Mortemis, Tramin, and Jigou down to 'B's because they couldn't do this, even though their performance on the rest of the map was quite satisfactory.

Final Grades

• Veruk - C
• Asra - C
• Oloch - C
• Margosa - B
• Mortemis - B
• Tramin - B
• Jigou - B
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - A
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Dianyun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A
• Grosh - A

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Sape Oasis Heroic