YMMV / Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate

• Demonic Spiders: Now has a page here.
• Difficulty Spike: Floor four is when the White Queen enters play, as the end of the third floor forces you to pick a card that spawns her from all floors thereafter. She's capable of moving and attacking any amount of squares in all 8 directions (before any buffs/nerfs), and she also has a great amount of health.
• Funny Moments:
  • Taunting Hop allows the Black King to jump onto and over an enemy piece once per turn as a free action, dealing 1 damage to that enemy. It's possible to finish something off in a hilarious and humiliating way, even moreso if you defeat a White King and beat the floor like this.
  • The "King's Shoulders" card allows you to grab an enemy piece (except the opposing King) and throw them at another piece to deal 3 damage to both. This allows you to do things like throwing the Queen into the King to defeat them — or even throwing an Iron Maiden Queen off the board for a One-Hit Kill. This card also allows you to get...
  • Imperial Shot Put, a card which puts a cannonball on the field that can be thrown around to deal heavy damage, and can be used more than once. Aside from the ridiculousness of it, you can get more than one — and if so, it's possible to trap the final White King between two cannonballs and the corner of the map, preventing him from moving at all.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In a game where every turn counts, any movement abilities that can reliably and consistently grant you an Extra Turn becomes one, especially since you get doubled turns over the enemy and movement recharges your ammo and reloads any empty barrels:
    • Royal Loafers doesn't give you a free turn, but it allows you to select a target, then move while auto-aim attacking that target at the same time to bypass the Do Not Run with a Gun rule. It's essentially two turns in one. Furthermore, card effects count for the square you moved to and not the one you are on, meaning that High Focus' effects will still apply if you jumped from next to the enemy into a square without any adjacent ones, and Cornered Despot will take effect when you jump to an edge.
    • Sacred Crown's effect is simple: Using a Soul Card to move now becomes a free action. Used well and you can consistently get both long-distance or unhindered mobility (while regenerating ammo and reloading your gun) and attack in a single turn by killing White pieces to get souls. Pair it up with Royal Loafers and you can essentially get three turns in one.
    • Taunting Hop went from an impractical Cherry Tapping meme to a much better card due to a single change: Hopping on an enemy is now a once-per-turn free action. This makes it a very powerful escape strategy tool since you can now hop over an adjacent enemy piece checking you then move again to get out of its range (which couldn't be done prior to the buff), plus you can whittle an enemy's health down to one-shot range and use your subsequent action to execute them.
  • Black Mist allows you one extra chance if you're defeated, placing you on a safe square on revival, and you can get more than one. This is huge considering that you are otherwise a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but the icing on the cake is that all Black Mist cards refresh every floor. It used to be unable to save you if the final White King caught you or if your own grenades blew you up, but that's no longer the case. The only time it cannot save you is when every empty square on the board is in check, which usually means you screwed up badly. The big update gives it a slight nerf by also reducing your shotgun range by 1 per card, making getting multiple Black Mists impractical.
  • Subtle Poison makes Kings and Queens have 1 less health allowing you to kill them faster (and makes the latter susceptible to being one-shotted by a point-blank hit even without firepower upgrades), but more importantly turns Queens from the biggest threats on the board into absolute jokes by reducing their movement range to that of a King's for 15 turns. This is usually more than enough for the player to off them (or the King) before they become a threat. As an added bonus, any newly-promoted or newly-spawned Queens are also affected by 15 turns of poison.
  • August Presence prevents any non king piece from entering any square adjacent to you. This can prevent white queens from initiating close quarter check shenanigans and pinning you in checkmate, hold off entire pawn groups from promoting, or limiting a rook's movement. Furthermore, it pairs very well with High Focus. The only time it's detrimental is if you're going for a Blade build.
  • High Focus. It's a Boring, but Practical card, as it just gives you a tighter firing arc and 1 power, but it is stackable. Two of these can guarantee whatever you aim at will get hit for at least 4 damage. While the condition for High Focus to remain active requires no adjacent white pieces, August Presence prevents that from happening without your intention, and The Moat can delay pieces from getting close to you.
  • The Moat puts a moat line in the fourth row from the bottom. Any piece that isn't a Knight or an Ascension Bishop cannot cross it in one move, forcing them to move onto the moat first before being able to attack the other side of the map from there. This is extremely useful at slowing down Rooks, non-Ascension Bishops, and Queens, preventing them from immediately checking you from across the board while you pick off the Knights that hop past or take care of the trapped units. The tradeoff is that it also hinders any extra movement capabilities you can get unless it's the Wand of Wings or a Knight Soul. For added stalling, the Wand of Gust can blow pieces on the moat one square backwards, meaning that they have to land on the moat again to get to the other side. It's for this reason the big update added The Bridge white card, which adds one knight and removes the moat tiles from the center two squares. However, the same update also adds the Deep Waters black card to break things even further by preventing non-knight pieces on the moat from attacking you. That Queen on the Moat? Completely harmless until she exits it.
  • Ravenous Rats causes every enemy that dies to spawn a rat that deals 1 damage to the nearest enemy. This includes enemies killed by rats. Not only is this excellent at softening up targets into one hit kill range or removing Kite Shield from knights, but it can also kill weakened enemies and cause a rat chain reaction. Furthermore, they do not trigger discovered checkmates should they kill a blocking piece. It and Crow's Nest are also a prerequisite to Black Plague, which damages a random enemy by 1 HP at the end of a turn, softening them up even further for rat chain reactions. Prior to an update that nerfed it, Ravenous Rats could even be stacked, producing 2 rats per kill.
  • Nightbane and Bushido when combined. The former gives +3 Blade, allowing you to hit an adjacent enemy for guaranteed 3 damage. The latter? For the cost of 1 firepower, you get +2 Blade and the ability to execute any adjacent piece with HP equal or lower to your Blade stat as a free action once per turn. If you lack August Presence, there's likely bound to be one enemy next to you, and most of your foes have 5 or less health, meaning that even a Queen or Rook that tried to check you in close range is not only dead, but you don't lose a turn in offing them. Combined with Ritual Dagger (lowers King's HP and gives you Blade, but reduces fire range) and/or the Makeda gun and you can one-shot Kings and end levels right there, provided the King lacks HP buffs.
• Goddamned Bats: Knights are the fastest enemies in the game, making a move every 2 turns while capable of jumping over pieces in an L-shape similar to real Chess. This usually means the Knights will be the first in your face after jumping over the pawn ranks, ganging up on you. They're also the only enemies that are always immune to the otherwise-very useful Moat (and the Moat upgrade Deep Waters). Fortunately, Knights are also very squishy, taking a mere 3 damage to go down.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Rightful Curtsey card allows Black to have a 50% chance of knocking back any White pieces he hits. Not only is this extremely luck-based due to the random chance, but it will more often than not cause a discovered checkmate when a piece in front is knocked out of an attacker's range, or knock pieces (especially Knights) into an instant checkmate position on you. Strangely enough, getting two of these makes it less unreliable due to making the knockback always occur, and allowing the player to plan around it. An update gave it a Balance Buff that made pieces knocked back unable to insta-checkmate you for the turn, but the discovered checkmate issue still exists.
  • After a Nerf that changed Unfaithful Steed's effect (+1 movement for every Knight Soul you have > +1 movement if there's a Knight on the board), it became borderline useless/having no effect. Knights are often the first pieces that a player kills thanks to their fast movement and getting in your face early. Furthermore, a number of much better Black cards have anti-synergy with keeping a Knight alive, like Courteous Jousting to get extra turns from killing Knights, or The Moat which prevents non-Knight pieces from crossing in one turn. This usually means Unfaithful Steed becomes a dead drop very quickly once the Knights all go down.
• That One Achievement: Multiple achievements in the game require beating the game with a certain set of cards. Some of them are good, synergistic black cards, but a few of them make you take a set of cards you'd never want to take normally. Other achievements require putting yourself into rare and/or very hairy situations on purpose or having a crazy amount of luck:
  • Inquisition requires taking Zealot, Ascension, and The Red Book. The Red Book alone is dangerous enough by giving Bishops cardinal movement, but what if they were also faster and gave you no way to hide against them? Better hope you already got Royal Loafers or Sacred Crown, or you'll be spending most of your turns just moving out of check.
  • Security Service requires taking Bodyguards, Kite Shield, and Castle. This one is just a combination of two dreadfully annoying synergies and one obnoxious one that also doesn't spawn frequently. You need enough Rooks to have Castle offered in the first place and enough firepower to kill the Rooks and blast the shields out of multiple Knights. If not, good luck.
  • Harem is the worst of the three white card achievements, forcing you to take the dreaded Iron Maiden, as well as two other cards that add an additional Queen, meaning you have to deal with three invincible Queens within your run. Without good mobility or free actions and good burst damage to end the game fast, there's a good chance the Queens will close in and checkmate you. The best strategy is to pray you also get offered Subtle Poison.
  • Wizard requires you to have four magic wands. This one is just Luck-Based Mission in the extreme. Finding one wand in a run is rare enough, and finding four of them in a single run is the equivalent of winning the lottery. There's no strategy except grinding and resetting runs until you get it.
  • She Is Everywhere requires you to have 5+ Queens on the board. Aside from having to keep five Demonic Spiders that can check you from a great distance away alive, you'd need luck with Pawn promotion as well as the cards that spawn Queens (Homecoming, King's Mistress, Genderqueer and Succubus all add one, meaning you still need a promoting pawn). Hope you also managed to get Presbyopia or Subtle Poison to force them into an Arbitrary Minimum Range or debuff their movement.
• That One Disadvantage: There are some White Cards that many players avoid like the plague even if the Black card paired with it is highly beneficial, as it gives White a massive advantage that can end a run easily:
  • Iron Maiden makes Queens get their turn much slower but also makes them completely invulnerable foes that can still soak up shots as long as any Non-Queen piece is alive. Any spawned Queens like those from Pawn promotion or the one spawned by Succubus or Genderqueer will also be invulnerable. This also makes it permanently impossible to get the very useful Queen Souls from thereon, unless you have King's Shoulders to throw an Iron Queen out of the map.
  • Kite Shield makes all of the otherwise-squishy but very fast Knights get a Single-Use Shield that absorbs all damage on their first hit, meaning that you will have to take at least 2 turns to kill one. By then, they can easily corner you. And if it gets paired up with Bodyguard, which prevents the White King from dying as long as a Knight lives...
  • Castle gives the White King the ability to swap place with a rook upon getting shot and the Rook takes damage instead, which can in many cases instantly checkmate you and end your run. There's a good reason why this card's spawn rate is rare. Fortunately, it's been nerfed such that the Rook can no longer instantly Checkmate you after a Castle.
  • Cathedral removes a Bishop, adds a Rook... and all non-Rook pieces adjacent to Rooks will only take a maximum of 1 damage in a shot. Needless to say, this makes pieces near Rooks borderline unkillable, and while this card does open up the useful Church Organ card, the downside is still quite horrific.
  • Guilotine removes the White King from the board. This forces you to kill all the pieces on the board to clear it and can screw you over if there are too many pieces, took too many cards that generate reinforcements, or if you don't have enough ways to take out multiple pieces at once. The only saving grace is that it requires you to get the Revolution card in order to show up, and it couldn't be taken at the same time as Iron Maiden... Till a later update changed how Iron Maiden worked so that Queens lose their invulnerably when they're the only pieces left, thus allowing both to be taken at the same time.
  • Analysis Paralysis makes you skip turns at the start of a level until 6 turns are up or until you're put into check, whichever comes first. Aside from allowing White's pieces to move a fair bit into an advantageous position, it also adds turns to various reinforcement cards. It used to be even worse before, where you would keep skipping turns until White made a move that put you in check.