The Toothy Shades

The Toothy Shades Fight

The Toothy Shades is one of the possible fifth fights a player can run into. The fight is won when the Miniboss, Maw Jaw, is defeated.

Strategy

The Toothy Shades are a tricky fight to navigate, as Marrow grants Teeth to all other allies and Smog makes all the player’s cards Aimless, making it difficult to prioritize targets. Smog’s Aimless also overwrites Barrage and thus shuts down crowd control options. Despite this, Marrow is generally the higher-priority threat, as its Teeth can take out offensive Companions that have low health, especially those with Frenzy, such as Foxee. Additionally, if Smog is instead defeated before Marrow, any cards that regain Barrage are liable to take Teeth damage from multiple enemies. Gromble mostly serves as another target to Aimlessly hit instead of Smog or Marrow, and though its attack is weak it can pile on chip damage since it attacks quickly. Paw Paw is another such enemy to draw attacks away from Smog and Marrow. However, it is especially inconvenient alongside Smog, since Aimless makes it impossible to predict what will be hit; even just a bit of bad luck with attack targets can cause Paw Paw to gain huge amounts of Teeth. Once Maw Jaw appears, it aims to capitalize on Smog’s Aimless to counterattack whenever it is randomly hit. Maw Jaw’s counterattack ability differs from Smackback in a couple ways. Maw Jaw does not trigger against the card that hit it, but instead attacks normally, hitting the front card in the row. It also triggers when hit with Items. This is generally more dangerous than Smackback because Items will cause it to retaliate, although if a sufficiently defensive Companion can tank hits then low health Companions can attack without fear of being killed by a counterattack.

Since Teeth is such a prevalent mechanic in the fight, Companions that deal a lot of damage in a single hit are preferable for minimizing Teeth damage, and healing and Shell effects help alleviate that damage. Items with high attack are also valuable for dealing damage without fear of something taking damage from Teeth. Effects that inflict Shroom, Demonize, and Bom are especially useful for getting the most damage out of each attack. Ink makes the fight significantly easier, negating Marrow’s Teeth, Smog’s Aimless, and Maw Jaw’s counterattack. Snow, particularly Snowcake, puts Maw Jaw out of the fight and makes it completely safe to attack it.

The Gachapomper is a uniquely powerful item in this fight, due to the mechanics of how Aimless and Barrage overwrite each other. Whichever ability was last applied takes precedence; if the Gachapomper is deployed while Smog is already on the field, the Gachapomper’s Barrage overwrites Aimless, and if Smog arrives in a new wave when the Gachapomper was already on the field, its Aimless overwrites Barrage. However, because the Gachapomper’s Barrage is applied only to the row, simply moving it to a different row causes all affected cards to lose Barrage and moving it back grants it again, making it the most recently applied effect and overwriting Aimless. As a result, having the Gachapomper will completely trivialize Smog’s ability, although be aware of Marrow’s Teeth nonetheless.

Enemies

Image	Card Name	Health	Attack	Counter	Other	Description
	Gromble	12	2	2
	Marrow	14	2	4		While active, add 2 Teeth to all allies
	Paw Paw	10	1	3		When hit, gain 2 Teeth
	Smog	10	5	6		While active, add Aimless to all enemies
	Gobling	6		4		Escape from the battle Drop 4 Bling when hit
	Maw Jaw	30	5	4	Reaction	Trigger when hit

Enemy Waves

The encounter consists of three waves. These are all possible enemy spawns each wave. Waves that spawn with a fixed order are marked in bold.

Wave number	Possible waves
Wave 1	1 Marrow, 1 Smog, 1 Gromble
	1 Smog, 1 Marrow, 1 Gromble
Wave 2	2 Paw Paws, 1 Gobling
Wave 3	Maw Jaw, 1 Smog, 1 Gromble
	Maw Jaw, 1 Gromble, 1 Smog
	Maw Jaw, 1 Smog, 1 Paw Paw
	Maw Jaw, 1 Paw Paw, 1 Smog