Worlds is over, and I decided to do something a little different for my first article back. Instead of writing up something that I played this week, I decided to look at one of the interesting Teams I got to see at Worlds. This one was built and run by Nick W. It was a very effective Team that got him through the Global Escalation Tournament with an undefeated record… but not the coveted Yu-Gi-Oh Factory Set. Nick was kind enough to do a little write up on his Team for us, so I will be handing the rest of this article over to Nick’s capable hands.

Take it away Nick!

Global Escalation is a format that is going to have some very differing opinions. There’s a lot of room for some speedy teams and I can appreciate the thought experiment of trying to win as soon as possible, but it doesn’t make for a meta game I would want to play long term.

At Origins, I played THAT Yondu team in Global Escalation. It worked well for being completely modern. I got to the final round undefeated and lost to a team that could win on turn 3. My team was fast but not that fast. So, I tried to make Yondu setup even faster. The team was originally Modern (and 10/10) so I looked up some PXG tricks, but that didn’t satisfy my needs.

Still I took inspiration from fabricating Golems for essentially free. That’s when I thought of another ability that allowed for KO’d characters to return to the field for more Fabricate shenanigans.

What Did You Play?

The Team: Nobby, Ork Nobby.

This team is meant for speed and if everything goes as planned, there should be a win by the end of turn 3. So along those lines, none of the typical control pieces have been included and all the efficiency cards have been added. Any format that allows for both the Clayface Global and the old PXG is going to be bonkers.

So the main part of the plan is to get 2 Ork Boys and 2 Ork Nobs in the field at the same time. Then you can fabricate 4 Stone Golems using the Ork Boys as sacrifice. However, since you have another Ork character active, namely the Ork Nob (we’ll get back to him in a moment), each time the Ork Boy is KO’d it will come back at level 1.

Taking another inspiration from DMArmada’s infinite Golems, this is another way to make it happen.

Furthermore each time a character is KO’d, each of the Ork Nob dice get +1A/+2D in stats. So by fabricating 4 Golems using 2 Ork Boy each time, you get a total of 8 KO’s for a total of +8/+16 to each Ork Nob. The base stats on Ork Nob are 2/3/3 attack across the levels which means each buffed Nob will have at least 10A. So with 2 Ork Nob you easily have 20 damage. There was a match or two where I tried to see how high I could get. If you use the Magic Missile Global to KO some Sidekicks or the level 1 Ork Boys, you can get into the 30 damage range.

The game plan is simple and ridiculous, but the purchase order and timing is very important. This all assumes you go first as well. Going second you may need to use Parallax just to waste some energy.

Turn 1: Roll for 2 masks and 1 other energy. With that you can purchase 1 Ork Nob and use the Clayface Global to turn it into 2 masks. When the opponent passes priority, use the 2 masks to PXG all 4 sidekicks from your used pile.

Turn 2: You’ll be rolling all 8 sidekicks with the goal of 2 fists, 3 masks, and 3 more energy. From here purchase 2 Ork Boys and 1 more Ork Nob totalling 6 energy. The 2 remaining energy should be masks, 1 will be used for Clayface Global an Ork Nob to double mask on your turn The other mask should be used to do the same on your opponent’s turn during priority. This sets you up with 4 masks for PXG! You can prep all 8 sidekicks for turn 3 and have all 4 Ork dice as your draw.

Turn 3: Profit! You need to roll all characters, 2 Ork Boys for Fabricating and 2 Ork Nobs for the damage. Use the Parallax global to make it happen. You will need anywhere from 2 to 6 energy for fielding the Orks, so there is some wiggle room to Parallax. To make sure they go through, you may also need bolt energy to Magic Missile global enemy sidekicks (they shouldn’t have anything more in the field) and a fist energy to use Doomcaliber Knight’s global to prevent your attack squad from being hit by global abilities.

Game 1:

Bye. This might have been for the best. I brewed the team about a month before and tested it then. I hadn’t touched it since, so I used this time to remember what I needed to do.

1-0

Game 2:

I played Jocelyn on stream. She was running the Ultron Drone that captures blockers. Her plan was to give them Overcrush too! That sounds scary, but it wasn’t as bad as the Blackbird Global I saw across the table. That was one of the few cards I didn’t want to see. She could shut down my PXG ramp and stall me out. Worse, I was going second giving me too much energy on turn 1. Also a lousy turn 1 where I got 1 of each energy type, rerolled, and got the same thing. I tried Parallax to get my 2 masks, still failed. So I bought 1 Ork Nob and used the Blackbird Global to turn itself off.

I missed some rolls and she got her Ultron Drones moving. I knew blocking would be bad for me and I never wanted her to have a character in the field anyways. So I took some damage. Lucky for me, her team wasn’t built for speed so I eventually set up and the Orks charged for lethal.

2-0

Game 3:

I can’t remember his name, but he was very friendly. He was playing Hope Summers with Colossus: Piotr Rasputin. Once Hope was out, I was going to be on a clock. The good news is, I went first and hit the rolls I needed and finished him off before the clock even started. With such an early win, he was shocked and I agreed to another game. This time he went first. Doing this really showed a weakness to the team, I assumed the opponent wouldn’t have a field when I attacked. I planned for the with Magic Missle to take out sidekicks, but when he had Hope and a few more characters it was harder to pull off. He eventually beat me when I stalled out against a very small wall.

3-0

Game 4:

I was matched against Troy this time. He’d been doing well playing an old time favorite, Satchel of Unlimited Weaponry: Chimichanga. I love that Team idea, field a bunch of continuous actions and hit the opponent hard with the Stachel. He even had The Kyln: Powered by the Crunch to suck up all the characters in the field since he left himself open for an attack. Sadly that team takes some time to set up. Once again I went first and everything went as planned. It was another shocking defeat. In the aftermath we discussed a key global that would have also been my bane, he almost brought the Mera Global from WoL. It would have reduced my hefty Ork Nobs attack down to 2 damage per character. I would have had to play slower, and attempt to burst in with more characters or catch him without energy for the global since Doomcaliber Knight’s Global can’t stop Mera.

4-0

Game 5:

Earlier in the day there was a mix up in the match results that lead to 3 players being 4-0 going into the last round. I was the odd man out and played against Andy May who was not undefeated. So I was on the outside of the title match looking in. Each of the teams in the title match brought some global disruption. One had the Blackbird global and the other brought Nefarious Broadcast with Rip Hunter’s Chalkboard. By using Chalkboard to prep Nefarious Broadcast on turn one, the team could turn off PxG ramp for the opponent, but still use it on the opponent’s turn. It was clever, and that’s probably why those 2 teams were in the top matches. They’d control the Globals, which is something I didn’t want to see. My game wasn’t that exciting to talk about. I went first, the plan worked, and I won on turn 3 as planned.

5-0

Post-Mortem:

It was great to use a rather under utilized ability and Team Pack, the Team was efficient and deadly. Sure you could miss some rolls but I took every precaution I could to make sure I got what I needed between Billy Club and Parallax. I’m not sure I would change much on the Team if I wanted to try it again.

Maybe sneak in a second Golem, but the team was a glass cannon. It needed to be fast and streamlined and a second Golem would be overkill on damage anyways. The different matches pointed out some of the potential problems I could have faced. Anyone who planned to disrupt my ability to PxG was a problem. The Mera global is also a potential issue. I think I might have been able to play around some of it, but it would have taken time and I obviously didn’t plan to do that. I’ll take a second place finish having avoided a lot of the global hate. Though I am disappointed I didn’t get to take home the coveted Yu-Gi-Oh Factory set as a prize.

– JackalopeSpam

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