Jank Night at the local game store tonight. The rules for tonight’s festivities were as follows:

When you purchased a non-BAC die, it would be unavailable to you for the rest of the night.

Each time you used a Global Ability on your Team, you had to remove a die from the card. If there were no dice on the card, the Global was shut down for you. These dice were gone for the night as well.

You Opponent could use your Globals freely.

You could not use any Global Abilities on Basic Action Cards

So… long story short, you buy a die and you no longer have it for the rest of the night. You would need to build something that did not rely on multiple copies of a die, or even Global Abilities to be successful.

I decided to take one of my current Two Team Takedown Legacy II Teams and strip it down for parts. It has some mechanics that I want to experiment around with more, so this felt like as good of a chance as any to do that.

What Did You Play?

The Team: Not Quite My Two Team Takedown Team.

The core of the original Team used three main pieces to do the damage. Jubilee was the first source of damage that I would get some use out of. We all know what she does. Good burn damage and good ping removal as well. I paired her with good old Defender Hulk. The idea here is that Jubilee does damage when my Sidekicks enter the Field, and Hulk does the damage when they are KO’ed.

The KO part is the tricky part of the equation here. Unless I can guarantee that my Opponent will be blocking them, how can I benefit from Hulk’s ability? Enter Plague Marine.

One of our other local players has been using this guy a lot recently as a Ramp engine. Why not piggy back some damage on top of that Ramp? Now I can guarantee that Hulk will be dealing out some damage along with Jubilee. Also, the Ramp provided by Plague Marine should help me get to Hulk a little easier… as long as I have Sidekicks.

Ideally, this Team needs a Sidekick Global (like Atlantis, or PXG), but this Format restricts Global usage so it didn’t make sense here. This is where Instant War came into play. I should be able to flood my Field with Sidekicks and ideally Ramp and deal 2 damage for each one. Seems like a plan.

Just to make my Ramp a little unnecessarily better, I also included Captain America. This version of Cap allows me to prep a die whenever a Sidekick I control is KO’ed. I think I am set on Prep options.

However, all of my damage is slower burn damage and is really dependent on my ability to get Sidekicks. What if that doesn’t happen? I wanted some type of back-up plan that could augment the Team and act as a finisher.

I dug deep into the archives to pull out this guy. First of all… Canadian. Second of all… He pairs nicely with Jubilee from a thematic aspect. Third of all… He is really the only character that I plan to attack with when needed. I do have to work to get him at a 6-cost, but I felt it was worth it for the payoff he can give. There are definitely cheaper ways to get this ability, but I wanted to bring old Wolverine out of the binder.

For the final slots on the Team, I went mainly for Globals. However, I tried to pick ones that would benefit both me and my Opponent. Mysterio and Tabaxi Rogue have a similar Global where both players can Prep a die. Since my Opponent will be unimpeded with their use of my Globals, I may as well gain something out of the deal. White Tiger was a similar choice. I am going for a Sidekick based Team. She can give me one if my Opponent chooses to let me have one.

The last slot went to Misdirection. Both Ramp and the ability to bring something in quickly on a low cost die is a pretty good investment.

So, the plan is pretty straight forward here:

Buy Jubilee and Plague Marine as early as possible.

Buy Instant War to start the Sidekick cycle.

Ramp up to Hulk to make the cycle deadlier.

Get to Wolverine to finish the job.

Sprinkle in other things as needed.

Let’s see how it ran.

Game 1:

Bye! Also… I will have extra dice by the end of the night. I budgeted for purchasing only one of any character per Round. Actually not a bad way to start off.

1-0

Game 2:

Up against a Team using Bahamut for some heavy damage. He had old school PXG and Heimdall for Ramp, and cleverly budgeted to use these himself in order to get to Bahamut quickly. He also had the old AOU Wasp to deter people from using the juicy Globals he brought. I got to Plague Marine and Jubilee fairly quick and started the cycle with Instant War. He got to his Bahamut really early thanks to his tools. I got lucky that he missed him early and I was able to Ramp up to Hulk. Then I finally had something in the Field that would survive the Breath Weapon. It also started to double the damage output of each Sidekick. His Bahamut came out many more times and did not roll once. He was relegated to using Cheetah and Hawkman from the original JL set for the bulk of his damage (which was actually pretty good). I was able to Misdirect in Wolverine on my final turn for the lethal damage needed to win. If he had hit his Dragon when he should have, I am pretty sure I would not have been lucky enough to win.

2-0

Game 3:

Parasite/Poxwalker/Team-Up were the big players here. Also OP Black Widow to negate both Hulk and Jubilee… AND Lex Luthor to negate Wolverine. Not as many good options in this one for me. The plan was to try and go wide with my Field and try and use the Team Up trick to my advantage. My options were not as plentiful as his, but I would try my best. Unfortunately, I was having more trouble getting Sidekicks out this game… and my Plague Marine was getting rid of them just as quickly as I got them. He was kind enough to use Mysterio and Tabaxi lots so Ramp was never an issue. Just getting the energy necessary to do what I needed to was. I did my best to force him to continually refield both his Poxwalker and Parasite… which he did. After the first hit, I was basically on life support. The plug was pulled the following turn when I did not have enough in the Field to block.

2-1

Game 4:

We decided to play a “for fun” round since we were done fairly early. Since this one was not really planned for in the Format, we just put one die on every card. This last Team was the good old infinite damage Giganta Team. This one came out before DM-North existed, but for those unfamiliar with the combo, it requires Giganta: Standing Tall in the Field. You also need the OP Teen Titans Robin for his ability (ideally on 2). The final piece is you need another Teen Titan rolled on energy. These pieces allow you to spin Robin up and down as many times as you like. Each time you do, Giganta gets +1A/+1D. Make her as big as you need to and then send her through unblockable or with Overcrush (whatever your desire). It is a really fun combo to fire off

Since he had pieces to make this happen relatively quick, I decided to dip into the dirty bag of tricks on the Team. I went for Jubilee/Plague Marine right off the bat. Jubilee hit the Field fast. Plague Marine decided to take the game off until the very last turn. I chose to actually buy Tabaxi in this one and go for a full burn Team. Now Instant War could be even better. Unfortunately, I was not able to get to Hulk in this one since my Ramp engine did not want to play. With Tabaxi present though, I didn’t really need him. I burned him down to 5 or so and swung with a gigantic Field. Plague Marine finally joined in for this one to help to give me enough damage to go through for the win. He was probably one turn off from hitting his Giganta.

3-1

Post-Mortem:

I like these limiting Formats. I forces you to plan out your purchases for the entire night… not just in a single game. The Global limitation was interesting as well. It forced many of us to drop the easy choices like Resurrection. If you included any Globals, you had to make sure that they could not hurt you too badly. In this Format, Mysterio and Tabaxi Rogue were perfect choices.

I quite like the Jubilee/Hulk/Plague Marine combination. The burn damage when the Sidekicks both enter and leave the Field Zone is just enjoyable. Like I mentioned earlier, this combo needs a Sidekick maker. Unfortunately though, the Format makes that unrealistic. Instant War was a much better choice to help out this engine.

Captain America was kind of unneeded in this build. I still want to experiment with him and Plague Marine as the main source of Ramp. I feel there is something there… I just don’t know what it is yet.

Canucklehead was super fun to break out of the binder again. The purchase and fielding costs kind of suck, but he is still fun to potentially punch through with an unblockable 8 if needed. Today, there are better versions of this ability at a more reasonable cost. Sometimes it is fun to use the classics though.

I will be honest, that using Tabaxi in the last game was not the intention of the build. It was a case of potentially losing the race without him. We all know what Tabaxi Rogue and Instant War can do. It is very effective in messing with bags and causing burn.

Misdirection is always an excellent BAC choice. I am hoping we see a reprint of this ability in something coming up. It would be a shame to see the loss of this one when the next rotation hits.

Some of our regulars missed out on the festivities, so I suspect we will be running this Format again in the near future. Would I play this Team again? Well… no. But I really like pieces of it and want to try them on different builds. For the Format though, the Team worked well. You only need one of each character to be successful.

What would you build if you lost dice from your Team with every purchase? How would you make your dice last the entire night? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo

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