Thanos month continues here in Calgary… wait… what do you mean we aren’t doing that anymore? But… but… I still want to play with Thanos. Well… Thanos month continues for me… I guess.

I wasn’t done with the Mad Titan and wanted to try one of those stupid combos tonight. The combo where there is no back-up plan. You win or you lose with it. There is no middle ground here. What is this combo you ask?

This guy is the core. I have wanted to give him a spin since I first saw him, but have not really had the opportunity. I decided to correct this oversight tonight.

Now Overcrush is the key here, but his ability really only works if you minimize blockers while maximizing damage. As he stands, it is almost better to bulk block him or let him through. This is not good enough. If only he had something like Call Out, or there was some way to give him that keyword.

Oh hey there Mr. Lord. You can give other Guardians this ability… but Thanos is far from a Guardian of the Galaxy. I wish there was a way to give Thanos temporary membership into Club GOTG.

Well there is this option. Roll Infiltrate to give Thanos the Guardian Affiliation and he can then make use of Call Out to suck in something with low defense. Mix in a force block Global and Thanos should now have all of the tools necessary to maximize the output from his ability.

Let’s assemble the rest of the Team.

What Did You Play?

The Team: A New Guardian.

Three slots are already taken with the combo, with the need for a force block option. I decided to go with the old school Goblin Attack Force here basically because the rest of my Team would heavily rely on Fists (spoilers!).

My win-con is based on purchasing an 8-cost character. I need ways to purchase him cheaper. With lots of options available, I narrowed down to the Blue-Eyes Global along with a Ring of Winter. Even these function similarly, I chose to include both here. I could have included the Kree Captain here, but spending-wise these made more sense to me.

To power these Globals, I included Rocket Raccoon as a source of Bolts. Also, his ability pairs well with BEWD for a means of removal.

With minimal slots left, I added Heimdall as my Ramp option. Sure, I could have gone with PXG and skipped some of the other things… but I honestly do not like it. It changes the game for me in such a way that is not as fun and ruins these overly complex machines.

The final place went to Cone of Cold. Yet another removal option, but it was there for the Global. Once I get Thanos blocked, I will pump him as high as possible.

On that note… I still need to get a good source of Fists to power the machine. Kree Soldier suits that purpose. His Swarm ability should give me more than enough to power Thanos to victory.

In theory… this works. In practice? Well… let’s see.

Game 1:

Up against a similar concept of a Team… except they were using the new Grodd from Justice with the built in Call Out, and used Pym Particles to give him Overcrush more regularly than Strike does. Lucky for me, he actually forgot some dice he needed, so he was not playing the most optimal version of his Team.

I had no problem getting enough energy to buy Thanos early. The first time he showed up he rolled Level 1 and I got greedy wanting something more… and lost. He rolled energy. It gave me time to purchase the other parts of the puzzle. Star-Lord hit the Field, followed shortly after by the larger Thanos that I wanted earlier.

Infiltrate rolled and this is what Thanos looked like after calling out one of his Sidekicks. The Sidekick was forced to block with the Goblin Attack Force Global. Those remaining fists were for the Cone of Cold Global. That made Thanos a nice hefty 21 attack. 20 of that went through as Overcrush damage, which was then doubled to 40.

The machine works!

1-0

Game 2:

Up against a whole lot of Infiltrate (but not my Infiltrate). Again, I had no problem buying the pieces here. Thanos was purchased by turn 3 (I believe). However, this was the complete 180 of my previous game. I got Star-Lord out, but Thanos did not roll. I purchased 3 of him… that’s right… 3 x 8 costs without issue… but could not roll even one of them. Rocket was bought in this game… but he wanted to follow Thanos by not rolling a single time.

He did me in with his Infiltrate plus some other buffing shenanigans (you’ll probably read about this Team later).

For fun, I drew my last draw after I was already dead. Guess what? Thanos still did not roll!!! This is where the LCG model fails. These dice now need to be burned to teach them a lesson and I can’t do that. 🙁

1-1

Game 3:

I was paired up with the resident youngster, but she was already playing one of the new youngsters. One of the other regulars brought his son, and he paired up with yet another young guy. I benched myself (and sacrificed those precious WIN points) and put my coaching hat on to help out the newbie. It was a classic young kid match where he wanted to just play with characters he liked. No problem. I walked him through the match and let him make the decisions along the way. I kind of love the little kid attitude of attacking with everyone ALL THE TIME. This game was not about strategy or combos. It was about young players just having fun and punching with the characters they like to play with. It is nice to see new blood in the store and I am happy to help them out. I guess I technically took the loss on this one, but I don’t know if anyone actually reported the official results to honest.

1-2?

Post-Mortem:

This was a one hit wonder Team… and when it hit… wow! After I hit it in the first game, I really did not care what happened the rest of the night. Pretty much every piece of this Team served to get to Thanos, or to power up Thanos. They all worked exactly as you would expect. There really is not a piece I would change here.

This has exactly zero chance of holding its own in the competitive scene. However, in a casual setting, it if fun as hell.

In the two games I played, I got to see both sides of this Team. If Thanos cooperated, it was amazing. If he didn’t, it failed hard.

Would I play this again? In a heartbeat!

These are the Teams that I absolutely love. The more complicated the machine, the more I like it.

How have you made use of the double-overcrushing Thanos? What did you do to maximize his damage? What is your favorite “one trick pony” type of a Team? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo

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