I made an announcement last week regarding the status of the blog, but before I sign off I want to bring you guys one more team build. There’s one particular figure from Harley Quinn and the Gotham Girls that I just can’t wait on.

In our set review on Two Clicks From KO, I mentioned that I feel like this new set has a bit of the Joker’s Wild syndrome where people feel that it’s really not that good of a set when in reality, there are some really strong pieces that are hiding within.

One of those pieces is King Shark, a Super Rare that wins the best sculpt award for this set. Sidebar, isn’t it weird that one Super Rare usually is the best sculpt over Chases? Anyway, this guy has quickly become my go-to piece in Modern Age. While I don’t think he will do much competitively (maybe Limited), he’s an absolute monster in LGS or home games.

King Shark comes in at 90 or 50 points, has 6 or 4 clicks (cost), has 2 traits and a special damage power, and has 0 range. Combat symbols are standard, except for the Dolphin symbol on movement. His keywords are decent with Animal, Secret Six, and Suicide Squad, which wouldn’t be that great before this set released.

His dial is pretty nice; Movement starts with 9 Flurry, which swaps to Plasticity on click two, drops to 8 on click three (starting line for 50 points), drops to 7 on click four, and swaps back to Flurry on his last two clicks. His first click of 11 attack is barren, but moves into Blades/Claws/Fangs on click two, and drops to 10 attack on click three. Clicks four, five, and six we have 9 with Steal Energy. Defense isn’t his strong suit as he has 17 Toughness for his first three clicks and 16 Invulnerability for his last three clicks. His damage is hefty with 4 and his special on clicks one and two, 3 Exploit Weakness on clicks three and four, and Battle Fury on five and six. The biggest issue with this dial is the lack of move and attack for such a nasty melee dial. However, that’s fixed once we get into his traits and powers.

His first trait is shared throughout all the Secret Six members from this set, and man is it crazy good:

ONLY SIX OF US?: Stealth, but only if your force has three or more characters. Improved Movement: Hindering Terrain, but only if your force has five or more characters. Modify all combat values +1, but only if your force has exactly six characters.

This trait requires a certain number of characters on your force at all times. That means if you start your game with 6 characters, you’ll get that sweet +1 to all combat values, but the second you lose someone, that ‘stack’ will dissipate. The nice part about this trait is that you get the other rewards even if you have more than 6 characters.

With King Shark, if you have 6 characters, his top dial looks a lot better; 10 Flurry, 12 attack, 18 Toughness, and 5 damage with that Special which we haven’t gotten to yet.

His second trait is where things really heat up:

ME AND MY CHUM: Sidestep. FREE: If King Shark occupies water terrain, move him up to his speed value.

Sidestep is good and helps negate the lack of Charge, but the kicker is the FREE you can give him, which lets him move up to his speed value if he’s in water terrain. That’s nuts, literally crazy-town. If King Shark is played on the right map, you can basically teleport around every turn without ever taking action tokens, and because this is a move, you’re able to carry smaller characters. What I really love about this trait is that the FREE isn’t linked to Sidestep, so it cannot be Outwitted. The only way to stop the shark from swimming around the map is to get him out of water.

His damage power is probably the least interesting part of his dial, but still extremely good:

GIANT, HUNGRY SHARK: Exploit Weakness, Shape Change.

The big part of this power is Shape Change as it gives King Shark a way to completely negate damage. Although I never make my Shape Change rolls, some people out there are incredibly lucky at landing it, making this guy even harder to deal with. It’s a great answer to his paper dial. Exploit Weakness is nice, but his Flurry is better. the important thing though is that King Shark does have the ability to hit an Impervious figure for a guaranteed 5 damage rather than gunning for 10 that they can roll out of and reduce. It gives him answers, so you really can’t complain that it doesn’t synergize with his Flurry.

Once you piece all of this together, you get a terribly efficient melee attacker that can literally eat through most characters in a single turn. As long as you can keep him on his top click, he’s going to be an absolute nightmare to deal with. Even if he goes down, he’ll most likely earn his points before he does.

Now that we’ve looked at the dial in detail, let’s compare the Positive vs. Negative aspects.

Positive: Stealth and Shape Change on a big melee dial. Good values. Can get +1 to said good values. Free movement every turn. Huge damage capabilities. Good keywords. Good reducers late dial.

Negative: Can easily be one-shot. 17 Toughness up front. Extremely map-dependent. Just 1 damage really hurts his capabilities.

If you can get around the fact that King Shark can go down pretty easily, he should be an absolute beast to deal with. The most important thing for this guy is map. You absolutely need a map with Water terrain, so a theme team is most likely the route you want to take. Outwit can heavily counter him, but that’s true for almost every piece in the game right now. His Secret Six trait alone makes him a pretty undercosted piece.

So what do we need to make the Shark the king of the sea? As I mentioned above, map choice is crucial so theme is by far the most important aspect. A taxi or TK doesn’t really help the Shark because of his free movement ability. Support powers would be nice like Outwit or Prob, or even Perplex if you want to really make him annihilate when he engages. As with all of the Secret Six, you need some way to keep you at 6 characters, and that’s pretty tough to do.

For today’s team build, I’m going to go with my standard 300 points, Modern, with no Resources.

300 Point Modern King Shark Team – No Resources

Two King Shark’s? Yep, two King Sharks. Seriously, this guy is so incredible for his shallow cost that there’s no reason not to run two of him. 180 of our points is steep, but the amount of aggression we get out of that 180 is totally worth it. This way your opponent doesn’t really know what to do because you can pincer from both sides of the map.

Gertrude and Old Lace are really strong, and she provides our team with a sixth member with her Dinosaur pog. We also get Leadership, upping our actions. What I really like about Gertrude is that not only is the pog pretty good with Charge, Blades, and Empower, but it’s also very hard to put down thanks to her trait where she can just absorb damage for it. This gives us two characters for 50 points that are really tough to put down.

Throg is an obvious choice for Animal teams because of his awesome +2 to any stat other than damage. With the Secret Six trait, you can raise one of your sharks to 14 attack, 20 defense, 12 movement to move even further, or even just the +1 to damage to deal 12 damage in a single attack. Thanks to his tiny hammer, he can ride shotgun with one of your sharks and cart around the map for free.

I did something I’ve never done before on a build: I included a piece that hasn’t been released yet. I did this because of how good this piece is for a King Shark team. The Tribbles from the upcoming Star Trek set is only 5 points with the Animal keyword. If you really wanted to, you can just cram 3 of these suckers onto your team and have 105 points left over to get yourself something like Rat King. Regardless, the real reason why I dig the Tribbles is because of their trait:

50% Of Their Metabolism Is Geared For Reproduction: FREE: If another friendly character has not activated this same effect this turn, generate a #012 Tribbles.

For 5 points, you can keep replicating these little bastards every single turn. That means that for just 5 points, you can guarantee that you’ll always have 6 characters on your force. Sure, the opposing player could run out to your starting area and take them out with their single-click dial and lowest-in-the-game 3 defense, but is it really worth it for just 5 points? That would also mean they need to move passed your two Sharks to get there. When I saw this click, I was incredibly impressed and instantly knew they would be on this team. Don’t forget that you need real pieces to bring in, not pogs.

For the final 20 points, I added two pieces of equipment, one for each Shark. 20 points is a lot for equipment, but they really help King Shark a lot. Bloodaxe will give you Steal Energy to stay top dial, Battle Fury to get through Shape Change, and I guess a second helping of Exploit which doesn’t really matter. Thunderstrike doesn’t really make much sense because in order to gain the healing, you have to knock people back, however, this works very well at the end of his dial when he picks Flurry back up along with Steal Energy. Because Thunderstrike says you heal 1 click after resolutions, you can combo this with Steal Energy to gain 2 clicks for each hit. If you wade into a group of enemies, you can heal King Shark from his last click to his second click. While it doesn’t get him back to top-dial, it’s still very good.

Unlike my other team builds, I mentioned a map because I’ve found it to be the best with King Shark. The TMNT sewers are really good as it’s indoors, there are some nice walls to protect you, and some hindering that cuts through so you aren’t limited to where you can move to engage. The other thing about this map is that King Shark can Sidestep into Water terrain from the starting area, and then move for free up to an item and equip it on turn 1. Since items can now be placed in any non-blocking terrain, you can place your axe and hammer on opposite sides of the map against walls in water terrain, and voila, you have both of them equipped on the first turn. I’ve played this map with a team similar to this four times, and the domination has been real.

This build gives you a ton of aggression and splits it down the middle so that you aren’t completely screwed if one of your sharks goes down. Secret Six would be a nice theme team to try, but I personally feel like Animal gives you more options, especially in Golden Age.

What are your thoughts on this team? Is there a different Animal that would work better with the sharks? Are you amazed I didn’t use Klarion? Sound off in the comments section!

As I mentioned last week, I’ll be taking a hiatus from all things Heroclix at least until the beginning of the new year. I hope you all enjoyed this final article for 2017. Take care and I’ll see you in 2018!