Welcome back readers – here is the second part of my ‘Gaming Vs Cancer’ series of posts, inspired by the “Ministry of Dice Presents…” event that took place at the GvC fundraiser last weekend.
Our last post provided the team lists and an overview of the event. It can be found HERE . This second instalment will be a traditional team breakdown and tournie report of my rounds through the day.
The Team
Here is the team I took:
Basic Actions
- Villainous Pact
- Thrown Brick
Character/Action Cards
- Techno – Downloaded Consciousness
- Poison Ivy – Red
- Black Manta – Deep Sea Deviant
- Malekith – King of the Dark
- Cheetah – Some Manner of Monster
- Blob – Nothing Moves the Blob!
- Green Goblin – Norman Osborn
- Professor X – No More, Magnus!
‘Black Manta’ and ‘Malekith’ were the key members of the team to provide the win condition. The idea was to fill up on Sidekicks, get them out, then murder my own Sidekicks with impunity using the ‘Green Goblin’ global and deliver lethal through several hits with Manta’s Retaliation text. (These Sidekick being Villains from ‘Malekith’, of course)
Everything else was there to support this aim – ‘Professor X’ was there for his Sidekick making global (new “PXG”), ‘Cheetah’/’Villainous Pact’/’Thrown Brick’ were my ramp & churn, ‘Techno’ Was there for his global to make sure I had Bolt energy to feed the Goblin global, and ‘Blob’ & ‘Poison Ivy’ for some defensive dice.
I’d play tested it a bit and I was going into the event aware of some flaws. Early ramp was an issue, as was later churn – using OG PXG was out of the question because I needed the new PXG for Sidekick generation. Swarm, ‘Mimic’ ramp and ‘Spot’ ramp all proved vulnerable to my own ‘Green Goblin’ global; canny players would keep shooting them out of the field. As you can see: I ended up with three cards to try and mitigate this with ‘Thrown Brick’, ‘Villainous Pact’ and ‘Cheetah’, but it was far from ideal.
It also needed a lot going on to pay off. To be really effective you need a good 5/6 dice bought & fielded to be effective – ‘Manta’, ‘Malekith’, ‘Cheetah’ and at least 2 or 3 sidekicks – as well as some energy hanging around for Globals.
Despite these flaws it was the team I was having the most fun with while playing around with Global Escalation, because it had lots going for it in a Shriekless meta.
Let’s see how it went…
Round One – Seth
Seth was playing an Avengers-centric team that was built to use ‘Madame Web’ , ‘Avengers ID Card’ global, ‘Danger Room’, ‘Kree Captain’ and ‘Nick Fury – Patch’ to deliver maximum damage.
I could quickly see that I had very little means of running interference (when ‘Madame Web’ hits the table it was going to be all over for me) so I elected to just rush into my Win Con and try to charge into lethal damage first. Seth appeared to have more moving parts than me, so I could do it . (He said, unconvincingly trying to convince himself)
And that’s how it pretty much went in both the games we played – I bought up my ‘Manta’ and ‘Malekith’ ASAP while Seth set about buying his core pieces. One boob for my strategy was double Modern PXG global as Seth had brought it, so I was able to get my Sidekick count up ready pretty quick.
I set about pinging off Villainous Sidekicks with my ‘Green Goblin’ global, with the occasional drop of the 2 damage across the field instead of a second sidekick of my own to control what was going on over Seth’s side of the table – mostly shooting ‘Madame Web’ in Seth’s go before the big swing could come.
With a solid Villain count and an abundance of Villainous Sidekicks to KO I was able to deliver lethal pretty quick.
At the end of round One I was 1 up.
Round Two – Matt
Matt’s Team was built around ‘Nitro – Stamford Incident’ and a number of means to bump up his defence to make him unblockable and do a little switcheroo with the ‘Ant-Man’ global for a big hit.
There was one particular pain point for me on Matt’s team: ‘Ronin – Between Employers’, a super pest for a direct damage team like mine.
In the first game I lined up my Win Con components and then turned to my capture ‘Blob’ to deal with the annoying ‘Ronin’.
I took one nasty ‘Nitro’ hit but managed to recover with a well-placed ‘Blob’ and a bucket load of damage while Matt cycled his ‘Nitro’ through for a new swing.
The second round was a different story. Matt doubled up his ‘Ronin’ and ‘ Nitro’ purchases to keep things together.
It got a bit weird though – while both us had the pieces we needed to win, neither of us could roll… well… basically anything. It was literally a race to see who rolled something useful first LOL
That winner was Matt, who landed a ‘Nitro’ and some actions, along with enough energy to do some global shenanigans, and deliver a one-shot 20 point kill.
Round two ended on a tie with one game a piece, putting me on 1W – 0L – 1D
Round Three – Spug
I loved my games with Spug in the third round, we had some really tricksy stuff going on to outmanoeuvre each other and there was a great cut & thrust to them.
Why was this? Because we were both playing Villain-centric teams. Spug was loaded up on Villainous win cons like ‘Nobby’, ‘Kree Captain’, and ‘Gorilla Grodd’ – much of which was going to be greatly helped out by my high Villain count.
To further add to my woes; Spug had ‘Bane’ with the taunt global, and was a nuisance forcing my low attack stat-ed Win Con pieces to attack and letting them through.
So… I had to play smart, carefully keeping my Villain count down, use my churn cards like ‘Cheetah’ and ‘Thrown Brick’ to get them back around ASAP, and go for the win with several smaller blows rather than 1 or 2 biggies.
I will also confess that there was a huge element of luck in my games with Spug, because at a few critical moments he failed to roll his ‘Nobby’ dice, giving me some breathing room and saving me from a few nasty blows.
By the skin of my teeth I made it through and won my third round.
I was now at 2W – 0L – 1D
Round Four – Paul
Into the next round and a face off against my buddy Paul. He was using a nice win Con combo of ‘Kree Captain’, ‘Danger Room’ , and ‘Martian Manhunter – Watchtower’ who prevents Villains from blocking.
As is now tradition with Paul & I we went to a Tie with one game each.
The first game went to me, with Capture ‘Blob’ serving as MVP by snatching up Paul’s six cost ‘Martian Manhunter’ and placing me in a position to weenie block his behemoth ‘Kree Captain’. I was able to line up my ducks and deliver lethal over two pretty healthy batches of Retaliation damage.
The second game I was not so fortunate and found I had bought up my ‘Blob’ too late to run interference, and Paul was able to get some pretty horrifying hits in with his ‘Kree Captain’.
Paul was also a nuisance with his ‘Captain Cold’s Cold Gun’ in the second game – popping shots off at my ‘Black Manta’ repeatedly and finding myself whiffing the re-roll in my next turn.
By the end of round four I was 2W – 0L – 2D
Round Five – Andy E
Not a lot to say here: I annihilated him like the little bitch he is.
3W – 0L – 2D
Round Six – Stu
my last round was against Stuart – a relatively new player who had been getting involved quite a bit online with some hangout gaming. Stu was also the generous contributor of some outstanding customised alt art cards (some of which now hold a special pride of place in my promo binder).
Stu was playing a team designed to use Rare ‘Collector’, ‘Thanos – Eternal Might’ and THAT ‘Kree Captain’ to deal direct damage from ‘Thanos” game text.
Stu flew out of the gate on a mission to ramp to afford the big 8 purchase cost of the ‘Thanos’, which he did like a boss, but my ‘Blob’ once again became the MVP as I swooped in and captured ‘Thanos’ just as Stu’s ramp stalled after his big purchase (But not until after I took one pretty nasty hit 😳). This meant I could set about lining my Win Con up and proceeded to field and KO Sidekicks like a maniac taking the game.
The second game went a little different – Stu ramped well, but then struggled to roll Masks at the crunch point to make his big purchase leaving him a little adrift for a couple of turns. A couple of turns is all I needed though to get my key Villains in the field with a handful of sidekicks to KO as ‘Malekith’ villains for lethal over a few good hits.
I had won my final round and ended the day at 4W – 0L – 2D.
The end of the day…
The results were totted up and, lo & behold, I had taken the top spot of the event! After falling in love with the custom made Ministry of Dice playmat we had designed it felt like karma had seen to it that it ended in the hands of a Ministry of Dice member (the better one #obvs)
I was soooo happy. There were many, MANY moments in the day where my rounds could have gone a different way and I’d really enjoyed the good back & fourth energy of all my games. I’d like to formally thanks all my opponents for their well timed whiffed rolls. Cheers lads!
We ran the raffle and everyone walked away with loads of swag. Thanks once again to our generous contributors to the prize pool. (Please jump back to the first GvC post for the complete list)
The meta at the event was super cool. I think this guy is popular though…
He appeared on A LOT of teams. Def on eto watch.
Thanks for reading folks. What did you think of the team I built? Is it a surprise I managed to win? Any suggestions for my next build? Let me know in the comments below…
