World’s Finest has Arrived on UK Shores…

It’s arrived!

I returned home today from a week long business trip to two wonderful packages awaiting me. The first a grav feed and the second a collector’s box & a starter.

I had been eagerly anticipating this set for awhile as it was ticking a lot of boxes for me: I’m a DC buff, I love the thrill of the chase, and the spoilers had already got me considering some team building options. Further to this; the Grav Feed felt like an especial win as I had been selling back my duplicate singles to an online retailer for quite some time and had used the credit to buy the feed for nearly no actual cash at all.

The wait to get the kids to bed was killing me as the two packages, stowed away in the dining room, kept calling out to me, but opening packs of colourful, eye-catching cubes around a pair of toddlers in my house is not a good idea. (Getting ready to head out to an event one time I left an open top bag of gaming gear by the front door briefly unattended. Arriving at the event I then discovered I only had 18 dice with me. Upon my return home I set about checking the whereabouts of these dice to no avail – searching through my collector’s boxes and my spares bundles until eventually writing them off. Some days later they were discovered stashed away in the freight carriage of a Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train set!)

I patiently waited the little tykes out and the moment they headed up to bed I was cracking open boosters. I love, LOVE opening boosters!
How did I do with my chase? Not too bad really. I was disappointed to only pull one Super Rare (I’d read reports on The Reserve Pool that many had been pulling two) and it was my least desired to boot: ‘Lex Luthor – ‘ and one particular rare I had my eye on ‘Bane -‘ eluded me. But I can’t complain, I have a complete set of commons, almost all the Uncommons, some interesting rares (and no doubles), and nearly four dice for each character. Tonnes of gameplay value in there So I’m a happy bunny.

It’s a fine looking set: some of the dice look super cool with their marble-effect design and the art-work appeals greatly to my personal taste. ‘The Joker’, for example, has loads of menace for the Clown Prince of Crime, and I’m pumped to see some Alex Ross painted artwork with ‘Alfred Pennyworth’.

When the spoilers first started coming through I was bummed to see that the set was not going to deliver any new members to the Justice League, Justice Society, and Teen Titan affiliation ranks. I argued at the time on The Reserve Pool forum that in set tribalism was at risk of creating ‘on rails’ archetypes that lacked variety & the potential for creative twists. That’s all good & well, and I stand by my position, but the thing is: that now I have the cards & dice in hand one of the first things I did was to start laying out a potential Bat-Family team on the table & looking for the synergies! So, I may have been disheartened to not have new options for my a Justice a League Retaliation build or my Teen Titan Starfire build but I’ll find the joy in the new affiliations.

It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun to play around with and I’m chomping at the bit to get to the next casual event at my FLGS to give some of the new blood a go…

What about you, lovely reader? How did your ‘World’s Finest’ launch go?