It was a holiday weekend in the Great White North, which meant no Achievement League event was held. So here’s more on the mid-week 3 Wishes event. The details of the format were described by Jourdo here.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Surfer Wishes
While I liked the sound of the format, I must admit I found myself lacking in inspiration as to what kind of team to build for it.
I knew what I didn’t want to play: Villains. I was concerned about the common Thanos (I Am Become Death) from GOTG who, when active, blanks all other Villains. 7 cost control cards don’t normally worry me too much, but in this format it looked to be a little easier to reach.
I quickly decided my first 7+ card would be the Uncommon Obelisk the Tormentor from Yu-Gi-Oh!
, I threw in common Jarnbjorn so I could increase his A (or whichever other big characters I decided to include.)
And then I kind of hit a wall – Is there such a thing as Brewer’s Block? Because the rest of this team was pretty much thrown together at the last minute.
I’m not saying I didn’t have any ideas, but I didn’t have any that truly excited me.
I settled on Silver Surfer: Sky Rider as my primary win condition, with Dimension Door as a BAC so I could make him unblockable. I added the Natalia Romanova SR as my third wish target die.
My other 3 cards were Goblins for some Swarm ramp, Bishop for protection from burn damage and the rare Volstagg as a counter to opponents who were using Mimic/PXG ramp (which didn’t end up happening this night, so I never bought him).
Plot Twist was my other BAC. I thought, given the format my opponents would probably have character dice it would be fun to try to steal for a turn. Neither I nor my opponents ended up using it on the night. The one time I bought one the game ended before I got it out of my bag.
Game 1:
Obelisk and Doppelganger were the keys here. I managed to get Silver Surfer early. I had it out on Level 3 and managed to get it combine it with a Dimension Door to get in a hit for 16 damage. I wasn’t able to wish in anything else successfully before he got his Scarlet Witch out, and was building up his field faster than I was able to build up mine. I wasn’t able to get Dimension Door to work again, and I couldn’t get enough buy his blockers to finish him off.
Eventually he got his Obelisk in the field (at Level 3) , followed on the same turn by two turn Doppelgangers for 27 damage.
0-1
Game 2:
More Egyptian Gods, My opponent this round has a miserable time trying to Wish in his big characters. His Constantine and Scarlet Witch made it very difficult to get my action dice on action faces.
With us both at about twelve life, he launched an attack where he left only one Rip Hunter die in his field. I managed to KO all of his attackers.
I didn’t have a lot in my field, but i had plenty of dice in my Prep Area. I got both Silver Surfer and Obelisk out, and I had enough Sidekicks and Goblins to get to lethal.
1-1
Game 3:
Natalia Romanova and unblockable Thanos: The Mad Titan with a side of Doppelgangers. He started with Natalia, than switched over to Thanos once I got my Rare Bishop out. The second time he fielded Thanos it was Level 3 and he field a Doppelganger immediately after. That’s 18 damage and I’d already taken 5 from Thanos’s first time through.
1-2
Game 4:
The wish cards here were Purple Worm, Red Dragon and Dracolich. The important BAC was Burning Hands.
I got Surfer out early and sent him through unblocked (but not doubled) for some early damage. Then I managed to pull my Natalia Romanova die the single time I used a Burning Hands die (he pulled Sidekicks both times he used one.)
There was one pass where I couldn’t field my Silver Surfer because the Limited Wish die and Dimension Door die I’d pulled that turn insisted on coming up on their action faces on the re-roll.
He got his Dracolich out and attacked with it. I let it through, taking me down to 6 life to his 7. And on my next turn I got Silver Surfer and Dimension Door to line up.
2-2
Post-Mortem:
This worked about as well as you can reasonably expect for a team largely thrown together at the last minute.
What would I change? First I’d use Silver Sable: Hero for Hire to make Silver Surfer unblockable rather than Dimension Door. I’d probably use Resurrection as the replacement BAC.
Unless I changed it out for Barkskin. Three days after the event, it occurs to me Barkskin pairs really nicely with Obelisk. Four of the seven players brought uncommon Obelisk, and none of us paired it with Barkskin and a force block global. Silly us.
It was quite interesting to see how readily many of my opponents would be to use the Silver Surfer global to try and keep their life totals as low as mine. More than one of my opponent has Resurrection as one of their BACs, and used the Silver Surfer global instead of Resurrection so my Surfer wouldn’t get pumped. There are, of course, limits on how often you can go to the well there.
My thoughts on the 3 Wishes format – it’s fun and interesting and definitely worth a try. However, there is one caveat.
I might be a little prejudiced, since the two games I lost were both to teams running Doppelgangers, but I have reservations about the use of Doppelganger in this format. The format if supposed to prevent you from straight out buying 7+ cost characters, but including Doppelganger effectively lets the player not only do that, but do it a a fairly steep discount. Sort of like the well known “cheat” of wishing for more wishes in the genie/magic lamp scenario.
If your group wants to run a 3 Wishes event I recommend you discuss beforehand whether you want to permit or ban Doppelgangers (and possibly also common Morph from XFC).
If it’s not banned, I suspect three quarters of any such group are going to run Doppelganger, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
As always, thanks for reading, and Happy Rolling!
-Son of L