Brotherhood of Odd Shenanigans

Well, it’s been a little while since I tried a theme team. With me having won Nationals and last week’s event, I figured it was time to slow down juuuust a little bit. So I decided to call upon the…

Brotherhood of Odd Shenanigans

The Team:  Brotherhood of “What the Heck am I even doing here?”

Format: Casual Golden Age (Modern recommended)

Now, full disclaimer: I did not watch DMArmada’s video on X-men sleepers until after I ran this team. Definitely check it out, as they have some interesting suggestions…two of which ended up on this team. Coincidence, I swear.

Ok, so the team is firmly intended to be a mostly theme team. The main win condition was actually Avalanche-based removal, Mastermind for an Infiltrate character that will force my opponent to block and KO him (so he can be re-fielded to trigger Avalanche), and Mystique and Lady Deathstrike are intended to be the team’s main offensive tools.

For control, I went for Black Tom Cassidy (with Fast and Call Out, he can serve as nasty removal), Scarlet Witch (action hate is always great), and…Blob. No, not that one. This particular version is a card I’ve been looking at for a while; some of my locals love to build quick, aggressive teams, so I was curious to see if he could work.

The rest of the team is utility: Teamwork is intended to take advantage of my shared affiliations, Villainous Pact serves as ramp and a secondary win condition, and Kree Captain serves to discount some of my more expensive characters.

With that said, on to the games!

Game 1:

I started off against an interesting team built around uncommon Orion. He’d use R Madame Web to get him through unblocked, then pay 1 to send him right back to Prep. Surprisingly solid damage. Could’ve been a fascinating match…if my stuff rolled. Which it didn’t. I would roll sidekicks when I needed energy, energy when I needed characters, and I just had no way to get any strategy going. Meanwhile, he got his strategy going pretty steadily and dealt tons of damage chunk, by chunk, by chunk. He won.

0-1

Game 2:

I then went up against Hulk + Fixit. This one had a weird pacing. I went for Black Tom early, he went for Shriek early, and he ended up blanking something else, so I would constantly call out his Shriek while keeping a lean bag going. After a while, he kind of had to block Black Tom. By then, I had a big field, so he went for Green Devil Mask, but Scarlet Witch stopped the mask from making an appearance. He also couldn’t roll Hulk to save his life. So I chipped away, bit by bit, made Mystique huge, and took his Upgrade – Proton Cannon to give Mystique Overcrush. Between an Overcrushing Mystique, a Call Out Black Tom, and other shenanigans, he couldn’t stop everything at once. I won.

1-1

Game 3:

And here’s a control and Dragons team with a bit of Golden Age thrown in (specifically Storm: Goddess of the Plains). My opponent saw what happened last game with Black Tom, and Shrieked him right away. He also went for Wrecker, hoping to slow me down…but he slowed himself down at the same time. He never even got his dragons going (thanks Scarlet Witch!). I went for small chunks of damage here and there, and eventually, he saw he had enough characters to attack me (including Atlas, his secondary win con) and he took a big gamble: he swung in, using Storm to remove my stuff…but his gamble failed. I got just enough blockers to block his smaller characters and let his other characters through, emptying his field. The following turn, I got Mystique, some other Brotherhood characters, and swung in for the win.

2-1

Game 4:

Let’s see…Yuan-ti, Poxwalker, Parasite…sounds like a job for Blob! It took longer than I liked to get Blob on the field, but the second he showed up (my opponent had me down to 6 life by then), my opponent’s team got shut down, hard. He only got Shriek once Blob was fielded, and she never had the time to show up. I built up a big field, used Teamwork, and charged in for way too much damage for the win.

3-1

Post-Mortem:

-Black Tom Cassidy is interesting. Love the combo of Fast and Call Out. It can be fascinating, especially when you soften up a larger character with Avalanche.  Likewise, Mastermind is a lot less tempting to block if your Shriek only has 1 toughness left due to Avalanche, so Infiltrate has a better chance to trigger. It made for interesting shenanigans.

-Blob is…hit or miss. I used him only in one game, but he was crucial that one time. Likewise for Teamwork.

-Mystique, predictably, was awesome in this. Hate her fielding costs, but she can really hurt (got her to 7A pretty reliably). Too bad my other bruiser (Lady Deathstrike) just never got to show up. Really wanted to see what impact her life gain could have.

Overall, this was a nice semi-casual build. Brotherhood’s looking like a decent affiliation now (much better than with just XFC). And quite fun to play with, too! A good way to cool down after the crazy competition of the last couple of months.

Next week, we’re starting a new legacy league, starting from Golden Age with a small ban list. Should I start with my crazy Beholder build just to get Imprisoned banned? Sound off in the comments below!