Chimichangas of Doom

I decided to make this the week I checked ‘Doom Lance’ off my bucket list of teams to play.

Format:  Golden Age Constructed.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Legion of Doom Lance – with Chimichangas.

Most Doom Lance teams I’ve seen generally are based around  Doom Lance and one character with the Deadly keyword.  I’d use that as a starting point, but there were some more wrinkles I wanted to add.

First was common Motorcycle, for the global.  It’s a way of preventing my character that attacks with a Doom Lance from being KO’d.  If I use Doom Lance, that’s going to wipe my opponent’s field, and while he’ll have an opportunity to field characters and re-establish a field before my next turn, I’m more likely than not to end up outnumbering him.  So, I didn’t want to use Static Field, and give my opponent another option to deal with unblocked attackers.

While I did include Grey Hunter: Son of Russ on the team as an option, he wasn’t my real plan.  That was using these two cards:

As there are currently no Legion of Doom cards with Deadly as an intrinsic ability, I had to resort to the Action Die that can give that keyword ability to a target character.  There’s no reason I can’t use Black Adam himself as the Legion character to be given Deadly, and it’s certainly the simplest solution.

So, get Black Adam active and use both Doom Lance and Free Chimichangas on him together.  Everything in my opponent’s field disappears, and it goes to the Used Pile instead of his Prep Area.  Use the Motorcyle global to remove Black Adam from the Attack Zone, to prevent him being KO’d.  Repeat as necessary.

I decided to throw in R Grodd from GATF primarily for the fist energy fixer global, but also because his ability makes a decent alternate win con.  I also decided to include R Professor X from XFC, so I’d have a supply of Sidekicks to use with the Grodd global.

Instant War became my second BAC.  The larger my opponent’s field is, the more damage I do with the Doom Lance/Deadly combo.

I put Tabaxi Rogue in one of my remaining free character slots, thinking maybe I could get a little more burn damage from using Instant War.  My final card slot went to the 2-cost Yellow Lantern Ring that gives Intimidate to all characters in my Reserve Pool.

So how did things turn out?

Game 1:

Fresh Meat!  One of our regulars, has very recently started bringing his son with him to our events, and I was matched up against him (i.e. the son) to begin the night.

He was running a team with the above Zombie, the blank crossover Hal Jordan.  He had a few bigger things, but he mostly purchased Zombies and Hals during the game.

He was running Villainous Pact as one of his BACs, whose global I wound up using extensively.

I bought Grey Hunter and Doom Lance, he bought Zombies and a Hal Jordan.

Very shortly I wound up with Grey Hunter and a bunch of Sidekicks in my Field Zone, and a bag so thin I was drawing Doom Lance every turn.

So I’d use Doom Lance with Grey Hunter and wipe his field (well, almost) every turn.  I let him use the re-roll ability on his Zombies even though they weren’t actually being KO’d in the attack step, given the way Deadly works.  But he was a very young, inexperienced player, and I figured he’d enjoy the game a little bit more if he had a few of his character dice ‘survive’ the Doom Lance each turn.  And, since I was using the Motorcyle global on Grey Hunter so I wouldn’t have to worry about re-rolling or re-fielding Grey Hunter, I was hammering my opponent’s field each turn.

I did manage to buy Black Adam and Free Chimichangas but by the time I got them out it hardly mattered.  The first time I used Doom Lance after I got Black Adam was the last time I needed to, as it brought my opponent’s life total down to 0.

1-0

Game 2:

Breath Weapon 2 Blue Dragon and Mimic.

Pop Quiz: Do you know what the actual character ability is on Professor X: No More, Magnus?  (This is the card with the Modern PXG Sidekick fielding global).

Answer:  He gives Sidekicks +2D while active.

I went for Professor X as soon as he bought his Blue Dragon, but he got the Dragon into his field before I got the Professor into mine.  Breath Weapon wiped my field, and his attackers wiped out roughly half my life.

Then I got Professor X into the field, my Sidekicks were able to survive his breath weapon and block his attackers.  He wasn’t getting any combat damage through, though he was wearing me down with the burn damage from repeated use of his Breath Weapon.

At one point he’d named my Sidekicks with his Mimic, forcing me to think carefully about whether I wanted to field any.  I eventually decided to stop holding back on that front and let him have his ramp.  Partly because I used Instant War, he wound up with a lot in his Prep Area and nothing in his bag or Used Pile, so he took 4 points of bag burn on his next turn.

I bought myself a brief reprieve when I got a Black Adam, a Doom Lance and a Free Chimichangas on the same draw, and got them all on the faces I needed.

It didn’t slow him down enough.  The Breath Weapon on his last assault brought me down to 1 life, but I thought I had just enough blockers to survive – until he used the Squirrel Girl global (the first time he’d used it all game) to redirect 1 damage from Black Adam to a Sidekick, knocking out the Sidekick and giving him the win.

1-1

Game 3:

Old Uncommon Retaliation Black Manta and Uncommon Hush.

He’d just gotten things set up and started the burning when, on my next turn, I drew Black Adam, Doom Lance and a Free Chimichangas die.  After my initial roll all three of them were on energy faces, but after the re-roll Doom Lance and Chimichangas were on their action faces and Black Adam was on a character face.

Beating 7-1 odds like that was unexpected, but I’ll take it.  I wiped his field, then got a Tabaxi Rogue out and started using its global to add to the damage total.  My opponent needed to get Manta and Catwoman (his Bat-Family character for triggering Hush) active again, which gave me the time to cycle Doom Lance and Free Chimichangas through my bag and hit him again.

My opponent conceded at that point – his life total was down to 1, he wouldn’t be able to deal enough damage to me to win on his turn, and all it would take was using the Tabaxi Rogue global to finish him.

2-1

Post-Mortem:

Not an awful team, but not a great one.  It was strange how Black Adam came out of the bag with the two action dice twice in three games, but three games is a pretty small sample size.

Yellow Lantern Ring didn’t seem to help much, and there were a number of turns where, even after using Grodd’s fixer global, I found myself needing one more energy to afford the die I really wanted to purchase at that point.  So I would take out Yellow Lantern Ring for either the Clayface global, or something with a global that gives discounts on Action Dice purchases (Thor from AI, or Red Dragon).

What’s the most interesting and/or unique Doom Lance team you’ve seen?  Let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Rolling!

Son of L