Fish Fight!

This was a Team I have been wanting to try out ever since I saw it fire off during the One Big Weekend: Online Tournament this past April.  Peter Jezik ran an amazingly fast Rush Team that centered around Black Widow and Atlantis.  This was his original Team Build.  The match that stood out for me can be viewed courtesy of The Ministry of Dice here:

So, this girl is one of the two key pieces to make this engine run.  Field her into a (hopefully) large Field and buff them to swing in for some serious damage.  In order to maximize her use, she paired with Atlantis.  The  main idea here is to Field as many Sidekicks as possible while Atlantis is active and cycle through your bag (hopefully adding to your Field as you do this).

If all things go according to plan, you can slap your Opponent across the face thanks to the power of the fish.

I didn’t want to straight up run the same build here, as that is no fun.  I wanted to make use of the core though and see what I could do with it.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Fish Fight.

The core of this Team reminded me of the Sam/Spot combo that you can read about here.  I wanted to focus on the Fish for my version of this build.  For this to work, I needed ALL THE SIDEKICKS.  The base 8 might not be enough here, so I added in Wong to supplement the herd.  He would also work as a removal piece when paired with the Black Widow Global.  A couple of Wong’s in the Field should be able to remove just about anything with a force attack.

To increase the odds of Sidekicks showing up, I included the new (not the newest though) PXG.  I also decided to try one of the new toys in Psylocke, who would also help field Sidekicks.

Since this Team will be focused on potentially fielding lots of things, I decided to give the Yellow Lantern Ring a try.  There were a few things that could really mess with this Team, so I thought that Intimidate could be useful.  In the event that YLR failed, Mimic was around to help with the removal of the bad things.

I noticed that the bulk of this Team was based on 2 cost dice.  This made it easy to add in the last card for my version of the build:  Supreme Intelligence.  The Global will make it easier to move the core dice around as needed.

The final pieces of the puzzle that I included were Insect Plague and Create Food and Water.  Insect Plague was to help push through the last points of damage with unblockable Sidekicks, while the Global on Create Food and Water would help with bag management (as well as setting up new PXG.

Let’s see how things ran for the night.

Game 1:

The first game of the night was against an Infiltrate Team, using Hope/Cable as the main source of damage.  He also had Madame Masque that was going to make Black Widow harder to trigger.

The Sidekicks and fish were flying in this game (although I made the mistake of buying a second copy of Atlantis, which was not necessary).  This was cycling through my bag really easily due to this.  The Black Widow Global easily let me push his Masque into my Wong to get rid of her (or allow her through if I was willing to eat the damage).

I hit early with some serious damage to bring him down in life.  YLR helped clear the field on the final turn for the lethal blow.

1-0

Game 2:

Unblockable Poxwalker/Parasite was the combo here.  Also, Switch was there to make Atlantis almost unusable.  I knew this one would have to be a race to get in as many swings before Switch showed up.  I bought up Atlantis in the first turn and spent the next turn using the Supreme Intelligence Global to get it into Prep.  Unfortunately, his Switch still managed to come out of the bag before I would have a chance to roll my fish.  Luckily, he missed on the Switch roll, so I would have a chance to roll Atlantis.

Unfortunately for my Opponent, missing rolls was going to me a common issue in this game.  It was one of those games where you feel bad as he was not getting anything to roll, while I was getting everything.  When he did manage to set up his combo, the Black Widow Global helped to mess it up by forcing Parasite to attack.

The Sidekick/Fish army marched through without much issue in this one.

2-0

Game 3:

The final opponent of the night was running lots of things from the new X-men set.  His core was based on Hope being whatever the hell she wanted and making life miserable on my side of the table… you know… Hope Stuff.

The night of good rolls was continuing for me in this one.  My first rolls were actually all Sidekicks, so I decided to just punch through an early open Field.

The Black Widow Global helped control Hope (forcing her off the Field while she was copying Cyclops and losing his discount) and his Dani Moonstar (sending her through while she was on a lower level).

I got him low enough, that I was able to make use of his Improvised Weapon to buff a level 3 Wong.  It was not until this game that I actually remembered to use the Insect Plague Global and send a 7 attack Wong through for the final push of damage.

3-0

We had a light night at the store tonight, so we decided to play a few extra “fun” rounds.  The fish continued to fire and rampage their way across the table.  They didn’t fall until game number 6 when I replayed the Infiltrate Team.  Only this time, he put in SR Angela that he did not include earlier.  Also, I had used up my good rolls for the night and had trouble getting Sidekicks out in that last game.

Still, 5-1 on the night overall is not bad.

Post-Mortem:

This is a really cool combo to play around with.  The core of Black Widow/Wong/Atlantis was very effective in dealing out damage and controlling the board state.  The Supreme Intelligence Global was essential on this Team in order to keep the fish flowing.

As I mentioned, I made a mistake in my first game in buying more than one Atlantis die.  You only really need one to fire off the combo.

Yellow Lantern Ring was… good.  It honestly only fired a few times, but I was able to work around most other problems using Black Widow and Wong.  I still think it was a good inclusion on this Team.  The worry of having to have two action dice come out at the same time is not a concern with the churn that Atlantis provides.

The PXG and Cake Globals were essential to the engine as well.  There were many times that I needed these tools to get the Sidekick Train started.  There are many other ways to make Sidekicks in this game, and they might be tempting to try in other versions of this.  Captain America (from Peter’s original build) and R Crystal immediately come to mind.

Insect Plague actually proved very useful on this Team.  There were times where I needed that last push of damage and this made that happen.

Mimic was not bought all night.  A nice tool to have, but he was not needed tonight.  Again, Black Widow and Wong took care of most of my problems tonight.

Psylocke was the odd woman out on this Team.  I never once felt the need to purchase her all night.  This is definitely an open slot that something else could be tried.

The Team was really effective, but I felt it needed some other tools.  With unblockable Sidekicks on the table, a pump Global would be a great addition to the Team.  Here, I might sub out Psylocke for Hulk.  It definitely needs some experimentation to see what would work best.

Thank you Peter for slapping Mr. Six around with the fish and inspiring this build.

This is a fun Team/combo that I really recommend to play around with.  It is definitely along the same lines as Sam/Spot, but is different enough that you do not get that sense of deja vu.

Have you rushed your fish into your Opponent’s face?  What has been your best use of this fantastic churn mechanic?  Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo