Tonight’s Team build gives full credit to our own Reg for giving me the inspiration. Now, this idea came a few weeks ago, so I cannot totally remember how much he put together but the centerpiece was this card:
The whole idea is to use Flying Car to slam something through (essentially) unblocked. I think he was trying to build something with Avengers and Patch. I wasn’t sure if that worked and I wanted to try a different partner for the Car. Ideally, I wanted something with a decent body and something that I could cycle easily. Whatever I chose would be easy to remove because the Car requires you to Sacrifice it after damage is dealt. But what if I could get it right back into the bag instead?
Enter Immortal. The Immortal keyword reads: “When a character die with Immortal would go to the Used Pile (not being fielded at the end of the Main Step, attacking and being unblocked, being Sacrificed, etc.), instead add that character die to its owner’s bag. Character dice with Immortal that went Out of Play this turn go to the Bag at the end of the turn instead of the Used Pile. This does not apply to dice initially being purchased, dice being swapped, or dice being spent as energy.”
There is the answer to my problem. A sacrificed Immortal die would go back into the bag and come right back out the next turn. A plan is forming.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Flying Drive By.
So, the first die that came to mind was our unofficial mascot Beholder. He fits the build for a couple of reasons. First, he still has some of the best stats for cost in the game. I want a big body and he gives me that. Secondly, his ability will allow me to get my Flying Cars moved over to the Prep Area relatively quickly. The only thing he is really lacking is the Immortal keyword.
Thankfully, there is a lady who makes that shortfall very easy to overcome. The Uncommon Hela will make EVERYTHING Immortal! Now, I have a whole Team of things that I can use with Flying Car, but the Beholder is really the main attraction.
Field Beholder to move over Cars. Use Cars to deal Beholder damage to my Opponent. Put the Immortal Beholder back in the bag. Rinse and repeat.
The core of the Team is pretty straight forward. It now needs some accessory pieces. First and foremost, if I am going with Uncommon Hela, I have to pair her with Rare Jane Foster. With those two out, all of my characters become cheaper. That combo with Resurrection Ramp means purchasing things should be fairly easy.
On the topic of purchasing, I wanted to make Flying Car just a little bit easier to reach, so I put in Thousand Island Thor for his Global to reduce the purchase cost of action dice by 2. Attune is not bad either, but I don’t honestly see myself purchasing the big guy.
The Team needs some protection. If Beholder is shut down by something like Wonder Woman or Madame Masque, I would be a sad Panda. This is where Batgirl comes in. Intimidate is a great way to remove annoyances, and gets around the limitations of the aforementioned ladies. However, Batgirl has the limitation where she can only Intimidate out Villains. With the Pandora’s Box Global, that issue is taken care of. The Villain maker will essentially allow me to remove almost anything that is standing in my way.
Constantine made his return to the game because Green Devil Mask has been around a little too much for my liking lately. He was always a card that I enjoyed using back in the day, so I thought I would dust him off for this build.
The final piece was more of an experimentation piece. I decided to add on Enchantress for some removal options. Not that I was worried about walls, but I was worried about some of these unblockable characters punching me while I needed the time to set up. I really have not played with her since the set was available to draft, so I wanted to give her another shot.
Game 1:
Up against an all D&D Team, making use of unblockable Stirge, Cleaving Barbarians, and lots of fun Gear. Easy set-up on T1 buying Jane Foster and fielding a Sidekick. This was the last good thing Jane did in the entire game. She did not roll at all and I ended up having to pay full price for Hela as soon as I could afford her (which took longer than it should have). Luckily he was having just as much fun rolling. I was able to punch through an empty Field with a giant Beholder while prepping Cars. This got me to Hela and then I was able to set up my machine. Rolling was iffy at best during the whole game, and I ended up eating more damage than I wanted to. I did need to buy Enchantress in this game to control his Field a bit and keep the Stirge from pecking away at me. The Beholder/Car machine fired to soften him up and then set up a turn where when there was plenty of damage for lethal.
1-0
Game 2:
The second game of the night was up against a store bought Team. What is a store bought Team? Well, it is when you forget to bring your stuff and you buy whatever from the singles binders and see what you can get. One of the things he picked up was Rare AVX Angel, who is unblockable when he throws a Brick at me. Constantine decided to play and try and make the Bricks a little less effective. Jane still was shy in this game and it took at least one full cycle to get her to come out. It also took longer than it should have to get to Hela. Angel’s defense was too high to consider using Enchantress in this game. I just had to take the damage as it came. The Beholder Car hit a couple of times and then decided to not line up for the lethal hit. However, my opponent was kind enough to let me know I had lethal on the board with just the bodies. Tunnel vision is bad kids.
2-0
Game 3:
The last game of the night was another Cleave Team (when is the last time you can say you saw two Cleave Teams on the same night?). He was using Parasite to buff his Barbarians and Giant Spider’s Global to force my stuff to block. Unfortunately, I brought a monster for him to prey upon. Fortunately, it has the potential to have a big butt to survive early attacks and maybe limit the Experience Tokens. He also brought Power Almighty for Ramp. I still stuck to the game plan and went for the early Jane. Then I switched gears and decided to grab a Power Almighty. I got some Sidekicks in the Field and pretty much everything I rolled was level 2 or 3, so I was prepping like mad. Hela was an easy buy with all of the energy. Cycling the Cars was no longer dependent of the Beholder. Power Almighty did all of the heavy lifting. Since my Beholders were beefy, I was able to force his Barbarians into them with the Giant Spider Global to try and force him to refield them. Essentially, my giant Beholders became bullies because of their stats and when the Cars hit it was game over.
3-0
Post-Mortem:
After my last game, my Opponent asked why I needed Hela. After using Power Almighty, the answer was, I didn’t. Using Power Almighty made me cycle through my entire bag so quickly, that my original plan really was not needed. This was a much more efficient way to get things though and recycled. If I were to consider this build again, I would drop Hela/Jane in favor of this.
Assuming that I did not have this gem pointed out to me, let’s look at the original core of the Team. Immortal was a great way to make Flying Car work without losing your character for a long period of time. This Beholder made it even better since I could cycle the Flying Car almost as fast as I could cycle the Beholder. Jane and Hela were needed to give Immortal to Beholder. Without them in the fold, Beholder would normally need to take the long way around.
Thor’s Global was really good at getting multiple Cars into the game. That single reduction in purchase cost makes such a big difference when you are trying to manage your Bag with Resurrection.
Constantine was fun to bring back. While he did not come up against any Masks, he did get to mess with some Bricks. He is not as punishing as Switch, but still a good way to deal with problematic Continuous Action Dice like Traps.
Enchantress was… ok. I never really reached for her except in that first game. In most other situations, the Defense of opposing characters were too high to really get the best use out of her ability. On this Team, she didn’t really fit. I am not sure what I would put here in the future, but I would definitely want to try something else.
Batgirl did not see play all night. There was never something in the Field that I needed to remove. However, having her paired with a Villain maker definitely give me the option to deal with problems. I would probably keep her around in order to protect Beholder. With that, Pandora’s Box (or something equivalent) would need to hand around too.
This was a fun use of Immortal, which really does not see much play. Combining these characters with something that basically sends your stuff to Used was great. Thank you Reg for dusting off the Car for me.
Would I play this Team again? Probably. I would absolutely try the Power Almighty version though and see how it ran. It would free up a few slots that could be better accessories.
What do you think of the Flying Immortals? What other off the wall uses have you found for this Keyword? Got any good Flying Car builds that make a good use of it? Share in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
– jourdo