From the (Worlds) Scrap Heap

This week, I decided to play something that didn’t quite make the cut for Worlds.  I had this floating around as an idea for Global Escalation, but knew it was not really fast enough to survive the format… even though it would have been hella fun to play.

Speaking of… Hela happens to be the centerpiece to the whole Team.  Essentially, I wanted to make everything on my Team Immortal and buff them with Uncommon Jarnbjorn for oodles of Overcrush damage.  In the true Global Escalation Format, there was no way that this would happen before I was dead.  I need quite a few pieces to make this machine run.

Since we don’t really play pure Global Escalation at my local store, I decided to take the scraps of my original idea and put them together for tonight’s festivities.

Let’s put this bad boy together.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Hella Overcrush!

Hela was obviously the main part that makes this Team tick.  However, Immortal is not really a win condition on its own.  This is where Jarnbjorn comes into play.  Anything with Immortal will get a stat boost and Overcrush.  With Hela active, that just so happens to be my entire Team.

The trick here though is that my whole win condition depends on getting to a 7 cost as fast as I can.  Sure, you can go with PXG or something similar here… but I wanted to try a tool that would help out the rest of the Team as well.

This is where this young lady comes into play.  With Jane Foster out, I can reach Hela easier.  With Jane and Hela out, I can reach EVERYTHING ELSE easier.  This is nothing new here.  Anyone who has run this combination has probably used these same cards in it.  They are kind of the essentials to this kind of a build.

So, with Jane I now have a 5 cost Hela.  This is good, but not great.  Now I could have gone with Kree Captain here, but I chose to go Ring of Winter.  This Global drops Hela to a 3 cost which is super easy to reach for.  With Chalkboard on the Team, the plan was simple:  Turn 1, Rip over Jane Foster; Turn 2, Field Jane and buy Hela for 3; Turn 3, Profit.

In all honesty, the other pieces here didn’t really matter much beyond the core.  You really just want to get stats on the board and then swing.  However, I did make a few conscious choices with my other parts.

Wonder Woman was put on the Team to lock down all the nasty “When attacks” and “When fielded” abilities in the game.  My Team does not really rely on these, so I didn’t really see a downside here.  Madame Masque was there because we still live in a Static Field world and that would make my life miserable.

Since I decided to go with Ring of Winter as my discount option, I decided to throw in a dragon.  What better one to include than the good old Red Dragon?  This actually serves a few key pieces here.  One, the Global lets me get to Jarnbjorn easier while burning my Opponent just a little bit.  Secondly, Red Dragon’s ability will let me double a single Jarnbjorn while it is active.

The BAC choices were some old favorites.  Resurrection is always great Ramp.  Misdirection gave me a second 2 cost option, but more importantly gave me a way to get my characters out a little faster.

Let’s see how it ran.

Game 1:

Up against an Orbital Strike Team with Hope/Thunderbird to keep their Field alive.  This one went according to script:  Turn 1, Rip Jane Foster; Turn 2, Field Jane and buy Hela for 3.  Misdirection started to make the rounds and got Hela out fast.  Then Wonder Woman, then the Dragon.  He was getting close to an Orbital Strike, when the axe showed up.  With everything in place, my entire Field got a +4/+4 buff with Overcrush.  He did not have the stats to deal with it.

1-0

Game 2:

Up against our resident youngster who was running a mish-mash of Brotherhood characters.  I stuck to the script again and everything went as it should.  This time, I used the Red Dragon’s Breath Weapon to thin the herd a little before the axe powered lethal blow.  I needed something to soften up her Blob that was going to absorb more Overcrush than I wanted.  If she had gotten some of her other big stats on board, I would have had a little more trouble getting through.

2-0

Game 3:

Up against a flippy unblockable Sidekick Team (Insect Plague, UXM Ant-man, high D Allies).  I won the roll off, so here we go again… except not so much.  I bought Jane, but missed the Rip on Turn 1.  That meant no Hela on Turn 2.  I couldn’t buy her until Turn 3 which I knew was too slow against this Team.  I did get Hela Misdirected in as quick as I could, but it was too late to make a difference.  I had decided to switch to the flippy Sidekicks myself but did not have the time to play catch up.  I was dead.

2-1

Post-Mortem:

I like this combo (I will spare you the “hella fun” pun here).  As I mentioned earlier, Hela/Jarnbjorn/Jane Foster is really the whole Team.  I did run a Hela/UC Jane combo before Wizkids clarified how the Rare Jane/Hela worked together (you can read about that one here).  The Rare Jane Foster is FAR superior in making this combination work.  A purchase discount is much more appealing than a Fielding discount.

Anything else that goes on your Team really depends on your personal tastes.  Control type pieces make the most sense to me though.  You just want something to frustrate or slow your Opponent here.  Wonder Woman and Madame Masque are great choices to serve that purpose.  They also have some decent stats to make Jarnbjorn more of a threat when it hits.

Chalkboard is just such an excellent acceleration tool to get your Team going.  I am actually excited to see it return in the WWE set.  Modern Teams will sure get a boost when this hits.

Believe it or not, Red Dragon proved to be one of the better pieces on the night.  I could buy it for cheap with the Hela/Jane/RoW discount.  When it was active, it made Jarnbjorn that much more effective.  Instead of needing a couple dice to fire off, one was usually enough to do the damage.  It also did not hurt to have the Breath Weapon option to soften up the defenders.

I know it does not have the legs to survive the shark infested waters that is Global Escalation.  However, this is a great local store Team.  The ingredients really depend on your play style and can honestly be almost anything.

Having said that… what would you include in your brew?  Would you include some different control options?  More removal?  Just big cheap stats?  Let us know in the comments below.

This puts an end to my Worlds leftovers.  Time to start brewing from the ground up for next week.  Thankfully, I have some stupidity locked and loaded thanks to one of tonight’s players.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo