Format: Modern (competitive, no SR Yuan-ti)
This week, we decided to make a Modern tournament, with strong, competitive teams, with no SR Yuan-ti. So I decided to try a card I had my eyes on for a while. Time to…
Go Nuts!
I took a concept I’d kept squirreled away for a while, and made it into something pretty fun.
The core of the team is that rare Squirrel Girl. With decent stats, a good purchase cost and a strong ability, there’s potential for some crazy burn damage here.
The damage she can deal doesn’t look that big at first glance, though. How do we increase that? I used two cards for this: Nova Corps Uniform (for permanent buffs) and Haymaker (for a more timely increase). 
Now, I need to make sure she gets blocked. Giant Spider does that job, with its force block global. Captain America serves as a secondary win condition in case Squirrel Girl gets shut down.
From there, the build’s fairly straightforward. Grodd serves for consistency and a third win condition, and Resurrection gives me ramp.
For control, I used Shriek to blank, Bard as an anti-Shriek, and Bishop to stop direct damage.
With that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
As with last week, I started up against Hulk + Babs. That was a tough matchup for both of us. He likes to keep a lean field, so Squirrel Girl hurt pretty bad. He did set Hulk up, but by that point, he was far behind. He ended up taking a gamble to force Squirrel Girl to block, in order to KO her and send Nova Corps Uniform to used. But Hulk was off the field, and I drew Haymaker. A force block and a lot of fists later, he took 15 damage (8 from Squirrel Girl’s ability, 7 from Overcrush) and I won.
1-0
Game 2:
My opponent was running Bolt Ring, with cheap Swarm characters for ramp. And that’s where it hurt her: Swarm is a really bad matchup when the other player uses a force block. I bought Squirrel Girl on turn 2 and never looked back. She never got a chance to put the ring on the field or even to Swarm at all. Squirrel Girl was just too damaging and oppressive to deal with; she had no answer.
2-0
Game 3:
This was against Jubilee, Cube and common Yuan-ti. Bishop earned his keep here. He hit the field early and made my opponent’s life heck. He spent tons of resources going after Bishop and Shriek (who was blanking Yuan-ti), to little effect, only damaging me when he’d attack me with Merlyn. Meanwhile, Squirrel Girl just chipped away for bigger and bigger chunks of damage (9 damage at one point), and I outpaced my opponent for the win.
3-0
Post-Mortem:
-Combining Squirrel Girl’s ability with Overcrush is just crazily powerful. I wish I could’ve pulled that trick off more often.
-Because I know it will come up: No, I did not put Blink-Transmutation or Kate Bishop on this team. A global to remove an attacker could’ve been fun, but it would have forced me to rely on non-combat damage. I like that this build can also use Haymaker as a reliable backup plan if my three other plans fail.
-Pym Particles could’ve worked instead of Haymaker, but I wanted Haymaker’s global. If someone uses Pym Particles in this build, be sure to use Wasp: Fashionista’s force block global instead of Giant Spider’s; it’ll give you a use for those extra masks.
-That Bard was and remains a fantastic way to frustrate Shriek and other annoying effects. I will definitely miss that guy when he rotates out.
Overall, I really like that Squirrel Girl, and certainly hope we see a force block global before the next rotation happens. If we do, she will certainly be a force to be reckoned with.