Format: Casual Golden Age (Modern recommended)
This week, I decided to disrupt the local meta. Sometimes, a team wins too much, and they need someone to come in, hard-counter them, and convince them to change to something different. It’s healthy, it’s useful, and sometimes you just need to do it to keep your local meta fresh.
With that said, there was this one Dragons team that kept winning our casual events since Nats, and I decided to give that team a giant nightmare. So be vewy, vewy quiet…
I’m Hunting Dragons!
The Team: Tonight, we feast on Dragons!
From experience, Dragons need Breath Weapon, and Hulk is that ability’s worst nightmare. How do I make that even worse? How about doubling the fun? Here comes SR Mimic!
Mimic’s insane. He copies abilities, but he’s not a copy of the die. What this means: he can double a “while active” effect like Hulk’s. Plus, Mimic takes Hulk’s text, and replaces “self-referential text” (where it says “Hulk”) with “Mimic”. So if Hulk gets damaged, Mimic triggers and deals 2 damage if he’s at max level. Likewise, Mimic taking damage triggers Hulk. And any other of my characters will trigger both, for 2 damage each. This is getting ridiculous.
So of course, Magic Missile’s the obvious next pick for this team. With it, I can convert one bolt into 4 damage if both Mimic and Hulk are active. 5 bolts wins the game outright. Let that sink in.
Mjolnir serves to complement this, to give me bolts more consistently. Plus, the action actually helps the strategy and can serve as backup removal.
Since my strategy relies on two 5+ cost characters, though, I need help. Enter Resurrection along with Kree Captain. I’ve ranted and raved about this card; it was my #1 pick in DMArmada’s community stream, and I maintain what I said there; that global is game-changing, making 5-costs so easy to get to. Plus, the character’s worth getting in a pinch.
I also needed some way to get fists for Kree Captain, and I felt I needed a bit more removal. Plus, I needed a 2-cost. Enter Black Widow. Hands down the best card of the Avengers Infinity Campaign Box, she fits this team to a tee; aggressive character that I want to attack with, nice global that serves as removal against control, gives me fists for the captain’s global…yeah, she’s fantastic.
Malekith serves to buff sidekicks so they can be hit with Magic Missile more than once. I put in Deadshot for laughs (hey, I ping off my character to hit you for 4 and kill off all of your sidekicks!). And of course, Shriek is for blanking as usual.
With that said, let’s go hunt some dragons!
Game 1:
I started off against an Attune team…but not one with SR Yuan-ti! (phew) They stayed relatively casual, relying on using actions with several Attune characters to deal damage. Her strategy didn’t get to fire off much though; I got some Widows early (and Malekith), did some quick damage to soften her up, then Hulk came in, caused pain, and I won.
1-0
Game 2:
Here comes the dragon team! This was the matchup I wanted. I went for a couple of Widows early on for fists, then Mimic and Hulk as soon as it was feasible. From the moment both hit the field (with Mimic copying Hulk), he was essentially deadlocked; using Breath Weapon would hurt him more than me, forcing Hulk to attack was going to take off a third of his health (and still lead to him taking 2 damage per character if he used Breath Weapon after). Soon enough, I decided to go for a gamble, make my Mimic into a dragon during my Main Step, swing in with a Breath Weapon, and sure enough, the attack brought him down to 2 life, with my Hulk still active. I won the next turn. Dragon-slaying: Quest complete.
2-0
Game 3:
This one was against a Ras Nsi + Pirates team (with gear, of course). This is a cool team, but with Hulk + Mimic, I wasn’t a good matchup for him. I bought Widows early for energy, ramped to Hulk and Mimic pretty quick, then fielded both with my Widows to attack a fair bit. Without a chance to use his Ras Nsi’s ability (lest he take massive Hulk + Mimic damage to the face), he simply couldn’t keep up with my damage output. I won.
3-0
Game 4:
And for my final match of the night, here comes Thanos! Yes, the double overcrush one. I’m lucky my opponent didn’t have a force block global (though I hear that will change next week), but I still ended up taking a lot of Thanos damage (that 9/9 face is nasty!). Thankfully, however, she otherwise had very few active characters. I set up Mimic + Hulk, used Widow’s global to get her Shriek off the field (so Mimic wouldn’t be blanked), and then fielded Widow to set up a big attack for the win.
4-0
Post-Mortem:
-Hulk and Mimic are disgusting together. Every time it would fire off, it would not take long before the game would just…end. You can get to lethal damage very easily even just by attacking.
-Black Widow was such a good fit here; on the global, no one wants to taunt a 7A Hulk, and even though it could hurt Malekith, it helped me so much otherwise (especially against Shriek) that I didn’t care. Also, the character itself made it more painful for my opponent not to block my attackers. I know it’s no surprise to hear that, but this Widow is going to wreck the meta something fierce.
-Kree Captain’s global is definitely a challenge; trying to get two fists made me take risks I maybe shouldn’t have. It’s a balancing act, one I’m still learning. Note for the future: don’t risk a near-perfect roll just to show off with a T1 Hulk, otherwise you look silly if you miss.
-Deadshot and Malekith weren’t the best picks for this. Malekith was fine in one match. Every other match, neither did much for this team. Too bad, but not entirely unexpected.
-The guy running the Dragon team decided to run something different next week (success!).
SR Mimic is awesome. It’s so incredibly flexible, and I look forward to seeing what else I can do with it.