Immortal Undertaker

For my second foray into using WWE cards*, I decided to build a team around Undertaker: The Deadman.

*For reasons unknown, suppliers seem to regard our city in general, and our host store in particular as “No Fly Zones” for new DiceMasters products.  Most of the local scene have managed to get our hands on some WWE stuff by now by various methods, but we haven’t had it very long.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Immortal Undertaker.

Format:  Golden Age Constructed.

The Deadman version of Undertaker has both Immortal and Call Out, as well as some fairly high D.  Is there any way to turn that into something resembling a win condition?

Well, Call Out generally combines quite nicely with Overcrush.  Call Out a chump blocker, do a good chunk of damage and stay in the field to repeat the process next turn.

Undertaker’s A of 3-3-4 is fairly unimpressive.  The same cannot be said of his D of 6-7-9.  So I added Bizarro of the stat flip global so I could use his impressive stats offensively.

The next two additions to the team were because of Undertaker’s Immortal status.  First was common Jarnbjorn, to give him Overcrush (and +2/+2).  Also added was Rare Jane Foster, to make him more affordable.

Next came The Rock card of the sacrilegious subtitle.  (I’m Canadian and a hockey fan, and Wayne Gretzky is the only athlete who is ever properly referred to as ‘The Great One’.)

He gives me another Immortal character to benefit from both Jarnbjorn and Jane Foster, and a purchase discount global.  With Jane active I can pay a mask, sacrifice a Sidekick and buy Undertaker (or The Rock) for 2.

For my BACs, I chose Get Thee Hence and Cone of Cold.  The first because I was running Immortals and having an active Immortal doubles its effectiveness.  The latter because I was planning to use Overcrush and thus would benefit from its global.

The one card I from this team that was not Modern legal was Constantine: Antihero.  He’s a 2-cost shield character, so he can be a source of fuel for the Bizarro global, plus his ability might slow down my opponents use of Yawning Portal (or some other action die.)

With Constantine, Jane Foster and Get Thee Hence on the team I added Supreme Intelligence so I could move dice from any of those from Used to Prep at need.

My last addition was Nihiloor, but not either of the versions with the KO one of your characters global.  No this was the global free version of Nihiloor, which, when fielded, allows me the choose an energy type and remove all energy of that type, and all wild energy from my opponent’s Reserve Pool.

This was added as a counter to Static Field.  As regular readers may remember, I’ve been trying to stretch myself and find other counters to Static Field beside Wonder Woman: Child of Clay.  Nihiloor was this week’s effort in that regard.

So how did the games go?

Game 1:

Plurp-E, Rachel Summers, Mimic, Boom Boom, one of the Nihiloors that did have the KO global and Thrown Brick.

He had a PlurpE channeling Rachel Summers.  I had two Undertakes in the Field Zone and had rolled a Jarnbjorn and was about to start swinging when he KO’d Boom Boom, which meant that Plurp-E Rachel KO’d everything else.

I whiffed on both Undertakers on my following turn, and ended up using delaying tactics the rest of the game as a result.

I’d leave characters unfielded so I could be sure to end the turn with something in my field – somehow for the entire rest of the game he always managed to save one mask for possible use on my turn.

I knew I needed to get rid of his Plurp-E to have a chance, but knowing that and being able to do it proved two different things.

I didn’t reroll many of the characters that had been KO’d the first time he’d used Rachel’s ability, and that was immediately before a bag refill, resulting in a clogged bag for me.

I bought a Cone of Cold and later a Nihiloor, but they had to work their way through my bag.

I’d bought two of his Thrown Bricks early in the game.  If they came out together, and I rolled the action face on both, I could used them both on Plurp-E and KO her that way.

I think I had three turns where I was rolling both of them, thanks to the use of the Supreme Intelligence global and Brick’s ability to Prep itself,  Not once did I get the action face on both on the same turn.

Eventually, I managed to KO his Plurp-E using a Cone of Cold die, but it had taken so long to find a way to KO it, that he had too may defenders.  He overwhelmed me soon after – I think on his next turn.

1-0

Game 2:

Bye.

1-1

Game 3:

The important part of this game was we christened a new version of an old global with its own name.  My opponent was running the Walk with Elias basic action card, which includes a global ability.  Said global is functionally the same as the Heimdall global or the XMF Professor X global, but that has nothing to do with the name.  During our game, my opponent and I decided that this global shall henceforth be known as the WWE global.  (Maybe the second ‘w’ will end up being lowercase – it was a verbal discussion.)

Anyhow, he was running the Kane with both Intimidate and Call Out, Ric Flair with the +4A global, the same The Rock as I was running and the use 2 globals for free when fielded Beholder.  Plus the new Asuka and SR Doppelgangers who copied my active characters.

So he’d field a Beholder, buff Kane for +4A, buy something at a discount, and attack with Kane using his Call Out to KO one of my characters of his choice (as he was so heavily buffed NOT blocking him was never a viable choice.

Basically, he chipped away at my wall until I didn’t have one left and hit me to bring me down to 5.  I refielded some KO’d characters, rolled a Jarnbjorn, and managed to do 15 damage of my own.

Doing that left me running on fumes, and he finished me off the following turn.

1-2

Post-Mortem:

Only two live games, small sample size disclaimer, yada yada yada.

I think this is an OK team, despite not beating a live opponent.  I had some bad luck on both rolls and draws in Game 1 after he started KO’ing his faux Rachels.  Although the Nihiloor I went with was maybe not such a great option.  I’d considered two different versions of Istrid Horn for that slot before I eventually settled on Nihiloor.  One of the Istrids allowed me to move an energy die from my opponent’s Reserve Pool, the other would allow me to shut down a global ability until the end of the turn.  Either one might have saved my bacon, as they’re both 2-costs and I was running Supreme Intelligence.  My opponent’s shenanigans had made a mess of my bag in that game, and it took an eternity to get to Nihiloor as a result.

In Game 3 my opponent was fielding Beholders to use a 4-cost global for free.  On a regular, or at least semi-regular basis.  Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t keep up with the economy adavantage that gave him.

I managed to make it look close – if he hadn’t been clever enough to make sure he didn’t have any Sidekicks or other low-D blockers to Call Out I might have even had a chance to pull out a win given that I managed to do 15 damage in one turn despite those precautions on his part.

Still, I doubt I will revisit this team.  Certainly not anytime soon.  Certain pieces, such as The Rock global, definitely, but the team as a whole – I think not.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Rolling.

Son of L