It was Initials Week at the local DiceMasters group.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Initials Alliteration
To be honest, I hadn’t asked enough questions and I was a little confused about the format. So I was only considering cards with names that started with G or W. So I wasn’t really using my middle initial, or any cards where the later words started with any of the available initials when looking at eligible cards.
Because my choices weren’t restricted enough by the confusion, I decided to impose a further condition on myself: Anything with a two word name, where both words started with one or both of G or W had to go on the team. There are no G__ W__ s or W__ G__ s that I was able to find, Still, that filled 6 slots on the team: Green Goblin, Guy Gardner, Gorilla Grodd, Goblin Glider, Weather Wizard and Wonder Woman.
Full disclosure: I didn’t put myself under the restriction until I realized I’d have Guy Gardner and Gorilla Grodd available.
I went with Goblin-Lord for Green Goblin (I don’t own Gobby), Blinding Rage for Guy Gardner, and the Rare for Gorilla Grodd. I’d probably have gone with the Rare Weather Wizard if I owned it, but since I don’t I went with the common. Goblin Glider didn’t really matter, since I had no real intention of ever buying it, but I went with the uncommon as the closest to useful version. For Wonder Woman, I chose to go with Child of Clay – decent stats and a potentially useful ability.
Given my initials, and even with my confusion about the eligibility of my middle initial, With Great Power was an auto include as a basic action.
These days, Gearing Up for those vets who have it, is just a more expensive version of Investigation. But Gearing Up starts with ‘G’ and Investigation doesn’t. And none of the other BACs that started with ‘G’ looked any better to me.
For my final two slots I decided to go with Green Devil Mask and White Tiger, the latter primarily for the global. With a little luck, the GDMs would winnow my opponents’ fields, allowing my Guy Gardners to hit for large chunks of damage.
How did it work?
Game 1:
Z-Q-M
Lots of Zombies and Plague Marines here. Both of us were running Green Devil Mask which meant that with the White Tiger global any field of more than two characters were at risk of disappearing.
Not that you could tell by the way my opponent rolled. I had my Green Devil Masks trigger four times in this game. Here’s what happened, or rather didn’t happen to my opponents field:
GDM Trigger Surviving Non-Sidekick Character Dice
#1 6/7
#2 3/3
#3 2/3
#4 3/5
TOTAL 14/18
We went to time with me ahead on life 14 to 7. I drew Grodd on my last turn. I hadn’t landed him all game, despite purchasing him relatively early. My opponent would have a last turn of his own, if he survived. My opponent had enough of a wall my only hope of inflicting more damage was to land Grodd, who my opponent couldn’t block. If I could get him on Level 3, I would win outright, as long as I was able to pay the fielding cost. No Grodd on the initial roll, and worried about Grodd’s L3 fielding cost, I probably rerolled more than was wise. Still No Grodd.
On his turn, my opponent slipped just enough attackers by to reduce me to 7 life, allowing him to win by 1 life.
0-1
Game 2:
Bye. Free win.
1-1
Game 3:
A-G-R
Gorilla Grodd, (Zombie) Gladiator, Red Hood, Tabaxi Rogue and various other mask characters.
I was never really in this one. Poked out his Tabaxi Rogue with Weather Wizard a couple of times, but that was about all I accomplished.
He destroyed me relatively quickly
1-2
Game 4:
We only play 3 official rounds, but Mr. A-G-R had an alternative team ready, and since he destroyed me so quickly in the previous round we decided to play another game where he’d swith to it.
This one relied on the Ant-Man with an Awaken ability which makes him unblockable, and the Giganta with the spin up global. He also had R Goliath for a buff global.
He’d hit me with 3 L3 Ant-Men (total) which, with some buffs had me down to 2 life. On my last turn he had only a Level 1 Guy Gardner in his field. I fielded a Level 3 Weather Wizard and used his ability to KO my opponent’s Guy Gardner. I had 1 Guy Gardner of my own which I think was Level 1, a Level 3 Weather Wizard (4-5), a Green Goblin which I used a fist to spin up from Level 2 to Level 3 (5-5) and 2 Sidekicks (each 2-2 after the Goblin Lord boost).
I didn’t expect to survive my opponent’s next turn, so I attacked with everything without bothering to do the math. My opponent counted up the damage and mistakenly gotten 21 even thought that’s actually only 19 total damage. We already had our teams half put away by the time a spectator pointed out the mistake. The opponent and the spectator think my Guy Gardner was on Level 2, which would have given me 1 more A and the win,
2-2
Post-Mortem:
If I’d been clearer on the rules I probably would have stuck with the alliteration idea and included Pym Particles and Pepper Potts in place of Green Devil Mask and White Tiger. The common Pym Particles likely would have combined well with Guy Gardner. While the common Pepper Potts from the Thor set would have given me a ramp option besides a 4-cost basic action die.
The actual team wasn’t terrible. I’ve definitely had better nights on the dice rolling front – I never managed to land Gorilla Grodd on a character face once all night, which hurt.
Weather Wizard was more useful than I was expecting. For a 4-cost, the ability to deal 2 damage to one character die on fielding seemed underwhelming to me. But it does remove a Level 1 of Level 2 Tabaxi Rogue. And I’m sure there are other nuisance cards it can be helpful with. Still not a fantastic card, but better than I originally thought.
Thanks for reading, and Happy Rolling!
Son of L