Format: Casual Golden Age, Modern recommended
With Canadian Nationals behind us, back to casual teams this week. Time to build a team based on a meme. And a classic one at that. Let’s have some fun.
It’s A Trap!
The Team: It’s A Trap!
This strategy is entirely based on R Skeleton Key. I aim to put a ton of traps on the field, make those Keys huge, and attack, attack, attack!
The problem with traps, though, is that my opponent can trigger them, they leave the field, and my keys get puny again. So I went for traps that my opponent will not be able to, or really not want, to trigger. U Kobold Trap is guaranteed to stay on if there’s no adventurer on the opposing team. And C Green Devil Mask…enough has been said about it. People will do almost anything not to trigger it. I also threw in the U Poison Dart Trap for laughs (was hoping to troll sidekick teams).
Tomb Dwarf was included to re-field my traps more quickly if they happen to trigger. Haymaker was there to give my Skeleton Keys Overcrush and also to push extra damage with the global. Acererak was intended to counter Scarlet Witch (it did that so well that my opponents didn’t even buy her).
As for Batiri, well, he got in as a “just in case”; if I use Kobold Trap and my opponent fields adventurers, I can buy my Batiris for free and they act as a secondary win condition. Shriek serves for blanking as usual, and Resurrection serves for ramp.
With that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
Boom Boom + Morph was my first challenge of the night. What stuck out immediately to my opponent: my purchase costs are puny. He’s right, and I just set up lightning fast. He brought me Unstable Canister, which I used to keep his field lean as I kept the pressure on with Skeleton Key. By the end (and our match wasn’t that long), my Keys were 6-7A each. Not bad for a 2-cost! He couldn’t stop the Skeleton Key rush. I won.
1-0
Game 2:
Game 2 was against Nobby + Collector. This one didn’t go as well. This team doesn’t have targeted removal and doesn’t have any damage mitigation (other than Shriek). So while my only strategy here was to be the aggro, my opponent just went for Collector and outpaced my damage. I did get Green Devil Mask out to limit Collector’s options, but my opponent played around this brilliantly. She won.
1-1
Game 3:
For my final match, I went up against a crazy Swarm team with Parademon, Darkseid, the Grabstab that doubles Swarm draws…you get the picture. It’s very strong, but it takes a long time to set up. And that’s where it hurt him; early Skeleton keys, with a couple of traps, meant I was attacking at every opportunity. Before he could get any decent setup, he was down to 4 life, and by that point, he didn’t have enough characters to stop me. I attacked with everything, and used a sidekick buffed by the Haymaker global to win.
2-1
Post-Mortem:
-That should be pretty obvious, but Skeleton Key hits hard! Sure, it’s not the most efficient strategy (seeing as you also need to buy tons of traps, temporarily clogging your bag), but once it builds up, it’s hard to stop.
-My costs were so low that I hardly needed any ramp, really. Churn was more of an issue. Maybe Cake should’ve been in instead of Resurrection?
-This team would’ve benefited from some targeted removal. Someone suggested Billy Club, which could work. Maybe I’ll consider that if I revisit the build.
-I didn’t use Tomb Dwarf all night. He was a neat idea, but I was too busy buying my Skeleton Keys and my traps to bother with him. Plus, if I’m buying a 4-cost in this team, it’s Green Devil Mask, every time.
-I didn’t buy Haymaker all night. I already had too much stuff to buy and field. To push my Keys through, I should’ve used something else, either mass removal or some way of tying up blockers (e.g. Madame Web, though as a 4-cost, she’d run into the same problem as Tomb Dwarf).
So overall, this was a fun little aggro build. Will I revisit this? With Avengers Infinity about to come out, not anytime soon. Tons of stuff coming next week; I’m hyped!