It’s Not Easy Being Green

As you may have seen, we had a blast at the TOTM last weekend. This tournament gave me a chance to play with a card I always liked, namely Green Lantern: Willpower. I liked it so much, in fact, that I decided to try to make a team showcasing how busted he can be. But as I soon figured out…

It’s Not Easy Being Green

The Team:  I’m seeing Doppel.

Format: Legacy League

The core combo here is to use Doppelganger with Green Lantern. Essentially, use Doppelganger on Green Lantern so that together, they give +4A to your other characters (and +2A to each other). With multiple Doppelganger dice, the effect stacks (seeing as this is a “When attacks” ability), which can get out of hand quickly. Could you imagine giving everything +10A?

To support this strategy, I need ramp. I went for Professor X (hey, he’s still legal!), Kree Captain (to make Green Lantern easier to get to), and Batiri Battle Stack. Batiri also has the advantage of being a good secondary use for Doppelganger, which worked well for me in the past.

*Note: I went for the weaker Kree Captain because I have a gentleman’s agreement with another player. He has a harder time building teams, so I don’t run his cards to avoid getting his team banned. He had the good Kree Cap, and the 2-cost is already banned. So I went for that one. It was just for the global anyway.

I threw in a couple of pieces to support my win condition: Madame Web (in case my opponent has a lot of blockers) and Haymaker (for the global; works especially well with Batiri).

This brings me to control and removal. I threw in Blob to counter GDM, Wonder Woman to counter Static Field/Kate Bishop, and finally…Confront The Mighty. The only piece of removal in this build, and the only action I expect to purchase. It COULD be used against me (e.g. they use it against Blob), but it’s a risk I have to take here; I can’t avoid removal in a build like this.

And with that said, on to the games!

Game 1:

I started the evening against Johnny Storm + Hulk. My opponent went for his win con, but did not get the best of rolls. His bag control ended up suffering as a result, and I took advantage; he hardly had the time to get any characters on the field. By T5, I had GL, Doppel, and enough characters to deal more than lethal damage (27 damage). I won.

1-0

Game 2:

Next up, time to face off against a Collector + Nobby control team. Not the most fun sounding of matchups at first glance. This matchup was defined by Confront The Mighty. I got Collector off the field with Confront and Blob’d him so he couldn’t come back. And I did all this while maintaining bag control (thanks PXG!), allowing me to continue buying my win con while this was happening. Eventually, GL + Doppelganger hit the field, and my opponent had no way of stopping the combo by then. I attacked with everything (32 damage) and won, around T5 or 6.

2-0

Game 3:

Next up, against a Atlantis + Widow’s bite rush team (no Wong as he was already banned). I had horrible rolls at first, and he decided to be aggressive. He got me down to 12 life quickly, forcing me to gamble and aim for one big turn. With GL + Doppelganger on the way…the combo failed to roll. I could’ve recovered with one more turn after, but he didn’t give me the opportunity. A rush of Widows and sidekicks (used with Atlantis) gave him just enough damage to win the following turn.

2-1

Game 4:

I followed this up by going up against Dragons. And this…was another weird one. He got his typical strategy set up quick (T1 Ring of Winter + Resurrection, aiming to field his Dragon T3). I had sub-optimal rolls again, but not nearly as bad. I eventually got my bag under control, but by then I had already taken a lot of damage. On 2 separate occasions, I had the opportunity to roll GL + Doppelganger. On both occasions, GL failed to appear on both roll and reroll. You can only miss so many rolls against dragons, and my opponent eventually ran me over with Breath Weapon. He won.

2-2

Game 5:

I finished off the evening against Poxwalker + Yuan-ti. So a team going for a giant overwhelming attack vs a team that keeps a lean field by attacking with unblockable Poxwalkers. That went around like you’d expect. He got some big punches in with Poxwalker, but had no response to the Doppelganger + Green Lantern combo. It took a bit longer to set up due to weird rolls, but it was just a matter of time. When I got things set up, he took 37 damage, and I won.

3-2

Post-Mortem:

-In the end, making multiple copies of Green Lantern becomes overkill really quickly. Just one Doppelganger with GL was enough on each of my three wins tonight.

-Speaking of which, I think this team is better than my 3-2 record shows. On both losses, I was one roll away from victory (twice, in my game against Dragons), and Green Lantern repeatedly would not roll. That will happen sometimes.

-Confront The Mighty was a good call for this build. I was otherwise blatantly lacking in removal, so that BAC came in handy on more than one occasion.

-Batiri was not really a factor, as GL+Doppelganger was significantly faster than the Batiri + Doppelganger combo. He was primarily useful for cheap fists to use Kree Cap or Haymaker’s globals. You could substitute him for any 2-cost fist character with decent stats (I could’ve gone with Tsarina if I felt really mean; she’s not banned yet!).

Overall, a good strategy, and a fun team, despite some…suboptimal rolls. Definitely a team worth revisiting for fun sometime.