Justice League North

The theme for the night was Single Affiliation (no Villains).  No better time to get the Justice League back to the table.  Also, it helps that I am hyped for Justice to come out.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Justice League North.

I went with a very classic build here and focused on Retaliation as one of the primary wincons.  Cyborg and Batman were the sources for that.  Also, since I would be fielding lots of Justice Leaguers, Batman was an excellent source of Life Gain.

The big problem with Justice League Retaliation is that most of them have big butts that are hard to KO.  Enter Katana.  She is small enough to become easy fodder.  Here ability will also help me get her out easily as long as my Opponent rolls ? Energy.  Batman will help negate the life loss here.

In the event that directly getting Katana KO’ed becomes difficult, I thought Firestorm might be helpful here (hint… he wasn’t).  The idea was to mainly use him to block and then direct that damage towards Katana.

No Justice League build is complete without Arthur Curry.  A card so good, they reprinted it for the upcoming set.  Discounts are always a good thing on this type of a Team.

Wonder Woman Relections was put on the Team because I messed up.  I actually wanted Ambassador of Peace, but brought the promo with me.  Turns out that this card does not have the Justice League Affiliation, while the regular version does.  Oops.  Reflections is not a bad card here, but a little pricier than I intended.

Since I messed up on Wonder Woman, I had to go with the good old Overcrushing Martian.  The original plan was to use John Jones for his “when attacks” ability.  Reflections ruined that plan and I had to improvise.

Finally, I had to have Superman.  Man of Tomorrow was just a no-brainer addition for me.  The big guy just gets bigger with more Leaguers.  He also became the alternate wincon.  Overcrushing Giant Superman.  To make that a reality, Thrown Car was a necessity.

The final add was Thrown Brick.  I needed a way to Ramp to some of these characters and Brick is such a great tool for that.  It also gave me yet another option to KO Katana.

Let’s see how it played.

Game 1:

Up against our resident youngster.  I again tried to build slowly here, but she seemed to struggle with the concept of Retaliation.  She attacked at every opportunity, and I just threw out my Katana army in front of everyone with a high enough attack.  She was worn down pretty quick and Giant Superman came flying in at the end for the kill shot.

1-0

Game 2:

This was a Grey Hunter/Staff build (he missed the memo on the Affiliation theme… no biggy).  His plan was to get the Hunters out with Staff, and have Absorbing Man Active to double Hunter’s ability.  He also had SR Beholder from FUS to allow him to KO 1 Hunter with an action die to KO all of them.  OTK if it goes off right.

I flubbed my first roll by having a stupid Sidekick come up on my turn.  I was behind on the Thrown Brick train and my Opponent scooped up the remainder after my whiff.  It also didn’t help that my Katana’s did not seem to know what level 1 was.  She only rolled on level 2 or 3 all night (normally not a bad thing).  I poked when I could and got some Retaliation through until the Hunters showed up.  Then it was a little harder to get through.  He started his engine to clear me out even when he did not have lethal, just to force me to reroll characters.

Eventually, I rolled enough back to outnumber him after he cleared me out.

2-0

Game 3:

The match I was excited for:  Justice League vs Justice League.  We decided to go a little off book and silly here and play each card exactly as it is written.  This meant that, as written, Retaliation damage would trigger on both side when a JL character was KO’ed.  Not right, but hilarious.  I managed to get my Retaliators out faster than him and got ahead in the race.  I missed Thrown Car the first go around with Superman, and took a giant hit when some opposing Overcrushing Martians came at me.  That was his big swing, and I managed to take out his Zatana (which would have stopped my Overcrush) with a Brick on my final turn, when Thrown Car FINALLY showed up.  Giant Superman FTW.

3-0

Post-Mortem:

This was fun to go back and revisit some of the classic Justice League cards.  The different options for damage from this Team were great.  Retaliation is one of those mechanics that puts your Opponent in the bad choices situations, which are always fun.  This type of Retaliation is much more fun than the broken Black Manta garbage that also came from this set.

I am looking forward to trying out the new members of the Justice League when Justice drops later this month.  I am sure they will take an already fun team to play with and give them even more tools to use.

There was nothing groundbreaking with this build.  Just a fun Team to mess around with.  What are some of your favorite Justice League Builds?What Cards are you most excited to add to this Team from the Justice Campaign Box?  Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo