Around two months ago (before I started doing write-ups for this site) I ran a Martian Manhunter – Danger Room team. The idea was to use the uncommon Manhunter from GAF, whose ability is that Villains cannot block while he’s active, and then use the rare Danger Room to make all of my opponent’s characters (mine too, but that wasn’t the important part) into villains. It turned out to be just a little bit too slow to be truly effective, but I always intended to revisit the general concept.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Casey Jones Danger Room
My initial thought was to use Batgirl – Stealth Bat and/or Casey Jones – Lunatic Vigilante, neither of whom can be blocked by Sidekicks or Villains, but the level 3 A on both is 4, so I’d need a lot of them, or some stat buffs to get to lethal. Looking at Casey Jones cards, Mutant Hunter looked to be a better option. In combination with Danger Room he could occupy all of my opponent’s blockers, allowing all my other attackers to get their damage through.
Batiri Battle Stacks provide both ramp on the early turns and healthy amounts of damage when I’m ready to swing. Rip Hunter’s Chalkboard team went on the team so I could get the first BatStack out quickly in order to start swarming. Acererak went on the team for his global, and Wererat to potentially give the BatStacks an extra buff. Dopplegangers, primarily so I could have extra BatStacks if I felt the need.
BACs were The Outsider for the global, as I was expecting to have unblocked Villains, and Misdirection, as a backup plan to get Casey Jones on the field if I couldn’t roll him normally.
I went with the uncommon Madame Masque as my last card. Mostly because when I received my prize packs from the latest round of the Achievement League I received a couple more copies of the card. With nothing else suggesting itself to me, I decided I may as well go with her.
Game 1:
Earth X Captain America team with its own Rare Danger Room. He got a solid hit in, but I was able to get the swing for lethal set up before he could.
1-0
Game 2:
SR Yuan-Ti Pureblood and lots of cheap action dice. He got a Yuan-Ti out early and started burning me. It was on a 1D face, so I bought a Danger Room earlier than usual, hoping to use it to make her a villain so I could ping her out with the Danger Room global. Problem with that: I missed the roll, the re-roll and the extra re-roll from the Acererak global. He kept burning away, putting me in a hole I was never able to dig out of.
1-1
Game 3:
Parallax, Golden PXG, Imprisoned and The Front Line. He got two of the Imprisoned dice, and was basically rolling all of his dice every turn, so he could use the Red Dragon global freeing my Imprisoned characters, than recapturing them and anything else I might have fielded with his other Imprisoned die. Then he used The Front Line, and even though his Field was mostly sidekicks, with my field empty, that was enough.
2-1
Game 4:
Warriors Three team. Overcrushing Volstagg (of course), with the Immortal versions of Fandral and Hogun. These teams deal huge amounts of damage once Volstagg and one of his friends hit the field. I wasn’t sure my team would be fast enough to cope with that, so I did something that wasn’t in my original plans: I actually bought Acererak.
Acererak has D of 6-8-9 and while I only had one Acererak die, I also had 2 Doppelganger dice which could potentially become Acererak dice. It didn’t actually happen that way, mostly due to the order in which I drew the dice, but it was part of my thinking when I made the purchase.
Acererak did prove to be a very useful blocker, and I was able to get Casey and Danger Room lined up so I could swing for lethal.
This was the first time I’ve ever beaten a Warriors Three team, so that was very satisfying.
2-2
Post-Mortem:
I thought the team worked fairly well. The games I lost I think were more due to bad rolls or misplays on my part than a failure of the team itself. Although having a removal option might have helped against Yuan-Ti.
Thanks for reading, and happy rolling!
-Son of L