I’ll discuss the team I brought and the games I played shortly, but I’m going to begin and end this article by talking about a card whose die was never purchased (at least in the head to head game I played with that opponent) and whose global was never used. Because a realization about that card (Tabaxi Rogue) and how it interacts with a certain other card (Hush) was the most important thing that happened to me at this event.
Format: Golden Age Constructed.
I hope I don’t scare readers into not finishing the article by starting like this, but, to be honest, my team for this week barely qualifies as a team. It was more a collection of interesting cards I decided to use together.
This was mostly because the group had discussed a few non-standard “silly fun” formats to possibly use this week and I couldn’t remember what, if anything, we’d actually settled on.
I didn’t want to put a lot of effort into a team only to find said team was unsuited to an oddball format. So I just didn’t put a whole lot of effort into the team in the first place.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Dick Grayson – Hush
I decided to start with a Bebop/Rocksteady combo. All of the Bebop or Rocksteady abilities require the other to be active, but the best of them all is Rocksteady: Armed and Dangerous.
A 3-5-6 base Attack with Overcrush who cannot be removed by ordinary blocking? I can work with that.
Next I decided to go with Hush ramp, and I added in the common Osborn to lower the cost of fielding Villains. Hush is 0-0-1, which is certainly manageable, but Bebop and Rocksteady are both 0-1-2 fielding. I figured a little help with that might not hurt.
And, of course, to use Hush ramp, you need Bat-family around. So on went R Dick Grayson, primarily for the Batmaker global, but his ability can certainly be useful.
Common Utility Belt came next. Being able to give Bat-family +3A didn’t seem too bad an idea, especially when I have the Batmaker global at my disposal.
Add The Outsider BAC for the global and that’s the crux of the team.
(I was going to put common Nightwing: Escrima Sticks on the team for the action dice discount to make it potentially easier to buy Utility Belts. Then I went to get the card, only to discover/remember that despite it being a common, I somehow have never pulled one from the Batman packs I’ve bought, and don’t have one in my collection.)
How did it work?
Game 1:
This was a mixed bag of Yu-Gi-Oh and D & D. He relied a lot on Batiri Battle Stacks and a common Blue Eyes White Dragon who, when it attacks, forces the opponent to KO one of their characters.
He also had Common Tabaxi Rogue. He never bought it, and I don’t think either of us ever used its global, but just seeing it there meant I decided not to buy any Hush dice because I didn’t want to risk them clogging my bag later in the game. He’d brought Resurrection as one of his BACs and I ended up up using its global as my main source of ramp.
I got a couple of decent shots in early, but once he got his BEWD out to stay, things swung in his favor. He’d be knocking out two character with it from attacking every turn (one from its ability, one from combat damage) and eventually he had enough characters I wasn’t able block to give him lethal.
0-1
Game 2:
Rare Black Adam, Rare Surtur team. He didn’t have anything in the way of blockers on the early turns and I got a couple clear shots where I did some hefty amounts of damage – something like 13 or 14 in two turns, IIRC.
He got Adam and Surtur out after that and started chipping away. He was knocking a lot of my stuff out with Surtur, but a lot of the characters he was KOing were Sidekicks, so he wasn’t doing that much chip damage with Adam, and he was giving me a bit of ramp.
Despite wiping my field multiple times, he never had the opportunity for lethal, and I was eventually able to purchase Dick Grayson and use him to deliver the coup de grace.
1-1
Game 3:
Mimic/PXG ramp and a lot of nasty win cons. In my case, he went for Kal-L: From Another Earth. Pay 2 shields, and he can only be blocked by Team Superman characters.
A Level 3 Kal-L combined with one of the Call to Action Basic Action dice I’d so thoughtfully brought for his use was 11 damage that I couldn’t block. Do it twice and it’s game over.
1-2
Post-Mortem:
This was not a particularly serious team. If I won with it great, if I didn’t – well, it’s it not like I’d put something together that I’d expected to be unstoppable.
My biggest takeaway from the event was actually something fairly subtle – that the existence of Tabaxi Rogue changes how players have to approach using UC Hush for ramp.
This event was probably the last time I will ever include Hush and a Batmaker global on the same team, at least where there’s any chance my opponents can bring Tabaxi Rogue.
Tabaxi Rogue and the Batmaker global means if I put Hush out, my opponent can use the global against me, KOing Hush and giving me burn damage. I would get some ramp out of the deal, but burn damage for ramp doesn’t strike me as a great trade .
So if I want to use Hush ramp in the future, I’ll be including a chap Batclan character – probably on a Flip card,, so I can keep my Hush dice in the field at need.
I’ve been playing Dice Masters long enough to consider myself an “Old Dog”, but not so old that I can’t learn new tricks. And I’m certainly aware that the release of new cards in a new set can change the value and utility of existing cards. But I hadn’t thought about how Tabaxi Rogue might effect Hush until it was right in front of me.
As always, thanks for reading and happy rolling!
-Son of L