Hey Dice Masters! This will probably be my last article in this slot for the foreseeable future. We have got a new (old from the former What Have You Played Thread) writer who has agreed to join us here at Dice Masters North. Gord has already given me a few submissions which I have posted on the site, so I decided it might be best to skip the middle man and give him his own article. He has always built some interesting Team Builds and was the person to discover the “Infinite Giganta Damage Team” and the ridiculous “Samantha Wilson/Spot/Ally Monstrosity” that we have covered recently. Hopefully you enjoy his contributions going forward.
Onto today’s “What Have You Played”: The Sunday Achievement League. Like previous builds for this League, this one was built to check as many boxes as possible in the League. In case you have not read up on this format, you can check out the original article here. This one was built to cover these build challenges:
- Using only Uncommon Cards
- Have a 20 dice Team with maximum dice on each card
- Each card title (excluding BAC’s) could not have more than one vowel in the title (but the vowel could repeat).
Hopefully, it could also score some Gameplay or Win-Based challenges that I am really behind on.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Batmanta Hush
This is a very basic build, with a very basic strategy. Hush was really the main part of the engine here. He served a few different purposes. He could be ramp and churn, fodder for Black Manta, or a decent attacker if big enough. Black Manta was his main partner in crime. His Retaliation damage when partnered with Hush is just stupid. In order for the Hush machine to work, I needed a Bat. In order to meet the vowel requirements, it was Nightwing or Batman. Both are good choices, but Nightwing is cheaper. Easy choice here. His “when fielded” ability is not too bad either. The plan would be to bring him out as a Villain, ping out something, and flip him to a Bat when needed. Katana was my back-up plan. With all these Villains, she should be beefy and a great body to attack with. Blob is simple removal.
Villainous Pact is a no-brainer when looking for ramp on a Villain build. It also gave yet another win-con against a non-villain Team. Pandora’s Box was there for the Global. When I was short on Villains, this would give me another source.
Let’s see how it ran.
Game 1:
My opponent was built for the life gain challenge (gain 20 life in one game). His main source was gold old Beholder (BFF) and Long Live the Resistance. When Beholder was assigned to attack, he was able to use all of the BAC’s (think Ultraman without the Kryptonite).
I decided to go with the direct damage route in this game and try and score on that challenge (win with only using direct damage). Pretty simple strategy here: Buy Hush, Black Manta, and Nightwing. KO Hush as much as possible while making Sidekicks and other characters Villains when necessary. I also decided to go with the challenge of buying my dice in numerical order. This meant I had to buy all my Hush dice first before I could move on to the 3 costs, etc. Due to this handcuff, I was not able to purchase Blob when he would have been really helpful to have.
The game went how you would expect. Efficient Retaliation damage, but the life gain kept him alive (significantly). I made an error on one turn where I attacked with some Katana’s, but thankfully they were blocked. That would have cost me the win-based challenge right there. I ended up dealing him lethal at least twice (he did manage to gain 20 life, and I did manage to eventually get him to zero) using only Retaliation. Blob would have been helpful here to deal with Beholder, but I handcuffed myself.
1-0
Game 2:
Mr. Fixit was the opponent here. This was also against one of our newer players, so the build had some holes that we discussed later. I decided to go with combat damage for this game, so Black Manta would be sitting out this game, and Nigthwing would be staying bad. Knowing that Fixit would be my biggest issue, I would want to be timing Blob for this game.
This time, I focused on getting Hush, Nightwing, and Katana out as quick as possible. I used Nightwing to KO Sidekicks when possible. Then came Mr. Fixit (faster than anticipated), armed with some Pym Particle… on level 3. Given the choice of taking the Overcrush or eating the damage, I chose to eat the 9 to the face. That forced Fixit back into the bag cycle and gave me time to set things up. I could never get Blob to come out when Fixit was around. The second duel with the big Grey guy went better as I had enough blockers to deal with his beefiness and prevent the damage at the expense of my entire field.
One crazy roll later, everything came back along with Blob. I pinged off some guys with Nightwing, captured the biggest remaining blocker with Blob, and managed to have enough damage to ram through for lethal. All combat damage achievement unlocked!
2-0
I did spend some time talking about his Team. He had a great concept, but I showed him where he could have made things significantly worse for me. Teaching new players how to destroy you in the future in part of the fun of the game.
Game 3:
This time, I was up against an all super rare Team. Highlighted by Darkseid, some Black Lanterns, and Valindra Shadowmantle. I have not had a chance to see this last one yet, so I was hopefully going to see how she worked. Hitting my main challenges for the day, I decided I would just see where this game took me. If I could avoid the Black Manta/Hush douchebaggery, I would.
Early game, I got a Katana out and managed to swing into an open field for 7 damage. That put me ahead of the clock that I knew would be coming when the Black Lanterns hit. Darkseid came out and he ramped like crazy. However, I managed to sit a Blob on top of the King of Apokolips and put a stop to that craziness. Then Valindra showed up and my Sidekicks went away. She is super efficient at keeping little stuff off the field. I need to get her at some point, but for now I just watched as I couldn’t keep chumps around to block with. Back to the game. Seeing as she was my biggest threat, I managed to sit another Blob on her to take care of the big boys. That left Sidekicks to ping off with Nightwing and a final attack for lethal. I got lucky to have the Blobs when I did, as they slowed down his high cost Team.
3-0
Post-Mortem:
Black Manta/Hush is one of those things you do not want to play too much. It is almost too effective in what it does. However, for what I needed the Team to do, it fit the build. Katana has great synergy with Villains and gives you a big body to attack with. Nightwing proved really useful with his ability, but he could have been almost any Bat-Family character to fit in here. Blob is excellent in what he does. This was my first time getting really good use out of him. If you want something difficult to remove to take out a big opposing piece, you may want to take a look at this guy.
In all honesty, there are other pieces that I wanted to add to this Team but the achievement goals really limited what I could put on the Team. Definitely, you can make this significantly better, but this was one of those builds that served a specific purpose.
What changes would you make to this Team if you took it outside of an achievement-based build? Let us know in the comments below.
As always… Thank you for reading!
– jourdo
P.S. Just a friendly reminder that we are still accepting submissions for the March Team of the Month. You can check out all of the details here.