Power Range-ers

Format: Casual Golden Age (Modern recommended)

After last week’s meta melting pot, I wanted to try something a little more focused. Seeing how powerful the Dreadnaught is, I wanted to make a team that didn’t just use Range as removal, but also as a way to get the strategy going. Enter the…

Power Range-ers

The Team:  You could say this team is de-Ranged.

The key combo is to get Range with Venerable Dreadnaught, with Primaris Aggressor active, to convert my removal into ramp. In theory, once that combo’s on, it should both make my opponent’s life difficult and make it really easy to purchase more characters.

To take advantage of this, I wanted a way to use Range without losing my characters when attacking. I went for Kree Soldier. Not only is he his own form of ramp, but Infiltrate allows me to pull him back and use him turn after turn, while still hurting my opponent.

With me having a huge ramp engine, I needed something to do with it. Enter Iron Fist and Batman. Iron Fist can serve as a nice bruiser when my opponent has no characters, and Batman serves as fantastic mass removal (not to mention his beefy stats).

Seeing as I wanted fists for Iron Fist, I wanted something to use those with, so I put in Haymaker for the global (with the action, alongside Iron Fist, serving as a nice secondary win condition). With the team depending on fists so much, using Jarnbjorn, for the sidekick-fixing global, was an easy call. And seeing as I was expecting fists by the boatload, Kree Captain’s global was also easy to add, to purchase my 4-5 costs much more easily (T1 Dreadnaught, going first, is a nightmare to deal with).

As for the rest of the team, Blob is there to counter Green Devil Mask, and Resurrection is there for some early-game ramp and churn.

With that said, on to the games!

Game 1:

To start off, I went up against a Stompa team (yes, the 9-cost. Yes, he actually purchased him). I saw GDM on the other side, so Blob was bought immediately. I did a massive misplay where I didn’t attack with Dreadnaught when his Stompa was about to hit the field. Dreadnaught went back to his card. However, the ones who didn’t get sent back were my Iron Fists. I bought all three dice for him, and they made a massive impact. They’d reliably have 5-6 attack, and they got really hard to block pretty quick. He had one giant Stompa, but I had several big Iron Fists. I also had Batman, which came in handy for removal seeing as he had no villains fielded. In the end, I managed to outpace him for the win even with Dreadnaught sent back to his card.

1-0

Game 2:

This time, I went up against some Orks. WAAAGH! This time, I went for Dreadnaught and Kree Soldiers. I wanted to get the Aggressor out too, but he was actually too slow; I got Dreadnaught out, with all of my Kree Soldiers. I’d attack with all of them, use Range, then Infiltrate them back to use this again next turn. Since there was no GDM this time, I didn’t have to worry about a complete board wipe. I just wore my opponent down with Infiltrate + Range, and he had to pay way too much energy to re-field his Orcs. (He probably should’ve put Warbiker on his team) Eventually, I just had to attack with everything, wipe his board, and deal the necessary damage. I won.

2-0

Game 3:

This opponent used Dreadnaught as well, but combined it with Batiri Battle Stack for ramp. Batiri was a smart choice, as he was much harder to ping out with Range once she had several on the board. That game had one key turn where I needed to field Dreadnaught, as he was the only high-defense character I had available to roll and she had her Dreadnaught with a lot of characters coming up. And he didn’t roll. She won the following turn.

2-1

Post-Mortem:

-Using Infiltrate with Range was an interesting idea, and it worked nicely overall. I need to find a way to better protect my Kree Soldiers against opposing Dreadnaughts though.

-With Dreadnaught being a huge part of the local meta, having high-toughness characters will get increasingly important. Suddenly, Blob is significantly more useful than Shriek.

-That Iron Fist makes for some pretty potent offense when combined with Swarm. A team built around him, tons of fist Swarm, and some way to get him through unblocked (or giving him Overcrush) could be viable, though I see him more as a secondary win con in an Overcrush build (e.g. he’s easy to put alongside the 8-cost Thanos). Just keep in mind that the true value with him is attacking with multiple copies. 3 Iron Fist, at 2A each, with 5 fists in Reserve = 21 damage. This guy’s no joke.

-If I had faced off against The Joker: Mr. J, I would’ve gotten destroyed tonight (since almost everything I use is a fist). Good thing none of my locals use him yet.

Overall, if tonight teaches us anything, it’s that Dreadnaught is just going to be way too present in the meta if this keeps up. Definitely looking forward to the OP Black Widow now.