It was a hot and sunny Saturday, on August 22, 2020, and I joined in on the fun from with our friends across the pond’s MODPDMUKGE event. Here’s a quick report of my team and how my day went. You can also check out Ep14 of A Double Double ‘n Dice podcast for a conversation about the event.
What Did You Play?
The Team: #rarespider-man4ever
I built my team around Spider-Man: Public Menace from the new Infinity Gauntlet set. This is a card I have been talking about since September of 2019, when I was lucky enough to draft him in during the Preview Draft at Worlds in Memphis. When Spider-Man attacks, I must spin target character die to an energy face. So I can spin something annoying of my opponent’s, or I can spin one of my own to an energy that may help me for a Global Ability, but I must spin something. Could I really have played anything else???
I paired Spider-Man with Eddie Guerrero: I Steal, which also has a when attacks ability. He allows me to move all the energy in my opponent’s reserve pool to their used pile. Since both Eddie & Spider-Man are when attacks abilities that I control, I can choose the order of effects. So I can spin your character down to an energy face with Spider-Man and then send all of the energy to your used pile. This is helpful against the Static Field or Kate Bishop Global Ability, which push back attacking character dice. This is ESPECIALLY important on my team, because I brought Static Field against opposing unblockable effects. I don’t want my opponent pushing back my characters, I want to win with combat damage.
Finally, at the suggestion of our very own Matt J, I added in Angela: Asgardian of the Galaxy. She gives all my character dice Infiltrate. Seemed like a fun twist and I love the infiltrate mechanic.
The rest of the team was there for utility – Global Abilities to buff characters (Hulk), help me buy characters for cheaper (Kree Captain), prep dice from my bag (Atlas), push back attacking character dice (Static Field), or Intimidate (Gazer) opposing dice out of my way. I included the 4 cost Becky Lynch: Straight Fire, for her prep global, which allows me to prep the first die I purchase each turn if I pay a shield. In doing so, I disqualified myself from Andy’s Gauntlet, which he laid down on The Ministry of Dice podcast (which is super awesome, and you should totally listen to it, if you don’t listen already. After listening to A Double Double ‘n Dice, of course!)
I was on the fence with my last action, so I decided to put in Stretch. The Global Ability still is a bit confusing to me, but I could see how it might be useful in the right build. Mostly I wanted the 2 cost action, in case things got out of hand. If my used pile was a massive mess, I could use it to select dice to place in my bag. However, in this competitive meta, I figured if it got so bad I needed to buy Stretch, I was probably out of luck!
The one piece I didn’t have room for was Black Widow: Agent. I considered putting her on the team, as I was worried about some direct damage strategies, but I couldn’t decide which character to remove to make room for her, and then the deadline for team submissions passed me by…so the team was set.
You can see 27 of the team lists here.
Game 1:
My first game was against Briton El-Tod. This was the first time I had ever played him and he had an optimized Becky Lynch: Maiden Ireland team, with her ringside announcers Booker T and Jerry Lawler for force block and double damage. However, for both of us, the rolls weren’t quite optimized. It was very back and forth, with both of us keeping lean fields and pushing for as much damage each turn as we could. El-Tod took game 1, and I took game 2. With 40 seconds left in the match, we tied the round.
0-0-1
Game 2:
In Round two, I played fellow Canadian General Nemesis. His team was built around the new Super Rare Thor: Jormungand’s Fear from Infinity Gauntlet. His ability reads: When Thor is active, when you field a character die, deal 2 damage to target character die or player. He was then using The Collector Global Ability to field sidekicks and deal me damage.
Remember how I said I was worried about direct damage? Here it was. I did make General Nemesis work for the win, and I was able to bury his Thor in his used pile a couple of times with Spider-Man, but in the end, he took the match 2-0.
0-1-1
Game 3:
Game 3 brought me a match against Mike Ingledue. Mike brought a team that included the uncommon Black Widow. She can only be blocked by sidekicks and she has Overcrush. Mike was using the Avengers ID card to make her an Avenger (with the Global Ability on that card) and then buff her with the action so that lots of damage would come through. He was also running the Super Rare Turk Barrett, but it didn’t really come around to help him out. In the first game, Mike used the new Drax: The Pacifist to stop me fielding my Spider-Man, so I had to do it. I bought Becky Lynch. In game two, I was able to use Spider-Man. I took this match against Mike 2-0.
1-1-1
Game 4:
I was paired against fellow DM-Norther, Reg, for this round. Reg was running a God Catcher team. He had quite a field of God Catchers going in the first game, and I came up with a turn that drew 3 Gazer dice. If they had rolled, I may have had a chance. Only one rolled. In hindsight, I should have bought one of Reg’s Confront the Mighty dice to deal with his God Catcher tokens, but I didn’t think of that until the match was completed.
1-2-1
Game 5:
My final round was against StuArt, who is a really lovely opponent. We had been having a nice chat in the Discord voice channel before the day got started and it was so nice to end it against him. As Stu put it, it was a great way to bookend a day of dice rolling. Stu was running an Atlantis team that revolves around fielding lots of sidekicks and characters, and using the Black Widow from the Avengers: Infinity Campaign Box to give all the fielded characters +1A. The idea here, if you’re not familiar with this team, sometimes referred to as Fish Slap, is to overwhelm your opponent with tons of dice.
Stu played with an awesome defensive piece that I had never played, or played against, before – he ran The Great Drunkard: Built for Defense. This is a trap, and if I use a Global Ability on his turn, he gets to fields a 6A, 6D token. It certainly prevented me from using his Global Abilities (of which there were MANY useful ones) for quite awhile. Eventually, I bit the bullet and triggered the trap.
Stu’s dice didn’t entirely cooperate with his plan. The first game was very much a chess match between the two of us, and I squeaked in the win. Game two was much faster, and went in my favour.
I took the final round 2-0.
2-2-1
Post-Mortem:
Overall, I had a fun time playing in this event. I did record my games, but I haven’t been able to post them yet, I’m still sorting that out, so they may come out later. For some reason, despite my OBS having the volume at full blast for Desktop capture, my opponent’s audio seems very quiet, so I will see what I can do with them.
I liked the best of 3 format, but I found that 45 minute rounds were a bit quick. I did really like that there were no turns at time. That helped keep the day on track. In future I might suggest 55 minute rounds if best of 3 is the format.
I enjoyed playing my team, but I would definitely reconsider Stretch and try to figure out how to shoehorn a Black Widow: Agent into future versions of this team. The team was very vulnerable to wide fields of characters, which I saw more of than I had expected to see, and was just as vulnerable to God Catcher and direct damage as I had expected. It was a bit slower than I had hoped, and I’d like to figure out how to get more Spider-Man dice going to help with removal.
I finished the event ranked 15th of 27, so middle of the pack. I’ll take it.
If you have suggestions for this team, please share them! What do you think of my #rarespiderman4ever team? Would you play it? How do you feel about infiltrate as a mechanic? What changes would you make? Will you bring a version of it to Roll For The North?
Until next time…
-jbouwme