Star-Grodd: Call Out Meets Overcrush

This week’s post is brought to you by the letter G.  Because the team features Gorilla Grodd and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

It was boring old Unlimited Constructed, for those who were wondering.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Kneel Before Grodd!

I find characters with the Call Out keyword to be of limited utility – unless it’s combined with Overcrush.  So how do you get characters with both?

One way is by using these two cards:

So if those two are active, all of my other Guardians characters are +1A with Call Out and Overcrush – not too shabby.

Grodd’s a 7 cost, so I was definitely going to need some ramp.  I decided to go with the common Cosmo Space Dog – who you can choose to KO when you field him – and the Mantis that allows you to prep a die each time one of your Guardians is KOed.

Next, I wanted some Guardians with serious damage potential.  Since Cosmo was on the team to be KOed, I added the UC Drax from the Guardians set that gets +3A on any turn where another character is KOed.  To complement him I added Rocket Raccoon:  For the Love of Battle who gets +1A/+1D for each other attacking Guardians die.

I added Groot:  Chlorokinesis, primarily for the Global.  Said global is on two Groot cards from the Kree Invasion Team Pack.  I figured I’d go with the one whose ability wasn’t ramp related as I already had a ramp engine.

Use this area to give an explanation of what the plan for the team is.  How are the parts supposed to work?  As little or as much information as you want.

For my last character I went with Captain America:  “How ‘Bout a Hand, Son?”.  Combine him with Grodd, and I can potentially make all my Sidekicks 4A with Overcrush.

First BAC was Escape Incarceration.  Since my ramp engine involved KOing characters, the Resistance effect meant it was likely I’d be able to use the action to move 2 dice from my Used Pile to my Prep Area whenever I drew (and landed) it.

For the other BAC I chose With Great Power.  Mantis and Cosmo Space Dog have fairly low A on their lower levels, so I was thinking I might want some means of spinning them up when it came time to convert them from ramp engine to attackers.

Game 1:

Battle Stacks, Squirrel Girl and her tokens, and Blue Eyes White Dragon.  No, not the Rare – the Starter version.  Also, Green Devil Mask.

I wasn’t able to land Mantis on a character face the first time I drew her, which was unfortunate.  Between swarming Battle Stacks, and Squirrel tokens he built up a sizable field quite quickly.  He used Scorching Ray and drew Blue Eyes for 6 damage.

I probably should have tried to buy Groot faster.  I’d bought him, but had yet to draw him when the Green Devil Mask came out.  I managed to keep the two Mantis dice I had in the field, but I lost the two Sidekicks I’d had.  When he attacked with everything the burst ability on his Level 1 Blue Eyes meant I had to knock out one of my characters, leaving with only one blocker.  A couple of buffed Battle Stacks, Squirrel Girl and plenty of tokens and Sidekicks gave him 15-16 damage even after I blocked Blue Eyes.

0-1

Game 2:

SR Multiple Man, Zombie Gladiator and plenty of other mask characters.

I got Star-Lord out relatively early, and started using my Guardians characters to Call Out his Multiple Man dice.  He generally chose to block with Multiple Man, and since I was attacking with enough to KO them, it saved him the damage, but wrecked his ramp.

It only got worse for him after I got Grodd out.  Although it did make things a little interesting when he used his SR Mimic to copy my Grodd.  I used a 6A (after the buff) Drax and Call Out to get rid of his Mimic.

I was steadily grinding him down, and then he had one of those turns where you’re rolling a dozen dice and you still can’t get any character faces.  That sunk whatever chance he’d had of retrieving his position.

1-1

Game 3:

Turtles!

Largely according to plan, except at one point he bought one of his Unstable Cannister dice.  I had six energy on my next turn, so I bought the other two.  I might have just started to burn him down with those, but they seemed to have a tendency to roll energy.  Oh well, buying Grodd instead wasn’t exactly a hardship.

With the Star-Lord Grodd combo I wore him down to 4 life.  It was clear to both of us he had to swing for the fences and hope he got lucky (or I got Unlucky).  He attacked with everything and when the dust cleared he had two characters in the field, I had one,  But I had a huge whack of dice in my Prep Area.

I rolled an Unstable Cannister and enough characters to guarantee 3 damage when I attacked.  Victory was mine.

2-1

Post-Mortem:

The team worked well even though I’m not completely satisfied with the build and I don’t think I had an especially great night on the piloting front.

This was the first time I’d used the Mantis/Cosmo ramp engine specifically, it’s pretty much analogous to the Batsomething/Hush engine which I’m quite familiar with.  A Prep Global would have been useful, allowing me to trigger a bag refill before the start of Turn 3 (which with any luck lets me get Mantis in the field by Turn 3.)

I never got Escape Incarceration to fire – I did buy it in Game 1 but the one time it was on the action face after Roll and Reroll my Used Pile was empty (and I had no energy to buy anything).  This may not be the right team for it – maybe I’ll use it with a Fabricate team somewhere down the road.

Nor do I think I used the Groot global to best advantage.  Nor the character himself – if I’d bought him a little earlier he might have saved my butt in Game 1.  Including Captain America in the build was almost certainly a mistake – I never considered buying him, nor using the global.  There were plenty of usable Guardians characters I could have used in that slot – such as the Angela that deals an extra damage when it uses Infiltrate.

Usually, you are presented with more learning opportunities when you lose than when you win.  It’s just after the event was over and I looked back on it, I saw so many ways to potentially improve the build and play the team (even as it was) better it was kind of surprising to me that I’d finished the night 2-1.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rolling!

Son of L