So thanks to some timely trades, I finally got my hands on one of my favorite SRs from this set. And just on time to have gone through almost all of the teams I had prepared. So of course I jumped on the chance to use SR Invisible Woman. It turned out to be a…
Sue-perb Idea
The Team: This team has a “clear” strategy.
My main strategy is to rely on Invisible Woman. She is sometimes called “Front Line on legs” for a reason. Field her, give +3A to all of your characters, AND reroll opposing characters too! All you need from there is to have at least 5 unblocked character dice (even sidekicks!), and that’s at least 20 damage. For this to work, I need to have more characters than my opponents can stop. Enter Magik, who allows me to KO all opposing sidekicks when she’s fielded. In addition, her global can give me extra sidekicks in a pinch. Between these two, I should have a bigger board presence than my opponent most of the time.
Now, while Invisible Woman and Magik give me removal, they’re pretty expensive. I also want inexpensive removal and control. Enter Drax (to make it so a KO’d character can’t be refielded) and Spider-Gwen, for her amazing when fielded ability. With all of these pieces, I should be good for control (so long as I don’t face SR Wonder Woman!). A note on Drax: his fielding costs are terrible, but the rest of the team has excellent fielding costs, so it shouldn’t backfire too terribly.
With Invisible Woman being expensive to purchase, I need some ways to get to her more easily. It’s predictable, I know, but here are Wolverine and Dark Phoenix. Wolverine’s global is great for ramp and bag fixing as usual, and Dark Phoenix’ discount is crucial. Plus, her global can get my “When fielded” characters KO’d so I can repeat their abilities.
Most of the rest of the team is utility. Jimmy Woo gives me cheap bolts (great for the Magik and Dark Phoenix globals) and he’s a pain to deal with. Invulnerability gives me yet another good use for cheap bolts, and Hawkman is there for his global, so that I can counter Distraction effectively. The character himself is a bit of an X-factor. He’s hard to block, after all, which synergizes very well with Invisible Woman’s ability. Plus, he’s also a bolt character (an energy type I see a lot of in this team), which should make him easier to get to.
And for the last card, I couldn’t help but notice all of my removal was on “when fielded” effects, so I thought: just in case Wonder Woman or Angela show up, I’d like some removal that’s not on that type of effect. So I threw in the Casket of Ancient Winters. Is it the right pick? Probably not, but I wanted to at least try it out.
With all of that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
My first match was against Spider-Friends. I got a Jimmy Woo on the field early. And hilariously, with him being the only active character, my opponent fielded a Spider-Gwen, that had to target herself because Jimmy wasn’t a legal target. From there, I just methodically built my board up and got removal. It took me a while to purchase Invisible Woman because I couldn’t roll masks worth a darn. But when she showed up, my opponent’s field was lean due to my other removal (Gwen in particular did a lot of work). So I had the clear advantage in numbers, and I charged in for way too much damage. I won.
1-0
Game 2:
Game 2 was against a Goddess of Thunder team. This one was weird. I bought Invisible Woman T2 (bought nothing T1) and emptied my field. And then I took 14 damage from 2 Goddess of Thunder dice. From there I was fielding sidekicks, doing ramp, and keeping purchases lean, making sure to keep some characters active since I didn’t have life points to spare. Before long, I fielded Invisible Woman, emptied my opponent’s board (Goddess of Thunder is VERY vulnerable to Magik), and charged in with Invisible Woman + an army of sidekicks for lethal damage. I won.
2-0
Game 3:
Next up, a Franklin’s Galactus team (!?). This one was great for me because it had R Sinister, allowing me a metric ton of ramp. Removal was key here. Again, I ramped into a T2 Invisible Woman. And from there my opponent got Galactus, but couldn’t get anything else than sidekicks…that were easy to get rid of with Invisible Woman and Magik. My opponent was really smart on holding back on characters; she once forced me to reroll both Invisible Woman and a sidekick I had active as those were the only active character dice…and both landed on energy (thank goodness for my opponent’s Sinister global!). But in the end it didn’t matter. I eventually got 5 sidekicks and Invisible Woman (that was just fielded) attacking, with only Galactus blocking. No matter who blocked, that was 20+ damage. I won.
3-0
Game 4:
Last game of the night was against Terrax + MSW Sinister. No T2 Invisible Woman here, as I got Drax and Gwen first to keep my opponent’s removal under control. But she was purchased T3 and Drax stopped Terrax from making an impact. After Invisible Woman rerolled my opponent’s board, my opponent had one character left (Namor), which I KO’d using my opponent’s Sinister global (UC Sinister from MSW). With my opponent’s board empty and my characters having +3A, I charged in for more than enough damage. I won.
4-0
Post-Mortem:
-Front Line is good. Front Line on a character with perfect fielding costs and built-in removal is even better. And bonus points for characters gaining attack even if they’re blocked (as opposite to Front Line). SR Invisible Woman is absolutely gross.
-That SR’s one weakness is that her reroll effect is mandatory. If you have too much removal (which I did), you can easily be forced to reroll your own characters. One thing I liked doing was rerolling a Gwen Stacy die I had just fielded. If it landed on energy, I could use that energy for Invulnerability’s global or even just to purchase more stuff.
To compensate for that, it can be tempting to put R Sinister (DPS) for the global, but then your opponents could use it too.
-If I built this team in a more competitive setting, I would replace Magik with R Brainiac 5 (probably putting a different method to field sidekicks). Range damage triggers during the Attack step, and therefore counters your opponent fielding sidekicks during the global window. It would be a far better complement to this strategy.
-The Casket of Ancient Winters was not a factor. It was just a poor fit – by the time Invisible Woman hit the field, I didn’t have the energy for that Epic BAC. Or if I did, I would use it for Magik plus ramp instead.
-Jimmy’s hilarious. He’s a pain to get rid of and he gives cheap bolts, which is valuable in this meta. Not flashy, but effective. Possibly the best general purpose 2-cost bolt in Modern. (I know, the bar isn’t set very high)
-Spider-Gwen’s global is the unsung hero of this team. When I couldn’t win on one big swing, that global allowed her to go right back in the bag so I could get back to Invisible Woman quickly. If you have this global, don’t forget to use it! I
And there you have it. I know anyone could’ve expected Invisible Woman to be an absolute monster, but, well, she is. This is just one attempt at using her of course. How would you use her to her full potential?
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