Tabaxi Parademons

This was casual, more or less anything goes, Golden Age Constructed.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Tabaxi For Darkseid

This week I decided to try something a little ambitious.  I would pair R Parademon and C Tabaxi Rogue as the basis of a burn team.

Furthermore I would include UC Darkseid, and actually try to make use of his ability in order to 

give myself a little extra ramp and get Parademons off the field before my Clear and Draw steps (where the Parademon burn damage would hit me).  The fielding cost for Parademons is pretty reasonable, so Sacrifice-Draw-Roll-Refield didn’t sound like a terrible plan.

I meant to put the 4-cost Hogun who makes your opponent draw a die when he’s fielded on the team, but I got mixed up about which of the Warriors Three was which, so I grabbed a Fandral card and dice and threw them in my team box without looking at them, then did a face-palm when I opened it up at the event and saw what I’d done.

The Hogun I’d meant to bring, and the Fandral I actually brought are both Immortals.  The Rare Jane Foster was on the team to make Hogun cheaper, but she still made Fandral cheaper.

Deadshot has a once per turn when fielded ability that gives you a 1-point discount on all Villains you buy for the remainder of the turn (technically, you have a choice between Villains or Suicide Squad characters, but how often is anybody going to run a team where Suicide Squad would be a meaningful choice?)

His D is 1-1-2, but since he has a ‘When fielded ability’ the low D is arguably a plus.  The 2 point fielding cost on Level 3 is a bit of a pain, though.

I put in Nasty Plot as a temptation to my opponents.  If they used it whie I had one or both of Tabaxi Rogue or Parademon out, they’d take damage.

I just about always include the Rare Mr. Mxyzptlk when I use Nasty Plot.  If I have Mxy out when my opponent uses Nasty Plot, I’ll get to Prep the same two dice he does – and my next Roll and Re-Roll Step will come up before his does.

My next-to-last card was something I don’t remember every seeing anyone play:  Common Knowhere.

At first glance, it seems like it just makes your character purchases more expensive.  But when I thought about it, I decided it’s a lot like the Rip Hunter’s Chalkboard global.  Or at least it can be used that way.

The Chalkboard cards saw plenty of use, at least before they rotated out of Modern, and it was mostly because of that global.

Using that global basically meant you were paying an extra shield energy to prep the next die you purchased.

You can use the Knowhere basic action to pay one more or any energy to prep a character die you purchase.  And you can use it more than once, if you have the energy and are so inclined.

True, it’s not always available.  You have to draw and roll the action.  Since you drew and used the action, you’ll likely to have a little less energy to spend on a given turn.  On the other hand, unlike the Chalkboard global, it’s not available to your opponent.

And you do have the option, if energy is tight, of purchasing characters before you use it, and then putting in the field so you can prep something you buy on your following turn.

I wasn’t expecting it to be amazing, but I thought there might actually be some potential utility there – somebody should take it out for a test drive, so to speak, and it might as well be me.

My last card was my other BAC.  I chose Misdirection.  Partly because the */** Prep ability meant more potential burn damage for my opponent, but primarily because it gave me another means of getting my Parademon dice into or out of my Field Zone.

Game 1:

Bye.

1-0

Game 2:

This team was basically about setting up the most fascinating and Rube Goldbergian combo I have ever seen.  No, I did not see it coming

The combo relies on bolt energy, so the team had the 1-cost Chwinga, and he bought all 4 dice for it as quickly as he could manage.  Then he used the Uncommon Rip Hunter, naming Chwinga with his ability.  That meant he could choose to put Chingwa dice into his Reserve Pool, on a face of his choosing instead of rolling it.

The heart of the combo involves combing the Pyro, Slifer, and Golden PXG globals.  Since he’s Rip Hunter’d Chwinga, he can put any Chwinga dice he draws (when using the Pyro global) on their double bolt faces.  If he has Quasar active, he can use a bolt instead of a mask for the Golden PXG global.

So if he has two or more Sidekick dice in the Prep Area, he can use 2 bolts to use the Slifer global twice, then a third bolt for PXG, returning the Sidekick dice to the Prep Area.

So, If he can manage his bag and Used Pile so there are ONLY Chwinga dice in either, he can basically get this to run forever on my turn.

On my turn, I pass priority.  He spends the bolts on his Chwinga dice for the various globals, moving them to the Used Pile when fully spent.  So they go back in the bag when his use of the Pyro global triggers a bag refill.  So, if he’s gotten his other dice out of his way, spending 1 bolt gets him 4 more to use, and he can do that as often as he likes.

Playing against my team, it would have seriously complicated things for him if I’d managed to get a Tabaxi Rogue or a Parademon fielded (or better yet, both) but it didn’t happen.  On the turn where he burned me to death I’d had two Parademons to roll and managed to whiff the roll and re-roll on both of them.

1-1

Game 3:

Crushed by a Red Hood/Sabretooth team as described by Jourdo in his post here.

1-2

Game 4:

Batmobile team.  The build was basically include every card you can manage with ‘Batman’ or ‘Robin’ in the title or sub-title and Batmobile.  The Robin was the OP version which is unblockable when Batman is active, and I wasn’t able to deal with it.

1-3

Post-Mortem:

I intend to revisit the Tabaxi Rogue/Parademon combo somewhere down the road, and when I do I intend to actually include UC Hogun.  And probably include Rare Bishop to protect myself from Parademon damage.

The rest of the team was a few different experiments.  Is it worthwhile trying to make use of the actual ability on UC Darkseid?  Not really.  Darkseid is a 5-cost and Parademons are 3- or 4-costs.  You need to buy at least 1 of each and get them into the field to begin making use of this eccentric form of ramp, and it’s just too slow to set up, too expensive and too erratic to be anything approaching a reliable form of ramp.

There’s another down side to it.  I’m pretty sure I forgot to draw the extra dice I was entitled to a couple of different times during the night.  Both times I sacrificed a Parademon on my own turn, then by the time I’d finished my turn and my opponent had gone through his turn, I’d forgotten about the sacrifice.  I’ll need to come up with some kind of physical reminder if I ever try to use this Darkseid with Parademons again.  Considering I’m the sort of player who needs that kind of reminder about the generic energy I earn when I bag burn myself, I probably should have though of it in the first place.

Knowhere as a Pseudo-Rip Hunter’s Chalkboard global wasn’t great, but wasn’t terrible either.  I wasn’t particularly strategic about it’s use – I tended to use it on the turn I rolled it, to Prep a character I was buying.  Somewhere down the line I may put it on a team with a cheap Gadgeteer character, and see how that works.

Deadshot – is not a good way to get a discount on the purchase cost of Villains.  He’s just the only way.  (I mean specifically for Villains, for those of you thinking about the BEWD and Ring of Winter globals.)  If your team has a lot of mid-cost Villains, bite the bullet and accept you’ll need to pay full price.

Do you have any “Somebody should actually play this at least once and see how it works in an actual game” card candidates?  Let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Rolling!

-Son of L