This week, we finally played out “Infinity War” event at our local shop. We left the Team Builds opened, but you were encouraged to make something thematic. As long as you could argue your case as to how it related to Avengers: Infinity War, you were good. Honestly, you were good no matter what.
We decided that we would introduce The Infinity Gauntlet into these games. If you missed that article, you can check it out here. The Coles Notes version is that once one of your characters wielded the Infinity Gauntlet, the rules of the game could potentially change depending which Infinity Stone was activated.
With that in mind, I decided to focus on the Battle on Titan from the movie. There was one card that jumped out at me when I thought of this…
The ability just screamed “Battle on Titan” to me. Also, how could you have an Infinity War themed Team without Thanos? With that in mind, here is the build.
What Did You Play?
The Team: The Battle on Titan.
So, the whole point of this Team is to get Thanos out and hurl all of my Villain characters at my opponents face. The big problem with this build challenge was that I wanted to try and stay as true to Infinity War as possible. Every card I used had to have some connection (even a loose one, or at least something that I could argue) to the MCU.
Now that my hands were tied, I needed some pieces. The first thing was I needed a way to get to Thanos. 8 cost characters are not exactly easy to purchase. Heimdall (obvious IW connection) was the first add as he gave me some ramp options and I still feel that I need some practice with this Global. The Collector (another obvious IW connection) was the second choice to get Thanos. While an 8 cost character is difficult to purchase, a 6 cost character is not. Buy Collector and field him to get a free Thanos. Rinse and repeat as necessary. Easy-peasy. Now I had a road to the Mad Titan. He just needed some things to throw.
Mindless Ones (from the Battle at Wakanda) was a pretty easy choice as a weapon for Thanos. Swarm gave me an alternate ramp option, and his stats on 2/3 sides are actually pretty beefy. How could I guarantee that I hit for 4 though? Enter Scarlet Witch (another obvious IW addition) …
This was a bit of a surprise for me as I was not really aware of her ability due to the Common version being such a superstar. With her in the Field, I pretty much always guaranteed myself a Level 2 Mindless One (assuming I rolled a character face). No fielding cost and 4 damage from Thanos? Yes please!
Now I needed a little control. Space Armor Iron Man was the most thematic Iron Man I could add to this Team. The possibility of life gain was nice, but he was mostly on the Team for theme alone. Spider-man actually offered a little defence against opposing “when fielded” effects, so he might be handy to have (also he fit the theme extremely well). For my final spot, I put in Kryptonite. Yes, that is a DC card… but it was the closest thing we have in the game to actual Infinity Stones, so I went with it. It gave me the option to blank something annoying across the Field or turn off Thanos for a turn if necessary.
The BAC’s were Magic Missile (Doctor Strange’s attacks) and Archnemesis (Daredevil is on the card and he is sort of part of the MCU). Magic Missile is another ramp option as well as a way to clear out annoyances or other things I need out of my Field. Archnemesis served the main function as a way to get rid of my Collector by lowering his massive defence.
With the scene set, let’s see how it ran.
Game 1:
This was against a nasty Wasp (R-AOU), PXG, the crappy Scarlet Witch, X-23, and Silver Sable to make X-23 unblockable. Not really “Infinity War”, but we were not that sticky with the theme. The early Collector led to an early Thanos. However, going this route made me miss my chance at buying a Gauntlet. I did not ever get the energy until the end of the game. Because Thanos kept most of my Villains out of the Field, I didn’t have a lot of characters. I was burning well but eventually fell when an unblockable 17A X-23 went through with just enough other characters for lethal. He did manage to use his Gauntlet a few times, but never rolled anything he could use at the time.
0-1
Game 2:
This was against an all Guardians Team (full points for theme). The focus was damaging things with Gamora to KO them (basically the proto-Deadly). With Call Out from Star Lord, Thanos could be an easy target here. The plan was the same… early Collector for an early Thanos. I had Scarlet Witch out early as well to control my characters a bit better. I get Thanos out on the cheap as a result. I eventually started hurling Mindless Ones at him as much as I could. He eventually got my Scarlet Witch out and it made my economy a little more difficult to deal with. I had to protect Thanos from Gamora (sweet irony here) so I took a lot of Call Out induced damage (I think in one turn, I ate 13 damage or so). However, that thinned his field and I rolled enough characters and bolts to burn him down enough and clear the Field for Thanos to walk though unopposed. Again, I didn’t have a good chance to purchase a Gauntlet although my opponent did. Nothing game breaking happened with this one.
1-1
Game 3:
This was an all DC Team (R Nightwing was the big hitter). He successfully argued how each of his characters could be counterparts in the MCU. Full points for creativity here. It took a little longer to get the Thanos train running in this game due to some early rolling issues. Neither one of us went for the Gauntlet in this game as we focused on our core Teams. It was back and forth with me having to manage Nightwing and he having to manage Thanos. He was just short of lethal on his last turn and I managed to roll enough Villains to burn him to the ground.
2-1
Game 4:
This was just a “for fun” game as there was a guy from out of town here tonight. We decided to play an extra game once we were done. He was running a really cool Soulmonger Team (yes… a cool Soulmonger Team). I have some plans to borrow parts of this one on a later build, so I am purposely going to leave the details of the Team out of this article. More or less, he bought a Gauntlet and managed to purchase one of my Scarlet Witches from me as well as taking control of my characters from time to time. No pesky Soul Stones were rolled in this game. He had me down to 3 life and could have finished me off multiple times, but wanted to play around with the Gauntlet some more. This did give me the chance to come back and use Thanos to burn him to death, with another Thanos. Technically, I won… but really he had this game earlier.
3-1*
Post-Mortem:
Rare Thanos did what he was supposed to do and did it very efficiently. Mindless Ones are almost the perfect teammate for the big purple guy. Peter and Tony did not once come into play, but I still feel they were good additions to the Team. Without Collector, I never would have gotten to Thanos, so he is a great piece to help buy those crazy expensive characters. Just be prepared to lose some dice as a result. The rest of the Team functioned as you would think they would.
Let’s talk Scarlet Witch though. Like I said, she was a bit of a surprise for me. The ability to manipulate the levels of my characters before fielding them is actually really good. It let me have cheap fodder for Thanos to throw. This is one of those cards that is actually pretty decent, but has a sibling that is just amazing. I highly recommend trying this card out on a Team and see what else this little lady can do.
Overall a fun theme Team. Nothing competitive here, but just fun to play with. The best thing about it was discovering one of these “buried treasure” cards along the way. The whole Infinity Gauntlet things was a neat change to the game. Although my games were not heavily impacted by it, I know others were. We are planning on running it again now that we’ve seen the basic mechanics of the Stones.
What are your thoughts on the Team? Have you accidentally stumbled on some buried treasures that you had forgotten about? Let us know in the comments below.
As always, thanks for reading!
– jourdo