With no news on Secret Wars’ release date, we’re still continuing our legacy league, and I figured I’d change the pace this week. This team is an homage to something one of our locals used all of the time. And if you underestimate it…
The Joke(asta)’s On You
The Team: The die is (Jo)Cast(a).
The core combo works as follows: have Jocasta active, target her with Mjolnir, then double the damage with Two-Face. However much damage Jocasta takes, that damage is reflected straight to my opponent’s life points. Three to four hits will be enough to win even without Two-Face active (and you will win with two hits while he’s there).
Now, it’s clear that this is not a very fast win condition. I will definitely need some ramp and discounts. First, and most obviously, I put in Thousand Dragon. It makes it much easier to purchase Mjolnir (unlike similar globals, Thousand Dragon can be triggered twice or more per turn, meaning Mjolnir really costs 4 energy instead of 6). Then, I put in Pepper Potts. She’s an underrated ramp tool that gives me a free die every turn while she’s active (which can be rolled immediately or Prep’d depending on what I draw). And last but not least, The Joker’s global needs no introduction. It’s certainly not as fast as I’d like (the original team was using old-school PXG as ramp, which is banned from the League already), but should be serviceable enough.
To be fair: there is a risk of anti-synergy with Pepper and Joker. If Pepper Preps a die at the beginning of my turn, I can’t use Joker that turn. But this is a risk I am willing to take.
Now, even with these tools, I know my team isn’t that fast. So I put in two control pieces to even the odds: Drax and Millennium Puzzle. Drax limits my opponent’s ability to purchase and field characters, and Millennium Puzzle gets said characters off the field. This control isn’t airtight, but my objective isn’t to completely shut down my opponent; it’s to disrupt their strategy long enough for mine to work.
As for my two basic actions, they are both secondary win conditions. Confront The Mighty is an alternate means to target Jocasta and hurt my opponent, but it does depend on my opponent having big enough characters to be effective. As for Betrayal, if the game walls up it can hurt almost as much as Mjolnir. Bonus: both of these actions’ damage can be doubled by Two-Face!
Honestly, I’m not expecting to win the event, but if I get 2 wins with this, I’ll be happy.
Game 1:
First off, I went up against an Overcrushing Thanos team. This team is pretty much built with tons of Swarm ramp and Thanos, with no real backup win condition. So I went for Drax + Puzzle early, put Drax on Thanos, and from there my opponent had to pivot for removal (Yellow Lantern Ring). The Problem is, my opponent had a hard time coordinating the Ring with characters, so her removal never got going. With a leaner bag and good ramp, I got to Jocasta + Mjolnir quickly, and after two Mjolnir hits (including one on double burst for 8 damage), I attacked with everything and won with combat damage.
1-0
Game 2:
This time, I went up against an Infiltrate team. SR Angela was there to make Infiltrate characters unblockable, and without that, my opponent would have to purchase and set up Cloudkill. So again, I went for Drax + Puzzle to neutralize Angela. My opponent purchased Cloudkill, but only did so after Drax hit, so it was too little too late. with no Angela, his Ricochet ramp never got going. Pepper’s ramp was key here, as she helped me draw Mjolnir consistently. After some Mjolnir hits, I again dealt the finishing blow with combat damage. I won.
2-0
Game 3:
My last (and most interesting) match of the night was against a SHIELD team. The strategy was simple: use Samatha Wilson as one-sided ramp by fielding sidekicks, Dum Dum Dugan as a battering ram, and Howard Stark as a way to go wide and deal more damage with all of those sidekicks (so in short: bad choices all around). And he had Raised Shields as a way to force damage through with Overcrush. Thankfully Jocasta was a great deterrent against Dugan, so he had to really set up well to have a chance. As he was setting up, I got a couple of really good Mjolnir hits (one burst, one double burst, 14 damage total). But then he got a great turn with things set up, used both Dugan and Stark to have a giant beatstick AND go wide (with Raised Shields of course!). He also used Mjolnir’s global on Jocasta so she couldn’t stop the Overcrush damage. He swung in with everything (since I was going to win with Mjolnir the next turn) and dealt me 17 damage in one go (ouch!). I rolled Mjolnir the next turn and won, but this was close.
3-0
Post-Mortem:
Before going into the post-mortem, I want to take a minute to give props to an old friend. The one who used to run this team is the very first person I ever played Dice Masters with. I’ve told this story before, but when I first bought a couple of AVX packs in 2015, I was told, “hey, if you like the game, go to Multizone, they’re playing it on Thursdays.”. So sure enough, I showed up, and they were doing a release event for War of Light. I told the TO I wanted to learn the game, and he encouraged me to purchase an AVX starter set. He spent the whole event teaching me how to play, and I immediately loved the game. Eventually, after I became a regular, one time I had this Jocasta+Mjolnir team and another team. Jean-Seb didn’t have a team with him, he borrowed my Jocasta team…and he liked it so much we agreed I’d let him use it every week. He eventually stopped playing, but I never forgot him.
Merci Jean-Seb. This one’s for you.
And now, on to the actual team:
-I know, ccm00007 winning again…but this time, it came down to luck. I was lucky two of my opponents had a clear lynchpin I could shut down with Drax and Puzzle. That type of control is not supposed to be that effective. And on my third game, had my opponent had two Dum Dum Dugans instead of one on that big turn, I would’ve gotten wrecked. So while it turned out great, it was a bit touch and go there at times.
-While it’s not especially quick, that Jocasta + Mjolnir combo is still incredibly reliable. I can’t think of another card that came out since AOU that could reliably win with Jocasta without depending on my opponent’s cards (unless I get into Transfer Power/Splinter’s Teaching shenanigans. Use God Catcher and switch stats, then use Confront The Mighty?). I will admit, though, that Two-Face is absolutely overkill here.
-One thing that helped me tremendously is that I churned through my bag quick, in no small part thanks to Pepper Potts. In my second game, I was drawing all available dice multiple times. Doesn’t hurt that you don’t need to purchase many dice to win with this team.
-Dangit, I didn’t mean to get Thousand Dragon banned yet. Ah well, so much for cheap Limited Wish shenanigans.
So, after 5 weeks of Legacy League, the ban list is slowly starting to hurt. But I still have a lot of tricks up my sleeve. If anyone wants to see what the ban list looks like so far, here you go. What would you build with what’s available? (Keeping in mind that we’re trying to steer away from the low-hanging fruit like Bard, God Catcher + Under Surveillance or Becky)
Let us know in the comments below, on our Socials (@dmNorthTV), or join the conversation on our Discord.