WHYP – Zod’s Will

After last week’s Bat-Madness, I wanted to try something different, a combo I saw months ago but never found the right opportunity to try. Let’s see how good that General Zod is with his nastiest combo. Time to unleash…

Zod’s Will

The Team:  Bolts. Bolts everywhere.

Format: Legacy League

The core combo of this team is to use General Zod to turn my sidekick characters into bolts, so that they can deal damage to my opponent when I attack with Lantern Ring active. Turning my sidekicks into Lantern Ring fodder makes it substantially easier (maybe even too easy) to get to 20 damage just with Lantern Ring damage. And then the sidekicks themselves are stronger (3A), so even if my opponent survives Lantern Ring, the combat damage should be enough to finish the job.

Now, if I wanted to optimize this, I would load up on ramp and support pieces to make it really quick. But after last week, I figured I would tone my team down a bit. So I limited my ramp/consistency tools to two: Professor X and Mjolnir. Professor X gives me an easy way to get to 6 energy for Zod, and Mjolnir allows me to reliably get bolt energy, which is necessary for this whole team to work.

Technically I did put one more ramp piece: Chwinga. As a 1-cost with Swarm, he should be great ramp…but his ability forces him to attack unless he is level 1. So I went out of left field and put in Focus. The idea is to use Focus’ global to spin Chwinga down so he isn’t forced to attack. To be honest, I doubt Chwinga’s ramp will do much though, I expect the best thing about that card will be the cheap bolts.

(I know I used a different version of Focus in my team link, but that art is so cool)

Now, I did use one more nasty card on the team: Shriek. I used her mainly to get her banned, but seeing as this win condition is slow, I also figured I’d need a way to slow my opponents down, and what better way than the best blanker in the game?

So since I promised myself not to put too many tools to make this efficient, I loaded up the rest of the team with other ways to deal damage. Jubilee is a fun one that can trigger off of sidekicks when Zod is active. She’s also a 2-cost with good stats (even though I hate her fielding costs). Firefly needs no introduction. If the game walls up and I can’t roll enough bolts for the Ring, he can be a serious pain to deal with. And finally, I put in Power Surge so that I have something to use these bolts on if I don’t beat my opponent outright with Lantern Ring.

And with all of that said, on to the games!

Game 1:

I started off against Collector + Nobby. This match was rough. He had little to no ramp for me to take advantage of, so my own limited ramp became very apparent. I was going to use Shriek to stop the Nobby damage, but he got his Madame Masque on the field too quickly. So it became a race for damage. And while I was putting some pieces together for a bit of damage (Jubilee, had Chwingas to try to ramp), but I didn’t purchase Lantern Ring until it was too late. He just kept up the Collector shenanigans going. He outpaced me and won. 

0-1

Game 2:

So this match is intriguing. My opponent ran a Hawk + Dove team with the Dark Phoenix global. Between Dark Phoenix and Chalkboard, this team gave me the tools I needed for this team to come out blazing. By turn 3, I had purchased both Lantern Ring and Zod. Then, on turn 5, both were on the field. My opponent’s field was empty due to a weird roll, and between the combat damage and Lantern Ring, I had enough damage to win in one attack.

1-1

Game 3:

My last opponent was SR Jocasta, alongside Clayface, Superhero Registration Act (SRA) for ramp and a boatload of control. Wait…Clayface? Don’t mind if I do. This should have been a quicker game than it ended up being, but neither Shriek nor SRA rolled for me all game. My opponent used Clayface as a battering ram and was on the verge of victory…except on a turn where I missed a ton of characters, I managed to get the Ring on the field, with Jubilee and two Chwingas. Doesn’t sound that impressive…except I had 9 bolts in my Reserve Pool. 27 Lantern Ring damage later, I won by the skin of my teeth.

2-1

Tiebreaker

Two of us were tied at 2-1, with the exact same Strength of Schedule. Because of the implications of winning, we agreed to do a tiebreaker match.

And this was against…Jocasta and Clayface again. This time Shriek and SRA both rolled to make her control’s life harder and give me the energy to get Zod and the Ring quickly. Eventually I had both active, but Zod was blanked by Typhoid Mary. I used her Dark Phoenix global to KO my Shriek, and then blanked her Typhoid Mary so Zod would be available again. By that point I had 6 bolt characters (3 sidekicks, Zod, Shriek and Jubilee) with 4 bolt energy in reserve. 24 Lantern Ring damage, so I attacked and won.

And as a result, I won the event! My team is banned. Shriek is gone, good riddance.

Post-Mortem:

-Zod and Lantern Ring together is as nasty as you expect. Whenever those two were on the field together, I just…won. It’s simply too much damage, especially if I can manage to get a few bolts in reserve. And that’s with a suboptimal build. I could have made this much more nasty and reliable.

-Chwinga was…bleh as ramp. The idea of using Focus to spin him down was neat, but way too much of an energy sink. Didn’t help that Chwinga loved his level 3 side (at which point I just didn’t bother). Sure, the cheap bolts were cool, but my bag was too clogged to take advantage of Swarm generally.

-Firefly as a secondary win condition should have been a good idea…but this team really didn’t allow him to shine. No Dark Phoenix global made it tough to use him, and in the one game when a secondary strategy would’ve been handy (against Collector), his ability was shut down by Madame Masque.

-I know I keep mentioning how toned down this is, but how do you make this more efficient? Well, first of all, you need Clayface. Gives you extra bolts when you need them, helps you ramp at crucial times…just a logical fit. I also need better ramp. Prof X is out, replaced by Chalkboard, and I would use Walk with Elias instead of Focus to get that same ramp global. And finally, getting a discount on actions is crucial here, so either Red Dragon or Thor would be great instead of Chwinga. This is what you would end up with.
**Note: if old school PXG was still legal, that would obviously take precedence. But I am going on the assumption that I would build with the ban list of my League.

So overall, I did manage to tone the team down to match the other local teams, but it felt really clunky to run. The fact that I won is more of a testament to how busted of a combo this is than anything else.

And that’s it for this week. Our Legacy League will still be on for the next few months. What is your local scene doing to keep the game fresh until the release of Secret Wars?

Let us know in the comments below, on our Socials (@dmNorthTV), or join the conversation on our Discord.