Post-Nats, Part Three

Bringing out some of the old figs for some scenario games, and building new ones for some fun play - Animal Man with nine Animal figs on the sideline!

Post-Nats, Part Two

And so a couple of days after Nationals, I come up with this team - Tiamat possessed by Ion with Green Lantern Ring and Battery with either Nurse or Wall constructs = four more powers that I can use with Tiamat boosted +1 on all combat values with a possible +2 on defense depending on how much tokens he has, with the opponents restricted to only one free action each. Quite the mean team. Unfortunately, too little too late.

Post-Nats, Part One

Back to scenarios and No Tactics builds!

Nats Entertainment!

My week in Clix

Which only amounted to one afternoon!

This was a quick and really fun game - I decided to do a terrible tentpole build (which I don't do too much of because I don't believe in it) and ran it quite predictably well, until I made a wrong decision and my opponent rolled two unpredictably miraculously high BCF rolls! One of my most fun losses in thr game so far!

This was a build I'd been wanting to run for months, slowly collecting the Witches and devicing strategies and whatnot, til I finally played it yesterday, and they were amazing, the number of Probs and Perplexes at any given turn, and those Hex tokens, my goodness. Didn't lose a fig in this fight! And against an Indigo Lantern build, to boot! These last few months, I'd been slowly developing a play style that's mainly conceptual and largely strategy-heavy, non-tentpole, with pitbull capabilities. It works for me!

This was fun to run, too - a gang of really effective snipers against two giants in a cramped space. Was still amazed I managed to dish out close to 15 damage in two turns! But this Thunderbolts build has a tendency to set the pace of the gameplay, regardless of who it's fighting.

A tag team fight against Master Mold! One team was a SHIELD build, another team was built of three from the Mighty, and my team was Nick Fury SR, Felix Faust, and Tiamat. Master Mold controller was distracted by some RPG games in his phone, but the game was still slow to build, and ultimately Tiamat based Master Mold with Charge+Exploit then followed-up by Flurry, dishing out 18 damage in a turn. Not bad!

Battle Report Short #013: Potential Yellow Lantern Build VS PotentialOrange Lantern Build

As a thought exercise, I tried making new builds around two of the more powerful batteries in the game right now, and came up with these two. Sadly, I don't have the two batteries, so the Indigo and Red Batteries I use had to proxy for them. But I had no serious plans to run any of these, up until this game.

I basically built two non-bruteforce builds, relying more on synergy and obtuse strategy: my Yellow Lantern build consists of Rainbow Raider, King Tut with Harley Quinn, and Greed with Electroblast. The plan was to have RR be a remote downer, have King Tut do his Elaborate Deathtrap against the opponent's main fig (and with Tut's Sphinx totem and Harley providing Perplex and Prob, that would more or less ensure that Tut would be able to do stuff), and have Greed Mind Control the opponent's main fig to get close to Tut for the Deathtrap.

My Orange Lantern build consists of Engineer, Impossible Man, and two SHIELD Recruits. The main plan was assign Engineer with powers that I want to disable (via Orange Lantern) in the opponent's figs, then assign Sniper Rifle to Impossible Man then have him Wildcard SHIELD TA to boost his special nullifier to 12 range and just have Engineer mop up the map (and Impossible Man is a pretty good attacker, too).

Well, apparently, Impossible Man with 12 range and the Orange Battery providing Prob and Engineer continuously disabling the enemy's Prob is a frightening build to behold - rendered Earthbound, Greed was killed in two turns. King Tut couldn't come close enough to activate his Deathtrap, so he just died in the vine. Harley and Rainbow Raider turned more into timewasters than dark horse contenders.

But I only ran the two builds by myself, and I bet things would be different if I ran the two teams against other players. The Orange Lantern build definitely has potential, though! Something to consider.

Battle Report Short #012: Fitz and the Furys VS JLA

Ran a 300-point build I've been wanting to run since before all the preparation for Nats - one hoverbot Fitz and nine Furys, that is to say, one "real" Fury and eight LMDs.

I rolled for initiative thanks to a +10 granted by the shared SHIELD keyword, then picked a map I always did well on, Deadpool's Hellhouse, parking my army right outside the house. I feel like the JLA team I played against was stronger in brute force terms - Hawkman's special Charge, Baz's GL TA and special Barrier, and Vibe is one of the greatest support figs to come out this year - but my opponent only got his figs that night, and I had more experience running mine.

And also, of course, with the Furys' special Shape Change shellgame and their Rally trait more or less allowed me to be bold with the rolls and placement, out-actioning the JLA six moves to three in at least three turns - when things got going, my basic strategy was one fig would hit walls to grant LoF which two figs would then take advantage of, and I could do that twice in one turn. This allowed me to whittle down Hawkman from his top click to his bottom click in one turn (and if I hadn't missed the last attack twice, Hawkman would've been dead in one turn). With this build, I can just Precision Strike and Shape Change all day!

It's a pretty good build for casual, no resources games, but now I want to try them out against Phoenix Force- and Battery-empowered builds - maybe against a Ragnarok+Ophidian+Juston+Orange Lantern build? We shall see!

Nats again and again.

Finally tested my Nats build against the much-feared Ragnarok+Ophidian+Seyfert+Orange Lantern Battery build, and I won fairly easily. 35- to 45-minute game, and I only rolled for one attack, which was the final attack, for 4 penetrating damage. Team is now 5-0, and has faced three tentpole builds (Cap Sentinel+Seyfert+Yellow Lantern Battery, Superior Spider-Man+Ant Man+Spiderbots+Star Sapphire Battery, Korvac+Seyfert+Fury SR+Round Table) and handled itself pretty well. This is very likely the team I'll be using for Nats!

My other Nats build did well, too, against a Copycat+Banshee+Yondu+Green Lantern Battery team - tried to disable my neutraliser with Copycat, but I always carry a Nurse construct, so I just equipped Nurse to Copycat then rolled for Regen, regaining my Copycatted fig inside my first turn. Not bad!

Nats Again

The various phases my Nats Team build went through before being refined to just two, both not shown here in any of their final manifestations. Both are designed to be workable despite the map (but I do have maps prepared for them just in case I win map roll), but one build is definitely more adaptable. One build relies on power shutdown and letting the enemy come to me, while the other relies on perfectly-timed close-combat kamikaze tactics. Both teams are founded on randomness. I've played three games with one build and won them all, while I've played three games with an early incarnation of the other team and only won two. Pretty excited about the builds! Gonna play maybe three more games each with both teams and see which team ultimately performs better. No plans on winning overall, but hoping at least to perform better than last time.