See that? Lightning just shoots right out of my hand. You can’t beat that.
So it’s been quite a while since I posted a team ideas column, but I think the wait was worth it. I’ve got a great team idea for today’s article that is completely original to this blog right now and very tournament worthy. Without further ado here’s the team:
The Unstoppable Force
IIM037 Iron Monger 2.0
DP042 Grasshopper * 4
WOLR102 Power Battery (Red Lantern Corps) [Writers Note: Battery color and construct color don’t matter that much, just make sure the ring is red.]
WOLR302 Red Lantern Ring
WOLR202.03 Mallet (Red)
WOLR202.06 Decoy (Red)
WOLR202.11 Bulldozer (Red)
WOLR202.13 Stop Sign (Red)
Total= 299 points
The most powerful character ever is a Great Lakes Avenger? You bet it is! This team works much better than you might think it does because of timing rules. When multiple effects happen at the start of your turn, you choose the order in which they happen. So the idea is to put a Red Construct on each of your Grasshoppers, which–in addition to the normal effects of the Construct–grants penetrating poison to each character. Once everyone is equipped, use all three actions to Maximum Jump and remove three grasshoppers from the board. They will be double tokened and they will each take a pushing damage. That sounds bad, but stick with me.
Maximum Napalm!
On your next turn the Grasshoppers hit the board like virtual napalm. Because of beginning of turn timing rules they can land and then do penetrating poison damage to every adjacent opposing figure immediately. That’s 3 penetrating damage dropped out of the sky with no attack rolls and probably hitting multiple opposing pieces at once. The Grasshoppers are still double tokened, but they haven’t taken an action this turn so they will clear at the end of the turn. And then if you need them to they can maximum jump again next turn with the same bad effect for your opponent. Since you’ve done all that damage on your turn but haven’t taken any actions you can use Maximum Jump on your last unused Grasshopper and even get a standard attack in with Iron Monger. But who likes rolling attack dice? Boring. Just keep doing automatic penetrating damage. That’s so much easier.
Then comes the hard part for your opponent. Every turn a Grasshopper survives next to an opposing character is another Penetrating Poison damage it will do the following turn. Depending on tokens, the number characters he’s playing, and positioning your opponent may not be capable of eliminating them all in one turn. Which means more Poison damage next turn. Just to make it harder on your opponent I’ve included Iron Monger 2.0 on this team. Iron Monger 2.0’s trait says that if your opponent kills a Grasshopper he’ll avoid taking a penetrating poison damage to every adjacent opposing figure next turn, but he’ll trade that for a penetrating explosion damage to every adjacent opposing figure right now! It’s a real lose-lose situation. Don’t knock out a Grasshopper? Take penetrating one damage for every one left alive. Knock out a Grasshopper? Take penetrating one damage for each one you kill.
After your opponent figures out what’s going on, this could be his response.
Something else to keep in mind is that the first Grasshopper that gets KOed resurrects itself for free in your starting area due to it’s Trait. Being in your starting area doesn’t really matter when you are moving around with Maximum Jump and the construct that was on the KOed figure simply returns to the battery to be redeployed on the resurrected figure. It’s really like you are playing 5 Grasshopper napalm bombs, but only paying for 4.
You’ll need a few turns for deploying constructs to get maximum effectiveness out of this team. Waiting until turn 4 is ideal. You can use the fact that this is a theme team to win map roll and make it a map that’s hard to traverse from one side to another. Wundagore Mountain anyone? Then if you need to you can use Iron Monger and any Grasshoppers that are ready to engage the other team for a turn or two from a distance. After taking all those Battery actions early, it should be pretty easy to get to the end of the dial. Which means that if all Grasshoppers are eliminated your opponent will likely still have to face down an Iron Monger 2.0 with Shape Change, Penetrating Poison, Plasticity, and +3 to all stats.
Artist’s rendition of what it looks like when Iron Monger 2.0 gets plus three to all stats.
If you surprise people with this team by taking it to you next constructed tournament, there is really only one thing to say to someone trying to beat it.
Critical Missives 
Pingback: Age of Ul… timate Play!! (Or, The Weekly Roundup for 09/14/2014!!) | Critical Missives
What about head pools with sheep gun attached? could that work more effectively do you think, or no?
LikeLike
I like where your head’s at (no pun intended!)! You would lose Theme, but as it’s a generic Theme to begin with, it would really just hurt you for Map Roll. The ability to generate Sheep tokens would definitely add another level to this Build though. What do you think, Ninwashui?
LikeLike
It wouldn’t work as written. Sheep gun on headpool has zero range. Also unlike grasshopper, the sheep needs to survive the opponent’s turn before it can start doing poison damage.
However, there is a bit of genious in Yankee Dudel’s post. Multiple Headpool’s plus some red constructs seems horrific – for your opponent. You’d need a way to move them all at once (Gates comes to mind), but once they are surrounding an opponent, it would be very hard to kill them and stop the poison damage.
Here’s a sample of that team:
AvX Scarlet Witch
Gates
Headpool * 3 (with wild card word bubble)
Red Lantern
Red Ring
Mallet
Bulldozer
Stop Sign
Total 300 points
You’don’t lose theme over my original team, but you’d have a three hard to KO poison machines with mystics.
LikeLike
What do you do against teams with Invincible?
LikeLike
I’m sure Ninwashui might know a couple more options that I’m not even thinking about, but keep in mind that there’s a good chance that IM 2.0 will have an uncounterable Perplex and/or Outwit. So your game plan with a team like this will vary more than most Builds might depending on what’s across the table from you, I’d imagine.
Also, there aren’t a ton of figures in the Meta right now with Invincible, especially top dial.
Pulling up the list of pieces with Invincible that you’d be likely to see in the Meta right now, I see:
Thane
Super Skrull (The Zombie Chase–he can get it, although he risks taking unavoidable damage)
Ronan (the 106R Movie version, who I think people have been sleeping on a little bit, but that’s a discussion for another time)
200 point JLSG Superman
Superboy Prime (Red Lantern)–maybe?
Larfleeze (maybe?!)
Black Witch (who just has 1 click of it)
Takion
And that’s about it–although you can probably also throw the Trinity of Sin Question in there, since I think he can get it.
Of those, Thane is gaining a lot of ground in the Meta, so a team featuring him would definitely be a tough matchup for this squad, but it wouldn’t necessarily be untenable.
The worst matchup would probably be the New Mutants Team Base once the new Canonball is released–cuz their printed Defense power usually sucks, and his asset ability gives them access to Invincible most turns. Yuck!!
Anyway, hope that helped!
LikeLike
Well unless you are specifically trying to counter this team odds are you won’t be playing a team with invincible on every piece. And even the pieces that have it usually only have a few clicks of it. Facing any piece without invincible you would use your normal penetrating poison to take them down. For the remaining invincible pieces you will need to use real damage to get past thode clicks. Iron monger has 4 damage printed and the grasshoppers all have Close combat expert on every click. They are very efficient for their cost even without a red ring. It’s a bummer to actually roll attack dice, but you will probably need to hit the average invincible character only a couple of times before you can just use poison the rest of the way.
For example the one character I can really think of to fear is Warstar, but anyone normally played with him in a 300 point team would be easy to KO with poison. Mid match you’d likely have 2 or 3 grasshoppers and iron monger versus a lone warstar. That’s still not easy, but if you use the remaining grasshopperso as tie up then iron monger should be able to get that KO.
LikeLike
Pingback: Team Ideas – Test Subjects… of Love! | Critical Missives
Pingback: Team Ideas – The Lazy Mirror Master | Critical Missives