Hobby League: Darkseid Triumphant

Woot! Woot Wooty Woot Woot! Dancey dancey dance dance, shimmy shimmy wootage!

 …. (*cough*) 

In case you didn’t gather, from either the post title or the above shenanigans, Darkseid fought his way to a win in the DC Legends Build-A-Legend marquee event tonight! I can’t really express how giddy I am with glee over this. Not only is it rather uncommon for me to fare this well in a tourney, it was a bloody marquee! I got the damn shirt without having to hope for a door prize! (*bounce bounce bounce*)

…. okay, enough of that. (*bounce*)

…. okay, NOW enough of that.

The deck I ran was pretty much the one I posted a few days back, with a couple of minor variances: (continued after split)

 Darkseid: Darkseidstitution

• 3x Parademon Elite: Army
• 4x Dark Lantern: Mockery
• 2x Dark Thanagarian: Mockery
• 4x Dark Firestorm: Mockery
• 3x Dark Martian: Mockery
• 3x Darkseid: Apokoliption Oppressor
• 2x Darkseid: 8th Century
• 2x Dark Superboy: Mockery
• 2x Darkseid: Evil Reborn
• 2x Dark Kryptonian @ Dark Superboy: Mockery
• 1x Darkseid: Apokolips Now
• 1x Darkseid: Dark God
• 4x Dark Matter Drain
• 2x Furnace of Apokolips
• 3x Ancient Throne
• 2x Ancient Evils
• 4x Mobilize
• 4x Titans of Tomorrow
• 3x Big Leagues
• 3x Against All Odds
• 2x Servants of Darkness
• 3x Pathetic Attempt
• 1x Created From Hate
• 1x Endgame
• 1x Anti-Life

Round one had me matched up with the Eponymous Pablo and his Future Foes based Ra’s Al Ghul deck. An unfortunate play error on four cost him his board when he discarded a 1-drop Ra’s to fuel Five Against One, and then realised he needed that Ra’s for a pump. The game continued with decent board presence on my end, especially since he was running the Fatal Five members.

In the end victory was mine on turn six - a subbed Dark Martian took out 5-drop Ra’s potential for reinforcement; Dark Kryptonian ate Ra’s, getting me an extra Furnace of Apokolips as he pushed the curve up a notch. 5-drop Darkseid and Dark Martian kicked 6-drop Persuader into the mat, and then Dark Firestorm and a sole Parademon Elite hit Pablo to the face, knocking him to -2, while I sat pretty on 32 END.

1-0 for Darkseid; the game was a lot of fun, but the card draw of Furnace and 4-drop Darkseid undermined the discard theme of the Future Foes. 

Round two saw me pitted against Babymama Carrie. This was a very special thing - Carrie, unfortunately, does not have the best track record at Hobby League. In fact, prior to this evening, she’s won a grand total of one game at Hobby League… but she keeps coming out with Pablo and baby Emma, and keeps at it with a smile on her face. Her sportsmanship is an example to everyone.

Carrie was packing a Magneto deck, loaded with pumps and packing Juggernaut for extra beaty goodness. Reinforcement on my side meant I was able to minimise a lot of the damage, but the stuns were still flowing freely. Thank God for 3-drop Juggernaut’s “no ready” effect - he had the helmet, so was tossing 11 ATK MINIMUM at me every time he got up the gumption to come visiting.

The highlight of this one was definitely the last round. Dark Kryptonian had jumped the resource count up again, so I was able to recruit Darkseid: Dark God, while Carrie was only running with 6 resources thanks to her blowing up a Genosha or two.

I sat there thinking “He’s a freakin’ 8-drop. She’s got 3-Juggernaut, Destiny, Avalanche, and 5-Quicksilver. I’ve got nothing to worry about!”.

Coyly, Carrie declares Juggernaut into Darkseid… and then plays Big Leages and Savage Beatdown, putting her at a sufficient 20 ATK.

“Hah!” I say to myself as I play Against All Odds….

“Poop!” I say to myself as she plays Crackshot, and promptly stuns an 8-drop Darkseid with a 3-drop Juggernaut.

In the end the rest of her board mooked Dark Superboy, but Dark Kryptonian swiftly followed up by trampling Destiny into the ground.

2-0 for Darkseid; Pathetic Attempt was useless since none of her plot twists, etc, targetted me, but I got to rock baby Emma to sleep while we were playing and thus had some quality snuggle time. I’m good.

One amusing thing that occured this round - Spud vs Pablo. Both playing Ra’s Al Ghul decks. Sitting next to them at the table, we overhear “I’ll declare a team attack, Ra’s Al Ghul and Talia into Nyssa Raatko”. And the fanboy geeks of the world explode in delight.  

Round three brings on Captain Spud and his League of Assassins Ra’s Al Ghul build. I’ve played againt this deck once before, but he didn’t manage to get the Inhumans half of the deck online in that game; without Attilan it was a pretty simple win for me. This time, however, everything started quite nicely.

He had his San, got his Attilan, and managed to get a couple of uses out of it before I was able to Dark Matter Drain it. His curve was pretty much set, and he had row’d a couple of Dirty Tricks to further mess with my Darkseid Stompyness.

This proceeded to be the toughest fight of the night for me based purely on trying to keep track of the numbers - he had Harsh Judgements, Shrike, and Dirty Tricks tossing my regular calculations out the window all over the place.

Entering turn 7, I had 15 endurance, he had 10; He had 7Nyssa, 6Shrike, 4Talia and 5Ra’s, I had Dark Superboy, Dark Kryptonian, and 7Darkseid. Spud had initially set up with Nyssa in the back row but after we played out the combat phase, it turned out that he hadn’t realised he was on 10 END, and had thought he could endure the 11pts worth of stun damage from Ra’s and Shrike getting biffed; I didn’t want to screw him over, so since the only thing he would have done differently was to put Nyssa in the front row so she could attack, and that wouldn’t have changed my plans (ie, to stun Ra’s and Shrike, doing 11 damage and putting him at -1) I let him move her up and swing into  Dark Kryptonian.

Final score: gdaybloke 1 END, captainspud -1 END

3-0 for Darkseid, a shirt and four Parallax for gdaybloke!

(*bounce bounce bounce*)

…

…. sorry about that, apparently it wasn’t completely out of my system.

Just to crown the evening off:

1) Gamerette gave me her playset of There Is No Escape since she has no interest in Manhunters and she knows I was drooling over a playset. Very grateful to her!

2) Carrie won her third round game, giving her a third place finish… and she also won the door prize! Very happy for her!

3) We had a new fellow, John, buy an X-Men starter and a few boosters, and expressing significant interest in getting into the game. A demo or so later and he’s a little confused, but eager… and he really wants to play a Cable deck. Lord knows where I’m going to find him some Bodyslides, but more players is a good thing! Very happy to meet him!

4) We only had a small turnout, so we had enough Sinestro Corp Rings to give everyone a playset, and one spare left over which we gave to new player John! Yay for Anti-Matter!

5) I picked up a couple of DCL packs… and pulled a Hidden HQ! A foily Nasty Surprise! A 6-drop Joker! Okay, so Joker’s trade bait since I don’t play IG or AI, but still… Yay for cards!

So, just in case you missed it, I walked away with:

• 1x Flash Shirt
• 4x Shiny new Jonboy art character
• 4x Shiny new Manhunter plot twist
• 4x Shiny new Anti-Matter equipment
• 1x Hidden HQ (only need one more for a playset now!)

WOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!