March Madness: Wrapping up Round One!

You’ve been such good little kiddies this year, gorging on your Easter chocolates and tossing the foil wrappers at each other… and if you haven’t, why not? It’s fun!

Not being the kind of lazy sods to let a weekend go by without squeezing in what gaming we can, we went ahead and wrapped up the remaining games of Round One! See, we’re a totally different type of lazy sod. That’s why my shirts are wrinkled and I’m carrying a spare tire. Bah. Enough! Results!

First up, the Pablo reported in on a couple of games played by his eponymous self and the lovely Babymama Carrie:

Team Superman wins over Thule Society
(yes, I know I already posted this result, but now we have a quick summary…)
After mulliganing, TS dropped Lois Lane on 1, finding Krypto for round 2, so there was some pretty good topdecking in the works. Round three saw two Cadmus Labs being blown up and two power-ups (including the only copy of 4-drop Superman) to stonewall the attach from Karl and Huge Annoying Tentacles, both hidden thanks to Into Hiding (x2)to benefit from Hunte Castle, a power-up and a Plague of Frogs. This proved to be crucial, as it preserved Superman Red’s cosmic counter. Thule kept dropping on curve army characters (Werewolves, Kieragraffes) into Black Flame at 6. TS underdropped a second Superman Red on 4, missed on 5 and finally, Superman Kal-El on 6 for the win. The double Reds made enough of a dent on turn 4, and a Home Sweet Home kept Krypto around to maintain board presence. A rewarding, if not unexpected, 33 to -something win for Big Blue (or red, as may be the case).

Fearsome Five win over Underworld
The Fearsome Five fought tooth and nail againts the Underworld, and thanks to Shimmer, managed to stimy the Underworld big beats. Shimmer stalled Reaper, Mephisto and Nastirth on 5, and Dr. Light stunned Mephisto on 6 to stop him from swinging in for big damage. The most significant moment came when I recruited Mind Gem on 5. The plan for Fearsome is to underdrop a 3 and a 2, as Neutron would be a terrible choice. With Dr. Light in hand, having recruited Sivana and Shimmer, the Mind Gem drew into the only copy of Psimon. Needing to discard either the 6 or the 7, Carrie’s logic prevailed (silly Bear, it hurt her in the long run). Psimon went into the KO pile, which proved huge as I didn’t draw into another Dr. Light on 6, so pitching him would have been disastrous. Finally, on 7, FF recruited Deuce and a power Gem, but, again, thanks to Shimmer, the Five prevailed 7 to -12.

And now back to the less detailed reports… hee….

Gotham Knights win over Future Foes
Some days it just doesn’t pay to be a bunch of evil twits from the far-flung future. Despite hitting their curve, the Future Foes were no match for the Gotham Knights; forcing your opponent to discard doesn’t achieve a lot when every other effect they have helps them draw cards. Thus, another of the teams with a non-rare tutor is bipped out of March Madness, and we’re left wondering whether Cassandra Cain really DOES prefer Vanilla Coke to Cherry after all. It wasn’t a complete walkover, but it may as well have been.

Kang Council wins over New Gods
You know, Supertown’s pretty cool, gives the New Gods a little extra oomph… but Cosmic-Surge isn’t much good when Rama Tut’s are putting the Finishing Moves on your stunned guys. Or gals, in the case of Beautiful Dreamer. The New Gods missed their six and topdecked into Infinity Man, but it just wasn’t enough to swap the swarm of Kang, Kang, Kang, Kang, Kang, Kang and Kang.

Green Lantern Corp wins over Marvel Defenders
There’s a reason the Marvel Defenders aren’t a tier one deck in Random Punks format… The Green Lantern Corps swarmed out in true Corps fashion, and there was only so much the on-curve Defenders could so about it. A free Light Armour on turn one certainly went a long way to helping the Corps completely blow out the Defenders, and natural synergy across the Willpower theme just pushed the Lanterns that much further. That Green Goliath certainly was grumpy when it was all over. 

Heralds of Galactus win over Villains United
Having a united front and all that is wonderful… but not going to do you much good against a planet eater. Despite missing their one and two drops, the Heralds didn’t lose a single character until turn seven, meaning they had a full board of Plasma, Human Torch, Air-Walker, the Fallen One and Galactus himself, before Tyrant came in on 8 to put the nail in the coffin. The Vengeance burn effects just couldn’t outpace the Heralds lifegain; despite 7-drop Calculator pulling out a 16 pt burn on turn 8, the Heralds had already slammed the baddest of DC’s bad to -30. In the end Dr Light may have been a traitor to the cause, continually bringing out lowbies for the Heralds to stomp.

JSA win over Wild Pack
At every turn the JSA were tossing about their “I get up-the-curve bonusses when exhausted”, to the extent where the end score was a hideous 39 to -17 blowout, proving that just like some of the other first-round losers, the Wild Pack work best when paired up with someone else. Not even the sheer awesomeness of Man-Eater could save the day for Silver Sable and her troops, with Wildcat punching Sable while holding some T-Spheres. Who knew he’d hit a lady!

Heralds (MCG) win over Secret Society
Who knew the bloody MCG gits even stood a chance? The Eponymous Pablo packed the deck with reinforcement effects to give those measly little Punisher Squadrons chance to stall out til the bigger Heralds could hit the deck… and it worked. The Society cycled every one-drop in the deck thanks to the wonder that is Poison Ivy, while Grodd stymied some attack values, but in the end it came down to the big boys… Doomsday proved his worth as he stomped Destroyer into the ground but Terrax’s  counterattack through Ivy made for a very public trouncing for a secret society.

Injustice Gang win over Masters of Evil
A game that see-sawed back and forth with the Masters of Evil setting up a KO lock to keep the Gang’s board small, but somehow IQ managed to stick around turn after turn, with three Criminal Masterminds loading the Masters’ hand and burning them all the way. In the end the lower-cost Masters just couldn’t take the heat as 7-drop Joker tossed more fuel on the fire, loading them up to 12 cards in hand… and then IQ slammed into 6-drop Erik Josten with three All Too Easy’s… a 2-drop with 33 attack is quite the sight.

Checkmate wins over Manhunters
Oh the pain! Oh the shame of it all! It turns out that some men can, in fact, escape the Manhunters. The burn from snipers kept the endurance totals from varying too much, while Checkmate put on a Christmas pageant, pulling out Three Kings and a Huntress in a Satellite. Clearly they need to reread the nativity story… A solid trouncing at the hands of a rather consistent beaty curve deck and my beloved Manhunters are out. (*cry*)

Big Brotherhood wins over Spider-Friends
There’s only so far three Spider-Senses can go. Having lost all of the rare goodness from MTU, the Spider-Friends didn’t have much of a choice other than to go for a Spider-Clones build. Despite having power-ups galore, the Spider-Friends found themselves continually outpaced by the Brotherhood’s Lost City fuelled pumpage. Aunt May can only bake so many pies.

And with that, Round One is complete! Whooooo! Spud will be updating the bracket later this evening for the curious.