SoL Rnd 1: Psychos vs Dr Spectrum

Anyone who’s listened to this week’s TRHC is already aware of Squire’s concerns for this matchup. The Squadron/Inhumans teamup looks pretty darn sweet on paper, with a strong curve, good search, and card recursion – but the deck comes into its own on turn five, and Lady Luck’s paired it up against Brian Foley’s rush fiends in the Avengers/Sinister Syndicate deck.

Trying to do Squire a favor by not letting Spud play and miss drops, I took the reins of “Hi Dr Spectrum” while the Eponymous Pablo picked up the Psycho Reservists.

True to form, I roll a 1 for initiative, handing it over to Pablo. He opts for odds, cos he’s a Welshman with no legs. My opening draw includes Arcanna and Mysterium, so I opt for a mulligan…

Turn One

Pablo starts his little rush squad with Slyde. I, on the other hand, have hit none – NONE – of the mulligan conditions for the deck. That said, I have a Substructure and a Great Refuge for later, so I’m hoping to catch up.

I recruit nothing, and Slyde kicks me the face.

Spectrum: 48
Psychos: 50

SoL Rnd 1: Shake ‘N Bake vs. TF: Revenge

Round one is nearing completion, and we’ve definitely saved some of the scrappiest decks for last. Today, we’re pitting Baldman’s Shake ‘N Bake, a Morlocks/Secret Six board hoarding deck, against the extremely aggressive Task Force: Revenge, built by OnyxWeapon. TF:R is basically just a huge pile of random guys plus board-wide pumps, so it’ll take some fancy maneuvering from the Shakers to stall this one out.

Let’s see how it goes down!

-Spud

***************************************************

Pablo wins the roll and takes odds; both players mull.

Pablo starts off the game with Mad Hatter, while Spud drops Sue Dibny, searching out a Booster Gold. Hatter beats her up to do some (minimal) break, and it’s off to turn 2!

Send in the clones – a ramble.

Clone Saga is a difficult format for me to write about. You see, the current incarnation of the “gdaybloke” character really developed on the Freedom Reborn forums for the Freedom Force PC game. My friend Rob, Hellscorp, was running around in-persona cloning everything in a sufficiently evil manner. They would even shave off their goatees so that we couldn’t tell the evil ones from the good ones. Thus agent Graham Day (G.Day) became to CEO of H.A.M.S.T.E.R., an agency dedicated to eradicating clones before they replaced regular humans. You know, the ones that get their fibre.

The first power on the card, originally designed some years ago, represents my shutting down of cloning by negating power-up potential. Since my weapon of choice was a minigun that fired specially-trained exploding rodents, the second power represents my laying down a spray of incendeniary gerbils, forcing people to keep their heads down.

And yes, in the art there you can catch a glimpse of the then-2-yr-old Gdaygirl in her little gyrocopter, and Gdaysheila packing heat as well. 

Nonetheless, after years of fighting clone villainy in all its forms on a handful of online fora, I now find myself contemplating just what I should clone.

And of course, this is completely distracting me from thoughts of what I should play for the City Champs in two week’s time, with its precious cargo of Fantastic Four characters… le sigh…

SoL Rnd 1: Wild & Sticky vs Crisis Knights

Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble, when your perfect in every way… but the perfect Everyman of Comics, the ever-popular Spider-Man, can’t win ‘em all, can he? And then there’s that twisted perversion of Superboy, who just wants to be perfect himself…

What happens when we toss ‘em at each other? A hell of a smackdown, that’s what!

in one of those really odd turns of events, I win the dice roll and opt for evens. I’m wild and crazy like that.

Turn One:

In the most boring turn of the game, both of us miss.

Wild & Sticky: 50
Crisis Knights: 50

SoL Rnd 1: WOLVERINE vs. WOLVERINE vs. WOLVERINE vs. NOT WOLVERINE

We’ve got a special treat for you folks tonight: a double-header of extreme violence, featuring no less than THREE Wolverine legend decks!

The first game pits a bizarre Wolverine/Hulk hybrid, which aims to smash directly with an absolutely massive SHIELD Wolverine, against the swarmy, scrappy Villain Potpourri. It’ll be an interesting matchup; Given the mostly-hidden early curve of Patrick Yapjoco’s deck, BOTH players are likely going to do a lot of face-smashing with their decks, so it’ll be interesting to see which can pump it out harder and faster!

After that comes one of my favourite items of weirdness for Summer of Love: the bizarre pseudo-mirror-match between Adamantium Skrullmate and The Claw Society. These two decks were matched up before we’d even assigned them to be built, so it was obviously pretty shocking to see them both come back as essentially different-team analogues of the same basic engine. It would be weird enough if they were just two similar decks, but to have them matched up against each other? PUH-LEAZE!

Alrighty, enough preamble. Let’s get to the violence!

Good Dad? Bad Dad? I’m with the chicken.

Slice of life time.

So, Gdaysheila’s off working a wedding. Gdaygirl’s gone to see Cirque du Soleil with her grandparents and is having a sleepover. It’s just me and Gdayboy with the rest of the day to waste.

We roll to the mall, run an errand or two… while strolling through a store I spot a costume that might be suitable for late October festivities. It’s a Frog, and it fits quite well. Not a bad costume, quite a reasonable price. Not to be, however, young master Gdayboy falls in love with a different costume entirely. No biggie, as long as he’s happy, I’m happy.

We buy said other costume, leave the store. Gdayboy wants to wear it then and there. Who am I to say no, it’s just he and I, right? So, think what you will, I help him into the costume and we continue wandering through the mall.

Enjoy.

The lay-deez were impressed.

SoL Rnd 1: CrimeWatch vs. /moar/ Cards

So I says to Flashback: “Pick A or B.” And he says, “B”. And I says to him, “Pick A or B again.” And he once again responds, “B”.

In so doing, he decided that this evening we would be resolving the second available matchup of the Calla Lily division, and Gday would be piloting its second deck, Crimewatch.

Always treat Spud’s cryptic nonsense with due respect; you know not what terrible consequences your answers might entail.

Caption Contest #15

Squeezing in between Summer Of Love match reports, it’s yet another Caption Contest! Here’s this week’s pic for you to make teh funny with.

Thursday 13 #26: Thirteen reasons…

I had all sorts of plans for a rather visual Thursday Thirteen this week, shouting to the heavens my admiration of a fellow by the name of Hank Raab… but he hasn’t emailed me back with the answers to the questions I sent him, so instead, I give you thirteen reasons why there’s no Thursday Thirteen this week. So to speak.

SoL Rnd 1: Green Weakness vs Family of One

You can tell when someone loves a team. Their adoration knows no bounds; any flaws are quickly glossed over in favor of enjoying the thrills of the team’s highlights. Possibly the best-known example of this is Rian “Stubarnes” Fike, whose love of purple robots surpasses even my own fondness for red ones.

As such, you can only imagine what a thrill it was to have him take on the Sentinel team-up deck for Summer Of Love… but do the Emerald Enemies make the team stronger, or do they undercut the oomph of Senator Kelly’s favourite mutant-smashers?

Read on as they take on the Fantastic Four and X-Statix!