by Michael Cupach
Hello everyone, my name is Michael Cupach, I am a Heroclix player out of Cleveland, Ohio and today I want to talk about the team I played at the ROC Regional event in Warren, Michigan on April 15, 2017.
Team Building
I’m the one with the green shirt!
When I decided to attend this event I was sure of what I was playing; I had a Scientist theme team that I liked a lot and had played a variation of in the past. I play tested it, found the right map for it, and had it packed away Friday night when out of nowhere I lost complete faith in my team. After liking it for six weeks, I lost confidence, scrapped it, and started rebuilding my team at 11pm, twelve hours before registration!
I had a few friends of mine on Facebook messenger help me out. We went over a few concepts when one of my friends, Eric, said I should play my Riptide team. I had played a 300 point version of the team at ROC States and a WKO back in November. The 300 point version was:
Riptide x 5 (225 points)
Proteus attached to a Riptide (35 points)
Batman/Superman Robot (25 points)
The Atom (15 points)
It was a tough team for people to deal with. It took a Zombie team base to the wire at States, and at the WKO all games were super close. I really liked the team, but with the format for the ROC being 400 points, no possession at the start of the game, and nothing bigger than a peanut base, I thought the team wouldn’t work and dismissed it. After finding nothing better to play, I re-re-revisited Riptide and things really fell into place after doing a search for characters who can carry more than one piece at a time. Vanisher became a no brainer, and I settled on playing seven Riptides (315 points) and two Vanishers (80 points).
(Marauders Theme)
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
45 Riptide
40 Vanisher
40 Vanisher
Heavy, Light, Light Object
Maps: Nick Fury Safehouse, Prison 42, Hank Pym’s Lab
Map selection
Now that I had my team I needed the map to make the team. At the start of the game, most terrain doesn’t really matter to me because the Vanishers will phase everyone into position anyway. I needed corners, walls, and tight spaces to keep my opponent’s team confined, and to let me keep my pieces out of pulse wave range. Furthermore, I couldn’t have elevated terrain because once the Riptides break off, if my opponent runs and hides on a building, I have to take the long way to follow them. Prison 42 ended up being the perfect map for my team. The Vanishers would phase everyone up to right behind the room in the middle of the map, then on the next move I could be within pulse wave range of anywhere on the map.
I found out the other map I wanted to play had been banned: I was always a fan of how the Morlock tunnels made for fairly predictable play, but it wasn’t mean to be. I ended up bringing with me Nick Fury’s Safe House and Hydra Island, but I had no intention of playing them.
Strategy
They say that cocaine is a helluva drug: well, Pulse Wave is a helluva power! 99.8% of pieces in this game can’t do a damn thing to combat pulse wave (yes, that’s right…I did the math!). I don’t have to worry about what your pieces do defensively or what traits they have; I just point and shoot and you take damage.
Every game I needed to start off by positioning myself so I could go for an aggressive attack on the next turn. In all but two games my opponent took a wait-and-see approach to my team; either they would pass or move up into position. Then I could get to work and start pulse-waving. My main objective was to KO the low-hanging fruit first. The purpose of the lowhanging fruit was to trigger Riptides trait:
MUTANT MASSACRE: The first time during your turn that one or more opposing characters are KO’d, after actions resolve choose one: this turn, modify this character’s speed, attack, and damage values by +1; -or- heal this character of 1 damage.
The goal was to always get the +1 to speed, attack, and damage, then to start single-target pulse-waving the big target for two damage. With Riptides improved movement: ignores characters, it’s easy to maneuver myself around to do this. It became rinse and repeat from there. I would push Vanisher onto his PC clix in case Riptide missed or if my opponent critically hit me or knocked me into a wall.
Drawbacks
There were a few drawbacks to playing this team. The dial is only four clix deep on Riptide and more times than not he would be one shot KO’ed. A piece like LE Doc Ock or the Krang/Seyfert/Batmite combo scared the hell out of me because they get so many attacks in one turn and could cripple my team. I faced each once and in both games I got really lucky in that Doc Ock missed half his attacks (including a critical miss) and Krang missed an attack as well.
Outwit was another power that could ruin my day, but I didn’t see too much of it. Having a one trick pony of a team means that if my trick is countered, my Riptides do diddly-squat! At top 16 I came against a team with both Doc Ock and The Riddler on it; I had a hard time dealing with The Riddler’s outwit and “clue” trait. Essentially, Riddler would be able to outwit sidestep on one Riptide, then use the clue to counter sidestep on another Riptide, then I would have to waste an action having someone move through the clue to get sidestep back. It got really annoying and slowed down the game for me.
Conclusion
I love this team: simple, straightforward to play, you control the board, and you can turn someones lights out pretty quickly. At first glance, many people wrote the team off because it wasn’t meta; it didn’t have Jakeem, Krang, or Nick Fury on it, so how could it be good? This is also right up my alley, playing teams that no one would think about or consider playing. While I mean no disrespect to people who only play the meta, it isn’t my style. I would rather take last place with a unique team I created than to play a 5th generation knockoff of a Nick Fury team that 100 other people have already won with and be the 101st person to win with it. I understand why people play “net deck” teams – if you are driving X amount of hours, dedicating X amount of money, and the prize is fantastic, you want to play something that has a track record of winning. That’s fine, but I get zero satisfaction from it. Be creative, think outside the box, go against the grain, play your team and bring some originality back to the meta!
Thank you for reading, I hope I gave some insight on how I got to where I was with this team. If you have any questions about my team or something I didn’t cover, follow me on Twitter @MJCupach and drop me a message.
