The New Season

By Paris Gordon

With the conclusion of the ROC World Cup (congratulations Isaac) a new season is upon us. This time, ROC has introduced a new format “Limited” that is the format for the next 6 months. Limited consists of a few restrictions to help diversify team builds and game-play: no resources, no relics, no ID cards, no constructs, no possession (for which we’ll assume the new Eclipso and Brainiac will fall under), and nothing larger than a peanut base. The standard build for this format is 300 modern; there are some cool alternate formats as well but we’ll save those for another time. Coinciding with the beginning of the new season is the release of the Superman & Wonder Woman set, which I personally love. One of my favorite figures from the new set (for various reasons) is the super rare, Majestix-designed Faust. So, for my first Limited team of the season, I present Faust 2.0.

The Team
Build +4 Mystical
90 SMWW056 Faust
87 SLOSH047A White Witch
58 JLTW055 Tim Hunter
45 SMWW015 Hat
10 NFAOSA002 Right Leg (Hulkbuster)
2 AVASS100 Pym Particles
4 ATA038 Legion Lost
296

This team takes advantage of almost everything Limited allows that the previous No Tactics did not: Themed Team, ATA, and special objects. Despite Faust being the highest point character and the main attacker, he was actually the last figure to go on the team, so let’s start with White Witch. The undisputed kings of the No Tactics format were Kyle Rayner and Zombie Super Skrull (henceforth: ZSS). Kyle has already been hurt by the new “no constructs” limitation, but ZSS is virtually untouched, which is where White Witch comes in. Her free action “give White Witch a free action, and each opposing character can’t be given more than one free action until your next turn,” absolutely cripples ZSS. Don’t get me wrong, a good ZSS player with a good team and (as always) some luck, could still win; but it’s as big of an uphill battle as you can imagine. And since I would prefer ZSS having the uphill battle and not me (which is usually every game against ZSS), I decided to play White Witch. Now, if all she did was counter ZSS that wouldn’t be enough for me to drop 87 points on her, but she does so much else. Limiting free actions also cripples vehicles trying to take powers/stats, Engineer, Batman, as well as numerous figures trying to use some combination of standard powers that are free actions. The fact you can do this every turn is amazing. She’s also a flier, gets the Legion Lost ata (probably Mystics to help make her a less appealing target and for a little more damage, which is one thing the team is slightly lacking on), has decent stats for a secondary attacker, isn’t easy to kill, and synergizes incredibly with the next piece.

Tim Hunter has the power to copy the powers possessed by any adjacent friendly Mystical (so, everyone) that has at least one action token. Now let’s look at the other half of White Witch’s power: “Give White Witch a power action and each opposing character’s combat values can’t be modified until your next turn.” It also specifies you can only use one of her two effects per turn. However with Tim Hunter, I can now do both every turn (power action Witch, copy/free action Tim, next turn copy/power action Tim, free action Witch, and so forth). If I don’t care about the modifiers for a turn, I can also carry Tim with White Witch and then have him copy and then free action. He also gets Shape Change and ESD from her, and can replace his defense value with her defense value for any attack roll, making him much harder to kill (that’s a 19 Shape Change from range, against an unmodified attack value). He could also copy Faust’s powers to be more mobile and maybe even do some damage, but that’s a very specific situation. Oh, and if he gets to click 4, he basically becomes your primary attacker (but you have to look at that as a bonus, he’s unlikely to get there and you’re playing him for his first 3 clicks anyway). I think that pretty much covers Tim’s role in this team, let’s move on to the “main” figure of the team.

From this point I knew I wanted to keep Mystical theme but that I needed a durable main attacker who could reliably hit or had Probability Control (PC), but those with the Mystical keyword are few and far between. Then I remembered Faust. He’s mobile, he packs a decent punch, is hard to kill with unmodified values (another unmodified attack on a 19-20 from range), plus has 7 clicks with the last two being his awesome teleport power with Regeneration/PC. I’m no mathematician, but man, rolling 3 dice on an unmodified defense value sounds very good to me. It’s fairly simple, very effective. And to add to his effectiveness we have the final member: Hat.

Hat is an amazing little 45 point Mystical support piece. His main role is to help out Faust. He can TK Faust or Smoke Cloud strategically to greatly improve Faust’s already impressive mobility, he can Perplex or Prob, or if he finds himself in range of an opponent, he can Outwit, Pulse Wave, Psychic Blast, etc. Of course he can only do any one of these things per turn, but it’s better to be able to choose one out of all the options than to limit your options to only 2, in my opinion. He’s also another 19 from range 😉 (and maybe even Shape Change! but probably not).

So, this all brings us to 284pts (with the Legion Lost ATA discussed earlier). I decided on Hulkbuster Right Leg (Toughness + Flight) and Pym Particles. Right Leg on Faust is incredible. Normally I would TK/Smoke Cloud Faust on to the object with Hat turn 1 and pick it up. Now Faust has a reducer to go with his already long dial and Flight which is extremely important on your main attacker, especially one who likes being in hindering terrain. Pym Particles are more there just because I have the points for them, but making Tim tiny is helpful if you can. Or maybe you want someone Giant some game, who knows. This brings us to 296! And that’s the team. However, I want to briefly go over 2 things: other options, and weaknesses.
For those last 20 points (including the ATA) you have some options, what I used was what I personally felt was best, but there’s arguments for the following as well. You can opt for Lockheed, other Hulkbuster parts (mainly Torso and Left Leg), Cowgirl (Smoke Cloud), or various other bystander tokens. The rest of the team is pretty concrete though, from my perspective.

Every team has some weaknesses, it’s impossible to avoid. For this team, the biggest weakness in my eyes is no heavy damage output. You won’t be one-shotting many figures with this team, but you’re hitting hard enough to hurt and probably two-shot a good chunk of figures and you’re hard to kill and limiting them, so ideally it balances out. The second biggest is no Willpower whatsoever. This isn’t the end of the world, as ideally you’re alternating tokens between Witch and Tim, don’t care much about pushing Hat, and Faust can take a push if he has to, although hopefully you can clear him safely. Heavy barrier teams could also be annoying, but with Walls gone and +4 to Map Roll, I wouldn’t be overly concerned with it.

Conclusion
That wraps it up! I hope you all enjoyed my team for the new ROC Limited format utilizing new pieces, and thanks to Majestix for designing such a cool piece! I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to play it, or if I’ll have a Faust when I do, but if the opportunity arises expect to see me with this!

Until next time, Happy Clixing!