Not only was this team intended to run nearly all the Hand Ninjas I’ve been slowly acquiring since early fall, but it was also born of my desire to play Tarantula, who’s under-appreciated because she’s just not as beastly-good as the 50-point  Spider-Man also seen in the same set. Finally, I’ve slowly been gaining respect for the new Kingpin figure and wanted to play him in a fairly comic-accurate team of him lording over a horde of hired ninjas (including the still-highly-mercenary Elektra and Tarantula) and Daredevil (presumably being manipulated somehow into working with his archenemy).

It was a battle royale starring, to my left going around:

Vic, who’s notorious for getting into the game, then selling out, then getting right back in:

Super-Skrull: Illuminati (Secret Invasion) 250 (borrowed from me)

Tony, the venue owner and a diehard, old-school FF fan who plays them the few chances he gets to play a real game. To wit:

and Therron:

He had an Asgardian themed team. But I had the umpteen-member Martial Artist theme and easily won map choice, putting us in the X:Men Danger Room indoor map. We decided to play until first team out.

That was all right with me; I had plenty of shuriken in the form of the Ninjas’ 8 range. And with the Hydra team ability boosting their Attack Values for range attacks, they began to whittle the big dog down.

Meanwhile, Vic decided to finally engage my Ninjas with Skrullowjacket, threatening to take out Kingpin. I took the opportunity to send  Tarantula in to occupy him. It proved a poor decision. She nearly took a crippling knockback punch until the players reminded me that I had tons of themed-team uses of Probability Control to burn. And so I did, forcing about 4 of my 7 available rerolls to save Tarantula from instant death. That proved fortuitous as Tarantula was later to use the Lunge feat to score a bit of real damage (yay BCF!) and hinder Vic’s attempts to take down Kingpin.

Elektra, on the other hand, did little but A) thoroughly miss Rocket Raccoon with her Flurry attacks and B) not get missed by Rocket Raccoon’s followup.

(Or Super-Skrull:Illuminati’s, which was the real trouble.) Daredevil, too, underachieved with big misses against Fenris Wolf. (Seems the critters were the ones giving me problems!)

Fortunately, I still had plenty of Ninjas. Hydra TA scored me lots of little shots on Skrullojacket, persuading Vic to try tying up the main Ninja culprits with Mr. Fantastic. With Mr. F using his SP to bump his DV to an impressive 19, it seemed a decent gamble, even against these two red-clad Ninjas’ free attacks.

It wasn’t. The Ninjas’ hits landed Mr. F onto late life.

As the game wore on, Daredevil at last pulled his weight by scoring a KO blow on the Wolf. With the other Ninjas mopping up the floor with all Vic’s team except Skrulluminati, I began creeping up on Tony and Therron’s respective teams. Therron was nearly all beaten up, with only Heimdall left and Tony wasn’t a whole lot healthier. I took the shots and actually scored two crit hits in a row to take out Therron’s last piece to end the game.

All game long, Tony kept warning that my Ninja Hedge would be a serious problem if Vic didn’t deal with them. But I honestly thought he was overstating things. In the end, though, he was right.

Kingpin worked just as I thought he would as the master plotter in the background. I actually never got to get him into full fight mode, as by the time he was actually threatened, the game was over.

Daredevil is a devil to use. His short range limits him and opens him up to retaliation. But he can dole out the pain.

“Human” Secret Invasion Elektra (seen here in my repaint) is a real feast-or-famine piece for me. Sometimes she’s a total buzzsaw that shreds teams singlehandedly, but more often she takes a beating like a bowl of eggs and gets fried to boot. Tonight was the latter.

But she sure looked good doing it. 😀

I’ll have to run something like this again in the future. In the meantime, watch this space for an attack from space against all flesh…