It took me a lonnnng time to play this team.

Black Bolt (Incredible Hulk 042) 193
Gorgon (Mutations & Monsters) 110
Crystal (Chaos War) + Fantastic Force 5
Medusa (Galactic Guardians) 82 + Fantastic Force 5
+ Kinetic Accelerator 0
+ Dynamostat 0
+ Eleha’al Vine 0
=500 points. It was for the “Turf Wars” scenario (as seen on the “scenarios” page on this site). I’ve been wanting to field Mr. Bolt with his wife for months, but the time or team or total points never seemed right until now.

FIRST VICTIM: Returning player G.O. fielded Sentinel Mark II (Giant-Size X-Men G01), Morgan Le Fay (Chaos War) and Daredevil (Incredible Hulk 021) on the Quinjet map. I had control of the game for the most part, but was unable to KO more than DD for the win. It came down to a final-round miss on a last-click Crystal to save the game for me, because time would’ve run out before I could add a last-click Morgan to my points.

SECOND MARK: Relative newbie Aaron, who ran a full-strength Black Adam (Superman 054), Wonder Woman (Justice League 003) and Batman (10th Anniversary 001) on the Realm of Death. Gorgon rushed in to tie down the threats; after he was KOed, the enemy was in prime position to take massive “Silent Scream” damage from Black Bolt. He’d do this more than once, as Aaron’s team was unable to escape or muster enough fight to stop me. This time I wiped.

FINAL FOE: Vic had a typically strong team of Metron, Brainiac (10th Anniversary 012), Lex Luthor (10th Anniversary 013), Calculator (Arkham Asylum) and (sadly denying Vic the wonderfully F.U.N. theme of an all-chair team) Batman (10th Anniversary 001) again on the Death map. This match swung back and forth a bit, but a crucial late game error killed my potential comeback — having broken walls to gain a single-target Pulse Wave on Metron, I missed the crucial attack. But the move I should have made was to move Crystal to base Metron first, JUST out of BB’s line of fire. That way, even missing wouldn’t have cost Bolt his chances of a followup shot. As it actually happened, though, he was knocked way off his fighting game and only running out of time saved me from a complete wipeout.

Piece-by-piece:

Black Bolt really needs TK and/or Barrier to be playable for his SP Pulse Wave. But as the only taxi for the team and being paired with his wife Medusa for the +1 to AV, it’s a little hard to pull off the mega-move. He’s pretty pushable, at least. In the future, I won’t run him without the Inhumans ATA to help maneuver him into position to explode.

Medusa benefits greatly from the +1 AV. In this game, her free melee Incap was useless about half the time, but

Crystal remained a solid figure, functioning first as the alpha strike that Black Bolt is sadly incapable of being for this team, then as the cleanup pitcher with her unorthodox line of attack via the “Tornado” trait.

Gorgon was nothing other than high-priced tie-up, because I forgot his Super Strength only works on standard objects.

• + Kinetic Accelerator 0
• + Dynamostat 0
• + Eleha’al Vine 0

Nope, I didn’t play a single one. Additionally, as I’ve mentioned before, Super Strength is hobbled by the fact that opponents need not bring a single object to the field — and none of mine did.

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The darkness continues next week, with a long-awaited all-villain team report!