Scenario : Planet Hulk

We played the Planet Hulk event dial this past Friday and I think it went pretty well. I know I came up with a screw everyone else strategy that didn't include playing against one piece (or group of pieces) - Galactus. I have to hand it to Jeff - way to get in an awesome figure that decided the game!

I played a wildcard abuse team. My main strategy was to get Deathstroke into the fray and take out as many figures as possible. Deathstroke had 3 initial wildcard abilities he could use including Batman Ally, Ultimates, and Mystics. The rest of my intial 600 point build included Namor, Nightshade, OOTS Batman, Ultimate Quicksilver, and Dawnstar (for Quarry & wildcard).

Ferru had an Injustice League team, and was my teammate. He had Lex Luthor (another wild card!), Black Manta, Solomon Grundy, and Bizarro.

Brian played an Illuminati force without their friend Blackbolt but with their good friend Spiderman. This was Namor, Professor X, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man and Spiderman.

Jeff had a Galactus team, with Galactus's left foot, his right foot, and the rest of him.

What I learned: When played as a force, with other figures, Galactus (and any other colossal) dominates the game. At the onset I saw how the game would unfold. We creep forward to the edge of his 16 range and wait. Galactus comes forward and blasts away all the rocks. His supporting figures fly forward and bring us out to attack. We split our efforts with 1/4 taking on the oncoming support figures and 3/4 going against Galactus once we got into position.

That's how the game went. I'm sure Brian would have LOVED to have had a TK'er launch Namor at our forces once Galactus was in range. He'd have mopped the floor with us. Alas he didn't know Galactus would be played and he had his team. I only say this 'cause I wish I had a TK'er to launch my Namor into the fight while Brian approached.

The event dial was the only anomaly that kind of worked in everyone's advantage. Just when we started taking losses did the 'roll 3 dice, choose 2' appear. That mechanic ROCKS. It almost guarantees a hit - although there was one miss! We were able to take out Iron man and Namor with that. However it cost us our Namor in the efforts.

As a kind of last ditch effort, I ran Quicksilver up to Galactus and attacked. After the attack, which was unsuccessful, I used the maneuver feat to move Galactus behind Quicksilver and next to our forces. This makes NO sense but there isn't a rule against it. So there, Quicksilver can lift buildings now.

We landed a few shots on Galactus but it was too few. We started to get our reserves in at some point and for the better part all they did was die. Jeff fed us some Manbat Assassins and the planet started blowing up per the event dial. In 1 turn all of my forces died. 3 turns later Galactus fell to the planet. Then Ferru's endless stream of Moloids came in as did Jeff's Multiplex forces. The game ended because there was no way for either side to KO the other since the planet would kill either player before they reached the other side!

Based on points, Jeff came in first, Brian in second, I came in third and Ferru finished last.

My only criticism of this scenario is that 600 points of figures + Galactus with an outdoor map is insane. There really isn't a way to narrow the field between teams we played. Is Galactus overpriced - hell no! Jeff committed 600 points to a figure that can't be countered outside of perplex and can make 2 attacks per turn against 3 targets with a 16 range. If we had say Earth-2 Supes + a TKer- those 600 points would have fallen in 1 or 2 rounds to a figure that is ~1/2 the cost! Does anyone have the E-2 Supes... no, but still...

I know if I make a scenario in the future, I'll be posting some type of eratta as far as the figures go. Collossals permitted or if there is a special condition nullifying the bonuses that the collossals get (such as seeing stealth, mystics damage, taking tokens, etc.) - basically to handicap them to make the game slightly more balanced if a team is lacking an Earth-2 Supes to take them out.

Hmmm, here's a thought - a team game similar to Friday's but requiring 2 teams of 400 points of figures + each team gets one collossal. A kind of gladiator arena game - you can either go collossal on collossal or have the collossal take out the other team's force or even make the collossals non-player figures w/ scenario rules as to how they attack....