Above the Storm: Part 2

Many people think that Mantis belongs to some sort of telepathic alien insect race. But she's actually a human named Mary Brandt with the super-power of telepathy. She is also highly trained in Vietnamese martial arts, which earned her the nickname Mantis, later used as her superhero alias. She was created for Avengers in the 70s as a replacement for Black Widow, who was leaving to go hang out with Daredevil or something.

So onto rAge.

Arriving at the Coca-Cola dome in Joburg, I started to get worried due to seeing rather lengthy lines to get in. The line for Computicket was however...actually there was no one so I can't even call it a line. I just walked in. So I have to thank Jerome and Krishin for insisting that I buy my tickets beforehand.

Once inside, I discovered that there were so many people I could hardly move. I also had no idea where I was supposed to be going. There was a map but I didn't see it, probably due to the fact that there were so many people I could hardly see anything. Eventually I ended up at the Unplug Yourself booth, and Francois kindly directed me to the Heroclix tables, which took a while to get to. I don't think I need to explain why.

Once I arrived there, I met up with the other guys from Durban. For those of you counting, the players from Durban were Kureshan, Krishin, Peter, Brandon, Kavi, Keegan, Chris and myself. Kuri and Krish had already qualified, and were just there to cheer the rest of us on. The judge, Deon, was dressed in a complete Guy Gardner Green Lantern outfit, which was rather impressive.

My first game was against a Joburg player playing M10 Iron Man, Splitlip and the Book of the Skull. As a reminder, my team was Angela, Mantis and Major Victory, using the Guardians of the Galaxy additional team ability, and supported by the Green Lantern Power Battery. Because outer space. He won the roll, and decided to go first, moving out Iron Man and Splitlip. I assume he was planning to drop hammers on his second turn, but Splitlip was now close enough for Angela to knock him out on my first turn. This slowed Iron Man down long enough for Major Victory to come in and defeat him, with Mantis assisting.

My second match was against Chris, who was playing the long-range Phantom X (I refuse to use the French spelling of his name because he isn't French), along with Black Talon (who sounds cool but is actually just a guy in a chicken suit), Weasel and the Indigo Tribe Power Battery. Those of you who know us will be aware that our games tend to devolve into rules-lawyering arguments (and it's my fault just as much as his). This was no different. I feel kind of bad that I completely forgot about the first-turn-immunity rule, which gave me a significant advantage as Angela crashed in and messed up Black Talon's day. She then blades'd Phantom X for 6, before getting knocked out. Chris' Weasel tried to heal Phantom X, but accidently knocked him out instead. Oops. Two wins for me, though I didn't really deserve this one.

My third match was against Brandon's team which was a similar idea to Chris' but used Cyborg instead of Phantom X, and a White Lantern Power Battery/Entity combo to bump up Cyborg's stats. The weakness of Cyborg is that you can destroy the objects he is using to increase his range. I just couldn't work out how to destroy them fast enough. Angela did a lot of damage, but not quite enough, and I lost. After the game, Kuri pointed out that I could have used Mantis to give Major Victor an extra attack instead of using it on Angela, which would have taken out the objects. I think more practice would probably have allowed me to come up with that idea myself.

Depite the loss, I had done well enough to get through to the Sunday, along with most of the other Durban players, with only Kavi and Keegan missing out. Part 3, which will finally explain the title of this series, is coming soon!