About 2 years ago, there was a post on the forums about trying to make a team that could withstand multiple villain encounters back to back to back without resetting their board or HP totals. Here is my 5 man team and teambuilding strategy for creating a team that can last through the long haul:
Teambuilding for Endurance:
To begin building the perfect team to take on multiple villain encounters, we need a cornerstone, someone who can take punishment, deal punishment out, and has the tools to keep themselvs and possibly others sustained through multiple rough patches. For the cornerstone of my team, no one really fits the bill as completely as Scholar. His elemental forms provide DR and heavy team tanking through redirection, massive self healing with utility team heals, the tools to prevent damage through Offensive Trans, and the ability to deal mass damage once set up through Energy forms. His out of turn plays will help during occasional board wipes. Scholar makes a perfect cornerstone to build an endurance team around.
1. Scholar
Now that we have identified the perfect cornerstone for a survivability team, lets start plugging holes. If there is one essentail component that Scholar is missing, its the lack of Ongoing destruction and general Villain deck Shenanigans. There are tons of great options here, from Nightmist to Argent to Visionary to Wraith, the list goes on. Parse, though, seems like a great fit. Her ability to screw with the villain deck and dictate what the villain plays is unrivaled, even by the previous queen of utility Dark Visionary. Parse brings the manipulation of DVis, while being able to deal more damage than her on average and can be the saving grace to Scholars major other weakness, DR, which her nack for Irreducible damage. They compliment each others weaknesses incredibly well and they form the "core" of the teams strategy.
1. Scholar
2. Parse
Now that the core of our team is built, we can start adding the bells and whistles that will make our core better and more efficient. We have two heros are are pretty such specializing in what they do. Scholar as the main Tank with benefits and Parse as our Utility queen, if ANY of them can't perform their job, for whatever reason, everything can fall apart. In competitive Pokemon team building, there is the notion of the "pivot" attacker, or in Baseball we call them pitch hitters. We need someone that can fill multiple roles and do it well in case someone falters. The Naturalist instalty jumps out to me as the perfect pivot for an endurance team. He can flip the switch to the DPS/Tank/Utility role on a whim and has his own fantastic ways of healing, redirecting, and even taking the Environment out of the equasion when it all becomes too much withstand.
1. Scholar
2. Parse
3. Naturalist
We are coming down to the wire, and with only 2 spots left, the competition gets tough. Back to the Pokemon teambuilding metaphor, the team lacks a definitive "Sweeper", the guy that comes it and cleans up the board through sheer speed and power. When the name of the game is Endurance, most of our heavy hitting heros are pretty frail and counter to our goals. Also, the team up to this point is very ONGOING heavy. But if we can ignore equipment destruction it leaves more room for Parse to be even more selective with her deck manipulation shenanigans. Tempest has the makings of of a great endurance style damage dealer. He not only has some of the best teamhealing, but his access to AoE and strong one-shots and enviro destruction makes him attractive. Haka is another prospect, where his bulky HP, healing, Ground Pound, and particularly Savage Mana could be very strong together and make a lot of sense. But there is another option that might not be very obvious. The Sentinels. They require very little setup, Medico can spot heal Parse or Scholar, they can team wide heal, have access to their own DR, can belt out a considerable amount of damage per turn (AoE and single target), and Writhes signature card can be used and abused. They can revive themselvs in case something goes horribly wrong as well, and when the name of the game is endurance, well, Battle Rez's have always been invaluable.
1. Scholar
2. Parse
3. Naturalist
4. Sentinels
You can't just throw the Sentinels into a team built for endurance without taking note of their largest flaw, low HP. Thats a challenge buster right there, and if they go down early to AoE or are targeted by constant lowest HP effects, the entire team will follow shortly. The healing/damage brought by the Sentinels is of key importance which is why they were chosen over some other more bulky options, so they need to be protected. Wraiths Smoke Bombs would be a great choice, but would be counter productive since the team works best staying as Ongoing heavy as possible. The best way to protect the Sentinels from a constant barrage of damage is to produce alternative low HP targets. Unity makes a very attractive option since she can belt out damage when fully setup and has some great utility in her BeeBots and StealthBot. While her deck is really fun to play and has a great mechanic, she tends to suffer from a lack of consistency, and since endurance is the name of the game, any weakness will be exploited especially if it takes her a long time to setup. Fortunatly, there is another option that fullfills our specific needs. Captain Cosmic! He has a wide array of low hp cards, a ton of ways to play them, and a lot of them gain extra beneficial effects when they are inevitably damaged. His unique style of of team Utility will help the entire team with healing, damage, low hp target damage sponge, and out-of-turn power uses.
1. Scholar
2. Parse
3. Naturalist
4. Sentinels
5. Captain Cosmic
