First up on our tour of some of the excellent Theme Teams that you can build from this set, I'm going to touch on 3 different versions of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I'll touch on the current team as well as DnA's team and the original Silver Age team (although I believe I've included some of the 90s additions to the Silver Age team).
I'll start in the most obvious place, the "current" team. It's current in that it's the early team from the current run (not including Venom or Captain Marvel, but Iron Man instead). Now I've built my team with the downgraded version of SR Iron Man because he works better to come out to a rounded point total. This build uses all figures from the 5 Figure Boosters, you could likely play around with the Gravity Feed versions of Gamora, Drax, and Star-Lord to upgrade Tony if you really wanted to. Here's the build:
55 GOTG001 Gamora
100 GOTG002 Drax the Destroyer
110 GOTG030 Star-Lord
94 GOTG033 Angela
100 GOTG051 Groot
80 GOTG052 Rocket Raccoon
150 GOTG055E Iron Man
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689 Total
For DnA's run, I actually went back and grabbed older versions of Groot, Star-Lord, and Rocket so that they had the right "look" for the team. This is a high point build, but it did leave point open for the AWESOME Guardians of the Galaxy ATA. This is definitely a "cover all" team, so you can widdle it down as needed.
Guardians of the Galaxy (DnA)
56 GOTG002 Mantis
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
85 GOTG029 Moondragon
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
160 GOTG040 Martyr
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
165 GG010 Adam Warlock SIDEBOARD GG020 Magus
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
121 GG011 Drax
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
52 GG039 Cosmo
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
64 CA011 Jack Flag
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
152 WS049 Groot
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
44 HA001 Bug
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
90 HA025 Star-Lord
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
65 HA028 Rocket Raccoon
4 ATA Guardians of the Galaxy
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1098 Total
Building the Silver Age team, I again tried to assemble anyone that you may want to use for the team. I did leave the Keeper off, because he's a Chase, and he threw the points off. Just keep in mind that he is an available option, if you want to rework the build. They have a Silver Age ATA, but it's worthless if you're playing a pure GotG team. Also note that you could sideboard either Starhawk or Aleta. All depends on which one you want to have on the board at the opening of the game. For my team, I went with Starhawk.
130 GOTG004 Starhawk SIDEBOARD GOTG024 Aleta
95 GOTG005 Major Victory
60 GOTG022 Talon
75 GOTG023 Yondu
92 GG012 Charlie-27
138 GG013 Hollywood
72 GG024 Nikki
82 GG025 Martinex
47 GG035 Replica
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791 Total
Next, I'm going to touch on some smaller team that were featured in different events. The first are the Graces, coming from the pages of Annihilation: Ronan. This team was formed by Gamora on a a fringe Kree planet, and received 3 of it's 6 members in this set. Unfortunately, a fourth member, Cerise appeared as a Prime in Wolverine and the X-Men, but didn't get the keyword, because WizKids hadn't created it yet. That said, I've still opted to include her here, and point out that any Judge should allow this team in as a Theme Team. Of course, since you have to technically break theme to play this team anyway, if you're looking to up the point total, you can always team them up with some version of Ronan, like they do in the comic.
55 GOTG001 Gamora
75 GOTG012B Tana Nile
87 GOTG016 Nebula
60 WXM023B Cerise
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277 Total
The next team I'd like to look at comes from War of Kings: Ascension and is probably the most straight forward of the builds that I'll be discussing. This was essentially DnA's attempt to do for Darkhawk, what they did for Nova in Annihilation, which is to bring the character back into the lime-light and make him cool again. They did this by creating a larger mythos around the character, and connecting him to an ancient secret order from the Shi'ar Empire. Now, Darkhawk doesn't exactly get along with the other Raptors, so you could always sub 2 generic Raptors in for him to build out the team, but since I really love Darkhawk as a character (and like the dial a lot as well) I'll be fielding him with the rest of the team. And it comes to an even 300 points, which is always good.
45 GOTG008A Raptor
45 GOTG008A Raptor
90 GOTG008B Darkhawk
120 GOTG102 Talon
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300 Total
In the War of Kings, the battle between Vulcan and Black Bolt ended with a rift being torn in space-time, called the Fault. When the Fault broke open, all kinds of things started spilling out. One of those things was an elderly version of one of Nova's greatest foes, the Sphinx. In Nova's Realm of Kings tie-in issues the Sphinx is forced to recruit some of his greatest adversaries to combat the younger version of himself, because his younger version wants to steal the older versions Ka Stone to increase his power. Admittedly, my main reason for building this team was for an excuse to have a team with the Sphinx on it. That said, it's in no way a Theme Team by WizKids rules, but it still looks really fun to play.
90 GOTG008B Darkhawk
150 GOTG036 Black Bolt
190 GOTG043 Sphinx
125 FFGGA001 Nova
130 GG037 Mr. Fantastic
98 AV046 Namorita
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783 Total
An alternate approach would be to field the young Sphinx's team, although it's missing a couple of characters (Bloodstone and Basilisk). Here's what is out.
190 GOTG043 Sphinx
94 IH009 Man-Wolf
76 HA022 Moonstone
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360 Total
At the close of Thanos Imperative, Nova and Star-Lord were trapped in the Cancerverse, the former with all of the Nova Force and the latter with a Cosmic Cube, with Thanos. At the writing of this, we still don't know what happened to Rich there (although we will soon), but the other cosmic heavyweights from Realm of Kings formed a team to honor that sacrifice. The team was called the Annihilators, and can now be fielded in all it's glory! Personally, this is one I can't wait to run. Although, I'll have to find an event large enough to run it in. Note that they're are cheaper versions of most of these characters, so you could shoot for a lower point total. This is the one that looked like the most fun.
150 GOTG009B Ikon
4 ATA047 Annihilators
200 FFGGA002 Silver Surfer
4 ATA047 Annihilators
175 FFGGA004 Quasar
4 ATA047 Annihilators
150 FFGGA005 Beta Ray Bill
4 ATA047 Annihilators
150 FFGGA006 Ronan the Accuser
4 ATA047 Annihilators
52 GG039 Cosmo
4 ATA047 Annihilators
195 GG040 Gladiator
4 ATA047 Annihilators
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1100 Total
One last stop on my cosmic event tour takes us to a more recent event, Infinity, and the Cull Obsidian (or as they gave them the keyword, the Black Order). Thanos is tough enough without having a team of sociopaths behind him, but in Infinity, that's exactly what he brings with him. The team is both cunning and nasty, and I think they were reflected quite well in this set. This is another team I can't wait to try out. I went with the Experienced version of Thanos here (to save on points, and to start with his "The Black Order Obeys" power) but since his larger version is exactly 100 points more, you could very easily upgrade him.
65 GOTG025 Ebony Maw
105 GOTG046 Black Dwarf
200 GOTG047AE Thanos
120 GOTG048 Supergiant
100 GOTG049 Corvus Glaive
100 GOTG050 Proxmia Midnight
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690 Total
The last team that I'll touch on is a team that was born out of an older event, Operation: Galactic Storm. This team was put together by the Kree Supreme Intelligence basically as a Kree answer to the Avengers. Starforce was built from the best the Kree had to offer, and you can build a pretty cool team with them. Although, this team does come in a few points lower than I would like, with all the characters being Kree, you could easily place a Kree generic on the team to round it out to 600 points.
150 GOTG019B Dr. Minerva
153 GOTG020 Ronan the Accuser
140 GOTG021 Korath the Pursuer
120 GOTG101 Captain Atlas
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563 Total
Now I know some people will look at this article and immediately say, where are the Inhumans? To that I say, they're in a Fast Force, which is more than easy to build teams from, and it's kind of an obvious team. Sure you could make the same argument for the Guardians of the Galaxy, except that as I've illustrated here, the Guardians really have at least 3 distinct rosters of characters. It's easy to get mixed up in those rosters if you don't already know who the members where on which teams. And while I may have touched on some obvious teams (like the Cull Obsidian), I at least tried to tap some that people may not have already known.
If you have a team that you really like that you can build thanks to something in this Guardians of the Galaxy set, I'd love to see it in the comments!
