Jeff's Guide to the Stormfinite Team

JeffCascadian

There's a team that I use for tough battles as often as possible. It's my "Stormfinite" team: , , and . I won't take credit for originating the team. It was shared to me months ago by a friend on Facebook. I'd give him credit here but don't know his user name and won't break his anonymity. Even he, by his own admission, didn't come up with it on his own. It's terribly efficient and I'm asked about it once in a while so here's the details to using it.

Hulk 3/5/5. I know it sounds weird to not have five in Hulk's but if things go right, the only power Hulk will use is his passive . You want to make every match with him, even if it is the that is useless to your team, so he's out front to take the damage. There's a couple of reasons for this. First, he needs to take damage to activate his passage and change tiles on the board to . Second, Storm is easy to KO so you don't want her taking damage. There is an exception: If you have the chance to make a five-match, do it because it doesn't matter what color it is because you'll be able to make another match. You'll almost never need (or even want) to use Hulk's active powers. His isn't as good as Storm's and his stinks under most circumstances. Sometimes, just for fun, I'll let Hulk finish off the final enemy in a round. For all the damage he's taken, he deserves it.

Storm 5/5/3. Storm is the character you'll use powers of the most. Use her and only her green. It does damage, shakes up the board, and most importantly generates AP for any tile it destroys. Use her green whenever it is charged. Use her as a secondary attack & board shake-up. Only use her when you feel you have to because it will screw up Kamala's . Every power that Storm uses activates Kamala's passive to heal the team. That's important. (It's good to note that two-star Storm can be used on this team--I love her !--but you have to be super careful to keep her safe because she's KO'd even easier than the three-star version.)

Kamala Khan 5/5/3. Again, we're going to ignore her green. Kamala is there to use her to create and for her passive to heal the team. You should avoid making purple matches yourself unless it's safe (a minions-only opposing team where none of them can attack). Instead, you're relying on Storm's green attack to generate purple AP for Kamala to use.

Once this system starts going, the opposing team just stops having turns. You'll keep firing Storm's green. When it runs too low, you use Kamala's purple to generate more green. If you need to, Storm's yellow also alters the board to hopefully make beneficial matches.

There are drawbacks. First, it's not a quick win; be prepared for it to take a few minutes. Second, you're usually going to be using a after every battle for Hulk. Next, it's weak against stunners because having Hulk stunned, especially early on, really messes up the game plan. Jean Grey and Iceman are absolute banes to this team. You do need Hulk to be, well, STRONGEST ONE THERE IS! If Storm or Kamala are boosted beyond him, it makes it difficult to keep him out front and absorbing the damage. Finally, unless you sub in the Storm, you're going to end up with a lot of useless AP.

So there you go. Stormfinite. I'll update this if I remember something that I missed (I already have twice!) but this should help you against tough opponents in most circumstances. Good luck and have fun.

Astralgazer

If I can do multiple thumbs up, I would certainly do it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Calnexin

I'm definitely going to try this when I get home. I'm assuming if Hulk is higher level he'll tank green, red, black, and blue? His teammates don't need to be significantly below, do they?

JeffCascadian

Calnexin wrote:

I'm definitely going to try this when I get home. I'm assuming if Hulk is higher level he'll tank green, red, black, and blue? His teammates don't need to be significantly below, do they?

Yes. He should tank those four colors plus team-up tiles. He doesn't need to be far ahead of the others in level, just high enough that his match damage is first. And, of course, put him in the first position whenever possible.

fanghoul

Wow! This just made the Boss Rush winnable for me.

Thanks a lot!

mckauhu

Yeah same here! Would give thumbs up but it lets me do that just randomly. That means I try to give thumbs up every time I see your post Jeff no matter in which topic it may be since it sometimes works Team itself is superb but a tad slow just.

crakker

My KK is only 3/3/1 so I use GSBW. Her purple creates green files at specific locations which can make multiple cascades, and her red also does good damage. But she doesn't heal.

fanghoul

I'm copying this from another thread, because the tl;dr helped clarify to me how to use this strategy even more effectively.

Oldboy wrote:

I used Hulk (5/3/5) Mohawk storm (5/5/3) and Kamala (5/5/3)

Only use 3 powers
- Storm's green and yellow
- Kamala's purple

- Keep your green AP at 10 and above at all times if possible
- Flood the board with green (while keeping purple untouched) using Kamala or make green matches
- DO NOT overwrite purple with green using Kamala
- use Storm's green to grab green and purple
- use storm's yellow to clear TU tiles before you use her green (if possible). This helps to minimise the chances of you collecting TU tiles when you use her green.
- use Hulk to tank if needed to generate green
- grab whatever match 5s you can get

It's a slow and steady battle (think 10min or more) so dont rush through it or you'll make mistakes.

Basically just copied and paste the above text from another thread
At this point of round 4/5, this team is pretty reliable and should be feasible for players who mainly have a champed 3* roster. Not sure how this team will do in later rounds though. Unfortunately for me, my Mostorm is higher level than Hulk so she tanks more than Hulk

Calnexin

I used this strategy, and managed to get through round 4 with it.

Then I earned a couple of Storm covers and applied them, boosting her above Hulk. In round 5 she started tanking, and I lost pretty hard to Goblin.

I'm not sure which I'm more uncomfortable with - the fact that this synergy allows you to punch far higher than your weight class, or that it can be completely nullified by improving a character.

There's a donut hole around here somewhere. I just can't seem to find it...

JeffCascadian

Calnexin wrote:

I used this strategy, and managed to get through round 4 with it.

Then I earned a couple of Storm covers and applied them, boosting her above Hulk. In round 5 she started tanking, and I lost pretty hard to Goblin.

I'm not sure which I'm more uncomfortable with - the fact that this synergy allows you to punch far higher than your weight class, or that it can be completely nullified by improving a character.

There's a donut hole around here somewhere. I just can't seem to find it...

Keep farming two-star Moonstone. She provides Hulk covers.

sambrookjm

Tried this team in the Big Enchilada in today's Deadpool Daily. I had to use the 2-star Storm, as my 3-star Storm at LVL 201, while my Hulk is at 194.

First Round - Ragnarok, and 2 Criterion, who spammed Shadow Knives tiles to drain Green, Blue and Purple. That's...not helpful. Rags got off his Godlike Power as well, but KK was there to heal up the damage.

Second Round - Sentry Flier, Gunner, and Grenadier. Wind Storm to start. Had enough for Hulk Smash, but too many green on the board. Got a few match 5 without Kamala's Purple, and relatively uneventful.

Third Round - Sentry Fighter, Thug and Pyro. Wind Storm centered on the Pyro, as Storm is squishy. First match was a purple, which was enough to get KK's ability rolling. Two Lightning Storms (26 and 15 AP respectively), followed by KK's Purple and two green match 5s finished this round.

Fourth round - Black Panther, Demolisher and Horror. Two Wind Storms + 2 Embiggened Bash end the round without them getting a turn.

It worked well, but would have been better without the Criterion really slowing me down in the first round. Fortunately, no stunners were to be found.

Pongie

This team got me to round 7 of boss rush too. Then in round 8, the team had too little health against the coin flip Phoenix. Team mate then suggested a slight variation to the team. KK becomes Rhulk, purple still generates green and anger can lead to more cascades. Hulk becomes Cyke, after all, hulk is only the ignition to get the engine started. Once the combo gets going, hulk becomes a dead weight. Cyke brings a red/blue outlets that not only hits hard but also offer board control. This team requires much more skill to play, but the damage is a lot higher.

TxMoose

variations of this were used in galactus. hulk/storm/damage dealer (iirc in G it was steve and 3cyke). the switch to 4cyke that pongie mentioned is something I've used since BR and will use as often as possible. that team works so well once going. it isn't a fast start but once going, is nearly winfinite.

JeffCascadian

I decided to try a variation on this for a Lightning Round this morning. I substituted (3/5/5) for . The pros are that it makes the red and blue AP gained useful. The blue is especially good as it self-heals Ragnarok and charges up Storm's green faster. The con is that he only tanks three colors (green, red, and blue) instead of four (not black) and even then it's because he's boosted for the Lightning Round. At normal levels, my Ragnarok is far lower in level than Storm or Kamala so one of them would be tanking the green.

Edit: I thought I've give it a try for The Big Enchilada today. Ragnarok only tanked red & blue but his blue supercharged those green tiles for Storm making her ability self-powering all that much sooner. It'd be a lot better if Rags were the highest level character to tank more but this still worked very well.

Punter1

I enjoyed this in Boss Rush tough think it's misnamed. Hulk is just there as a battery to get started, then he gets in the way, Storm is key with a bit of KK for back-up and health regen.

It should be called "Storkkfinite"

richterbelmont10

Not bad, not bad at all! It was fun to try. Like you said, it was slow. But I like the constant board shake-up to counter the annoying Teisatsu's attack tiles, Daken's strike tiles, and Bullseye's protect tiles. Those morons are everywhere in PvE. Do you ever use Hulk's Red as a last move to end the battle?

JeffCascadian

richterbelmont10 wrote:

Do you ever use Hulk's Red as a last move to end the battle?

Sometimes but not often. I'll still only use it if there's few enough green that it wouldn't damage my team, too. I'm just not a fan of the way that power works. I do like giving the Hulk the finishing move, though, because I fell he's earned it by taking all the damage.

richterbelmont10

Okay, so I have a new variation on this team: Hood instead of Hulk.

Here's when to use it: When Storm and KK are powered up and taking away from Hulk tanking his colors, which is the case in the current Dr. Strange story event. I was using Hulkfinite team vs. Kingpin and 2 Devastators and I was never able to get Hulk in front to take damage from Wison’s Gambit since he only tanked one or two colors (I was using 2* Storm classic in her essential node PVE). So I thought: Hulk seems to be useless in this instance. Who can I use instead to steal AP? Loki was first to come to mind, and I might try him later. But I figured, Hood also steals AP! Also, he has a black and a yellow power that you can actually use, thus activating KK’s healing! I tried it and it worked like a charm. I had so much AP at the end of the fight, I was using 2* Storm’s Wind Storm to stun the 2 remaining enemies, used Hood’s Twin Pistols to deal massive damage and take out countdown tiles (it ended my turn but the enemy team was stunned), got my KK healing, and just continued clobbering the enemy into submission. It was fun!

JeffCascadian

Punter1 wrote:

I enjoyed this in Boss Rush tough think it's misnamed. Hulk is just there as a battery to get started, then he gets in the way, Storm is key with a bit of KK for back-up and health regen.

It should be called "Storkkfinite"

I'd already been thinking about it and I've thought about it some more. As a result, I've changed the name to Stormfinite. While all three characters are important, Storm is what really makes this work so credit where credit is due.

Punter1

So it really is a "Stormfinite" as I ran this in Divine Champions, but with Storm being the only part of the team that I kept!

Had Storm, Loki and Thoress. Took a little longer to get started, but once going was a quicker finish.

Loki worked as the battery initially, allow the opponent match-4s and steal the AP to get started. His purple was also useful for board shake mid-combo to keep matches going.

Thoress could then use her blue to stun and place charged tiles. The charged tiles accelerate Storm's green AP generation as well as powering the main damage from Thoress' red. Blue's stun also helps keep the combo running allowing the odd match or 2 if you've the enemy totally stunned.

I'd say Loki isn't as good as KK for the combo, her purple is more reliable than his, but I like Thoress in for her damage and charged tiles on red & blue that were useless with Hulk in the combo.

deadtaco

My PX is only 4 covers so I can't make use of his team.

Since finding this one, I have played around with it a little here or there, but for this season's pvp simulator I went all out.

It really works well. I set the rule for myself that I would take on whatever the highest point opponent I could find, no skipping unless all the point vaules were under 30.

I have crushed everything so far. The closest I came to losing was a bad board that eventually fed a 3* Mags a lot of blue and he beat the hulk to death. But his anger fed me enough green that after he died, the opponent only got one more turn.

It's slow and poor defensively, but it allows me to beat any team (so far). I was excited to think I could cruise to that elusive yellow Dr. Strange cover, but I then realized in my bracket that only 4 people have gotten that far, so I am waiting a bit. This team has been found and beat up 5 times so I ran another team to put out a better defense.

I'll try again in 2-3 days and see if I can keep the streak going.

Edit to note : some matches see Hulk get anger set off much faster than others. I know it's based on how much damage he takes, but I have seen him lose half his health and do nothing.