Welcome Back!
In our last articles we covered Brotherhood as an affiliation, going over the individual characters, as well as delving into Magneto's Leadership, which was extremely popular at launch. Brotherhood gave prospective players all the tools they needed to succeed with the power of Magneto at their backs along with some strong support and beneficiary characters to receive the dump trucks of power that Magneto spreads to his teammates.
But they were all deceived, for another Leadership was made...
I can pinpoint the time I switched hard to Mystique Leadership. I was due a game versus Black Order and realized that Magneto simply can't out-punch Black Order, no matter what crazy tricks I put in place. It was then I realized that going tall with Magneto wasn't going to cut it, and going wide with Mystique might just be the ticket! I won that game 16-2 on SWORD base by absolutely out activating BO and sending Corvus to Egypt between Enchantress' advance and SWORD advance.
Small sample size, I know, but I still boast a very high winrate with Mystique Brotherhood, to which the point I've almost forgotten how to play Magneto (if you want to go back to my Magneto article and make fun of me, make sure to leave some comments below XD). So I forced myself to never take Magneto in any game that mattered to see if I can weasel my way through games. I think Brotherhood gives a player the unique opportunity to taste both sides of the cone, the ability to go tall and beefy or go wide and slippery in the same list, with most of the same characters!
In this article, like the Magneto article, we will go over the Leadership itself, as well as how your affiliated characters come into play with this different playstyle, and then I'll spell some characters out of affiliation to finish the meal. As a dessert, I'll post my current list which is more leaned toward Mystique (but still runs Magnus in a pinch). If you are looking for Team Tactics and Crisis Strategy, that'll be covered by BOTH affiliations in the next few articles.
Without further ado, the Mystique Leadership and Character Primer!
Lets lead off with some brief Pros/Cons before we get to the real meat
Pros
- Does great when going wide
- 8 point core, plenty of room to fill out points
- Still able to punch at a good clip to eliminate priority targets
- First hand access to the best displacement card in the game
- Doesn't really have a "bad" scenario
Cons
- Sometimes half Mystique's Leadership is unusable
- Can punch hard, but not quite as hard as Magneto
- Need to rely on displacement ideals to score
Leadership
There's a LOT of text here, and there's a lot to break down, so lets start with the first half, because this in my opinion is the BEST half.
There's a lot to unpack here:
Once per turn, not "the first time", so this ability can be activated at your leisure.
This is NOT a cost reducer or something that makes it free like First Class, this is a Rebate, you need to have the power to be able to get it back.
(ok, maybe not that much to unpack, but here's your analysis)
This half of the Leadership means on Cubes you can easily grab 2 with a character like Lizard who can heal some cube damage, or a guy like Quicksilver who can just get away from danger and be overall slippery, or Toad with R2 objective pickup
I probably spoiled half the article right there, but this rebate also gives you a Power Advantage over your opponent. Having just one extra power can unlock a lot of possibilities Round 2, where the general fighting begins. Characters like Quicksilver are starving for power so they need all the help they can get! This also helps your benefit on "find the thing" extracts as it lessens the blow if you fail to find the Skrull/Senator. This also helps lessen the blow of multiple Legacy Virus grabs, although you can just be like me and steal it off someone with QS, then use Toad as a sacrificial lamb by slurping up one or two extracts from QS to win the game.
This half of the Leadership gives you an early game edge, which Brotherhood does a great job of taking the lead and securing the lead. They are not a great catchup team because that requires potentially dazing several characters, which is possible, but shouldn't be relied upon.
Here's the second half of her Leadership broken down:
Both halves of this Leadership give you a group of tools that you can use to win the game. Now lets talk about our affiliated characters!
Affiliated Characters
Magneto
This'll be brief, if you are taking Magneto you are likely doing so for his Leadership, where it's possible Mystique and her boss will be on the table at the same time, there's likely no time you will take Magneto and run Mystique leadership. Magneto just does not do what the Leadership wants. That's out of the way, lets move on!
Sabertooth (L counter: 2)
So I'm going to be keeping a tally of L movers, counting Mystique (who is a L mover herself), but her bestest bud Sabertooth is on the scene. In this list Sabertooth is an Enforcer, heading to flanks or back points with his L move in order to take out weak targets and/or dare the opponent to attack him. He will not survive focused attacking (save for XCeptional Healing possibly) so you need to keep him out of the thick of fighting and focus on mismatches, which are definitely possible. Sabertooth is great at dealing damage here, as well as robbing activations from greedy characters that attack him, especially if the target is already damaged. I'll be talking about my core later, but Sabertooth might as well be part of it with Mystique lists due to his punching and threatening power.
Toad and Quicksilver (L Counter: 3 and a half?)
So these characters go together, because they ARE your core with Mystique, giving you an 8 point starting point! Sword 14 is no issue with this Affiliation at all, and you have a lot of beef and variety to go with it. These guys are going to be doing most of your objective heavy lifting, nabbing extracts while being safe, getting from point to point, threatening a back point (but mostly to steal and less to punch out like Sabertooth will). Toad can get extracts off weaker targets and run away, or spit on someone to get a critical attack the be more effective. Can I Borrow That is in our 10 and can be taken in certain situations where it deems important (remember when I mentioned Power Advantage?). The difference between Mystique and Magneto here are these two may be hedging your bets with a Magneto list, with Mystique they are your workhorse!
Scarlet Witch
Wanda is your attacking muscle. There's still no one better to flat eliminate a character, but with an 8 point core, it's supremely easy to slot in 5 threat Scarlet Witch and remind your opponent who she is. With the wide strategy there will also be plenty of moving parts making it a little harder for your opponent to focus her down, so it's going to take careful planning and possibly an Asteroid M play in order to maximize her effectiveness. Going 5-6 wide (depending on threat) can allow you enough distraction for Wanda to shine and she will absolutely obliterate targets on D flanks and E points.
Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were a huge key to making this kind of squad work. Scarlet Witch shaves a single point of punching giving you a super lean core with QS and Toad and now you have 3 characters that are heavy on objectives along with your Leader. If we were keeping count Brotherhood has 3 L movers that are affiliated (Toad might as well be a L mover with his movement skills), this is done for one to help counteract Magneto's slow walk of doom, but also greatly shows how your characters can zoom around the board changing the conflict in certain map styles.
But who works well with Brotherhood on Mystique side? Because we want plans for low threat, we really want to avoid unaffiliated 5+s, even so much as avoiding unaffiliated 4+s (but we will discuss at least one). That's right, the 3 threat army is here, but first lets get to the auto-include:
Let me be clear, when I said Mystique had an 8 point core I sort of lied, because I can't imagine playing any Mystique pointed game without Lizard. For a while this slot belonged to a character like Beast (who also can fit in your roster at the same time, but I've replaced him with another character we will get to later, and yes, Beast will have his own section because I'm still a Beast apologist), but when Lizard came out he just supports this list in every single way. Now I touched on Lizard briefly in the Magneto article but I feel like he does everything you want here; Movement (M with a Medium Base and Wall Crawl), 2 displacement effects (push and throw), physically tanky with 4 defense, Damage Reduction, and Healing Factor 1, as well as potential value in running him and Sabertooth making X-Ceptional Healing a better play. Lizard is your single extract runner, Lizard is the immovable object you send to a point to just hang out. Hot Take #1: Lizard is the best out-of-affiliation 3 threat in the game. I could spend a whole article gushing about Lizard, but lets talk about a few other characters before this article loses your attention...
Beast
You know, I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Henry McCoy. He was kind of a prototype Lizard for me; heavy physical defense, rerolls on defense to cover his shortcomings in energy defense. mobility (some forced), character throw and packs a better punch than Lizard. Now most people dislike the fact a wild on his builder forces you to move, and yes there can be situations where attacking may put you in a place you don't want to go, but I find he works best going in rather than attacking out, so I do try to use him to engage a point not defend it from a distance (unless I use his spender). Lizard and Beast together create a bash brother situation where both characters are hard to eliminate and can get in and out just as quickly. I don't run both together now, but depends on where the meta goes I could see running both again.
Enchantress
Pre-Nerf Amora was a shoe-in pick, being able to displace multiple characters a turn along with objective stealing coupled with some good attacks. The nerf bat hit her pretty hard as she loses some of her punch only being able to move one character along with stealing now being an action. I don't think this excludes her, but also think she isn't an auto-include on high threat situations. I personally need to do more testing with her, but at this time she's not in my current list. She still does a great job of dealing with clumped characters and affecting objectives in order to win the game.
Lockjaw
So I'm going to bring up Lockjaw because a lot of people are in love with him, and I'll admit it, I was also originally. I loved the idea of using Lockjaw as Magneto's best boy, but with the game changing and Mystique being more effective, Lockjaw kind of sits behind. When most of your team moves L already, you need more value out of your 3 pointers and I just don't think Lockjaw does enough to make it worthwhile. He can help focus a character with his buff, and with teleports and terrain throws he can affect some things, but I don't believe he just does enough.
Black Cat
Another new(er) addition, Felicia does a fantastic job of replacing what Enchantress does at a lower threat level with objective control. She also has an auto-stagger on her spender (well, if it does damage, which you should be doing), Stealth and preventing rerolls also helps her stay alive a little better than Amora, who can just get sniped off if they commit well enough. She's also another L mover giving you even more mobility.
Before I talk about the final character I want to spotlight. Lets kind of review who we like for out of affiliation characters
- Mobility
- Displacement
- Objective Control
- Defensive
The new hotness, Sam Wilson. So the funny thing is with Wanda and QS, also depending on who you spell it with, you can actually backdoor into an Avengers affiliation, but that's not what we're here for. I shouldn't have to talk too much about Sam since he's kind of everywhere right now. He's another L mover, who has a mini Drop Off (a nonbo with Sabertooth unfortunately) but also has Charge and some ok defensive prowess. Sam is super HUNGRY for power though so managing his tools is hard but the main reason I included him includes his absolutely bonkers Shield Throw, pushing characters and guaranteed power is invaluable and his Charge helps him get into contesting then Shield Throw twice to bonk characters off if needed.
Imagine this for a second, imagine your opponent sees you play Magneto and wants to punish you with SWORD 14, but you turn around and throw this squad at them:
Mystique, Quicksilver, Toad, Lizard, Cap Sam Wilson
ALL either L movers or have some extra movement and objective tools, two characters that can handle extract play very well, Deception with Mystique to push people off points, and Sam who can carry anyone in this squad. The number one question in the old rules I had for every list was "What's your 14 threat plan?" Today that is less likely, but it's still something you should be prepared for. My go-to 14 on Senators was Magneto and the Twins and simply destroy everyone and everything in my path, but even today I don't like that idea quite as much as I used to.
Finally today, here's the current list I'm running, keep in mind my list is still a little straddled toward both affiliations for flexibility, and I'm currently testing Gamora on the Magneto side as she got some good updates recently.
[Characters]
- Black Cat: 3
- Captain America (Sam Wilson): 3
- Gamora: 4
- Lizard: 3
- Magneto: 6
- Mystique: 3
- Quicksilver: 3
- Sabretooth: 4
- Scarlet Witch: 5
- Toad: 2
[Team Tactics]
- Asteroid M
- Brace for Impact
- Can I Borrow That?
- Deception
- Disarm
- Magnetic Refraction
- Medpack
- No More Mutants
- The Whims of Chaos
- X-Ceptional Healing
[Extract Crises]
- Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? [C]: 19
- Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan [F]: 17
- Struggle for the Cube Continues [F]: 17
[Secure Crises]
- Infinity Formula Goes Missing [B]: 17
- Portals Overrun City with Spider-People [D]: 18
- S.W.O.R.D. Establishes Base On Moon's Blue Area [C]: 14
Now I'm sure you have questions, mostly regarding Team Tactics cards and Crisis cards, but those will have to wait for another day. Next article will be over setting up your scenario and throwing some sample squads for a few different situations.
Till Next Time Brothers!
-HavoKDarK
Lizard is size 3 so Sam can't Air Lift.
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