The Magneto Manifesto Part 5: A Winning Hand for Mutantkind

Greetings Homo Superiors!

Alas we have reached the final regular entry in the Brotherhood manifesto. This certainly doesn't mean that I will be done making content, but this should close the door on basics and understanding the affiliation, and I'll expand with more strategy based articles as well as answer questions that I'm commonly asked.  Without any further delay, it's time to talk about...

Team Tactics Cards.

The New World Order expanded your TT card roster from 8-10, with more character specific options and powerful options available, there's a lot more you can slot in and Brotherhood is not a faction that's short on cards to play. However, to keep this article from being 80 pages I'm going to focus on a couple specific things. Of course I'm going to cover every Brotherhood Affiliated card as well as touch on Brotherhood Character Specific cards (even though I loosely covered these in my character articles). I'll also cover my top 5 neutral cards, and for those of you that love hot takes, I have a spicy one down below.

Affiliated Cards

    So Brotherhood only has 3 actual affiliated cards, in Asteroid M, The Books of Truth, and Difficult to Please, so those will be covered first.

This card is an absolute powerhouse, the more affiliated Brotherhood characters you have (or can choose from), the more powerful this card is!  For 2 power each you can bring Magneto to your side, or Wanda, or Juggernaut to help you fight a battle. Granted this does not allow objective characters to move, but objective characters can be the target location. So if your Toad is full on power he can port over to where the Legacy Viruses are and slurp them up to hopefully win the game! Mystique lists arguably get a little less run with this card since you may not have the Master of Magnetism to impact big damage, but bringing over threats like Wanda or Juggs should be sufficient.

Verdict: Must Take

The newest affiliated card, this one when it was spoiled was a big deal being able to give Magneto another activation! The conditions for this happening aren't out of the question either, especially depending on Crisis selection. Wanda usually Dazes/KOs a target she gets 2 attacks on and Quicksilver is running objectives for you anyways, seems perfectly reasonable to get a free Magneto activation. It's a little too niche for my tastes, since it requires Magneto and the Twins to work at all, and while there are some situations where I'd run it (14 Senators is a thought depending on Secure), I'm most likely leaving this out of my 10.

Verdict: Situational at best, likely no room in your 10

I did play this card when it came out, it's promising to see a one sided Recalibration Matrix, and one that lets you reroll your skulls also.....until you realize things now like Wanda wants her Skulls, and also sometimes you want to de-spike your opponent also.  Recalibration Matrix used to be a lot more popular in early MCP but there's just way more impactful cards to play now than a hope for a better result.

Verdict: Leave Out

Character Specific Cards

    With Brotherhood only having 3 Affiliated Cards, that means they have a spattering of Character Specific Cards.  For the purposes of this review, I'll only be including cards that call out a character by name (sorry X-Ceptional, but I'll cover you somewhere also).  Lets start with the boss himself:

    Magneto has 2 cards, and I don't think you can be farther from the spectrum in viability than these 2. Magnetic Refraction is unaffiliated, but you really only want to run it when affiliated since you get to reuse it.  For a paltry (for Magneto) 2 power, you give cover to himself and everyone within Range 3 of Magneto.  This is potentially HUGE amounts of blocked damage for scenarios where you have to clump like Demons or Gamma. Magneto can play this as early as Turn 1 (but normally not needed until Turn 2) and can be a total game changer.  Now I'll admit when I had 8 cards I had trouble finding room as I was playing a more spread strategy, but there's no excuse now, if you play Magneto in any way in Brotherhood, you're playing this card.

    Magnetic Crush is a cute card that I once saw an Enemy Magneto obliterate one of my characters with a 13-15 dice attack, but it was only a daze and I cracked back next turn.  Magneto had no terrain left to throw so he was easier to deal with. It's fun to dump truck some dice on the table, but it's safe to leave this one at home.

Verdict: Refraction is a must play, leave Crush at home.

Mystique

If you've read my articles, I've already talked about this card a ton, if you haven't read my other articles, links to the right of the page! Obviously this card is a monster, a positioning nightmare card for your opponent when they have priority early game, a potential displacement for points, or doing something like taking your opponent's Herb runner off track.  Since this is an advance at their speed, this can be devastating for L move characters, as you can throw them simply into your deployment zone for easy attacking.

I have a quick story on the power of this card. Back in the Hired Muscle meta Angela went around and did her usual thing, but I was able to Deception Angela right to where Kingpin was standing at the beginning of the game.  Now the real story is I threw very poor dice, wasn't able to get Hail to the King off, and Angela ran away next turn, but the potential power of Deception is very strong, and with a good player hard to counter.  Swarm lists make it hard to utilize, but you can still eliminate or displace a character to get the character you want to move.

Every time I play this card I think of new ways I can benefit from its power.  Even if it's something dumb like making a character take Gamma damage to daze/KO them, this game is all about positioning and this is a unilateral tool to help you accomplish that, and it's free to use (unless you have hammers)

Verdict: Must Take

Scarlet Witch

    This is a pairing I've struggled with trying to justify, and I think my settling is unless you play Wanda a lot, I think you take one of these cards. They both have a lot of power going for them, but we just don't have the card economy to run both. And you can be completely justified not taking any of these in your 10, especially if Wanda is just a bit player to your rosters.

    No More Mutants is Shhh..., it's exactly the same. It counters an active or reactive superpower that costs 1 or more and they can't do it again this turn.  I won a game with this by stopping Magneto's throw rampage, and can be used aggressively to maybe stop a Charge limiting a character to a single attack. Since Husband and Wife now cost a power, this can stop that as well. I feel like this card is the Powerful One Time Use Item in RPGs fallacy, you keep saving it and saving it but never use it because you think nothing it worth it. This is a card you are totally fine using early (game dependent) you just need to weigh the power of stopping this thing, if you think it saves a character or gives you points as a result, it's probably a good idea to use.  Power isn't an issue since unless it's Turn 1 Wanda has plenty of Power. This is the card I normally take in my rosters.

    Whims is an odd duck in my opinion. It has a strong effect of dumping Wanda's power to heal your characters and give others conditions, including ones they can't shake near her like Hex, or good ol' fashioned Incinerate to assist with the killing.  As we talked about Power isn't an issue since she always is stocked on Power, but being within range 3 of multiple allies and enemies is not the best position Wanda wants to be in due to her generally squishy defense. In Defenders this may be better since Strange can lob shields over to her or Luke Cage can Heroes for Hire someone into a bad day, but I think in Brotherhood it doesn't fit as well.

Verdict: Take one of these, No More Mutants is more impactful but YMMV

Juggernaut

    Juggernaut is indeed a monster, and both of his cards are fun and thematic, but I believe only one is the clear winner here.

    The first one is a callback to an Internet Classic, I won't link it here, but if you know, you know, and this card has so many funky interactions and things you can do with it I laugh every time I think about how I can use this card.  Do You Know Who I Am effectively can send a character to Egypt or out-of-activation chuck that Size 4 across the map to a character you need dead.  It throws terrain and, yes, characters L.  There aren't a lot of effects that throw terrain L, and even less effects that throw characters L, and this one does either! Ever wanted to send Hulk to the other side of the board, now you can! Ever wanted to Fastball Special Wolverine into an unsuspecting Bullseye or Storm, go hog wild! Now Indominable is a card (and we will get to that) but if you do this during Mystique's turn, they can't use Indominable or Brace to stop effects from this card! But since a lot of people aren't taking Brace as much anymore, chucking a 4 at someone is still a good move on anyone's turn. Card is fantastic and I love it.

    Ruckus is kind of a bodyguard, but not. It makes Juggernaut get an out of activation attack on someone, which can be devastating, but you don't get bonus dice for moving there so it's just the 5 dice Strike, which isn't bad, but you can get more run out of your cards. It might also give you the push you needed to get Juggs in position and/or push an opponent out, so it definitely has purpose. Maybe if you have heavy Juggernaut play you can take both, since I've talked about in previous articles the merit of robbing activations, and Juggernaut can certainly try.  Sabertooth did this a little better since he can Pierce attacks as well as buff his dice with that attack if you're already wounded, Juggs is just giving you a 5 dice attack with a potential push.

Verdict: Take DYKWIA, leave Ruckus at home

Rogue

    I already covered this a little in my update article, but I'll delve a little deeper here.  Mind if I Cut In is almost a super bodyguard, a free card that forces opponents to pay a Power or else attack Rogue. This generally works out fine since she has Damage Reduction and 4 Physical defense, but 1 Power may mess up Corvus math, but likely isn't going to stop the things from happening.  It's free to play so that is a benefit.

    Sugah has a lot of text, but a lot of situational things. In Brotherhood she can get cover from Magneto, but she likely already has it from Refraction. Now this can be used on enemy characters also but I just don't think it's worth taking for the chance of facing any of these characters.

Verdict: Leave both alone

Quicksilver

    Last but certainly not least, we have Can I Borrow That. While this card is not stapled to Quicksilver I think it has some very good uses. You can grab the Kree core if it ends up on someone you don't want to try to outright kill or you can flip a Legacy Virus off an easy to hit character, or you can snag your opponent's Herb before they can do some damage. Obviously this card has more uses but those are the two big ones, and you can do this quite early to gain or maintain a VP lead early in the game which Mystique thrives upon. It does cost 2 Power, and Quicksilver is starving for power a lot of the time. If you have 4 Power, you can do his spender, attack with 6 dice at Range 3, grab the objective, then run away M (if able). It's weird because you wont always take it when you take Quicksilver, but I think in certain situations, you need it in your 10.

Verdict: Situational for your 5, but should be in your 10

Obviously I'm leaving out Fastball Special since it requires both Colossus and Wolverine, and since they wont ever be together in a Brotherhood roster I'm playing, there isn't much point talking about it.

Neutral Cards

    So I said I'm going to list my Top 5 Neutral cards here, and this is going to be including Restricted Cards, now I'm sure the Internet will be responding on why I didn't include XYZ card, and when that happens I'm trying to keep it simple for everyone and show you what cards you should definitely consider. In order to cheat a little, I may clump 2-3 cards that do the same thing into one "card" slot.

Also, if you are trying to get to the Hot Take, don't worry, it's coming...

    This one should be no surprise, although it may be? I noticed a lot of people not taking Medpack lately (some for reasons I'm going to talk about later), and I tend to use Medpack as a "spike negator". Especially early game where you sometimes get caught out and spiked for 3-4 damage, you usually don't get dazed since one character is able to hit you, but for 2 power you can just erase that attack. This can be super effective in Brotherhood with their Damage Reduction characters giving you way more effective health.

    I shouldn't have to talk too much about Bitter Rivals, the card is absolutely insane for both Magneto dealing extra damage, and Mystique stopping damage (or sometimes dealing extra damage also). I can see not taking this for maybe Brace (Meta dependent), but this card to me is a staple for Brotherhood unless you are going very spread.

    So Indominable could be a problem, but it clearly does things differently than Brace does.  Yes it stops character to character throw/damage, but doesn't stop advances, or throwing buildings at characters. The card gives you sort of what you want from Brace but one character paying and gives you the additional objective bonus of not moving around. I currently play this and use my second Restricted card as Bitter Rivals but if Magneto and Terrain Throwing becomes more prevalent I may put Brace back in. I particularly like the objective benefit and for that reason I think it edges Brace right now.

...besides I'm throwing the Size 4 terrain at you, I don't need Brace...

    Climbing Gear is something Magneto players like to have, give them a little bonus movement.  Extreme Conditioning fills this "slot" also but just gives you a L move instead of a free move.  Sometimes Magneto is just outside killing range and this will usually get him there.  The other neat thing about this card is you can use it out of activation, which can be some strong objective play.

    One card left, what's it going to be...  It might not be one you expect...

    

    NOTE: this is not the "Hot Take" I got a special section for that.

    I love Disarm.  It does exactly what you want it to do, for 2 Power (1 over 2 characters) you can make a character roll 2 fewer attack dice.  If you are a mad lad and stack this with Bitter Rivals, it makes a 4 dice attack now a 1 die attack. It's an incredibly efficient card that deals with "that threat" pretty effectively.  I've played this card numerous times where their offensive powerhouse spends its turn running to a back point instead of engaging. This card can replace Bitter Rivals giving you a slot for Blind Obsession or other tasty options should you decide to go that way, and frankly will be in my list if they ever ban Bitter Rivals. I love this card, I've played it since release, and you should try it also.

Ok, I've teased this long enough, here come my Hot Take. Now before I get into this I want to preface that the following card can give you amazing results and comeback abilities, but for a newer or less skilled player this card can be an absolute dud. I think newer players should especially stay away from this card until you learn how to utilize it best and not having it burning a hole in your 10 or your 5.  With that out of the way, here goes...

I Hate Field Dressing.

    That's the tweet. Not good enough, ok here we go.  I've hated this card during the All You've Got phase, and now that AYG is banned, I still hate it and probably hate it more. First off, it's expensive, 4 power to sneaky sneaky bring a character back for a hurrah that hasn't been activated already. Yes you can use this card before you activate someone, but come on, the blood is in the water if I know you are playing this card, I'll just rob you of Power or get you out of range with pushes or throws. What's worse if you leave him with 1 HP for me to just Daze again, yes you could do some math and figure I spent an action re-Dazing your guy instead of the other target I wanted, but is that effort really worth 4 Power?  Bodyguard is 2 Power for the record, Heroes for Hire and Lethal Protector are cards also that cost less Power and do that specific role of distraction way easier than Field Dressing. So to me, this card is a gimmick or a crutch against bad positioning. I feel like you have better use out of your 5 Team Tactics cards than taking this piece of junk.

Ok, feel free to tell me how I really am wrong in the comments, no seriously, I'll fight you on this!

This is the Official Conclusion of the Magneto Manifesto, but not my final article.  I hope this proves useful to you for building a Brotherhood Squad and excelling with it.  Over time I'll write some updates and maybe dig into the other Mutants such as the X-Men, I might need some aspirin for that one though..

Thanks for coming on this journey with me, I hope you love the content and you can always check me out on Facebook or Discord.

-HavoKDarK