Proxima Midnight is the second Black Order member whom we will be able to get our grubby little mitts on. A formidable warrior, the wife of Corvus Glaive will beat you black and blue whilst wearing black and blue. So, what does Proxima do in-game? Let’s see.
STAMINA – Proxima has a solid 5 stamina, pretty average for a character of her threat level.
MOVEMENT – Looooooong! Yes, everyone’s favourite movement length is back. By now we are getting a nice collection of long movers. It will be interesting to do a head to head comparison of them at some point.
SIZE – An entirely expected 2.
THREAT – Midders is 3 threat which, along with her movement and stamina, put her in Baron Zemo territory. Will she be able to dethrone the purple headed one?!
DEFENCES – Just like Corvus (best said in a French accent with a silent “s”), Proxima’s defences are entirely average, with 3 dice rolled for each defence type.
ATTACKS – The first of Proxima’s 3 attacks is a physical attack called Strike. This attack has a range of 2, strength of 5 and power cost of 0. As usual, power equal to the damage dealt is gained once this attack is resolved. Roll a wild, however, and you will get to trigger Pierce which, just like on her husband and Doctor Octopus, let’s you change one of the defending characters critical, wild or defence dice to a blank, very handy for getting a bit more damage through.
Attack number 2 is an energy attack called Spear Throw which has a range of 3, strength of 5 and power cost of 0; so, like her Strike but with a tad more range. The twist is that after the attack resolves you can place Proxima within range 1 of the target and, roll a wild and you can give the target character the Poison special condition (the character loses 1 power during the power phase). If I recall correctly this is the first instance of Poison which we have seen in the game, but I’m sure we can all agree that losing 1 power at the start of each round is baaaaaaad. Even if you don’t get the wild roll, (which is entirely possible on a 5 dice roll), being able to move to within range 1 of the target as an automatic thing after the attack resolves is huge. Even if you don’t want to hurt the target character tremendously, you can just fire off this attack to get some movement. Range 3 plus range 1 is not that far off from range 4, which is no small distance to move, especially when you consider that Proxima can also take a long move action before or after this attack.
Proxima’s third and final attack is another energy attack, this time called Quantum Starburst (here in the UK we have a sweet (candy to our comrades overseas) called Starburst, a rebranding of Opal Fruits – and now I’m hungry). This attack has a range of 4, strength of 6 and power cost of 4. 6 dice is not a huge amount for a characters “big” attack, especially one with a cost of 4. However, if the target character does get damaged then after the attack resolves it gains the Bleed, Poison and Stun special conditions. To recap, that’s 1 point of damage after it’s activation if it doesn’t shake Bleed, loss of 1 power in the power phase for Poison, and if the character would gain any amount of power it only gains 1 from Stun. This is crippling. If the target character does nothing at all with their activation other than spend 2 actions to shake 2 conditions then they are still left with one condition. The exception to this would be a character in an Asgardian affiliation as they can remove a special condition during a round, and the Crew of the Milano card which can be used by the Guardians of the Galaxy affiliation to give immunity to special conditions for a round – that card just went up in value! These affiliations aside, that is an entire character activation gone, spent solely on removing conditions. Ouch. And if they don’t remove the conditions, well then they are at a disadvantage for another turn or two. Win-win for Proxima.
SUPERPOWERS – Proxima’s first superpower is a reactive one called Martial Prowess, and it is just like Gamora’s ability with the same name. This superpower states that when Proxima is targeted by an attack within range 2 she may spend the required 2 power to to use this ability. If she does so then instead of rolling her defence dice pool she rolls 5 dice. If she then suffers no damage from the attack then the attacking character gains 2 damage. This is a really interesting ability. It basically adds 2 dice on top of Proxima’s attacks and has the potential to do damage to the attacker instead. You’ll certainly have to think twice before attacking an opposing Proxima! Considering Proxima is so “attacky” she will hopefully be generating power which she can use to keep fuelling this ability, keeping her alive and damaging her opponents.
Proxima’s second superpower is another reactive one and is called Wife of Corvus Glaive and is basically the mirror of Corvus Glaive’s Husband of Proxima Midnight. If, at the end of her activation, Proxima is within range 4 of an allied Corvus Glaive then she can use this free superpower. If the allied Corvus Glaive has not yet activated this round then he may activate before your turn ends. As we discussed when looking at Corvus Glaive, this is a nifty way of doing some focus fire on an opposing character which you need to take down, and is also an interesting way of potentially playing with priority.
Proxima’s third and final superpower is an innate ability called Invulnerability. In a callback to Iron Man’s Invincible Iron Man superpower, if Proxima would take damage from an enemy effect then you may reduce that damage by 1 to a minimum of 1. We have seen how great this power is at improving Iron Man’s longevity, and to have this on a character like Proxima Midnight is great and, like her Martial Prowess superpower, really adds to her staying power on the board.
INJURED SIDE – There appears to be no change.
SUMMARY – Proxima Midnight certainly seems like she will be a force to be reckoned with. Her big attack is particularly nasty, merely for the fact that it throws so many nasty conditions out as long as damage is dealt. And she is sooooooooo mobile. A long move as standard, but a place within range 1 of the target on her free Spear Throw attack. Sheesh! I am very much looking forward to getting her onto the table and trying her out.
Proxima is a listed member of the Black Order (although not the leader – that honour belongs to Thanos), and as his card has now been revealed we can have a discussion about how Proxima plays into the affiliation ability. The Black Order leadership ability is two-fold. On Thanos’ healthy side whenever an enemy character is K.O’d you score 1 victory point, then on Thanos’ injured side an allied character may take up to 3 damage to allow them to reroll one attack die for each damage taken. Proxima Midnight is most certainly setup for attacking, and her abilities play very nicely into the Black Order ability.
If you were to run Proxima in an Avengers affiliation then her Martial Prowess superpower would only cost 1 power the first time she used it each turn. Thats huge. If she has a decent amount of power then she could be triggering this throughout the round when she is attacked by various enemies. Proxima in Cabal makes sense, she will (hopefully) be attacking lots and thereby generating power, which will then play nicely into paying for her Martial Prowess; and as she will be attacking lots her Spear Throw placement will aid in getting her into position for delicious double attacks.
Running Proxima in a Wakandan affiliation will grant her access to rerolls, which can help to ensure that her attacks get through and get those desired special conditions stacked up on to those pesky enemy characters, and hopefully lessen the damage caused by any characters or terrain which get thrown at her. An Asgardian affiliation would allow Proxima to remove a damage or special condition each round, very handy for making sure that she sticks around longer and gets to make the most of both of her actions as she wont be having to shake conditions. Lastly, in a Guardians of the Galaxy affiliation Proxima would have access to mega rerolls, which is no bad thing as mentioned above.
When it comes to team tactics cards, there are 3 Black Order cards to discuss, as well as a Proxima-specific one. Let’s start with the 2 Black Order cards by talking about Price of Failure. This card is active and allows you to choose an injured allied character. Other allied characters gain 3 power each and then the chosen character is K.O’d. This is an interesting card, and powerful. If you have a character who is super low on remaining stamina and it is looking like they are going to get taken out soon why not activate them, let them do their thing, then take them out with this card to give allied characters some motivation to perform a bit better. Thematically, this card is flavour heaven! Or, would you be willing to sacrifice a low threat character who has more or less fulfilled their function on the battlefield in order to power up your 3, 4, 5 threat characters? Something to consider. Bear in mind that the 3 power boost doesn’t just go on to affiliated character but allied characters, meaning every single character on your turn suddenly gets 3 power. That’s huge.
The second Black Order card is called Blood to Spare (which is just a great name for a card) and is reactive. This card states that when a Black Order character would be dazed by an enemy effect it may spend 3 power to play this card. The character immediately performs an attack before gaining the dazed token. If the attack results in the character removing damage then it is not dazed. This is a very interesting card as it allows a character to do one last swing before going down, with the potential to not even go down if the character can remove damage.
The third Black Order card which we need to talk about is called Mothership and requires you to be sat down in a safe place prior to reading, lest you get over excited and fall on your noggin. This is an active card that stated that 2 Black Order characters may spend 2 power each to play it. Place one of the 2 characters not holding an obective token within range 1 of the other character. OH. MY. GOODNESS. This is an amazing card! Proxima likes to be near to her husband, Corvus Glaive, so that they can trigger their husband/wife superpower to allow consecutive turns. If they end up spread across the board claiming objectives or chasing K.O’s we have Mothership to get them back into position. No matter where your characters are on the board, you can move any 1 Black Order character to within range 1 of another. All of a sudden range 5 seems super restrictive! This is going to be especially good for if the fight moves away from Proxima, you can just slam this card down and get him back into the fray. It seems like it will also be great for playing defensively, moving a character up and doing some attacks, then pulling them back to a safer position. Utterly superb and a cornerstone of the Black Order affiliation methinks.
Lastly for affiliation/character-specific cards we have Execute. This card plays nicely into the Corvus/Proxima synergy that we have seen on their character cards and states that when Corvus Glaive targets an enemy character with an attack that is within range 1 of an allied Proxima Midnight, or vice-versa, both characters may spend 2 power each. If they do so then the enemy character rolls no defence die during this attack. Execute indeed! Get your Corvus and Proxima into position and get them to take down a big enemy. Goodbye all those sweet defence dice boosting abilities that characters have, Corvus and Proxima are here to do some damage! This card could be used to great effect to get rid of a particularly pesky enemy character who is spoiling your game plan, or to deny objective points. I like it and am looking forward to trying it out in upcoming games.
Once again it behooves me to talk about Battle Lust. Were you to play this on Proxima then for the paltry cost of 2 power she could add 2 dice to an attack made after a move action, and if she got damage through then she would get to push the target character away short.
I think Field Dressing is an interesting card with Proxima. If she were to be dazed before getting to activate then she could be resurrected, a Corvus Glaive could activate and then her activation could follow immediately behind (or vice versa).
If you find that Proxima is struggling for power to pay for her Martial Prowess ability then running Inspiring Monologue could be a good way of letting her reroll her defence dice for a round, and best of all a more power-flush allied character gets to pay for it!
Lastly, One-Two Punch is a further way of adding dice to Proxima’s attack pool, all good in ensuring that damage is dealt and conditions are applied to the enemy character, and all for the cost of a power each.
So, what do you make of Proxima Midnight? Will she make your roster? Comment below!