Thanks to the release of the Star-Lord pack we have some shiny new cards to play with. In this article I would like to talk about Rocket Boots?! as this is an interesting card.
Upon first read you may just pass Rocket Boots?! off as a card which you will never use. Why risk stagger and stun for the sake of being able to move 1 character slightly farther for a round. And that is an entirely fair observation. But bear with me for a few moments.
This is a real positive/negative risk/reward card, the benefit being that you can give a character the flight innate superpower for a whole round, with the potential to also get a short move for the character at the end of the round, the risk being that at the end of the round the character could end up with the Stun special condition, or at worst the Stun and Stagger special conditions.
Gaining the flight superpower is obviously beneficial for those that don’t aready have it (or its more structurally-oriented relative wall crawl), and would allow them to act as a size 5 character, meaning that they can take their ususal movement over any terrain that is up to size 5. On a board with a lot of terrain, or if terrain is not working in your favour, then this could be the card for you.
So, who doesn’t have flight and would benefit from it the most? Well, the first character to consider would be the smallest, as the smallest character is logically the one who would struggle the most to negotiate terrain, which as of the time of this post is Rocket Raccoon in all his size 1 majesty. Rocket has a medium move, but if he comes across any terrain of size 2 or larger then he is scuppered and has to reduce his move to short. Not ideal considering Rocket is all about the attacks. The negatives of Rocket Boots?! do not trigger until the end of the round so you could use Rocket Boots?! to give Rocket some much needed mobility over larger terrain and fire off his attacks, then deal with the negatives later on.
Another good target for this card would be flightless characters with long movement. Being able to move long over any terrain up to size 5 is one heck of a good thing and could be used to good effect to grab an objective (or two), or fire off a critical attack (or get the heck away from enemy characters of course). Characters like Baron Zemo, Black Panther, Black Widow, and the upcoming Proxima Midnight, Gamora and Nebula, all have a long move and a wide range of abilities. Rocket Boots?! would allow them a significant advantage when moving over terrain, meaning that they can be used more effectively for their activation.
The most interesting thing about Rocket Boots?!, to me anyway, is the timing of the resolution of the die roll. The card simply states that the die is rolled “at the end of the round.” If we look at the table from the rulebook appendix showing the stages of the cleaup phase, we can see that the effect of Rocket Boots would be resolved during step 2, when player effects are resolved (this has been confirmed by AMG):
Now we get to the interesting part. This is resolved before a character flips to their injured side and removes all tokens. So, even if the character you played Rocket Boots?! on failed their die roll spectacularly and ended up with the Stun and Stagger special conditions, if they ended up dazed over the course of the round it wouldn’t matter as they would lose the conditions when they flip to their injured side (the obvious exception being Hulk of course). This opens up some interesting tactics in that you could go for somewhat of a “go down with all guns blaizing” approach, using Rocket Boots?! to get a heavy hitter with low stamina remaining into position, fire off their attacks, leave them to get dazed, do the die roll, take the conditions (depedent on the roll of course), and then shed them once the character card flips. Of course, the disadvantage to this is that if the character is dazed they will not be able to take advantage of the potential short move afforded by Rocket Boots?! if they roll anything other than a blank or critical failure.
Lastly, since using Rocket Boots?! will give your character access to flight, by default it also gives you access to team tactics cards that work around the flight ability, namely the perennial turn 1 favourite Drop Off.
This combo’s amazingly with Groot and Rocket. Drop Off can be played on Groot to allow him to move and then place Rocket within range 1 of him. Rocket then gets a free 0 cost attack (which for Rocket is range 5). Groot can then continue his activation. When it comes to Rocket he will be in a prime location to take advantage of Groot’s personal bodyguard ability, meaning he can be protected from damage as long as Groot is alive. Once it comes to Rocket’s activation he can then fire off his attacks, plus play the Deadly Duo team tactics card to allow him to do 3 Plasma Rifle attacks on top of his usual activations. This is no small thing and a play worth considering. I hope to try it out in my next game to see how well it works.
Of course, you could also Drop Off any other character, effectively using Rocket Boots?! to move 2 characters across the board when combined with Drop Off. This opens up a lot of opportunities. For more discussion on this check out episode 20 of the House Party Protocol podcast where, quite coincidentally, there is a discussion on a tactic using Rocket Boots?! and Drop Off in a Cabal list which I was listening whilst already having this article mostly drafted. Spooky!
These are just some of my thoughts. What do you think of Rocket Boots?! Will it make it out of your deck box? Comment below.
Great article! I’m just wondering how you’d get the power to pull off the combo early in the game? Both Drop Off and Deadly Duo require Power, 3 per character in total.
Rocket could get his from shooting with the Plasma Rifle, so that wouldn’t be a problem. But Groot wouldn’t have the 2 Power he needs to play Deadly Duo, unless he’s already attacked, in which case Rocket is left standing there for a turn and is therefore in grave danger of being Dazed before he gets to shoot at all. So I’m thinking this is a Turn 2 thing, unless you’ve got some way to pump up the power early?
Also – are there any combos you like for this one in Asgardians, since they can shake conditions?
Hi Plasticcraic, thanks for commenting. How feasible this combo would he to pull off turn 1 I am not sure. In the article I call Drop Off the perennial turn 1 favourite, perhaps that was misleading as i wasn’t trying to say that this would be a feasible turn 1 play, just that Drop Off is often used turn 1. Still, thinking about it it could maybe be done with some trickery I think.
Grit would have to activate first and you would immediately play Rocket Boots?! On him. Then, Groot and Rocket would both have 1 power each to pay for Drop Off which you could trigger immediately afterwards. Rocket would then get a free 0 cost attack and hopefully do some damage to gain power. Then Groot would continue with his activation. After an enemy turn (and maybe a little power gain from damage) Roxket would activate and maybe fire off 2 attacks, then play Deadly Duo for 3 free attacks. If you don’t get the power you need from taking damage or hitting with basic attacks then you could play Advanced R&D, but that means a third team tactics card in a combo.
Yeah thanks for that. I guess Rocket wouldn’t be as vulnerable as I was thinking anyway, because of Personal Bodyguard 😁 You should be able to pull off the combo if you wanted to… and I do 😁
Yeah Personal Bodyguard goes a long way to keeping him alive. And even if he ends up on low health, at least if he gets dazed after running the combo he can lose any special conditions that Rocket Boots?! might give him. Let me know if you manage to pull it off, will be interesting to hear about.