Another Wednesday, another First Impressions! This time Marc Spector, better known as Moon Knight.
Moon Knight is a fan favorite known probably best for the memes
But also for his questionable sanity and weird egyptian moon-god mystic powers. Admittedly my knowledge goes barely past the memes but if you think I’m not going to constantly call Dracula a nerd while Moon Knight is on the table you’ve got another thing coming. But lets jump right in to the card breakdown!
Yep thats a perfectly standard 3 threat statline there. Not much to say here. With all the boilerplate 3s we keep getting statwise I’m on the verge of ceasing coverage of this segment. But instead we’re here, having me complain about the standardness of this statline.
Oh joy, another power per damage 4 power builder. Thankfully it has reroll any built in to make it more reliable to do SOME damage, or maybe even shoot the moon for the incredibly difficult crit-wild-hit trigger for a stagger. And as we’ll get into in a second with this breakdown there are some potent synergies here. I’m definitely going to try to go big on this every time I use it.
Edit: After some (well deserved) ridicule from ATB’s Pat Dunford and a helpful look at Jarvis, I’m changing my tune. 4 dice reroll any is comparable to 6 dice, I assumed it was closer to 5 and let my 4 dice builder hate take the wheel. This is great without bonus dice and bonkers with. Hammers, Doomed Prophesy, Blind Obsession, Thanos… the world’s your oyster.
A much better builder, r4 equivalent of Mystique’s automatic pistols is a wonderful choice when you don’t want to gamble on the Bo Staff. I will gladly sit on a point quad tapping people like a budget Deadpool in a pinch.
This is a fascinating control tool, reminiscent of Crossbones’ Overpower. Setting aside the dice pool (7 dice mystic is no slouch against most targets), an automatic place and push away is a wonderful way to clear a point and stand on it yourself. Do remember that the push always comes before the place, so be careful with where you send the target if you don’t have a free move action after going full Konshu on their ass. I also think this is going to be used more often than you’d otherwise think as I expect it to not be uncommon for Marc to single or double tap Throwing Crescents on most turns, opening up an Avatar of Konshu ~every other round assuming targets abound.
A nice little mystic defense boost with a pseudo P.S.D. tacked on to eliminate control effects is nice. I do wish that it was usable for all attack types just for the advance/push/place immunity even if it had to lose the bonus defense dice, but I understand the thematics here. Between Cassandra Nova and Mysterio, there seems to be more and more options with mystic control attacks, so the value of this is only going to rise.
This lives up to everything the panel-to-play promised. 7/8 of the time you get a neat little bonus, with them opening up options you wouldn’t go for otherwise. Bonus attack dice? Bo Staff someone to death with a high likelihood of the stagger trigger like I promised earlier. Bonus power? Sneak in an Avatar of Konshu you otherwise would be short power for. Go big and hit the Crit? Use that move to get to somewhere you otherwise found infeasible. And they’re nice enough to not actually give a downside on a skull so its always gravy.
And to round out the bottom of the card are the perennial favorites, Stealth and Wall Crawler. Wall Crawler might be playgroup dependent based on how much terrain you cover your board with and how much of it is size 3+, but Stealth is ALWAYS annoying for long range characters. If you’re sitting back on a point just chucking crescents like it’s a fire sale, it will make it harder for similar characters to stop you. Admittedly I wish Martial Artist had made room on the card but that might have been a BIT much.
All in all I am reasonably whelmed by Marc. 40% of his activations he will Bo Staff the SHIT out of somebody which seems like a cute/unique control effect applier, like a much more reliable (unreliably) Luke Cage. His spender is within easy reach of his power economy and has great typing and a unique set of control effects attached. Sure he doesn’t take hits particularly well but to me he’s a solid affiliated work horse team member. And who knows, maybe affiliations with a lot of dice manipulation can get his Bo Staff to reliably stagger? He could also find room in spam shells that like a LOT of 3 threat options where he’s solid at range and close up, and has some nice tech against Mystic which a lot of spam teams lack. He probably won’t crack the holy trinity of Zemo, Shuri, and Valkyrie in most cases but he’ll do a reasonable job in a pinch.
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