Another Friday, another Three Box Challenge! This time: Web Warriors!
What is the Three Box Challenge, you may ask? It’s simple – what affiliated rosters can you put together with just the core set plus three boxes of your choice. I know a lot of us obsessively purchase every single box, but I think a huge part of why this game is so great is you can pick up a core box, and a couple boxes of what appeals to you and you could take that to a game night or tournament and do OK.
If you’re coming to this article without having any MCP experience whatsoever and are doubting the value of the Core box, I’m here to tell you that it is worth it. For $100 you get:
All the dice you should need
All the measuring tools you will need
~Half a tournament board’s worth of terrain
10 characters (a standard game requires a roster of 10)
20 tactics (you’ll need 10)
3 secure crises and 3 extract crises (you’ll need 3 of each to play)
Compared to other big wargames like 40k/AOS and WMH, its really impressive what you can get for ~$200. So, this is somewhat akin to a budget/beginner’s MCP guide, focusing on a different faction each time.
And again, this time we’ll be focusing on how to get started with Web Warriors (big shout-out for West bracket Web Warrior extraordinaire Hellcannon for consulting on this). And why would you want to roll with Spidey and his pals other than them being some of the coolest characters in Marvel’s rolodex?
Web Warriors are an objective-focused defensive control team. They are masters of not taking damage thanks to Miles Morales’ leadership, Great Responsibility:
But can dish it out in a key moment with their signature team tactic card All Webbed Up:
They are incredibly mobile as well, with most either Long movers or having a place superpower, or sometimes both in the case of Amazing Spider-Man and Black Cat. Where they fall short is early power economy and pillow fisted attacks if they can’t afford to use superpowers / more expensive attacks. But again, they’re a defensive control team focused around mobility, tankiness, and displacement tools so not being the most murderific unless you can spend on All Webbed Up / better attacks isn’t the end of the world
The most obvious way to start is with the two dedicated Web Warriors boxes, Miles & Ghost Spider plus Amazing Spider-Man & Black Cat. It gets you both leaders for the affiliation (though you pretty much always want to use Miles’), two more key members, all of the affiliated team tactics, and another crisis card to play around with:
Admittedly due to Web Warriors poor early power issues, playing a Secure you have to spend power interacting with isn’t ideal, but this still is a good control secure so at the three box level can still be a more appealing choice than Deadly Meteors which is already a “flip” secure as well.
Once you select these two boxes you’re going to be asking yourself which Peter Parker to play:
Which, thankfully, doesn’t need to happen at roster construction anymore as with the announced changes you can have both in your roster. But which one do you play? The answer is, it depends.
Amazing Spider-Man is a best in class mobile tank. Thanks to his medium base size and Long movement, he can reach the middle line in a single move. That means on the core box extracts Struggle for the Cube Continues or Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan he can move up, grab the middle extract, and move back to where nobody can attack him and ensure you go up 3-2 on secures if you rolled priority. But if you’re playing Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership or another extract that doesn’t lend itself to an extract play / you don’t have priority, you might find him a bit overcosted as just a point holder.
And this of course is where core box Spider-Man comes into play. Core Spider-Man loves parking on a point, not dying, and occasionally disrupting your opponent with little to no resources invested in him. He loves playing a flank on Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 or Infinity Formula Goes Missing, requiring no support to reliably hold you a secure and disrupt the enemies ability to hold theirs. Thanks to his excellent tank stats between Spider Sense and Miles’ leadership you can hold activating him until quite late in the round where his Impact Webbing, Web Line, and Web-A-Pult will have maximum control value.
Between our 5 Web Warriors we have either 13 (Miles, Gwen, Black Cat, Core Spider-Man) or 14 (Miles, Gwen, Black Cat, Amazing Spider-Man) to build off of for team building which means for the core crisis standard of 17 we are looking for a 3 or 4 threat to round out our team on board. For the ASM configuration the natural choice comes in the core box with Baron Zemo.
Mobile, tanky, loves the ability to reroll skulls from Miles’ leadership, makes your team hit harder, whats not to love? Sure you can always replace him with your pet 3 threat splash if you have a particular character you love / think has more synergy but as far as core box options go for filling the hole you’re pretty happy with Helmut Zemo. The 4 threat options are a little more bleak.
Between the Captains, Red Skull and Ultron, Captain Marvel seems the natural choice but she is VERY power hungry, and potentially a bit of dead weight outside of when playing Infinity Formula goes missing. Ultron seems generically fine in his updated form as well, helping out with damage output and occasionally being an absolute murder turret himself. But I’d still look to upgrade your four threat options with your final box. Which naturally brings us to the first box suggestion:
Doctor Voodoo brings a lot that Web Warriors love in a 4 threat: wonderful tank stats, excellent power economy, mystic attacks, and perhaps more important than anything else – a control effect that works on things that Web Warriors can’t pull/push/throw. And Hood is a worthy option to consider taking out Baron Zemo for, excellent attack suite in both forms, healing as utility, and thanks to his Rapid Fire builder excellent power economy. Consider the following roster:
[Characters]
- Amazing Spider-Man: 5
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Black Cat: 3
- Captain Marvel: 4
- Doctor Voodoo: 4
- Hood: 3
- Ghost Spider: 3
- Spider-Man (Miles Morales): 3
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
[Team Tactics]
- All You’ve Got
- All Webbed Up
- Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes
- Disarm
- Follow Me
- Hood’s Gang
- Mission Objective
- Sacrifice
- Spider-Tracker
- The Cat and the Spider
[Extract Crises]
- Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership [C]: 17
- 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
- Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
Next we’re going to take a look at an interesting secondary affiliation option: Midnight Sons
Now I’m going to warn you right now, Blade is not a good 4 threat splash for Web Warriors. He is mostly only worth taking in Midnight Sons as a leader (which you can read more about in the Three Box capacity here). But Moon Knight is a Web Warrior, and a good one at that. Moon Knight throwing Crescent Blades under All Webbed Up alongside All You’ve Got is one of the most deadly things you can run in Three Box Challenge game, and will remove virtually anything from the board aside from perhaps Dormammu if you don’t have a backstop. Also as Black Cat is a Midnight Son this opens up teams like Blade, Moon Knight, Black Cat, Gwen, Spider-Man which has a hilarious amount of mobility and control. Bats-ing a stagger onto someone with Moon Knight and then pulling/throwing them with Spider-Man can be absolutely back breaking.
[Characters]
- Amazing Spider-Man: 5
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Black Cat: 3
- Blade: 4
- Ghost Spider: 3
- Moon Knight: 3
- Spider-Man (Miles Morales): 3
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
- Ultron: 4
[Team Tactics]
- All You’ve Got
- All Webbed Up
- Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes
- Bats the Ghost Hound
- Disarm
- Mission Objective
- Sacrifice
- Siege of Darkness
- Spider-Tracker
- The Cat and the Spider
[Extract Crises]
- Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership [C]: 17
- 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
- Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
And finally, the perennial “generic goodstuff” option, Luke Cage and Iron Fist:
Iron Fist has the distinction of being one of the most taken characters in recent memory. Luke Cage is a hell of a tank. On top of that you get your hands on Heroes For Hire, one of the best tactics cards in the current meta. What’s not to love? Admittedly this box doesn’t fix your 4 threat “problem” so I hope you like playing Ultron when you don’t feel like taking Amazing Spider-Man. That said, Danny Rand having 2 power/round naturally makes him a compelling side-in when dealing with Deadly Meteors or another flip secure in addition to a wide extract like Struggle for the Cube or Spider-Infected.
[Characters]
- Amazing Spider-Man: 5
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Black Cat: 3
- Iron Fist: 3
- Luke Cage: 3
- Ghost Spider: 3
- Spider-Man (Miles Morales): 3
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
- Ultron: 4
[Team Tactics]
- All Webbed Up
- Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes
- Brace for Impact
- Disarm
- Follow Me
- Heroes For Hire
- Mission Objective
- Sacrifice
- Spider-Tracker
- The Cat and the Spider
[Extract Crises]
- Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership [C]: 17
- 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
- Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
And FINALLY, if you’re not supporting your FLGS for MCP, I would like to bring your attention to our sponsors for your wargaming needs in both NA and the UK:
NA:
https://www.discountgamesinc.com/
UK:
That will wrap us up for this Three Box Challenge article here on acrossthebifrost.com! Also make sure to check out the Roster Doctor on Facebook, Youtube and Twitch!
https://www.facebook.com/rosterdoctor
