Another Friday, another Three Box Challenge! This time: X-Men!
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 if you live in the US and want to get your own Three Box setup started, check out our Holiday Bash Giveaway where we will be giving one lucky reader their choice of a core box or their three boxes to help build their collection.
And today as previously mentioned we’ll be covering X-Men. Why should you consider X-Men (besides having watched the 90s cartoon as a kid)?
They’re a teamwork focused affiliation that through working together become more than the sum of their parts. Which is conveniently shown through both leadership abilities available to them:
As well as their two (good) signature tactics cards:
Thanks to Storm’s X-Men Gold Leadership and First Class, tons of round one turn one tricks are available to you. Leapfrog through a medium base to single move onto the medium line. To Me My X-Men a character forward to single move onto the medium line. To Me My X-Men a medium based X-Men character in front of another medium based X-Men character and you can single move onto your opponent’s Cube/Spider for a really nasty steal trick. You will never truly know joy until you’re playing against an opponent who struggles to dish out non-physical damage at range 3+ and you steal an enemy cube + the middle cube with Beast first activation, all the while benefitting from cover thanks to the other half of X-Men Gold.
The first box is easy for starting with X-Men, as shown by the leaderships/cards shown above – Cyclops + Storm. You get both leaders and while Storm is very consistently the better of the two Cyclops is more than fine as a regular member at the Three Box level, and even when he isn’t the leader he can still play To Me My X-Men for additional flexibility. They even come with a nifty crisis to add to your collection:
This, like Deadly Meteors in the core set is what’s known as a “flip” secure – one you have to interact with to control rather than staying on it. And thanks to the above shown First Class tactic card, all of your X-Men get a free interact first round of the game – giving you a BIG power advantage on your opponents. But now that we’ve settled the first box where do we go from here?
There’s a few choices available to us but some key X-Men are split in boxes with Brotherhood counterparts – Beast/Mystique and Wolverine/Sabretooth. So here it comes down to Cable/Domino, Rogue/Gambit, or Colossus/Magik. From the 3 of those the most obvious candidate is Rogue/Gambit. While Domino is probably the best 3 threat X-Men affiliated character, Gambit is no slouch either and Rogue is far and away their best 4 threat. And again they give you another crisis to stick in your cap (though due to Storm’s leadership already giving you Cover, you probably don’t want to take it in your X-Men rosters):
Admittedly these two are a couple months away due to shipping delays but I think they’re more than worth the wait. But now that we’ve locked in our first two boxes we have a 14 threat 4 X-Man core. Since MOST Three Box games are played at 17 threat, and we bring an 18 threat crisis as well we want to find ourselves some good 3s and 4s to play around with to round things out. And as we already crowned Domino the best 3 threat X-Men affiliate, there’s only one way we can go with our first box suggestion:
Domino as promised is an insanely powerful ranged DPS piece. Cranking your dice luck up to 11 while stopping your opponent from exploding crits, handing out incinerate and in general being an absolute machine gun she consistently punches above her weight class. Cable is… less of a star but a solid workhorse with a Size 4 terrain throw and support capacity with his telekinetic shield. You even get another crisis to fiddle about with:
Though much like Sinister Syndicate this one doesn’t fit with X-Men all too well. Take a gander at the following roster:
[Characters]
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Cable: 5
- Cyclops: 4
- Domino: 3
- Gambit: 3
- Rogue: 4
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
- Storm: 3
- Ultron: 4
[Team Tactics]
- Brace For Impact
- Disarm
- First Class
- Follow Me
- Mind if I Cut In?
- Mission Objective
- Pardon Me, Sugah
- Patch Up
- Sacrifice
- To Me, My X-Men!
[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
- Mutant Madman Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park [B]: 18
- Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
The next natural suggestion is the last box of 2 X-Men, the Rasputin siblings AKA Colossus and Magik:
These two fit the bill perfectly for rounding out your 17 as follows: Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Magik, Colossus with an upgrade of one of your 3s to Cyclops at 18. Magik is a mobile fighter with solid attacks and tricks, while Colossus is a consumate tank. They also bring in key cards like Journey Through Limbo as a swiss army knife tool to use for mobility or enemy displacement, and Indomitable to block key pushes/throws. You even get the iconic Fastball Special:
for when you inevitably pick up Wolverine. Consider the following roster:
[Characters]
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Colossus: 4
- Cyclops: 4
- Gambit: 3
- Magik: 3
- Rogue: 4
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
- Storm: 3
- Ultron: 4
[Team Tactics]
- Brace For Impact
- Disarm
- First Class
- Follow Me
- Indomitable
- Journey Through Limbo
- Mission Objective
- Patch Up
- Sacrifice
- To Me, My X-Men!
[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
- Mutant Madman Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park [B]: 18
- Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
And FINALLY, it wouldn’t be an X-Men intro roster without suggesting the king of X-Men fandom, Wolverine (and also Sabretooth as a bonus):
I’m not going to lie to you, Wolverine needs a lot of love to work. He is a power hungry mf-er, and not insanely tanky or mobile. But if you can get him to work he can be a doozy. And with both of his tactics he can fix both his defense and mobility issues:
and thanks to the Three Box format you can get away with running more character specific tactics due to the overall lower level of unaffiliated tactics with a limited collection. Check out the following roster:
[Characters]
- Baron Zemo: 3
- Black Widow: 2
- Crossbones: 3
- Cyclops: 4
- Gambit: 3
- Rogue: 4
- Sabretooth: 4
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker): 4
- Storm: 3
- Wolverine: 4
[Team Tactics]
- Brace For Impact
- Disarm
- First Class
- Follow Me
- Mission Objective
- Patch Up
- Sacrifice
- To Me, My X-Men!
- Weapon X Program
- X-Ceptional Healing
[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
- Mutant Madman Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park [B]: 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!
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