TseungTsu here with episode 5 of “What’cha Playin?”. Today I’m joined by the legendary, Utility Cookie. Cookie is known for a great many things, my personal favorite being his work on “Oh Snap! The Thanos Thesis”, and I’m thrilled to hear about this current take on Black Order.
Cookie, it’s been too long since we’ve talked. I hope life is well, let’s just jump right on into this though, What’cha Playing?
[Characters]
– Black Cat: 3
– Black Panther: 4
– Black Widow: 2
– Bullseye: 2
– Corvus Glaive: 4
— Infinity Gem: Reality: 1
– Hood: 3
– Kingpin: 4
– Lizard: 3
– Proxima Midnight: 3
– Thanos, the Mad Titan: 6
— Infinity Gem: Power: 1
— Infinity Gem: Mind: 1
[Secure Crises]
– Infinity Formula Goes Missing [B]: 17
– Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 [D]: 17
– Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate! [F]: 20
[Team Tactics]
– Advanced R&D
– All According to Plan
– Brace for Impact
– Eyes on the Prize
– Indomitable
– Medpack
– Mission Objective
– Monkey Brain is Lizard Home
– Mothership
– Sacrifice
[Extract Crises]
– Mystic Wakandan Herbs: Fact or Fiction? [A]: 15
– Research Station Attacked! [E]: 16
– Struggle for the Cube Continues [F]: 17
I know you love to tinker and optimize things. So what made you interested in playing this list?
I just love Black Order and wanted a roster that could be both aggressive and strong on crisis that require a wider spread of characters. The roster has had other affiliations in the spot of CS (Wakanda and Sam avengers to name a few) but I liked CS the most in the end. The roster has a strong control element and can switch to be a beatdown list.
Okay so I know you said it has a nice control game, and can pivot into a beatdown, but what’s the game plan?
The game plan is different depending on the crisis combination that comes up. I’ll play Black Order every time I can, but in some matchups they get outnumbered or counterteched so that is where CS comes in. With CS you can go very wide and if you need to play a wide aggressive list you can easily add in Corvus and Proxima. Both are tanky characters who reduce damage but also bring good damage output, something many CS characters (but not all) lack.
The CS side mainly wants to sit on points and close out a game fast. So the focus is more on fast and slow options to play with rather than specific crises. Besides that CS is strong on most secures and Black Order has some strong extract plays.
All of the secures are pretty good for both CS and Black Order, CS has some tricks on infinity formula and Black Order can do some good stuff on D secures. I prefer these more spread out crisis since this also disables a full roster bearing down on one or two of your models on more central crisis.
Pay to flip secures like mutant madman are playable as well by going wider and have more chances to flip the secures, in my opinion there is not a good way to build specifically for those and you can leave that out of the equation in general. Just go wide and be able to remove some activations and you should be set. The extracts also counteract the pay to flip secures a bit by being high scoring like herbs or research station or help you remove activations so you can try to roll for more flips like Cubes.
What’s your favorite thing about the list?
There are a couple of things I like on the character front, I really like Black Panther but got a bit bored with Wakanda. He has a good home in CS with being tanky and having good control and is a good pick over proxima in 17 points Black Order with his full rerolls and Thanos Boost.
Hood healing lizard and Kingpin in CS is also pretty sweet.
Using Monkey brain to clear an entire research station with a single lizard activation.
On the crisis front you can do some fun hot potato on Wakandan herb with CS and they also have some sweet plays on Infinity formula by deploying widow and cat in the center and lizard on a flank. Lizard can double move and contest a back infinity canister. Both widow and Cat can reach both sides on your opponent’s side by moving double L. This can lead to some quick scoring and also being spread out
Cubes are also very sweet for CS, use bullseye to have people daze in the power phase in round 3 and close out that round by using All according to plan to daze another one top of round 3. This will net you a lot of points in that round that can seal a game right away in this round or give you too much of a lead to catch up on.
The main thing I like about this combination is giving the opponent no good opportunity to counter pick, what’s good into Black Order is not really good into CS. Corvus and proxima in CS are just a blast to play as well.
Black order has changed more than any other affiliation over these last few months. What are the “counter tech” pieces you’re most worried about now?
A lot of the ‘’old’’ counters still hold up. Going wide on pay to flip secures, Loki, Gwen, shuri, Black Panther, Asgard with stagger, shock and odin’s blessing to stop Corvus’s big attack. These are all ‘’counter tech’’ that can make it rough. Helios laser is also a card that can just take out Thanos and put him on his injured side, it’s the reason why Sacrifice is in the list.
Okay Cookie I love the roster, but can’t let you go without asking. Is mono affiliated Black Order still viable?
I don’t think it is, some point values just make it really awkward because you are bringing a leader that will probably be 8 threat. Since you cannot be flexible with the gems anymore you are stuck with a 13pt core of Thanos and Corvus which make the lower point values hard to play on.
I’m glad we were able to catch up and talk a little shop. I’m looking forward to your next encyclopedic dump of knowledge for MCP and am super happy that you’re posting here on AcrosstheBifrost.com !
If you have a list you want to talk about shoot me an email at TT@Acrossthebifrost.com!
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Till next time everyone, Cheers and Happy Gaming,
TT