Welcome back! Today I’m going to go over my preparation for a local tournament coming up this weekend in my area, what I’m expecting and what I’ll be bringing into it.
Having learned a lot from my games in the past weeks, I’m now a lot more comfortable with the latest mutant wave and what they bring for the X-Men, what I like and what I want my team to do. One of their definite strengths is still the extract play they can set up early in the game and capitalize on, whilst maintaining a relatively cheap and flexible core of characters. I’ll still be playing under X-Men Gold as it’s still by far my favorite leadership to play with.
With the recent release of Shield and Shadowlands Daredevil, having a reliable plan to be able to counter their ability to score the Herb on Round 1 was pretty important and required some roster adjustments on my part but it gave me an opportunity to revisit some characters and tactics cards that I’ve loved in the past. It gave me an opportunity to put Ghost-Spider back into the X-Men. Having access to relatively cheap displacement and a nice synergy on her builder with Storm’s leadership (you can use the X-Men jump before her builder to get a Long move after the attack). With Advanced R&D and her long move, she can displace most models very reliably in Round 1.
Second was Dr. Voodoo, which is pretty necessary these days against most teams either playing him and to ease my match-up into Criminal Syndicate which has been hard for X-Men in my experience. He also brings another 50mm base which is always welcome as it provides an additional pivot for the leadership.
I’ve also kept some of the more aggressive X-Men in my roster in order to be able to pivot if necessary into a more brawly team if needed against certain teams (like Criminal Syndicate) or on certain crises (like Demons or Intrusion). I’ve also added Children of the Atom which I’ve only rarely played but helps offset Black Cat’s Staggers and can be used to remove other annoying conditions. It’s been relevent enough in pratice games that I’m giving it a try on the field this weekend.
So here’s my roster
Characters
Storm, Beast, Doctor Voodoo, Domino, Ghost-Spider, Honey Badger, Jean Grey, Magik, Rogue and X-23
Tactics Cards
Advanced R&D, Blind Obsession, Brace for Impact, Children of the Atom, Field Dressing, First Class, Indomitable, Journey Through Limbo, Mental Domination, To Me, My X-Men!
Crises
Infinity Formula Goes Missing!, Mutant Madmen Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park, Portals Overrun City with Spider-People!
Fear Grips World as “Worthy” Terrorize Cities, Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan, Stuggle for the Cube Continues.