Jean Grey, also known as Marvel Girl, is one of the original X-Men, a powerful psychic and telepath that can rival Professor X himself in addition to being one of the most iconic mutants in the franchise. How does her incarnation fare in MCP? Let’s check it out.
On her healthy side, Jean has a relatively fragile stat line with 6 health (7 on her injured side), size 2 and a 3 physical, 4 energy and 5 mystical defences. Having her weakest defense be the most common attack type means that she would rather stay away from harm more often than not.
Psionic Bolt is a R4 builder with 5 dice and a wild trigger to sap power, which is relatively on par with other 5 threat’s builders, nothing really noteworthy but the sap helps building additional power.
Telekinetic Force is Jean Grey’s spender and hot dang it is flashy. With 9 dice, physical, at R3 costing a significant 6 power. It also gets to throw size 4 or less (so most characters) away before damage is dealt, since it has the same timing as the explosive trigger it allows you to choose the order in which they happen.
Next we have Battlefield Manipulation, a size 4 terrain throw that gives Jean some additional offensive power and helps diversify her arsenal.
Matter Transmutation is a very unique and interesting superpower. It can push any activated character within R2 away S and a character can only be moved this way once per turn. Being able to move allies in addition to enemies makes this power a lot more versatile even if it is harder to use. The restrictions on Matter Transmutation is what can make it awkward to use because it requires Jean to be close to the model she wants to move and have them already activated which encourages a late activation on a high treat model which can be counterintuitive to play.
Shield Mind is another relatively unique superpower as it is one of the very few ways to stop your models from being displaced. It stops most forms of forced movements with the exception of throws in a wide area. It is a very effective way of limiting the impact of some models like Thanos (as it can stop both the Mind Gem and his Cosmic Portals) and Web Warriors like Ghost-Spider, Venom and Peter Parker from the Core Set.
Finally, her Latent Psychic Potential grants her an additional power per turn which is very welcome as she has a lot of ways of spending it and also allows Shield Mind to be used almost from the start of every turn and flight lets her move unimpeded and use Matter Transmutation without having to worry about terrain.
Overall, I really like what Jean Grey brings to the table with her diverse and very unique toolkit, but she’s a character that is relatively fragile that needs to be able to weave in and out of a fight to impact the board. As opposed to a lot of high threat models, she also wants to activate as late as possible unless she’s in danger in order to be able to move characters without retaliation. Jean is somewhat of a technical model, in the sense that she fills a very specific role in a roster and isn’t a character that should see the table every game but when she does she works great.
Thank you and as always, don’t forget to have fun!
