Today let’s take a look at the new Ultron, the only one who we knew for certain would come before August 2nd due to him being shown off at Adepticon. You know what I said when I first saw his model? Instant buy no matter how his stat card turns out. But, you know, I would also like to put him on the playing table without feeling bad about it.
Metal Tyrant Ultron comes with Ultron Drone Grunts specifically to show new players how Grunts function in the game. Though his Grunts play a very different game from the ones we’ve seen before. It’s probably good they don’t act like Hydra Grunts who are plain and simply stupid, but they also can’t hold extracts so they are there solely for murder.
Let’s look at the cards:
I have to be honest. On first look I was pretty disappointed. 5 threat Ultron doesn’t look too different from his 4 threat version at a glance and his Grunts not playing the objective game at all is also a bit sad. He has incredible defensive stats, is basically invulnerable to Mystic, has 8 Stamina on his front side and since you don’t need to think about their role outside of murder his grunts are basically two additional attacks per round (from round 2 onwards). Also his spender is super nice.
Nutron has a decent amount of control while he can put out quite a bit of hurt on top of that. I think key to him being worth his threat is gonna be to use his Grunts effectively. Being non scoring and coming back rather reliably (pack some terrain throws in your Roster if you’re bringing Ultron, Metal Tyrant ☝️) they don’t present a pretty appealing target for your opponent. So you have to really force them to deal with them or just enjoy the potential free damage each turn. Medium base, medium move, Fly and a range 3 attack means not all that much can stay completely save from them.
He also comes with a new card but before we take a look at that let’s talk about an existing card that has an enormous effect on how we value the Meta Tyrant which is of course:
Age of Ultron is great with 4 threat Ultron and basically stapled to his face. Now it has a unique problem: original Ultron can’t be distinct by his alter ego. So we don’t know if it is supposed to be Ultron (like Captain America) or Ultron (like Steve Rogers). Now you can make arguements for both. They could have gone the route of giving Metal Tyrant a name like Ultron 2.0 to make it clear he can’t use Age but that would have made it able to play them side by side (which I would’ve found very cool and when do we get a Phalanx affiliation AMG, when!?) and it’s clear that they didn’t want to do that for one of 11 characters when you can’t do it with the others.
Personally I expect an Errata to come out and ban Metal Tyrant from using Age but I’m very happy to be wrong about that.
Now let’s look at the new card he definitely can play (as does old Ultron):
It looks kind of cool and thematic. It’s nowhere near the power level of Age but might help power up Ultron a bit to use his awesome spender, bow someone off a point and throw a size 4 after their heads. It’s nice but not a stapled card like AoU.
Overall I’ve come around on the Metal Tyrant quite a lot. Initially I was very disappointed but now I’m really excited to give him a try. He chooses almost pure violence and I think his best teams will be exactly those. He likes fighty leaderships like new Red Skulls, also Red Skull 1s and potentially also Shadowlands Daredevil. Might be a bit awkward to play with two Grunt parents (remember only one Grunt can be on the board for you at any given time), but both can come back fairly reliably and don’t mind much being taken out.
Next up we’ll take a look at the Cosmic Avenger herself, Carol Denvers.
See you then!
Cheers from Germany 🍻