Today we have another new Leader, this time the Invincible Iron Man who brings a new Shield leadership to the table. Here’s the card:
So in what is a first for the game we have a full on copy and paste repeat leadership. It’s exactly the same as Black Panthers. Luckily is generally considered pretty good so no bad news for Shield players here. Making his allies more effective is the name of the game for this version of Tony Stark with his superpower Jarvis being the most exciting part of his kit outside of his leadership. Tony opens up a more proactive attrition game plan rather than the setting up traps and using the leadership cleverly way that Fury Jr. Let’s you play. I think it’s totally viable to have both leaders in your squad as you probably want to keep Eye in the Sky available. That said, if you’re not that married to Shield tactics cards but want to bring a very consistent gun line a core of Invincible Iron Man (iTony if you will 😉), Bucky and Commandos opens that up, too. Add in Hawkeye and you have a tonne of long ranged damage dealers for only 13 threat that you can season to taste with any splashes you like. It’s important to note that while the leadership works on dodge and defense rolls, Jarvis rerolls are attack dice only. I heard a couple of people say it’s directly copied from Shuri but it isn’t.
So just from a pure stat card perspective, is 4 threat Tony an improvement over 3 threat that’s worth the investment? To which I can only very strongly say: it depends. He helps an attrition game plan but is probably the weaker version per threat spent in a scenario focused team.
In Shield I think he wins out over his former self (and the unaffiliated Hulkbuster for that matter) because of the leadership. Even if you’re barely ever gonna use it, it at least gives you an option and can catch your opponent off guard. Personally I would use it almost exclusively for dodge and defense roles to keep the gun line alive that little bit longer.
We’ve already looked at one new Tony Stark tactics card, Overcharge, in the Captain Marvel Cosmic Avenger hot takes but there’s another one. Oh boy is there another one…
This card is insane. It’s now basically the second card for Tony that you’ll at the very least have in your 10 every time you put a version of him in your Roster. It is obviously best used by Hulkbuster who will have the greatest area of effect due to his giant base but of course he kind of dies easily already and this puts an even bigger target on his head. 3 Threat Iron Man is a cheap throw in for Helios Laser anyway and now you can also put in Stark Armory when you don’t need one big blast but rather more damage overall across the board.
It has theoretical synergy with iTony due to Jarvis making the added dice more consistent but realistically you’ll not have enough power on him to make use of both effectively. Maybe on an E map when you only have to spent 2-3 power to hit every member of your team with Stark Armory.
Overall I think iTony runs into a similar problem that Baron Helmut Zemo did, in that his 3 threat version is one of the best 3 threats for his role (tanky, ranged control piece) and his 4 threat not outshining it enough to be worth the upgrade. Where they differ though is that I wouldn’t consider original Iron Man the best model (per threat) in Shield where Baron Zemo is. So I think iTony has a lot of play in his home affiliation.
That said I think that Stark Armory will make Tony in any version an even more common splash than he already is.
Tomorrow we’ll look at Red Skull, Master of the World.
See you then and Cheers from Germany 🍻