A third incarnation of Johann Schmidt, also known as Red Skulls come to us in the new core set and, as would be expected he has a leadership once again, making him the only alter ego in the game with not only three versions but three versions who all have a leadership. After his Master of Hydra version had (unsurprisingly) a leadership for the Hydra affiliation, Master of the World (from now on called World Skull in this article to differentiate them) comes back to the roots with a new Cabal leadership. Let’s look at the card:
World Skull comes with a very good leadership that leans into the attrition focused game play that you’ll normally associate with Cabal. It lets you count a Failure (Skull) as a crit in your attack role once per turn and drains you a power for it afterwards. Or if you don’t have a power you take one damage. He adds a good attacks suite, both at range 4, a fantastic range 3 size 3 medium terrain throw and a copy of Supreme Stranges Scalpel of Strange in Nothing is beyond my reach. He can spent power from his allies for his spender and superpowers but we need an errata for the exact ruling on how that works. It’s not really clear from the wording if you can split the cost through different models (and if Johann can contribute himself at all then) or if it all has to be spent by one allied model alone.
He seems like a pure improvement over original core set Red Skull. Is he as strong as Master of Hydra? Probably not but he is a threat cheaper and has about 4 times as many affiliated models to choose from.
Will he dethrone Malekith as the most taken Cabal leader (who join the Criminal Syndicate and Avengers in having 4 leaders each)? I would hope but sadly don’t think so.
We also get a new tactics card useable by all versions of Red Skull:
It’s probably best used on Red Skull 2 but I think it’s always gonna be worth at least considering if you bring any version of the character. It has great synergy with Baron Mordo who can help extent the applied conditions onto even more targets. But at its baseline the card is just a remover of conditions for Red Skull which is very strong indeed.
Next up we’ll look at Captain America, First Avenger. See you then and cheers from Germany 🍻