Welcome back to SG Protocol.
We continue our breakdown of everything we got at Ministravaganza 2023. Today we look at how five Meta threats have been taken down a bit as well as the new cards for Black Bolt and Ronan the Accuser.
Black Cats extract steal has become an action just like on for example Enchantress. This massively changes the effectiveness of the character of course as it now that much harder to steal and live. But as a survivability buff enemy characters can’t explode their crits with attacks into her anymore. Her builder also now adds bleed on damage dealt. But realistically you are still very seldomly going to use her builder. She remains great at grabbing an extract of the table and running with it. Or as a Stagger not once she has a bit of power on her. Her steal is now something you really have to plan out to execute rather than something you just casually do almost by accident every game.
The most taken 3 threat in the game gets nerfs on both of his attacks. His spender now has a size restriction of 3 and more importantly his rapid fire trigger changes from a hit to a wild making it only half as likely to roll. The nerfs here are OK and will push Bucky out of some but certainly not all rosters. It is a big boost for his upcoming 4 threat version, too.
Since I’m currently playing Convocation in both TTS leagues I’m playing in this one hurts me the most. Possession was fixed. It now only works on extracts and the Brother Daniel tokens returns to Voodoo when he dazes. Both are fine and necessary changes. The throw now being a double hit trigger on his builder and always being restricted to size 2 takes quite a lot of action economy off of Voodoo and makes him a much more dice reliant character. His recall spirit being increased to 3 power and not automatically returning in the power phase if you want is also drastically decreasing it’s appeal in the early game. He is still a good character in his affiliations but will see a massive drop as a splash is my guess.
Cosmic Portal has been given a “once per turn” limitation as they said he was going over the speed limit of displacement. A good change in my opinion. What we learned afterwards and which wasn’t mentioned in any of the panels is that the Space and Reality Gem were taken off of the Restricted list making SR Thanos a much easier include as a splash in any roster. I really can’t say how this will effect the meta. I’m afraid he will be taken much more as the 10th model as a bluff or a secondary plan. Black Order certainly are happy about getting restricted cards back though.
Round 2 of nerfs for the tiger boy. He was exceeding the speed limit on kills is what Ben Ransom and the Wills (Shick and Pagani) said during the panel. And loosing pierce on his builder and restricting the throw on his charge to size 3 is how they want to change that offensively, while also decreasing his stamina on both sides by one. He now will have problems with other tall models but remains very good while hopefully not being as bad a play experience for anyone who has to face him. It could also help the players using him not hating it as much as many of them (claim to) did before.
Inhumans
Crystals political alliance against the Skrulls back in Secret Invasion 1 husband gains two extra stamina, one on each side of his card. I’m going to try him in my Convocation roster just as a big hard to kill block that has very good control potential.
Much more impactful for the Inhumans are the substantial buffs to their king and leader Blackagar Boltagon. His builder gains a dice, his mystic defense is increased to 3, he gained an additional point of stamina on his front side and a 1 power costs bodyguard. Also gains an extra power per turn now which is huge. He looses his two extra dice power but that’s a really small price to pay here. Black Bolt is now a force to be reckoned with and might even reach the territory of splashable 5 where before he often felt like a tax in Inhumans. His leadership is commonly agreed to be among the best in the game and didn’t change. He is just much more damaging and survivable now. Having his bodyguard only on his front side and his sensational spender only on his injured side creates an interesting puzzle for your opponent where it is really gonna hurt them when he bodyguards, dazes and wakes up ready to whisper.
That’s it for today.
Next we will look at what else got shown off in terms of new models, new game modes and added details we got about time line events. Also the only character updated that we haven’t talked about yet in Taskmaster. So a bit of a grab bag of an article that should hopefully have something in it for you, too.
See you then and cheers from Germany 🍻
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