Welcome back to SG Protocol.
Today we’ll finish up this series.
If you haven’t already be sure to read these three articles first before you move on to this one:
Uncanny X-Men:
Cyclops:
Since his character update in September 2023 Cyclops has a new ramp style leadership that hands out power to friends if the active character dealt damage with an attack. This might sound like an attrition leadership but is in reality a reward leadership that doesn’t help to actually do damage. Something X-Men can be built for but which isn’t their primary strength.
X-Men under either leader are famed for their strength on Pay to Flip secures mostly off of the strength of the “First Class” TTC they bring.
Scott can make his team into either an archetype 2 or a 3 with the right characters (Domino, Psylocke, Logan or Wolverine and X-23), but for the latter there’s probably a better way to go.
Prof X:
Charles Xavier is scheduled to come out on March 1st 2024 and is confirmed to be the third X-Men leader but his card hasn’t been shown off yet.
Storm:
The traditional X-Men leader #1. Her leadership took a hit in the September 2023 character updates but remains very strong and best supporting the X-Men typical archetype 2 game plan. With her you often build a team that is quick on the board to grab the extracts and flip some secures and than dare your opponent to take them back and punish them for it.
Wakanda:
Black Panther:
The longest serving Wakanda leader has exactly the same leadership as Invincible Iron Man received in the new core box for SHIELD. This it serves to just make your team overall better at attacking and defending if they can afford to pay for it. Wakanda characters all have good to great ways to spend their power however and thus might not be able to pay for the leadership as much as you’d like. His team, especially off the back of probably the strongest TTC in the game “Wakanda Forever”, has very high damage potential while having lots of displacement to play a good secure game. It will mostly play into an archetype 3 game plan but can also be tuned to be a 2 with the right splashes and maybe try to be a 4 with splashes for that.
King T’Challa:
The upcoming new 5 threat version of T’Challa offers a very unique leadership that changes a core rule of the game in having pushes potentially dealing damage. Sadly the probably single best user of the leadership can never use as it’s 4 threat Black Panther obviously sharing the same alter ego. But Shuri, M’Baku and King T himself all have good amounts of pushes available to them and there is a good amount of splashes to take advantage of the leadership too.
He can stay in the traditional archetype 3 range or tune to go 2 or 4.
Killmonger, Ursurper:
The new leader version of Killmonger has once again a very unique leadership and one of the “real” attrition leaderships actually helping you to deal damage. It rewards your team for being “tall” because you only get three tokens regardless of how many characters you have on the table. Weirdly enough you’ll probably want King T’Challa pretty much locked into your squad with KM, U as your leader because he is the affiliated character with the biggest expected damage output in affiliation outside of maybe classic Killmonger who, once again, can’t be in your squad for having the same alter ego as your leader. Killmonger Usurper is probably your choice of leader if you want to go full on archetype 4 with the faction.
M’Baku:
The only leader in the faction who can bring every model in affiliation, M’Baku offers dice fixing and a bit of scenario support. As he likes central fights himself he once again is probably best served going for an archetype 3 game plan and can maybe be tuned up to a 4. And possibly to a 2.
One important thing to note for Wakanda under any of the many leaders is their typical opening turn and deployment: you keep all your characters around Range 2 off of a Wakanda character you don’t need a lot of power on in the first round. This will most likely be Okoye and sometimes Shuri. And the whole plan works best with a splash character that generates 2 (or more) power per power phase.
You activate that character first. You then play the TTC “Advanced RnD” to give a power to your central model (Okoye). That model then plays the Wakanda TTC “Spirit of Wakanda” for 2 power which hands out 2 power to every character in Range 2 of it. Turning on loads of superpowers right away.
Weapon X:
Weapon X have a roster of decent characters and an, in theory, good leadership. But because it costs a slot in your 5 TTCs and doesn’t benefit unaffiliated models it’s really not all that great sadly. The leadership can be put on X-23 (where you should put it), Logan, the Wolverine (where you don’t want it) or even unaffiliated Wolverine (yeah, why would you ever do that?) but does the same regardless of who has it.
The team overall is one of tanks damage dealers maybe capable of a full on archetype 4 game plan.
Web Warriors:
Amazing Spider-Man:
Peter Parkers 5 threat version has a very strong but hard to master leadership helping you score out the game by denying your opponent VPs per displacement. He plays a true archetype 1 game.
Spider-Man (Miles Morales):
Miles has to be seen as the primary leader of the Web Heads and really enables the very wide archetype 1 game plan that the faction is known for and probably best at in the game.
Both leaders use the TTC “All webbed up” for one attrition heavy turn but that is to increase the speed of them outscoring the game rather than really focus on damage as the route to victory.
With recently improved Daredevil, Venom and Agent Venom being decent damage dealers the roster can nowadays maybe be played as a 2 but will never be able to employ an archetype 3 or 4 game plan very consistently successful.
Winter Guard:
Winter Guard offer a very strong leadership and good 1:1 characters and defensive abilities. They are pretty slow in turn though. Their common play pattern is playing central brawls because of the strength of Crimson Dynamo on those but shouldn’t be relegated to those. They have a strong secure game and can be build for either archetype 3 or 2. 4 and especially 1 are quite a stretch for them.
X-Force:
Remember when I said in X-Men you could go a more effective route for a 3 or even 4 style X-Men roster? Yeah this is it. Cable himself is probably one of the X-Men with the highest expected damage output and his X-Force leadership is a true attrition leadership as well. And outside of Logan all the damage focussed X-Men I mentioned above are also X-Force affiliated. And Logan can easily be splashed in, too. X-Force also get the heavily buffed Deadpool in affiliation which X-Men don’t have. You’ll usually start your squads with Cable and 1-3 of Deadpool, X-23 and Domino depending on the threat value of the game.
And that’s all the affiliations and leaders currently in the game.
Cheers from Germany 🍻