It has happend! The immediate impact on the game I predicted this panel to have has come to fruition:
These cards are now out of the game:
That’s quite the list to say the least.
Not all that many people will be crying to have some of these cards out of the game but some more niche picks also getting the axe is a bit weird.
Fall Back being the second most taken card in the game not getting touched here also is an interesting choice especially when Escort to Safety got cut. The restricted list now only has four entries and your first three cards in basically any roster will be Brace + Idom/ Patch Up/ Sacrifice to taste and Fall Back.
The list above also just sorta tells half of the story as my immediate response even as a Spider-Foes player was “What about Rhinobbery?!”
It changed too which you can see from the Errata Download. It now costs 4 power which makes it still great but less trivial to use:
Convocations Iron-Bound Books also got the Nerf hammer in now excluding Grunts for the return of the card:
Combined with the Rotation of Age of Ultron (which absolute devastes any hopes of ever fielding Ultron 1) the Wizards and Robots list Mario created seems to be pretty dead for now. But I’m sure he’s already cooking up the next evil thing possibly including a certain Asgardian Wizard.
What is missing from the nerf list?
All webbed Up and my Hellfire Club. The top two factions in the game don’t get their overtuned TTCs touched and especially against Webs people now also lose the tech of Marked for Death and P.S.D.
HFC might already have been taken down a pitch with the loss of Eyes but in the end they are one of the best factions of having Bill just stand on the midline and live anyway.
The new rotation list is kind off hard to read as it now just lists all legal TTCs in alphabetical order but don’t worry I’m sure Drakhaine will have Jarvis updated in the next couple of days (probably faster as I know him).
Deception and X-Ceptional Healing were marked yellow on the list for a specific reason which is that they are getting direct (nerfed) replacements:
The change is that you now can’t target characters that have already activated. So it basically stops turn 1 plays with it which makes it less of a one dimensional card overall but also allows for much more counter play. Both are good things.
The card is OK but far from what X-Ceptional did and Odin’s Blessing still does allow for. Combined with the loss of NMTC and Marked for Death X-Force might fall down the ladder again quite some steps (they didn’t even put up world shattering numbers before this).
Update: Some more changes to existing cards:
Cloning Banks, World Domination, Dark Empowerment, Foreign Assignment and Joint Effort got their wording cleaned up.
First of the Black Order: the world “allied” was added to not give enemy black order models power
It’s time travel… Don’t ask, Meet my Executioner and Last Minute Save got their erratas on the card.
Buffed cards:
Daughters of Thanos: now costs only 1 power each, down from 2 each. Makes it much more of a consideration when you have both on the table.
Online and Operational: now costs only 4, down from 8. It was already necessary to have any chance to do something with the MK4s and this makes it much easier to bring one back to full. Won’t be enough to lift them up high but Sentinels need all the help they can get and this is certainly a welcome change for them.
Versatile Strategy:
The biggest buff of the list probably. It changed to now having the non-active leadership character playing the card. Meaning you can use it after you’ve lost your original leader. Makes it much more of a consideration for affiliations with multiple leaders you want on the board even if they aren’t leading. Interesting for X-Men, Wakanda, Avengers, Hydra (though they have a better version of this already) and new Asgard where it immediately becomes a consideration for my list.
Aside from those we also got shown some upcoming TTCs:
This card is very good. Basically stapled to Apocalypse and it becomes even better as Apocalypse is immune to all status effects (which includes Stagger) on this injured side.
A new universal card when the rotation is trying to get them out of the game is interesting. Ben Ransom explained the specific play pattern of dazing a character and then KOing it with Prio before it gets to go again as why this card was made specifically. Seems reasonable.
So New Mutants is a new affiliation confirmed meaning we increase to at least 27 this year with three more being introduced into the game (New Mutants, Servants of Apocalypse, Mephistos Affiliation) and who knows what we’ll get added to that tomorrow at the road map panel?
Safe to say Magik, Warlock and Sunspot who is pretty likely their leader are affiliated but not a lot of their other canon members are in the game yet. Gonna be interesting who makes the list (probably X-23 and Honey Badger?)
The card itself looks decent no trigger for the push and no power cost is what’s selling it. The 5 die attack is just an added bonus (that can actually be a negative if you end up powering them up).
We don’t know what Mephisto does yet (I guess we might tomorrow) but the card is pretty great on face level already. We’ll come back to this once we know what the Deal tokens actually do.
This card is just cool as well.. Hell.
It has a high cost and a potential big downside for yourself but the potential it brings is also immense. Good to squash some burning arachnids and you’ll need all the help you can get to hold back that pest now…
Overall I’m really surprised by some of the choices here and less so about others. All Webbed Up absolutely has to be touched which will hopefully become clear very quickly now.
Otherwise it’s a brave new world where ASM, Namor and Angela increased in value a lot just like any faction who can build a safe grab without Eyes like Mystique with Juggernaut.
Be sure to download the Errata’ed cards from AMGs website and go whatch the stream to learn more about how TTCs are created:
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2201994988
See you tomorrow for the Road Map recap!
