Today I want to give a brief overview over all the affiliations in the game and how they changed through the TTC updates, rotations and outlook. Some will be more affected than others or course.
A-Force:
Not a lot has changed for the girls and the road map also didn’t give any hints of support coming to them. Jane from the Asgard box might end up affiliated. Angelas stock has probably risen again here as she’s an affiliated safe grab and she can special delivery She-Hulk further than anyone else.
Outlook: unchanged.
Asgard:
Asgard loses a lot of potential safe grabs with only Angela remaining. She still has a hard time making a roster against the other three 5 threats who are all leaders. Versatile Strategy becomes a big consideration for Asgard now I feel. Helas stock as also declined now with Loki 2 being a great Mystic gun character. Could create more room in the roster for the more durable Lady Sif.
Asgard may now be one of the premier teams of just standing on the midline and living.
Asgard now also holds two defensive cards affiliated that everyone else lost in Odin’s Blessing remaining what X-Ceptional Healing did and Freya’s Blessing doing basically what Inspiring Monologue did.
Outlook: Moving up, through the new box.
Avengers:
Not a lot changed for the Avengers. They do get a boost through Shang-Chi of course and will get 1-3 new characters in 2025 with Ronin, Echo and especially Tigra being considerations for being affiliated.
Sam as well as any scenario team will miss Mission Objective but he was far from dependent on it. The new card Survival has a very weird and very unlikely to be deliberate interaction with Heroes for Hire where neither Luke nor Iron Fist are the ones playing the card and thus they can be affected by it but then not being attacked. I expect the forum to rectify that quickly but right now it seems possible. I absolutely wouldn’t bet money on that staying this way however.
Outlook: Unchanged.
Black Order:
Corvus leadership now doesn’t give power to enemy Black Order characters. I’m not sure anybody actually noticed it did that before. A Black Order mirror is not the most likely thing to happen in MCP at the moment I’d say.
Otherwise they lose Marked for Death but scenario teams lost some cards too. Might come out to a small net positive for the affiliation.
Having less generic TTCs might also lead people to playing Black Onslaught for example which is a good card but fitting Dwarf and Swan in your squad is still difficult of course.
Outlook: Slightly better than before.
Brotherhood of Mutants:
Deception is gone and replaced with much fairer Stolen Identity which is still a good card but not as stapled to Mystique as Deception was. And SI is not restricted freeing up a space which for Magneto will most likely be Indomitable to keep him in position (or to not have Juggernaut be thrown into your other characters).
Stolen Identity is less of a scenario card for Mystique now but can still be used outside of her activation to pull someone into the range of a heavy hitter and take their extract off them for example.
They are still a long way out but we know Brotherhood will get a boost of three new characters in 2025 which is only fair considering how many new “good side” Mutants have come out recently.
Outlook: Slightly up for Magneto; Slightly down for Mystique
Cabal:
Age of Ultron being gone means Ultron 1 is now unplayable 😱 He wasn’t played with the card either so we’ll all live through it.
Ultron 2 is still very good but will drop heavily in play rate.
Red Skull 3 and his Thanos build like the changes very much with more people for them to murder on the midline. Malekith misses ARND for a turn 1 charge but with far less safe grabs he also isn’t as dependent on it anymore.
Sin is probably sad about the scenario TTCs going away but if you’re playing Sin leadership chances are you aren’t aiming to win events in the first place.
Red Skull 1 is now finally, irreversibly, dead. He didn’t have much on his 3rd incarnation anyway except for distributing up to 4 power to his team through ARND in turn 1. Unable to do that he just compares too poorly to Master of the World to be a real consideration now.
Outlook: Up for RS3; Slightly up for Malekith; Slightly down for Sin; Very down for RS1
Convocation:
A hefty double nerf for the flying robots who, for some reason, have about three kind of wizardy people (and/or Taskmaster) with them.
No seriously Grunts not triggering Iron Bound Books is a much needed change that frees the affiliation of the “why aren’t you playing a Grunt character?” tax and loosing Age of Ultron also makes him worse for obvious reasons.
I still think Ultron 2 and MODOK 2 have decent enough synergy with the leadership that they probably don’t fly out of the roster immediately but if the changes lead to more Wizards back on the board that can only be a good thing. Fingers crossed Loki 2 will be affiliated because no affiliation has waited longer for a new release. He’d give them a big, and probably needed, boost if he is.
Outlook: Down.
Criminal Syndicate:
They recently got the four new models and according to the store leak Wrecking Crew and also Abomination will be CS affiliated which is certainly a boost to the faction. Wrecking Crew also just looks like three tons of fun.
SLDD will miss Marked for Death, Kingpin somewhat Mission Objective, though he can still pass extracts actively through the leadership.
MODOK and Klaw didn’t really change.
Kingpin Potato heads are pretty good at standing somewhere and not dying which has become more relevant now again.
Outlook: Kingpin slightly up. SLDD slightly down. Klaw and MODOK unchanged.
Dark Dimension:
Check out my Ministravaganza recap part 4 to learn more about this image.
In terms of the rotation Dorm should probably get Smash reprinted as a character card for him. Loosing it hurts him quite a bit even if the cats won’t be missed in the greater scheme of things. Like all attrition lists of course he likes more people on the midline and less scenario TTC tech.
He also enables characters like Ancient One and Cable (anyone who needs one power more than they natively have to walk, walk, pick up, place back) to be a semi safe grabs which might be interesting.
Outlook: I talked myself into Slightly Up, even though Dorm will miss his Smash.
Defenders:
Defenders are a brawly down the middle team that just got boosted heavily with four new models and a bunch of really awesome TTCs on top. No Eyes means more fighting and that’s what Defenders want to do anyway. Survival is just as broken here as it is in Avengers of course (read Avengers if you skipped it, everything from there applies to here, too). The loss of Kick ‘Em hurts Defenders, who put out conditions like candy a bit but not having a card where your arch nemesis throws stripper money on your leader in your 10 is at least a style improvement probably 😅
Doctor Strange didn’t get a lot out of everything here.
Outlook: DD slightly up. Doctor Strange unchanged
Guardians of the Galaxy:
Crew of the Milano is gone. As it should, it was the best card of its effect by a gigantic margin. I could see them bringing in a much tuned down version of it with Yondu and Nova, who will hopefully their second leader in early 25. The new version would probably be Children of the Atom just for GotG, but then again X-Men will get their Kaiju and could lose Children because of that.
Guardians certainly took a small hit but nothing they can’t recover from.
Outlook: Slightly down.
Hellfire Club:
The leadership stayed as it was which is the biggest suprise here. HFC does feel the nerf to This is a Robbery a bit and won’t have the best Beta Ray Bill anymore (just one that is as good as or only slightly better as anyone else’s). Ultron 2 might see less play but as every new release is a HFC release there’s obviously stuff to be excited about for them.
Outlook: The builds will change a bit but their overall strength is unchanged.
Hydra:
Baron Strucker cries a lot about Kick ‘Em being gone but Baron Helmut Zemo is probably the saddest boy in the game to see Eyes go. No more Safe grabs for Viper and Spider-Woman through his leadership. At least you also just lost a lot of potential cards you could’ve brought in with his leadership…
Red Skull 2, who was an Eyes target in his own right, very much likes the overall changes and further cements his statement of being the de facto faction leader.
Abomination is supposed to be Hydra which is an interesting choice but can only lift up the affiliation.
Outlook: Slightly up for RS2. Slightly Down for Baron Strucker. Helmut Zemo Leadership is effectively dead.
Inhumans:
They’ll finally be expanded with some more actual Inhumans (instead of Crystals various lovers) and will be front and center in the narrative missions from the War of Kings pack.
Outlook : Unchanged now. Will get a boost and second leadership in early 25.
Legion of the Lost:
We don’t know if this is even true but according to the store leak this is Mephistos affiliation. It’s basically here as a placeholder, for when it gets revealed to be true (or not).
Midnight Sons:
The new best home for previous Eyes on the Prize targets as they can use the Bump instead of Eyes for basically the same effect. Even works with Lockjaw.
Sons also get Werewolf by Night confirmed and possibly Incantu and Frankensteins Monster as new models this year and then Man-Thing and Elsa Bloodstone (second leadership) in Q1 of 2025.
Gwenom also just recently gave the faction a good boost.
And then you have Blades Arch enemy Dracula who isn’t affiliated but could work very well with the teams too I think.
Outlook: Up.
New Mutants:
One of four brand new affiliations on the list. We only know about three affiliated models so far, Sunspot, Warlock and Magik with a TTC that gives Ilyana the leadership.
Outlook: 🤷🏽
Sentinels:
Online and Operationals price got cut in half. That makes this card an absolute auto take now.
Sentinels still won’t be great but they sure as hell are better now than they were before Ministravaganza.
Outlook: Up.
Servants of the Apocalypse:
The second new affiliation. We know a lot more about it than New Mutants and what we know looks very very good. A lot here hinges on the affiliation list which everyone is wanting for now to properly rate the affiliation.
Outlook: Very good.
SHIELD:
Less running away means more shooting for the Gun line. SHIELD also never cared for unaffiliated cards anyway so they kind of aren’t bothered by this whole thing. They also just got a new model and a new leadership.
Outlook: Unchanged for all three leaderships.
Spider-Foes:
Everybody lost Mission Objective? Well Foes still have Strategic Retreat which is basically MO paired with Fall Back for 4 power and only affiliated models can play it. Having Rhinobbery double in cost and losing ARND to turn 2 teleport Electro are certainly things that are worse from a power level standpoint for Foes but both were necessary changes to the game. Having some Healing Factor Characters in the line up also means they do suffer the downgrade of X-Ceptional to Instant Recovery.
All changes are good for the game but will hurt the competitive ceiling for Foes just a little bit.
Outlook: Slightly down.
Uncanny X-Men:
Who needs Eyes on the Prize when you can have First Class and To Me My X-Men?
Outlook: Slightly Up.
Vampire Thralls:
Dracula’s own TTC affiliation that we have no idea how it works or what it does. It does have a very strong leader at least.
Wakanda:
The turn one Spirit jank play now at least requires Wong which is a heavy tax and will reign in the faction significantly.
Outlook: Down.
Weapon X:
Is getting a new target for the leadership and another new affiliated character. Both seem good (I think I rated Logan 3 to bad in my first look) and help struggling affiliation.
But the elephant in the room of course is the downgrade from X-Ceptional to Instant Recovery. It’s certainly a (necessary) hard nerf for the card which very much affects the faction here but I do think here the new characters outweigh it to come out to a net positive.
Outlook: Up.
Web Warriors:
All webbed up dodged a nerf in the errata but Webs feel the loss of MO which let them steal, run away, bunker up and never give the extract back. Now they’ll continue to steal and run away but at least knocking then down now should give you the extracts back.
They’ve gotten three more characters just very recently and will have to wait some time for new reinforcements but will be given a full Spider-Verse box at the end of 2025 with Spider-Man 2099 confirmed alongside some unknown others.
Outlook: Slightly down right now.
Winter Guard:
They were beginning to use ARND with Dynamo to jumpstart a single character recently but will find different ways to be effective I’m sure.
Nothing on the roadmap looks like it could belong in the faction so overall its pretty unchanged.
Outlook: Slightly down.
X-Force:
Cable and his boys and gals feel the downgrade of X-Ceptional the most and also suffer from No Matter the Cost being rotated. Having lost a game to that specific combination of cards recently I can’t say I’m personally too mad about that 😅
X-Force definitely were the best users for both and maybe relied too much on them. Now they can’t just place a Healing Factor character somewhere and know they’ll live no matter what.
I still think the faction is good overall and it might be growing with Sunspot being very likely affiliated (they talked about why they chose his X-Force costume for the mini) and then Warlock, Maverick and Weapon X unlikely but not impossible adds, too.
Outlook: Down.
As always I’m very happy to be wrong about everything here 😁
I know I’m excited for the new meta.
Cheers from Germany 🍻