ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! Day after my foot surgery trounced up on vicodin I hop onto twitter this morning thinking to myself “there’s no way they spoil models two days in a row”. And what do I find? Baron FREAKING Mordo!
Admittedly I’m no Doctor Strange / Mordo expert outside of the MCU where Mordo is a bit of an anti-hero/sympathetic villain. In other cartoons/comics where I’ve seen him he’s been more of a generic dickhead but I’ll leave it up to the comics experts to talk about his character. Here we only care about the rules on the card. And with that, lets dig in!
Another wonderful stat block – 2/4/4 with 11 stamina is as far as I can tell unique on a 3 threat. Is that uniqueness a good thing, though? As we’re going to get into here, Mordo has zero defensive tech. The closest he has to defensive tech is being very comfortable contributing from range 4, limiting who has access to him. And admittedly I feel range 4+ attacks skew heavily towards energy and mystic so this could work out fine. But watch out for Hawkeye who will send Mordo to the dark dimension posthaste.
We’ve seen variations on this builder before – 4 dice, wild size 2 push trigger. Usually it’s physical and range 4, with flat power generation, but I’m going to give this a pass on the power per damage generation because its mystic. That might come back to being a downside as people increasingly take mystic defense solutions – do note that Psychic Shielding Device not only ensures most targets won’t take damage from this but also can’t be pushed as it’s mystic. Realistically this will be only used in specific scenarios next to his other builder.
THIS is a lot more my speed. Range 4, flat power generation and a wild Hex trigger feels like a great supportive poke attack. Do some damage, apply some statuses, get an amount of power you can plan over. I expect his default mode will be to sit on a point and double tap with this to spread the hex around, and occasionally throw in some spenders. Solid workhorse attack and if you’re happy with this attack you’ll be happy with his overall function.
Oof. 7 dice at range 4 on a (for now) excellent attack type with GUARANTEED incinerate and poison. Makes me a little sad for Green Goblin comparing these head to head – same cost, worse range, and requires damage to apply the same effects (and why is the order of incinerate and poison different on the two cards?!?). Thanks to Mordo’s solid power economy (more on that in a second) I expect you to be getting this off a LOT. Like every 2-3 turns a lot, every other for sure if you can find him some better power economy.
And speaking of power economy, here’s his take on Red Skull’s Cosmic Cube / Wong’s meditation. If you notice, flat power generation for the round plus this means if you can find an extra power/round somewhere you can do this and his spender as your actions every round. Pair him with lockjaw in the back in an Inhumans roster, hand off some power, throw in an Interdimensional Bloodhound for good measure and you’re off to the races. Also, all of his superpowers we’re going to talk about next cost exactly 2 power, so its easy to think of this as spending an action to get another proc of your excellent powers. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it is once per turn so Mordo can’t just be a living Ferocity of Cyttorak battery for your team.
Spread the love, baby! Admittedly its a bit annoying that this is a range 3 power when his status application attacks are range 4 but we’ll live. Being able to similarly spread slow is a nice little bonus on top. This will be obnoxious on crises that hand out statuses like Demons Downtown or Terrigen Clouds, and situationally still usable if the only source of these statuses are Mordo himself. Especially on Demons/Terrigen it will put a passive pressure on your opponent to shake statuses lest you push them into a cluster of allies and poison/incinerate them all. Do note this is NOT once per turn so you can chain spread if you have the power and the desire.
Mini Thanos here we come! No frills, just 2 power from Karl and 1 stamina from your attacker and you get to rain pain down on your foes. This right here is why Mordo is going to see broad splash play, so many affiliations want this effect without having to pay for Thanos. Spider-Foes, X-Force, Sin spam all come to mind immediately, and I’m sure other teams will love this too.
Finally, a neat little anti-control effect to round out the card. Pseudo-aggressive but only against pushing effects rather than damaging attacks, this allows him to stick on a point no matter how much an annoying Shuri wants him gone. And in conjunction with his Flight passive he’s guaranteed to be able to get back to wherever he got pushed (are there even any medium or long pushes in the game? Edit: I’ve been corrected by Season 5 semifinalist Mike DeLuca, Venom and Omega red both have medium pushes. I blame the vicodin.) unlike Crossbones who can be a sad boy if he gets pushed off a building. Cornercase but when you need it you’re going to feel great about having it.
Edit: another catch by Mike, this doesn’t specify when pushed by an enemy effect. Mordo can trigger this off of Gwen’s Life Saver or Jean’s push to turn their short displacement into a medium!
All in all I’m on the Mordo hype train! He’s the first dedicated support 3 since Lockjaw and brings some really exciting stuff to the table. And unlike Lockjaw, you can leave Mordo on the back point and have him contribute pretty reliably. I mentioned all the interesting places to splash him above but I’m betting on release everyone will be giving him a go, and we’ll see where he actually is worth it when the dust settles. If you’re playing frontline heavy aggro I highly recommend putting him through his paces.
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That will wrap us up for this First Impressions article here on acrossthebifrost.com, make sure to check out the Roster Doctor on Facebook, Youtube and Anchor.Fm!
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