Formally welcome back to SGP on ATB.
Today we take a look at no less then 5 new characters coming up later this year including two brand new leaderships (and technically also affiliations but they are barely to be called that…).
Lets start with the newest one just spoiled today at time of writing (a couple of days ago now): Mephisto, Lord of Temptation.
Mephisto is quite unique and interesting. His stats aren’t particularly impressive for a 5 threat (he really doesn’t like things thrown at his face for with only 3 physical defense for example), but that’s not where is power lies at all.
A Range 3 6 dice Energy Gainer with wild Incinerate is just a decent base attack and gives you reliable power economy. His next attack is weird as Hell. Range 2 6 dice Mystic is OK, but you can only ever do one damage with it but only if you do you get a Devils Deal token which is the entire point for making this attack. Gladly you don’t often have to spend an action on this attack since you can use How can I be of Service for 2 power (which he can pretty easily have, since he gets additional power for every Devil’s Deal token he has, meaning he starts with 2 Power in the first round of the game), to place in Range 1 of an enemy character and perform the attack for free. Now wether or not you particularly like being in R1 of an enemy character at the end of your activation is a different question.
It’s definitely great to set up his super powerful (but costly) spender beam. And if you teleported onto a secure you can make a pretty powerful play with the best thing on Mephistos card: Meet My Associate. Built in (better) Sacrifice is already great but it teleporting the character to you (and at best onto the secure) is very very cool. It costs a Devils Deal token of course which is the harder price to pay than the power.
Affiliations:
Cabal:
He honesty doesn’t stand out under any of the four leaderships. Best, like for most Cabal members, is probably the generic upside of Red Skull 3 leadership.
Criminal Syndicate:
Kingpin:
He can be very interesting here as someone that can teleport himself and others onto points. He isn’t as survivable and brings no displacement of his own though.
Shadowland Daredevil:
Getting rerolls on his mega beam seems pretty nice. The Hand Ninjas are also a decent target to be Associates for Mephisto.
MODOK 2:
Ups the defence and offense a bit. Pure upside but MODOK and Mephisto both want to shunt of attacks into allies which you might run out of quicker than you’d like with both on the board.
Klaw:
Double selfish 5s is probably not the quickest path to success but you never know…
Legion of the Lost:
Mephisto brings another “choose anyone” affiliation and leadership (sudden increase in those, as well see later) and it’s… Not great? Your opponent gets to choose which of their characters gets the Incinerate and they gain a power for it. Handing out a couple of free power is nice but there’s certainly better power building leaderships out there (HFC for example but that is of course restricted).
Not including his own leadership Mephisto comes with no less than 3 character specific TTCs:
This card is basically stapled to the red dudes face in my opinion. It is pretty awesome when you have an attack that only dealt 1 damage to force your opponent to either increase Mephistos Devils Deal tokens or to give him another activation. A.
This is a much more nuanced card with less pure upside. You wouldn’t want to trade a key KO or daze for for example an additional Bob or Bullseye activation. You’d have to have a taller more scary squad to make this card worthwhile in my opinion and knowing when to play it will take a lot of thought and practice. B-.
The most metal artwork and card in the game. This is just great. It has a big downside but one you can play around. The P2P mentioned Corvus and Proxima as good characters to run with Mephisto and playing this card and I can absolutely see why. With Prio you can have them both benefit from the full rerolls and loose their Incinerate before the opponent can go once through Husband and Wife. A.
Overall Mephisto is a very interesting beast. It’s hard to evaluate his actual strength on the table but what is certainly already obvious is that you want to bring at least two of his 4 TTCs. I’m not the biggest fan of his leadership and would probably look at him mostly in Criminal Syndicate. But they have a wide range of good affiliated TTCs and also good other 5 threats. For splashing him in nothing stands really out on first look. Maybe Strucker Hydra?
C+ on initial read but very happy to be proven wrong.
N’kantu, the living Mummy
Well, he’s just super awesome isn’t he? He might struggle to build power a bit but his builder is pretty good for a 3 and he also doesn’t need a lot of power for his kit. He is built around Captured Soul tokens like Hela which just come naturally through playing the game. His damage output isn’t super high but he has decent control and good defenses (outside of Energy, I guess a Mummy doesn’t like being set on fire) with good immunities.
N’Kantu won’t win you games by himself but he’s a super decent 3 you can just throw on the board and feel good about it.
Affiliations:
Midnight Sons:
The only confirmed (and most likely only overall) affiliation for him. He likes the bump but might struggle to pay for it. Same for Siege of Darkness pretty much, where he might also be seldom in range to participate. It’s gonna be really interesting for him what Elsa’s leadership ends up being.
N’Kantu can have an Area spender with his card (max R3) that he can increase up to 10 dice, but costs him all this captured soul tokens (and he can’t get new ones from the attacks as you remove them after all attacks are resolved). It can be a nice card for him after he flips but is pretty far from an auto take when you have him. C.
Overall the living Mummy is just a pretty cool character that can work well in a lot of places. Red Skull 2 (Hydra) leadership stands out to me because with it you can make him a decent back point sitter and with the additional power of the leadership you can at least Sever Soul once each turn.
B+.
Frankenstein’s Monster
Adam is also great. He has limited power building options with only a (very good) gainer and two spenders but he’s fast (which Charge helps a lot with), strong and resilient. His one power Spender that hands out Stagger on Damage is dicey but great if you get it off. Giving him a lot of control. His damage output is also increased by his size 4 terrain throw.
Affiliations:
Midnight Sons:
The only confirmed (and most likely only overall) affiliation for him. He likes the bump but might struggle to pay for it early on. He should always be in the thick of it so we will probably build some power through taking damage.
Monster for Hire. For Frank’s limited power economy it’s certainly great that the targeted character has to pay for the card instead of himself. The effect of Adam living through the attack might not be as good as the throw of Heroes for Hire but it can be quite dangerous either way. Ideally you haven’t had Frank activated before the card was played and can activate him next to punish the enemy character you pushed towards you. A.
Personally I like Frankenstein’s Monster a lot. With his excellent card he can be a decent include in almost any team you’d like to play him in. B+.
Werewolf by Night
Jack is awesome. There’s two things on his card I don’t really like which is the randomness of the Leap trigger and the 2 Mystic defense. The rest of his card is pure money. Unearthly Howl and Midnight Massacre are both really great superpowers and Pounce is absolutely fantastic for him being size 3 and on a medium base. 14 health is average for a 5 threat but Healing factor 2 keeps him standing a lot longer than that would suggest.
Affiliations:
Midnight Sons
Like with the other two it’s probably his only natural home, though he should be SHIELD for fluff reasons, but that hasn’t been the best indicator of where models land recently (no I’m still not over Jane Foster not being an Avenger). Using the Bump to get in range for his builder, make a pounce hit an enemy and position yourself to be in Range for Midnight Massacre at the end of your activation are all good uses. His auto bleed also has great synergy with Blade. He seems to be a new core member of the faction, though he competes with Ghost Rider (and Strange) for the 5 threat slot.
This card is interesting but a bit weird. The effects are both decent but you’d need a team that hands out (different) conditions like candy to make it really worthwhile. MS have a lot of Bleed, a bit of Hex and maybe Incinerate at their disposal. Not enough to have the card make my roster personally. C.
Overall Jack Russel is absolutely awesome and can fit in most teams. I’ll definitely be putting him on the table a lot once he’s finally in my hands and painted. A.
Dracula
First up: If you have Unlimited and haven’t read Blood Hunt yet (still ongoing event) stop what you’re doing and read it now. It’s great and Dracula in particular is extremely awesome in this event. His art is also fantastic. But back to MCP. Extremely awesome could also be used to describe his stat card. The only thing lacking from his kit is action economy. He can he fast with the awesome Shapeshifting superpower but he has to spend a movement action to do it which is a bit of a bummer. Dracula’s attacks are extremely scary, with his Builder putting even Malekith to shame. It’s also gonna be pretty hard to actually put Vlad into the ground with the potential amount of healing he has.
Affiliaitons:
Cabal
Red Skull:
Basically removing the power cost Blood Feast to a net 0 (but you have to have the power first) is quite decent especially if you can use it with Eternal Hunger.
Red Skull, Master of the World:
Making Drac’s already quite scary attacks even better seems like a good thing to do.
Malekith:
Going super tall and killy could be very interesting and the leadership can give Vlad some much needed extra movement.
Sin:
Her leadership is hard to quantify but Drac having a bow certainly helps with her more control focussed play style.
Dracula fights for a spot in Cabal against maybe of the great 5 threats they have, like Red Skull 2, Ultron 2 and Ulik but he’s certainly not a bad option there.
Thralls of Dracula
And here we have the other “everyone is in” affiliation. Doubling the amount we have of those. Sadly Dracula’s here appears to be the weakest one. The P2P made it sound as if you could heal the active character with it but Rules as Written the heal is only ever for Dracula himself. We’ll have to wait until his release to find out if there was a spelling error on the shown off card or if the P2P simply got it wrong. I promised on Reserve Members (our German/Austrian Podcast) that I would play the leadership no matter what it is and I’m going to keep the promise. I probably won’t do it as often as I hoped though.
While it is quite cool and thematic and even offers very cool hobby opportunities to turn your favourite characters into Vampires, the overall strength of the affiliation doesn’t seem super high. Especially considering how many popular models are immune to Bleed completely nullifying the leadership.
Despite his leadership not being great Dracula himself is absolutely an A. I’ll put him on the table with Midnight Sons (he’s worked with Blade quite often in the comics) and Green Goblin Spider-Foes first but I think he is a decent 5 threat almost everywhere. Any affiliation that has ways to move him is definitely on the front row there.
I think that leaves only Abomination as a character coming out this year that we haven’t seen the card of yet, along with the backside of the awesome Wrecking Crew that he shares his box with.
Cheers from Germany 🍻
