How to start the affiliation
Currently your only leader option is Star-Lord who comes in a single box so he’s going to be your first purchase. Next up you’ll want to grab Rocket and Groot. There’s a couple more packs with two Guardians in them in Gamora and Nebula as well as Ronan and Drax. All of them are absolutely worth to get at some point but I wouldn’t call them absolutely essential. You also have Cosmic Ghost Rider who comes with a fantastic affiliated TTC (not tied to him). And then you have Beta Ray Bill (affiliated) and Ulik, Agent Venom (affiliated) and Spider-Woman as well as Angela (affiliated) and Enchantress. Of these I’d say Angela is the one you’d put on last on your priority list but your milage may vary there. As much as I dislike him as a character and in MCP I have to bring up Thanos here. If you want to go down the most competitively proven road with Guardians you’ll have to grab him too (and at least here he doesn’t feel as out of place as he does in some other places).
What leaderships are available and what is the typical game plan
Winging it is a very good leadership that takes a little bit of practice to know who to give the tokens to. But double rerolls is very good of course. It rewards you for going tall and makes this a very good affiliation to make any big boy you like work.
The ability to go pretty wide with the low cost affiliated characters that are available may trick you into thinking Guardians could be decent scenario team but what the characters and especially the leadership really further is a straight up murder plan. Full on type 4, be the beat down in pretty much every match up. But if you use your splash slots for that going more type 3 is also feasible.
Who could be added to the affiliation in the future especially as a leader
Nova 😍 he absolutely should be the factions new second leader but they could of course decide to stick the leadership on Yondu who’ll be in the box with Nova. My most hotly anticipated character pack for next year so far (though Elsa and Man-Thing aren’t far behind).
Outside of these two already confirmed characters there’s Moondragon, Phyla-Vel and of course Adam Warlock, who could be another leader. And I’m sure they’ll find someone else whose been on the team for exactly 5 panels like a certain flame headed person…
Rating every affiliated TTC and character
Team Tactics (5)
Foreign Assignment
A. If you bring Agent Venom in your Guardians (which you should) you also bring this card. Every single effect possible on here is at least decent to extremely good like using Star-Lords spender without an action and for a lower power cost with Agent Venom.
Galaxy‘s Greatest
A. There’s absolutely 0 reason to ever play a Guardians games without this card. If they daze some (or even one) of your affiliated models they get an additional die on every attack and defense roll? Yes please. (If they paid the 2 power for the card of course)
Lovable Misfits
B+. Not especially loved in the competitive world for it’s randomness but 7/8 die faces here have a positive effect and with teams like Asgard being so prevalent in the meta handing out AoE Stun for the low cost of Stunning your let’s say Nebula that’s still upside overall. Always fun but a bit dreadful to roll the dice with this card.
The next to cards aren’t affiliated but team up cards where both characters are making them much more likely to show up here than in other places.
Deadly Duo
A. It’s three additional, actionless attacks for Rocket. If you bring him and Groot (which you don’t always have to do!), you’re bringing the card.
Daughters of Thanos
An additional out of action attack with one of these two can make the difference between dazing/ KOing a model or not. Worth it if you plan to play both of them together a lot. A bit hard to set up as both are running around the table a lot.
Characters (11)
Agent Venom (4)
A-. Agent Venom is one of the most fun to play characters in the game for me. He can just do everything that is fun: place himself, throw terrain or characters, remove conditions that would otherwise ruin your fun (like Stagger, Stun, Root or Poison) and has good attacks on top of it. What balances him out to make him not break the game: he dies quite easily.
Angela (5)
B-. Angela brings an affiliated safe midline grab. But you don’t really want to play a lot of scenario here anyway. She is good at hunting lower threat models and her size 4 terrain throw can help your smaller damage dealers stay alive by throwing the terrain into your enemy instead of them.
Beta Ray Bill (4)
A-. Bill will be your scenario guy if you need to take that route. He will not let you down there but never expect him to be a reliable source of damage in his own right.
Cosmic Ghost Rider (6)
B-. He got tuned down a lot and is now: fine. For pure damage output there is a certain Asgardian you could splash in for the same investment of threat.
Drax the Destroyer (3)
B. Drax is a decent enough 3 threat overall. You probably wouldn’t splash him anything but you’re not begrudgingly playing him here.
Gamora (4)
B. Gamora is fast, has stealth and a high damage ceiling. And she will fall over dead quicker than the eyes can see if she faces any kind of focus fire.
Groot (3)
B+. Groot is great but slow. His spender is very much in the competition for best in the game overall and you should sometimes consider taking him without Rocket.
Nebula (2)
B+. Her biggest downside is not being able to contribute to scoring but she makes up for it with pure killing power you wouldn’t expect from a 2 threat. Speaking of:
Rocket Raccoon (2)
A. 5 dice range 5 energy attack. On a 2 threat that always benefits from cover and doesn’t suffer damage from collisions. I play Rocket (without Groot) in my competitive Asgard roster and haven’t been let down by him once. I wouldn’t consider a Guardians list without him.
Ronan the Accuser (4)
B+. Ronan is very match up dependent. If your opponent brought size 4 models and any kind of Kaijus (which often correlates of course) he’ll have a field day. He sadly lacks a bit of action compression but otherwise he has tremendous upside.
Star-Lord (3)
B+. Peter himself is good under his own leadership which can turn him into a reliable damage dealer but only OK without it. There’s a reason you never see him splashed anywhere (maybe he should be considered more though? 🤔)
Example Roster
Once again Thanos should probably be here in the most competitive form of this list but he’s broken and a dumb character overall so I went for Space Maw, who is much cooler. Hulk and of course Thor 2 also work very well in the roster too (but take out Fisk of you want to play Thor 2. Probably overall the first crisis to replace with something else).
Characters (10)
Agent Venom (4)
Beta Ray Bill (4)
Drax the Destroyer (3)
Gamora (4)
Groot (3)
Nebula (2)
Rocket Raccoon (2)
Ronan the Accuser (4)
Star-Lord (3)
Ebony Maw (Space) (6)
Team Tactics (10)
Foreign Assignment
Galaxy‘s Greatest
Lovable Misfits
Deadly Duo
Daughters of Thanos
Shhh…
We Are Groot
Brace for Impact (R)
Grievous Wounds
Recalibration Matrix
Secure Crisis
Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest (E, 15)
Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? (E, 19)
Mayor Fisk Vows To Find Missing Witnesses (H, 16)
Extract Crisis
Research Station Attacked! (E, 15) (R)
Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)
Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities (D, 18)
That’s it for today. Next up: Hellfire Club
Cheers from Germany 🍻
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