The Mad King Rises

Finally another solid 4 threat Inhuman! Well, I say solid, but with 2/3/5 defences, Maximus needs to be wary of the environment’s tendency towards big physical attacks and collision damage.

Front and back of his card are identical, with 6 health, a medium move, and size 2 on a small base.

What he brings that is exceptional is a new leadership on a 4 threat body. This allows Inhumans to look at wider teams, bigger splash characters, and new strategies

Call Me Maximus the Magnificent!

Maximus’ Leadership doubles down on the Inhuman bonus with a sinister twist. You MUST reroll a dice in your first attack and defence each turn if able. If the dice rerolls as a Failure, then your opponent may place the character 1 and Max gains 1 power.

Having an extra reroll on the first attack and defence each turn is powerful. Statistically your average damage goes up by 0.5 and your average defence goes up by 0.33. Over the span of a match this will be very advantageous, and result in much more consistency.

Being displaced 1/8th of the time is not amazing, but giving Max an extra power is incredibly useful, as you will see when we look at his abilities. Lets just say he is a hungry boy, and can do a lot with the extra power.

The actual displacement is not always going to be impactful. Perhaps it moves you out of range, or off a point, but as it’s only on your first attack, you may still have an activation left to compensate. Or perhaps one of Inhumans many movement powers (Medusa, Lockjaw, KingBB, Max) will place you back later in the round.

This leadership benefits a wider team (more rerolls each round) and is offensive and defensive. I think this plays well in a control/scenario setup, where you are less reliant on kaiju and trying to hold on to objectives.

Abilities

Brain Freeze is a long range (4) builder which creates a 5 dice Mystic attack. This is great, as it’s the first Mystic attack for Inhumans, and it has good range. It has a Suppression trigger for each Wild rolled, removing 1 power from the target before the attack.

Neuro-Annihilation is a range 3 Mystic attack. 5 power rolls 9 dice, and the opponent may not add dice or modify dice. This turns off crits and rerolls, putting a limit on defensive rolls and creating massive damage potential. It is almost guaranteed to roll a Wild and Stagger the target if it doesn’t outright kill them.

Did You Forget Why You’re Here? short advances an activated character that is within R3. Moves opponents off points, moves you back on them, pulls targets into range, and pushes allies away from attackers. It’s also a fitting apology for when his Leadership displaces his own team. This is a powerful ability and will lead to Max waiting for a late round activation where he can cause as much disruption as possible.

It’s Madness, My Favourite Kind is probably the strongest ability on Max. If an enemy within R3 is attacking, during the Modify Dice step, Max can pay 2 power and reroll 2 attacking dice. This mirrors Disruption Field in a lot of ways, an ability which leads to Crimson Dynamo seeing a lot of play on E Maps. However, Dynamo has to pay for the power during the target step, so sometimes the dice go your way and the power is wasted. But Max only reacts after you see dice, so you know whether there are results to reroll or not.

This ability compensates strongly for his own low defences, and will likely become the cornerstone of a new Inhuman defensive bubble.

Max is of course an Inhuman, getting that vital reroll on all attack and defence rolls, and is Immune to Poison, which is nice quality of life.

Leader or Not?

Max has a strong suite of control abilities on a 4 threat model and he needs a lot of power to keep them running. This leads to an important choice: is he your leader or do you run under BB1/Medusa?

Under his own Leadership your team will overall perform a little better, and he will gain an extra 1-2 power each round. You likely want to go wide and focus on grabbing extracts and blocking secures whilst building up Max’s power, later falling back into his defensive screen and trying to score out.

Instead, under BB1 he can be passed 1 power a turn from a willing donor (Lockjaw and Crystal are our two best batteries) as well as what he gains from his own attacks. Meanwhile BB1 can Bodyguard Max and Max can neutralise the worst incoming attacks. If BB1 gets displaced, Max can pull him back in. This creates a 9 threat bunker that is dangerous to get close to, and very hard to break.

Under Medusa, Max has to daze targets to gain power back (plus heal and move). Given his ability to snipe and his powerful mid range spender, this is not impossible, but he is not a touch or aggressive character, creating limited opportunities. But in such a team he can help defend a powerful kaiju character with his Madness, and manipulate positioning with Forget. Not a great fit in my opinion.

Strategy

Max will likely spend the early turns securing a back point and building power; looking for opportunities to displace opponents and capture an objective.

Under BB1 or with Wong, you can give him a power turn 1 to let him double move onto a point, and move an activated opponent off it.
He can alternatively walk into a vacant point, and move an enemy extract holder off the line, or move an ally extract holder to safety.

Meanwhile the rest of your team is likely to group up on objectives and try to grab early points.

Once Max has sufficient power, he will want to move forward cautiously, anchoring his team with his defensive field. Ideally you are creating a conflict for your opponent, where he attacks your point scorers through Max’s Madness, or has to try and focus Max whilst your scorers get safe and win you the game.

Into a team with heavy displacement and many throws, Max is at risk, and if you are going to bring him consider protection like Brace, Indomitable, or a Bodyguard/Taunt character.

Overall

A fresh 4 threat who brings some new and exciting scenario play to Inhumans. Whether his Leadership is good enough to replace BB1 remains to be seen.

What I think is possible is that you can start a game under BB1, and once you are ready to go offensive you Versatile Strategy into Maximus the Mad for the finish.

It’s a hope anyway.