Surprise Changes Just Landed

It has been around six months since AMG last issued changes to the balance of MCP, cycling out many old TTCs whilst Restricting “Research Station Attacked!” and “Brothers In Arms.”

This change comes out of the blue and will very likely shake up the environment.

Fall of the Mad Titan

Thanos, The Mad Titan is the first big change. His builder has it’s Throw trigger changed from Wild, to Hit & Wild. This means an unmodified attack roll will hit the trigger around 50% of the time, down from approx 60%. Overall his damage output will be slightly lower each game.

What feels like the biggest change is moving the reduction in cost for Infinity Gems into his Leadership. He can still carry 2 gems, but he has to pay power to use them if he is not leading a Black Order squad. This has a huge impact on his turn-to-turn play, as he can no longer afford to use Space and Mind gems together on Turn 1, and it eats into power he would be using on his spender, Death’s Decree, or Cosmic Portal.

Speaking of Cosmic Portal, this now only targets other allies, removing one of his kidnap options, but still allowing him to mobilise allies effectively.

Death’s Agenda is now the same on both sides, and does not trigger from K.O.ing Grunts.

New to Thanos is the Peerless trait. This is a new addition to the rulebook , and you may only choose to include one Peerless character in your squad when forming it. This has no immediate impact, but as more characters become Peerless, it will likely prevent certain “toxic combinations” of powerful characters in the future.

This is a huge blow to Cabal who have made Thanos a core part of their most infamous rosters. Turn 1 kidnaps will be harder, cost more power, and do less damage if Thanos will need to walk towards the midline. This may force Cabal to completely reassess their competitive lists and change tactics.

Alternate Reality

Along with Thanos, the Reality Gem has seen an update too. It is now Reactive and costs 1 power. It no longer works on Interact rolls, and it has precise timing (prior to Resolve Critical step).

Although a little bit of a power down, it brings it in line with Malekith and Domino, and in combat it will still be very powerful if you remember to keep 1 power back.

Godslayer

Thor, Hero of Midgard is the next character to receive updates. People have hotly criticised his efficacy for months now, inside and outside of the Asgardian faction, and many have been waiting for this change.

Odenson’s Ire, his builder, has been reduced from 7 to 6 dice and also reduced to Range 2. The dice change means it will on average do half a point of damage less, not a huge difference. But this drops the chance of hitting a Wild trigger by 5%, and the chance of getting a Push trigger goes down by around 10% (still around 50%).

Additionally the cost of “Have At Thee!” has been increased from 3 to 4 power. One big side effect of this is that once displaced, Thor will need to pay more to throw himself back into the battle – a feat that sometimes felt all too easy at 3 power.

The range reduction is a really big change. Previously, Thor2 had a massive reach Turn 1. He could make a Medium advance, and then the Range 3 attack from a Medium Base would allow him to strike anyone within Range 2 of the midline.

He then had around a 60% chance to get a push trigger, which would let him move the target, likely forward into the range of your team.

Under leaderships that grant power or superpower cost reductions, Thor2 was very disruptive Turn 1. He could walk and “Have At Thee!” before attacking. Alternatively he could throw himself into position and attack twice. These strategies would often then give enough power to Throw a large piece of terrain, and would usually decimate the midline

Now his Turn 1 threat is greatly reduced, and he has to save all of his power to make his big activation Turn 2, so no Extracts or Pay to Flips.

Brothers No More

Banned. Welp.

This plus the Thor2 changes are going to REALLY reduce the effectiveness of Asgard as a fast and aggressive attrition team. Even Wong will not be able to plug the gap and get Thor2 online Turn 1.

Inhumans and Avengers will still have some play, but will require more resources to get Thor2 rolling.

I think this will become a massive opportunity for the teams that splashed Thor2 to switch over to The Mighty Thor instead. She may have a small base, and lacks a “pounce”, but she has big attacks, extra Throws, and has more consistent dice.

Do What Thou Will

“My Hellfire Club” has gone from an Unaffiliated card to an Affiliated Hellfire Club card. It is also no longer Restricted.

To make it playable, a new Hellfire Club faction has been created and populated with a plethora of interesting mutants.

The leadership itself is exactly the same, but this is a massive change to the faction as none of the listed characters are core to the most popular rosters.

This change is will mark a massive shift, and it is going to take some time to understand how to use these characters effectively with the leadership.

One massive benefit is that this opens the game design to easily insert characters from the Hellfire Club in the future. I cannot wait for the day we see Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, and possibly even a “Black Queen” version of Jean Grey.

Reserved

Reserve is a new trait for characters that do not go in rosters or deploy at the start of the game. The obvious recipients of this would be model similar to Ms Marvel (Embiggened), Emma Frost (Diamond), Captain Marvel, Cosmic Avenger (Binary). But we will see if they have any more plans for this trait in the future.