Welcome to another article in the Brotherhood Character Deep Dive series. It's been a while since I wrote an article in the series, so we're going to get back to it by looking at the Master of Magnetism - Magneto.
Max Eisenhardt, the man who would become Magneto, faced unimaginable discrimination and evil during the Third Reich’s rise to power in World War II. He survived, thanks in part to the manifestation of his mutant power to control magnetic fields. Following the war, he resolved that such a fate would never befall mutant kind. An uncompromising freedom fighter for his fellow mutants, his extreme beliefs for mutant superiority drove a wedge between Magneto and his close friend, Professor Xavier. Magneto’s vision for mutant kind caused him to form the Brotherhood of Mutants, who fight for mutant supremacy.
Character Card
Let's start by taking a look at his character card - we'll look at his healthy side first and then look briefly at the changes on his injured side. Magneto is a whopping 6 threat character, he has 6 health on his healthy side a slow move (though he is on a medium base) and has 3/3/6 defence. Other than his mystic defence, these on paper don't look great at first glance, but he does have a way to manipulate this which we'll cover later.
Reverse Polarity is Magneto's builder. Which is a 6 dice, range 3 physical attack, if the target is within range 2 of Magneto he may re-roll any number of attack dice, if it is not, after the attack is resolved, the target is pushed short (note, there is no size restriction on the push). This frankly, makes Magneto a killing machine. He ideally wants to be starting his activation within range 2 of a target so he can get two attacks off. Rolling 12 dice with the ability to re-roll any (note this is not all - so you only need to re-roll failures not all of your attack dice) is arguably one of the best builders in the game. He's also getting power for damage dealt so he's never short on power to do the other things he wants to do. The push is a nice addition to the attack and gives you some additional flexibility - but your taking Magneto to be a murder machine so it's not something typically you'd be looking to do.
Shrapnel Blast is Magneto's spender, this is a 6 dice, area 2 attack and costs 5 power to use. When measuring the range and line of sight for this attack, you may choose to measure it from a construct within range 3 of Magneto. If you choose to do this, the construct is destroyed at the end of the attack. After each attack is resolved the target characters gain the Stun special condition. I'll be honest, I've never really been sure about this attack, Magneto can do a lot of other things with 5 power and I think I'd only be using this if there was an opportunity to target 2 or more characters. I know others reading this will probably disagree, but I don't really use his spender and prefer to use the power elsewhere.
Moving on to his leadership - From The Ruins. When a terrain feature is destroyed, after the effect is resolved, choose a number of allied characters equal to or less than the terrain features size. Each chosen character gains 1 power. A character can only gain 1 power per turn from the ability. Not only is this thematic from Magneto's point of view, it's also an extremely good leadership. The ability for your team to gain extra power from something Magneto LOVES doing is welcomed and can really enable a lot of spenders or superpowers early it also encourages you to build more characters with throws into your roster to help with the leadership. There is a downside to this leadership for me though. The strength of this leadership is largely based around the board setup your playing on, which in a competitive environment is largely out of your own control. Magneto's constructs are meant to help with this, as technically there's ALWAYS something to throw, but there's a difference in throwing size 2 constructs and size 3 or 4 buildings in a turn.
Let's move on to superpowers then, and the first is Fatal Attraction which links directly to the leadership. Magneto may spend 1 to 4 power. Choose an interactive terrain with 3 of Magneto and with a size equal to or less than the power spent and throw it L. Note there is no stipulation here about only being used once per turn - making Magneto one of the only characters in the game that can throw more than once per turn. There is a stipulation on this superpower though that he must pay 1 additional power for each time this superpower has already been used - so it gets more expensive the more times he uses it.
Force Projection is Magneto's second superpower, when this character is targeted by an attack or would make a dodge roll, he may spend 2 power and he can use mystic defence to defend or dodge. There's also the added stipulation that he cannot be pushed or thrown as a result of the special rules of the attack or collision. This is such a fantastic superpower and now makes that 3/3/6 defence look a lot better. It obviously gives you a decision to make though, if your using this every time Magneto is attacked it's going to deplete his power very quickly. The added stipulation that he cant be pushed or thrown as part of the attack is also very handy, as it can stop your opponent being able to displace Magneto from an attack out of range 2 for the re-rolls on his builder.
Master of Magnetism is Magneto's final superpower. During the power phase, if there are fewer than two metal constructs in play, place one within range 3 of Magneto. This is a size 2 terrain feature and Magneto gains an additional power in the power phase for each construct in play. There's also the stipulation that a character cannot overlap a construct. As mentioned earlier, the constructs really help on terrain scarce boards, whether that be early in the game or once a lot of the terrain has already been thrown later in the game - they basically ensure Magneto's leadership is always relevant. The additional power in the power phase is also extremely useful and gives Magneto power for a potential early Asteroid M.
Magneto also has the benefit of Flight.
The only change between his healthy and injured sides is his health pool. He goes from 6 health on his healthy side to 8 health on his injured side. The 8 health - his Force Projection and some help from a tactics card we're about to discuss - means your opponent really needs to put a lot of effort into taking Magneto down.
Tactics Cards
That leads us nicely into the tactics cards section. We'll only be discussing the cards included in his box that are relevant to Magneto.
Magnetic Refraction is Magneto's personal tactics cards. Magneto may 2 power to give himself and any other allied characters within 3 of himself cover. If your squad is Brotherhood of Mutants affiliated, you can return this card to your available Team Tactics cards during the clean-up phase and may be played again. This card is a must take with Magento. 2 power isn't a huge spend since he's gaining 2-3 power per power phase anyway. This card combined with his large health pool and the ability to put attacks on to his 6 mystic defence can make Magneto incredibly tanky and the cover aura helps with survivability of the rest of your team. The fact this card also comes back every turn just makes this even stronger.
The next card I talked about in the Toad article, but for the benefit of the people who might not have read that article. I'll go over it again here.
Asteroid M is probably Brotherhood's signature card, and is arguably their best - it is a Brotherhood affiliated card so it can only be taken if your squad is affiliated to Brotherhood. Two Brotherhood of Mutants Characters may both spend 2 power to play this card. Place one of the two characters not holding an objective token within 1 of the other character. A note to make about this card, is that it specifically states "Brotherhood of Mutants character" - this means that they must be affiliated with Brotherhood so your splash characters cannot use this card - the characters playing this card must be listed as Brotherhood affiliated in the affiliation list.
Asteroid M is straight up a fantastic card, it can not only be used for aggressive plays to move Magneto up the board early or across the board to reposition but it can also be used as a defensive card to pull an injured character away from a danger zone.
Heave-Ho is the next tactics card in this box, which I actually forgot to mention in the Toad article, since he can also play this card. If two allied characters are within range 2 of the same interactive terrain feature of size 2 or less they both may spend 1 power to play this card. Choose on the characters to throw the terrain feature M.
I'm actually torn on whether I like the card, the out of activation throw is nice, but the fact both characters have to be within 2 of the same terrain feature and it's only size 2 means I think I probably leave this at home. I don't think it's strong enough to be making your 5 or even your 10. If this was a size 3 terrain feature instead of a 2, I'd seriously consider bringing it.
The final card is Magnetic Crush, which Magneto may spend 5 to play which allows Magneto to use the attack ONCE this activation. When creating the dice pool for this attack, you may destroy any number of interactive terrain features of Size 3 or less with 2 of the target character. If you do add dice to the attack roll equal to all the destroyed terrain features sizes combined. Before damage is dealt, other enemy characters within 2 of the target character suffer 1 damage.
This is another card I'm really torn on, 5 power is a fairly substantial power spend and this can be a very corner case card given the target needs to be within 2 of terrain features (again board dependant). There is potential to get a hefty attack off though and you would be able to distribute power from the destroyed terrain from the leadership, although depending on the amount of terrain you destroy you might not get as much to distribute as throwing it across multiple turns. I think this is another one I personally leave at home given there's a wealth of good Brotherhood tactics cards.
Where Does He Fit In Affiliation?
Well, he's the leader you take if you want to smash face and murder people. Magneto kills things and he kills things well, so if your looking to play an attrition game then you want to be using him as your leader. His leadership also enables lots of superpowers to come online early providing your throwing a lot of terrain around, so if your looking to do some early jank with certain characters he can enable that. The downside is, he's not really very flexible, due to his high threat level and low mobility, Magneto Brotherhood teams typically only play attrition. If your looking to play a more control or extract focused game on a wide crisis, then Mystique is typically a better choice.
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