Welcome to the third article of the Brotherhood Character Deep Dive series. A series where we take a deep dive into the affiliated Brotherhood characters. This week we're taking a look at one of Brotherhood's two leaders - Mystique.
Mystique is a peerless shapeshifter, able to alter her physical appearance and voice to match another person’s as a perfect mimic. Little is known about her early life, though she has claimed to be over 100 years old. During her life, she has assassinated several significant figures involved in mutant affairs, imitated high-ranking generals and politicians, and clashed with the X-Men on numerous occasions.
Character Card
Lets take a look at Mystique's character card. We'll start by pointing out that Mystique's card is the same on both her healthy and injured sides. At 3 threat, she has a typical 5 health pool and 3 defence across the board and she's a long mover.
Taking a look at her leadership, and this comes in two parts, the first is that once per turn when an allied character interacts with an extract objective token they spend 1 power to interact and then they get the power refunded back. There's two points to note here, the first is that it's ONLY the first extract objective that a character interacts with, so they would get the refund the first time, but if the same character interacted with another extract during that same activation then they don't get the refund. The second point to note is that this is once per turn, so you can use this every time you activate a character.
The second part of her leadership allows you to spend a power to interact with a secure objective and place a token on the objective. Whilst the token is in play, your securing the objective, essentially allowing you to still the score the secure and move away. Some points to note on this one, firstly is that it only essentially works for stand on secures, since you have to roll to secure pay to flips, another couple of points to note is that the token is removed once an enemy character contests the objective and only one token can be in play at a time - so you cant put this down on multiple secures (you can however use the token again once it's been removed from play).
Moving onto her attacks, and Mystique's Pistol attack is fairly standard for a rapid fire character, 4 dice, range 3 physical and she gets to make another attack onto the same target if she rolled a hit (note this triggers only once per attack) - she gains a flat power for each attack including the rapid fire attack.
Her spender Espionage is a range 2 and 6 dice physical attack for 3 power. Note on this attack, that the target gains stun BEFORE the damage is dealt meaning the target only gains 1 power from the attack regardless of how much damage is dealt.
In terms of superpowers, Mystique's can spend 3 power and blow up a Size 3 or less terrain piece within range 4 of herself. If any character is within Range 1 of the terrain when it is destroyed, they take 2 instant damage. This superpower also costs Mystique one of her two actions.
Mystique also has Martial Artist - allowing her to count blanks in her defence rolls from physical and energy attacks if she's attacked from within range 2.
One of Mystique's more unique superpowers is Shapeshifter. During her activation enemy characters cannot use reactive superpowers or team tactics cards.
Mystique also has stealth, meaning she cant be attacked from outside of range 3.
Tactics Cards
The below tactics cards are included in Mystique's box:
Deception is easily the best card in this box. Mystique must play this card - however the card doesn't use the term "during this characters activation" - so it can be used at any point during one of your turns. This essentially allows Mystique to move any character within range 4 their speed towards her - however it cannot be used if there is another allied character within range 2 of the target. A note to make on this one, the target character can move through Mystique, the target doesn't need to stop when they reach Mystique if their move would take them further. Although this card can be used outside of her own activation, it is probably best used during her turn as it can be combined with Shapeshifter, so your opponent cant use superpowers or tactics cards to stop the move.
Advanced R&D is the second card included in her box. This allows an allied character to spend up to 5 power and give 1 power to a number of characters equal to the power spent. This is a great card universally in the game as it can enable superpowers or spenders early in the game but I find this exceptionally relevant to Mystique since she tends to generate a fair amount of power but doesn't really have much to spend it on so being able to distribute that back out to your team is really useful.
The Books of Truth is the final tactics cards included in the box. This is a Brotherhood of Mutants affiliated card and for 2 power at the end of a either an attack or defence roll you can re-roll all the dice including skull results. This isn't a particularly strong card especially in Brotherhood where they have some already strong affiliated tactics cards.
Where Does She Fit In The Affiliation?
There are basically two ways in which Mystique fits into Brotherhood. The first and main way she's utilised is an alternative leader to Magneto. At 3 threat she's a much cheaper option over his 6 threat and allows for a more wide Brotherhood squad. She also offers a vastly different playstyle to her counterpart, he prefers more down the middle attrition based playstyles and Mystique prefers a more wider scenario.
Alternatively, Mystique can be used alongside Magneto to either utilise her long move and stealth as an objective runner whilst Magneto and the rest of the team focus on attrition or she's used for an early Deception play to pull someone in for Magneto to murder. She also synergises particularly well with Magneto since she can use her abundance of power to blow up terrain to feed into his leadership. With the recent arrival of the Versatile Strategy tactics card, it is also now viable to switch over their leaderships during the game which creates further synergy between the two.
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