Welcome to another edition of the Brotherhood Character Deep Dive. After I recently covered Sabretooth, Apex Predator in my last article, we're going to be taking a look at another recent edition to the Brotherhood of Mutants in the form of Pyro.
St. John Allerdyce, more commonly known as Pyro, can shape fire, increasing or diminishing its heat, intensity, and size, making him a menacing addition to any team.
Character Card
Let's start by looking at Pyro's character card. He is a 3 threat, with a medium move and 5 health on both sides of his card, which is average for characters of the same threat value. With 3/4/3 defences however, he is above average, and that 4 energy defence is really useful in the context of Brotherhood as at the time of writing, he's one of only three characters in affiliation with a higher energy defence than 3 - and he's the cheapest in terms of threat level (the other two being Scarlet Witch and Apex Predator).
Moving onto his attacks, and Fire Blast is the first of these, which is a Range 4, 5 dice energy attack with a wild incinerate. A really nice attack if you just want to sit him on a back point handing out incinerate. The main selling point to this attack however, is the automatic 1 power when the attack is resolved rather than earning power on damage dealt, this is going to prove useful for something we're going to talk about a bit further down in the article.
The next attack in Pyro's arsenal in flame jet, which is a Beam 3, 4 dice energy attack with a wild incinerate, and Pyro gains a power after each attack. Fairly standard this one, but a really good way to try and get incinerate onto multiple targets and beams are always a nice option to have on any character.
The final attack on Pyro's card is his spender Inferno which costs 3 power, a 7 dice energy attack is nice, but the range 2 is a bit of kicker as it's not typically where Pyro wants to be as he can be fairly squishy. The auto incinerate and the additional damage to anyone within range 2 of the target is a nice little bonus but I think he probably has better ways to spend his power.
And now for where Pyro really shines, his superpowers.
Firewall. The superpower that every Thanos and Malekith hates. For 2 power, root and slow a target within range 3. This is where Pyro really shines and has become a staple for dealing with those big threat characters - nobody likes having to pay an extra power for their superpowers and can really limit the action economy of the target, add that to the fact your movement is now limited because your slowed and this feels really bad. The fact this also only costs 2 power is a huge bonus, and you can pretty much guarantee it's always going to be online each round if Pyro makes an attack with one of his gainers as they'll always generate you a power. To put this all into context, 5 threat Cassandra Nova also has this same superpower but it costs 3 power, so Pyro's is cheaper and he costs 2 threat less. Really, REALLY nice.
For 3 power, Stoke the Flames allows Pyro to add 2 dice to his next attack. As mentioned earlier it's because of this Superpower that I don't think paying the 3 power for Inferno is useful outside of maybe wanting the auto incinerate. This essentially turns Pyro's Fire Blast into a 7 dice attack from Range 4 or his Flame Jet into a 6 dice energy beam. A note to make here, you get the extra two dice on each attack in the beam, so Stoke the Flames can be very useful as both an attrition option, and to increase your chances of the wild incinerate on the attack.
Finally, this leaves Fire Manipulation which is an innate superpower with no cost. When Pyro targets an enemy with an attack, if they end up with the Incinerate special condition, he can choose another enemy character within Range 2 of the target and pass the incinerate on. This is really good when combined with his beam, as he can pass this on in between each attack. So if he Incinerates the first target in the beam, he can then put the incinerate on the second character before he makes the attack provided they are within range 2 of the first target.
Lot's going on with Pyro's card, but fortunately this doesn't change between his healthy and injured sides, so everything talked about above applies to both sides of his card.
Tactics Cards
In this section, we're going to look at Pyro's character specific tactics cards.
Unfortunately, there is only 1 card for Pyro and it's the very aptly named Pyrotechnics. And if the sensational card art alone isn't enough for you to include this in your roster, the text certainly will. Pyro may spend any number of power, for each power spent choose an enemy character that is incinerated and within Range 3, each character drops 1 objective token and is pushed short away from Pyro.
OK, so a big point to note here, the effects of this card are completely independent of each other, so if you just want the push, you don't have to make a character drop a token before this happens, so this can be played on characters not holding an objective token.
I've seen a lot of different opinions from the community regarding this card. I've seen some people really high on this card, and others that are not so high. I'm definitely in the camp that this is a great card. The stipulations are not hard to pull off and the effects are massive. Pyro has plenty of ways to hand out and move incinerate around and he's often moving in and out of range 3 for Firewall anyway so your not really going out of your way to try and set up for this card. Even if you only manage to make your opponent drop 1 objective which you subsequently then pick and then push them from a secure, that's still a good VP swing in your favour, it doesn't always need to be about getting the absolute maximum effect from the card.
Strength's and Weaknesses
Strengths
Lots of ways to hand out Incinerate
Firewall is an excellent superpower that can really hinder your opponents activations
Three attack options which gives flexibility
Self sufficient in power generation between Fire Blast and Flame Jet
Has an excellent tactics card in Pyrotechnics
Above average energy defence for a 3 threat character
Weaknesses
A low health pool and no defensive tech means Pyro will die relatively easily if focused
Where Does He Fit in Affiliation?
Pyro has something to offer both Brotherhood leaders in Mystique and Magneto. His ability to easily hand out incinerates really aids Magneto's attrition game, and Firewall and Pyrotechnics really helps Mystique with her control and objective based game plan. With a character card stacked full of tools to be able to deal with some of the most oppressive characters in the game, Pyro has not just become a premium in the Brotherhood affiliation, but a premium 3 threat across the board.
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