Brotherhood Character Deep Dive: Scarlet Witch

You may have noticed that we've undergone a little bit of a re-branding in the last couple of days, so to celebrate, your getting 2 for 1 on the Brotherhood Deep Dives this week! We looked at Quicksilver earlier in the week, and this time we're taking a look at his twin sister - Scarlet Witch!

The mutant twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are powerful beings who have fought on both sides of the mutant divide, as founding members of the Brotherhood of Mutants as well as members of the Avengers and X-Men. The Scarlet Witch’s ability to manipulate reality through chaos magic makes her a potent force for change, able to cause unlikely and random events to occur.

Character Card

As always, we'll start by looking at Wanda's character card. Wanda is another Brotherhood character who's card does not change between her healthy and injured sides. She's 5 threat, with a medium move with 6 health on both sides of her card with 3/4/4 defences - which is about average for a 5 threat character.

Her builder is the range 4, 6 dice mystic attack Hex Bolt - for every skull she rolls in the attack she can place one of Bleed, Hex, Incinerate or Poison. A big note to make here is that this is for EVERY skull rolled in the attack, so if you roll 4 skulls you can place every condition on the target assuming they are not immune to any of the conditions (we'll get on to why rolling skulls is especially good for her later).

Wanda's spender is Cruel Twist, which is a range 3, 8 dice mystic attack - this is costly though at 6 power. The defending character does not count crits towards the total successes in the defence roll and cannot add the additional dice from it either. There's an additional trigger here on a skull - which is essentially a pierce - change one of the defending characters successes to a blank. There's a reason why this attack is 6 power, because it's arguably one of the best attacks in the game.

Moving on to her superpowers, and the first of these is Telekinesis. For 3 power Wanda can choose a terrain feature of Size 4 or less within range 3 of her and throw it medium.

For 2 power Curse allows Wanda to place Judgement on attacking character if they've damaged her with an enemy effect. For readers who don't know what the condition Judgement is - the character does not gain power from enemy attacks.

And now, arguably the best superpower on her card, Chosen of Cython allows Wanda to count skulls as successes in attack, defence and dodge rolls. You read that right, COUNTS SKULLS AS SUCCESSES. So that 6 dice builder where you get to give out those conditions for every skull - they're also counting as successes. That 8 dice spender where the defending character cant count or explode crits in their defence roll - YOUR ALSO COUNTING SKULLS IN YOUR ATTACK ROLL (and one of them is a pierce). This superpower is what makes Scarlet Witch the powerhouse that she is.

The last superpower on her card is Hex Field. Any enemy character within range 3 of Wanda cant shake the Hex, Judgement or Poison special conditions.

She also has the benefit of Flight.

Tactics Cards

As with the Quicksilver article, there are other cards included in Wanda's box, but we'll only be discussing the one's that can be played with Wanda.

The Whims of Chaos allows Wanda to spend any number of power to play the card. For each power power spent, she can remove a damage from any non dazed allied character within 3 of herself and then place one of Hex, Root or Incinerate on enemy characters also with range 3 of herself. This is a fantastic card on any crisis where there are going to be a cluster of enemy characters such as C or E shape maps where you can get the most benefit from the card. Given Wanda's toolkit though, I'm not sure I'm convinced that this is the best use for her power.

I discussed Difficult to Please in the Quicksilver article, but I'll discuss it here again for the benefit of anybody that hasn't read it. If Scarlet Witch has dazed or KO'd an enemy character and Quicksilver has interacted with or picked an objective token both in the same round, then you can remove an activated token from Magneto. This card sounds great on paper, but there's a lot of situational things that need to happen all in the same round in order to pull this off that are just unlikely to happen. It's probably one that I would personally leave at home.

The final card in the box that can be played by Scarlet Witch is No More Mutants. When an enemy character within range 5 of Scarlet Witch spends 1 or more power to use a superpower Scarlet Witch can spend 3 to play this card. The enemy superpower has no effect, the character still spends that power and is considered to have used that superpower. This is such a fantastic card and has use in every game and in my opinion is easily the best card in Wanda's arsenal - not only does it have a bigger range area than Whims but it stops annoying superpowers like bodyguard and throws being used and stops them being used again if they're only once per turn.

Where Does She Fit In The Affiliation?

Whether your playing a Magneto or a Mystique focused Brotherhood, there's only one reason why you take Scarlet Witch, and that's to be the beat stick for your team. There's not many characters currently in the game that plays the attrition game better than Wanda. Her attacks are fantastic when you include skulls to the successes and with her size 4 throw, she can really output a lot of damage. If you add to that the various conditions she can throw out, she does solid work in aiding the rest of your team with the attrition game.

One of the downsides to playing Scarlet Witch is she can die quite easily if she's thrown into a group fight, she can count skulls on her defence rolls which does help with her survivability but at only 3 physical defence she is quite susceptible to physical attackers. Her builder is range 4 though, so she's quite comfortable as a mid to backline cannon, just moving up the board when she has enough power for a Cruel Twist.

In summary, Scarlet Witch should be an auto include in any Brotherhood roster, there isn't many characters currently in the game that have the damage ceiling that Wanda possesses, if you can keep her alive, she'll undoubtedly be a solid addition to any team.