Welcome to another article in the Quick Reference Guide series. In this series we're going to take a look at each affiliation in the game and give a brief overview of how they play on the table, where we cover three main topics, strengths, weaknesses and crisis selections. This series is aimed at newer players who might not be familiar with all of the affiliations in the game, and serve as a quick reference guide to glance over before a game. In this article, we're going to take a look at Web Warriors, and as I've got no experience playing them, I've enlisted the help of one of my local Web Warriors players to help me write the article - Ian Marley.
What are the Strengths of the Affiliation?
The main strength of the affiliation is their access to control, they have lots of affiliated characters with pushes and pulls to move around your opponents' characters to prevent them from scoring crisis or moving them into range for the abilities of your other characters. This ties in really well with another one of their core strengths, they have access to a number of affiliated characters who can move quickly around the board, either with a long move, or superpowers/attacks that grant additional movement. These often combine well together and create a really distinct playstyle for Web Warriors, often pulling characters off secures and then using their speed to jump on.
Another point to note here, is their access to strong affiliated tactics cards, such as All Webbed Up (where an allied character can spend 3 power to slow a target within range 3, any Web Warriors characters then get two extra attack dice that round when attacking a target with slow) and Spider Tracker (after an enemy character ends a move within 4 of a Web Warriors character they can spend 2 power to advance short).
The last thing to point out, is a number of their affiliated characters have access to cheap 2 cost superpowers, meaning with the use of Advanced R&D or another alternative to pass power around, they can often get superpowers online early in the game which can open up some strong turn 1 options.
What Are Their Weaknesses?
Their main weakness comes down to damage output - they have no consistent way to deal damage. I've used the word consistent here for a reason, as during the All Webbed Up Turn, Web Warriors can be punchy if the card is played correctly - however outside of this turn they often struggle with attrition and any crisis that forces the need for them to fight.
As a result of this, they subsequently suffer from power generation issues, because they're not often doing a lot of damage to targets, they struggle to self generate their own power, so often have to look at other sources within the game to do this for them.
At the time of writing, they also do not have an affiliated 2 threat, which can sometimes cause problems when squad building. This is not as much of an issue with Web Warriors as in other affiliations as they typically prefer to go wider with lower threat characters and have a low threat leader in Miles Morales.
This next point is not necessarily a weakness of the affiliation itself but I think it's still worth mentioning - due to their distinct and fairly complicated playstyle they require a lot more investment and practice from the player in order to play them well compared to other affiliations in the game and can often feel underwhelming for new players.
What Crisis Do They Like?
For secures, Web Warriors love a D shape map as this type of map often splits up the opponents characters and subsequently the volume of attacks, keeping your allied characters on the table for longer. This shape also lends itself to the control game that Web Warriors want to play, as the D shape is such a wide map shape, they can utilise their speed to get between secures. Portals Overrun With Spider People. Black Order Descends on Earth and Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 are all excellent choices here.
In terms of extracts, Web Warriors are really flexible here and can play almost anything. They prefer any extract crisis that has 4 or more objectives available as this helps them score faster and win the game quicker before they die to attrition. Crisis such as Spider Infected and Paranoia Pummels Populace are both good picks here.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and I hope it's given you enough understanding of the affiliation to give you some confidence in either playing with, or against them. I'd like to say a huge Thank You to Ian for his contribution to the article, it wouldn't have been possible to write this guide without his input. As ever, thank you for taking the time to read, keep on rolling those dice.
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