I've tried a couple of times now to play Inhumans in MCP - they're another affiliation outside of Brotherhood where I feel a real connection to their characters, however I feel like they could do with some new releases and improvements before they're considered to be a solid affiliation. I know a few people who have had success competitively with them - and this post is in no way saying Inhumans are not viable - there's just a number of things I'd like to see in order to improve them and bring them in line with the rest of the affiliations in MCP. This article gives an overview of what I think Inhumans do well, where a lot of their weaknesses lie and how I think they could be made to be better.
The Strengths
So lets start with the positive stuff - what are their strengths?
The Leadership
The Inhumans leadership is probably the main reason anyone plays this affiliation - and who could blame them? It's arguably one of the best leaderships in the game. This basically lets you pass 1 power to an allied character as long as they're within range 3 PER TURN - so that's not per game round - it's every time you would activate an allied character - even if you choose to pass. This allows you to funnel power to certain characters to set up various different plays - if set up correctly you can daisy chain power to a single character which in turn can set up a lot of turn 1 jank.
Extract Play
Due to the nature of the Inhuman leadership and the ability to pass around power, this in turn sets up a lot of extract plays that other affiliations just are not capable of. The recent addition of Ms Marvel and her insane movement helps a lot with this gameplan.
Access to Some Great Affiliated Characters
Inhumans have access to some great affiliated characters, my favourite of these being Ms Marvel. She's a fairly solid character in her normal form - range four with a four dice builder and a push towards on a wild is nothing to screw your face up at - add to this a size 2 terrain and character throw and she has some decent control elements.
Where she really shines though is in her embiggened form. At first her five dice attack looks pretty mediocre, until you factor in her Morphogenics and Inhuman re-rolls. Essentially she's getting 3 re-rolls on a 5 dice attack - meaning she's VERY consistent in throwing out 3/4/5 damage per attack. Add in to the fact she gains power per damage dealt and she's extremely efficient at generating power - more to pass out to the rest of your team through that great leadership.
She gets better though - her embiggened form comes on a large base and her polymorph ability allows her to interact with objectives at range two. Add in to that her medium move and her range 1 place when she transforms back to her normal form and she has some seriously great movement.
For me, Ms Marvel is the staple of this team.
Even though she got hit with a nerf recently Medusa is still a solid character - her Braid Bash can still trigger a Flurry (albeit not as consistently as before) and still has the wild push - add to that her size three character throw and she's still a fairly solid control piece. Her Split Ends spender is also useful in those clustered up crisis such as Gamma or Demons Downtown and her Royal Decree assists both herself and other allied characters with additional movement.
The Weaknesses
Black Bolt
So I'll start with the biggest issue that Inhumans have, and unfortunately it's Black Bolt.
I love Black Bolt as a character, I think he's such a great character in the comics so it's hugely disappointing for me that he simply doesn't pull his weight in MCP.
The biggest issue with Blackagar is he just doesn't feel like a 5 threat character - he's just hugely reliant on dice and if they don't go his way he has nothing else in his locker to make up for it. His builder is hugely underwhelming and you have to make a decision early whether you want to use his spender or use his superpowers to boost his builder/defense - as he's unlikely to be generating enough power to be doing everything you want to do with him. He's even more underwhelming if he cant attack twice and he has to move before making an attack. You can obviously use the leadership to pass him power - but in my opinion there's better characters to be passing power on instead of just trying to make Black Bolts dice less underwhelming. 5 HP on his healthy side is also under-par for a 5 threat character.
Black Bolt does get better on his injured side - gaining access to the famous Whisper beam attack. Now let me say before I go any further this attack is incredible - a range four - nine dice beam with a stagger on a wild - it's easily the best thing on his card. The downside though - is it's 6 power - meaning a lot of the time your just saving power by not spending it on anything else and he only gets access to this on his injured side. Bolt also goes up to 9 HP on his injured side which makes him extremely tough to take down - though I'd have much preferred a more even split across both sides of his card - since characters are typically more valuable for objective play on their healthy sides.
Overall he's extremely underwhelming on his healthy side but gets better on his injured side. So this balances itself out right? Well, no not really. If my opponent has Black Bolt and I know he gets much better on his injured side, I can simply stop that from happening and just not attack him - and there's no way my opponent can force him to be injured either outside of a few crisis instances where he might take damage. This is hugely problematic for an auto take 5 threat leader.
He's easily the biggest Inhumans weakness for me, he's 5 threat - at the time of writing he's the only Inhumans leader so your forced into taking him - and he probably pulls the same sort of a weight in a game as a 3 or 4 threat.
High Threat Leader and No In Affiliation Two Threat
Inhumans have a very similar problem to that of Asgard - they have a 5 threat leader that isn't great and have no affiliated two threat character which makes list and squad building a bit complicated. Add to that one of their best affiliated characters in Medusa is 4 threat - that's a 9 threat core in BB and Medusa before we've even looked to add any additional characters into the squad.
The Leadership Can Be Complicated
I've already mentioned how great the leadership is - and it really is. But there's a downside to it too - it can often be complicated. The leadership requires characters to be within range 3 of each other to be able to move the power around. A lot of this involves careful placement of your characters to allow for the movement of that power. It often takes extra thought and pre-planning about who and where you want to move power to - it's an extra element of thinking that other affiliations don't have.
Mediocre Affiliated Characters
This might be the most controversial part of the article as I know some readers will love some of the characters I'm about to list. Another downside to Inhumans is a lot of their affiliated characters are extremely mediocre. Before I make this next point, I'd just like to point out that there's nothing wrong with "mediocre" characters. The problem with Inhumans is they don't have a lot of strengths currently so the mediocre characters don't particularly improve the affiliation as a whole.
Other than the characters mentioned previously that leaves us with Beast, Quicksilver, Ronan, Lockjaw and Crystal.
Lets start with Crystal, out of all of the characters mentioned in this article, she's probably the one that doesn't see much table time.
Crystals large move is welcomed but other than her movement and her Elemental Onslaught- giving her an extra attack - she doesn't really offer a lot to the rest of the team. I can see what the game designers were trying to achieve here - all of her attacks are able to give out conditions and her Elemental Empowerment stops anyone removing them if they're within 3 of her - so the idea behind it on paper seems strong. The problem though is that all of her conditions are based on rolling wilds and she's only rolling 4 dice on each of her attacks meaning she's not very consistent in actually dishing out those conditions.
Beast does have some synergy with the rest of the team - he can generate a lot of additional power through Disconcerting Yet Provocative - gaining a power for each roll where a skull is rolled - which can then be passed around your team through the leadership. His size two enemy and character throw helps with control and the additional movement from his two attacks helps with objective play. The kicker for me though is the Ambush on his builder - he must move within 1 of the target if he rolls a wild - this is one of the main reasons why I don't use him. Beast is fine, but he's not really a staple in any of his affiliations.
I have a strange relationship with Lockjaw - on one hand I think he's a must take and on the other I feel like he's only valuable in the first couple of rounds a game. The main thing Lockjaw brings to Inhumans is the power battery - he's generating an additional 3 power each turn as long as he's within 2 of an allied character. This helps massively with the leadership and stops you from having to look to generate power before being able to move it around - extremely handy for turn 1 plays. His Teleport helps with additional movement (great for when Black Bolt gets displaced or needs to move before he's attacked) and Inter Dimensional Bloodhound helps with attrition by letting allied characters roll an additional attack dice on the target (this can help to trigger Medusa's Flurry).
The problem with Lockjaw is he doesn't offer much other than simply being a support piece for the rest of your team - which is fine if you have other characters that can pull the weight for him to make up for it - unfortunately this isn't always the case in Inhumans.
That brings us to Quicksilver . Quicksilver plays really well into the Inhumans extract game and can use his L move to jump onto secures from across the board. I use him a great deal in my Brotherhood list - what he does he does well but I often find him largely one dimensional.
Like Quicksilver, Ronan is very good at what he does but doesn't offer much outside of that. Judgement is great - your opponent not gaining power from damage taken is always beneficial - but does it really do that much for an affiliation that typically is an extract team? Probably not so much. Ronan with the Power Gem also has synergy with the affiliation - being able to pass the additional power around the team, though this then makes Ronan 5 threat on top of your 5 threat leader to essentially fill the same role that 3 threat Lockjaw does.
Tactics Cards
Aside from Black Bolt, the other main drawback to Inhumans is their tactics cards. Quite frankly, they're hugely situational and very underwhelming.
Attilan Rising is probably the weakest of the three cards. 1 power for each injured allied Inhuman character is just not good - especially when you can already move around power through the leadership ability to where you need it and already have affiliated characters where you can generate enough power to be able to move it around.
Inhuman Royal Family is probably the best of a bad bunch - it allows any Inhuman character to spend two power to re-roll any number of dice in one of their attack or defence rolls. The main downside to this card being that it's only for one roll - so you have to pick the most opportunistic time to play it. When combined with the Inhuman re-roll it makes this card slightly better - but if this was an unaffiliated card you'd probably be leaving it out of your 10.
Terrigenisis CAN be a great card, and there's been a couple of times this card has won me games. The big problem here is it can only be used on civilian crisis so it's hugely situational.
How Can They Be Improved?
So I've talked about both the strengths and weaknesses, now here's my thoughts on how I think they can be improved.
Leader
The biggest way they could be improved is by improving the leader. Either by making Black Bolt better or by giving Inhumans another low threat leader - preferably both.
Lets talk about improving Black Bolt. I've thought quite hard about how he could improved and the best way I feel is to nerf his Whisper slightly and give him it on both sides of his card. Maybe drop it down to a 6 dice beam instead of a 9 and make it 3/4 power. I'd also spread his health pool out and make him 7/7 across both sides of his card.
Inhumans need a low threat leader to help with the list building aspect of the affiliation, it would be my preference that this would be a 3 threat given BB is already a 5 threat leader. I've heard lots of suggestions for who could be a leader, Maximus, Gorgon, Karnak - all would be great 3 threat options.
Improved Tactics Cards
Simply put, Inhumans need more impactful tactics cards - I don't feel like their current selection of tactics cards improves the affiliation or provide any sort of flexibility.
A Wider Selection Of Affiliated Characters
To put it in simple terms, Inhumans have four dedicated releases and the rest have been taken from other affiliations. This one I'm sure will come in time, but they just need more character releases - more characters provide greater flexibility to the affiliation and makes their playstyle less one dimensional.
That brings an end to the article - I'll continue to play Inhumans despite my current frustrations with the affiliation as a whole - I still enjoy putting some of my favourite characters on the table even though they're not as solid as I'd like them to be. Fingers crossed for some future Inhumans releases!
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