With the recent reveal of Xavier's character card, and the recent updates to both Storm and Cyclops, the Uncanny X-Men affiliation has never been more flexible. In this article, we'll look at how the dynamics of the affiliation has changed over time, and how this has added flexibility to the various different playstyles of the affiliation.
Pre-Errata X-Men
Let's start by taking a trip back in time to before the errata. There are two leaders for the Uncanny X-Men, one very much more viable than the other. The first of these leaders is Storm:
Although Storm herself left a lot to be desired as a character, her leadership really stood out. Having access to out of activation movement and cover in a meta where there were fewer fast chasing attrition pieces meant they were very hard to catch and take off the board, so a very passive grab all the extracts and run away playstyle developed for the affiliation. As the meta changed and more characters released into the game that were suddenly able to chase down the extract runners, the passive game plan was no longer as viable as it was previously, forcing many players to revert to a more proactive playstyle. Affiliated characters such as Logan the Wolverine, Domino and X-23 helped add some well needed attrition, and splash pieces such as Voodoo and Rhino with their ability to steal extracts and help the scenario side of the game, were all common in X Men rosters.
Unfortunately for Cyclops, he didn't really stand out. Although he had access to some fairly respectable tools, he often struggled with his own power generation to be able to use them on a regular basis. His leadership was also extremely niche, and over emphasised the use of spenders, which often is not the best way to spend power. This meant that Storm was very much the leader of choice for the affiliation and Cyclops often got put to one side.
Sweeping Changes
In September 2023, AMG made a surprise announcement that involved a huge errata, making changes to various underperforming and overperforming characters. Many of these impacted X-Men, and both Storm and Cyclops were hit with changes.
Storm's Eye of the Storm superpower changed from a 3 power cost to 2 and her Hurricane attack went from a 5 dice attack to 6. Her biggest change however came to her leadership, the hop became a 1 power cost instead of being free and cover was removed and changed to a defensive re-roll. This change meant Storm was now a much more pro-active character on the board, and has enabled her to play a much more aggressive game plan. The nerf to the cover however, along with the nerf to Voodoo, has hurt Storm's scenario focused game plan as she now often struggles into pure scenario focused affiliations. However, because characters no longer gain cover from the leadership, they can now benefit from cover by the use of terrain as well as getting the benefit of the defensive re-roll at the same time.
Cyclops also received a number of sweeping changes, and his builder received one of the biggest improvements. The size restriction on the push was increased from size 2 to size 3 and an additional trigger was added that let him make another attack against a different character. The potential extra attacks a turn massively helped his power generation meaning he could access the rest of his kit more often. The trigger on his spender was also changed from the target losing 1 power if a wild was rolled, to losing 1 power for each wild.
Perhaps the biggest change to Cyclops though, was the change to his leadership. Now instead of a leadership that was niche, it's now a functional leadership that offers lots of tactical flexibility depending on where you spread the extra power.
X Men Blue typically functions by taking characters that consist of enablers and executors. The enablers are characters that can consistently trigger the leadership, by damaging enemy characters, such as X-23, Logan and Domino, and the executors are the characters that are going to benefit from the additional power from the leadership such as Rogue, Cyclops and Beast.
The biggest misconception with X Men Blue is many people see a leadership that requires you to damage enemy characters and instantly think of an attrition game plan but in actuality under Cyclops, X Men are more of a mid-range affiliation. They want to slow the game down against the more crisis focused teams and speed the game up against affiliations that want to win by attrition. In terms of speeding a game up, they make good use of First Class and To Me My X-Men to play to the crisis, and to slow the game down against more crisis focused teams, affiliated characters such as Logan and X-23 are more than capable of chasing down extract holders.
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
That brings us on to the newest of the X Men leaders, Professor X.
At first glance, Xavier's leadership has a lot of crossover with the Cyclops leadership. They both feed an allied character a power, they just have slightly different ways of doing so. Xavier's leadership is undoubtedly more consistent given you dont need to rely on dice to trigger it, you're also not hampered by a range restriction. However, the Cyclops leadership has a higher ceiling in terms of the amount of power that can be given out when you take beams and rapid fire into consideration, the wording is also different for X Men Blue, a character may only receive 1 power per turn where Xavier's leadership can only be triggered once per turn - although this can be triggered on your opponents turns through reactive superpowers.
Xavier's leadership also has similarities with Storm in terms of how it plays on the table, especially given the number of round 1 plays available. Cable is a big enabler for this having enough power on turn 1 to bodyslide to trigger the leadership to then pass on a power to someone else. This would then allow someone like Juggernaut to safe grab an extract from the middle to then Nothing Stops the Juggernaut away which then also triggers the leadership to give someone else a power and gets the chain rolling.
Conclusion
In just a few short months, X Men have gone from a single leader with a clearly defined playstyle, to 3 leaders offering a lot of flexibility in how to play the affiliation. Although there are similarities between the leaderships and how they perform on the table, there's enough variety between them to offer something for everyone. With so much still to explore with new characters and new tactics cards, maybe you could be the one to bring a new approach to the Uncanny X Men.
Before I wrap up, I'd like to say a huge thank you to Joe Hainstock, Jamie Finch and Vodkablitz for all of their input into the article, it wouldn't have been possible to write this without them.
As always, thank you for reading, and please check out our sponsor www.protechgames.co.uk for all of your MCP needs.