Welcome to another edition of Strategic Initiative! Today I'll be covering strategies available to the Uncanny X-Men when lead by Storm under her leadership, X-Men Gold. Before we get into it, here's a reminder of the tools we are going to work with.
Storm's leadership lets you take one of your characters, within R2 of another, place themselves within R1 of the other character as long as they're not holding an objective token. This is a key tool to a lot of round 1 options available to X-Men as it gives enough additional mobility to a model to let them reach certain extracts or secures they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. Combined with some Tactics Cards like First Class, To Me, My X-Men and Eyes on the Prize, it opens up a lot of possibilities.
So today's article will be focusing primarily on K and C shaped extracts which both have a majority of tokens on the central line of the map. First and one of the most simple lines of play you can on those shapes, is to have an X-Men affiliated character with a 50mm base and at least a medium movement, be deployed directly in line with an extract, play Eyes on the Prize and (assuming you've played First Class), move, interact with the objective and move away to safety (which you can even use to set up an X-Men jump!). On K shaped maps, you can even use this to grab any of the two central extracts, provided your character is deployed in the center.
The second sequence involves a use of the X-Men jump. You can take a character within R2 of another and place them within R1 of another. If the character using the jump has; a 50mm and a medium move, a 65mm or a long move, they can manage to, in a single move, be able to interact with a central extract. So in this example, Beast, a 50mm base character with a medium move, uses the leadership to place himself within R1 in front of Storm to then move and pick up an extract with another action remaining.
One of the things I enjoy the most with X-Men is using your tools synergistically to leverage an even bigger advantage. What if we use the line with Beast and Eyes on the Prize, to set up a jump?
Here, we have Beast deployed directly in the middle, with Storm on his right side. Beast activates, plays Eyes on the Prize (assuming First Class has also been played), interacts with the extracts, then moves and places himself within R2 of Storm, angled to the side.
This let's Storm or any other model use the X-Men jump to get to either the other central extract or the one placed on the far side of the map
Another available option leans on using the card To Me, My X-Men or, if you're playing Emma Frost, her tactics card Headmistress, to gain additional movement to safely interact and pick up extracts on the central line.
With To Me, My X-Men, if you deploy models aligned roughly with the token you want them to grab, you can have an X-Men leader play the card and have a model advance short towards the leader (to make it easier, deploying your leader relatively centrally helps). This lets them move and pick up an extract before moving again. One of the benefits of this sequence, is that, provided you have enough affiliated characters, you can threaten simultaneously every extracts that are on the midline and adapt to what the opposing player is doing.
The sequence, with Headmistress and Emma Frost, is similar, but, since Emma has to play the card during her turn, without outside assistance, she can move herself with the card, take a move action, interact without paying the power cost thanks to First Class, and move back again to relative safety. In this example, we have Storm play To Me, My X-Men on X-23, which gives her a short advance towards Storm. Then she moves and is within R1 of an objective on the central line.
The sequence, with Headmistress and Emma Frost, is similar, but, since Emma has to play the card during her turn, without outside assistance, she can move herself with the card, take a move action, interact without paying the power cost thanks to First Class, and move back again to relative safety. In this example, we have Storm play To Me, My X-Men on X-23, which gives her a short advance towards Storm. Then she moves and is within R1 of an objective on the central line.
This should give an idea of how mobile and flexible the Uncanny X-Men are for grabbing extracts and still be very mobile. As always, I encourage everyone to try these out for themselves and experiment to see what they might discover!
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece and don't forget to have fun!
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