Cyclops was Right, an X-Men Blue Primer. Feat: Riddlesworth
Hello and welcome back! Today I have the privilege of hosting fellow X-Men aficionado Riddlesworth, who wrote an impressively detailed and comprehensive primer on the workings of Cyclops's leadership, X-Men Blue. So here's what they have to say about Scott Summer's X-Men.
Our favourite boy in Blue, X-Men’s de facto field leader, got an update from our friends at AMG and there’s a lot of excitement in the X-Men MCP community about how to make the most of it. After some 30 games of messing around with X-Men Blue, Vodkablitz kindly allowed me to nerd out on his blog on my thoughts for new players to X-Men Blue.
The Leadership
Power generating/manipulating leaderships vary in effectiveness based on the restrictions and conditions required to trigger. On the scale of always happens to too difficult and/or restrictive, X-Men Blue sits somewhere in the middle. It does have a high ceiling, but also has a low floor, which is something you must consider when building your roster and your squad.
The flexibility of choosing who gets the power helps you effectively manage power thresholds – making sure Ghost Spider always has Lifesaver, or Captain Marvel always has Binary form available puts interesting decision trees around your activation order and keeps your characters at high levels of efficiency in their activations.
The benefits of the leadership tend to hit their peak end of round 3 and top of round 4, where your early power advantage starts to be cancelled out by your opponent’s power ramping – from their own power generation but also the fact that you must damage them for your triggers. As you start to lose characters and activations to clap backs, you get less opportunities to trigger the leadership, so X-Men Blue teams should be looking to put themselves in a position to close out games around this time.
The major caution in playing this leadership is “Magical Christmas Land”. If you build your squad with the expectation that you are going to be all gas, no brakes activations – always attacking twice, always triggering the leadership twice (or more) – you can find yourself outplayed on scenario because, despite defence dice not being real, your attacks will fail somewhere along the line. A good baseline to aim for to begin with is triggering the leadership once for every activation you have in a round, though this doesn’t mean hitting it on every activation, as we’ll discuss.
The Field Leader
Cyclops is going to be in every squad you build if you’re playing X-Men Blue. He brings you a ranged support package that enables you to remain relevant on scenario and make your pieces more efficient.
Optic blast now pushing size 3 on a wild trigger is a big upgrade. Pushing the vast majority of the models in the game from range 4 to get them off points or using your mobility (because you have action compression from hit and run) to angle your pushes to put enemy models in attack range of your allies feels very much like the field leader of the comics and plays into his team’s synergy and tempo well.
Speed of Sight, granting him an extra attack is an excellent trigger you’ll hit around 40% of the time. Getting the best use out of Cyclops will involve considering the trigger every time you attack – if you hit the trigger, is there a second target in range and is it worth taking the shot if not?
The standout ability on Cyclop’s card is Field Leader. Out of activation, non-action movement is incredibly powerful in MCP. There’s a whole other article that could be written on uses for this ability but a short, non-exhaustive list includes;
⦁ Giving a character with no movement economy but who wants to spend actions attacking – like Domino or M.O.D.O.K – a short move to start their activation in range of a target.
⦁ Moving a model back onto a point after they have been displaced.
⦁ Moving an extract holder out of range of being attacked twice on an enemy model’s activation.
Effective use of Field Leader defines a good Cyclops game. Speed of Sight and the occasional leadership trigger being sent his way should ensure that you are able to use this ability at least once during each of his activations.
Because Cyclops is the lynchpin of X-Men Blue – carrying the leadership, movement for other pieces and control – he is a prime target to be dived by an assassin to take these things off the board. As the X-Men player, using his range 4 to keep him safe, not holding extracts to increase the value of taking him out and applying pressure with your other models to make this play too high a risk for the reward will be a valuable skill to learn.
EEE - Enable, Empower, Execute
Models in Cyclops rosters tend to fall into 3 categories: Executors, Enablers and Utilities.
Executors
Executors are models that scale very well with the extra power that the leadership generates. They are the models that when loaded with power will make significantly game impacting activations. Typically, such models are balanced by their own ability to generate power not necessarily giving them these activations often or they take a couple of activations to really get going. Alternatively, they have no action economy around movement so are countered by displacement and range. Good examples include Apex Predator, Rogue or Miles Morales. Colossus also falls into this bucket as a model that spends power very well and can impact your opponents’ activations with his Big Brother and X-Slam abilities.
Bonus power from the leadership and movement economy from Field Leader is overcomes the typical balancing restrictions on these models to make them truly game winning.
Enablers
Enablers in this context are the models that enable you to reliably hit leadership triggers. They’ll usually do this in one of two ways.
Models that make your Executors hit harder include pieces that can give out rerolls, reliably pass out the Incinerate or Hex conditions or add extra dice. Invincible Iron Man, Pyro and Baron Mordo are all examples in the respective categories. An Executor that hits harder because of these models is not only generating more power for themselves but is triggering the leadership for other Executors in the team.
The other type of enabler is one which will consistently push through the single point of damage at a low (or zero) power threshold, not needing the leadership to do so. Most of the X-Men affiliated enablement pieces fall into this bucket – Domino, X-23, Logan, and Cable are all very consistent at doing damage with attacks without any help from outside sources. Domino and X-23, in particular, are also limited in how they scale with power – X-23 can spend a max of 6 in her activation and Domino’s spending is mostly reactive to dice – which is a benefit to the Executors they support as they don’t vie for the leadership power as much.
Characters with low or zero cost beams, or with rapid fire or flurry are very effective damage-based enablers because of the number of opportunities they get to hit the leadership trigger.
Some Enablers do both – Shuri and Baron Zemo are the best examples. Both give out rerolls but have consistent damager dealing attacks.
Utilities
Utility characters tend to be the ones doing a specific job for the squad at hand. They like the extra power but don’t necessarily need it or go over the top with it and they’re not particularly consistent enough with attacks or support abilities to be an enabler. Beast is an affiliated model that falls into this category. He is a durable extract runner, with a very well costed throw and a size 3 push on his spender to steal or contest points late.
Squad Building for EEE
Making effective X-Men Blue squads is about balancing Enablers and Executors. Too many of either and you’re not making the most of the leadership’s benefits. My general rule of thumb has been for every Executor I include in a X-Men Blue squad, I look to include an Enabler.
However, Cyclops functions as somewhat of a buffer here in that, while he’s not as consistent at pushing through damage, the extra attacks he’ll gain from Speed of Sight means he’ll power himself decently and get some triggers through to be net neutral, so an Enabler like Domino or Shuri who can fairly reliably get 2 leadership triggers an activation or are increasing the chances of a trigger on multiple activations plus Cyclops could support two Executors pretty comfortably. The reason for the 1:1 rule is simply that if you hit this ratio, you get more freedom to feed power to Cyclops for Field Leader. Certain Executors also just need power to turn on big attacks, providing a power feedback loop for your squad.
Example squads;
18 Threat – Cyclops, Beast (Utility), Domino (Enabler), Rogue (Executor), Colossus (Executor)
17 Threat – Cyclops, Cable (Enabler), Rogue (Executor), Apex Predator (Executor)
17 Threat – Cyclops, Crimson Dynamo (Enabler), Gambit (Executor), Domino (Enabler), Miles Morales (Executor)
20 Threat – Cyclops, Captain Marvel (Executor), Psylocke (Executor), X-23 (enabler), Honey Badger (Enabler), Ms. Marvel (Executor)
What Scenarios Does X-Men Blue Like?
The obvious answer is closer, brawlier scenarios where you’re making more attacks and therefore hitting more triggers to generate more power. On the flipside, a large amount of the X-Men Blue commentary discusses how the Range 5 restriction makes them significantly worse on wider secures like D and B maps. I feel that the real answer lies somewhere in the middle – X-Men is a solid brawling team but will lose a brawl to the best attrition teams. They’re a solid scenario team but will lose to scenario teams trying to play pure scenario or trying to brawl with scenario teams across the map.
So, what do X-Men Blue have? Well, they’re X-men, so they have access to First Class and To Me, My X-Men. This gives them a safe centreline grab with any affiliated model and a tempo advantage against most of the field on the Pay to Flip Scenarios. First Class gives them another safe grab with Cable. Eyes on the Prize and First Class is yet another safe centreline grab with Colossus or Beast.
With the leadership generating extra power and these things considered, X-Men Blue has a very solid ability to pivot easily between attrition or scenario focus from Turn 0 through to end of the game.
The Crisis Choices
Secures
Pay to Flips are a strange beast in MCP dialogue. There’s certainly a fair few teams that are good at playing pay to flips, but X-Men seem to be a bogeyman on them, and for good reason. Pay to flip scenarios drain early power resource and First Class can completely negate that, meaning X-Men teams have better tempo on power going into round 2. Rogue, Beast and X-23 are good examples of where starting round 2 with 2 power after an interact in round 1 means lots more interesting plays are available to them.
As such, any 3 of Mutant Madman, SWORD Base, Spider Portals or Deadly Meteors are solid secure choices. Mayor Fisk is also interesting as the leadership mitigates the Stun somewhat, as is Super Powered Scoundrels for the additional resilience for the team, while having mobile pieces to rotate as needed.
Extracts
If you have 2-3 Pay to Flip secures in your roster, your opponents are unlikely to let you play on them, so most of the time, you will have your extracts when you don’t have priority. While X-Men Blue can certainly dive a back F on Spider Infected or Cubes and can even get safely back to the midline with a combination of First Class/TMMXM/Eyes on the Prize, the resource investment is massive and can easily be derailed by a solid diver on the opposing side of the board (like a Lizard, or an ASM).
The ability to dictate where the fighting happens is more important than getting a VP advantage in round 1, so the even number extracts – Senators, Fear Grips, Paranoia and Skrulls – are easier to manage in terms of rotating your team to have extract holders in that range 5 bubble and threaten to break parity on VPs by displacing from a secure late in a round or assassinating/stealing from an extract holder. Because of To Me, My X-Men, it doesn’t matter which centreline extract gets taken by your opponent, you will be able to get one safely.
The B/D Map Conundrum
Fighting on spread out secures can mean your models are outside of range 5 for leadership triggers, which lessen the impact of the leadership, so naturally a B or D, or sometimes F secure can be an issue. However, this is where your roster selections, crisis and game tactics will come into play.
D Maps – Riots, Cosmic Invasion, Spider Portals
How do you keep your team together in your range 5 bubble when all 4 points are so spread out? The simple answer is you don’t. After deployment, you should be looking to which flank you can move your 2 safe extract pickups, along with all but 1 member of the rest of your squad. Your “bunker” is built between your home point and one flank point. In that quarter of the board, keeping characters within range 5 for leadership triggers should be very straightforward, and you should be able to effectively keep the secures there to maintain parity.
The only model that shouldn’t be rotating into the bunker is your tie breaker. Models that excel in this role are mobile duellists. Pieces that can activate late and displace, or assassinate the models left there, but who also do not require the X-Men Blue leadership to do this job. Both Logan and Psylocke are excellent in this role. On Spider Portals in particular, Logan is very reliable at flipping points left behind.
It is also extremely beneficial to have a model in the bunker who can swing a VP on a secure or steal an extract. Beast, Doctor Voodoo or Miles, for example.
This forces your opponent into difficult choices – If they take the fight to your bunker where you’re strongest and will have better action economy because you don’t have to move as much, they either do it with their whole team – giving up parity by leaving secures for your duelist to take, or with only part of their team and bank on swinging VPs that your duellist will win by killing a deckchair model on their home point. This strategy also holds true for Superpowered Scoundrels in the F shape. The difference being that your lone operative can be in leadership trigger range while on the central point.
B Maps
B maps are technically harder because the rotation distance is bigger. However, there are differences on how to approach each.
Firstly, Mutant Madman. This is a pay to flip secure. X-Men have a number of 4 defence models that can flip contested secures. Because flipped points stay under your control, the strategy is very similar to D maps. Grab your extracts and get them on one flank of the board, fight in one column where your leadership is going to give you the advantage. The “lone operative” in this scenario is a relatively durable model that can easily move between 2 points of a D map, with 4 defence to activate late and attempt 2 flips to maintain parity or gain a VP advantage on the side you’ve abandoned. Beast and Logan are excellent in affiliation options for this role, with the likes of Colossus and Lizard being good secondary picks.
Infinity Formula is a little different. In the X-Men Blue roster, you’re already taking a number of Executors, who leverage extra power well, so while the shape negatively impacts the frequency of leadership triggers, it replaces it by giving you extra power for contesting. If you have a solid executor and an enabler on each flank, this secure feels fine for X-Men Blue.
So, What Sort of Team is X-Men Blue?
X-Men Blue are a tempo team. In round 1 they’re looking to gain score parity or an advantage, while positioning to dictate where fights will happen so that round 2, they can hit multiple leadership triggers for big activations in rounds 3 and 4 to close out the game.
Thanks for reading!
