Strategic Initiative: Extract Plays #5
Welcome back to another edition of Strategic Initiative! Today I'll be going over most of the ways the Uncanny X-Men can grab an extract on the central line safely, meaning that they are able to move back in some form or another after interacting with a token placed in the center of the board. This will focus on options unique to X-Men and by no means reprensent an exhaustive list.
First, I'll be covering the ones that are independent of leaderships, meaning that they can be done under any X-Men leaderships.
Now, let's see what we're working with.
First Class and To Me, My X-Men both play pretty important roles for X-Men, especially in round 1. With To Me, My X-Men, any affiliated character, with at least a 35mm base and a medium move or a 50mm or larger base, can use the advance of the card to move towards the center, use a move action to get to the objective, then a move action back.
To make it easier you'd want your character to not be directly aligned with the objective and placed further away from the leader playing the card, but it's not mandatory (also, it's important to be mindful of terrain and how it may get in your way).
Next, we have a very popular one that has some additional options available in X-Men, namely, Eyes on the Prize.
This Tactics Card extends the interaction range of a model, for their activation, from R1 to R2. This lets any model that generates 2 or more power per turn, and has, at least, a long move or a medium move with a 50mm or 65mm base be able to interact with a central objective after taking only a single move action. Some characters like Hela or Beta Ray Bill are prime example of this. In X-Men, if you take into account the card First Class, it lets any affiliated model mobile enough, play Eyes on the Prize and interact with a central objective in a single move action (for characters like Beast, Colossus or Shadowcat) and move back to safety.
Cable provides yet another alternative to the Uncanny X-Men as a safe extract option, assuming First Class has been played. Because he starts his turn with 2 power, it means he's able to use his superpower; Bodyslide by One, to place within R2 of himself, then take a move action, interact with an objective in the midline and move back. Albeit with a short move only, thanks to the 50mm base it should still put Cable in relative safety.
While you can do either the move then the R2 place first before interacting, I recommend doing the place first since it lets you have better control over how close to the point you want Cable to be.
The next one is also character specific but also requires the use of a tactics card. Thanks to Headmistress, Emma Frost can spend 1 power during her activation and give a medium move to any affiliated X-Men character not already holding an objective token.
Once again presuming First Class has been played, Emma can play the card to get an additional medium movement, letting her move twice towards the central line, interact and then move again. Unfortunately, because she has to play the card during her activation, it means that the use of Headmistress to grab an extract on the central line is mostly locked on Emma Frost.
Next we have another option that requires a character affiliated tactics cards in addition to To Me, My X-Men; Gotta Get Some Air.
With it, Logan can get an additional movement in a round, provided a character ends an advance or place within R2 of Logan. An X-Men leader can play To Me, My X-Men and advance an affiliated character behind Logan (since Gotta Get Some Air forces you to move away from the other character) and trigger the tactics card. While this can be a safe grab option, costing an additional tactics card compared to the rest makes this a more expensive resource but is nonetheless an option.
Finally, last but not least, is the one enabled by Storm's leadership, X-Men Gold. Let's take a look at the leadership.
Once per round, if they're not holding an objective, a character within R2 of another, can pay 1 power and place themselves within R1 of another allied character if they're not holding an objective token.
For the purpose of safe extracts, this means that provided either model has a 50mm or 65mm base and at least a medium move (this includes models with 35mm bases with long moves), they can use the leadership, move once towards the center and pick up an extract before moving back. Since the leadership costs power to use, if you want to be able to do this in round 1, you would either need an affiliated X-Men character on a turn you played First Class or a character that inherently starts with 2 or more power.
With these, you should be able to have a good variety of options to grab the extracts on the central line of the board. As always, I encourage anyone to try these for themselves and not be afraid to experiment and test other alternatives!
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece and as always, don't forget to have fun!
