Character Review: Emma Frost

 

Emma Frost, White Queen, Headmistress of the Hellions, socialite and Femme Fatal, is one of the most iconic telepaths of the X-Men franchise. She's known for her telepathic prowess and the ability to turn into Diamond. Let's see if her Crisis Protocol counterpart shines as much as she does. 

Since Emma brings two completely different character cards to the table with normal and diamond forms, we'll be looking at both of them and then see how they compare.

From the get-go, her stat line means Emma is pretty fragile for her threat level unless she's on the receiving end of mystic attacks. Having 6 health means she gets to take some hits but would prefer to be as far as she can from the action.

Psychic Spike serves as Emma's builder. With R4 and 5 dice, it has a slightly better range than average, but the Hit/Wild trigger, even if somewhat unreliable, gives her an innate control option with a decent range.

Hands Off is a very good and efficient spender (with a great name for its trigger). A pretty solid 8 dice and a size 4 throw on a wild, it serves as an excellent damage source and control option if it can land on an opposing model of size 3 or 4.

With both her attacks, Emma, through her actions can provide a surprising amount of control. Since they both rely on triggers, they are unreliable and be very hit-or-miss from game to game.

Diamond Form is probably the most iconic part of Emma Frost's Mutation. She gets to turn into Diamond (which we'll take a look at soon) when she gets attacked for a single power.

Sharing this superpower with Jean Grey, Emma Frost brings a very welcome anti-control tool that stops the majority of superpower displacements (except for throws) like Web Lines, Thanos's Cosmic Portals and mystical attacks in a very far area thanks to its range. Having access to that superpower on different affiliated models gives interesting options to X-Men to deny the opposing player some of their control options.

Telekinetic Deflection is a very welcome addition to Emma's arsenal as it gives her a way to handle things being thrown her way, which would be dangerous with her 2 physical defense if not for this superpower.

Last but not least, we have Power Inhibition, which denies reactive superpowers and tactics cards, making all of her attacks significantly better when she gets to displace models outside of bodyguard range with her builder or throw a size 4 character into another without letting the opponent play Brace for Impact.

Emma's normal form provides interesting but unreliable control with her attacks and a varied toolbox of narrow but efficient reactive superpowers.

Now onto her Diamond Form!

Already we can see how her diamond form differs from her normal one, with a defensive profile of 4 across the board, it helps Emma defend against both physical and energy attacks at the cost of lowering her mystical defense by 1.

Diamond Strike offers a very different option as a builder from the normal form, trading the R4 and mystical attack type for a R2, physical attack, with pierce and stun. Pierce being on a crit means it is less likely to happen than on a wild, but is still a solid trigger. 

Shatter is Emma's spender. At 6 power, it is definitely on the expensive side, but as an A2 with 7 dice and pierce, it has the potential to hit fairly hard. It also has the very notable benefit of being able to change Emma back into her normal form. Having the option to change her form back to place R1 and move away to safety or use the other part of her kit.

In her Diamond Form, Emma gets to throw a size 3 terrain, medium, which grants her a source of ranged damage, a very welcome effect.

Diamond Mind is a passive superpower which the main drawback of the diamond form, as it stops Emma from being able to play Tactics Cards (namely Headmistress). It also makes her more vulnerable to throws in general as opposed to her normal form since she doesn't have access to Telekinetic Deflection and can't play Brace for Impact.

In addition to having a very different defensive profile, Emma also gains 4 immunities and resiliency to common control effects, while also counting Blanks against Mystic attacks. One thing to note, if a character has a condition and then becomes immune to that same condition, it removes the condition from the character. In this case, gaining immunity to Incinerate in particular might help decide to transform Emma from her Normal Form into her Diamond Form, for both better defenses and her immunities.

This last passive superpower transforms Emma back into her Normal Form, whenever she ends an activation in Diamond Form. This lets you leverage the movement provided by changing forms to reach a position you other wouldn't have been able to.

Emma Frost also brings an affiliated tactics card for the Uncanny X-Men in Headmistress. 

Headmistress provides a pretty big movement to the characters benefitting from it. It lets Emma grab an extract from the middle of the board by using this combined with First Class. Also opens up a lot of movement during the game, provided the characters are not holding extracts. This can either let you move forward aggressively early in the game or move back in position late in a round.

Overall, Emma Frost is a pretty interesting character with a very unique toolkit and very good tactics card. Balancing her transformations and her Normal and Diamond forms takes some practice getting used to but her kit gives her an interesting place in X-Men's pool of characters.

Thanks for taking the time to read this piece and as always, don't forget to have fun!