Strategic Initiative: Extract Plays #6

Hello and welcome back to another edition of Strategic Initiative! 

Today, we're going to go over the round 1 opening on «Mutant Extremists, Target US Senators!» under Professor X.

As usual, here's a reminder of what we are working with.

Senators is a very interesting crisis. With the most amount of tokens on the board (6 total) it has the potential to be the fastest extract in the game but, thanks to its drawback, limiting models to a single move action per turn if they're holding one, it can also be a very good extract for attrition teams as it limits the opposing model's ability to run away with points. 

Charles Xavier's leadership is the most recent addition to the Uncanny X-Men. Once per turn. it lets your characters gain 1 power when another ally spends power for one of their superpowers. This opens up some new opportunities for Round 1 that weren't previously available and we are going to go over one of them today. At the time of writing, Mystique's Brotherhood is the main affiliation that plays Senators, so this is written with her Tactics's Card Deception in mind, as it can be a powerful tool to disrupt the opposing team (in this case X-Men) when they are playing on this extract.

This setup assumes that Professor X is leading the X-Men, and requires the use of the First Class Tactics Card.

First Class is important here as it lets your character's first interaction be free and sequence things appropriately from there. This setup uses Professor X, Nightcrawler, Magik and Shadowcat, but could also be done with Cable and some other affiliated characters.

The opening move here is arguably the most important and the one where mistakes will make you more vulnerable. First, we have Magik move twice from the deployment line (ideally near the center of the board) within R1 of a Senator and pick it up for free. Next, she can use Limbo Step to move herself backward R1, triggering Xavier's leadership and giving power to another model.

After having used Limbo Step, if a model with either a 50 or 65mm base was deployed directly under the Senator picked up by Magik, she would be within R2 to deny the use of Deception. Since Professor X is already an option here, you always have access to him to set this up during deployment, but if you can double down and use characters like Iceman, Beast or Cable it provides a nice safety net and gives Magik more options for which Senator to pick up.

Next, assuming we gave Nightcrawler power since, with a medium move, he can only reach 2 out of the 3 Senators on the opposite side of the board without being deployed exactly in the center, we have him move twice to an opposing Senator, then use BAMF! to teleport R2 towards Magik.

Even if he picks up the extract that's furthest away from Magik, he can still end up within R2 of her with BAMF! after picking up the token.

This also, once again, triggers Xavier's leadership, and this time we'll give the power to Shadowcat to set up something similar with her.

As we see, Nightcrawler, after his place R2 still ends up further than the midline, which, combined with his innate defensive abilities can give him functionally Stealth if he's near terrain, so it's worth keeping in mind.

Next, we have Shadowcat do something similar to Nightcrawler, where she moves twice to any Senator on the opposing side of the board, and uses her Phase Rush to end up within R2 of another model, be it Nightcrawler or Magik. 

This once against triggers Xavier's leadership which lets you give another model 1 power to use. Here, models like Iceman, Cyclops or Xavier himself are good candidate as they have tools to help move your characters out of their activations (with Ice Slide on Iceman, Field Leader on Cyclops and the Tactics Card: To Me, My X-Men for any X-Men leader).

Another thing to keep in my is that this setup presumes the Senators on your side of the board will get taken by your opponent, but I would encourage not to go after those on the other side of the board unless you need to (as is often the case vs Mystique's Brotherhood on this scenario). Keeping to your side lets you give power to your team but end up in a better position going into the second round.

This should give an idea of some of the setups available to Professor X on Senators, as always, I encourage anyone to try these out for themselves and figure things out and not be afraid to experiment.

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