Hello and welcome back!
As we are getting near the end of 2024, I wanted to do something special to wrap up the year. So I reached out to some of the most experienced X-Men players out there to do a retrospective on the X-Men in 2024. In this series, I'll be asking open questions about characters, Team Tactics Cards the state of the game and what's coming on the horizon. In today's article, I have the pleasure of hosting Joemanji!
Section 1: New Leadership
In 2024, the Uncanny X-Men recieved, with the release of Charles Xavier, a brand new leader to supplement Storm and Cyclops. What are your thoughts on this new leadership and how it fits in the overall affiliation?
Our new leadership is really strong and an absolute blast to play! So a massive success in those terms. It is really interesting because it both requires and benefits very different characters than a traditional Storm list, with some of our strongest like X-23 and Logan having relatively poor synergy with it. On the other hand some perhaps less played characters like Magik are really good under Xavier. The leadership can do incredibly powerful things if you get the chain rolling early, but I find it can run out of steam if you don't turn those early advantages into VPs. A canny opponent often knows just to spend all their efforts denying your early jank knowing they will be able to win through model quality mid to late game. Xavier lists are also fairly packed and can struggle to fit in a great plan B for when they play on an unfavourable crisis, something all truly competitive lists absolutely need. They are also weighed down by Xavier himself being a poor character individually. Overall a strong leadership with a middling shell that can do great things but can also come unstuck more often than you'd like.
Section 2: Character reviews & team tactic cards
X-Men received a lot of new characters and team tactic cards in 2024. What are your impression of them, what they bring to X-Men and their place overall in the affiliation?
Professor X
The leadership is super cool as discussed. Xavier himself I think might be the worst 4 threat individually in the game. If you gave me his leadership on a Sentinel MK4 I would take it simply because it has higher defences and more health points. He has low impact activations, is incredibly vulnerable to being focused down by attrition and crucially does not 'wake up angry'. If you leave Xavier on 1 health or give away priority by dazing him his activation is essentially the same as it would be on his first activation of the game. A model that does little and doesn't punish an opponent for just beelining to remove him is a sitting duck in this meta.
Bishop
Bishop is okay. I have played him in X-Force much more than in X-Men, and he can do some useful things. Decent attacks, amazing throw. Ideally needs power fuelled to him to access that throw more often, but both Cyclops and Xavier can do that. He does have issues though, both with action economy and durability. Mutant Energy Absorption is really cool but hugely random. Occasionally he tanks the world and but more often he is made of paper, and not knowing which of those you are going to get makes him difficult to play and position well. The Overload negative superpower is obviously a disaster, just a line of text that does nothing but cause the owning player to feel miserable sometimes. He's fine, probably finding his best home under Cyclops but unlikely to see play in the best possible X-Men list.
Nightcrawler
Nightcrawler is amazing. I didn't fully grasp it from reading his card, but Puff Of Smoke being able to place with 2 of a character after an attack makes the distances he can cover absurd. He also very rarely makes move actions since he moves by attacking, and this in turn makes him do more damage over the course of a game than you'd expect given his basic five dice builder. The guaranteed stun can also be incredibly impactful, although it isn't so good you can just throw Kurt away to get it on a scary model. He's not an every game model, but can do incredible things on any map where moving around the board is going to be valuable. He also has no control effects on his card, and so sometimes is just left rolling dice at things which isn't ideal. But overall a very strong character for X-Men and a mainstay in competitive lists under all three leaders.
Iceman
I was very cool on Bobby from reading his card, but he is better than I thought. His Cold Snap effect can be very strong on wide maps and particularly on wide Pay To Flips, and opponents tend to take great lengths trying to avoid it. He's fast and his 4 Physical defence is very useful on Madman. He is still a model with a fairly low impact activation, with neither damage output or control, but can be a useful bits and pieces character in a wider squad. A reasonably model I can see sneaking into 10th spot in a competitive roster, even if I worry he can get a little lost in games.
Shadowcat
Speaking of characters that can get lost in games, we have Shadowcat. I just do not get her, my playstyle is bouncing right off this model. You would think X-Men getting an affiliated long mover would be a total game changer. But every time I play Kitty I feel like she is actively losing me the game with her low impact activations. Double move or move plus 4 dice builder just doesn't influence games in the way that an X-23 or a Domino would if they were around in her place. To me, she is the Viper of X-Men. This is a huge shame as Kitty is one of my favourite characters in the comics, and she even has Lockheed! But I can't see myself playing her competitively even if I need a fifth affiliated 3 threat at this point.
Angel
Warren's card looks like absolute trash. A 5 health 3/3/3 defences character that is forced to place next to opposing characters when he attacks them, and can only control them by dragging them closer to him (and at the cost of an action too)? That sounds like a fast track to the morgue. In practice I have seen him be a little better than this, if only because if he gets lucky and doesn't die his spender is really good and really cheap. With the guranteed throw he can do a lot of damage if next to two enemy characters. But this doesn't seem like a repeatable play pattern and in most games he'll just immediately evaporate I imagine. Still, will test him some more to see if there are some better play patterns than just commiting suicide every time he makes a builder.
Cerebro
Mind Wipe
I tried this a few times but all it did was encourage my opponent to dive and KO Xavier himself even more than normal. The few times I might have played it Xavier didn't have enough power. Probably just a fun meme card at this point, but getting it off is probably going to be a blast.
Xavier's Dream
An affiliation defining card. Dream is incredibly strong and almost certainly the best thing to happen to the X-Men in 2024. It is also an interesting and skill testing card to use, with the constant tension of whether to use it early or hold it for a potentially better moment. The longer you keep it hanging over your opponent's head the more powerful it can be, but I have also had a lot of joy just using it the first opportunity that I can get to protect an activation and trying to build a strong early VP lead. Nowhere near as good as the top TTCs in the game like Wakanda Forever and All Webbed Up, but for sure the best available to X-Men and an every game card under any leader.
Section 3: Current place in the meta
How impactful have you found the new leadership to be for the affiliation?
It has been a lot of fun playing Xavier but competitively Storm was still the leader I took to WTC and that was never in question. My experience with Xavier has generally revolved around Xavier himself being a liability. When things are going well you can afford to play 4 threat down and it feels wonderful. But if you get a bad matchup or things don't go well, Xavier's individual issues compound upon your problems and things can unravel fast. Support characters have always had trouble being of consistent value in MCP; this is not a game where you can afford passengers. Xavier unfortunately isn't even a good support character, with his re-rolls being once a turn for some reason unlike 3 threat versions of the archetype like Shuri and Zola. He also doesn't have the bonus power economy of those characters. Xavier finds himself in a weird middle ground. The leadership is so good that his lists can't be bad, but he himself is so bad that the lists can't be truly great.
How have you found the new models impact your list building and how you approach the affiliation?
Nightcrawler is huge boon to X-Men and has allowed me to feel more confident about running SWORD as my third secure. He is just so incredibly good on it, and SWORD is a crisis that rewards big early tempo swings. Nightcrawler for example being able to hit both opposing SWORD bases round one is massive. None of the other models have really made the grade for me competititvely, with my solo Storm list for WTC being almost the same as the previous year aside from Nightcrawler. I was genuinely amazed to see Kitty be so much more popular than X-23 at WTC amongst the other X-Men players, as Laura has still be performing incredibly consistently for me even after the card rotation.
What would you say is the biggest gain X-Men made this year and why?
Xavier's Dream. Card is gold. Nightcrawler is the only other item in consideration for me, but he is not an every game pick and Xavier's Dream most certainly is.
What would you say is X-Men's biggest loss this year and why?
The loss of X-Ceptional felt like a huge hit to us, and particularly X-23 and Logan, the Wolverine, two staple characters. But after playing those characters without the card it turns out they are still actually really good models even without it, and very much worth their spots in any list that was previously taking them. In general the TTC rotation was overall probably more a boon than a loss for X-Men, given that they already have enough affiliated TTCs to play most of the time anyway.
I would like to thank Joemanji for taking the time to answer my questions and give feedback on what's been a pretty busy year for the Uncanny X-Men. I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to read this article and as always, don't forget to have fun!
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