I really like how the XMen waves have really been like "how can we focus on this mechanic?" And then we get all of the different ways as different heroes. This wave has really focused on resources. But Bishop and Magik play completely differently, and they both look completely different to Jubilee and Magneto.
Agreed, resources are much like alter-egos and nemesis sets to me - barely explored in terms of the game's design. I think there's so much more space they could cover and I'm excited to see it continue!
I'm not a big fan of the cards we've seen from Magneto so far. He seems to be very standard and boring. But there is still hope for the other cards. I would like to se an upgrade in his kit that does something like this: Look at the top 3 or 4 cards and change the order as you want. That would help to get more out of his armor. Because hitting only a lightning or instant a magnetic card could feel very bad.
The magnetic cards do have resource icons, so something should still trigger, but deck manipulation would definitely be fun. I always love those kind of shenanigans.
I think he’s going to feel better as player count increases. It looks like he will want to flip frequently, especially as his deck count decreases because he can effectively stack his deck to a degree. Leadership seems very tempting since allies are some of the highest value cards you can get and being able to shuffle back 2 double resources and an ally of your choice with a high chance of drawing back into them seems strong. If you go down to heal and at the same time get to set yourself up to play a 3-4 cost ally with double resources, that turn is going to feel really good.
Agreed on all counts. His thwarting card will be harder to trigger the attachment-removal in multiplayer as schemes will accumulate more threat - but there will also be so many more attachments that it will really pay off if the group coordinates for it.
I'm hoping for some sort of big event that works off of the number of Magnetic cards in his hand. Maybe have the player discard Magnetic cards to boost. it. He could play the card for 1 to get an initial effect (which would also make use of the helmet to play the card), and then the player could discard cards as a kicker to continue boosting it. With a hand-size effectively being 6, and all his card being traited Magnetic, there's a good chance that 3-4 cards in your hand will be Magnetic. Plus, something that dumps a bunch of Magnetic cards into the discard actually leans into his alter-ego ability where he could flip down and get them back in his deck.
I would also mention that "survivor" is not 'forced', so you'll be able to choose to put 3 back in. Yes, it would thicken the draw-deck up, but you may think the top 3 are not wanted at this point in game. As you seek something else specifically.???
Yep! The choice about when to do it or whether to do it at all is very interesting. If I knew I had one key card that I really wanted, I wouldn't want to refill my deck whatsoever. Great shout
My prediction: He will have at least one resource card. Since he likes all three resource types, I'm thinking either three different combinations of doubles, or three cards with different resource types and some special effect, or maybe one card with all three resource types? Domino already has that, though, so maybe not. Maybe one with each resource type plus a wild? Anyway, great video!
He has an effective hand-size of 6, plus a resource generator for his signature cards, plus enough super power cards to warrant Deft Focus. I hope they don't give him hero specific resource cards.
I could see a resource card happening. I don't think it will run that close to Jubilee's or anything crazy - maybe something that counts as a double for Magnetic cards? Not sure! The way his helmet mirrors Iceman's belt makes me wonder if he might have something like Cryokinetic Perception instead.
Kinda like you mentioned, it seems like they want him to be beginner friendly, which makes sense since he's such a popular character that inexperienced players may pick him off the shelf purely based off of the name. It's just kinda weird that we end off the mutant trilogy with Magneto, one of the greatest comic book characters of all time, and yet he's fairly straightforward and not all too exciting mechanically. I'm sure as we see more cards he'll be more impressive, but I was definitely hoping for more complexity. The armor seems very fun though. Makes me want to run a 45-50 card deck to try and hit those resource icons before a magnetic card, since he has 15 of those. Idk though. I can kind of see potential in him, and I'm definitely excited, I just need to see more of what he has to offer before getting 100% on board.
The over-40 cards thing is interesting. The thing is that his magnetic cards will at least contribute a resource type - so whatever you find gives him at least one stat boost. Sometimes you will just want the one stat and get it anyway, and sometimes you might go up to 50 cards and still not get what you wanted. It's tricky. I hope he has more things to synergize with that Armor - to incentivize us to explore that type of thing further. Thanks for the comment and let's hope his other cards are fun
@@VillainTheory Oh right, I keep forgetting the card he discards counts. I still think adding more cards might(?) add a little more consistency, but then again you could always just discard a magnetic card as your first discard so it won't matter. I'm so curious to see if there's a way to optimize the armor due to the inconsistency. Definitely hoping for some cards to synergize with it
I think the most interesting thing about Magneto’s announcement is the timing…FFG has big announcements scheduled on 1Aug @ Gencon. If this announcement is out of the way what will be the Champions announcement in two weeks?
I’m hoping most of his cards will be superpowers and then magnetos helmet, deft focus and xgene will mean they can practically be paid for free. I see what you’re saying…. We all want him to be really good. These previews are such a tease!
So, one thing about Magneto that i appreciate is how you can build him around readies a bit like Rogue with her jacket. With Magnetic Pull, you are likely to boost either Atk or Thw, and you can focus on the one you boost and ready up easily with Utopia in any aspect. Also, depending on what you're building for, you can focus on a particular trait, like Strength Agg builds with Jarnbjorn
Rogue is a good comparison for that! In some ways even, I think Magneto feels like a hero from early on in the game's life. Not as strong of a special gimmick as many new heroes, but that leaves him free to build with great flexibility
I am more excited for Magneto than I have been for any hero ever released. An absolutely legendary comic book figure, I always thought he was vastly more popular and influential in the comics than Beast, so I am thoroughly perplexed as to why seemingly everyone else wanted Beast over Magneto. To be fair, Beast would be cool for sure, but in my personal opinion Magneto is on an entirely different level in terms of overall influence. I also think he's an excellent choice given the timing of the X-Men 97 show. As for the kit itself, I love what I see. For one, the lack of an obvious deck building 'solution' I think is far more interesting than if there were some obvious lane in which to stuff him in. Secondly, I think the theme is fantastic, pulling those magnet cards out of his deck? So on point. Shredding an enemy and using their metallic remnants to make some impromptu armor? Epic. Ripping some horrendous and dangerous weapon out of the enemy's hands? Awesome. In terms of the deck, I actually absolutely will not put the Digging Deep or White Fox in. Digging Deep is wild, which I do not want, as it does not help his armour, and White Fox is not thematic enough (to me, he is the real leader of the X-Men, and my puritanical take on this precludes me from considering non-X-men allies). What I am seeing here is perhaps the first hero to really lean into dramatically increasing the deck density with magnetic (and presumably very good, on average) cards and allies. I will augment this with X-Mansion and a full set of Mutant Education, coupled with Weapon X. Increasing the Magnetic/Signature density of the deck will largely mitigate cards lost due to discard effects by way of Weapon X and Magnetic Pull. Running him in leadership, especially with allies like the new absurd 3-thwart New ally, I suspect threat can be fairly easily managed. Flipping down and stacking the deck could yield great rewards when going back up to hero. Since Asteroid M heals for 1, this perfectly offsets Weapon X. So from alter-ego, he draws to 7, flips (I'll have Moira as well) going to 8, then Magnetic Pulls to 9. Being able to recur allies is, of course, tremendously powerful, so someone like Pixie getting shuffled back in and made available again on the same deck pass seems very, very good. As noted elsewhere too, having his helmet, X-Gene, and Deft Focus all available should allow him to easily play multiple magnetic cards per turn. He may take some time to spool up to full throttle, but goodness gracious once he does, I suspect he will be a powerhouse. I am beyond excited for Magneto; November will feel like Christmas to me.
Wow thanks for the in-depth comment! I think, for Beast, it comes down to him being one of the original X-Men, heavily featured in art throughout these expansions, and more traditionally thought of as a hero while Magneto is better known for being a villain. I felt like Beast deserved it. But Magneto is, as you say, a legendary comic character and fantastic. I am still very happy with him as the last mutant hero for a while. Regarding the deckbuilding, the thing I would say is that there is a difference between an obvious solution and interesting hooks. Sometimes the latter strays too close to becoming the former, but the problem without any real hooks is that it typically means decks gravitate to just taking the generically strong cards everyone uses. For the X-Men, this basically means a bunch of X-Men allies. You can choose to build differently of course, but I do like some unique interactions. Still, as I say in the video, we have loads of unrevealed cards so I'm sure there will be something. Something to note about his Armor is that, in my opinion, drawing Digging Deep is worth much more than +1 to a stat in most instances unless you're running multiple ways to ready. Especially early game to aid with setting up. It's a little bit like his Armor having a 4th option which says "Generate a Wild for your next card played" which I think would make wilds extraordinarily desirable for him. But we'll see. The different approaches we can discuss is already a good sign for some fun options. At the end of the day, those unrevealed cards will surely shake up all our perceptions. As it stands, it's fantastic to get Magneto as a hero and I am looking forward to playing him!
@@VillainTheory You've made me consider possibly adding Digging Deep (although I typically don't build for fast, explosive starts. I generally am comfortable with the idea of having to navigate a full two deck passes before even being ready to begin a proper assault). Some of my most effective (highest win-rate) decks rely on reloading the deck with key pieces, effectively increasing not only the number of key cards per deck pass, but the probability with which they appear; the idea of having a hero in Magneto who embraces that excites me very much. As for Beast, yes you make some good points, although I'm certain he will show up some day. In terms of the notion of 'interesting', to me the complete lack of any obvious path with him is, by definition, what makes him so interesting to me (I felt similarly about Deadpool; his signature cards didn't immediately scream to me a single solution). Overall, I believe this type of preliminary analysis so early in his reveal cycle, at the very least, speaks to potential. Great work Villain; I much appreciate your analytical approach to the game. Cheers!
My few initial thoughts (although as you said, not that much has been revealed): - he should be quite ok power wise, but does not have any strong (obvious) synergies - should be ok for true solo - 2 or 3 THW and probably can draw thwart event quite often - since article mentioned all cards are magnetic, I expect no signature ally - I think from the side of deck building most decks will be very vanilla, for example I would not want to make a deck with many important 1-off upgrades, too much risk of discarding them and not drawing magnetic cards is too much of a pay off, so I guess most decks will be fairly simple, just put some strong cards together and go, also probably it might be a good idea to run some redundancy i.e. run 2 copies of Uncanny X-Men in case 1 gets discarded by Magnetic Pull
Agreed on basically all of that. I already typically run 2-3 Uncanny X-Men's in most decks for example - but for Magneto, that's going to be even more important. Great points!
They used a unique piece of art for the preview image at the top of the article which shows a shield around Magneto blocking some incoming lasers. Seems like a very strong indicator that Magnetic Bubble will be included.
Wow fantastic spot! They used the art from Nightcrawler's defense event in the same place in his article, so it stands to reason you're 100% right. Thanks for sharing this!
Magneto's armor really gets me thinking about the design economy here. Instead of having three cards, like in the magik deck, we have one card. And also, there's your observations of how the villain cards overlap with the hero cards. Obviously, educated by the designers explicitly drawing upon that. Good video.
It's definitely very interesting how his Armor differs to Magik's upgrades. Hers do have extra perks, though I suppose the steady is found here on Magneto's helmet. I'd love to discuss the design in detail with the designers one day if I could!
What is your prediction for the next campaign/wave setting? My prediction is maybe with the Midnight Sons video game being popular and talk of a while now the MCU setting up for a Midnight Sons movie. I would love to see Ghost Rider and Blade come in a Campaign and do a wave of random heroes that don't really fit in a team type wave or Fantastic Four Campaign with all 4 heroes coming in the campaign box with a wave of random heroes that don't really fit in a team.
I'm expecting Fantastic Four next. I think they'll follow the same formula as before. Standalone box, then a new trilogy. Though I'd be happy to see them break that.
"I'll take 2 scoops of X Men" had me laughing! Haha little sad to see the big bad enemy turned into a rather standard hero. I think the thwart card should remove 4, the ability is good tho VERY situational (removing last threat AND having an attachment, 2 conditions). Also $100 says he will have an attachment (theme from this wave).
The attachment thing is interesting! Bishop, Magik and Jubilee don't appear to so I'm not convinced he will. ...But magnetic stuff does make sense for attachments. We'll see! I'm excited either way to see what else he has
I think he's going to be enjoyable. But if I'm being honest, his none hero cards are what really excites me about this pack. Cyclops and Jean are interesting. And deft focus reprint is great. I actually think his deck has the potential to be one of the better pre-cons in the game. I do believe there will be some good decks with him in each aspect, which will be good. But I don't know that any his decks will be game breaking. And that's fine. But for now, that's all just speculation. I'm excited either way. If a bit disappointed, we didn't get beast.
As all of Magneto's cards have the Magnetic trait. This makes White Fox relatively worse as you will discard less cards each time you use his ability. Also potentially will build over 40 card decks to increase the reliability of his armour :)
As symealleon pointed out in another comment, his ability is a bit like Ms. Marvel's alter-ego ability. And I think White Fox is pretty good in her. I think the risk of it missing is generally worth the absolutely insane value of a 3 hp ally for free sometimes. Especially if you combo it with other effects like Domino or Goldballs. Building over 40 cards is interesting. I don't know if the Armor stat boosts are worth it exactly but it will be fun to play around with and, if his other cards synergize with that, absolutely!
If you hit the all the kickers on His Armour then Go All Out is doing 9! Yea you lose the 3 ATK but doing 9 in one go is just phenomenal especially in multiplayer. Same with Push Ahead. 9 threat is essential in 3-4 player.
The small catch is that, if you're losing 3 ATK, then the card is really just doing 6 damage. 6 for 3 effective resources (2-cost card) is still good though. But it gets worse if your Armor doesn't hit everything reliably which will sometimes be inevitable. With all that said and done though, Push Ahead is thwarting which can be duplicated with Overwatch with some teamwork. That's huge.
Magneto hero pull ability should be looked at with Kamala Khan Teen Spirit ability. They are basically the same. We can evaluate how effective that ability using her. They also share similar support of Asteroid M and Amir Khan. It’s an interesting thought.
Definitely interesting. I think it differs slightly in that one is hero form, and one's card draw benefits from a signature resource generator and cheap trait-locked resource generators. Which is to say, I think Magneto's is better and means more Magneto cards drawn will be played than Ms. Marvel cards drawn (which often become resources). But the similarities are 100% worth exploring. Amir and Asteroid M is a great comparison I didn't think about. It reminded me a little more of Logan's Cabin with +1 cost for +1 healing each use. I like how Amir lets you play with the order of your deck and I think Magneto could really benefit from that. Once low enough, you could practically guarantee what Magnetic Pull would find/what resources his Armor would benefit from. Great shout - makes me wish he gets something more similar honestly
I'm 99% certain you mentioned this, but I was doing work while "watching in the background": Magneto will likely have some minion control type card(s) also.
I talk a little near the end about how his villain attachment card, Wrapped in Metal, could be converted into a hero card that affects minions and stops them! That's about as close as I got! Magnetic Missile could also hit a minion just like the encounter card version too, hm...
I thought about including that. I wasn't certain if he needed it with his own two ways to shuffle things in - the more magnetic stuff you put back on, the less consistency getting boosts from his armour. It's odd! But worth testing/seeing what his other cards are.
Glad to see Magneto. Was hoping to see Aerial but I guess he technically isn't flying. I do think that we are missing a defence event (2 copies) and possibly some deck /discard manipulation event (maybe named Master of Magnetism like his encounter). Looking at his villain kit Wrapped in Metal could be an interesting port over to hero abit like webbed up it can work for one turn but prevent either the next attack or a scheme and then be discarded
They could always add an upgrade (or an event) that gives him Aerial, but I don't think that what he does matches Aeriel well. The Aerial trait seems to be more about agility and proficiency when above the ground rather than simply the ability to fly.
Fingers crossed on Aerial. I think he deserves it. As Sam says, if Iceman can get Aerial then Magneto 110% should. Let's hope they didn't forget about it!
Definitely going to play him in Leadership with Uncanny X-Men the most. Like you said, pretty much almost anything could work with him, but there are just so many powerful X-Men allies now, especially with now with Phoenix and Cyclops. I'm curious of his remaining cards too. The X-Men/Mutant trait is now so good, that a hero with those only needs to be "decent" to be very good. X-Gene, X-Jet, he has his own resource generator and he can also use Deft Focus because he has some cards with Superpower trait. He also has a +1 effective hand size as well because of his hero ability. I'm pretty satisfied with his cards so far. On the side note, I wouldn't have minded Beast, but I'm happy it's Magneto (I don't prefer either over the other).
This is a fantastic point I should have brought up. I do think a resource gained is worth more than a +1 most of the time - but that starts to change if you built into readying.
It almost seems like there must be some more interesting cards in his kit, but it baffles the mind that they wouldn't preview some of the cooler cards in the pack. This preview makes him seem kinda boring and generic.
