First Impressions - Black Swan

 

Dear Reader,

Today we have been blessed with a preview of the lovely Black Swan, and I am here to give you my first impressions of this deadly member of the Black Order. But, before we start with any impressions, let's start with the stats.

 

The first things that pop out to me are that she has a nice defensive spread with 4/4/3 and 6 HP on both sides for 4 threat is not bad at all. She has size 2 which is pretty standard for most characters so no surprise there along with a medium move. Having flight makes her more mobile than most characters which goes hand in hand with her ability to charge.

She seems to be an offensive juggernaut with her ability to auto-incinerate her opposition with a pierce tacked on to boot with her Eye Laser attack for 1 power and two control options in her other attacks in the form of a push and a throw respectively. I kind of wish she had a superpower that would allow a push or throw as well, but Black Order is an offense oriented team, so it makes sense that she would need to actually be attacking her opponent to get her control elements going.

She is able to take the Power Gem, which of course puts her up to 5, but also allows for a Charge and Eye Laser every turn, to make her more survivable, or to further barrel through enemy defenses with Telepathic Suggestion. I personally think you are going to find a lot of people attaching the Power Gem to her to make sure her she is AKS (Always Killing Something). I think that it is also important to note that this gives her the ability to hunt down targets who may have multiple objectives, daze or kill them, and potentially still be able to pick up all of the dropped objective tokens. In a game that is focused on scoring, she has a great potential to swing turns with 3 power generated in a faction where if you focus her you may be getting knocked around by the likes of Corvus or Thanos. I think this creates interesting paradoxes for your opponents to figure out. Do you go for Black Swan who is killing people left and right and can pick up objectives or do you go for Corvus who is super killing people left and right and potentially picking up objectives? It is something your opponent is going to have to figure out while also making sure that they have hit your characters hard enough to daze or kill them lest they just get healed and then turned into paste the next turn.

How I imagine I will feel when I field Black Swan

I will say it now, Everything Dies is potentially my favorite spender in the game. It is so cinematic in its execution and the fact that you can throw Dormammu into someone with it is amazing. Don’t even get me started on the fact that it is an omnidirectional throw and not just away, and the fact that she is more than likely going to get 2 attacks out of this spender for the cost of 1 is, to put it bluntly, amazing. Going to have to give the Chef’s Kiss here for this spender. This is only ramped up when you allow Thanos to give her even more dice. The best part, she can reliably do this on turn 2 if you give her the Power Gem (more on this later) If you really need your opponent to die, you can Eye Beam to incinerate into an Everything Dies for a potential 18 dice thrown over 2 attacks on an incinerated opponent where 2 of the dice pierce and you have Oscorp Tech (the ability to reroll one of your opponent’s defense dice) on demand for a power.

She also has a charge, which is amazing. Any sort of action economy is good. It is even better for a team who’s sole focus is to play the time old game of Murder Death Kill. Black Swan being able to to move and attack, and that attack not be limited to her builder is very good. The fact that with with the Power Gem she is able to charge every turn makes me very happy as it keeps Black Swan doing what she wants to do: killing everything around her. It also allows her better movement to take the fight to the opponent, which means a hop skip and jump onto a point and a double attack is not out of the question. If it is a pay to flip you can always attempt to push the enemy off of the point or if you are looking for ultimate murder you can eye laser into a strike with a push on a now incinerated opponent. Most characters with a charge utilize them well, but for some reason Black Swan just seems to be the actual best at what she does with it (suck it Wolverine). I mean, comparing the two is like night and day. Sure, Wolverine counts Wilds double. Black Swan is able to do any attack she would like while Wolverine is locked into an Adamantium Slash. It just seems like you really can't compare the two considering you may never get a wild on the charge with Wolverine. The odds of getting a wild are 12.5%. So you may get 1 Wild, 2 if you are lucky statistically. You are paying one additional power on a character who doesn't generate power well to get one or two more successes. Meanwhile, Black Swan is acting like a race car from hell eye beaming people to death. I am just saying, Black Swan wins here for just one more threat or even at the same threat level. 

So, enough gushing about how good her stats look. Let’s talk about some faults. Her lack of DR 1 is unfortunate. I mean, it was kind of expected considering Ebony Maw doesn’t have it, but it still is a blow against her in a faction that is known for frustrating your opponent’s attacking stats. In addition, as I said earlier, any control that she does have is bundled into attacks. While this may not seem all that bad, it does mean that you are a bit more limited on some maps in how you operate. This may be addressed with a potential new leadership coming in with First of the Black Order TTC (which, pleeeeeeaaaasssseeee be the next reveal), but as it stands now there is no control without possibly giving your opponent power, which means you are going to really need to burn down the enemies that need to die early to gain your advantage. Not that Black Order doesn’t do that well already, but it is something to consider. Outside of those two things I think she is going to find a really nice home in Black Order and possibly in other offensive lists. Can you imagine her in Spider Foes with Oscorp Tech just erasing your enemy’s ability to defend themselves. I am already getting goosebumps.

I think she is going to play really well into pay-to-flip scenarios with her high defenses and access to more power than your average bear and with Black Order’s love for slow scoring single scenarios as it is exceptionally hard to keep away from her.

It is going to be very interesting to me as to who you take now as it seems that Black Order has two characters that you are essentially going to staple a gem to make them a 5 threat. I feel that Corvus and Swan are going to be fighting for the same position on the team as a hard hitting 5 threat and I will need to run the numbers to see who comes out on top. It may be that you take both in your list and use them for certain scenarios. I can see Corvus still being your go-to Murder Alley Hobo while Swan being your B/D + Pay-to-Flip Scenario go to. But, again, it is going to depend on what Super Giant does and what their TTC do. Either way, Black Swan is an exciting addition to Marvel Crisis Protocol’s hardest hitting and salt producing faction.

Till next time Webslingers