Dear Readers,
Heroes come in all sorts. Some lead from the front, all heroic charges and bolts of lightning. Some rule the skies, all lasers and rocket pods. Others use their mind to create technological marvels and immense deductive skills. Of that group, some use their high intelligence and skills from the shadows in order to incapacitate and eliminate the evils of this world from the shadows. Natasha Romanoff is one such hero. A terrible foe for the unprepared, The Black Widow is a former Russian asset turned S.H.I.E.L.D Agent and Avenger. However, today I don’t care about either of those factions. Today we look at using this new core set addition in Web Warriors as a tough as nails character to turn the lights out on your opponent.
The Stats
Before we jump into the stats, I wanted to restate the three rules I have for what I look for in a Web Warriors model inclusion at the moment:- Extract Play - Web Warriors excel at Extract play with their multiple methods of stealing or forcing drops of extracts for your opponent's models.
- Durability - Web Warrior models should be more durable than your average bear. This is why Black Panther and Crimson Dynamo have found their way into many Web Warrior lists and any model with Damage Reduction of any kind are nightmares with Miles.
- Mobility - Web Warrior models need to be able to move and book it, because there ain’t nothing more durable than just not being there.
Please keep these rules in mind as you gaze upon The Black Widow’s stats.
The first thing that stuck out to me was her passive ability All That Matters is the Mission. Being able to replicate Nick Fury Jr’s grunts ability is amazing on any model and has high potential to ruin your opponent’s day when they are trying to daze or kill Natasha for extract gain. Except, she isn’t disposable like the grunts are and her defensive capabilities seem to be through the roof. She has 3 abilities to keep her safe in Stealth, Martial Artist, and Calculated Risk. Your opponent is going to have to keep their ranges in mind when attacking her, which gives you more control of the board as you play in order to better keep the enemy off of secures if they want to maximize their damage against her. However, looking at her defensive potential, I went back to JARVIS over at Xavier Protocol’s and put in the most common attack type in the game last I checked - Range 2 5 dice physical attacks. Under Miles, this is what came up for the results:
Our orange bracket is your average R2 5 dice physical attack into Natasha under Miles. You will have roughly a 71% chance of taking no damage from the jump. If things go poorly and you have 2 power (which she has a flat gainer that also stuns, so you probably will) then you are now looking at a 76% chance of no damage.
Why this is important is because we haven’t included the following potential additions to this equations: Attack 2 does not include Mile’s Leadership, shock, or attack rerolls from Amazing Spider-Man/Crimson Dynamo. You opponent, from the jump you are already looking at being safe with a minimal chance of taking only 1 damage. But if you look at Column 3, you will see that your opponent in this scenario if they shoot both attacks at Natasha has a greater than 50% chance of just dealing no damage whatsoever. I cannot stress how important that is for Web Warriors to just hold onto objectives and survive. It is a great equalizer in the points war and creates frustration for your opponent. While I want the game to be fun for everyone, do not discount the importance of causing frustrating scenarios for your enemies as it can lead to hyper fixation (which Widow seems from these numbers more than ready to handle) or misplays.
We have not even talked about how Martial Artist also counts blanks for energy attacks or how Calculated Risk also deals with Mystic attacks. This is just the most common attacking type being severely hampered by her defenses and requirements for closer combat.
In addition, she is able to hand out Shock, thus increasing her durability even further.
But the final and my favorite part of her kit is her speed. She is a long mover, which is always nice, but she also has a medium move built into her spender. This to me is a huge benefit as it allows her to dance around the map and contest different secure objectives easily and she may be able to just outright out speed opponents, especially on turns like All Webbed Up where you are hopefully slowing a good chunk of your opponent’s key models.
But I know what you are thinking, what about models like Malekith? He is a Whopper Deluxe of Whoop Ass! What can he do to our Widow? Minimal damage. Don’t believe me? Early game Malekith needs power to get his pain train out of the station, but here is what he is doing to The Black Widow without his dice manipulation:
You have roughly a 57% chance of taking 1 or less damage if your opponent is saving their power. While Malekith is gaining 2 power a turn, if he is charging turn 1 due to Advance R and D he has no power to follow-up with crit manipulation. After which, you just run away. Malekith has a few key weaknesses, all of which lie in Web Warrior’s wheel house - Stagger, Models that count Blanks, and Models that are just faster than him. Limiting Malekith’s ability to punch you in the head removes his ability to do anything at all, which means your opponent spent 7 threat just to run around the map chasing you. Might as well have played Mario Kart instead if we wanted to play colorful chase.
The Black Widow hits all three of my key components of a great Web Warriors model and, in my opinion, her only real competition is Black Panther who also has a long movement and has a guaranteed push on size 3 or smaller. The downside for Panther is that once he is on his injured side he no longer benefits from counting blanks and has to pay to add additional dice to his defense pool whereas the only thing that changes for Natasha on her injured side is she is Health 5 instead of 6.
This isn’t to say she is invincible. Good dice spikes happen and if you play her like she will never take damage then she is going to crash and burn faster than my dreams. But when used, I think Natasha is going to be a wonderful addition to your lists.
Natasha is also able to assist her fellows with her new Team Tactics Card in the Core Set by giving them an out of activation small advance, which is pretty big when you have a high value model that needs to run away from the fight or needs just a little bit of additional movement to get to their next secure rotation.
Some Ideas
I am still in my early phases of creating lists, but I have been thinking of good core team comps for Natasha to run on that may help you guide your future endeavors.Miles, Amazing Spider-Man, The Black Widow, Ghost Spider or Black Cat - This team at 15 is hard to kill with the amount of defensive tech and potential stealth found across the models. You have more durable models in Miles Morales (Stealth and Spider-Sense+Leadership), Amazing Spider-Man (Witty Banter and Mastered Spider-Sense), and The Black Widow (Stealth, Martial Artist, and Calculated Risk). In addition, you have 1-2 extract steals or a few ways of removing opponents off of points (Webline Kick throws and Gwen pulls) depending on what your opponent has brought to the field or what your scenarios happen to be.
Miles, The Black Widow, Ghost Spider/Black Cat, Spider-Woman, and 2 of choice (Wong or Toad are my favorites) OR Miles, Amazing Spider-Man, Spider Woman, and The Black Widow - Depending on what you are looking for at 16 you can run a bit taller or wider. Either way, having a minimum of 3 stealth characters, 2 with martial artist, 2 minimum with enemy forced extract drops, and a myriad of status conditions to limit your opponent’s capabilities make this a hard team to deal with, especially on a wider secure map as you are now dealing with up to 3 long movers who are all tough to deal with.
The higher up you go the more toys you can include. Crimson Dynamo and Amazing Spider-Man with Natasha is 14, but this also allows you to still put out Miles and another 3 Web Warriors characters to keep your affiliation bonus which allows you a squad of stupidly defensive units with multiple sources of shock and negative benefit rerolls for your opponent. 19 allows you to cut Dynamo to play the Gwen Cat tag team to keep your opponent out of sync with their own plans by tugging characters out of position and staggering them.
All in all, I am very excited to test The Black Widow with Web Warriors and I think that she is going to become a quick staple for the faction once the new core box hits.
Till next time Webslingers
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