Fixing the Guardians of the Galaxy

If you’ve read my last post – The next event! No.2, then you’ll know that I’m currently at an event, trying my best to do well with the Web heads! I’ve tried to set it up so that this article posts automatically at 11.30am, as I would normally post it manually! Nevertheless, lets get started with Fixing the Guardians of the Galaxy!

There is nothing worse than having a favourite character – Who turns out to be a bit lacklustre on the table top. I was so happy to find that Venom was a solid character when I got into the game – He was one of the main reasons I picked up Marvel Crisis Protocol to begin with. Because of this, I feel the pain of those who really want to play Guardians – But can’t justify Winging it.

The Guardians are one of the coolest sets of characters out there. James Gunn’s movies made each character memorable and really brought them to life, from the hilarious Rocket Raccoon to the invisible Drax. With each character being so unique, they make for an interesting group both on the table and in the movies.

Sadly there are some real problems with the Guardian leadership. The Winging it tokens seem like a cool idea, but with how impactful and powerful some Tactics cards have become, it becomes a tall order to be sacrificing them for a couple of re rolls. 

Once per round, for the price of sacrificing one tactics card at the start of a friendly turn, you can choose an allied character and they gain 3 Winging it tokens. These tokens can then be discarded to reroll two attack, defence or dodge dice on that character. Only one token can be discarded per roll, and during the clean-up phase a character loses all Winging it tokens. 

Needless to say, sacrificing one of your five limited team tactics card for this, just doesn’t seem worth it. With the recent clarification to the timing of rerolls, this has made the Winging it tokens even worse, as you have to declare to use them while you are still in the dark about the results of your crits. I do think there is some potential for this to be both a strong and balanced leadership, if we add some text and change things around a bit. This is just my opinion, and how I would possibly try to fix the Winging it leadership.

‘At the start of either players turn, you may choose an allied character and discard a Team Tactic card to use this leadership ability. The chosen character gains up to 3 Winging it tokens. A character can never have more than three Winging it tokens at one time. After rolling attack dice, defence dice or dodge dice, and resolving extra dice from Criticals, a character may discard any number of Winging it tokens to reroll up to 2 of its dice. Additionally, when using Winging it tokens, the chosen character may use them to reroll Failure results. Remove all Winging it tokens from all characters during the Clean-up Phase.’ 

So this is quite a change. First of all, it allows the leadership ability to be used more than once per round, and at the start of either players turn. To stop a character from stockpiling fifteen Winging it tokens, the leadership now specifically limits a model to having a maximum of three at any one point. 

Winging it re rolls can still only be used for Attack, Defence or Dodge rolls, but now happen during the modify dice step. This means the Guardian player has a chance to see what the results of additional dice from Crits being rolled are. The new leadership also allows the character to use any number of Winging it tokens in a roll, for a total of up to six rerolls.

The biggest boost to the leadership is the addition of being able to use the Winging it tokens to reroll failures (Skulls). This can really help to make the rerolls more useful, and make it worth sacrificing a Tactics card. 

These changes make the leadership ability a lot more viable in my opinion. Although you still have to sacrifice a card, and ultimately only have the chance to use the leadership ability five times, when doing so you get much more bang for your buck. 

These re rolls can be used to get out of some really bad situations, where you can imagine one of the Guardians just about managing to pull off some crazy feat, or avoid an untimely death. At the start of the second Guardians movie, the way that Baby Groot innocently dances around as chaos unfolds is what I think of when I here ‘Winging it’.

Overall I think these changes would make the Guardians leadership worth taking, while not making it overpowered. Sure, you could give out three or four sets of Winging it tokens in one round, but that still comes in at a very heavy cost. Whilst on the topic of fixing the Guardians, there is one more thing I’d like to change.

We are Groot

The second change that comes to mind for me is a quick and simple one. I would add to both Rocket and Groot’s cards, the following Innate superpower, ‘We are Groot’

‘This model does not suffer damage from collisions with an allied character that also has this superpower’ 

This rule adds both a bit of flavour and some much needed protection to Rocket and Groot. There’s nothing worse than somebody walking up and ruining Rockets day by throwing Groot at him, simply squashing everyone’s favourite trash panda. I thought about possibly adding this superpower to more of the Guardians, but feel it is better suited as a strong rule which encourages you to bring the Deadly duo. The two are so used to fighting together, it would make sense that they are always aware of each others positions!

Please let me know what you think of these possible changes and how they would affect the Guardians! I’m by no means saying this would make the Guardians perfect and balanced, but I do think these changes might see them a step in the right direction to being more viable as an affiliation.

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If you’re looking to expand your roster or jump in to Marvel Crisis Protocol, Check out Board in Brums Marvel section here, for all the MCP goodness you need. Thanks for reading!