Character review – Ms. Marvel

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We’ve now looked at both the Hulkbuster and Magik, so today we are going to be doing a dive into the character card for Ms. Marvel! We saw her character card quite early in the Ministravaganza, so some people might of missed it with all of the reveals of the X-Men and the Juggernaut.

Kamala Khan was once a normal girl in New Jersey – and she was obsessed with the career of Carol Danvers, who we all know as Captain Marvel. When she was a teenager, a cloud of Terrigen Mists fell on the Jersey Shore, and like all of the other Inhumans, this had varying effects on her. She found she now had morphogenetic abilities that let her regenerate, alter her physical state and elongate her limbs. In a nod to her childhood hero, she donned the title Ms. Marvel.

To show her abilities to alter her body, Ms. Marvel has two halves to her character card that she can Transform between. On the left we have her in her ‘Normal’ form, and on the right we have her ‘Embiggened‘ form. I’ll go through her basic stats, and then do her Normal forms Attacks and Superpowers, followed by her Embiggened ones.

But wait… What is a transform?

So before we dive in I’m just going to quickly go over the Transform mechanic. This was first introduced when Ant-Man and the Wasp were released, and it was a mechanic that let us see Ant Man shrinking down to size and the Wasp going super small. So, when an effect or Superpower causes a character to Transform, you follow these steps;

Firstly you place the miniature for the new Form the character is Transforming into on to the battlefield within one of its current position.

Secondly, you remove the Transforming character’s original miniature. It is now represented on the battlefield by the new Form that has just been placed.

A character that Transforms is still the same character, so any effects, special conditions, or tokens on it remain when it Transforms. Some models become smaller when they transform, and some, like Ms. Marvel, become much bigger. They might have different stats or abilities in their different forms, and there are a few different advantages to it. Now that we all know how transforming works, lets dive into Ms. Marvels card! You may have to zoom in a little, as the format of her card means it is slightly smaller than usual.

Ms. Marvel

So starting off by looking at her stats, she is a three threat hero who has five health. In both of her states she has a medium move, although whilst she is in her normal state she is size two, and when she is embiggened she is size four. Her defences are slightly above average for a three threat character, as she has a decent 3/4/3. The extra energy defence dice is always welcome, and the average stats for the others means she has a well rounded set of defences.

Ms. Marvel – Normal

Attacks

Ms. Marvel only has one attack in each of her forms – and in her normal form this attack is Morpho-punch. It’s a range four physical attack that costs zero power, and rolls four dice. Before damage is dealt to the target, if you rolled a Wild and the target is size two or less, they can be pushed toward this character small. Once this attack is resolved, Ms. Marvel gains one power. This is a pretty weak attack, although range four does give it a decent reach. The trigger of the push can help pull in some back line characters like Hawkeye or Rocket Raccoon that would generally want to try and stay away, but it probably won’t be doing huge amounts of damage. 

Superpowers

Kamala has four Super powers in her normal state. The first superpower, Embiggen, is her only access to the transform mechanic in this state. For three power, Ms. Marvel transforms into Ms. Marvel Embiggened. This can give you a handy bit of placement, as when you transform you place the new model within range one of the first. She transforms onto a bigger base too, so she can cover a small amount of distance to just clutch a secure if needs be. This superpower can only be used once per turn, so you can’t just keep going back and forth between forms.

Her second superpower is Take out the trash. For three power, Ms. Marvel can choose an interactive terrain feature or enemy character, both of size two or less and within range three, and throw them small. This is a pretty standard throw, and although you won’t be able to throw around bigger characters like Venom, you can throw around their smaller friends or just throw cars at them. This Super power can only be used once per turn, which is pretty standard for throws.

Kamala’s third Superpower is the innate power Inhuman. This lets her re roll one die in both her attack and defence re rolls. This boosts her defensive capabilities, and adds a little bit more reliability into her basic attack. This is a great Superpower that all of the Inhumans have, and it can really make a difference across the game. Her last superpower is simply immunity (Poison) which again is standard to all Inhumans. This is pretty useful on Kamala as I already feel she is quite power hungry, and doesn’t have any great ways of building power.

Ms. Marvel – Embiggened

Attacks

In her larger state, Kamala still only has one attack – High five. This is a zero cost, range three physical attack that rolls… Five dice. After the attack is resolved, Kamala gains power equal to the damage dealt. This feels a little underwhelming, as although Kamala has access to some re rolls, it is still only five dice.

Superpowers

Kamala’s first Superpower in her larger form is the Inhuman innate power. Again, one reroll on both attack and defence rolls is really solid, and will make some difference over the course of the game.

Her second Superpower is Morphogenetics. This helps make her slightly underwhelming High five attack a bit better, as if the target character is small than the now size four Ms. Marvel, she gets to reroll two of her attack dice. Additionally, this Superpower means that at the end of her activation she transforms back into Normal Ms. Marvel. This means you’ll have that extra place at the end of her activation, but it also means that you can never just stay in the Embigenned form ready for the next turn.

Polymorph is Kamala’s third Superpower, and it is simple yet great. Polymorph means that Ms. Marvel can interact with objective tokens within two of herself rather than the normal one. This combined with the Medium move on a large base means that Kamala has quite a long reach, and can then transform backwards away at the end of her activation. The only other character we have seen with this is Toad, although there is now a tactics card that gives you a similar ability.

Her last Superpower on this side is simply Immunity (Poison). In her bigger state Kamala isn’t as worried about power as she actually has nothing at all that she can spend it on. It’s a nice immunity to have and means she won’t fall victim to Omega Red shenanigans, and it also means that she won’t be limited on power when she goes back into her smaller form.

Overall for me Ms. Marvel’s character card is very lack lustre. The fact that both of her forms have no real spender means I don’t ever see her doing huge amounts of damage, as even though High five will usually be a five dice attack with three rerolls against smaller targets, it’s still not great. I don’t really understand why the Embiggened form loses out on the Throw, and just wish there was a little more to either form.

Her movement abilities with the transform and then ability to interact at range two means she might be pretty useful as an objective runner, but outside of that she feels a little underwhelming. She has got some funky team tactics cards which were revealed during the Ministravaganza, and I’ll cover them in a post shortly. In Inhumans Kamala should always have the power to transform, and in Steve led Avengers she’ll really like the cheaper transform. I’m not too sure what other affiliations she will fit into, but having an affiliated Inhuman is always great for cards like the Inhuman royal family.

As always please leave a thumbs up if you enjoyed reading, or a thumbs down if you didn’t! Please comment with any thoughts you have on Ms. Marvel and where you might be trying her out! Board in Brum still currently has some sales on, including the Inhumans leader Black Bolt and his wife Medusa, which you can find here!

If you’re looking to expand your roster with some new Heroes for Hire, or take the dive into Marvel Crisis Protocol – Check out Board in Brums Marvel section here, for all the MCP goodness you need! Thanks again for reading!