Affiliation Overview: Winter Guard

 How to start the affiliation 

You pick up both of the original Winter Guard boxes in Crimson Dynamo (leader) with Darkstar and Red Guardian with Ursa Major. If you don't own core set 1 maybe look for a Black Widow 1 on eBay and the like or consider getting the Avengers affiliation pack. Both Steve 1 and Iron Man in it are still very relevant characters so it's not a bad purchase anyway (but I'd always look for a deal on core 1 before I'd commit to getting that). 

Speaking of core sets, if you have core set 2, Winter Soldier, Operative isn't a bad piece here but I wouldn't get core 2 specifically to get him for your Winter Guard either. 

And finally you have one of my favourite mutants from the lore, that doesn't quite live up to his fluff on the table in Omega Red. 

What leaderships are available and what is the typical game plan?

Unbreakable Red Line is a very good leadership making any condition based plan against your models that much worse. You want all your models to be effectively Stagger immune? This is the right place for you (doesn't help against Shang-Chi of course). The second part is just seldomly relevant icing on the cake. The leadership doesn't particularly dictate any kind of game plan but Dynamo himself certainly like to fight in the middle of the board. And aside from Black Widow your affiliated models all are firmly on the slower end, so they don't mind being in the middle of the board either. 

Who could be added to the affiliation in the future, especially as leaders

Red Widow features on a TTC and seems the most likely candidate. Chenoborg, Perun and Vanguard are also listed as current members. 

Rating every affiliated TTC and character 

Team Tactics (2+1)

Sovereign Strike

A. Automatic damage is the best kind of damage in this game. Also helps by removing a piece of terrain so it's not getting thrown into your face which is a nice bonus. 

Winter Rush

B. Used to be rather useless when the affiliation was 4 models and is now at least OK when you have three or four affiliated models on the table, especially as they are on average rather slow. 

Comrade‘s Keeper (unaffiliated)

A. Unlike the personal TTCs for Crimson Dynamo, Darkstar and Ursa Major, which I'd all rate as straight Ds sadly, Comrade's Keeper is a card that is basically stapled to Red Guardian and should see play in almost all your Winter Guard matches. 

Characters (7)

Black Widow (2)

B. Original Natasha is a fast objective runner with stealth. Some you really need here so she's gonna be a staple in your list. Her 2 threat also help with splashing for obvious reasons. 

Crimson Dynamo (4)

A. Your leader will be your best and most active affiliates model in 99% of your games. He's a very popular splash as "King of the E Map", too. He doesn't particularly like playing wider secures but he isn't useless on them either. His absolute floor is being a big body that is really tanky and having long range attacks. His ceiling is beaming the enemy team off the board and rerolling all their attack triggers away with his Disruption Field. 

Darkstar (3)

C-. Darkstars kit would be very good if she had any way to reliably pay for it. All of her teleport, defensive shield and also her Gainer are good abilities. But since it is a Gainer she can at max use one of her powers per round if she hasn't taken damage, which, she kind of can't afford. She isn't unplayable but she needs a ramp team to really contribute more than a bit of damage. 

Omega Red (4)

B-. Omega Red is good at guarding a secure and using his healing and damage reduction to not die there, while ideally pulling enemy characters from theirs. Fine slow with no action economy. 

Red Guardian (3)

A. He is a super flexible 3 threat "tank" that has good attacks and displacement on his kit. His TTC is super valuable and he'll basically always have the power to use it, too. 

Ursa Major (4)

B-. One of my trademark controversial takes as I guess many people would have the Bear at C- or even lower. But he isn't as bad as that. Aggressive and Charge make up for his S movement and his Spender is in consideration for being the single best one in the game. It is cheap and an automatic size 4 S character throw before (!) damage is dealt and an automatic Stagger on top of it. The 7 dice are just icing on the cake. From pure effects and numbers Groot's is better with the throw being sizeless and M and having 8 attack dice but he has to pay 5 power to use making it much harder to actually get off. 3 physical defense and no defensive tech outside of his 7/7 health pool is really where Ursa has his problems. He can and will be focused down a lot probably. 

Winter Soldier, Operative (4)

B+. Bucky brings long range fire support, mobility with hit and run and more ways to blow up terrain. He's just a good model. 

Example Roster

Characters (10)

Black Widow (2)

* Crimson Dynamo (4)

Omega Red (4)

Red Guardian (3)

Ursa Major (4)

Winter Soldier, Operative (4)

Baron Zemo (3)

Namor the Sub-Mariner (5)

Taskmaster (3)

Thor, Hero of Midgard (6)

Team Tactics (10)

Sovereign Strike

Winter Rush

Comrade‘s Keeper

Carbonadium Synthesizer

I Am A Baron, After All

Vertical Assistance

Brace for Impact (R)

Sacrifice (R)

Joint Effort

Recalibration Matrix

Secure Crisis

Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest (E, 15)

Mayor Fisk Vows To Find Missing Witnesses (H, 16)

Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? (E, 19)

Extract Crisis

Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)

The Montesi Formula Found (E, 18)

Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)

This roster tries to fight down the middle and brings in Namor and Baron Zemo for the double reroll aura and Thor 2 as a pure damage Kaiju that gets to be Stagger immune with the leadership. 

That's it for today. Next up: X-Force

Cheers from Germany 🍻

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