Elsa Bloodstone Hot Takes

Elsa was revealed today and we've already known she'd have a new leadership for one of my favourite factions, the Midnight Sons. Let's dive right in: 

Legion of Monsters (a name that has me thinking Morbius and Manphibian can't be too far off) is a very interesting leadership. It is super flexible and all three effects you can choose are situationally great. The big and important difference to OG Doctor Stranges leadership Mystic Empowerment , which is probably the closest in comparison to this one, is, that the effect happens automatically. You pay one and either splash damage other characters in 2 of the target, give the target root or prevent damage reduction for the attack. All effects here are very good. But are they good enough to give up Bump? 

Hmm. Maybe sometimes. Bump is just extremely awesome and flexible and this is more pure offense where Bump can help you offensively, defensively and with scoring points. I think you pick this leadership over Bump in the Night in a straight up central fight (though that's when I personally put iHulk on the table and he loves the Bump 🤔).  This honestly isn't a knock on Elsa's leadership. I think a lot of affiliations would absolutely love to have this. It is just a testament to how strong Bump really is. 

OK then if the leadership itself can't put Elsa over Blade what about the rest of her kit? Is she the better leader because of the impact she'll have herself? 

Overall she has a lot of similarities with Blade. She's got the exact same defensive stats and abilities meaning she isn't the obvious answer when you face a lot of Energy attacks as she's just as weak to them as Blade and just as good against Physical and Mystic. 

She has a very good Range 4 builder with awesome triggers on Crit and Wild respectively. Handing out Slow on Crit and Incinerate on Wild. She can combine it with her version of Hit and Run which is confusingly named Run and Gun which would imply that you'd move first but you don't here. 

Her Spender is also pretty cool and super flexible in its cost as it only costs 1 power base and you can choose to pay up to 3 more to increase the number of dice. The Wild trigger here turns of healing abilities for the rest of the round which in some matchups will be super potent and absolutely irrelevant in some others. 

And finally she punishes you for putting conditions onto her which is a very cool and unique ability. Blade can just shake them for power which is probably overall the stronger effect but Elsa might discourage even trying it more.

And finally Elsa can't be advanced or placed by enemy superpowers or Mystic attacks which is super relevant with how prevalent Dracula and Red Skull 3 are in the Meta and Ultron 2 making a strong comeback, too (and of course probably my favourite model in the game Enchantress is also turned off by this). 

Elsa is a Backpoint sitter with good fire support. A role often begrudgingly played by Blade because you can't afford to loose your leadership too quickly when you send him in. So Elsa is much better at that job but is it worth loosing Bump? Maybe that doesn't have to be a decision you make before the game. I could see me running both Elsa and Blade in a squad and maybe bring Versatile Strategy. If and when Blade ultimately goes down you could switch to Elsa, who'll be shooting from relative safety with the combination of Bump and Hit and Run up until that point. And maybe the splash damage or refusing the healing will be the deciding factor then. Two obvious weaknesses with this plan: it gets really crowded at 4 threat with Doctor Voodoo being an almost every game model in affiliation and my Boy Adam also wanting to get onto the board sometimes (although he's realistically probably not all that great). The other thing is that you might not find room for Versatile Strategy in your 5. Because you play Brace, Siege of Darkness and Bats the Ghost Hound in absolutely every game you play as Sons. And speaking of TTCs: Elsa comes with one and it has a strong case for being stapled to her:

Covering Fire gives Elsa a Range 4 classic Baron Zemo Counterstrike with 5 dice once per turn for every enemy attack in Range 4 of her. She has to pay 2 Power in the Power Phase but you'll gladly pay that price for such a big disinecentive to attack any of your models. Having lost a Star-Lord in his own activation to a Zemo Counterstrike just yesterday I can attest that it is really annoying. The card being unaffiliated is also the only reason I'd consider Elsa as a splash. She'd fit in very good in a Trap House Foes list, if she wasn't another 4 threat long range character which that list has already covered well enough. 

Overall I don't think we'll see many solo Elsa Midnight Sons builds (but I've been wrong on those things before) but she is an interesting addition to the affiliation nonetheless. I'll try to get her box on release (but honestly mostly more Man-Thing...) but that is always diffucult here in Germany. So it's much more realistic that I'll have the two end of January releases which sit on hype spot 2 and 3 for me of the packs we already now about at the end of February. Spot number 1 to absolutely no ones shock is the War of Kings Crisis Pack that comes with Gladiator. 

That's it for today. I'm expecting Yondu on Thursday. See you then! 

Cheers from Germany! 🍻

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