Affiliation Overview: Legion of the Lost (updated)

 

Why should you play the affiliation 

If this isn't enough of a reason I don't know what is. Mephisto is an awesome character and this affiliation is him turning everyone into a Ghost Rider and controlling them like he does in Doctor Strange: Damnation. If you want to fully commit to it you could convert an entire Legion of the Lost list but of course that's not a necessity. 

On the board LotL is another of the "everyone is affiliated" affiliations and offer incredible flexibility. And having a very good 5 threat leader with this freedom means it can be very strong, too. 

How to start the affiliation 

As this is another of the “everyone is affiliated” factions your only required purchase is Mephisto himself. After him you can really get whoever else you like. Owning a core set is of course never a bad idea.

If you really want to show that you’re playing LotL you can kitbash every character you have in your roster with a Ghost Rider head. If you haven’t read Damnation, but have acces to Marvel Unlimited: go read it now, it’s great! And Sam, T’Challa, Clint Barton, Carol Danvers and especially Jane Foster look awesome as Ghost Rider puppets of Mephisto in it. (See above)

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

This leadership is… weird. You force your opponent to select one of their models to get incinerate but they do gain a power for it. And then you get to give a power each to two of your characters. Meaning going tall will usually be the way to go with the affiliation.

Extra power and burning opponents probably play into a type 3 – 4 game plan the best (so murder basically). 

Type 1: Pure Scenario team, as many VPs on the table as possible and try to win by scoring out as early as possible and with as little engagement
Type 2: Midrange Scenario team. Similar to Type 1 but can fight and chase if necessary
Type 3: Midrange Attrition team. Wants to be the beatdown but can shift to scenario play if the other side is clearly the beatdown.
Type 4: Pure Attrition team. Wants to murder you as quick as possible. Tabling is a possible and achievable goal here, but not the only way to win (they mostly score their points and deny yours by virtue of your models being dazed or KO'ed)

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

None really. As the leadership is tied to Mephisto, Lord of Temptation not even a new version of Mephisto would be able to use it.

Rating every affiliated TTC and Character 

Team Tactics (1+3)

Devil‘s Reckoning

B-. The leadership doesn’t immediately stand out as being super good, but for the state of the game as a whole that is definitely a good thing. You really don’t want these “everyone is affiliated” leaderships too be especially great.

The next three are all unaffiliated but Mephisto character cards and since you’ll play him every game we take a quick look at them, too

A-. Especially here in LotL where you are highly likely to have some big scary bruisers alongside Mephisto the threat of having one of them activate again should be high enough to basically guarantee the heal and additional power for Mephisto Option is chosen by your opponent. He spends the power well so gaining 3, healing and removing special conditions for basically no cost is good.

C+. This is probably the Mephisto Card I like the least and it is even lower here in LotL where you have such easy acces to Incinerate anyway. It notably also let’s the allied character reroll “all” not “any” attack dice which is the much worse version of the effect.

A. My favourite of the Mephisto cards and the one I would play in every game with him usually. You can simply play this whenever you would damage an enemy character without much risk of the opponent picking the “wrong” option. You just get the card back if you don’t want to remove the activated token on Mephisto.

A-. Mephisto isn’t going to be your overwhelming damage dealer every game but he teleports himself and his allies around the board quickly and will be very hard to actually put down. Also getting a couple of Deals tokens on him isn't super difficult so 8 dice beams aren't super hard to get off either. 

Popular Splash Characters for the affiliation 

Everyone here is a splash. But wgat you'll definitely want is some characters that you can shunt attacks into with Mephisto. 

Example Roster 

Characters (10)

* Mephisto, Lord of Temptation (5)

Abomination (5)

Frankenstein‘s Monster (4)

Sabretooth (4)

* Nick Fury (4)

N‘Kantu, the Living Mummy (3)

Pyro (3)

Weapon X (3)

Black Dwarf (4)

* Loki, Prince of Lies (5)

Team Tactics (10)

Brand New Day

Devil‘s Reckoning

Eye In The Sky

Giant‘s Blood

Hideous Monster

Happy Birthday, Runt!

Pyrotechnics

Up the Ante

Brace for Impact (R)

Sacrifice (R)

Secure Crisis

Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest (E, 15)

Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse (C, 19)

Infinity Formula Goes Missing! (B, 17)

Extract Crisis

Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)

The Montesi Formula Found (E, 18)

Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)

Comic recommendations 

The Damnation event. It is the founding of the Midnight Sons and the inspiration for this entire affiliation too. And an excellent read. 

That's it for today. Next Up: New Mutants 

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Thank you for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻