Affiliation Overview: Hellfire Club (rewrite)

 

Why should you play the affiliation 

Emma is awesome and here she brings a group of misfit mutants that are mostly found in the greyish area of good and bad and combines them under a very strong leadership. 

How to start the affiliation 

Your first pick up here has to be Emma Frost and Psylocke. Emma is your only leader option at the moment and Psylocke is an affiliated killing machine, that will probably see the table quite a lot so it's a good starting point. It gets complicated immediately after those two though. I'd grab Angel and Archangel next but you can of course never play them together on the field as it's the same alter ego. Archangel brings a strong team up card with Psylocke but Angel is probably playing more to your usual game plan. Grabbing the Brotherhood affiliation pack and playing the affiliation as a dual affiliated list is probably also a decent idea. It comes with affiliated Magneto and Mystique (who are both Brotherhood leaders) as well as premier splash character Toad and role player Sabretooth who honestly works quite well in Hellfire Club. Mister Sinister is a fantastic character in the lore, a great sculpt and a decent, if not especially great, character in MCP that has a good home here. Basically all of that is true for Omega Red as well. 

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

White Queen's Pawns is a fantastic leadership. Once upon a time it allowed every character to be affiliated and that was so strong that the card had to be restricted. Now with HFC having an actual affiliated roster it is still amongst the best leaderships in the game but no longer restricted. 

It, combined with the native strengths of the affiliated models, promotes a type 2 list build most. 

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? 

Sebastian Shaw is the big an obvious answer here. And I'm 75% we'll see him in the Adepticon reveals and he'll bring more affiliated TTCs. 

I'm also a bit sad, that AMG decided to keep it a mutant only affiliation when all of: Norman Osborne, Tony Stark, Wilson Fisk, Ophelia Sakrissian (Vipers alter ego most likely spelled wrong) have been members of the club for example. 

Rating every affiliated TTC and Character 

Team Tactics (1)

My Hellfire Club 

A. It's your leadership and it is incredibly good. You're not too mad about it taking a slot in your 5. 

Characters (12)

Angel (3)

B+. Angel is fast, can displace and has a healing factor. He's also got a Sacrifice style TTC. Personally I'd run him in every HFC game .

Archangel (4)

B-. Archangel is also fast, can hit like a truck but also dies rather quickly. He's got a fantastic team up card with Psylocke but I feel you can use that trick better in Servants of the Apocalypse or X-Force. 

Cassandra Nova (5)

B-. Cassandra is a fine character. Her biggest issue is mobility which the affiliation doesn't fix however. 

Emma Frost (4)

B+. Emma is a great back point sitter and mystic blaster. Don't even bother to bring her diamond form mini and stat card though. You'll be better off for it in 9 out of 10 times. 

Magneto (6)

D. Magneto needs his own leadership to at least barely work. With E shape secures leaving the game completely he's in desperate need for a glow up. 

Mister Sinister (4)

B-. Sinister is often considered a bad model and I simply don't agree with that. He isn't the best and needs additional power to really work but that's exactly what the leadership gives him. He's also as fast as Angel and the toughest model on the list here. On top of that he brings reliable displacement. 

Mystique (3)

B-. Raven is very fast while Stealth and Martial Artist makes her rather tough. She's pretty much always loaded on power anyway so this isn't her best home here. 

Omega Red (4)

B-. Omega Red is slow but super tough and the leadership helps him quite a lot. 

Psylocke (4)

B+. Psylocke is a fantastic killer with great mobility as well as Stealth and Martial artist. Probably a staple in most of your games here. 

Shadow King (5)

C. My favourite sculpt in the game but sadly probably over corrected after initial play test to be too far below the curve overall. He does fit the overall style here though being very tanky and offering some form of displacement. 

Storm (3)

B+. Storm is just a good 3 threat overall. Her role is a bit filled by Emma already but you won't be mad having her on the table most of the times. 

Sunspot (4)

C+. Sunspot is a fun character to play when you can give him flare tokens at least semi reliably which sadly you really can't here. 

Popular Splash Characters for the affiliation 

Toad (2) 

A. Toad is great in any team that wants to focus on objectives first and this is no exception.

Rhino (4) 

A. Rhino is fast and tough which is Emmas favourite kind of model to have. 

Example Roster 

Characters (10)

Angel (3)

* Emma Frost (4)

Mister Sinister (4)

Omega Red (4)

Psylocke (4)

* Storm (3)

Shadow King (5)

Iron Man (3)

Gladiator (6)

Luke Cage (3)

Team Tactics (10)

Carbonadium Synthesizer

Helios Laser Bombardment

Heroes for Hire

Mind Transfer

My Hellfire Club

Protector of the Empire

Stark Armory

Ultimate Sacrifice

Brace for Impact (R)

Sacrifice (R)

Secure Crisis

Infinity Formula Goes Missing! (B, 17)

Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate (F, 20)

Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (D, 17)

Extract Crisis

Scientific Samples Found in Discovered Universe (D, 17)

Mutant Extremists Target U.S. Senators! (L, 19)

Struggle For The Cube Continues (F, 17)

You can find all the Overviews here.

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Thank you for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻