Today I want to take a deep dive at the Pros and Cons of doing just that and the different approaches to it, including not doing it at all and also taking two or more leaders of a single faction in your roster and how that impacts the list.
1. Mono Affiliation with a single leader
This is probably the way most lists are created at least at the start and how I personally most often build mine.
The advantages here are that you know beforehand what your leadership will be in any given game and can build a game plan around that leadership from character selection to crisis cards and TTCs. It's also a good way to go if you want to get your Longshanks badges for X games with a given affiliation. Another aspect on the Pro collum of Mono Affiliation (this is a bit regardless of how many leaders of the Affiliation you bring) is that you have more room for Affiliation specific TTCs. And those in turn often get stronger the more affiliated characters you bring in the roster. Typical examples here would be Inhumans with a giant pile of very strong affiliated TTCs that all don't work on splash characters or Guardians of the Galaxy whose card "Galaxy's Greatest" can often be more impactful than the leadership if you've brought enough affiliated models.
The disadvantages here are that you might run into situations and matchups that your list basically can't handle at all or are at least very disadvantaged at it. It also is much easier for your opponent to read your list and expect what you are trying to do. Being locked into one game plan helps you with mental load in turn 0 but it also helps your opponent with theirs.
2. Mono Affiliation with two (or more) leaders
Adding a second (or possibly third or even fourth) leader of your chosen affiliation is getting a real consideration for the majority of affiliations who can nowadays boast at least two. Out of the 28 affiliations currently in the game only 7 of the affiliations, who have more than one member, are left with a single leader option (and Guardians have their second leader on the way finally and it's highly likely that either Nimrod, Bastion, Omega Sentinel or all of them get a second Sentinels leadership).
The advantage here is that you don't need to make room for characters and TTCs of another affiliation but still get the benefit of shifting your game plan quite easy. A classic example of this is Criminal Syndicate. It's very common that a Kingpin led squad is the main plan for those rosters but there will arise occasions where it's basically not worth it to have the leadership on the board. That's mainly on Pay to Flip Secures for example. Luckily CS can boost no less than three other leaders in Shadowland Daredevil, MODOK 2 and Klaw. That means that if forced onto a Pay to Flip you can just shift to a different leader and different game plan, while being able to play the same affiliated models and TTCs.
The disadvantages here are that your affiliated models that excell at your number 1 game plan might absolutely not work at your substitute plan. Kingpin and SLDD want pretty different models in their squads for example. And while CS is a giant affiliation that offers great quality for both of them the overlap is much smaller than you'd want. Same goes for any splash characters you want to bring in. Kingpin loves Juggernaut and Beta Ray Bill for example but neither screams reliable damage dealer which is what Shadowland Daredevil wants to see from his splashes.
So with this approach you have to consider how much you want to water down your primary game plan to be able to bring in the secondary. And it always helps if your secondary leader is a model that works well in the primary plan under the other leader. Sam Wilson in Avengers is a prime example of this. Sam is just such a great affiliated 3 threat that you can and probably should have him in your Avengers roster no matter who your primary leader is. Asgard is another prime example, where the chance is very high, that you could have all three leaders on the field together. This also gives a unique advantage over both mono leader lists and splash affiliations (see below): the timing of when the leadership is chosen.
You only declare your leadership after all models have been deployed. Which both gives you a tactical decision to make once you've got the information and (possibly) keeps your opponent guessing about just what you are trying to do until they can't do anything about it anymore (other than playing the game itself of course).
Special mention: Versatile Strategy
And while talking about Hydra, they can do something with a TTC that no other affiliation can:
It allows you to have two leaderships at once, if your primary leader has been KO'd and you had three on the field initially. Importantly it doesn't change your affiliation, so you still can't play Cabal cards even if you've somehow achieved this.
(Find the forum ruling about it here)
3. Dual affiliating because of characters overlap
Some affiliations have a lot of natural overlap. Almost every member of Hydra is also in Cabal, loads of Midnight Sons are also Defenders, most Spider-Foes are also in the Criminal Syndicate and many A-Force members are Avengers, too for example. Which often makes it easy to "fall" into a dual affiliated list more or less by accident. Is that something you should embrace or ignore? It depends. First you have to decide if theres enough room for the TTCs you'd want for both affiliations. If it is, the question you have to ask yourself is: does it either further my game plan or create a unique shift that lets me be more flexible? If neither is true and maybe your dual affiliation has similar weaknesses to your main one than just let it be. Otherwise there's two different routes:
3.a) same, same but different - the same game plan with a different leader
Sometimes the Affiliation you bring in as a dual has much of a similar game plan and on the board feel to it. A prime example here is Steve 1 led Avengers and A-Force. The leaderships are somewhat similar in creating a power advantage out of thin air for you and thus putting models over the edge of their usual power building economy. This might not always work out exactly the same of course. What bringing in a leader of a different affiliation that has the same basic game plan allows you to do is being more flexible in your squad selections. So when you feel you need to be wider than She-Hulk lets you be, you just play under Steve for example.
Another (very new and so far untested) similar combination is Doctor Strange Defenders with Elsa Bloodstone Midnight Sons. Elsa is a good model for the Strange plan in her own right and she'd allow you to change to a 4 threat leader with a similar game plan of slowing your opponents models down. Here you'd probably decide more based on your opponents list. If it is likely to run pretty wide like Web Warriors you'd bring Elsa and her roots while against tall teams like Asgard Doctor Strange Defenders will have a field day. But you're still doing basically the same thing where the same affiliated pieces and splashes will usually work great under either leader. Doc Ock Spider-Foes in Kingpin Criminals specifically to deal with Pay to Flips while playing basically the same game plan still, is another example of this.
3.b) Flexible Strategy
Here you use the overlap to add a different game plan fast and easy. An example here would be bringing in Sam led Avengers in an Inhumans roster. The overlap is there with Beast, Quicksilver and Ms. Marvel who all work great in both Black Bolt led Inhumans and Sam led Avengers.
Same would go for Green Goblin Spider-Foes in a Kingpin led Criminal Syndicate roster.
This, just like with dual leaders in the same affiliation, mostly makes sense when you feel that your main plan has a specific weakness that the dual affiliation can address.
4. Dual affiliating with a splash affiliation
Nowadays basically the Danger Room Podcast crew way of list building. Here you identify a specific weakness in your main list and splash in an affiliation that's good at dealing with it. Chewy had a Black Order Splash in his 2024 Second Wind run with Apocalypse because he felt Apoc couldn't play E maps and 15 threat (luckily both gone from the game now). Deaton had an Asgard splash of just Bill, Thor and Jane in his Squad Goals Kingpin Criminals, to outfight other type 1 or 2 team where Kingpin might struggle.
You need to be sure enough that you have the space in your roster to add in an Affiliation that you have basically no overlap with in characters. And you definitely should have a clear cut trigger as to when you play the splash affiliation.
This is probably the most competitive focused way of list building where winning the game is more important to you than playing any specific affiliation or models. Which is absolutely fine of course but understandable that many less competitively focused players will not even consider it.
4.a) The one model splash affiliation
Mephisto with Devil's Reconning, Dracula with Thralls of Dracula and Dormammu just on his own take a unique space in the splash affiliation realm because they cost the least investment only taking up one character and maybe one TTC slot. Of course they all very much like dedicated rosters build towards their leaderships much better but if you feel that either of them can fill a specific whole your main list can't it's very easy to just stick them in.
Conclusion:
The biggest upside of having multiple leaders (and sometimes affiliations) is also the biggest weakness of it
What a Multileader list will always do is have your opponent guessing at what exactly it is you will be doing in any given game. But if you haven't spent hours and hours pre planning every possible crisis combination, threat level and opposing list or have already played a tonnes of games with the list, so will you. Anilyzation Paralysis is definitely a thing with this and why I mostly moved away from it. If you can handle to mental load it's probably overall more efficient to do it. Just always have a reason for it. Don't dual affiliate just because you could.
What is your preference? Mono leader single affiliation list? Splash as many affiliations in a list as possible? Or something in between?
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Cheers from Germany 🍻
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