What makes a Spender a good Spender?

 

An old common wisdom in MCP was to almost always avoid using a Spender as the trade off wasn't worth it. Getting just a few more dice on the attack but having to pay instead of gaining power could tax your own power economy too hard to be worth it, while the increased damage would power up your opponent. 

Nowadays that has changed quite a bit and a lot more spenders are seen as being very good. But what does make a Spender a good Spender? 

1. Power to Dice conversion 

AMG lately seems to have come to the standard of having a Spender with 7 dice cost 3 power, 8 dice cost 4 power and 9-10 dice cost 5 power. A better conversion rate than this means a Spender might be worth it for the sheer amount of dice gained by the power spent. Spenders with a worse conversion rate need to tick at least a couple of the following boxes to be worth it. 

2. Dice triggers

Dice face triggers, usually wilds, often represent the main reason to choose a Spender over a builder or gainer. How impactful these are varies from spender to spender. Wild throws and staggers are obviously the best triggers to get here. These obviously have the risk of failing to get the trigger. 

3. Guaranteed Triggers

Better than dice (or damage) reliant triggers are automatic triggers like the automatic throw on Vultures spender. Here you basically pay for a character throw that costs an action and has the added bonus of a bucket of dice thrown at the opponent before the throw happens. Even better if the throw is before damage is dealt like with Abomination. 

4. Two actions in one 

Another great way for a Spender to be worth paying for is if it basically consists of two actions in one. It's been in the game from day one on Baron Zemos Steel Rush that has an advance included and on MODOKs Doomsday Chair that includes a free second attack against another character in range 2 to the original target character. These include spenders that have your characters place themselves. Here all of Black Bolt, Abomination and Nova are very interesting because using their spenders takes some pre-planning. 

With Black Bolt you have a lot of control because both his throw (that needs the attack to have done damage) and his place are after the attack is resolved so you can order it in a way you like. Meaning you can throw the enemy character before you place yourself and thus increasing the range you can place or place first and then throw the character to get some distance between Bolt and them. 

Abomination doesn't have this option. His wild trigger throw is before damage is dealt (which is very strong in itself as it will happen regardless of whether you dazed or KO'ed the target character) and his mandatory place is after the attack is resolved so always include the throw in your estimate of where Blonsky will end up on the board. 

With Nova you have to order your attacks in a way where you want to be next to your last target of his beam, and calculate that damage on the last target will push it away from Nova before he places. If you can afford it using Faster than Light with the spender can be helpful to get to the ideal position at the end of it.

In conclusion there's a lot of worthwhile spenders in the game nowadays but that doesn't mean you should use them every time you have the power and the range to do them. You need to decide if the effects or the simple increase in dice will be worth the trade-off. Not gaining but loosing power while potentially gifting your opponent more is always a dangerous path. 

That's it for today.

Cheers from Germany 🍻