Team Tournament alternatives 4 - Beta Ray Bill

  

We continue to go through some of the most common splash models in competitive singles lists and try to find some alternatives for them. Today: Beta Ray Bill 

Bill is my most played model in the game by quite a margin. Which shouldn't be a surprise as my two most played affiliations are Asgard and Guardians of the Galaxy. He is absolutely invaluable in bothering bringing the affiliation tag and thus access to the affiliated TTCs to the table on top of his excellent kit. In most games Bill will not be your flashy and exciting activation. But he'll score you one or two VPs on average for every round you play him. His extreme durability, good mobility and access to a size 4 character (and terrain) throw makes him a great plug and play character. The rotation of Eyes on the Prize has really not bothered him in the end as he's just good at standing on the midline and living. And the advance of much more Pay to Flips in people's lists also makes his two power per Power Phase even more valuable. 

I've played multiple games with Venom in Legion of the Lost and he's always been great. He is significantly slower than Bill but has even more displacement and with Web Warriors, Servants of the Apocalypse and Invaders SHIELD running around turning off defensive rerolls for your opponent is a great tech. Venom lacks Damage reduction but makes up for that with a Counter Attack and a Spender that can heal him. Not the first choice but one to keep in the back of your mind especially when your affiliation can help him with movement. 

Is this a joke? Well yes but actually no. Ursa is very far down the power curve (and his official model pretty ugly sadly) and of course nowhere near the power level of Beta Ray Bill. He definitely can't make Bills strongest play of Move, Move, Throw but he can automatically Throw and Stagger a Size 4 or smaller model with his cheap spender. Just make sure Ursa isn't used to power up your opponents models with his bad defenses and high health pool. If you have a team that can somewhat relaibly hand out Stuns to negate that maybe give the Bear a try? 

Automatic Damage Reduction, Charge, good attacks and superpowers. The only things Rouge misses are a character throw that doesn't cost an action and reliable power generation. If you have a way to power he up she's your Gal. 

If you have a Wakanda player on your team (which, looking at my stats articles from the last few months that appears to be a good idea) M'Baku is already taken but if you don't you might want to give him some thought. He isn't super tanky but not super easy to remove either. He needs to hit his triggers to get the most out of so any kind of dice fixing (like his own leadership) are great for him. 

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Lady Sif makes her second appearance in the series. Here it's more for her tankiness with added control. She is just a very good character overall that gets overshadowed by more specialized 4 threats. 

Another character that has a very high chance of being the main leader of one of your players on the team. And rightfully so. And that is usually Mister Fisks only role. He is affiliated with Spider-Foes and Cabal as well but basically never sees play there and absolutely never as a splash. Is he that bad? I really don't think so. He has the same mobility issue than Venom has but he can reduce damage to 0 and has a great throw, Spender and Builder with a decent Beam on top of it and not suffering collision damage from characters is also very good with the amount of throws and pounces in the game, even if Thor 2 shouldn't be the main villain of WTC like last year. (Same for M'Baku above)

Gwenom is very fast and has a good throw combined with OK attacks (which she is very reliant on getting power from) and Spider-Sense with 6/7 Stamina making her somewhat durable. Her counter attack when friends were attacked is also cool. 

Adam loves any power leadership to get going and is pretty hard to fully take of the board while having a great set of guaranteed control effects on all his attacks. With his TTC Hideous Monster he even adds a Sacrifice like effect. 

Having received another buff this year Colossus might finally be at the state he feels appropriate. He is reliant on wild triggers for his displacement and they are tied to attacks (=actions) but he is extremely hard to take of the board and Big Brother can now also help him get in range so he doesn't have to waste actions moving. 

Bishop is not especially tanky though his reverse pierce makes it kind of hard to really evaluate that. He is pretty fast and has the size 4 character throw as a superpower. He is basically the more offensive replacement for Bill. 

Maybe the closest 1:1 substitute on the list Black Dwarf has a big health pool, damage reduction, size 4 character throw and a wild Stagger on this spender, while also being a Taunt character. Overall I kind of wonder why he isn't splashed more already. 

Next in the series: 

Luke Cage

That's it for today. 

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Cheers from Germany 🍻