Mirage comes with a decent defense statline of 3/3/4 defenses and 6/6 Stamina and importantly combines that with Stealth. She has a small base and moves Medium.
She has a Range 5, 5 Dice, Mystic Builder with an interesting trigger: handing out a Neural Connection Token. She can then spend the token (that hopefully comes with the box, unlike the Weakness Token for Karnak...) and two Power to Advance an enemy character in Range 5 or reroll two of their attack dice. Both she can also do to enemy characters in Range 1 that don't need to have the token.
Obviously a *Bow" from Range 5 is incredible and basically the heart of the kit for Dani here. It does of course rely on hitting the wild. The good thing is: firing away Mystic Range 5 shots while sitting in Stealth range herself is very good for a 3 threat even if she never hits the trigger.
Her Spender is fine. Range 3, 7 dice for 3 Power us pretty much the baseline and here you have a (hard to hit) trigger to hit another enemy character. Not great but decent in a pinch.
And now for the leadership: Dani is, unsurprisingly, the second New Mutants leader and unlike Magik she doesn't need a TTC leaving more room in the 5. The leadership itself is interesting. Characters that have gotten dazed again an additional 3 Power and roll 3 additional defense and dodge dice until they have activated. It's a leadership specifically designed to not have your injured characters KOed before you can activate again. It seems quite good while it of course does not help you at the start of the game. The 3 additional Power also seems great but it remains to be seen how impactful that part really is as dazed models often gave a ton of power from dazing anyway. But with the new prevelance of Hulkbuster in the game nowadays, whose Spender prevents the defender from gaining Power, it can be super helpful.
I still think Magiks leadership is more fun and gives you more to build around but the option to go with Mirage is now super helpful. New Mutants also have become the first Affiliation in the game with two 3 threat leader options.
Mirage is also affiliated with SHIELD and X-Force. In SHIELD what she brings, what is not already there is the Mystic type on her Range 5. She is now the third affiliated 3 threat, that can shoot this far.
X-Force likes the long range fire support and potential kidnapping she can do to get people in front of the claws for hands people.
Hot Take Rating: A-
Usually I'm not a big fan of attack TTCs that require an action but this one is decent because of the guaranteed effect. If you have 4 Power on Mirage and need to displace a character in Range 5, you have the guarantee with the card. Unless, of course, the 7 dice with Pierce just takes them out anyway.
B+.
Alex Summers comes with 7/6 Stamina and 3/4/4 defenses, immunity to Incinerate, small base Medium move and is a 4 threat.
Before we look at his attacks it is important to factor his innate superpower Plasma Dispersion, which allows him to change 1 die to a hit if he has at least one Wild in the roll.
His Builder is a Range 4 Energy attack called Plasma Blast, which has 5 dice and a Wild Incinerate. Remember the Wild also means you can change one of your missea into a hit meaning it's very very good to hit it. So if you have rerolls of other ways to make it happen that's very helpful (unfittingly Alex' Brother Scott Summers likes to be played under Captain America, First Avenger and Alex is no different there). Sadly, despite having at least a small claim, Havok did not end up being Guardians for the Galaxy affiliated, who would have helped with it, too.
His Spender, Plasma Wave, is costly at 5 Power but is a mighty Range 4 Beam with 7 Dice, a Wild Pierce and automatic Incinerate.
Cosmic Energy Absorption has him spend an Action to gain 2 power. Which is fine when you don't have anything else to do with your action but I don't see you using it very regularly.
What you absolutely will be using as often as possible, and which Cosmic Energy Absorption can help you reach in Round 2, is Blast Off. An active superpower that lets Havok place in Range 2. Great to have him fire of more attacks and not waste his time with movement actions.
Havok is one of two leaders for the new X-Factor Affiliation and honestly I'm not especially excited for his leadership. It is basically a straight up worse version of Star-Lords leadership, as it has a condition to use the token and does not work on dodges.
And despite being a Guardians player, I don't really love Winging It either. Guardians can boast a lot of affiliated powerhouses who are automatic recievers of the token each round. Leaving many of your other characters (most likely 2 when you play 5 characters wide) basically without a leadership for the round. Here in X-Factor, with a much shorter list of affiliated characters you are even more incentificed to Splash a "big bad".
I honestly do hope the Leadership on Multiple Man will be more interesting. We will find out next week.
Overall Havok isn't especially exciting but decent.
Hot Take Rating: B+
Now this card seems great. Looking at the (short) Affiliation list for X-Factor we have Mystique, Angel and Quicksilver, who are all great receivers.
Hot Take Rating: A.
This card is hard to evaluate. 5 Power is a lot and placing Havok Range 5 isn't as impactful as placing Onslaught Range 5. The superpower it grants is very good though.
Hot Take Rating: B I guess?
That's it for today.
Cheers from Germany 🍻
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