Now Heroscape is an extremely challenging game when it comes to building your team. You can just pick your favorite heroes, and sure, that's fun. But if you're going to compete with anyone who knows what they are doing you MUST form a synergy. That takes a lot of careful planning and drafting. There are many teams to choose from depending on what cards and figures you have. I'm going to break down a pretty simple team to start with, Mutants with Outcasts. The reason Mutants are simple to put together is they are HUGE. As long as you get Apocalypse or Professor X to start your team you can do well with just about any other mutants.
I am going to list these in order of importance to the team. Not in order of importance to draft. Once you start playing you should know who will go fast and plan your draft accordingly. While you may think getting your favorite hero or villain with your first pick is the way to go you may miss out on someone more important, while your favorite hero will be there later anyway. Let's start off with "linchpins" these are characters that hold your synergy together. You can find linchpins in this really great Faction/Group guide. We're going to shoot for a 2000 point army. Now, let's get started...
The Man
Professor Xavier is the glue to hold this entire team together. You should keep him alive at ALL COSTS. He's not very strong, he doesn't have a lot of life, but once he is gone you're fighting an up hill battle. Let's look at that first ability, Mutant Mind Link. With that ability you can place all your numbered order markers on this card and take a turn with TWO mutants within 10 spaces. What that means is in one round, instead of 3 turns, you get 6. That is a massive advantage to your team. Keep him alive, trust me.
The Buffer
Sage takes your entire team to another level. Sage can increase the attack of your mutants by 1. You will be able to choose which 3 mutants to put your markers on. To do this you must reveal your "X" order marker. Which means your first 3 rounds you will be putting it on Sage for sure. Since you have Professor X you will be able to reveal the "X" and place an enhancement marker after he takes a turn with her. Let's not forget she can also move around order markers and raise a 20 sided die roll by one. Both will be an advantage a little later in the match.
The Surprise
Destiny is only 55 points. Destiny will also for sure be there in later rounds. Value wise though, she is crucial. She can raise a 20 sided die roll of any outcast by 3 and mutants that are not outcasts by 1. To do this you must keep your "X" order marker on her when you plan to use it. Pair this with Sage in clear sight and suddenly you've got a plus 4 to a 20 sided die roll. This will come into play very soon. Now, that does it for our linchpins, let's look at the rest of our army.
The Villain
Magneto is a beast. He has a long range of 7 and a pretty good attack of 5 (I would suggest adding 1 to that with Sage enhancements). Add that to a great defense of 7 and move of 5 and you've got your front line infantry. Magneto's magnetic assault requires you to hit a 20 sided die roll of 9. Add Destiny and Sage and you only have to hit a 5 to cause an automatic wound AND you can use it again (although without Destiny, you can still use Sage). He cannot be taken control of by an opponent. He even has a boost. He can change one unique mutant to an outcast. They would then benefit from Destiny and another character later.
The Sniper
Cable is an incredibly popular choice whether you are building a mutant army or not. His stats right off the bat look, good, not amazing. That's until you enhance him with Sage. Cable's attack is typically 4 but with his sighting ability he adds TWO attack dice if he is at least one spot higher. Couple that with sage and suddenly Cable has 7 attack and with the aptly named "Double Attack" he can attack twice per turn. Cable has caused a lot of headaches in our games because he is so sneaky good when used correctly.
The Witch
Scarlet Witch is not quite the heavy hitter for your team but can cause problems for your opponents. She is also a very popular choice in our games regardless of synergy. First of all she is very hard to kill. With her Hex-Sphere Disturbance when an opponent attacks, you roll your 20 sided die before defending. If you roll 5 or hire (4 with Sage in clear sight) your opponent must re-roll all skulls. If you are hit, that's okay too, she has Magical Defense. With that power the most wounds you can take per attack where attack dice are rolled is one. The opponent could roll 12 skulls to your 0 shield and instead of taking 12 wounds, you take one. Magical Defense does not work against cards that also have that power but at the same time that's only a few (Dr. Fate, Dr. Strange, Zatana, Enchantress, etc.) Her main ability though is easily her Chaos Magic Curse. Once your curse an opponent they must roll the 20 sided die and roll 9 or higher to use ANY power on their card. Including flying and super strength. This girl causes quite the headache.
The Knockout
Psylocke is the third suggestion for a Sage enhancement. That would bring her attack up to respectability. Her best feature though is that Psychic Knife. With that ability if you roll a 20 on a 20 sided die roll your opponent is automatically destroyed. Here's where you can make it more deadly. At the beginning of the game use Magneto to make Psylocke an outcast. Now with that you can take a shot with Psychic knife adding 3 to the roll from Destiny and 1 from Sage. Now your auto-kill only takes a 16 or higher. That is pretty good odds to take an opponent out in one hit.
The Commander
Mystique is a fun little card. She can impersonate a character from an opponent's team. Which means only that card can attack her. Also, she can take control of outcasts after completing her turn. He ability is not quite as good as Professor X considering the range is shorter and you must roll for it but it's decent none the less. She is a great addition to the team especially if you lose Professor X.
The Expendable One
Avalanche is a great addition to get the most out of your points. Before this pick you should only have 150 points left. Even though it's not much he still fits the mold of the team and has an outcast ability of his own. If you don't want to use Avalanche that's okay. He can be swapped out easy for Blob, Pyro, or Toad. Depending of course how strict your game is on points. We usually let players go 20 points over, which would let you get Blob, who by the way would help in defending Professor X.
There you have it! Your first team! Mutants are definitely the easy to use hard to master type. There are so many more mutants than members of other synergies. Everything here is a suggestion and doesn't have to be followed perfectly (although this team did win me a game ;)) I would suggest taking a look at the faction guide and seeing what you would like.
-Matt
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