Team Tactics – Mephisto Tips & Tricks – Paris Gordon

 by Paris Gordon

Hey everybody, today I’m going to talk about my figure I designed for winning the 2015 World Chapmionship: Mephisto. I wanted to go through my thought in designing him, both in representing his character and being a competitive piece, some tips in playing him, and some sample teams and combos. So without further ado, let’s get into my thought process for his design!

From a comic book standpoint, I wanted to accomplish three main things: background manipulation, brute force, and making a “deal with the the devil”. The first two clicks handle the background manipulation part (and sometimes this is all he does, hence the 45 point dial), the next three handle the brute force, and his trait the deal with the devil. The last two clicks show how he’s difficult to finish off, and can always come back. Competitively, putting the manipulator clicks at the top of the dial before the brutal Pulse Wave clicks helps keep his point cost down, as opposed to starting with such a good power set. Similarly, the last two Regeneration clicks helps keep his cost down while still giving him a way to back to the Pulse Wave clicks instead of just having more powerful clicks. Because of being basically unable to do damage on 4/7 of his clicks, this means the three clicks that he can do damage can be better than they normally would be on a similarly costed piece. Defensively he’s also set up in a way that makes him very hard to get through. First off he has a STOP click, so you’re forced to hit him to Invincible. The main ways around Invincible usually are to Outwit it, or to Pulse Wave through it, and neither of these can be done from his STOP click. Also unless you’re doing 6+ damage, you’ll just land him on another Invincible click, and then (unless you Pulse Wave) a 19-Defense Regeneration/Shape Change click (which is also considerably harder to deal with due to Power Cosmic). All the while taking Mystics, unless you’re Pulse Waving of course. So if you want to kill Mephisto, it’s very difficult to avoid dealing with the Pulse Wave clicks. Of course you also have the option of playing him at 45 points and getting Stealth/Sidestep/Perplex with Mystics and the Contract trait.Speaking of the Contract trait, let’s talk about that in depth for a bit. Basically any character can use PC on one missed attack in a game, at the cost of a permanent -1 Defense and healing Mephisto one click on death. This has several interesting uses, and while both you and your opponent have the option of making the contracts, it’s better for you not only because of the healing, but you built your team knowing you were going to have the option of making contracts, and they didn’t. You could play him with Nighthawk, and make that -1 Defense really stick. You could play him with a pog generator and make contracts with them and receive lots of healing. One very strong aspect of the contracts is that every ID character gets Prob, with basically no drawbacks as they’re only going to be there for one turn. This is really good as they can just Prob themselves instead of trying to position another Prob and waste that one, or using both to help make sure you hit. And of course, all of this applies to both 45pt and 130pt Mephisto.

The one other special power, besides the STOP, is the speed ability. It’s not too complicated, but it definitely has some good uses. Since he has Improved Targeting: Hindering, you can move people out of Stealth to help your other attackers hit. You can also move people out of a high Defend, and ID inspiration, into range of one of your attackers, away from a potential Support or Leadership, or away from various other adjacency powers. Not much else to say about it, but potentially a very useful power.

So that’s a rundown on his dial and powers, let’s talk about some potential combos and teams. First the 45 dial. Since the trait is so good for ID characters, my first thought was using him with Quinjet. To do this while keeping 2 drones it would pretty much have to look like this

Build
Quinjet 140
-Resource Dial 5
Mephisto 45
Ultron-18.2 (Drone) 30
Ultron-6 (Drone) 30
The Atom 15
265

Plus whichever 7 ID cards you want. Comparing this to Patrick’s world’s winning team, you basically get Mephisto over Atomica, H.E.N.R.Y., and one ID card. The contract Prob over Atomica Prob and Perplex over Empower/Enhancement both have their pros and cons, although losing one ID card is only a con. May or may not be better, but certainly an interesting variation. Another way to use him with ID cards is using the fast forces Jean Grey with a Drone and another attacker. This way you don’t have to worry about getting a Prob up there as Mephisto provides it from anywhere. Perhaps something like this:

Build
Mephisto 45
FF Jean Grey 50
Ultron-18.2 (Drone) 30
SR Iceman 110
-Eclipso 25
-Rock of Eternity (Envy, Sloth, Greed, Lust, Wrath) 24
284

Plus 3 ID cards. This way you can hit with an ID and Iceman from a long way away, with a Prob for your ID and a one time Prob for Iceman, and a Perplex for Iceman. That’s a good amount of damage, control, and range.

Moving onto the 130, there’s some great options with him. If you wanted to maximize Mephisto’s durability and play him with Nighthawk, you could go with something like this:

Build
Mephisto 130
Nighthawk 65
Ant-Man 50
The Atom 15
Pandora’s Box 24
-Sloth Relic 4
-Wrath Relic 4
-Greed Relic 4
284

Plus 3 ID cards. Nighthawk makes it basically impossible to kill Mephisto straight from the stop click, and with potential contract healing from the ants and Atom, and Sloth on Mephisto, makes Mephisto very durable. It’s possible to ignore Mephisto, but he can call in some good ID cards at 130 or less that get Prob and have his Perplex, and maybe other benefits from Ant-Man. Also, Atom getting Prob on his retaliation is very useful.

Another option would be utilizing the newly released Ruler ATA (thanks to Kenji Kaneshiro). There’s a lot of good Ruler options since there’s several drones and Solaris that have it. Using the Ruler ATA is also a very good way to avoid an attack from a Nick that turned off your Invincible.

Build
Mephisto 130
-Brainiac 25
Ultron-18.2 (Drone) 30
Ultron (Age of Ultron-Drone) 30
Solaris 25
Diplomatic Immunity 20 (5×4)
Avengers Round Table 5
265

Plus a full 6 ID cards. This gives you a +4 theme team (which is very helpful since Mephisto doesn’t have any improved movement so you want a flat map), 3 very good figures for calling in ID’s in the drones and Mephisto, and Solaris is just all around awesome. Brainiac is very good on Mephisto because it can keep him cleared while on his stop click to either keep Pulse Waving or keep calling in ID’s to sustain that damage.

Well, that’s my explanation on my Mephisto design, as well as some tips and sample teams to either try out or get you started on your own. I plan on using him at upcoming events, so expect a more detailed team report in the future! I hope you guys like Mephisto and that this article gave you a little more insight on him. Until next time!