Team Tactics – Why Don’t I Play This Piece? – Malekith – Jay Solomon

Majestix - Team List

Jay Solomon by Jay Solomon

Hello and welcome to another iteration of Why Don’t I Play This Piece?. This week, I will be going over an overlooked chase from the Mighty Thor set, Malekith. Malekith has two possible point values, 175 and 100. Malekith also has a bunch of special stuff going on, including Improved Targeting: Characters. He has two traits and two special powers:

(Trait) WIELDER OF THE CASKET OF ANCIENT WINTERS: Malekith starts the game with the TMT #s012 Casket of Ancient Winters equipped.

 

 

Getting something for free is almost never bad, and Malekith gets that thanks to his particular Wielder trait. His Casket of Ancient Winters’ EFFECT reads:

EFFECT: POWER. If this character is 100 points or more, give it 3 Fimbulwinter tokens. At the end of each player’s turn, remove a Fimbulwinter token from the equipped character. If you do, give an action token to each of the active player’s characters within 7 squares without the Asgardian, Cosmic, or Deity keywords. If you remove the last Fimbulwinter token, KO this object instead.

This equipment won’t be very useful, outside of specifically being built around, but won’t otherwise have much impact on the current competitive game, requiring you to give POWER actions to your 175 or 100 point investment along with being otherwise built around.

VULNERABLE TO IRON, BUT NOT MUCH ELSE: Malekith takes a maximum of 1 damage from range attacks.

Like Skurge prime, this trait takes Malekith’s decent length dial and stretches it out to an annoying length. As long as Malekith isn’t being punched, he will survive for a long time, and we will be building with that in mind.

GATHER SUPPORT FROM MY PEOPLE: Incapacitate. When an opposing character within range and line of fire is given an action token by an effect of a character (not equipment) on your force, after resolution you may roll a d6. 4-6: generate a Dark Elf bystander adjacent to it.

Malekith won’t be using Incapacitate himself, at least the vast majority of the time, but the potential to generate bystanders with Blades/Claws/Fangs after giving the opposing character adjacent to it at least one token is useful, assuming Malekith isn’t the one giving out the tokens. (I should note that Malekith never gets this power on his 100 point line).

CHANGE OTHER’S SHAPE: Shape Change, but succeeds on a 4-6. Other friendly characters can use Shape Change, but succeed only on a 6.

In addition to having a 50/50 shot at rolling Shape Change himself, Malekith also gives the rest of your force a Shape Change variant with a 17% chance of success, which can work very well when stacked with other defenses, such as from Inspirations from the Justice League Teleporter.

Overall, Malekith has respectable combat values, can survive a lot of damage, and makes the rest of your team better. He is high enough points to call in almost anything relevant, including the upcoming chase Iceman (assuming he gets an ID card). He also has one of the best generic keywords in the game, giving him plenty of options for teams. The team that I’ve built with him uses the Mystical keyword, focusing on Malekith’s wanting to be at range, and further buffing him and call-ins.

175 TMT064 Malekith
50 ADW001 Dr. Strange
35 JW052 Green Lantern
5 WKD17-V001ST Terrain Dial
5 WFR100 Justice League Teleporter
-5 NFAOSNFID-007 S.H.I.E.L.D. Level 7
-5 WFWFID-004 Green Arrow
-5 WFWFID-020 Nightwing
-5 WFWFID-024 Zatanna
-5 WFWFID-102 Wonder Woman
-5 WKDCID-004 Lex Luthor
300
Sideline:
Shifting Focus: Dr. Strange – ADW019 Dr. Strange, ADW035 Doctor Strange

S.H.I.E.L.D. Level 7 ID – NFAOS056 Nick Fury, ADW067 Hawkeye
Green Arrow ID – EW049 Green Arrow
Nightwing ID – WKD15-008 Nightwing
Zatanna ID – HQ053 Zatanna
Wonder Woman ID – WF063 Wonder Woman
Lex Luthor ID – HQ066 Lex Luthor, God of Apokolips

This team is about being as defensive as possible while maximizing the effectiveness of your call-ins’ offenses. The combination of Green Lantern’s Light Wall and/or Barrier, the Invisible Plane special terrain, and Malekith’s trait should minimize how often he is attacked in close combat. This is in the goal of making him incredibly hard to KO, preventing him from taking more than one click of damage at a time. If you use the Defend Dr. Strange, you can essentially stop him from taking any damage, healing the 1 damage that he will take. Map roll is important for this team, so I wanted at least a +3 to the Initiative roll bonus, which I think will be quite good now, as competitive theme teams are not very common at the moment.

That’s all I have for this week. Thanks for reading, and remember that when playing either the established competitive game elements, or your favourite fringe piece, practice makes your team better.