by Jay Solomon
Hello, and welcome to another iteration of Why Don’t I Play This Piece?. Today, I’ll be taking a look at a figure from the Star Trek set that synergizes well with the current Cosmic competitive scene, Trelane.
Trelane has Indomitable, no team abilities, as well as two traits and a special power:
(Trait) IT’S MY GAME AND MY RULES: At the beginning of the game, roll a d6 and place it on this card. POWER: If there is no d6 on this card, roll a d6 and place it on this card. Trelane has PROTECTED: Outwit.
(Trait) I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT. I SHOULD THINK YOU WOULD HAVE REALIZED THAT BY NOW: Whenever a character rolls an attack roll, you may remove the d6 from this card and replace a die in the roll with it.
These traits give Trelane a similar ability to the now retired Mr. Mxyzptlk. He can store dice to use later, to replace in attack rolls, regardless of range or line of fire. He can also use these dice for attack rolls that can’t be rerolled, although those are not common. Once one of those D6 are used up, he can take a POWER action to get a new one. In addition, he has protection from Outwit.
I want to take a second and go over why every single possible D6 result is potentially useful.
Rolling a 1 could make one of your opponent’s attacks into a critical miss, and on the same note, even discourage them from attacking if they have used up all their Probability Control for the turn.
A 2 can make an attack of yours not critically miss, in addition to being a generally low result for your opponent.
A 3 could make a surprising amount of attack rolls hit, as well as potentially lead to misses.
While neither 4s or 5s are likely to make your opponents attacks miss, they could make your opponent miss if they need really high rolls, or prevent a critical hit, which could be good if critical hit damage will prevent Super Senses, Mastermind, or cause enough damage to KO a character.
A 6 is obviously good, making any of your attack rolls essentially have a minimum result of 7 (the 6 plus a 1 on the other D6), in addition to increasing the odds of a critical hit.
(Special Defense Power) YOU ALWAYS STOP ME WHEN I’M HAVING FUN: STOP.
This is simply a STOP click, without any extra defense powers. Extra longevity is good, on a dial that’s not too long.
Trelane also has other good stuff going for him, including Sidestep and some Range, to maybe make some random attacks, as well as the aforementioned Willpower. He is also exactly high enough points to call in anything relevant, such as either Headmaster Wolverine or Cyclops. He’s also not the easiest character to hit, with Super Senses that can’t be Outwitted. His dice manipulation ability is of course his biggest draw, however, and even that can be used in surprising ways. Being able to cause knockback via turning your own attack roll into doubles can be just as, if not more useful than preventing opposing knockback. The Cosmic keyword is also hot right now, so having more options is notable, rather than relying on stuff from Avengers Infinity, as well as Uni-Mind. And finally, Trelane synergizes well with the traits on recent chases from Avengers Infinity, ensuring you will roll the correct number for the respective trait (such as Starfox’s healing for the whole team), Trelane will make sure you can trigger those potentially very useful effects. I have built with that synergy in mind:
50 TREKOS044 Trelane
40 AI008 Pip The Troll
75 WKMP18-005 Lockjaw
80 AI048 Starfox
10 TMTS009 Mjolnir
20 AIG025 Groot
8 WKMP17-007 Pym Pocket Tank
3 XXSXID-010 Chamber
5 XXSXID-025 Wolverine
5 WKMVID-012 Professor X
3 WKMVID-020 Jean Grey
299
(This team is built assuming that all the recent convention exclusive stuff will be legal)
This team takes full advantage of what Trelane can do, between calling in Wolverine, maximizing use of Starfox’s trait, and being able to affect the attack rolls of Groot and Walking Woods, regardless of how far away they are. Starfox’s +2 Perplex can make hitting with the Tank even easier, giving that character a net +1-Attack after the -1 that the Tank gives. Starfox will probably be the character to attack with the Tank, using Flurry, breaking up your opponent’s formation with the first attack, and getting a normal attack with the second. If you are on a map with a lot of blocking, the non-prime Professor X and Pym Tank combo could be quite useful.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and remember that whether you’re playing the established competitive characters or a Fringe piece, practice makes your team better.
