From The Grassy Knoll
New Team Ability Review
by Shooter

5-04-04  With the new Marvel: Ultimates set on the way, I thought it might be a good idea to give you guys my thoughts and opinions on the new team abilities being introduced upon this set’s debut and how they will effect the game.

Morlocks:  When it makes a close combat attack, a member of this team gets +1 to its attack value for each friendly character that is both adjacent to this team member and the target character.

Basically, this TA rewards you if you swarm your opponent’s characters.  When you first read it, it seems like a close combat version of the Hydra/Police TA.  But upon closer inspection, it’s actually very different.  While the Hydra/Police TA grants a friendly attackers a +1 to attack for every Hydra/Police member adjacent to the attacker, the Morlock TA grants the Morlock character a +1 for every adjacent friendly character, regardless of what those characters’ TAs are.  This means that the Morlock TA is not going to be found on a support character, but on a primary or secondary attacker.  It also means that having only a small number of Morlocks will not be a detriment to the ability, since multiple Morlocks are not required for this TA to work, and you won’t have to flood your team with wildcards either if you want to play with one of them.  The downside to this TA is that the friendly character has to be adjacent to both the Morlock and the enemy, meaning you can’t have a taxi fly your Morlock in and hide behind them if you want the TA to work.  It makes sense with the spirit of the TA in my opinion; the +1 bonus to attack could be because your friends are circling around the enemy intimidating them, or even holding them down for your Morlock to knock his lights out.  Certainly the effect this has on gameplay will be decided based upon how the characters with the TA are designed.  If we get a close combat beatstick or even a cleanup piece, this TA will be really useful, especially if they can fly and can taxi in their own support (however, I doubt any of them will be gifted with flight).  If we get a ranged combat attacker or a sniper-like piece, this TA will be wasted points, so I really hope the designers thought well about who they decided to make and how they represent their powers.  When I think about wildcards copying this TA, the one I think could most effectively use this is Hellboy, since he’s a big beatstick to begin with, and add the attack pump ability, and he’s all the better.  As a quick note, the +1 to attack will be restricted by the rule of three, so there isn’t going to be any point in putting more than 3 friendly figs in position for this TA’s benefit.  This shouldn’t be too much of a problem however, since there can only be a maximum of 4 figures that can possibly be both adjacent to your figure and the enemy.  Just to give you guys an more definitive explanation on placement, I’ll show the two possible set-ups and what locations would qualify as adjacent to both the Morlock and the Enemy:

M = Morlock
+ = Friendly character in this square gives a bonus
X = Friendly character does not give a bonus
E = Enemy

X X X
+ E +
+ M + 

X X X
+ E X
M + X 

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed my review and will look forward to my next review where I’ll take a look at the Ultimate X-Men team ability.

One quick note:  I will review these TA’s upon the way that I interpret them and how I believe they will play.  Changes could possibly be made in the FAQ posted following Ultimates release that alter/clarify these abilities that make my reviews invalid.  So please don’t send me hate mail about how I incorrectly reviewed if my interpretations end up being wrong.

---Shooter