Magneto, the final piece of the Brotherhood of Mutants puzzle, arrived yesterday for players who had enough five-star characters to get him. While things are still quite early, my first impressions are super positive.
Magneto is unlocked through a Legendary event requiring a team of five-star X-Men or Brotherhood characters. The event content itself is uninteresting, to be honest. Basically, Ultimus has stolen Magneto’s Asteroid M base and he’s willing to work with the do-gooders against Ultimus if they help him get it back. I don’t have a team of seven-star characters to finish the entire event, but I don’t expect any big surprises to come from the last two missions. The entire thing is a straightforward set of easy battles that you’ll forget about immediately.
What you won’t forget is how insane Magneto is once you have him. I’ve had the other Brotherhood characters for a few weeks now and I’ve been playing them as a B-team of sorts in a variety of modes to get a feel for their potential, but Magneto truly is the gel that holds the team together and unleashes their terrifying potential.
Aside from the various synergies Magneto has with the rest of the team, the real game changer is Magneto’s Ultimate, Magnetic Vortex. With a full Brotherhood squad, you’ll be able to drop this move at the opening of a fight and it will blind the entire enemy team and pull them all up to two spaces in so that they are adjacent with the primary target. Properly executed, this will give your team complete safety on the first turn and the ability to dump an incredible amount of damage right out of the gate. For modes like Arena, where dealing damage quickly is the name of the game, I feel the Brotherhood will be unmatched with Magneto leading them.
With Magnetic Vortex, Pyro, and Sabretooth, you’ll be able to apply three stacks of bleed (lasting two turns!) across the entire enemy team on turn one. Juggernaut can then ram through the team for massive damage, that is if you don’t murder everyone outright before he reaches four stacks of Charge. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with my orange ability upgrade materials, but I’m strongly leaning towards maxing out Juggernaut’s passive so that he can get to his four stacks as quickly as possible.
As for Mystique, I don’t feel she is an absolute must on the Brotherhood team. That’s not to say she’s bad or anything. She’s actually great, but I consider her sort of a tech pick, to use a CCG term. If you know you’re going to be facing stealth characters, she’s a must have, especially versus Hand Sentry. Her stats are great and she has plenty of uses, but you may be able to find someone else to fill her spot depending on the situation. Sabretooth is kind of a flex pick as well, but he at least fulfills the team’s purpose of dumping as much damage as possible at the outset of a fight. Mystique just doesn’t take as much advantage of Magnetic Vortex as the rest of the Brotherhood.
For now, I’m excited to continue building up the team so I can see what more they can do. My excitement is tempered a bit by apprehension, however, as the Brotherhood continues MSF’s trend towards out of control power creep. I don’t want to say that the Brotherhood is definitely overpowered at this point. Teams like the easily accessible Defenders can cleanse the blinds and bleeds, so there’s definitely some counterplay available in the game already, but I do think Magnetic Vortex’s irreversible ability to force adjacency could end up oppressive. We’ll see. It’s far too early to tell.
What’s your take on the Brotherhood of Mutants? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
