Since Mid-January 2016 we have had seven new 4* characters released. The sad truth is they are all irrelevant. I call them the Irrelevant 7. MPQ has become a 5* game. Along with that if you need some 4* to supplement your 5* the best five 4* (HB/JG/Ice/Rhulk/4Clops) have been around so long you have them better covered and leveled. You will compete for a new character and then it will sit unused on your roster after you use it for the essential node in the PvE following its release.
Here is the even sadder thing I would say that this streak of seven releases is perhaps the strongest set of new characters released in a row. I think the devs have actually gotten it mostly right and even in the case of the two misfires there are interesting aspects to both.
I thought I’d give some reasoning why I think each of the Irrelevant 7 should be on your radar.
Nova is in my mind as good as any of the Big 5. I have played with him a quite a bit and his speed plus the way his powers interact with each other make him very good. The ability to play yellow followed by sending threats airborne with his red cannot be overlooked. In PvE you can send Juggernaut airborne time and again while you gather ap every time he comes down send him flying again. There are generally better black users but if you need a finishing move the black is okay. His speed and self-sufficiency makes him one of the best designed characters the devs have released, plus he is fun to play. Some of my teammates tell me they say “pew pew” when using his yellow.
Quake/Daisy is another incredibly well-designed character who is a queen of PvE. Have you ever been annoyed by those aoe attacks from goons.? You know the names you hate; tommy gun, rocket, flamethrower, caltrops, etc. Quake yellow turns them in to spitballs off a battleship. Her blue targets tile color so if some irritating strike tiles get out just destroy the color. Then cast green do aoe damage and reset the board. I used to hate the ninjas now Daisy lets me laugh at them.
Punisher MAX or as someone named him Maxie is my idea of what a Punisher character should be. A consistent theme among these recent releases is self-sufficiency as one power tends to feed the other. Nowhere does it work better than with Maxie. Use his blue to create black strike tiles which makes his black single target nuke stronger. Once you use that to remove one opponent use his green to kill the other two. He has been part of my Big Enchilada team in DDQ and this is a description of how wave 4 goes on many days. He, again, is fun to play because his powers feel organic to the character.
Winter Soldier finally showed the devs have learned how to design a predominantly countdown character that doesn’t suck. The key is having the countdown do one thing if it resolves and do another thing if it is matched. Add to that the purple ability which can be used to start a cascade or make an important match while also stealing that color ap from the opponent. The devs have again created a character whose abilities feed each other appropriately.
Howard the Duck is a trophy character but he is a much better trophy character than Devil Dinosaur. His purple invisibility ability is the most annoying in the game. Having to remove four invisibility tiles is problematic most of the time. Ask anyone who has gotten stuck on a PvP cupcake where the baker used a level 70 Howard who casts purple. It can make you crazy trying to get rid of the damn tiles to kill him. The green removing all the green and doing decent damage makes him pretty good. The blue is definitely situational but overall Howard’s three abilities can be useful.
Spider-Gwen is one of the two weak new releases and the reason it is weak is solely due to the uselessness of the yellow and the color overlap of the one-two punch of red and purple. Having yellow only heal teammates and not Gwen is a baffling choice to me especially since the heal isn’t massive so that it might be worth it to use her as a way of keeping a couple of big guns in play a little longer. The red-purple interplay is a nice design and as I keep repeating it makes the character self-sufficient enough to use on her own. Except there are other way better red-purple nukes. I so wish they had chosen two other colors to do the same thing and make the yellow either a complete burst heal for teammates or make it for the entire team including Gwen. As she currently exists she is not useful.
Finally the booby prize of the Irrelevant 7, Drax. I can’t fault them for trying new ideas and ways of using existing game mechanics. In the six characters above they did a decent to great job of it. In Drax they failed completely. This is how not to design a countdown-dependent character. Drax’s black should have been similar to Maxie’s green without needing to have countdowns out. Drax’s red should be a nuke not weaker the less health the opponent has. Finally, why did they add “ends the turn” to purple? It would have been more useful a touch more expensive without the turn ending effect.
There they are the Irrelevant 7. I really wish they would have 4*-only PVP so we could use these characters because I think there are some really fun all-4* teams to be played. Might as well wish for world peace.
