Why do players say 3* Luke Cage / 3* Iron Fist is a good (not just okay) 3* PvP team?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Why do players say 3* Luke Cage / 3* Iron Fist is a good 3* PvP team? I get that they’re okay. But “good”?

For context, I’m assume PvP with an Essential Character filling in the third spot on the team, and that the player doesn’t have a synergistic and/or well covered/leveled 4* or 3* that works well with 3* Cage/Fist (i.e. players early in the 3*-4* transition). That is, Cage/Fist needs to work on their own, or possibly with commonly available team-ups. Also assuming Cage/Fist are not boosted.

Cage has Protect tile, Fist has Attack tile. Cage has 13 AP yellow bomb, and 6 AP black hits (but needs to bank a load of black). Fist has 5 AP purple that populate black or if 12 black AP stored does damage, and 8 AP green that does damage and does Strikes.

Here’s how I see the match playing out. Cage’s Protect reduces enemy match damage. Fist’s attack chips at enemy health. It takes a really long to build up purple, black, and yellow AP (and less so green), then Cage/Fist destroy everything. But on the other hand, enemies can’t be killed quickly, or stunned, or sent airborne, or AP drained. So the enemy will probably get 1-2 attacks off, and that’s going to cost in health packs.

Sure that’s “okay”. But I hesitate to say it’s “good”. There’s no reliable board control, no stun, no AP drain, no airborne, etc. The team has no use for red and blue, which are both good colors that an enemy team may well use - so if the Cage/Fist team makes red and blue matches to stop the enemy team from getting red and blue AP, then building up the bank of AP they need happens even slower (and the red and blue AP is useless). Cage’s Protect tile works pretty well against normal match damage, but if the enemy can populate the board with Strike tiles, or gets off a couple major damage powers, the Protect tile becomes irrelevant / doesn’t help much.

All this I could say all right, not strong in a couple colors, no good control, okay - IF the team were fast. But the team is slow unless fighting some fragile 2*s or something.

So my question is when some players ask what 3s to use in PvP, why do some players keep recommending Fist/Cage? I see the recommendation over and over again. And yes, if I wanted to protect against enemy chip damage (from an enemy Iron Fist) then Cage’s Protect tile could be useful, or I can see Cage / Fist good in some other cases, but generally I think I’d say 3 Iron Man / 3* Strange (can’t use most AP but fast and has stun and AP drain), Kamala Khan / Captain America (slow, but once it gets going has board control, stun, Prot tiles, and recurring temporary hit points), Magneto / whoever (board shuffle, blue bomb, then whoever else - Magneto just works well with a lot of characters).

Again I’m not saying Cage/Fist is bad. I just don’t think they’re good, I don’t think they’re the premiere team a 3* player should think of when fielding a 3* team. If they’re both boosted that’s one thing but I’m assuming they’re not.

2

Back when I was starting out, my team most of the time would consist of those 2 along with 3* falcon as well. They would go about doing their thing, with falcon overwriting enemy special tiles (including countdowns) and buffing your own specials with yellow matches, which you chase anyway for cage’s yellow active.

It worked surprisingly well, and didn’t take much damage due to the protect tile too. Even less if you decided to use falcons purple instead of iron fist’s

3

Cages Black does stun. But mainly Purple can generate a lot of black AP pretty quickly, and cage can punch away doing pretty high damage/AP and also stun whoever survives long enough to get more purple and repeat.

4

That purple is way cheap for the damage it does. The gimmick is to bank up 24 black, fire off purple till you run out, then let Cag3 mop up with the black.

the reason it’s good inPVP is because a) it’s a synergistic duo so the required character won’t break it up

b) it does damage passively from turn 1 on defense, so you WILL need a health pack after if you win against it. So it’s s skippable defense team like Medusa/4ocket a tier up from them

5

Stun power? Check
Protect tile negating most like-level match damage? Check
Easy damage per turn? Check
Character power that feeds the other character AP? Check
Powers in colors that let you bring a heavy-hitter (often red or green) with them? Check

They were also a good team prior to Thanos/Strange’s existence and IM40’s buff. So, there is a level of bias from players who had already surpassed the 3* tier before it looked like it looks now.

6

Also, speed isn’t as important in PvP at the 3* level. Reliability often matters more, as you’re more often matched up with teams where the question is less how fast you can beat them and more whether or not you can beat them at all. The constant outgoing damage from the Attack tile and incoming damage prevention from the Protect tile can really help buy time to overcome a bad board. Or they can hold off a stronger team long enough to build up for a big turn of unloading everything, letting them punch* well above their weight class if you’re willing to take the time.
*Pun intended.

7

Cage and Fist are great if you know how to play them. The focus is Cage’s 6 Black 4K+ Hit and 1-turn stun. I ran Cage 3/5/5 and Fist 3/5/5. This is how it worked:

I began by collecting as much purple as possible, with a secondary collection of black and green. During these turns, I targeted the biggest threat hitting them for 700 - 900 damage per turn (match damage + attack tile). By the time I had collected 15 purple, I had taken almost no damage because of Cage’s beefy protect tile. I then started firing off Fist’s purple until I had 12+ black. If I had 8 green, I would throw down Fist’s strike tiles afterward. At this point, the first enemy is down, so I then punch and stun the 2nd biggest threat. Then, I play purple 1 or 2 more times for more black, which hits the stunned enemy too. I then stun, the 3rd enemy. At this point, you’ve won. Just collect more black and purple, finish off the 2nd enemy and then stun or kill the 3rd.

If purple is hard to come by, you can still collect black and green for the same strategy, it just takes a little longer. Cage’s yellow hit is just a bonus as well as any hits from the required character. This team works great with Scarlett Witch, she being the purple AP engine. I ran this team for weeks until I had IM40 and Strange champed.

8

I tend to skip this team in early 3* land because of 4 reasons:

  1. Big damage reduction from Luke Cage
  2. Free damage almost every turn (Iron Fist)
  3. Luke Cage’s cheap black power with stun and often neglected heavy yellow power
  4. just cheap power from both of them

From an offensive point of view, this team can get pretty slow sometimes because there’s an ideal number of aps to save up if you want to end things quickly. I usually save up between 15 to 20 purple aps. By then, there are only 2 opponents left. So the match will end by then, usually.

3* Hawkeye is the man to counter this team (+2ap each to blue and purple ap for each special tile matched and true heal). You can team him up with Dr Strange to counter their cheap powers and then clean up both special tiles if it’s hard to reach. Another one would be Iron Fist. 3* Hawkeye should be tanking 2/3 colours for both of them.