Powerscaling: Squirrel Girl

 

Powerscaling: Squirrel Girl

Welcome to the first in a series I’ll do… as and when I feel like I have something interesting to honk about, looking at characters in Marvel Crisis Protocol that I find personally interesting. Where better to start than everyone’s favourite and least controversial character in the Marvel Universe, the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl!

I was a little concerned when I heard that Squirrel Girl was coming to Marvel Crisis Protocol. How could you possibly represent a character who has defeated both Thanos and Doctor Doom effortlessly within the comics, without making her seem underwhelming on the table? I’m happy to say that Doreen absolutely lives up to the hype in MCP, and delivers a character that ticks every box I look for in a character I love playing: thematic, interesting, and with an excellent sculpt to boot.

At first glance, Squirrel Girl might seem a little underwhelming for a 4 threat. She’s only got a medium move (albeit, wallcrawler means that she will always get that medium move unless she is slowed), her defences are a low 3/3/3 and her 6/5 health puts her on the squishier end of 4 threats. A mere 5 die strike and 6 die spender don’t look like much either.

This is why I love the design so much. Just like in the comics, it’s easy to look at the surface level of Squirrel Girl and underestimate her, but when you see how her mechanics play out on the tabletop – that’s when the secret power reveals itself and if you’re not prepared, you’ll find yourself taken totally by surprise!

Squirrel Girl’s strength is found mostly in her Tippy-Toe Token, the squirrel friend who goes with her into battle and helps her take her enemies by surprise. Just like Doctor Voodoo, she can either hold on Tippy herself to make her dice better, or she can throw Tippy onto an enemy to ruin their day.

Whilst holding Tippy, Doreen’s defenses become a much more reliable 3/3/3 with two rerolls – this makes her comparable to the Spider People with their Spider Sense power, except that hers also works on mystic attacks meaning that she has no immediate hole. It also boosts her offensive output, letting her reroll 2 dice – which makes her comparable to a 7 die strike under most circumstances, at range 3.

Like Beast, her Ambush isn’t a may it is a must, so she can also use the rerolls to roll out of a wild if she doesn’t want to place within 1 of her target – though I’ve not usually found it too difficult to use the attack when she wants to place.

Against an average 3-4 defense character she will probably do 2 damage with just over 60% odds to place. Where things become more interesting, though, is where she has the power to put the token onto the target.

Whilst an opponent has Tippy, they no longer explode critical results and they no longer count critical results as successes – which is a kind of Super Hex that isn’t called Hex so it even Hexes characters who are otherwise immune to Hex.

This is a pretty big offensive debuff, suddenly meaning that the very maximum number of hits that can be rolled is equal to the number of dice in the attack. More importantly though, it is also a huge defensive debuff – especially with the proliferation of martial artists out there. The crit isn’t turned into a blank, it just doesn’t count which means that the number of die facings that can be a fail for a martial artist goes up from 3 to 4 and are capped by the number of dice in the initial roll, making them much easier to deal with.

Doreen herself becomes trivial to take down when Tippy is off pestering an opponent, however – 3/3/3 defenses with 6 health and no rerolls or damage reduction makes her equal to Valkyrie rather than the average 4 threat, so timing on when to use this is important. It means that most commonly you want Squirrel Girl to ambush an opponent who has already activated when there are few opportunities for another opposing character to hit her after she has activated. That can be tricky to engineer and the pressure this puts on your activation order is probably the biggest weakness in the character.

The payoff can be huge, though. If Doreen is paired up with an ally who can take advantage of the target’s squirrel’d status to finish the job that she started, there are very few characters in the game who can reliably deal with that kind of pressure. Such a shame that Follow Me has rotated out of the set!

There are some interesting additional strengths to Squirrel Girl which I feel are worth calling out. The main one is her Guardian Squirrel power on her injured side. This, again, is deceptive – it essentially means that (barring Grievous Wounds or Elsa’s Debilitate trigger) Squirrel Girl has slightly better than 6 health on her back side. If she takes 20 damage all at once (say she gets hit with a Helios Laser because she’s infuriated Stark so much) she still won’t KO, will get to place within 2 (hopefully taking her out of easy double tap range) and will live on 1.

Whilst she does lose the token that is the source of the majority of her power to do that, she will also probably have the power to use her range 4 spender twice, potentially displacing two size 3 characters. Or displacing the person who just ‘KO’d’ her and then moving back onto the point herself, running away with an extract, etc etc. The fact that you have to put at least two damaging effects into Squirrel Girl’s injured side to take her out (and often more) comes up a lot more than you would necessarily think, and it means that there’s less risk in choosing to activate her later in the round as she prefers (even if a tippy-toe-less Squirrel Girl is, fittingly, a little sad).

Lastly, she has access to two cards that I think are both excellent. One for flavour and one for power. Lets talk about the flavour one first:

Inexplicable Demise is the kind of card you only really want to take when your opponent is bringing a 6+ threat model. Even then, it isn’t an all-the-time option. Squirrel Girl has to spend as much power as she would normally spend dropping her token on someone to play it, and you do have to ask yourself if it would be better to just drop the token; chances are high you’re not going to be doing both.

The potential upside however is very high indeed. The chances of getting the instant KO are negligible and not really worth consideration from a competitive perspective (though there is some sadistic glee in dropping this on an Immortal Hulk and watching your opponent squirm as they know there’s an almost 90% chance they won’t lost him … but they might). The chances of getting a slow and a stagger on a 6 threat, though, are 33% and the chances of getting a slow alone are 60%.

In most rosters and most circumstances (Hulks) this probably isn’t worth it but one place I have used it and felt good about it is in Web Warriors, where Miles’ leadership already helps Squirrel Girl considerably and the slow means that you can extend the All Webbed Up play to a second point of the board. It’s probably still better to take the other card for her, but it is worth consideration in some match-ups because a slow, staggered Malekith is a sad Malekith indeed (and the slim chance of re-enacting the card art means this would be an always-take for me into Black Order just because).

They Say Keep Your Enemies Close… is a reference so obscure I don’t get it at all, but it is an effect so powerful I think you bring it when you bring Squirrel Girl most of the time. 3 power gives her next attack one of two potent effects.

Either after the attack is made, if the enemy is not within 1, the enemy gets placed within 1 of her – this has no restrictions on size and can easily pull anyone off the point. Her attacks are range 3 and 4 so it’s very possible for her to hit someone and reposition them far from where they want to be. That’s where I think most people assume the money is because repositioning is a very strong effect.

However, if the target is already within 1 (say, because she hit them with an Ambush before she hit them a second time) the target doesn’t get to roll defence dice at all. This means an average of 3-4 damage if she has her token, with no opportunity for a defensive spike. Once again, those pesky martial artists absolutely hate her!

Now, I should say that I don’t think Squirrel Girl is one of the premier 4 threats in the game. There are a lot of characters in contention for that spot. What I think she does offer is a startling amount of versatility as a great role-player. If you need control, she has some of that via her card and spender. If you need damage, she has consistent damage herself and she can buff your team’s ability to put it on a key target. If you need survivability, she has it – and in a pretty unique fashion where the opponent needs to KO her twice.

Her home affiliations are the Avengers and A-Force. Until recently I would have said that she doesn’t get much out of Avengers, but actually Squirrel Girl makes excellent use of the Steve3 leadership to either guarantee or dodge her ambush trigger and sneak in even more consistent damage (average 4-5 damage with her card is nasty if she has the power to get it). I think she plays very nicely into that team where the consistent additional damage from Earth’s Mightiest Heroes combines excellently with Tippy’s defensive debuffs.

A-Force also serves her nicely, as she can rely on multiple bodyguards when she has Tippy out so there’s less concern about timing, and she can use the additional power to fuel that token when needed – without requiring the additional power to function in the way some of her teammates can.

And as briefly mentioned, I also really like her in Web Warriors, where the fact that she can blunt the opponent’s offensive output becomes a lot more relevant and her teammates can help keep her safe with Lifesaver or symbiote shenanigans.

So where would I scale her?

Obviously the answer is S, for Squirrel. She just can’t be beat!

Until next time... Honk!