Powerscaling: Elsa Bloodstone

 

Powerscaling: Elsa Bloodstone

In this installation of Powerscaling, we’re going to be looking at one of the characters who was a huge draw in bringing me back to the game: Elsa Bloodstone.

When I first read Elsa’s card my eyes lit up. The leadership just stood out as such an incredibly interesting choice. Root is a powerful condition and I have historically considered taking characters like Minister Sinister purely because they can throw out Root and combo it with the original Loki to create a horrific bubble where characters have to spend two power before they can play any non-innate superpowers at all.

That kind of tax can really hurt characters who rely on their cheap reactive powers to reduce damage. If a 1 point increase is a handful of sand in the gears of a team’s power engine, 2 points is a pocket full of gravel. Not every team cares, but for the ones that do it can make the game a painful uphill battle.

Elsa remains my personal favourite way to play Midnight Sons as a result (though I hasten to add, this is not the same as thinking she is the most competitive option. She can be good, but Blade's leadership is head and shoulders above hers). 

The trouble is that her power economy, and that of the Midnight Sons in general, can really suffer under the weight of her own leadership. Boom! Is great for spreading out chip damage… but it’s also damage that you are causing that you aren’t gaining power for and your opponent is. Silver Bullets can be fantastic for sealing the deal on characters you have brought low who would otherwise be able to lean on a well-timed Odin’s Blessing or Xavier’s Dream to live… but you’re paying a power before you know if you have done enough damage for it to be relevant. Nothing sucks worse than paying to stop your opponent being able to reduce damage and then whiffing, or watching them roll 5 blocks anyway.

Her own kit is still extremely solid, though, and whilst I don't intend to compare her to Blade after this point, I think it's fascinating to see how a few tweaks can turn a character who superficially shares so much with her counterpart into a very different play experience compared to the Dhampir.

Elsa’s hit and run is not once per turn, which means that if she starts with 4 power she can choose to make 2 builders and 2 medium move actions. That’s a lot of efficiency right there! She has a respectable 6/6 health pool rather than the semi-common 6/5, and she backs that up with 4/3/4 defences and the ability to reroll her physical and mystic dice if needed. She has a hole in energy (which seems to be common with Midnight Sons characters) but it isn’t as pronounced as a symbiote character.

Bearer of the Bloodgem also makes her resilient to certain forms of control; immunity to advancement or placement by superpowers comes up more than you would expect. She’s not immune to any conditions, but any time she gets one the character responsible takes a point of damage – which is just a little nuisance punishment that can soften someone up for retribution.

Her attacks are where the real juice can be found. Monster Hunting Weapons being range 4 means that it is very common for her to be able to walk and then make an attack right from round 1. It has two very relevant conditions; slow makes it more difficult for opponents to outrun her medium movement hit and runs, and incinerate softens the target up for more shots. With the prevalence of martial artist characters in the meta right now, I’ve found that a good ranged attacker and incinerate are both extremely relevant tools to be packing.

Bloodgem Blast is also an extremely efficient spender. Ranging from 6-9 dice for 1-4 power, she almost always has access to it if she wants it, and if she hits the wild trigger she can completely shut down the healing that characters like Immortal Hulk and Apocalypse rely on to help keep themselves alive. Even turning off healing factor can help to make sure damage sticks when it is needed, and with hit and run she can do this as she repositions around the board.

The difficulty that I’ve had getting the most out of Elsa has been in the reliability of her triggers. Sometimes you hit both on her main attack and feel great. Other times she whiffs completely. Five dice with no inherent rerolls is not a particularly consistent effect.

Which is why I’d like to talk about her under Steve Rogers: First Avenger. After all, she’s… Avengers Adjacent, right?

Steve3 lets her spend a power if she gets a hit to change another die to anything she likes. At first this seems like it wouldn’t help with her power economy; she’s still spending a power. But, because the timing on this is during the modify dice step rather than when targeting an attack, you can choose not to spend it if you wouldn’t also refund the power that it costs.

Suddenly she has an 80 per cent chance of getting the hit she needs to get at least one trigger, and the chances of getting both go up substantially. If you’re lucky enough to hit the 26% chance of getting both, maybe she spends a power to force a point of damage through anyway! The way I’ve been playing Steve3 is very aggressive; the intent is to get 2-3 extra points of damage over the course of each and every round from the leadership, as well as some relevant triggers, which can really put the pressure on the opponent.

That aggressive playstyle strongly benefits from softening targets up and keeping them in place, which both of Elsa’s Monster Hunting Weapons triggers enable, and even moreso from turning off the healing that can otherwise negate the extra trickle of damage.

It is also possible for her to play more cagily; if she is sitting on a back point, she can still move up then hit and run back onto the point whilst hopefully contributing with an incinerate, but my personal experience has been that in order to be worth her points, Elsa needs to be getting those two attacks in every round past the first whilst using her greater range to stay in an annoying position to be dug out of, hopefully whilst holding an extract she took from someone she dazed early on. She can leave the secure points to characters like Steve himself, Hulk and Cage who are generally pretty happy to claim a point and benefit from the hail of bullets she can put in to soften up their targets for them.

On paper, I think other affiliations can run a similar gameplan; Red Skull: Master of the World can let her turn her skulls into crits for the Slow, and he’s often running Zemo who can help her get a reroll. Defenders – where she is also affiliated – have a lot of ways to boost her attack dice and there are a lot of 5 threat characters who will absolutely hate being incinerated, slowed, hexed and judged all from one attack. But neither of these options are as reliable as Steve3’s ability to let her choose which one she wants, if she needs either of them, so long as she gets the initial hit.

She does technically have a tactics card – Covering Fire – which enables her to roll 5 dice the first time each turn an enemy character makes an attack whilst within 4 of her to deal damage equal to the crits and wilds. Unfortunately, to make best use of this Elsa needs to be positioned very precisely and she’s still probably not getting more than one or two damage. At a cost of 2 power and a tactics card I have yet to find a sport where I can make that shine – partly because both Avengers and Midnight Sons have a lot of fantastic cards they generally want to bring.

But this is a powerscaling series, so the most important question: where would I scale her?

The answer is of course E, for European, even if she was born in Boston. She sure does love to remind people where her heart truly belongs.

HONK!