Ricochet Blast is one of the most evocative team tactics cards. It is included in the suggested demo game and it feels great to pull off, but how effective is it?

For a total of 4 power, you get a 7 dice reroll any attack at range 4 from Cap. Iron man can often be holding back a bit, on an objective “turreting”, which means he can be a little out of range of some characters. Cap, by comparison, is often in the thick of things, body guarding and using shorter range attacks. So the first thing to note is that this is relatively easy to use.

Into the maths of it:

So you should be expecting at least 4 hits, and the median result is almost 6. 5-6 hits will be quite common. So where does that put you at chances to daze/KO?

Assuming a vanilla 3 energy defense, you’ve got a 23% chance to daze a 6 health character and a 43% chance to daze a 5 health.

Those seem pretty decent, but if you have 4 power on Iron Man, you can afford to Friday AI. That is assuming you are playing in the Avengers affiliation, but given that you have Cap and Iron Man on the field it’s a safe bet.

Suddenly, adding those two dice puts your median hits up by two. The ability to reroll any gets more powerful the more dice you roll. With Friday behind him, Iron Man is much more likely to daze:

Both results go up by about 30 percentage points, making it slightly better than a coin flip to daze a 6 health and pretty likely to daze a 5 health.

The clear limitations are the two characters you have to include. For this card to make one of your slots of 8, you need to have a plan to play Avengers a lot and Iron Man at least a decent amount.

It also doesn’t bring anything particularly new. All characters can do damage. This card does more damage at maybe an increased range. But there is always the opportunity cost of Iron Man’s unibeam. If the scenario is a very spread out one, the extra potential for range may be very valuable. But on a central clumped scenario, the beam attack of Unibeam may be a better investment of power.

Team Tactics cards rating

Power Cost – ★★★☆☆ (★★★★☆with Friday AI)

Ease of set up – ★★★★☆

Impact – ★★★☆☆ (★★★★☆ with Friday AI)

Breadth of applicability – ★☆☆☆☆

Overall rating: ★★★☆☆