Inspiring Monologue is a team tactics card that I don’t see used very much, but it can really help when you have a character that really needs to survive a turn. But which characters benefit most from it?

Typically, rerolls become more effective the more dice you roll. There is more chance of having a result you can reroll. That goes doubly for a “reroll any number” ability – the more dice you roll, the more dice you reroll.

So you might think that inspiring monologue is best used on high defense dice characters like a Captain America. More rerolls on more dice is more better. Or something.

But I’ve run a few set of numbers through J.A.R.V.I.S. and complied them.

For these I’ve assumed two physical attacks, one at strength 5 and one at 7, are coming at the character. First, let’s look at a range of characters that have no damage on them, and see which benefits most from it. Here are the chances of dazing them with and without the reroll from Inspiring Monolgue:

So the character that gets the most help from inspiring monologue in this situation is Cap, but only on his healthy side and without using his Vibranium shield. Black Widow and Captain Marvel get almost as much use out of it.

But sometimes you might want to just limit the amount of damage taken. Here are the chances of doing 3 or more damage to a range of defenses:

So the basic idea of rerolls on more dice having a larger marginal effect is bourne out, but when you look at the numbers from a strategic point of view you might draw another conclusion.

A character rolling 4 dice goes from around a 2/3 chance to less than 1/2 chance of taking at least 3 damage. That’s an important psychological shift when evaluating your turn that may change the behaviour of your opponent.

Even if they aren’t aware of the odds, playing up the fact a character has a big defensive bonus can affect their choice of targets and get the result you were looking for anyway.

It’s not always about the maths – it’s a social game too and trying to manipulate your opponent to your own benefit is an under-explored tactic right now. Warding them off your Skrull-carrier with a well timed monologue might result in some serious VP gain.

This seems especially valuable on extract scenarios with a big VP item: Skrulls, Kree power core and wakandan herbs. If you plan to include these scenarios, inspiring monolgue is worthy of consideration. If you want to include inspiring monolgue, you should be considering taking these extract scenarios.

Power Cost – ★★★★☆

Ease of set up – ★★★★★

Impact – ★★★☆☆

Breadth of applicability – ★★★★☆

Overall rating: ★★★☆☆