I’ve been having a few conversations on Discord about the Cosmic Cubes crisis, and I’ve given the same suggestion a few times, so thought it bears broadcasting to a wider audience. It’s about a specific turn one play on the Cosmic Cubes scenario. Certain teams are strong in that crisis, where they have multiple fast, low threat characters to grab cubes. Asgard and Cabal with a M.O.D.O.K. focus can struggle to an extent on that crisis. Luckily I have a plan.

Hela is a regular character in Asgardian rosters, and a great one to include in Cabal. She has a great play in cubes.

Any character with a 50mm baseman’s M move can reach an opponent’s cube on round 1 if they deploy opposite it: the “missile”.

Doc Ock and Ultron are other characters that can do something similar, and have the big advantage of ignoring terrain via Wall Crawler or Flying. You can get to and interact with you opponent’s cube. That’s important in the maths of the scenario.

Without Priority

Imagine your opponent has priority and has forced you to play on Cubes. They are going first, and send a durable character like Captain America, Black Panther or Black Dwarf up to claim the centre cube. The amount of effort required to daze the character to get that cube back is high, and probably puts them ahead in terms of power economy if it’s even possible. Maybe they’ve used Hulk to grab-and-go on the centre cube and you don’t even have that option.

From that position, you might expect to grab your two closer cubes and your opponent to grab theirs. That leaves them 3-2 up off the cubes side of the crisis.

If you can disrupt the plan by grabbing one of their cubes, you can swing back the maths to 2-3 to you, negating their “advantage” of going first in this crisis.

With Proirity

With priority, you have the option of grabbing the centre cube first. But also grabbing one of your opponent’s cubes to potentially get ahead 4-1 on cubes! A common counter tactics is for your opponent to load the centre with high output characters to try and take out your centre cube grabber. This can give you insurance, so that if they do manage to daze whoever you send you still end up 3-2 up, or it allows you to cede the centre cube, not risking your character, and come out with an advantage.

Why Hela?

So far this seems like a great play for Ock and Ultron, so why am I excited about Hela?

Hela has a couple of things going for her. First is her defenses – 4s across the board with 6 stamina. That’s pretty beefy!

Next is her Asgardian power generation. She starts the game with two power, so she can pick up both cubes on her way through. Remember the problem is often not having enough options to collect extracts and cover secures on round one? This really helps. She is essentially counting as two characters for this purpose. Other characters could do this with Advanced R&D, but you find better uses for this card or better cards to take. She can do it innately.

Add in that the rosters who struggle with this – Asgard and Cabal – often include her anyway! She’s one of the four affiliated characters in Asgard and she’s a great character in Cabal, stealing souls from afar.

Finally, in Asgard you’ve got access to Odin’s blessing. That really increases how hard it is for her to be taken down by nixing one big hit.

It also helps that she does really well up close and personal. Rain of Hel hurts a lot, and she will have the power to use it. Even her strikes are really good when she gets a few souls on her.

Terrain

All of this relies on Hela having a clear path, free of size 3+ terrain. There is a small amount of tolerance for going round things, but very little. If you don’t have priority, checking movement lanes for cubes is something that might be worth doing before picking sides, and remember: you can choose any side.

Other options

Any 50mm base with M move can do a version of this. As well as the two with the ability to ignore terrain, Corvus Glaive and Ronan can do it. Ronan has a bit more terrain mitigation, as he can traverse size 3 terrain without needing to climb.

L movers can do it too, and Black Panther is the king of these with his excellent survivability.

Counter-play

If you see one of these higher mobility characters opposite a wide cube, prioritise grabbing that one to deny this whole strategy to your opponent.

Alternatively, when you see them deployed, counter deploy a character that can counter them: a mystical attacker against Black Panther or an energy attacker against Doc Ock or Ultron.

Look for possible terrain-free lines to your cubes against those hindered by terrain, and deploy you early activators to grab that cube.

Finally, running your own Cube-n Missile can be very effective. Once they grab yours, their flank will be less threatening, so you can send your own down to their side with more impunity.