Aimtron

Aimtron was one of the first effective counters to the Asgardians in MSF. They provide sustainability while Graviton provides key utility to counter Loki’s stealth. Ultron and his bots do most of the damage.

Waste: Asgardians -20%
Safe: Even Power
Risky: Asgardians +15% Power
Hopeless: Asgardians +40% Power

Caveat: Aimtron isn’t as reliable against the highest power Asgardian teams because Ultron doesn’t have red stars. This means that when facing teams with all 6 or 7 red star Asgardians, Ultron doesn’t have enough damage to nuke players with his ult.

 

Aimtron Counter for Asgardians – Team Composition:

The Aimtron team has quite a bit of optionality because Aim has 7 members and you only need to choose 4 of them because Ultron is using a slot.

Core:

• Ultron: Ultron and his bots make the team work against relatively high power Asgardian teams.
  The speed bot can be used effectively against Loki. Ultron’s ult should be used to nuke open targets.
• Scientist Supreme: Scientist Supreme serves a dual purpose. First, her turn-1 ult to apply debuffs across the opponents (and only to Ultron) can reduce the damage from Thor’s passive AOE. This is a bit of a crap shoot because you don’t know which debuffs will apply, but it’s very valuable. Second, Scientist Supreme also provides a bit of insurance from her passive revives — again this isn’t guaranteed, but reviving Graviton after he falls can swing the course of the battle.
• Graviton: Graviton has the key counter to the team.
  The challenge to the Asgardians is that once they drop beneath 50% health they get hidden away with Loki’s stealth. Graviton applies disrupt when enemies drop beneath 75% health. The key thing is that you need to have Graviton have enough focus to have these land and then also be strong enough to be alive.

Even with the core members fixed, you have 5 options for 2 slots — 10 different team compositions. What will dictate your choices between these options is your farm state for the characters and the red stars. If you have no red stars on Aim Security and 7 red stars on Aim Infector and Aim Monstrosity, you’re going to go with the 7 red star choices.

Strongly Recommended:

• Aim Security: Aim Security provides a taunt that can take the heat off of Graviton, Scientist Supreme, Ultron and his bots. In principle, there is a useful debuff-reflect mechanic where debuffs applied to her will bounce off to the attacker. But this requires her to be above 75% health, which tends to quickly vanish.

Strong Additional Options:

Aim Assaulter is the most common choice for the fifth option, although it’s possible that Aim Researcher might be a better choice and give a slightly higher reach with punch ups.

• Aim Assaulter: Aim Assaulter gives additional speed bar to adjacent Aim allies. This works well if you have a damage dealer on your Aimtron team — Aim Monstrosity, but that requires taking off Aim Security or if you have a strong Graviton.
• Aim Researcher: Aim Researcher gives heals. This additional heal can be really useful for keeping the team alive for one additional attack at the beginning and that can turn the tide from a loss to a win. Now the issue is that the targets are random and that they are frequently heal blocked.
• Aim Monstrosity: Aim Monstrosity is a damage dealer. He can be useful for eliminating additional enemies. Unfortunately, he has splash damage that can take down Hela’s summons and end up being counter productive.

Weaker Option:

• Aim Infector: Aim Infector doesn’t do a lot other than apply debuffs and some minor damage. It works as an additional target to take heat off of the core members while still not getting debuffed by Scientist Supreme on her ult.

Key Offensive T4 Upgrade for countering Asgardians:

These are the key upgrades for being an effective counter to the Asgardians.

Top Priorities:

• Ultron Special: This is essential since it drops a third minion.
  The third bot is healer bot which clear’s the debuffs off of Ultron from Scientist Supreme’s opening ult.
• Ultron Ult: This raises the damage from 620% to 700% piercing damage.
  This additional damage is key for nuking Sif through her block and defense up.

Additional Priorities:

• Scientist Supreme Passive: This raises her revive health from 25% to 30% of that character’s health.
  • It also increases the amount of ability energy generated from 1 to 1-2 on Aim allies with negative effects. The ability energy isn’t that relevant because only Graviton needs ability energy for his ult and if he has debuffs, he’s in trouble.
• Ultron Basic: This increases damage from 270% to 340%.
  • This additional damage is useful since he is frequently the primary damage dealer.
• Ultron Passive: This raises the number of positive effects prolonged on kill from up to 4 to unlimited.
  • At the critical early points in a battle you typically don’t have more than 4 positive effects in a war against the Asgardians, so this isn’t as critical as it is in other game modes. However, late in war attack you can end up with 5 or 6 positive events and this can be critical for Ultimus nuking every time when you’re running low on time.
• Aim Monstrosity Special: This makes it so that Aim Monstrosity gains the offense up before his turn, rather than having to wait to the next turn.
  • If you’re using him as a damage dealer, this is key.

Lower Priorities:

• Aim Researcher Passive: This increases the speed bar gain when a negative effect is applied to an Aim ally from +10% to +20%.
  • The increased speed bar gain is useful to get her special recharged.
• Aim Research Special: Raises her healing by 7k health.
  • Note that she already has 15% of her health plus 6k. For my Aim Researcher, she heals at 34k health without the T4 so the increase to 41k isn’t dramatic. It also raises the chance of a bleed flip is raised from 75% to 100% for adjacent allies. This is useful and the power of the regens from the flipped bleeds increases.
• Scientist Supreme Special: This increases the number of debuffs flipped from 3 to 4.
  • This isn’t super relevant against Asgardians. Very useful Ult7 where mass debuffs are flying and you’re using her in a non-Aim team so her ult is debuffing the team.

 

Game Play – Aimtron vs. Asgardians

Aimtron game play is really important because it is important to manage the turn order and avoid charging up Thor and avoiding Loki’s special.

Unfortunately, there is a degree of randomness in the battles due to Loki’s opening target and Scientist Supreme’s choice of debuffs. Additionally, as Sif gets stronger, the chance of the block becoming more meaningful goes up.

 

Opening:

Loki and Hela are going to go first. This is going to hurt. You’re hoping to not lose anyone, but even if you do, you can hope that Scientist Supreme will revive. Notice if you lose Ultron to know that you’re down to his last life. If you lose Scientist Supreme, that is effectively game over. If you lose Graviton, it isn’t good.

The first character to go for you is Scientist Supreme. Use her ult to apply debuffs. This has a lot of randomness. What you want is for Thor to get offense down, Hela to get offense down, Sif to get defense down, Loki to get slow. Ideally, Ultron doesn’t get the slow from Scientist Supreme, because that will delay Ultron’s first turn by half a turn.

Graviton will go next. Sometimes this is before Sif goes — which depends on whether Sif got a slow from Scientist Supreme. If you have an option, stun Thor because this won’t give him a second charge and will eliminate his first attack. He will still charge up while stunned and will AOE out of a stun. If you have to attack Sif, try to stun her. Don’t try to stun Loki unless your Graviton is significantly stronger than Loki– while it is awesome when the stun lands because Loki’s passive doesn’t work, Loki has high resistance and the stun rarely lands.

When Ultron goes, summon his minions and use their specials to give positive effects to Ultron. The healer bot will clear the negative effects from Scientist Supreme. Then use Ultron’s ult — this will always be directed at Sif. Up to about 50k, a maxed Ultron will nuke Sif. For Sifs from 50k to 70k, it depends on Sif’s blocks and Ultron’s crits whether she goes down or not. Above 70k, it’s tough to take Sif down with Ultron’s ult. While you typically hope for Graviton’s passive to apply disrupt, this is one time when you don’t because Sif is not a major threat and you want her taunt cleared so that you can start working on Thor and not charging him up.

 

Midgame:

In the following rounds avoid attacking anyone other than Thor to prevent him from charging up unless you have a big attack on another target. The one exception to the “only hit Thor” rule is when the speed bot comes back around for its second attack, attack Loki to reduce his speed bar so that his ult doesn’t go off stealthing the team.

One important thing to note, is that you shouldn’t use Graviton’s special because it will usually hit one of Hela’s summons and rewind your turn meter and heal up the team.

When Ultron comes back around for an ult, nuke someone. Loki or Thor are ideal next targets. You want them to go down, particularly if you hit Loki. Once Thor goes down, get rid of Loki then Hela. Leave Heimdall to last.

If Loki’s ult goes off and he stealths everyone, time will be a critical factor in the battle. You want to use your minions to take the evades off of Loki’s summons. The reason is that if Ultron needs to attack, you want him to kill something to prolong his positive effects, and if he only has Loki summons with evades then that won’t be possible.

You need to have Loki’s 2-turn stealth pass, so long as Thor is down, you can attack Hela’s summons because this will rewind your turn meter and effectively speed up the other team — at the expense of healing them.

 

Endgame:

Once Thor is gone, you’re really in the end game of the battle. The key thing is to work quickly through the opponents while keeping buffs on Ultron to give him energy. You’ll be wanting to nuke each player with Ultron’s ult since with the exception of Sif, they’re pretty squishy.

Remember, you still clear the room if only summons remain, so if you’re running out of time, target the primary characters.

Key War Room Caveats

• Eng Buffed rooms: No difference since the team already starts with defense up.
• Security Buffed rooms: This can cause Hela’s opening attack to hurt more. This can be bad for Ultron against high red star Helas, particularly if Loki targeted him on turn 1.
• Reactor: The primary challenge here is that Aim Security can’t get a taunt off turn 1. I recommend still using the taunt to heal her and to not charge Thor. This can be doubly bad if the Reactor is buffed with Security.
• Bridge: The counters from the bridge can be problematic for Scientist Supreme if she isn’t strong, particularly if the Bridge is buffed with security since she will get the brunt of all 5 Asgardians and Hela’s summon as well. If she was targeted by Loki, this could kill her. You could consider using her special on turn 1 to flip the Security debuffs.
• Cargo Bay: As always, this is a crap shoot. The big danger is if offense ups land on Thor and Hela along with speed up on Thor.

 

Written by: Avenue Assassin
Reviewed by: koopandres
Last updated: 2020/06/22