MSF: Using X-Force to counter Asgardians in Alliance Wars

Asgardian counters in Alliance Wars

X-Force

X-Force is a new team to Marvel Strike Force in June 2020. At the time of the writing, the full team has just become available as this team was designed to counter Asgardians in Alliance War. Currently in July 2020, since X-Force has 3 new team members, few people have a fully leveled X-Force team, whereas many people have a near maxed out Asgardian team. This means that current X-Force teams are not well balanced.

Finally, Hela is a standard for Ultimus 7 and Dark Dimension 3, this means that she is often maxed out to T14 and has multiple or all T4 upgrades. This is a difficult team balance for Asgardians.

The initial game play indicates that X-Force can punch across in power, but cannot do significant punch ups.

 

Waste: Asgardians 70% Power
Safe: Asgardians 90% Power
Risky: Asgardians +125% Power
Hopeless: Asgardians +160% Power

 

X-Force Counter for Asgardians – Team Composition:

There isn’t much optionality to X-Force since there are only 5 players.

Core:

  • Deadpool: The core of the team. With X-23, his special attacks the most injured character ignoring blinds.
  • Cable: Cable helps a bit with speed and his ultimate attack does significant damage.
  • Domino: Domino really drives the team into a meta. She offers speed and evades that adds to the survivability. Additionally, she has to be killed before Deadpool can be killed.
  • Negasonic: Negasonic heal blocks on her opening move. This is critical to stopping Hela’s summons heals.
  • X-23: X-23 adds speed when characters fall beneath 50% health and adds more evades when the X-Force falls beneath 50% health.

 

Key Offensive T4 Upgrade for countering Asgardians:

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

Top Priorities:

  • Domino Passive: Increases the chance that on turn an X-Force member gets evade go from 50% to 75%.
    • This is pretty huge because it means that most team members won’t take the first hit.
  • X-23 Passive: This raises the opening speed bar increase in war to +20% and compounds with Cable
    • This means that the team will get to get off more attacks early in the match.

Additional Priorities:

  • Domino Special: This raises the speed bar increase for Deadpool from 60% to 80%.
    • This upgrade means that you typically get back-to-back attacks.
  • X-23 Ultimate: This guarantees that the stealth flip happens up from 70%.
    • Since she targets the most injured character, this is a hard counter for Loki’s passive stealth.
  • Deadpool Passive: This increases the healing per negative effect on him and guarantees energy for Cable.
    • Deadpool regularly has 1-2 negative effects in the match and this increases healing from 20%/30% to 30%/45%.

Lower Priorities:

  • X-23 Basic: Guarantees evade on attack
    • This generally adds to the survivability against the onslaught from Asgardians.
  • Cable Special: Clears all positive effects from target, rather than limiting to 3.
  • Negasonic Passive: Adds 20% damage to all X-Force in war.
    • This helps tip over Asgardian opponents when they are close to dead.

 

Game Play – X-Force vs. Asgardians

Hela is the key to eliminating the Asgardians since she typically is the highest Asgardian. The X-Force team gets a lot of turnmeter gain, meaning they go incredibly fast relative to the Asgardians. You need to get Hela down to stop her summons from rewinding X-Force’s turn meter, and so she is your primary target.

Opening:

The order of turns is Negasonic with her ultimate A0E applying heal block to the whole team. Next X-23 goes with her special applying ability block — the main challenge is getting Hela down early, so targeting her is key. Domino goes with her ultimate applying disrupt to the primary target — again, Hela should be targeted and hopefully the disrupt will be active when she falls beneath 50% to nullify Loki’s passive.

Fourth X-23 goes with her ultimate attack, attacking the most injured Asgardian ignoring stealth. This is frequently Loki since he is very squishy.

Fifth Deadpool goes with his basic or ultimate — this should be targeted at Hela again — be careful about using his ultimate since it can hit Hela’s summons, causing the turnmeter to be rewound.

After this, Thor will use his passive A0E — this hurts, but Domino has often put on evades to members of the team. Notice that only Cable hasn’t gone, so defense down will have expired from the team.

Next Cable will go, he will have his charged special frequently available since Deadpool grants him energy. This should target Hela if she’s still alive — this has the chance of killing her.

At this point, you’ll likely have one or two Asgardians down and you’ve entered the middle game.

Midgame:

Loki will go next if he’s alive; although, frequently he will be dead thanks to X-23. He will use his special attack — mind control 2 opponents and apply defense down. Ideally this hits Deadpool since he is unkillable.

Hela will go after Loki — she typically has her ultimate available; however, she has been ability blocked by Domino, so this will only be her basic attack. Thor will go after with his special. Next Sif with her special and putting up taunt. X-23 should go next, which will be her basic attack. Then Heimdall will get his attack. After this, Negasonic will use her special attack, clearing taunt from Sif and allowing Thor to be targeted.

At this point, you should be in the endgame, cleaning up the remaining members.

Endgame:

X-23 will go allowing Thor to be hit freely and then Deadpool’s ultimate attack and Cable’s ultimate. Then it’s just a matter of picking off Thor, Sif, and Heimdal — generally in that order and leaving the Hela summons until the end.

 

Key War Room Caveats

  • Eng Buffed rooms: No difference since the team already starts with defense up.
  • Security Buffed rooms: The X-Force team is fast, but Asgardians also fast, so they take a hit and are a bit squishy.
  • Reactor: This prevents opening move evades.
  • Bridge: Negasonic’s opening move ultimate will cause her to be hit by multiple characters, particularly problematic with Security-buffed rooms.

 

Written by: Avenue Assassin
Reviewed by: koopandres
Last updated: 2020/07/03

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