Marvel Strike Force: The First Horseman – Morgan Le Fay

Welcome back to MSF Mondays! Each week we break down one more aspect of the hottest mobile game, Marvel Strike Force!

Another week, another Marvel Strike Force Blog post. Not one week removed from the announcement of Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen, and we already get our first reveal: Morgan Le Fay as Pestilence! After taking a look at her kit, I was reminded that I wanted to do a more strategic in-depth look at how you should optimize your status effect applications.

Let’s get into it!

MSF: Morgan Le Fay

What a coincidence that the Morgan Le Fay announcement comes right on the heels of me watching The Green Knight for the first time. I have always enjoyed Arthurian legends, and so getting a Marvel character from the Excalibur storyline (among others) seems like a real treat. It opens the doors to other Arthurian toons, and possibly even NIGHTCRAWLER??

Morgan Le Fay is a Legendary Controller featuring high health and high damage capabilities, but that’s not the part that excites me the most. As history has shown with recent releases like the Astonishing X-Men and Web-Warriors, turn meter is king. It’s the same effect as you get in other games like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons: at higher levels you’re playing rocket tag with the action economy.

So, as we delve into Morgan Le Fay’s kit, we see that she actually has two abilities that impact the precious turn order.

Special – Time Warp: This is a major battlefield reset. It takes all toons and knocks their turn meter down to 0, clears all of the enemy positive effects, dishes out some damage, and then applies Speed Up and Immunity to all Darkhold allies.

Because of the Speed Up, this ensures that your team will be going next, all before the enemy gets a chance to go. Have your enemies been racking up the Speed Ups of their own? This is how you knock them down a peg or two.

The reliable counter that I see to this is by inflicting opposing Morgan Le Fay teams with Slow/Stun because negative effects are only cleared from Morgan Le Fay instead of all allies. Either way, this is extremely powerful, especially if the enemy turn meters are high when it’s used.

Ultimate – Reality Break: This other ability perpetuates the new Trauma ability introduced with Omega Red. After spreading a bunch of negative effects, flipping positives, and dealing some damage, any remaining enemies that don’t have negative effects lose a third of their turn meter. Once again we see that we’re just piling on the hurt. Arguably the special seems better overall, but I think we’ll find that the Ultimate is just as scary to face.

Passive – Fae Queen: And then we get to the Passive ability. Biggest line is this one: “On enemy Turn, fill Speed Bar by 10% for self and all Darkhold allies.” It’s like a built-in Speed Up battery for your Darkhold team. If you’re able to add Speed Up on top of that, things are really going to get out of control. I would be surprised if other Darkhold allies get a Speed Up ability because of this, but it’s certainly not out of the question.

MSF: Status Strategy

I just wanted to take the opportunity to share some insights that I have on Status effects on the strategy around them. Take them with a grain of salt, but following this logic has worked well for me to this point.

1. Slow – Slow is best used on enemies when their turn meter is low. You want to get the most bang for your buck, and slowing an enemy that moves right away clears your effect while not really impacting the battlefield at all.
2. Speed Up – In a similar fashion, you want to apply friendly Speed Ups to toons with a low turn meter. They’ll be able to build more ‘free’ turn meter this way than if it’s cleared right away with their turn. The other applicable time to apply is when you NEED to beat the speed of an enemy toon whose turn meter is high. Then just slap it on your toon with a higher turn meter so that they can go first.
3. Ability Block – Don’t apply Ability Block to a Blind enemy or a Stunned enemy. If an enemy is Blind, you want them to burn their higher abilities (Specials or Ultimates). Once you apply Ability Block, they’ll burn their Basic and have their better abilities available next turn. That’s not good.
4. Stun – If an enemy is Stunned, don’t pile on more negative effects except Slow. Slow will prolong the duration of the Stun, especially if you can extend the Slow with something like Doc Ock’s Ultimate. Just don’t apply Ability Blocks and Blinds because they’ll be wasted.
5. Blind – In some cases, Blind is almost better than Stun because it can burn Specials and Ultimates. It’s also spreadable with abilities like Hela’s Ultimate, so it makes it have more utility than Stun.
6. Defense Down – Like other abilities, this is best used on toons with lower turn meter so that you can take advantage of their lower defenses for a longer period of time. It’s also useful to counteract Defense Up to bring the damage levels back to equilibrium.
7. Disrupted – Situational status effect that you can apply when you know enemy kits well. Don’t want that Sif or Stryfe to Taunt? Hit them with Disrupted. In today’s meta game of status effects, this is applicable to most toons at nearly any time.

Well I hope this helps you take your Squad from a D+ to a B- Commander!

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