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C3G Strategy - October 2018

Posted October 16th, 2018 at 04:20 AM by HS Codex

C3G Strategy Guide
Scarlet Spider (Kaine Parker)
By: Ronin


Analyzed Statistics

Left Box Breakdown
Species – Clone
Uniqueness – Unique Hero
Class – Vigilante
Personality – Conflicted
Size/Height – Medium 5

Being a clone comes with a few synergies; two of those are the cloning powers of Arnim Zola and Jackal. Generally, those powers are best used as an insurance policy for very high-value heroes, or as a way of getting your hooks into an opponent’s hero. Scarlet Spider is a respectable mid-level bruiser, but he isn’t nasty enough to be a go-to option for either of them to clone. It is feasible that he could be a backup option for Arnim Zola. Jackal, on the other hand, requires you to commit to a specific hero at the start of the game, meaning Kaine isn’t apt to be on his radar. The only other clone synergy comes from Scientist Supreme and her order marker management, which can be nice. More on that later.

The other big thing to note here is the class of vigilante—that’s a very rich synergy that gives Kaine a smorgasbord of army-building options. There’s an awful lot to unpack there, so let’s save it for now.

Statistics Breakdown
Life – 6
Move – 6
Range – 1
Attack – 6
Defense – 5
Points – 245

Good stats across the board, at a mid-level price point. Slightly trivial, but not entirely irrelevant for army building, is the fact that Kaine is the only C3G unit ringing in at 245 points. Including the Hasbro Marvel units in your draft pool does mean that he shares the price point with Doctor Doom, however. Anyway, solid melee bruiser stats here. Let’s dig into those special powers.

Powers Breakdown

Stealth Suit
Before moving, you may place the black Stealth Marker on this card. While the Stealth Marker is on this card, Scarlet Spider can move through all figures and is never attacked when leaving an engagement. Scarlet Spider cannot be targeted by opponents’ non-adjacent figures for any attack or for any opponents’ special powers that require clear sight. If Scarlet Spider attacks or uses his Spider Stingers special ability, remove the Stealth Marker from this card.

Essentially, what this means is that Kaine can’t get picked off early, before he gets into the fray. It lets you safely sneak him up near the front line and leave him there until you’re ready for him to jump in. Once Kaine’s in the fray, though, you’re not gonna be using this in a long-term way—the Phantom Walk aspect can always be handy, but the stealth marker is almost certainly leaving Kaine’s card at the end of his turn. The only exceptions would be the rare circumstances where retreating is better than trying to get some wounds out, or where Kaine’s picked up a glyph that provides an alternative offensive option.

Swing Line 4
Instead of his normal move, Scarlet Spider may use his Swing Line. Swing Line has a move of 4. When counting spaces for Scarlet Spider’s Swing Line movement, ignore elevations. Scarlet Spider may swing over water without stopping, swing over figures without becoming engaged, and swing over obstacles such as ruins. Scarlet Spider may not Swing Line more than 40 levels up or down in a single Swing Line. If Scarlet Spider is engaged when he starts to Swing Line, he will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

A movement power common to a lot of Spider-Folks, Swing Line is essentially pseudo-stealth flying. Limited to 4 spaces of movement in Kaine’s case, but it’s extremely handy for letting him get around. It does have some redundancy with Stealth Suit, which also lets him disengage and move through figures. Swing Line is more effective over uneven terrain (natch), whereas Kaine’s normal move of 6 is more useful on wide open maps.

Spider Stingers 9
Instead of attacking, you may choose an adjacent opponent’s figure and roll the 20-sided die. If you roll 9 or higher, the chosen figure receives one wound. After rolling for Spider Stingers, you may roll for Spider Stingers one additional time.

This power requires adjacency, sure, but it’s still an auto-wounding power with a pretty low threshold for success. You get a 36% chance of scoring two wounds on the chosen figure, and a 48% chance of scoring one wound, leaving just a 16% chance of inflicting no wounds. That’s not too shabby at all, given how valuable auto-wounds can be in C3G. Using Spider Stingers is a great alternative to attacking, especially against figures with low life and good defensive powers (like say, a lot of Green Lanterns).

Super Strength
One of the most widely held special powers in C3G. A handful of immunities, but not rich fodder for discussion.


In-Depth Analysis

So, summing up: Scarlet Spider is evasive, fast, he hits hard, and he’s got a solid auto-wounding power that gets around a lot of tricky defensive abilities. He’s also got some interesting paper synergies to explore. Let’s tackle the clone thing first, since that’s more limited. Trying to build around Kaine’s clone synergies is probably going to land you in a build like this:
  • 160 – Scientist Supreme
  • 220 – Red Skull (C3G)
  • 245 – Scarlet Spider
  • 200 – Arnim Zola
  • 30 – Ant-Man (Hank)
  • 140 – A.I.M. Agents x2
  • 995

Really, the core of that army is Scientist Supreme and Red Skull. Scarlet Spider is your big bruiser hero. M.O.D.O.K. could serve in that role a little more effectively, but Scarlet Spider is (comparatively) a discount option that leaves you more room for terrorist and scientist filler that Scientist Supreme likes.

The way to play an army like that is to let Scientist Supreme hang back and take your order markers, and use her Leader of A.I.M. special power to hand turns to Red Skull, in hopes of him bonding with Scarlet Spider via Master Motivator. As a backup plan, she can activate Scarlet Spider directly, or the A.I.M. Agents. Arnim Zola can bring back a key player for a second go-round, plus his Reverse Engineering provides a contingency plan if the enemy gets hold of Red Skull’s Cosmic Cube.

That’s an army where Scarlet Spider isn’t likely to get too much use out of his Stealth Suit even early in the game. It’s desirable for him to draw fire away from Red Skull, so cloaking him doesn’t really make sense.

You could put together a couple different kinds of clone-centric armies for Kaine, but they’re all apt to be variations on that theme. The really juicy thing to talk about is Kaine’s vigilante synergy. Being a vigilante gives him a really robust range of bonding options. A smaller vigilante-focused army might look something like this:
  • 245 – Scarlet Spider
  • 130 – Nite Owl
  • 100 – Robin (Dick)
  • 130 – Batgirl (Babs)
  • 90 – Speedy (Roy)
  • 695

An army like that gives you a lot of options for where you want to put your order markers—Robin can bond with all three vigilantes (Nite Owl, Scarlet Spider and Batgirl), and Nite Owl can bond with the other two vigilantes as well. If your vigilantes start going down more quickly than you expect, Speedy can attack-bond with Robin.

There are a lot of vigilante sidekicks, but Kaine probably most prefers the Dick Grayson Robin. Dick is generally the best value among the vigilante sidekicks, and his ability to tie up the opponent makes it a lot easier for Scarlet Spider to get a few good hits in.

Scarlet Spider is absolutely the biggest hitter in that army, so you want to be careful about how you use him. If you’re up against an army with a lot of relatively low-end figures (comparable to your other vigilantes), you might want to Stealth Suit Kaine and lead out with the rest of your army, to soften them up before they can get a crack at Kaine, and let Kaine be your finisher. If you’re up against heavier hitters that might cut through your other vigilantes, consider not Stealth Suit-ing Kaine, and putting him right on the front line to soak up some wounds. He can roll with the punches a lot better than Batgirl can. Obviously, Robin is your real go-to screen figure, but he can’t be everywhere at once.

Something else you might do with Kaine is take advantage of one of the recruitment effects available to vigilantes. There are two of those: Lady Shiva, who can recruit vigilantes into assassins; and Kingpin (II), who can recruit vigilantes into criminals. Going for the latter, you might wind up with a build like this:
  • 245 – Scarlet Spider
  • 230 – Kingpin (II)
  • 160 – Shocker
  • 160 – Merlyn
  • 90 – Vulture
  • 75 – Chronos
  • 960

Scarlet Spider doesn’t have a particularly intricate role in that build, besides just being able to fairly reliably take an order marker each round to trigger Kingpin’s stat boosts.

Another aspect of Scarlet Spider’s vigilante synergies, when considered together with his clone status, is that he has a lot of bonding options in a Star-Lord build, because all the vigilante sidekicks are human. That said, he’s not the premier figure for that sort of role—there are other non-human vigilantes that are cheaper or better leverage Star-Lord’s attack boosts, or both (check out Azrael, Black Canary, and Daredevil).

His vigilante status also makes him compatible with a couple of Justice League hubs—Superman (III) and Martian Manhunter (II). In general, there isn’t much drawing him to Superman (III), but he can be a really nice option as an auto-wounder for Martian Manhunter (II). On the Justice League scale, he’s a relatively cheap pick, too. Because he has such good odds of inflicting an auto-wound, it can be worth moving him up early and Stealth-ing him to keep him out of trouble, then using him to assassinate units that your big Justice League bruisers soften up.

Scarlet Spider is a fun, sneaky bruiser with a lot of utility as an assassin. For more information, check out the Book of Scarlet Spider.
Total Comments 3

Comments

Old
Yodaking's Avatar
His SS, Range of 1, & 6 life mean he's not a bad option for Enchantress II's bodyguard. If he's in stealth mode, your non-adjacent opponents then have to attack Enchantress where her Magical Defense can limit the damage.
Posted October 21st, 2018 at 02:24 PM by Yodaking Yodaking is online now
Old
Lazy Orang's Avatar
Great article, Ronin.
Posted October 21st, 2018 at 07:53 PM by Lazy Orang Lazy Orang is offline
Old
Ronin's Avatar
Thanks, LO!

Keeping him in stealth mode with Enchantress is an interesting thought, but I'm not sure how well it would work out, practically, since you have to forego doing any damage with him in order to leave him in stealth.

Might not be a bad option if you were planning to play Amora a little campy, and you had some other Weak-Minded types around as juicy bonding targets. Maybe some Lightning Bolt spells for the extra range.
Posted October 22nd, 2018 at 11:11 PM by Ronin Ronin is online now
 
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