From Panel to Play: Defenders Affiliation Pack

In today’s From Panel to Play we revisit and consolidate previously released characters into a new box! From the halls of the Sanctum Sanctorum to the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, we find members of the Defenders Affiliation Pack ready to defend their city and world from all threats natural and supernatural.

This pack contains a solid starting point for players looking to add the Defenders to their collection by putting five of their classic characters into a single box with all the Team Tactic Cards and Infinity Gems they need to enter the battlefield together with refreshed cards featuring new art! Not all of the cards in this box feature changes, but any changes that have been made over the years are now incorporated onto their physical cards.

Leading off the group is the original leader, Doctor Strange. Doctor Strange’s card has a few noteworthy changes. The first of these is removal of the Mystic Empowerment Leadership. He’s still a leader though! His Leadership has been changed to Judgment of the Vishanti, which allows a character to put the Hex special condition on an enemy when one or more of its triggers are met. Dealing damage with an attack is one way to trigger it. The other is if the target has a Threat Value of 5 or more! Characters with high Threat Value are typically more difficult to damage and have potent attacks. This new Leadership ensures that those characters will have to deal with Hex limiting their attacks and defenses moving forward. Unlike his old Leadership, this one does not cost Power from the attacker and is only used after knowing it will have an effect. Keep in mind, effects triggered by the attack, like Throws, will not trigger this Leadership if they damage the target.

Oshtur’s Refuge has gained Range on its effect. Instead of removing damage from allies within Range 2 of Doctor Strange, it now reaches Range 3. This provides a nice bump in flexibility as Stephen will not have to shepherd allies as much, and it now meshes well with his other superpower, Hoggoth’s Hoary Wisdom, which also has Range 3 and now adds dice to dodge rolls, allowing Doctor Strange to protect allies and heal them without sacrificing actions.

There are two more changes to this character’s card: he has gained 1 Stamina on his Injured side and the Eye of Agamotto superpower now affects dodge rolls in addition to attack and defense rolls. These changes give Doctor Strange a little more survivability.

Next up is the man without fear, Daredevil. This version of Daredevil was revised in 2023 with adjustments to his Baton Hook and Devil’s Deliverance attacks amongst changes to his superpowers and the addition of a Leadership!

Matt Murdock gained better Physical defense while Baton Hook’s Pull special rule had timing adjustments and was made easier to trigger. It also gained the ability to ignore the Stealth superpower many characters bring to the battlefield. Devil’s Deliverance saw its Strength increased to 6 while the bonus dice became more limited, which results in a more powerful attack in most situations.

While Healthy, Daredevil has the Man Without Fear superpower. This superpower gained movement prior to making the Strike attack, which helps it be a bit more useful. While Injured, he has the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen superpower instead. This superpower used to restrict his attack to an enemy within Range 2 of him. That was removed, creating additional opportunities for players to benefit from this superpower.

Finally, he received the Marvel Knights Leadership. This Leadership grants allied characters rerolls once per turn when attacking based on the number of enemies near them, creating chances to beat potentially overwhelming odds!

Luke Cage and Iron Fist did not get any changes to their rules but do benefit from horizontal cards and refreshed artwork! These two characters remain solid Threat Value 3 options for the Defenders and including either of them enables the use of the Heroes for Hire Team Tactic Card.

The final character in this box is Wong, the trusted servant to the Sorcerer Supreme. During the 2023 update he received two changes. The first was an increase in his Physical defense from 2 to 3. The second was changing the keywords in his Servant to the Sorcerer Supreme superpower from “Doctor Strange” to “Stephen Vincent Strange.” This change allows Wong to benefit from this superpower regardless of which version of Stephen Vincent Strange is on the battlefield whereas before he could only benefit from the Doctor Strange included in this box, and not Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme due to the mismatched character names.

Moving on from characters, we find two Infinity Gems included due to Doctor Strange’s ability to use them: Time and Soul. The Infinity Gem: Soul has not changed over the years, but the Infinity Gem: Time has changed. It used to grant an additional action per Activation to its holder. This was changed to allowing the holder to reroll both attack and defense dice when attacking, including Failure results.

 

This pack includes 7 Team Tactic Cards to get players started with these characters. None of these cards have experienced major changes but all of them have useful effects. Heroes for Hire, seen above, allows for one allied character to “hire” Luke Cage or Iron Fist to take a hit for them and, should they remain standing, the attacker will be Thrown!

Pentagram of Farallah allows Doctor Strange or Wong to open a pair of portals in the Power Phase. When any character is near one, they can spend Power to be Placed near another one. This is not limited to allied portals either. If both players play this card, any character can use any portal to be Placed near any other portal. Finally, these portals do not expire creating all sorts of potential plays for both players all game long! Doctor Strange also has a Team Tactic Card that grants him another attack. Seven Suns of Cinnibus has the same effect it used to, but now uses the Active: Action phrasing to clearly indicate Doctor Strange has to use an action to make the attack. Vapors of Valtorr is also unchanged, providing Doctor Strange a way to increase the resilience of one allied character for the remainder of the round.

As with many of the Team Tactic Cards, Mystic Ward is unchanged. It provides a way for Defenders to prevent opponents from engaging with a particular Objective token. Note that this is not limited to particular types of Objective tokens, which makes it very versatile.

The last two Team Tactic Cards, Cover Me and Street Smarts, are also unchanged and provide Defenders with the ability to retaliate against attacks or shrug off opponents’ attempts to relocate them.

That’s all we have for this From Panel to Play. The Defenders stand ready to protect Earth from your battlefield! Pre-order your copy of the Defenders Affiliation Pack at your local game store or through the webstore today!

Until next time, Atomic Mass Games, signing off!