Title Characters have been quite the rage in Heroclix, and not more than a couple weeks ago, I covered two of the recent additions. Now we have two more characters to cover and for today’s article, it’s all about the master of magnetism.

There doesn’t seem to be any indication that this mechanic of Title Characters will be slowing down. In the last three Marvel/DC sets, we’ve gotten two characters each, and I’m sure we’ll see some Title Characters in Avengers: Infinity as well (I swear, if there’s a Title Thanos, I… dunno what I’m going to do). Personally, I really like these characters. They have the strengths of Primes where their dials are incredibly efficient for the points, they’re easy to play for newbies if you take the card out of the equation since they don’t have any special powers, and I like the idea of a battle being about one or two particular characters.

While there are two Title Characters in this set, really only one is worth talking about. There’s a serious degree of difference between the two and frankly, Title Professor X isn’t worth building around.

Magneto is 100 points with 7 range and a single target, 7 clicks of health, standard combat symbols with Flight, and the Brotherhood of Mutants team ability. Like all Title Characters, he has no special powers and has four Title Traits; one for being KO’d and three activated abilities. Since this is Magneto when he was a villain, we only get the Acolytes and Brotherhood of Mutants Keywords. He starts the game with 3 Plot Points.

The dial is perhaps the most staggering part of Magneto; it’s incredibly good for just 100 points. For movement, he’s always quick with 9 Running Shot up top, moving to 8, swapping to Sidestep on three, Force Blast on click five, and dropping to 7 on his last two clicks. Attack is very strong with 11 Pen/Psy on his first two clicks, 10 Precision Strike on clicks three though five, and Pulse Wave on his last two clicks, which drops to a 9 on his final click. Defense is very steady; 18 Invulnerability up front, then dropping to a 17 (which persists the entire dial), Toughness on clicks three through five, and ES/D on his last two clicks. Damage is also very steady with 4 Leadership on his first two clicks, 3 Ranged Combat Expert on clicks three and four, and 3 Perplex on his last three clicks. Magneto can pump out at least 4 damage on every single click and as long as he doesn’t come across penetrating damage, this dial is going to stick around and be quite the pain.

Like all my Title Character builds, let’s first examine what happens when Magneto, Realist is KO’d:

When Magneto, Realist is KO’d, friendly characters modify damage -1 for the rest of the game

That’s pretty brutal, but it’s honestly not the end of the world. You can easily build around that to where it doesn’t hurt that much, and it’s certainly not something that practically ends the game for you. I would rate this a 3 out of 5 for Title Character penalties (with 5 being perfectly fine and 1 being game-changing).

Now the fun part! What does Magneto do for you as a Title Character? Which route does he take; boss damage or he more of a team player?

First up, the increase ability:

(+1) MUTANTS MUST FORCE CHANGE: FREE: All friendly characters within range modify attack +1 until your next turn.

Wow. Yeah, he’s a team player alright. This is a killer ability as it almost guarantee’s that your team is going to land their attacks for a turn, and Magneto can trigger this right out the gate if he needs to. There are two really nice aspects here; the first is that it doesn’t say that other friendly characters are boosted, so Magneto gets that +1 as well (go ahead and increase all of his attack values by +1 on that dial), AND because it doesn’t require line of fire, you get this bonus as long as you’re within a 15 square box of Mags. Who needs a double Perplex piece when you can use this guy to be a primary attacker and buff the rest of your team at the same time?

Next up, his decrease ability:

(-2) MAGNETIC WAVE: FREE: Move all friendly characters within range up to 2 squares.

A lot of people complain when Magneto doesn’t have Telekinesis, and while this version follows that direction, this ability mimics his ability to move his allies. It also adds to the team-player aspect of the piece. This ability is seriously insane; how many times have I talked about positioning being a big deal? Well Magneto says “everyone Sidestep! I don’t care if you’ve already used Sidestep! Do it again!” Just like with the last ability, Magneto gains the benefit of this as well, so you get a bigger Running Shot on his first two clicks and a mini Running Shot on his middle two clicks. How about giving Flurry pieces Sidestep? Or just moving your tokened allies into safety? The amount this power can change the game is staggering.

Last up, his ultimate ability:

(-9) THE DREAM OF SUPREMACY: FREE: For the rest of the game, as along as Magneto, Realist is on the map, friendly characters modify damage +1.

Now, this is a really great ultimate. There’s a ton of firepower behind it and you should be able to practically win if you manage to pull it off. However, I would argue that you should never save up your Plot Points to activate it. Magneto has to be given 7 actions without using any other Title Abilities if he wants to pull this off. Without Willpower, that means that if you don’t want to hurt him, you’re getting to use this on turn 14. What Heroclix game have you played that’s actually made it to turn 14? Usually time is called or the game is flat over by that point. To sacrifice his other incredibly strong powers to try and get a +1 damage to your team is a waste of this character, and while it looks like a really nasty ability, I would say it’s tied for the worst ultimate of the Title Characters, strictly because of cost.

While his ultimate might not be good, Magneto’s basic Title Abilities and kick-ass dial are more than enough to pull the 100 point cost to play him. Sure, he lacks Willpower and that’s a bummer, but you can afford to push this guy. Just make sure you decide how you want to play him before you charge into the fight as that KO effect can be a stinger.

Keys to Success

It’s my belief that more than anything, Magneto needs a good supporting cast of secondary attackers to make his dial worth it. While he’s strong on his own, he’s incredible with the right allies, so I would prioritize more aggression over support. Branching off of this, Magneto is better off if you throw your other characters into the fight first and have them take shots or tie-up opponents while Magneto snipes enemies off to keep him safe and continue boosting his force.

Transportation isn’t really an issue; Magneto can fly so he can’t be carried except by vehicles (Overdrive could work well), and he’s got some great movement and range, so TK really isn’t that necessary. This is a figure that you luckily don’t need to sink points into getting him around the map.

Support powers on the other hand will be very good with him. Outwit is almost always a must-have these days (although you could probably still get away without it). Perplex isn’t too necessary as Magneto has the numbers game on lock, but you could always riase his damage or defenses. Probability Control is almost a non-issue because of his 12 attack thanks to his ability, and the fact that he’ll raise everyone else’s attack values as well. I say almost a non-issue because you should never rule Probability Control out completely. There’s always a place for it.

Map choice isn’t the end of the world for Magneto because his abilities don’t care about line of fire, so thankfully his lack of good Keywords aren’t really going to make his team suffer. Obviously if you win map roll, I would elect for something with elevation and outdoors so that he can hide when he needs to and then take shots from the rim.

For today’s build, I’m going with 300 Modern with no Resources. Like the last article, I have someone on here that takes advantage of the Headmaster trait, so I don’t want to lose out on the ID card.

300 Point Modern Magneto, Realist Team – No Resources

The first stop on my Magneto tour was finding a great way to take advantage of his Mutants Must Force Change ability. In my opinion, the best way to do this is with bystander tokens. They’re usually pretty cheap because of the lack of dial length and in the last two years, their attack values have jumped quite a bit. At first I wanted to use Devil Dinosaur since you get a lot of options, but he’s 100 points and aside from TK, he doesn’t contribute that much to the overall team. Instead, I went with the undisputed master of bystander generation; Carnage.

For 60 points, you get the best retaliator in the game and you get 5 pogs with Plasticity, 11 Blades, Super Senses, and Shape Change. These are honestly probably the best guys Magneto could hope to be paired with. They already have a superb attack value and his ability almost guarantee’s they’re causing damage. They tie opponents down while he takes pot shots and keeps him safe from KO. Lastly, if the manage to go down, they don’t award any points. While your opponent is busy dealing with the threat, Carnage can always drop in with retaliation and spawn another.

With 5 bystanders, we need a way to get them into the fight. I’ve tried playing these guys without a taxi and it really does crush their effectiveness to a certain degree. Since we have 5 symbiotes (and other team members), I really like the Green Lantern Team Ability, so I’m going with Green Oracle from Elseworlds. She has a great support suite of powers with Perplex on her top click (pushing into Outwit which we’ll almost 100% do every game), the biggest move value of modern Green Lantern Team Ability figures in modern, and she has a nice 18 ES/D to protect her.

We’re pretty heavy in points so far and we only have one primary attacker which is a little risky. While the sybmiotes do a lot of damage, a single Pulse Wave or Energy Explosion can really disrupt our tempo, and I’m a big fan of having multiple options. FOr a secondary attacker, I went with the new Chase Iceman at his lower point value. This is a seriously nice dial for 60 points and while it may be a little fragile, you get some great value out of it. With Bobby, we pick up Pulse Wave to take out large targets with heavy reducers. We also get another 11 attack piece that will jump to a 12 with Magneto, and he has Enhancement so he can help Magneto hit for more damage. What I really like about Iceman is that his Ice Clone trait isn’t tied to his 175 point dial, so we can still pump out bystanders to further increase our potential with Magneto.

With just 30 points remaining, I figured a support piece could work well, so I went with Moira MacTaggart. While she isn’t a full support figure, she does bring another Leadership, Perplex for her or Iceman, and an ID card to the team. Plus, she pushes into Outwit just like Green Oracle, so we have more power countering. With Moira being Iceman’s dedicated support, he can shoot with 12 attack and 4 damage, and she can pull tokens off of him so that he can keep plugging damage.

For our ID cards, we get a Student ID from Moira and 5 points left on the team which is perfect for a regular ID. For students, I like Chamber for this team. While only Magneto can call him in, he does have Enhancement so he can boost Iceman’s damage even more, and he can pickup from Iceman’s own Enhancement giving you two shots with 4 damage. For the other ID, I like Wolverine at 50 points. Almost anyone on the team can call him in and he deals an absurd amount of damage. If we need healing for Iceman’s short dial or to get Magneto back up a bit, we can call him in near them and get a free 1 click heal. You don’t need Wolverine here and really any ID that suits you can work, but Wolverine is my personal choice.

I ran this team last week with a slight change (I don’t have Green Oracle, so I went with the common Green Lantern from Elseworlds and ditched the Faculty ID as he’s 5 more points), and it was disgusting how difficult it was for my opponent to do anything. The symbiotes are such a pain to deal with and once they get that 12 attack and four of them can attack, there’s so much damage that’s being thrown out. Magneto and Iceman are incredibly efficient snipers and it feels somewhat helpless at you really can’t make any headway. Is this team perfect for an ROC or WKO? Probably not, but it’s super fun and I would imagine it would wreck a lot of players at a typical LGS event.

What are your thoughts on this team build? What pieces do you want to use with this Magneto the most? Could you actually build a functioning Brotherhood team with him in the current Modern? Answers below in the comments section!

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you liked this team build and the direction I took it. I’ll see you all next week on our sister site over at Two Clicks From KO! Have a good one!