The Guardians of the Galaxy have a powerful leadership ability: cashing in a team tactics card for three sets of two rerolls. But who really capitalises on them?

A lot of the time who you want to use Winging It on will depend on the game state. It’s very hard to give general advice, so most of this will focus on characters you could select at roster or team selection phase, but I wanted to give some general guidelines first I use when deciding who to Wing It on.

Identify your most important attacks

If you have some vital attacks planned – KOing a character stacked up on power or dazing an extract holder – identifying that early in the round and getting the rerolls you need to increase the odds of your plan working is a good use of Winging It. That said, at roster and team construction there are some character and tactics cards choices you should be considering.

Three attacks

One of the features of Winging It is that the tokens only last until the end of the round. Most characters only make two attack rolls, so one token goes unused. It can be used on defense, but assuming you want to maximise your offensive output, choosing characters that can make more than two attacks is a way to get the most out of your three tokens.

Characters that fall in to this category are:

Rocket and Groot. With the Deadly Duo team tactics card Rocket can make up to 5 attacks. That allows you to choose where those rerolls are going to get the most value.

Gamora. Her Cosmic Assassination attack can hit another character with a God Slayer. She does need four power and two targets though.

M.O.D.O.K. His Doomsday Chair attack with Whirling Blades gets the third attack. M.O.D.O.K. already comes with access to rerolls, so there is an element of diminishing marginal returns, but it saves you power on the attack.

Valkyrie. Her Dragon Fang attack triggers another strike, and those rerolls can help her get that wild trigger she really wants. Unlike Gamora and M.O.D.O.K., these attacks can all target the same character, but rely on luck. The rerolls boost her chance of hitting that wild by 8.1% to 73.5%.

Vision. His beam attack can easily catch a second character in it, generating more attack rolls

Hulk. His Thunder Clap can target more and high numbers of dice means more possibility of needing two rerolls.

Venom. So Many Snacks allows him those extra attacks – remember the winging it tokens last all round. This further disincentives people from attacking Venom.

Winter soldier. If you suspect one or more of your characters will be dazed this round, Get Your Own Back comes in to play.

This list is here for completeness, but I think these are less persuasive targets:

Thor. I considered putting Thor in the category above, as he really shines with rerolls, but he rarely has the power spare to spend on God of Thunder to get three attack rolls. He remains, however, a good target for Winging It.

Loki’s Frost Blast is made a lot better with the reroll, as you are more likely to get a damage through and so inflict the slow condition. But it’s not an attack you really want to be planning around – he normally wants to be using strike to generate power or Illusions for damage. Two rerolls does help the odds on triggering Mesmerise, but only a bit – from 20% to 30%.

Okoye. Not the most exciting, but her Vibranium Spear Thrust can generate a Strike.

Captain America. Again, not the most exciting, but his shield throw can Richochet.

Defensive (single extracts scenario?)

Holding on

As well as dishing out damage, those rerolls can help a character hold on in the face of a storm of attacks. Making a three defense charcater in to Spider-Man really shifts their odds on defense. But where it can really shine, is on an already defensively strong character.

Black Panther is a great example. Panther already counts blanks as blocks, and has 4 physical defense. Adding rerolls really helps him out on his uninjured side. This might allow him to whether a storm on an important Secure objective or hold on to a high priority Extract target like a Skrull, Kree Power Core or Wakandan Herb.

Other characters can fill this role too: Cap in his injured side; Captain Marvel – especially when Binary Formed; Hela with her high base defenses and recursion ability; Okoye if the attack is from within range 2; and even M.O.D.O.K. to an extent, though low base defense stats mean his rerolls may be wasted.

This presents your opponent an interesting choice: ignore the character and let you keep the Extract/Secure or take it on and risk wasting a lot of activations. The plan will typically work better on Extracts than Secures, due to all the pushes and throws in the game.

But there is one final category worth considering:

Meat Shields

Groot gets to bodyguard Rocket for free and Cap and Okoye have it as a super power. This means you can direct attacks towards them from their protectee and then get great use out of the rerolls. Now this plan has a big flaw in that it can be easy to move them out of range with a push or a throw, but there will be game states where this is a viable consideration.

So what do I do?

Most of the time, offence is the best form of defence. I will normally be looking to use Winging It on the most important attacker that turn, normally early in the turn. But in some situations, particularly with single Extracts, my thoughts turn to defense.