While the Prime Common seems to be greatly overshadowing the Super Rare, I feel it’s time to take the bigger Mad Titan for a spin with his own Team Build. C’mon, you knew this was coming!

It’s no surprise to regular readers that Thanos is a big deal to me; I even wrote an entire article about him around the release of the Infinity War film, which you can read here (which should be updated to be honest). WizKids has done a great job of embracing Thanos this year to coincide with the movie, even if we didn’t get a cinematic set – 3 different unique Thanos retail releases, 4 if you count the duplicates from this set, and 5 if you factor in Thanos with his Thanoscopter. I have a hunch we’ll get maybe one more next year to celebrate Infinity War Part 2, but we’ll probably take a long break from him after that, so I have to live in the moment!

Yes, I have gone on record saying the Common Prime is better than the Super Rare, but man is this a solid figure as well. Both of them are honestly better than the Avengers: Infinity giant-sized Thanos with the Gauntlet, strictly because you can easily play these two guys in a 300 point game and do well. I love that we’re getting a lot of different options for the Titan, and the regular figures from this set are both very playable in regular games.

So what does the Super Rare bring to the table?

Thanos has two point values; 200 or 150 points, meaning he’s always going to be your primary attacker. For those costs, you get either 9 (!) or 6 clicks. Pretty solid for 200 points and not terrible for 150 although it is on the shallower side. He’s rocking 8 range with a single target, standard combat symbols, and the always-present Power Cosmic team ability. As usual, Thanos is blessed with Keywords – Black Order, Cosmic, Eternal, Minions of Thanos, Mystical, Scientist, and Warrior. While that doesn’t compare to literally every generic Keyword the Prime has, these are very strong for any regular figure. Like a lot of Thanos’, he has a single trait that doesn’t really do much outside of very limited games.

Both of his iterations (200/150 cost) are quite different. At 200 points, he starts with 9 movement and his special movement for those opening three clicks, a whopping 12 attack that drops to 11 on his second and third clicks, 19 Invincible on defense which drops to 18 for his second and third clicks, and 5 damage with Probability Control for all three. That’s a very meaty front end.

The rest of his dial isn’t too shabby either. Movement picks up with 9 Running Shot on click four, drops to 8 on five, and moves to Sidestep for the rest. Attack values stay pretty high shifting to 11 Pen/Psy on four, dropping to 10 on five, swapping to Steal Energy on six, and picking back up to an 11 on his last click. Defense starts strong with 18 Invincible on click four, swaps to Invulnerability on five, drops to 18 on six, swaps to Toughness on seven, and drops to 16 on eight and nine. Damage isn’t as big as the 200 point line, but still very good; he starts with 4 Probability Control on four, 3 Outwit on five and six, climbs back to 4 on click seven, and ends with two clicks of 4 Close Combat Expert.

Every click on this dial is very strong. His weakest clicks are probably clicks six and seven where his attack is 10, his defenses finally dip to 17 with lower reducers, his damage is at its lowest, and he loses Running Shot. Still though, with four clicks of Steal Energy, Thanos is going to stick around for a long time, and with massive numbers and Close Combat Expert on the end of his dial, you really do not want him closing the gap.

Thanos does have singular trait, but it’s not really worth talking about. But hey, it’s a team build article and I always go into detail so let’s do it.

THE MAD TITAN RAVAGING BATTLEWORLD: Colossal Stamina. Thanos modifies his attack and damage +1 if targeting only characters with Battleworld keywords.

Okay, I partially lied. Colossal Stamina is quite good and to be honest, I always forget about this. Having a 200 point piece that can always attack is very good and gives him a lot more teeth than he seems. Not being able to successfully Incap him or slow him down is a big issue, and as long as Sheriff Strange isn’t across from him, he can always call in ID characters.

The rest of this trait is what I was referring to. In a vacuum, it’s awesome and makes Thanos an auto-win against Battleworld characters, but once this set ‘wears off’ and that new car smell is gone, you can pretty much treat this trait as simply granting Colossal Stamina.

Thanos does have one last trick up his sleeve – his special movement power that you only get if you use him at 200 points.

DIMENSIONAL DESTRUCTION THROUGH THE BATTLEWORLD: Phasing/Teleport. When Thanos uses it, after resolutions roll 2d6. If the result is greater than the amount moved, this turn he has “FREE: Make an attack.”

To the untrained eye, this might not seem like it’s that good of a power, especially at 200 points. Why not just give him Running Shot? Let me try and help those of you who feel this way.

There’s a very crucial portion of this power that makes it very strong; the fact that it doesn’t say when Thanos has to make his attack. It’s a FREE action, so he can activate that any time during the turn. That means that if Thanos has a very mobile Taxi, Thanos can hit anyone on the board no matter where they are. But what about the roll? What if I roll too low? Well friend, you simply don’t have to move any squares! Remember that a move of 0 is still a move. Better yet, your dice cannot roll lower than 2 and the odds that you’ll roll a 2 is very low, so you have a guarantee that this will work if you move Thanos 1 square and an extremely high change you’ll roll higher if you simply use this power like Sidestep. Oh wait, it’s tied to Phasing/Teleport which means you treat it like Sidestep that ignores everything on the map.

This power is insane and gives Thanos a huge leg up. While the Prime version has more going for him in the long run, this Thanos starts the game off incredibly strong and isn’t afraid to immediately get his hands dirty.

TOOLS FOR SUCCESS

I recommend always playing Thanos at 200 points. At 150 points, the Prime is just better for 25 more points, and those first three clicks are absolutely worth running. That said, we only have 100 points to work with to aid him. Luckily, we don’t really need another attacker. If you’re playing Thanos well, you shouldn’t ever find yourself in a situation where he’s the weakest piece on the board.

The number 1 piece you want is a taxi; the cheaper and more mobile the better. I wouldn’t devote more than 40 points for this role unless the taxi is really good. Characters that can move twice in a turn are going to be a priority as this will allow Thanos to be brought in, make an attack, and then move away, so prioritize taxi’s that have access to Sidestep. Improved movement through either Flight or just ignoring terrain is going to be huge as well.

Support powers aren’t all that necessary for the Mad Titan. He’s already got a ton of Probability Control built in, and with his large attack values with the power (AND defense), you probably don’t need more. Outwit could be good to run with him as Shape Change, Super Senses, Impervious, and Pulse Wave are going to be issues for him to deal with. Perplex could be a big help to move his defense to a monstrous 20. Keep in mind though that with only 100 points, and even less once you add a taxi, you might not want to drop more points on these powers. Characters that can fit multiple rolls are going to be your best friend.

Retaliation seems like a very good option to run with Thanos. They’re pretty cheap and since Thanos absolutely will not go down in a single hit no matter who hits him, you have a good chance of triggering retaliation. If you hide your colossal in the back, that means your opponent is going to have to run characters out to KO them for any points and gives Thanos more ways to strike. They can serve as both deterrents and secondary damage.

Equipment seems like a good route as well. They’re fairly low in points so they won’t take away from the rest of our support and can help to improve Thanos capabilities since he is rather vanilla with his attacks aside from big numbers. The lack of any Pen/Psy, Pulse Wave, Precision Strike, or Outwit could hurt, so equipment could help big time. Just remember that the FREE attack isn’t CLOSE or RANGE, it’s just a normal attack, so take certain equipment with a grain of salt. You could also go the opposite direction and use something like the Symbiote or Mirror to double up on defenses. Those are quite nice with Power Cosmic blocking them from Outwit.

Last up is a theme team, and I don’t think Thanos really needs it. That being said, he has fantastic generic Keywords, so you can absolutely build something like a Mystical, Cosmic, Scientist, or Soldier team so that you can try and pick map and take the game to something that works well with your taxi so you can play to your strengths. I would shy away from a named theme team since your only options are filled with high point characters. Sure, you could go Minions of Thanos and play Mangog and Outrider, but then your only taxi is Mangog and that’s super risky.

Like all my team builds now, we’re going with 300 Modern, no restrictions. Also, I wanted to add in that I’m not adding Troubalert characters on my builds unless the team is very good at calling them (like using Maxie Zeus, Starro, Zatanna, etc.). These 12 are pretty much fill-ins and you should almost always deck out your Sideline vacancies with them.

300 Point Modern Thanos Team

While I did just say that a theme team isn’t necessary with Thanos, I ended up with one, but let me explain my process since this one was a little different.

Before I looked at anything else on the team, I did a large search of all the taxi’s in Modern age and developed a list, narrowing down what my top picks were. I figure since I already ran through this, I might as well share with you!

Kite Man – 15 points with high mobility and can carry two characters. For the cost of one taxi, you can get two Kite-Mans, handing off Thanos between them giving you the most overall protection on the map. Since he can carry two people, you could add Ape Batman to gain some Outwit, or the new Manta to give Stealth busting, PD, and Enchancement.

Overdrive – 35 points again with high mobility and Sidestep, which I talked about being a good addition. Hard to KO so you can count on him a bit more, and Empower could come in handy, but less than Enhancement. Terrain can muck him up.

Dr. Fate – 40 points, can provide either Enhancement or Empower, has high movement, and Indomitable with good defenses of 18 ES/D. Mystical. Very hefty cost though.

Shifting Focus Dr. Strange – 50 points which is very risky, but serves as both taxi and attacker. Can boost Thanos to 13 attack and 6 damage, but will usually only get to pull that off once before he’s incinerated. Mystical.

Super Friends Green Lantern – 30 points with a plethora of good powers. Sidestep, although fairly low movement, TK to equip something on turn 1, Barrier for defensive plays, and Enhancement for more damage. Push-friendly going into Running Shot + Pulse Wave.

Super Friends Firestorm – 40 Points, same movement as Green Lantern. Probability Control to basically ensure a hit. Pushes into the fantastic +2/-2 Perplex.

At the end of the day, I went with an unlisted character (because I wanted to save him for this section) – Joker’s Wild Green Lantern. While his defense is a point below Dr. Fate at 17, he has good movement with 10, he’s Indomitable, and has the Mystical Keyword. The big reason why I went with Green Lantern though is because of his free Barrier once per turn. Not only can we use this to wall of Thanos and make it harder (read: not impossible) to hit him, we can also use it as a Stealth-buster. Stealth is going to be a big problem for Thanos to get around, so he provides a taxi service, protection, and/or a solution for 35 points, all while themed with Thanos’ best Keyword. If you’re going to swap this out, I would recommend Kite Man if you have Manta, or either of the Super Friends chases, although 40 is a lot for Firestorm and just 3 clicks.

Since I was already going down the Mystical path, I went with the Tri-Sentinel as the retaliator. I’ve talked about him before and I know he’s been on my team builds a lot lately, but the big bot is just nuts. His ability to deal damage for free like the Shredder Elite is just dumb on a retaliator, and having Pulse Wave as his retaliation power adds fuel to the fire. Since Thanos has 8 range, you can actually trigger this pretty well without hitting him with the Pulse Wave blast based on where you attack from. You only need to worry about a 5-square radius, so hopefully you don’t need to hit a melee character that decided to rush you.

If you’re running Mystical and you’re low on points, Alex Wilder is by far the best pick pretty much every. This guy is just dumb, and he provides a lot of the powers we need to make Thanos even stronger. As I’ve said before, a good player will probably never let you have Probability Control, so you can almost count on Outwit and Perplex being active. Use that however you want on Thanos and the Outwit will be a welcome addition to counter play. He’ll be a little slow to get into the fight, but he’ll do wonders when he gets there.

With 10 points remaining, I had a choice to make of either the Symbiote and an X-Men Student ID Card or something a little more aggressive. I went with Thunderstrike because it gives Thanos a way to heal himself throughout his entire dial (and heal himself two clicks if he’s on his Steal Energy clicks). The best way to keep Thanos kicking is to never let him dip into lower clicks, and thanks to his Colossal Stamina, you can pretty much do this every turn, even profiting when he’s way back in the dial. This also serves very well from the knockback because he can easily position to hit someone into terrain or off a ledge to take additional damage, or simply to disengage if he needs to. The Symbiote would be my follow-up equipment as I think it gives more benefits than the Mirror and doesn’t have a chance of breaking itself.

I quite like how this team filled out and while I think there are a lot of neat things you can do with those 100 points to bring a lot of pain, the high-end support pit crew is probably the best bet. Still, I’m anxious to try some other comps with him with someone like Manta who brings so much utility for just 40 points. Of course, I’ll have to experiment with giving Thanos the new Exospex as well since it pretty much turns him into a nightmare (as it does for anyone). I feel like it’s somewhat of a cop-out to use them on my builds though because it’s a “play this piece = instantly make your team better”.

What are your thoughts on this new Mad Titan team? What would you run with Thanos or what have you run with him that was successful? Which of the taxi’s that I listed would you play? Sound off below, I’d love to read about it!

Next week I’ll be skipping an article on Two Clicks From KO due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. and the race I’ll be undertaking at work, hosting our first Turkey Day in our new place, and general head-on-fire. But I will return here in two weeks! Until then, take care and I wish my American readers a Happy Thanksgiving ahead of time!