Most of the Chases from The Mighty Thor are really strong, but I feel like Odin hasn’t really been talked about as his kids and friends are all the rage. Today I want to build around the Allfather himself and see what we can do with this brick.

Last Friday, I went and saw Thor: Ragnarok and let’s just say it’s completely rekindled the ever so slight withering of this newer Thor set and sparked my interest to keep building teams around the characters. It was a great addition to the Marvel Studios library and I highly suggest going to see it, especially if you didn’t like the first two Thor movies.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the intro, I feel like Odin slipped by to a certain degree in this set. He’s very strong at both point levels, but it seems like Thor and his Hammer along with Beta Ray Bill stole the Chase show in this set (and rightly so). I want to give you enough evidence to prove that Odin is one of the better chases.

While it’s true that Odin doesn’t have the raw firepower that either of Thor or Bill, and his weapon is probably the worst of the three, he’s very good if you play him correctly and with the right type of team.

Odin clocks in at 230 or 150 points, has 8 range with a single target, the Power Cosmic team ability, and possesses the Asgardian, Deity, Ruler, and Warrior Keywords. At 230, he’s got 9 clicks of health and at his lower value of 150, he has just 6 clicks of health. He doesn’t have any improvements regarding targeting or movement. As for specialties, he’s got two traits (one of which is a ‘wielder’ trait), a special defense, and a special damage.

Odin’s movement is decent, but a little slow for the likes of The Allfather. He starts with 11 Sidestep, dropping to 10 on click two, and swapping to Running Shot on click four. His value drops again to 9 on his fifth click, and he shifts to Phasing/Teleport on click seven. His last click has 0 movement with no power. His attack value starts very strong with 12 Pen/Psy, but drops to an 11 on clicks two, three, and four, before jumping over to Precision Strike on four. He then drops down to 10 attack, picks up an 11 with Pulse Wave on click seven, climbs again to a 12 on slick eight, and ends with 0 with no power. While his defense is strong to start, Odin does teeter pretty quickly. 19 Invincible gets things going, and then immediately drops to an 18 on click two. On click four, he drops to 17 with Invulnerable, swaps to Toughness on click six, and ends his dial on 19 with his special defense power. Damage is consistent with 4 and his special power all the way through click four, dropping to 3 Probability Control on five and six, switching to Outwit on seven, upping to 4 damage on click eight, and ending on 0 with Probability Control.

Odin starts things off pretty well and seems worth that 230 point cost, but once he takes even a small amount of damage, you really start to wonder why you invested so many points into him. I love that he ends with two insanely strong “anti-life” clicks with Pulse Wave and big attack values and Outwit just to pour salt into the wound. Nothing is getting away from him.

At this point value (both high and low), traits and special powers really have to be amazing. Let’s take a look.

WIELDER OF GUNGNIR: Odin starts the game with TMT #s015 Gungnir equipped. INDESTRUCTIBLE

EQUIP: ANY

UNEQUIP: DROP EFFECT: This characters’s attack rolls can’t be rerolled. When this character is given an object action, it may use Gungnir as the held object. If you do, also modify attack +3, and the attack deals penetrating damage. (This is still an object attack) Light Object

The Spear of Odin is neat in that you won’t be stopping his attacks anytime soon with Prob or Mr. Mxyzptlk, and has a nice single-use that gives him a +3 attack to any one roll, which then causes Gungnir to be destroyed. Having a one-time, borderline-guaranteed attack is really nice, especially on a piece this costly. Of course, the silver lining to this is that you can’t Prob your own rolls, so if you roll that Critical Miss, there’s no help.

Next up, his second trait:

ALLFATHER, KING OF ASGARD: Leadership. Other friendly characters with the Asgardian keyword modify attack +1.

As expected, Odin has a ‘lord’ trait that helps out a particular Keyword. Any character that boosts other characters and makes it easier for you to attack overall is a good thing, so I like this trait a lot. The Leadership is nice, but at this point level, we probably won’t need it (until we see the rest of his special powers that is).

Let’s see his special defense power which only appears on that last click:

ODINSLEEP: STOP. Impervious, Super Senses. At the end of your turn, give Odin a Sleep token. FREE: Remove all Sleep tokens to heal Odin a number of clicks equal to the number of tokens removed.

Ah yes, the Odinsleep. This is a really remarkable power and gives Odin a much deeper dial than it would seem. Impervious is great on a final click, and granting Super Senses as well is double-nice. What really makes this nasty is that first word though; STOP. That means that the only weakness to final clicks with huge defenses, Pulse Wave, has a very low chance of actually hurting Odin. Power Cosmic makes it so you can’t get rid of either of these (or the entire power), and the double roll-out makes it very difficult to even hit him. What’s more is this fantastic mechanic that slowly heals Odin, potentially to top dial if he’s left alone for long enough, or until you would hit a click that would really help you in a certain situation. This is the real money to Odin and makes that huge cost worth it.

While it really can’t get much better, let’s see his final power:

ROYAL GUARDS OF ODIN: POWER: Generate a Crimson Hawk bystander. DOUBLE POWER: Generate two Crimson Hawk bystanders. You may not have more than 5 Crimson Hawk bystanders on your force.

This is just like the Civil War Namor in that Odin can generate pogs. It’s exactly the same mechanic, even down to the Double Power option and the limit to how many you can have. Oh yeah, and the pogs are the same, too. 8 Charge, 9 attack, 16 Combat Reflexes, and 2 Close Combat Expert, and they have the Asgardian keyword which means just like Namor, Odin gives them a +1 to attack. So we’ve seen this before meaning I’m not going to detail it out any further.

When you put all of this together, you actually get a very meaty dial, all thanks to that fantastic defense power Odin has which should keep him in the game for, well, pretty much the whole thing. Odin has some great offenses, boosts his allies, and builds his own army, which makes him a pretty damn good Chase since you aren’t pigeon-holed into doing one thing with him.

You know what time it is; Positive Vs. Negative review time! Let’s break Odin down into easy points to really get a grasp of how good he really is.

Positive: Good opening values. Power Cosmic. Long range. Great power selections. Threat the entire dial. Gungnir. Boosts your team. Almost impossible to kill. Self-healing mechanic. Leadership for +1 to actions. Builds his own army. Good Keywords.

Negative: Stats decay fast. Very costly. Shallow dial for the points. Gungir. Too many points to make team boost worthwhile. No improvements.

As you can see, I mentioned Gungir in both sections, and that’s because I still don’t really like the idea that I can’t potentially reroll my own poor results. That kind of aspect is rough when you’re talking either almost your entire team or at the very least, half. Still, Odin has good attack values, so the odds are better for you. The biggest weakness to Odin is one we can’t get around; cost. He’s just so darn expensive. That means that if you really want to play Odin, you almost have to play him at his lower cost to make it worthwhile, even in 400 point games (which is what the build is today). It’s a shame too, because I do really enjoy this dial.

For today’s build, I’m going for 400 points, Modern, with no resources. This will give us a little more room to play with Odin and actually build an adequate force for him to do some work and take the focus off of him.

400 Point Modern Chase Odin Team – No Resources

As I mentioned above, Odin is being played at lower points so that we can actually build a real team around him. He still gets everything he needs and is still an adequate primary attacker at this level (or perhaps better with Running Shot on his first click over Sidestep).

I really wanted to abuse the +1 to attack for Asgardians and the fact that Odin can pump out these tokens pretty quickly, so I opted for Hogun. He’s got a great special movement power:

WARRIORS THREE, HOGUN LEADING THE CHARGE: Charge. When Hogun uses it and hits an opposing character, after resolutions each friendly character with the Asgardian keyword adjacent to him at the start of the action can use Charge as FREE this turn.

If you can surround Hogun with the Crimson Hawk bystanders that Odin makes, you can get a ton of free attacks off in a single turn. I put Hogun in there at full points because he starts with a higher attack of 11 (which goes to 12 thanks to Odin), and he has this power for four clicks rather than just one. Hogun also has the knobbed mace which gives a -2 to attack if he lands a hit, so he’s either going to help nuke a target, or make them useless while his buddies venture off to attack other targets.

With this many bodies, we need a way to move our team around, and the new movie Heimdall is a great resource to do this for Asgardian teams. On turn one, you can have Odin pop out two of these bystanders, and then Heimdall can carry those two and Hogun five squares through any terrain. He’s pushable, has a very solid Super Senses power, and has a pretty nasty mid dial that will really work well with that +1 to attack value.

Our next team member isn’t technically Asgardian, but he does have the Keyword, and it’s the Fast Forces Captain America. 5 clicks, an average of 11 attack (oh wait, that’s 12 thanks to Odin), great damage the entire dial, Indomitable, and a 19 defense at all times thanks to his shield make him a stupid-strong investment for 50 points. The real kicker to Steve though is his STOP click on his third click. When he hits this, he gives all adjacent friendly characters +1 to attack, so now our Crimson Hawks are up to an 11, Hogun is at 12, Heimdall is at 12, and if Odin is by Steve, he’s got a 12 as well. The fact that this dial has Close Combat Expert on almost every single click really sells Steve.

With just 50 points left, I wanted another taxi, and a colossal is a great option. Ymir was chosen over the Frost Giant or Surtur because of his insane lockdown on retaliation. Sure, he doesn’t do damage, but handing out 2 tokens to every character is huge. While Surtur is a better option for the +1 attack (13 on retaliation is pretty dumb), Ymir does get to a 12 so it’s not a world of difference.

For the final 25 points, I went with a Rock Troll because they’re very good for their points. 5 clicks with great values and Charge is tough to pass up for this cost. With Odin, we get 12 attack here as well, and since they have 3 damage, they can pull a decent chunk of weight.

With Hogun starting the action, you can really pump out a supreme amount of damage on this force. Let’s say Hogun is adjacent to Captain America, the Rock Troll, Heimdall, and a Crimson Hawk. That’s easy enough as Heimdall would get Hogun and two others there, and let’s say the Rock Troll moved up on his own. Hogun charges in first, landing 3 damage. Assuming all attacks hit, The Rock Troll and Heimdall charge in for free for 3 damage each (9 total so far), while Captain America and the Crimson Hawk then charge in for free for 2 damage each (13 damage so far), all off of one action. Then you still have 4 actions remaining. Cap can hit for 4 with Close Combat Expert, as can the Crimson Hawk (21 damage so far), the Rock troll can push and hit for another 3 (24 damage so far), and then Heimdall can Phase away, carrying the group and preparing another assault. Sure, some of those attacks can miss, but as long as Hogun lands his strike, there’s so much free damage that comes out that virtually nothing will live. Even characters like Doomsday will be overrun by the sheer amount of attacks. Meanwhile, Odin will make his way forward and just snipe anyone he needs to.

If you want to switch the build and add some support for Hogun, swap out Ymir for the Frost Giant and the Rock Troll for Jane Foster. You get the same theme bonus, the same colossal taxi, and you also get some nice healing which also gets buffed from Odin (10 to a 15 for Support, heck yes!).

This build isn’t perfect and I’m sure there’s better out there, but I really like the interactions this team has. There’s just so much aggression and raw damage. If you position the pogs carefully, you also have a low risk of your power pieces getting hit.

What are your thoughts on this build? Do you think I could have put something else in here to really pair nicely with the Allfather? What are your thoughts on Odin? Sound off in the doobly-doo below.

That will do it for this week. I’ll see you all on Thursday on our sister site, Two Clicks From KO. I hope any of you that competed last weekend at a WKO did well and I wish luck to those attending sometime this month.