Avengers Infinity- G009 Jakar

During my sealed release I drafted what I thought was a pretty average selection of figures, with highlights including two rare Maxams, Chronos and yes, Jakar. I ended up playing Jakar, Her, Kree Sentry and Chronos for a cool 300 point team, and ended up winning the thing. A huge portion of that win goes to me having amazing rolls while my opponents had terrible rolls, but another portion of that has to go to Jakar, who in every single game made his points back and more. Since then I’ve used Jakar a handful of times, and found the same thing, for 75 points he’s an absolutely mean figure that definitely deserves some love, especially when he’s going for less than $3 most places.

Breakdown

Jakar comes in at either 325, 125, 75 or 25 points, but for our purposes you’re only going to be looking at the 75 or 25 starting lines with the 125 point value being a possible, but unlikely candidate. For right now, let’s focus on the 75 point dial, and see what makes me so excited about him.

Before powers, lets take a look at his values. Jakar is coming in at 75 points for 4 clicks of life, with a attack value that wavers between 10 and 9, a solid defense of 18 and 19 and a very solid 3 damage with 7 range. 4 clicks of life isn’t a lot for 75 points, but that’s where the powers come in. Jakar’s value almost entirely comes from the powers, especially his special attack power. For the small price of a power action, Jakar can use Telekinesis three times in a row, and on-top of that can deal penetrating damage by placing opposing characters. This Telekinesis is the crux of his usefulness at the beginning of the game, especially on the first turn where he can give three of your characters a 6 square starting boost. In later turns, as the battle heads towards the middle of the map, Jakar’s Telekinesis opens your opponents up for some heavy damage, where he can rearrange your team while throwing heavy objects at your opponents, or deal penetrating damage to those with reducers. On a single turn, Jakar can deal up to 9 damage when he’s in range of 3 heavies and 3 characters, which while seeming unlikely, happens far more often than you think. His attack power is an incredible boon for any team, allowing for a lot of disruption and damage. Now that attack power would mean nothing if he didn’t have anything to back it up with, and he most definitely does. Compounding on that 18 defense is Invincible and Shape Change, making Jakar a really hard guy to deal with, without Outwit. Even then Jakar himself isn’t afraid of taking a little damage, as when he loses his Shape Change and special Telekinesis, he gains Outwit and Pulse Wave instead, making him an even bigger threat. These powers are so good it’s even worth pushing Jakar to get to them, and it’s not a big worry either as Jakar, like all colossal retaliators has a stop-click on his last click.

As a retaliator, Jakar isn’t one of the strongest, as his retaliation slows down an opponents team for a turn. It’s not that it isn’t useful, it’s just hard to compare it to the strongest of the retaliators that tend to cost less than Jakar at his 25 point line. That being said, Jakar excels at retaliating after being knocked to it. It lets him jump across the map, slowing down big clusters of your opponents figures before taking a shot at a vulnerable foe with a normal action. This is especially good at picking off other colossals from a distance. Jakar is also really hard to hit on his last click with Shape Change and a 19 defense keeping him safe from a lot of attacks, and giving him more chances to retaliate.

Here’s why you need to pick up a Jakar, he perfectly grows in purpose as the game goes on giving him useful abilities during the time in the game that you need them. At the beginning he makes big sweeping plays where he relocates your entire team if need be, or makes three attacks to weaken the opponents. In the middle of the game he becomes an Outwitter when you need it, with Pulse Wave as an option to deal some wide-spread damage, or potentially to get through a single character, and finally when he gets too irritating, you’re opponent is going to need to get through his stop-click to finally put him down, and if they fail to, they’re getting action tokens on a lot of their characters.

Keywords

The biggest disappointment I have with Jakar is his keywords. His first is the always underachieving Batroc’s Brigade, leaving him few options for team building. The second, is Cosmic, an excellent keyword with lots of support, and lots of need for Telekinesis. Cosmic offers up some fantastic characters for Jakar to work with like, the space ninja turtles, Kismet and Her, Venom Space Knight, Championpool, Mistress Death and Nekhrun the Bat-God.

Teambuilding

Batroc’s Brigade

We’ll start with the weaker of the two teams. Batroc’s Brigade doesn’t give us a lot to work with, especially if we’re trying to make a modern team, so we won’t. We’re going to grab the man himself, Batroc, from Avengers/Defenders War who is one of the best harassers in the entire game, but we’re going to pass over Machete in favor of Zaran, who’s combination of both Close and Ranged Combat Expert makes him a superior choice. This core works really well together because Zaran and Batroc are very easy to pick off from a distance, but with the help of Jakar, they can much more easily get into range and get working. That leaves us with 85 points left to spend, perfect for either Whirlwind or Swordsman. Both are pretty good close attackers, Swordsman with a high attack, and great powers throughout his dial, as well as a trait that protects him from a lot of close attackers, but Whirlwind takes the cake in this case, as a taxi for the rest of your team. Whirlwind also has the exciting combination of Charge, Flurry, Blades/Claws/Fangs followed by a free Force Blast to round out his set. The big issue with this team is a lack of support powers, but there just isn’t anything available for Batroc’s Brigade unless you want to trade out Whirlwind and a Zaran, or both Zaran’s and a Batroc for Eternity. Thankfully you do get 5 theme team Probability Control’s, and Batroc and Zaran can hopefully pick away at your opponents figures to weaken them up. It’s not an ideal theme, but it can do some work in a casual setting.

AIG009 Jakar 75

ADW031 Zaran 30

ADW031 Zaran 30

ADW050 Batroc 40

ADW050 Batroc 40

AVAS Whirlwind 83

TOTAL=298

Cosmic

Cosmic offers so many possibilities for Jakar that it becomes hard to make a team around him. I’m looking for 2-3 threats to go with him as opposed to a Cosmic beatstick to utilize his Telekinesis to the best of it’s ability. So I’m going to add the space Michelangelo, who’s Smoke Cloud not only boosts Jakar’s defense from range, but allows him to more easily reposition with Sidestep. He also brings Probability Control to the table, giving you some more support coverage. Next I’m going to add Nekhrun, The Bat-God, who grants Stealth to your entire team, making Michelangelo’s Smoke Cloud even better. He also suffers from low mobility, something that can be easily be fixed by Jakar. Finally we’re going to bolster the damage output of this team with Groot from the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie set. He has Smoke Cloud, ensuring your team isn’t going to be left without protection and Enhancement to boost the damage of all your attackers. He’s also tiny so Michelangelo can carry him up during a running shot, before being placed beside Nekhrun to boost his damage to a possible 6. This leaves us 20 points to work with, which we’re going to spend on the Symbiote, to tie-up any pesky Hypersonic figures that want to meddle with your team, and the S.H.I.E.L.D Flying Car which we can use to clog up areas or as protection, giving us more chances to use Stealth. With the final 9 points we can throw on any X-Student ID Cards you have, or a headmaster like Professor X. This team stays away from opponents and uses the Stealth granted by Nekhrun to keep you safe from range. The key to keeping your team moving is Jakar’s Telekinesis which can get your characters where they need to be, keep your opponents away while dealing damage and make some huge swings with heavy objects.

AIG009 Jakar 75

TMNT3026 Michelangelo 75

EW024E Nekhrun, The Bat-God 100

GOTG2M002 Groot 30

SFSMS101 Symbiote 6

G002 S.H.I.E.L.D Flying Car (special terrain) 5

XID-003 Leech 3

XID-006 All-New Wolverine 3

XID- Chamber 3

TOTAL=300