Who Is Elsa Bloodstone?
Elsa Bloodstone is a character not super-familiar to many, even those deeply grounded in the Marvel mythos. Even your intrepid author had to do a bit of research on her for the purposes of this article! For our purposes, here are the bullet points (no pun intended):
- She was created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning in 2001 (those guys are everywhere) as the daughter of previously-established Ulysses Bloodstone.
- She is a monster-hunter (and ally?) of considerable repute.
- She has been a member of both the Legion of Monsters and the Midnight Sons, and was a focal character in the 2017 Monsters Unleashed story arc, which the recent “monster box” of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, N’Kantu, and Werewolf-by-Night is named after.
Elsa Bloodstone on the Tabletop
So what does she bring to Marvel Crisis Protocol? Well, a second leader for Midnight Sons, for one. Let’s look at what she’s got going on:
(Let’s start by pointing out that Elsa’s card is unchanged on her injured side, so everything we’re about to say applies to both Healthy and Injured Elsa Bloodstone.)
Elsa’s defenses are pretty mediocre for a 4 threat character; she has 4 Physical and Mystic defense and 3 Energy defense, continuing the Midnight Sons trend of being slightly more vulnerable to energy attacks. She does have a superpower to assist with this, as we’ll see later, but it only affects Physical and Mystic attacks, so this is a bit of a “win more” effect, strengthening her stronger defenses rather than addressing her Energy weakness. She has six health on both sides of her card, average for a 4 threat character.
Elsa’s attacks are decent. Her Monster Hunting Weapons builder gives you a range 4, 5 dice physical attack with some great triggers: Critical slow and Wild incinerate. The fact that these don’t require damage is excellent, and you can potentially trigger them both at once. So far so good!
Her Bloodstone Blast spender is a range 3, 6 dice mystic attack that costs 1 power, and allows you to spend up to 3 more power to add additional dice at a rate of 1 die per power spent. This is not a great ratio of power to dice, as you’re not going to get anything back from it and Elsa has several other things she might want to spend power on, but it’s serviceable and increases your chance of hitting your Wild “degeneration” trigger, which is very good: enemies affected by degeneration cannot remove damage from them for the rest of the Activation Phase. This stops Healing Factor, Immortal Hulks, Nebulas, etc. cold and gives you a real edge into some of these models that rely on their self-healing to stay on the table. (It also shuts down things like Venom’s We Are Venom spender, for what it’s worth.) I don’t think this is an attack you’ll be using a lot unless your opponent has one of those models or a really poor mystic defence, but when you really need this ability and can hit the trigger, it’s going to be game-saving. Remember: you do not have to deal damage in order to activate this effect (just hit the Wild trigger), so it is strictly superior in that regard to the Grievous Wounds team tactics card, which has a similar effect.
We’ll tackle the leadership in a minute, because that’s worthy of its own discussion. Let’s move on to Superpowers, of which Elsa has several.
Run and Gun is a new name for an old power, and functions the same as the Hit and Run found on Star-Lord, Bullseye, and Cyclops. For the cost of an action, this lets you attack and then take a move action. Action compression is always good, and this lets Elsa take the tried-and-tested activation pattern of walking up from a secure into range to blast somebody before retreating back to the objective (and theoretically safety). However, this doesn’t do a lot to extend your threat range- it’s no Charge as we see on other models, for example. I do think this is an important superpower for Elsa and one she’ll use a fair amount, as she is fairly vulnerable to getting attacked back by her targets- it lets her maintain a standoff distance from scary enemies while still contributing to the fight. Keep in mind that this superpower just says an “Attack Action,” so if you need to use a Bloodgem Blast or even a Montesi Book or Inhuman Weapon’s attack, you can- you’re not limited to the builder.
Supernatural Senses allows Elsa to spend 2 power to reroll any number of dice when defending against a physical or mystic attack, including skulls. Ask Web Warriors about how great getting to reroll skulls defensively is! This is a very good superpower and makes Elsa pretty resilient against physical and mystic attacks. Unfortunately, those are her good defenses already, so as I mentioned above, this is just making you better at what you’re already good at; meanwhile, lasers, fire, sonic booms…basically any form of energy attack is going to carve right through Elsa.
Finally, Elsa has an innate superpower called Bearer of the Bloodgem, which has the nifty effect of pinging an enemy back for a damage when they inflict a condition on Elsa, and also prevents her from being advanced or placed by enemy mystic attacks or superpowers. The risk of an enemy taking damage during their activation can be fun and make your opponent have to deal with some tough choices- especially if they’re low on health. Be aware, however, that this can also bite you in the butt if your enemy pings you for a condition you don’t care that much about, takes a damage and gains a power in return (because this is an enemy effect to them) that might turn on some of their kit they didn’t previously have enough power to use or allow them to interact with an objective they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to control this- the effect just happens- but keep it in mind for your planning purposes.
It is nice that Bearer of the Bloodgem prevents advance/place from mystic attacks and superpowers, but this feels a little less impactful in a world post-Thanos nerfs, as he was the primary offender of some of those sorts of play patterns. Still, this has her in a good spot for when the next kidnap strategies inevitably arise.
Okay, okay…let’s talk about the Leadership.
I’m not going to mince words on this one- in order to have a shot at displacing Blade as the Midnight Sons’ leader of choice, Elsa needed at least one of three things going for her:
- Be 3 threat to open up roster building (she isn’t)
- Be a markedly more powerful character than Blade with truly impressive utility or output for a four threat (she isn’t)
- Have a leadership that was somehow, improbably, even better than Bump in the Night, widely considered one of the A-tier leaderships in the game (spoilers, folks- it isn’t)
That isn’t to say that Legion of Monsters isn’t a good leadership. It has some great potential applications. All of its effects are automatic, which is spectacular compared to Dr. Strange’s Mystic Empowerment, which is probably the closest analog to this leadership that we’ve previously seen. Unlike Strange’s leadership, you don’t need to deal damage- the effect here just happens. The effects are also pretty good- Root is an extremely debilitating condition, we’ve seen from Thor2 (electric boogaloo) just how much massed splashed damage can add up, and preventing Odin’s Blessing/Xavier’s Dream or cutting through damage reduction superpowers are all useful (that last one just a hair less so in our new Thanos-less meta, perhaps).
However, here’s what we have to ask ourselves: Is adding one of these effects to an attack once per turn better for 1 power than being able to place yourself within Range 1 for the same power cost using Bump in the Night? While you might be glad to have access to any of these effects at the right moment, turn over turn throughout an entire match, I can’t imagine that Legion of Monsters does more for you than Bump in the Night. That Bump place effect is so important in terms of opening up what your characters can do, providing action efficiency to characters designed without any and taking characters like Ghost Rider/Immortal Hulk and turning their mobility up to 11. Legion of Monsters is a neat leadership, but it’s not Bump, and that alone is probably going to keep her out of the Sons’ drivers seat.
Elsa does have a team tactics card associated with her: Covering Fire.
This is not a bad little tactics card. It creates a range 4 bubble of clapback threat around Elsa that can potentially do some damage when enemies attack her or her friends. It’s not going to do a lot of damage (you’re most likely statistically to get a single result, followed by it being slightly more likely that you’ll get 2 than 0; odds drop off dramatically for more than 2). This is fine; the main problems with it other than the expected damage being a little low are that it requires the enemy be within Range 4 of Elsa (which is closer than she’ll want to be to a lot of folks) and that it consumes a valuable TTC slot that could be one of your restricted cards, Siege of Darkness, Bats the Ghost Hound, etc. This card may have some more play in the new post-War of Kings crises set, as there are tighter scenarios that aren’t E shapes now where it may be able to reach more potential targets. That said, I would describe it as aggressively fine– if you want this kind of effect or are really leaning into booby traps and clapbacks for a list, this will do nicely; if you’re looking for a card that’s going to transform how a character/affiliation plays, you’re going to need to look elsewhere.
So Where Does Elsa Fit, Then?
Honestly, it’s a bit tough to say. I find it hard to believe that she’s going to displace Blade (or really even provide a viable alternative leader pivot), and she seems like she may have trouble justifying her Midnight Sons roster spot at all in an affiliation that has access to Dr Voodoo for the same 4 threat (on top of the obligatory Blade). I also don’t think there’s a ton of room for her in Defenders, her other affiliation, who have access to so many great characters, all of whom synergize with Daredevil’s leadership better than she does as a ranged attacker.
What role Elsa does have I think will be meta-dependent; she’s pretty decent at setting up Immortal Hulk for a KO, and Midnight Sons seem poised to take a spot at or near the top of the post-Thor/Thanos world, so maybe she is useful as a tech pick against him? The problem is that there’s not a ton of ways to guarantee she hits the degeneration trigger, so if you were taking her for that specifically, she’s not even a sure thing to do it. In Midnight Sons, you can use Bats the Ghost Hound to do it, which potentially gives her a bit more play in her home affiliation, and Captain America, First Avenger’s Earth’s Mightiest Heroes leadership can help you get there, so she might fit as a tech piece in those teams. But really, are you going to spend 4 splash threat in Avengers on Elsa?
Otherwise, if you’re looking for a solid but not exceptional mid-range blaster, Elsa probably has you covered- but so do a lot of other 4 threat ranged options. Whether or not she’s your pick will likely come down to if you like her character from the comics/MCU film Werewolf-by-Night or if you are going to try to leverage some particular aspect of her kit in niche situations.
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