Who Is Mephisto?
Mephisto is is often depicted as a powerful embodiment of evil, akin to the devil, ruling over a hellish dimension known as Hell. However, despite the many similarities, Mephisto is not the actual Devil. He possesses a wide range of powers, including reality manipulation, soul manipulation, shape-shifting, and immortality.
Over the years, he has been affiliated with various villainous groups such as the Legion of Doom and has clashed with numerous heroes, notably Spider-Man, Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange. One of the most infamous story arcs involving Mephisto was “One More Day,” where he strikes a deal with Spider-Man, erasing Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson in exchange for saving Aunt May. A lot of fans didn’t like this story-line because for one thing, doesn’t the Devil have better things to do than break up a marriage? But Mephisto remains a key villain in the Marvel mythos.
Character Card
For base stats Mephisto has a respectable 7 health on both his healthy and injured side with 3/4/4 defences. Only having 3 physical defence is a little low for a 5-threat character but overall he has better than average defences. A medium base with a medium move gives him some good mobility and being size 3 makes him slightly harder to push around.
Hellfire Lash is his first attack. A range 3, 6-dice energy attack that always gains one power and gives the target incinerate on a wild after the attack is resolved. Attacks that gain guaranteed power can be useful as it makes your power economy easier to plan out. However, with a big 6-dice attack like this gaining power based on damage dealt would probably be more useful. There is a roughly 60% chance to hit the incinerate trigger which helps his leadership (see below) as well as any followup attacks.
Infernal Bargain is his next attack. A range 2, 6-dice mystic attack that costs no energy. This attack can only ever do 1 damage to the target but if it does damage it gives Mephisto a Devil’s Deal token which we will get to later. The odds of doing 1 damage on a 6-dice mystic attack are quite good though there will be times when you are against an opponent with heavy mystic defences and you might not get the Devil’s Deal token when you need it. On the other hand, there will be times when you only needed to do one damage to the opponent anyway and the Devil’s Deal token will often be more useful than gaining one immediate energy.
Mephisto’s spender is Termination Clause. A Beam 4, 6-dice energy attack for 5 power. The attack gains dice for each Devil’s Deal token Mephisto has which means it can become a 9-dice beam with his usual maximum of 3 tokens or up to 11-dice if he has sucessfylly played Up the Ante. Additionally this attack guarantees incinerate on anyone hit. There is a a lot of potential for some huge attacks here however, keeping hold of both your Devil’s Deal tokens and your energy will be key to getting the most from this attack. It’s worth noting that the attack doesn’t actually spend the tokens it only benefits from them so you can start the activation with a termination clause and end with his superpowers that spend the remaining tokens.
Mephisto’s first superpower is Devil’s Due. For 1 power and 1 Devil’s Deal token Mephisto can choose an enemy character and based on the dice rolled steal power from them or damage them. On average it is only likely to do one damage and maybe steal one power so may not always be the best use of your Devil’s Deal tokens however, there are some significant advantages. Targeted chip damage is relatively rare and this can ignore bodyguards, line of sight and other defensive abilities that your opponent might have. If you’ve ever faced Amazing Spider-Man on 1 health you’ll know how difficult it can be to do even a single point of damage to him with basic attacks. You can also use this power multiple times in a turn (as long as it is on different characters) so if Mephisto has tokens and power to spare he can dish out a lot of damage without wasting pesky actions to do so.
How Can I Be of Service? is Mephisto’s next superpower and provides him with some much appreciated action economy and movement. For 2 power Mephisto can place himself next to an enemy character within range 3 and make an infernal bargain attack. Movement that doesn’t cost an action is always useful but movement AND an attack that doesn’t cost an action is better. The 2 power cost is minimal when Mephisto will start on 2 power as long as he has at least 1 Devil’s Deal token so round 1 he can move once, How Can I be of Service into someone on the mid-line and finish things off with either a Hellfire Lash to push some damage or another infernal bargain to make sure he starts the next round with the maximum 3 Devil’s Deal Tokens.
Meet My Associate is a reactive superpower that allows Mephisto to choose another allied character within range 3 to become the target of an attack instead of himself, at the cost of one Devil’s Deal token and a power. This superpower works best when paired with a character like Venom, who can not only withstand attacks but also benefits from the additional movement and can retaliate against the enemy that attacked.
Finally the thing that ties everything together Demonic Contract clarifies that Mephisto starts with a Devil’s Deal token, can have a maximum of 3, and that in the power phase he gains additional power for each token he has. Playing Mephisto will take some practice to balance the economy of his power and his tokens.
Affiliations
Atomic Mass Games have confirmed that Mephisto will be affiliated to both the Cabal and Criminal Syndicate. On the Criminal Syndicate side he will bring some nice mobility to a Kingpin list though at 5 threat he does compete with Ulik for the same role. Shadowlands Daredevil will bring some much appreciated consistency to his attack rolls and as one of the few re-roll leaderships that isn’t limited to once per turn will work especially well with the beam spender if multiple enemies are clustered on a point.
On the Cabal side Mephisto has great synergy with all but one of their available leaderships (though lets be honest Sin’s leadership needs a rework anyway) and provides a relatively reliable way to dish out incinerate to hep with their general attrition game plan.
It’s worth noting that neither the Cabal or Criminal Syndicate are particularly card hungry making it easier to add Mephisto as well as one or more of his Tactics cards.
As well as those affiliations Mephisto brings with him his own leadership.
The Legion of the Lost
The Devil’s Reckoning card gives you access to the Legion of the Lost leadership. This works in the same way as the My Hellfire Club card where any character in the game* can become Legion of the Lost affiliated as long as Mephisto is part of the squad.
The leadership works in the cleanup phase and lets your opponent choose one of their models to gain one power and the incinerate special condition, in addition you can two allied characters 1 additional power. I love the flavour of this card showing the Faustian nature of Mephisto’s deals. Sure one of your guys can have one extra power but in exchange they will burn in hellfire…
Atomic Mass Games have clearly learned from the Hellfire White Queen’s Pawns leadership and made the effect happen in the cleanup rather than the power phase which prevents any turn 1 shenanigans. They’ve also made sure that the opponent can’t just choose a model that is unable to be incinerated, deals with the devil have rules about them after all. The leadership gets better as the game goes on as once the Mephisto player has incinerated the enemy team their opponent won’t get any benefit at all.
Unfortunately, as is the nature of leaderships where any character in the game can be taken these leaderships are difficult to balance. Time will tell if someone finds a particularly ‘broken’ combo using the Legion of the Lost though my initial take is that 2 additional power to your characters isn’t impactful enough to break anything.
A+ for fluff C+ as a leadership
Team Tactics Cards
Brand New Day, in reference to the story-line mentioned above is an unaffiliated reactive tactics card that Mephisto can play when an enemy character within range 3 of him is Dazed or KO’d. The character’s controlling player can choose one of two effects, either:
- The character is not Dazed or KO’d and is alive on 1 wound without an activated token. Mephisto gains 2 Devil’s deal tokens and removes an activated token from an allied character.
- Or Mephisto removes all damage and special conditions from himself and gains 3 power.
Once again they have done a great job staying on theme with this card letting the opponent choose the effect, and both effects ultimately helping Mephisto are great representations of his nefarious deals. Unfortunately in practice this card may be difficult for the Mephisto player to pull off. Ideally Mephisto himself is injured enough for the second part of the deal to matter, and has another way to do a single point of damage to the target character. If not, the opponent will either choose to heal a healthy Mephisto or will happily have their additional activation with their character on 1 health. There will be situations where the opposing player is forced to make one of two terrible decisions but I fear that more often than not there will be a ‘correct’ choice for the opponent and the card hasn’t really done anything. C
Embrace the Inferno is an unaffiliated reactive tactics card that lets Mephisto spend 4 power in the power phase to give all characters in range 3 (friendly and enemy) the incinerate special condition. For that round when an allied character with incinerate is attacking it can choose to re-roll all attack dice and if it does damage with that attack can remove incinerate from itself. 4 power is a little on the expensive side but Mephisto with his tokens can potentially get this in the power phase immediately. It’s a card that you will want to play if you have priority so that you can try to remove incinerate on at least one of your characters. The issue with the wording is that it allows you to re-roll ALL dice, not any number of dice. Therefore you might play this with priority, activate a key piece, roll too well and end up not using the re-rolls thus ending their turn still incinerated. B-
Finally Up the Ante is an unaffiliated reactive card that is played when an allied character would do damage to an enemy with an attack. Once again the opposing player gets to choose one of two effects.
- The attack deals no damage and they lose the same amount of power instead. For the rest of the game Mephisto can have up to 5 devil’s deal tokens and he gains 2 tokens immediately.
- Mephisto can remove an activated token from himself or can save the card to play another time.
A Mephisto with 5 Devil’s deal tokens is a scary prospect as he would start the next round on 6 power. Not only that but he could start his activation with an enormous Termination Clause beam before then spending all his tokens on chipping down the final bits of health with Devil’s Due. If the opponent chooses the other option, Mephisto could end up with a double activation which could be an equally scary prospect. Overall these effects seem stronger than the other cards and are easier to set up while keeping the flavour of a difficult deal. A
Verdict
Atomic Mass Games have done a great job in adding the fun of Faustian bargains to the table. Mephisto’s rules are both fun and quite strong so you can expect to see him on tables near you soon. Thank you to Atomic Mass Games for providing an early copy for review.
*Except Dormammu, there can only be one fiery Demonic entity at a time
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