In this series, I will be discussing my Servants of the Apocalypse list building and presenting battle reports as I relearn MCP after a very long hiatus and learn to play the Servants of the Apocalypse affiliation.
Before playing any games with the Servants of the Apocalypse. I first had to build an initial roster. This means selecting Team Tactics Cards. In the previous article, some character-specific tactics cards were discussed. In this article, tactics cards for Apocalypse and unaffiliated Team Tactics Cards to fill out the Team Tactics Card slots will be discussed.
Apocalyse
As the centerpiece of every Servants of the Apocalypse squad, it is no surprise that he will be the focus of many of the selected Team Tactics Cards.
Being a 6-threat Apocalypse’s activations are presumably supposed to be relatively strong in comparison to lower-threat character. This card allows you to exchange actions on a lower-threat character for one or two actions on Apocalypse. Playing this card can give Apocalypse the Stagger condition. However, one important thing to note is the, via Only the Strong Remain, and injured Apocalypse is immune to Stagger and will instead gain a power or heal one damage. This makes this an amazing late-game card. This principle KO target of this card is Toad as Death. KOing Toad as Death will additionally provide three Evolution Tokens, enabling an extremely powerful Apocalypse activation by paying for horseman superpowers and rerolls.
Rerolls can not only be important for making Apocalypse’s activations consistently impactful, but can also, along with healing, be important for keeping him undazed and unKO’d. Servants of Apocalypse helps brings options to provide any of these. This means that you will see this almost always in the selected five Team Tactics Cards for a Servants of the Apocalypse squad.
Unaffiliated
Many of the unaffiliated cards also center around keeping Apocalypse alive and well.
Similar to Immortal Servants, Recalibration Matrix brings a full reroll that can be used for an attack or defense roll. This will most often be used in an attempt to keep Apocalypse undazed or unKO’d, but can be used to try make an important Apocalypse attack connect. This card is very often selected to be in Servants of the Apocalypse squads.
In keeping with the goal of keeping Apocalypse safe, Sacrifice is a common pick for a restricted slot. This can prevent attacks big attacks or attacks that have critical effects, like applying the Stagger condition or stealing an extract, from connecting with Apocalypse. Of note is that having an attack redirected to Toad as Death can be a way to either trigger Slippery if he survives or generate three Evolution tokens if he does not. Some Servants of the Apocalypse players are not as worried about stopping attacks that have critical effects from connecting with Apocalypse and instead like to bring more flexible healing.
An alternative Restricted card to Sacrifice is Patch Up. Patch Up might be preferred if you do not think that you will often have an allied character within Range 2 of Apocalypse, or another priority character, when they are attacked. Personally, I lean towards Sacrifice, but it does require more exact positioning.
Survival can be another Tam Tactics Card that can prevent a key model, often Apocalypse, from being KO’d. It is most commonly played against enemy squads that are likely to have priority and to threaten to KO a key model with one activation.
Apocalypse’s defensive superpower, Only The Strong Will Remain, does not counteract damage from throws. This makes throwing large terrain at him an effective means of damaging him. Also, Apocalypse is Size 4, which means that your opponent throwing him into another allied not only displaces Apocalypse but can also apply a large amount of damage to that allied character. Brace for Impact, an extremely common Restriced selection, can prevent that damage.
An alternative Restricted card to Brace for Impact is Indomitable. While it does not protect from damage from terrain throws, it can stop character throws and pushes from displacing a key model. With how positioning dependent MCP can be, I am very tempted by running this over Brace for Impact. However, this is something that needs to be tested.
Warpath is another unaffiliated Team Tactics Card that can be played if you are worried about key characters being displaced or getting key characters into better positions. This is often played to counter act attacks with pushes or throws to get a character back on a point or back into a good position. However, it can be used to get to an entirely new position after an attack that does not have displacement.
Making Apocalypse’s attacks more consistent has been a theme. Joint Effort is an additional option for doing that. When combined with some combination of Fury from War, En Sabah Nur’s Judgement, and Celestial Technology to bring two allied characters within Range 1 of Apocalypse, Joint Effort can massively boost the reliability and damage ceiling of an attack. This card also combos well with Pyro’s beam attack, Flame Jet.
Epilogue
The key Team Tactics Cards for Servants of the Apocalypse squads are The First One, Immortal Servants, Recalibration Matrix, and Survival. The two Restricted selections with usually be Sacrifice/Patch Up and Brace for Impact/Indomitable. The remaining Team Tactics cards will usually be filled with character cards (discussed in the previous article), with Warpath and Joint Effort sometimes making an appearance.
The next article will be covering crises and gameplans for Servants of the Apocalypse rosters. As always, if you have any comments or critiques please reach out to me on Discord at professor_ulysses.
You Caught Me Monolouging 