Now we really start bottom-feeding.
#4
RACHEL DAWES (Dark Knight Rises 205)
I mentioned her last summer in my rant about the overpoweredness of The Dark Knight Rises set, but my complaint was centered solely on the character inaccuracy of this dial. It’s really not very good.
- She’s not getting much use out of Leadership at her 40-point price.
- Incap’s not too useful at 0 range.
- She loses Stealth to be a medic…a subpar one with 8 AV.
Sure, she makes adjacent pals immune to Poison and Incap. But only one of those powers is scary. Meanwhile, she’s got to push and push (ignoring her Willpower) to get to a decent AV to use Support. So just do yourself a favor and pretend this Rachel is the one that gets blown up in the 2nd movie.
Along the lines of civilians-in-a-superhero-game…
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#3
LUCIUS FOX (Batman 033)
This was almost a double feature starring BOTH versions of Lucius Fox: this one and the Dark Knight Rises version. But the latter is properly costed well under 40 points for his civilian bystander weakness and can be useful for his special Leadership (which works way better than stupid Katie Holmes’) and Perplex and then Outwit.
The non-Morgan Freeman’d Fox also brings Perplex and Outwit to the table. But he’s paying 42 points for it and his power to not get shot at first thing in a turn. So opponents will move an inconsequential piece first and THEN blast him.
I suppose one could use him to tie up a dangerous opponent. But with his crap stats, you’ll just be surrendering his support powers and his 42 points and make him an obituary.
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#2
MADAME XANADU (New 52 Justice League 018)
She’s a Mystic with Perplex, and one of the cheapest. This makes her better than a lot of previous years’ Worst lists. Yet she here tops 2012’s crap heap. Why?
- No defense other than Mystics.
- In fact, she’s completely soft and vulnerable to attack.
- A largely wasted 10 AV. Being so soft and having 0 range work at cross purposes. In order to fight, she must be in close. No savvy opponent will let her in close, and she won’t live long in melee.
- And then there’s her SP, which only removes tokens off adjacent characters who MISS an attack.
- I repeat for emphasis — it only works when you’re failing attacks.
- Oh, and she’s got to make a power action first. So you’re basically burning an action as a weak contingency if the ally misses. Otherwise, you just totally wasted an action and her ability to use themed team Probability Control (because you’re only going to play her on a Justice League or Mystical keyword team, if ever) to reroll a friend’s attack.
The only reason she isn’t #1 is that the ever-useful Perplex is followed by an impressive run of Regen paired with Prob Control, which can combine to keep her around longer than she should and force the opponent to take more Mystics damage trying to KO her.
But you shouldn’t be paying 62 points for the ability to maybe come back from damage she ought not be taking. The booby prize of the New 52 Rares.
(Literally)