We finally got Sinister Motives and after some playtesting we are ready to talk about the heroes in the box. In this article we will cover Spider-Man (Miles Morales)’s strengths and weaknesses and his potential with different aspects, based on our two-player experience.
Spider-Man (Miles Morales)’s Strengths
- Massively consistent conditions – Tough, Stun, and Confuse for days
- Solid stat-line across the board
- Ability to pay wild resources where needed
- High damage output
Playing Miles (who we’re going to use to refer to Spider-Man throughout most of this article, because good lord there are a lot of Spider-Men now in the game) feels oddly reminiscent of Doctor Strange, with his ability to just keep the conditions rolling. His double Web-Shooters are fantastic cheap wild resource generators, and his hero cards are just plain crazy, with cards like Swing In being capable of thwarting 4, confusing the villain, and applying tough, all for the low cost of 2 resources.
On the damage side of things, Spider-Man is an offensive powerhouse, with his big finisher being Arachnobatics, paying a single resource for up to 8 damage with a single attack. That’s huge, and not at all difficult to pull off thanks to his other condition-stacking abilities.
Spider-Man (Miles Morales)’s Weaknesses
- Jefferson Davis is terrible
- The designers think he needs to change form too much
- Requires hero cards in hand to trigger his abilities
- Entirely reliant on conditions
- Specific-resource dependence
Miles’ only real weaknesses are some frankly questionable design choices in his kit. One of his two supports, Jefferson Davis, allows him to remove a single point of threat while in Alter-Ego form. While this is fine, it’s just not on a level with the rest of Spider-Man’s kit, particularly as you actually spend relatively little time in Alter-Ego form in the first place. He’s capable of applying tough to himself with startling regularity, so having cards that rely on him being in Alter-Ego means the designers apparently expected him to be one of those characters that flip regularly, particularly with Double Life.
I’m sure you could play him this way, flipping regularly to take advantage of those cards, but the costs of being in alter-ego dramatically outweigh the benefits, and those cards just aren’t good enough to improve that. Confuse helps to mitigate the problem, but the fact you can keep a villain confused in order to make a forced flip-down to Alter-Ego less painful and use it to trigger any confusion synergies means that in most situations you just don’t want to be leaving hero form if you don’t have to. And you do not have to most of the time, thanks to Stun and Tough.
The biggest weakness Miles has is that he does need to inflict those conditions to matter. A Stalwart or even Steady villain who resists conditions, or a villain who has piercing, will make quick work of our newest Spider-Man, and I don’t think there’s any way back from that matchup. He’s extremely binary in that if they can’t handle his conditions, you’re probably going to win. If they can… you’ve got a friendly neighbourhood paperweight at the table.
Aspect Pairings for Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
- Aggression
- Justice
- Leadership
- Protection
Aggression is our number one pick for Miles, as currently Aggression has the most combos with conditions, which we’re going to be applying as regularly as possible. We’ll break this down more with our deck below, as spoilers – that’s how we built him.
Justice obviously has some synergies around Confuse, but takes the number 2 spot simply because at the time of writing, Justice is actually fairly lacking in good cards that care about confuse. Sonic Rifle and Concussive Blow are decent enough, and a great source of confusion, but Think Fast! can only be played by Guardians, and Scare Tactic is just… kinda bad.
Protection Miles is all about two things: Iron First (Danny Rand) and Tackle. Both are extremely usable cards that give you a reliable source of stun, allowing you to ensure that an attack is cancelled almost every round. He’s no stunlock Captain America, but you can absolutely get close. There’s just not a huge amount of synergy otherwise, unless you build Web-Warrior tribal, which is absolutely an option that needs further exploration once they print up more Web-Warriors (playing Miles robs you of his ally version, which is a big problem!)
Leadership has no direct synergies with conditions, but what Leadership is great for is any hero that cares about playing their hero cards thanks to powerful draw engines like Strength in Numbers. While you can’t trigger any of the Avenger or Guardian synergies out there, it honestly just does not matter. This may be the number 4 spot, but it definitely would work.
All in all, Miles is going to be Miles no matter how you play him, with great threat management tools, damage, and protective tools. But Aggression wins hands-down for us, and let’s look more closely at why with our deck.
Our Spider-Man’s Deck
For our deck, I chose to go with Aggression, and the reason why has a name: Press the Advantage. Check out our list over on MarvelCDB and follow along!
Press the Advantage is the biggest piece of this deck. It’s only 2 damage for 1 resource, which isn’t a fantastic rate, but it replaces itself, allowing you to quickly draw and cycle through to get the cards that you need, which is absolutely vital – Miles needs specific cards and specific resources, or his likelihood of going off and become a godlike condition machine gets stalled quickly. Drop Kick is another card that we can use to do this, at a steeper resource cost with the added benefit of a stun we can drop on an enemy.
Meanwhile, we’ve got resource generators and wild resource cards providing Miles with the resources he needs to trigger his abilities (you only have to pay a single one of that resource to get the trigger on a card like the energy cost on Web-Shot. Too many resources? That’s why we’ve added some high-cost cards like Nick Fury and Avenger Mansion to take advantage of those turns where you have a hand full of resources but none of your attacks. It happens!
The deck’s rounded out with a contingent of allies like Spider-Girl, and Mockingbird who are great for helping ensure that something has a condition to trigger Press the Advantage, even if it’s not the villain.
Plan of Attack is another card for those over-stuffed resource turns, as it effectively lets you pack in a few more copies of those attacks. It doesn’t always hit, so you have to be careful when you play it, but when you have excess resources, being able to grab attacks out of your deck can be a godsend.
This deck was built to be played with our Ghost-Spider deck, so it does include Young Love, but there’s an interesting issue with this – it’s unclear right now whether that actually allows you to play the card when they’re in hero form. There are interpretations that will only allow it in alter-ego, and if you want to take the Grim Rule and go that way, I would absolutely recommend removing that card and replacing it with something, anything else. It’s basically unplayable. We decided to play as though the hero is still Miles Morales because logically it makes absolutely no sense otherwise, it’s likely the templating is this way because it can’t read “Spider-Man” without including other Spider-Men, and it’s far from game-breaking – the card is rarely used.
Regardless, overall Spider-Man (Miles Morales) is firmly in the S-tier of our new tier list, provided he has a villain who can be stunned or confused. Without that, he’s dead weight. This is one of those heroes that’s incredibly difficult to rate because of this, as he’s extremely feast-or famine. But that’s probably fine.
Summary
Good
- Massively consistent conditions
- Solid stat-line across the board
- High damage output
Bad
- Jefferson Davis is terrible
- Entirely reliant on conditions
- Requires hero cards in hand to trigger his abilities
