***** Mister Sinister (Nathaniel Essex) *****

Tiger_Wong

So I have Sinister at 3/3/5. Been messing around in Sim and a little PVP. 

Sinister/Okoye/GEDoom

a bit slowish but won’t die, regenerates their own health, and you’ll eventually do the damage you want. You should chase blue and red as you’ll need those colors the most for damage and versatility while Doom will pick up the yellow and black passively. I really like Doom with Sinister as he reflexively keeps Sinister’s black passive ready to fire and his yellow reshuffles the board so you can match his traps cuz sometimes those things are put in the craziest places. 

Sinister/Vulture/X-23

a weird team but with really good and scary cohesion. Of course, Vulture is for AP gain and as soon as he starts flying, you get to start firing off Sinister’s blue. But the weird, yet cool thing is how X-23 blends in. First, she does damage with her green and with her red at 9, she puts strikes on the field (although you have to fire it twice, which is lame). Her purple puts a trap on the field to help boost Sinister’s power. And she stays alive by matching red and green (not purple because Sinister takes priority). 

I’ve been chasing Worthy/Hawk/JJ teams with good results. 

I’ve been thinking about a team-up with Elektra for Sinister. Haven’t settled on a 3rd yet. 

But yeah, Sinister is bit hit and miss. I really like him with Doom because his board shake and health regen and black AP gain. You really need to shuffle sometimes because those traps fall to the bottom and the corners. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Try Chavez/Elektr4/Sinister, she gives you free crits that create their own board chaos for accidentally matching traps, free trap spam on match 4s, and you don't have any active overlap anywhere. Sinister's incidental traps should keep you ahead on AP banks as well. 

I'm also curious how Main Event, with Grand Entrance set to 5, and Gamma Powerbomb set to 5, would go on this team. probably be spotty performance, but spectacular when it worked.

TPF Alexis

atomzed said:

I have sinister champ at 451. I been using him with Bishop (since bishop is OP in generating blue). I can spam sinister “behold” quite quickly and can often one hit ko a character. 

Getting a lot of defence wins but I suspect it’s because of the god mode buff.

Yeah, I wasn't paying attention and accidentally attacked a champed Sinister. Still almost beat him, and would have absolutely wrecked him if he hadn't had the boost.

Tiger_Wong

Well, Sinister/GEDoom (or Mr/Dr) is just a really good combo. My Sinister is now at 3/4/5. I figure I’m gonna champ him sooner or later. My GEDoom is already champed. They go well together and cover up each other’s problems. The more you use them together, the more your style of playing changes. I barely match black or yellow. Just let the the opponent do it. Doom’s board shuffle and heal are SO CRUCIAL to Sinister. I usually don’t fire off Behold unless I got the board shuffle ready to fire just in case the traps are put in bad spots.

Sinister Secrets is better than I initially thought. It really keeps the opposing AP down and bumps yours up. It can be murder to make a red match with a Sinister Secret trap vs certain teams. The AI matches it and we both have 6 red AP.  AI goes to 3 and mine goes to 9. It’s hilarious. You’ll start to welcome powers going off that don’t do really big damage. Wanna make some strikes? Heal? Destroy the board? Activate a TU? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. 

Mr./Dr. team is a walking hard counter to Jessica Jones. She adds power to your traps, chases black for you, and has a passive that does damage but that you can take pretty well. She’s basically a 4th member of your team. I leave her for last almost everytime. 

Mr./Dr. duo isn’t full proof (duh). So I’ve been testing 3rd members.....

Mr./Dr./America Chavez - it works because you’re gonna have more AP than your opponent reflexively by NOT chasing black and yellow and matching  4s. She’ll put crits on the board and traps for Sinister. Problem to look out for is you want to be able to hide her and she has the strongest red and green matches on the team. This team does very well vs ProfX.

Mr./Dr./Hela - it works because you have the rainbow covered (not by powers but by match power) and Hela holds down another color (green) passively and punishes the AI when their green gets to 10. Also overwrites 3/4 enemy SAPs. Problem to look out for is Hela takes some time to do work as her powers have a high threshold. This team Does well vs Gladiathor and Kitty/BRB combos. 

Mr./Dr./Daredevil - it works because DD is really hard to kill and teams well with Doom. Makes strong strikes reflexively so you want him to take hits by matching his colors. Overwrites SAP and STUNS. Stunning is VERY IMPORTANT because sometimes the AI will go crazy and you can’t take a power. So you stun for a couple turns a buy some time. This team works well vs Gritty team that don’t have Bishop and Kitty/BRB teams that don’t have Bishop.

Bishop wrecks Mr./Dr teams. Yeah, even if he’s stunned the traps on the board can go off but that’s not enough. If you’re stunned and take a power or get through the damage threshold, his traps won’t fire. Really almost any stun team screws this duo up. I’m looking for a good 3rd to combat stunners. I’ve tried Doc Ock. The synergy isn’t there. 

Bad

From what I experienced with my sorry Sinister 1/1/0, one great partner for him is carnage.
And he is a beast with all his tramps 

AXP_isme

Great name for a band. Mr.Sinister and the beastly tramps. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I'd run Sinister with Doom/Profe$$or X, that way you can shake the board on more than 1 color. 

I'd also attempt it with Hawkeye/Iceman. This may seem horrible due to the blue drain, but in fact any Iceman CDs you can't match will burn down and turn into 3 blue/each depending on your hawkeye build, so you'll be "up" on blue before you know it. This team also has the advantage of essentially locking blue out as a place to park Sinister's traps, same as using Iceman with Jessica Jones, which should mean they end up on more matchable spots. 

The playstyle @Tiger_Wong described is not dissimilar to how you have to retrain your brain playing Mockingbird or 3* Loki - leaving match-4s on the board so that enemies will trigger their passives for you. I suppose Mockingbird might actually be an interesting option there as well. Mockingbird/Chavez might be an interesting set of wingpersons to run if you're by some chance transitioning to 5* play off the back of Sinister. Chavez being all-passive means you're either firing off Behold for free, or Mockingbird's AP steal, or her red that hits very hard in the event of an opponent match-N. Or you could use GE Doom there in place of Chavez.

Daredevil217

I like Storm and Phoenix in theory. Both can spam the board with certain colors and possibly change the trap tile colors. Professor does this too but I don’t like the idea of only two active powers between Professor and Sinister. I like Carnage for the extra matches he provides. You already get extra AP, from those matches, but more still from sinister secrets being matched. I think you’d need a third though to actually spend the AP. Maybe Doom so you have all but purple covered? Definite potential here. But obviously like 4* Star-Lord or Doc Strange will excel most against spammy goons. 

Tiger_Wong

Mockingbird/Mr/Dr works well on offense. Her purple gives yellow or black, both which are needed. Because of all the stealing of AP that’s going on, her Oppurtunist fires off powers earlier than you would believe. Which is great because you want every active power to fire as much as possible. And Bombshell at 5 still hits hard. 

Defensively, I haven’t gotten a win yet. 

Oh and I now have Sinister champed. Running him at 5/3/5 but considering 4/4/5.

ThaRoadWarrior

How about Banner/Sinister/Carbage?

Tiger_Wong

Ok. New team I’ve been running that is strangely anti-5*Prof-X and I have no idea why. 

Rogue 5/3/5
GED 5/5/3
Sinister 4/4/5

the reason I was checking this team was because if you activate Gloves Off vs 5X you absorb his strongest color which (strangely) is blue. So everytime you match blue, you get double the AP which means more Behold traps. 

But a weird thing keeps happening and I barely see it happen because sometimes there are multiple match cascades. Anyway..... a match 4 will happen, prof-x banner will go off.... and Rogue takes no damage. Like. “-1” or it won’t even show any damage. I don’t know why/how this is happening. I understand her jumping in front and chopping the damage by 25% but..... 

ThaRoadWarrior

Is Sinister blocking it on top of her reduction?

HoundofShadow

Your build will reduce match and power damage by 75% and 2 black ap is enough to trigger Mr Sinister's damage reduction. GED helps you to gain black ap when opponent matches black tiles. That could be why?

Tiger_Wong

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Is Sinister blocking it on top of her reduction?

That must be it. But I think the order is wrong? Because the match-4 happens, then the Xavier banner pop up. 

I think it’s taking Sinister’s power reduction first, then Rogue’s match reduction afterwards. Or maybe it’s counting Xavier’s power on top of the match reduction? Making it 50% reduction of what was left from Sinister’s reduction? 

I think I just confused myself. 

Bad

 I like sinister. His life clone moustache animation is hilarious.
But when fighting pve goons animation must be off, in a long battle he fills the board mostly of sinister secrets. One time I counted 55 traps scattered.
A good partner for him is Maria. And maybe ororo as battery.

ThaRoadWarrior

Is Wakanda Forever! not stacking on these traps? I've been watching it in Honor Among Thieves and it feels like that sometimes but not others.

*edit - it does appear that WF! is stacking, it just hits as a tic after the match damage resolves.

RickOShay

Sinister has started to impress me a bit lately.
With his black at level 5, once you have 8 saved up you are basically safe from abilities like BRB's green (Skuttlebutt). Each of those hits are over 7500, and Sinister reduces each of them by spending 2 black AP for each. He then creates 2 traps for each damage reduction / hit. 
Separately, Sinister's passive purple has been making AP gains quite efficient. In fact, if you make a blue match that has a Sinister Secrets trap in it, you may net 6 blue by stealing up to 3 from the enemy. Again, excellent against Bill for example. 
Sinister has a few drawbacks of course, and relies on a strong teammate. But I think he's fun and can be very tactical, which I enjoy.
I recently took out a team in 2 turns consisting of Kitty 45K, BRB 21K, Prof X 32K by hitting a few Behold and Original Sinister traps (which stole green for my Thor). 

himatako

Yeah, my opinion about him changed as well after I used him even at 1/1/1. His purple passive works well enough, and trying to maximize his blue is fun. Although it makes me wish Spiderwoman's trap activated on a friendly match as well. 

One problem is since all trap tiles' overlays are the same, and none of his trap tiles are color specific, it's more and more troublesome as there are more traps on the board. I have to check their descriptions pretty often and it can be tedious. There's not much they can do right now, I guess. 

sinnerjfl

himatako said:

Yeah, my opinion about him changed as well after I used him even at 1/1/1. His purple passive works well enough, and trying to maximize his blue is fun. Although it makes me wish Spiderwoman's trap activated on a friendly match as well. 

One problem is since all trap tiles' overlays are the same, and none of his trap tiles are color specific, it's more and more troublesome as there are more traps on the board. I have to check their descriptions pretty often and it can be tedious. There's not much they can do right now, I guess. 

At the very least, his behold traps should be visually distinguishable. A different color for the trap or a different trap shape. Anything really, I dont think its that much to ask because as it is, it makes it super annoying to find the Behold traps and makes me want to use him a lot less even though he's quite good.

sinnerjfl

Regarding his Behold traps, they could also just make them flashing at the beginning of the turn like JJ's do.

I'm not a fan either of the way his Sinister Secrets traps spawn since it's on random colors, makes it much less potent than it could be. Why can't the trap be of the same color of the enemy power that was used? Now that would be a lot more effective. The way it is I steal useless AP a lot of the time and you can't plan against that (rainbow team might mitigate it but you still cant know what color the traps will land on anyway).