**** Northstar (Classic) ****

IceIX

Northstar (Classic)

4-Star Rarity (Legendary)

Heroes

  

"Famous athlete, wildly successful entrepreneur, devoted husband, and speedster member of super hero team Alpha Flight, Jean-Paul Beaubier is an icon in his home country of Canada.”

(Abilities listed at level 70, followed by 270)
3297 Health / 13995 Health
 37 |  10 |  42 |  9 |  8 | 33 |  23 |  3.5x
 85 |  13 |  74 |  12 |  11 | 65 |  43 |  3.5x

Running Early - 8  AP

Northstar moves with incredible speed and expert precision. Destroys the chosen row. Gains Yellow AP for each Yellow tile destroyed. (Destroyed tiles don't deal damage or generate other AP.)

• Level 2: Also deals 152 damage. (Max level 297 damage)
• Level 3: Also gains Black AP for Black tiles destroyed.
• Level 4: Also gains Blue AP for Blue tiles destroyed.
• Level 5: Deals 682 damage. (Max level 1333 damage)

Star Bright - 6  AP

Northstar joins hands with his twin sister Aurora, creating blinding light to dazzle enemies. Converts 2 basic tiles of the target's strongest color into Team-Up tiles and creates a 2-turn Countdown tile targeting a random ally. While on the board, this tile grants 1 turn of Invisibility and gives a burst of 118 health to that ally at the start of your turn. (Max level 229 health)

• Level 2: Converts 3 tiles and heals 211 health. (Max level 409 health)
• Level 3: Converts 4 tiles and heals 255 health. (Max level 496 health)
• Level 4: Tile lasts 3 turns and heals 295 health. (Max level 572 health)
• Level 5: Converts 5 tiles and heals 504 health. (Max level 978 health)

Up North - 6  AP

Northstar lifts the enemy into the air and pummels them with fists and gravity. Sends Northstar and the target airborne for 1 turn. When the enemy lands, destroy 1 AP and 2 tile(s) in the airborne enemy's second-strongest color, dealing 76 damage per tile destroyed.  (Destroyed tiles don't deal damage or generate other AP.) (Max level 148 damage)

• Level 2: Destroys 2 AP.
• Level 3: Deals 117 damage per tile. (Max level 228 damage)
• Level 4: Deals 186 damage per tile. (Max level 362 damage)
• Level 5: Destroys 3 AP.

Release Schedule

Store Offerings

S.H.I.E.L.D. Training Heroes for Hire - January 9 - January 16

• Price: 7000 HP
  

• Contents:

• Vulture (Adrian Toomes) Black Cover

• Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) Blue Cover

• 16x Elite tokens

• 6 Command Points

• 20,000 Iso-8

Northstar & Friends - January 12 - January 18

• 80 Item Vault
  

• Legendary token

• 3x Beginner Support tokens

• Random Northstar (Classic) cover

• 2x random 4-Stars from the Call for Backup missions, with an option of the following characters:

• Vulture (Adrian Toomes)

• Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards)

• Spider-Man 2099 (Miguel O'Hara)

• 21x 3-Stars

• 3x Featured

• 18x Random

• 52x 2-Stars

• 10x Featured

• 42x Random

Release Debut:

Infinite Pursuit - January 9 - January 14

• Northstar (Classic) In placement rewards

S.H.I.E.L.D. Training - January 9 - January 16

• Rewards tokens to Infinite Pursuit, random cover of Northstar (Classic), and more

Featured Event:

Hearts of Darkness - January 13 - January 17

• Northstar (Classic) as a progression reward

• Rewards tokens to the Northstar & Friends vault

Versus Tournament:

Star Athlete - January 12 - January 15

• Northstar (Classic) as a progression reward

• Rewards tokens to the Northstar & Friends vault

Edit: Updated Black and Green damage numbers at 270, they were flipped. Fixed SHIELD Training rewards from Venom Bomb to Infinite Pursuit, that was a copy/paste error. Checked over the other rewards, should be correct now.

Edit 2: Clarified Black's AP destruction to be in the second-strongest color.

Edit 3: Updated the text for Star Bright (Yellow). Functionality is unchanged, just updating the text to the final in-game version which is clearer and contains better grammar.

Ed_Dragonrider

ST rewards tokens to Venom Bomb?? Dont you mean to Infinte Pursuit?

HoundofShadow

Is the release event Infinite Pursuit or Venom Bomb because Shield Training rewards tokens to Venom Bomb?

tiomono

Looks like 5-5-3 to me. Definitely a support character. But turning an ally invis and healing for up to 3k over 3 turns for just 6 yellow seems handy.

furbear00000

He’s desired in Canada about as much as Justin Beiber is.  

Jormagund

Welcome back IceIX.  Black and green damage appear to be the wrong way round at 270.

Borstock

Turns an ally invis is kind of interesting, I guess. A little bit of a 4* version of the 2* Carol, too. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

RickOShay

Cool abilities, and cheap.
Definitely looking forward to his blue ability clearing a chosen row and earning his colors of AP. (and destroying 5* DD green CD). 

Looks a bit low on the damage as mentioned, but we'll see how much the board rewards his abilities with all that shake up; and how he can be a useful support character. 

Too bad Up North is a black ability, It would be quite good with Archangel (and still could be) but Archangel's black is his own best power IMO. 

KGB

blankcanvas said:

Those poor Canadians. Surely there must be someone more worthy of icon status...nice leotard though 😁

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Canuck 

KGB

Vhailorx

Wow. He seems very meh on first read.

I will say again: 4* tier is dead.  Good characters are buried by their predecessors.  Broken characters render almost 100 predecessors superfluous, and trash tier filler just make dilution worse.  Every new 4* is just a waste of everyone's time and money.

leoperez90

It's an interesting character indeed. I'm not overly wowed or upset it sits in the middle with me. 

But on the other hand I would like to see a pve that feature sentinels and stuff that would be pretty cool and refreshing or even a alliance event. Isnt there like a sentinel king or supreme. Throwing it out there.

MrEd95

blankcanvas said:

Those poor Canadians. Surely there must be someone more worthy of icon status...nice leotard though 😁

I mean.. we already have 2 deadpools, sabretooth and like 5 wolverines (clones included), what more could you want? 😛

As a UK resident, I personally would like some more representation from the British Isles. Currently, we only have Psylocke, Wolfsbane, Spider-Woman and Blade; the last two of whom I didn’t even know were British until about 2 minutes ago, when I searched up British marvel characters

Snowbird could be an interesting character mechanically though, if we are to have more Canadians

IceIX

Updated Black and Green match damage numbers at 270, they were flipped.

Fixed SHIELD Training rewards from Venom Bomb to Infinite Pursuit, that was a copy/paste error. Checked over the other rewards, should be correct now.

Working on getting the full Sneak Peek up as well which'll cover these events. New month's Sneak Peek threads take longer than normal to format, it'll be up in a bit though!

MoosePrime

Black says it destroys tiles, with no mention of AP, then the level 2 and 5 upgrades say that it destroys AP.  What color AP does it destroy?

IceIX

MoosePrime said:

Black says it destroys tiles, with no mention of AP, then the level 2 and 5 upgrades say that it destroys AP.  What color AP does it destroy?

Second strongest color, and it starts by destroying 1 AP then upgrades from there. Good catch, easy text fix in-game.

jamesh

Can his yellow target himself? For example, if he is the last character alive on the team will he heal himself?

Vhailorx

blankcanvas said:

I agree he doesn't look great but to say the 4* tier is dead is a little premature. 2019 gave us some fun characters like Juggs, Thanos, Ronin, Creed, (*cough* Steve and his magic hammer *cough*), MODOK, Hammond Torch to name a few.

But you are right that dilution continues to be a problem. Rather than rolling out characters relentlessly, it would be nice to see how the developers plan to tackle this subject in 2020. (Assuming shards has something to do with it).

There were many good 4*s released this year, but the 4* tier is still dead. 

Trash tier characters are always bad.  They just dilute the pool, and 4* land is very dilute. (Northstar is in this tier, I think.)

But even good 4* characters are now just treading water.  They do little to add to the variety of play for 5* players, nor can they compete with level 330+ 4* champs.  and even for newer players on whose rosters the good new 4*a would make a difference, the 4* tier is SOOOOO diluted now that it's necessary to hoard for more than a month (while grinding hard) to gather aeven a handful of targeted 4* covers). Would you rather have 10 covers for sabertooth, or 5 each for sabertooth and 2099, even if you think 2099 is a bit better?

Broken characters (worthy and to a lesser extent Juggs) are also bad because they invalidate all prior characters.  Are there really any 4*s that matter for 5* play right now beyond bishop, worthy, and (when boosted or otherwise able to tank) Juggs?  These characters break fundamental rules of mpq (they enable massive AP gain on round 2 in PvP, or they make aoe damage effectively zero cost). no one should advocate in favor the 4* tier because they want to see new broken 4*s.  That is just a bad outcome for everyone.

bluewolf

Northstar is the 90th non-Limited 4.  We left the 1% pull rate behind with 2099 and just keep making each pull more and more diluted.

Players now consider it a major accomplishment to simply roster one cover of each 4 in the game.  90 down, 1,080 covers to go....

He looks very meh, maybe there's some synergy somewhere but there's no reason you'd use him over the top characters in the game in any situation that I can see.  Maybe he'll have some effectiveness vs a boss or something?  But I can't see targeting him over any of those characters who might actually have an impact on your game/speed.  There's always a mix of bad and good characters being released, always has been.  We had Rocket,  Gamora, and then....Sandman.

It would be nice if the game offered more puzzle-y stuff and less speed-clear stuff. Maybe would make it interesting to develop some characters more but even then your resources are far too limited in comparison to potential use.

But what else can they do than keep adding characters to make you feel like you have something to do?  I champed MODOK this morning so now I'm waiting for Karolina to enter tokens/rewards etc.  You can't have players feel like they are "finished" when you have a FTP business model.

Anduinel

Dude's my favorite character, so regardless of the stats, I'm glad to see him here. Though I kind of dread what his cover art is going to be, lol. He doesn't have a lot of great ones.

Anon

5/5/3 seems most optimal, but yeah, this character doesn't seem very good.

HoundofShadow

There must be a purpose why he's converting target strongest colour to teamup tiles instead of your own strongest colour. 

I realised those 4* characters that have powers revolving around teamup tiles have something in common: blue and yellow powers. They are Cyclops and Agent Coulson.

5/5/3 seems like the best way forward.