Dat Required Character (In-Character)

Dormammu

Once a roster reaches a certain point, Deadpool's Daily Quest becomes something of a breeze. Spider-Man, Juggernaut, or Iron Man at a high enough level can solo the 1-star node; max-champed 2-stars aren't threatened in the two 2-star nodes; etc.

So to have a little fun every day I make sure that whomever is required in the 3-star Dat Required Character node gets surrounded by an in-character team. Or in other words, two characters that would be (or have been) natural and likely allies to the required character in the actual comic books themselves. A threesome that shares some sort of connection. I then use the same team in The Big Enchilada node.

Just to amuse myself, and to give me a reason to stray from the General Discussion section of these forums, I'll describe and explain the teams I use every day in this thread. (At least, until we cycle through the 3-stars). Isn't that fun?

Dormammu

Today's (8/12/20) required character is... Magneto!

There are a lot of options here, as Magneto has enjoyed several affiliations. He was with the X-Men more than once and even headmaster of Xavier's school and a prominent character in the New Mutants book. But no, this version of Magneto is clearly the villainous one. Hmm, how about a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants team? Let's see, there's Mystique and Sabretooth from the first X-Men movie. But no, none of the MPQ versions are the movie versions. Oh wait, I know! Waaay back in the day (circa 1990) there was a big comic crossover event called Acts of Vengeance where all the major bad guys (plus The Mandarin for some reason) all got together to cause havoc for the heroes. Dr. Doom, Loki, and Kingpin were all part of that. But no, that's pretty old and obscure.

In the end, I decided to team Magneto up with his two children - The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. A lot of newer fans of Marvel who have only seen the movies may not even know old Erik L. managed to sire a couple of kids who would one day become Avengers, but it's true.

It was a fun team to play, mostly because of Quicksilver's antics. He has one of the most interesting and tactical builds in the 3-star tier. The three of them together make for a great team, covering the rainbow spectrum and offering uses for all colors - even team-up tiles! Mags offers two nukes in red and blue, plus some defense in yellow. Switch gives you an AoE with her purple. Quicksilver has another AoE with his blue, plus two more nukes in green and black - not to mention his invaluable ability to manipulate the board. The three of them together made short work of DDQ today.

DAZ0273

I do this sometimes too - you have to know that when we got Namor in game then the original Defenders were go go and when we got Jim Hammond then 3* Cap was Invader-ing!

Dormammu

Today's (8/13/20) required character is... Ragnarok!

This one was a bit of a struggle. Ragnarok, despite being an OG MPQ launch character, doesn't have the rich comic book history that a character like Magneto enjoys. Plus, Rags came along long after I stopped reading comics so about the only thing I know about him is that he was a Dark Avenger and some sort of robot clone of Jack Kirby's Thor.

The obvious play here is to team him up with his Dark Avenger pals, but that didn't appeal to me. I see enough of those guys in PvE. Regardless, most of the Dark Avengers are 2-stars (or a 1-star in the case of Yelena). That wouldn't do, not for The Big Enchilada. I briefly considered teaming him with a couple other random villains but that seemed lame and uninspired.

Then it dawned on me... Rags is basically a Thor! Or at least some kind of weird mandroid version of everyone's favorite God of Thunder. He's got a big hammer and a winged helmet, anyway. I swiped towards my 4-stars and put Jane Foster in the left position. Cool! That was two Thors. Now I just needed a third Thor... so why not the man (god?) himself? Swiping further into my roster I found 3-star Thor and tried to put him in the right position, but that didn't work - I forgot Jane and Thor can't be friends because they both wield Mjolnir. Dangit! Were my plans foiled?

Then I remembered, I have one more Thor! He may only have one cover on him, but that would do. Swiping back into my 5-stars I found my 0/1/0 Beta Ray Bill. Let's see, big hammer? Check. Winged helmet? Check. He'd work. I had successfully formed a team of three Thors! They were a girl, a robot, and a horse-headed alien, but they were my team of Thors and I was taking them into battle!

Now, I'm not going to lie to you. This wasn't a very good team. Jane Foster did most of the work, but my one yellow cover on BRB did provide a bit of green and Rags at least got in a shot of his AoE. It was fun to dust-off old Jane, though. She was one of my favorite 4-stars back in the day (and a frequent friend to a guy I called IM40).

Dormammu

Today's (8/14/20) required character is... Spider-Man!

Ah, Spidey. My favorite superhero. No one is cooler than Spider-Man. I mean, he took on the X-Men single-handed and would have won if it wasn't for that cheater Professor X. He beat a herald of Galactus all by himself, a feat that usually takes a whole team of Fantastic Fours. And let's not forget that he has - hands down - THE best rogue's gallery in all of comics. Yeah, I could go on and on about how great Spider-Man is but this is about forming an in-character team around him. So let's get to it.

My first inclination was to build an Into the Spider-Verse team starring Gwen, Miles, or maybe even Peter Porker the amazing Spider-Ham. But that was a movie and I really want to keep this comics-centric. Then I thought about teaming Spidey with his two best buddies, the Human Torch and Flash Thomson (Agent Venom) and nearly went with that before a sudden childhood memory returned to me...



The all-new Fantastic Four! I actually bought this issue off the shelf of my local comic book shop when I was but a youngster and I wanted it to become a thing soooo bad. What a cool team! It didn't last, of course, but my memories of it remain strong. So today's DDQ featured Spider-Man, 4-star Ghost Rider, and Patch (the closest variant of Wolverine to that era). Not quite the full team... the all new Fantastic Three? Ah well, sorry Hulk.

This was a fun team. Spidey and Ghosty compliment each other perfectly, offering a full-rainbow of match damage and an active use for everything except purple AP. Patch works himself in as he always does, soaking damage and healing it back up. I had no issues dealing with my foes today using this fantastic threesome.

Dormammu

Today's (8/15/20) required character is... Iron Man!

Ah, IM40. The battery of the 3-star tier. If I had a nickel for every time I used his yellow Recharge back in the day, I'd have a really big pile of nickels. As soon as I champed this guy (after he got a re-work) he was an ever-present member of my teams all the way through the 4-star tier. He helped me tear through the ranks of PvP, fueling the likes of Peggy Carter, Jane Foster, and Riri Williams. (What can I say? Tony likes the ladies.) My go-to team for eons in PvE (back in the days of scaling, prior to SHIELD Clearance Levels) was IM40, Patch, and Cap (Cap was later replaced by Dr. Strange). They allowed me to punch way above my level when scaled enemies would normally be out of reach.

So it was a treat to re-visit my old friend today. But who to team him with? At first I was going to go with an Armor Wars type of team and add Riri and War Machine, but nostalgia got the better of me and I wanted to team IM40 with his old buddy Captain America. As a third, I added 3-star Hulk to form a team of original Avengers! Well, almost original. Cap didn't join the team until like issue #4 or something - but close enough.

The yellow came to me early for Recharges in both my matches and soon shields were bouncing everywhere. Meanwhile, the Hulk was terrorizing my enemies with massive green hand-claps. I finished the last wave in The Big Enchilada with IM40s patented blue AoE, just so he wouldn't be left out of the offensive fun.

Dormammu

Today's (8/16/20) required character is... Punisher!

Did you know that there was a time in MPQ when 3-star Punisher was the most feared character in PvP? He generated more skips than a pre-teen girl during his reign at the top. His ubiquitous partner was Psylocke and together they were sort of the Grocket/Gamora or Grocket/Kitty of their day in that they were inseparable and everywhere. Of course, Punisher still owns a tiny slice of the meta all these years later in the form of his red team-up which becomes popular during PvE boss events (it really amuses me to think about the Punisher taking out Galactus with a handgun).

This was a difficult day to find friends for the featured character, because Mr. Castle doesn't have any friends! He is Marvel's lone gunman, a solitary nut, the lunatic vigilante who drives around in a windowless van looking for jaywalkers to gun down. He is a crabby loner who doesn't play well with others.

Back in the day before Punisher had his own book(s) he was most likely to show up in the pages of Spider-Man or Daredevil and I thought about teaming him up with those two. But then I deep-dived into my roster a bit more, looking for some other connection. Who would Punisher most likely run into while hanging around the back alleys of New York looking for drug dealers and pimps to plug with his .45? I decided on Cloak & Dagger and Agent Venom!

These days the Punisher is about as scary as a newborn kitten - power creep has relegated his abilities into the laughable category, even among his peers in the 3-star tier. Fortunately both C&D and AV are fun characters to play around with, so I mostly used them and let Frank scowl and grumble at the back of the group. Hopefully tomorrow's character proves more suited to in-character buddies.

Dormammu

Today's (8/17/20) required character is... The Incredible Hulk!

This is actually my least favorite 3-star. In fact, this may be my least favorite character in the entire game. His black Anger ability should be his best power, but unfortunately the more levels/health you add to him the less it is triggered. (So wait, so the stronger Hulk gets, the weaker he gets? I'm so confused.) And then there's his red ability. For the absolute bargain-basement cost of 24AP (14 red, up to 10 green) you can potentially... hurt your own team?

Whatever.

Well, just a couple of days ago I used Hulk to form an original Avengers team (with IM40 and Cap) and that was going to be my path again today, except I was going to use Ant-Man and Wasp. But then I remembered the Ant-Man in MPQ is Scott Lang, not Hank Pym. Dangit, that idea is out. (Where the heck is Hank Pym in this game, anyway? C'mon! Ant-Man, Yellowjacket, Giant-Man, creator of Ultron, beater of wives... oh, maybe that's why.) I had to change course and come up with something else. I decided to borrow my own concept from Ragnarok's day (a team of Thors) and create a team of Hulks! I went looking for the totally-awesome one but discovered he was locked out (why is that?) so I had to find a couple of other Hulks. Luckily, there's no shortage of them. I finally settled on She-Hulk and Red Hulk as teammates and entered the fray.

This was sort of a terrible team, with lots of duplicate colors. My battles basically boiled down to the path of all battles involving Red Hulk - gather enough purple and green to fire his AoE and end things rather decisively.

Dormammu

Today's (8/18/20) required character is... Wolverine!

Okay, here we go. Is there anyone more prolific in the Marvel universe than Wolverine? He's an X-Man, an Avenger, and he's teamed-up with practically every hero to ever put on spandex (including a few from other comic companies). He was once on the Fantastic Four and I think he was even supposed to be in Alpha Flight as part of Canada's Weapon-X program. He's got children (Daken), lovers (Jean Grey), and drinking buddies (Nightcrawler). This should be an easy day to find friends, right?

But this is a very specific version of Wolverine from a very specific era of Marvel comics. Wolverine had to be 'Patch' because that was his disguise (lol, kind of like Clark Kent's glasses I guess). The world thought the X-Men were dead and they wanted everyone to keep thinking that way so they could operate without fear of retribution from their many enemies of the time (mainly the Marauders). This was the high time of Claremont, Silvestri, and Lee. A golden age of X-Men comics. I wanted to team-up Wolverine with period-correct buddies.

That era of X-Men had Storm, Kitty, Nightcrawler, Gambit, Longshot, Dazzler, Havok... a plethora to choose from. I decided to go with Jubilee and Colossus! Logan was something of a mentor to Jubilee in the beginning of her time with the X-Men, and Colossus.... well, he and Logan had something called the 'Fastball Special'.



I made it a point in my battles to gather as much black as I could so that Colossus could throw Wolverine around the battlefield, giving me free casts of Logan's red and green abilities. Jubilee didn't really do too much (her stuff is expensive!) Colossus did most of the work, chucking Wolverine and leveling enemies with his red AoE. It was a lot of fun.

Dormammu

Today's (8/19/20) required character is... Daredevil!

I've never been much of a Man Without Fear guy. I don't know why, but Daredevil just never resonated with me. I think it was his so-called 'weakness' of being blind. I mean, okay, he can't see. But he has his radar sense so he can totally see. What's the big deal? Sounds like he's got it covered. In fact, he can tell what's going on around him in 360 degree fashion. He can 'see' better than I can, what else can he do? Oh, he's dexterous, dodgy, and swings around New York? Yeah, okay, I'll be over here reading Spider-Man. Thanks anyway.

Still, I needed a team to put around old horn head. I went with the obvious today and teamed DD with his ex-girlfriend (4-star Elektra) and one of his arch foes (3-star Bullseye). I was a little worried about color over-lap here since they all share purple, but the only thing I was missing was yellow so I went with it.

The team worked pretty well, as they can get a lot of strikes out. This helped punish my foes with Elektra's red, which is an amazing power that does damage every turn. I was fortunate to get her trap tile buried in the lower left corner during the wave node with a ton of strikes already out. It just shredded through enemies and ended things rather quickly.

Dormammu

Today's (8/20/20) required character is... Psylocke!

Betsy Braddock, another classic X-Man from the heyday of the early 90's. British-born telepath and sister to Captain Britain, turned Asian super-ninja-hottie. I guess Claremont decided the X-Men had enough telepaths but not enough ninjas. You can't ever go wrong with more ninjas, I suppose.

My first instinct was to get Kitty in here, given the way Psylocke can get out attacks/strikes, but champed 5-stars make this too easy. Instead I went with a couple champed 4-stars (still pretty easy). Like Patch's day, I decided on some period-accurate X-Men teammates in Rogue and Nightcrawler (well, actually, Nightcrawler was in Excalibur at the time but that team did have Psylocke's brother so close enough).

Interestingly, something happened in the first fight that has never happened to me in the history of Marvel Puzzle Quest: a match-8 critical. The enemy made a match-5 to clear a column and the crit tile that fell was followed by seven green tiles creating a top-to-bottom full-column crit. Ouch! Luckily I had Rogue to jump to the front and take the hit with reduced damage. But still, what are the odds?

TPF Alexis

Dormammu said:

But still, what are the odds?

.00017%. Roughly 1 in 585277, given a full column crit clear.

Dormammu

Today's (8/21/20) required character is... Thor!

After Peter Parker, Thor is my favorite superhero. I consider Walter Simonson's run on The Mighty Thor to be one of the greatest (and most under-appreciated) arcs in comics history. It's the run that defined Thor, Loki, and the mythology of Marvel's Asgard still in use today some 30 years later. It definitely was Marvel Studio's biggest influence for the three Thor movies. But enough of me gushing about Walt, who am I going to team Thor up with?

I've already had a team of Thors on Ragnarok's day, and I already used a team of original Avengers on IM40's day, so I didn't want to repeat those. Instead, I went with a team of Asgardians and chose 3-star Loki and Valkyrie. I could have used my under-covered and severely under-leveled 5-star Loki for better match damage, but 3-star Loki is actually a guy that can help Thor out.

You see, 3-star Thor may be mighty for his tier but he is expensive (alert the press) so I used Loki as a bit of a battery. When the enemy team makes match-4s (and they always seem to against me) Loki makes those annoying countdown tiles that steal AP. Plus, his cheap purple is a good cascade generator. Yep, Loki makes a good companion for his adopted brother. And while I did manage to cast Thor's yellow and green during the 2 DDQ nodes, most of the work was handled by Valkyrie and her awesome red power.

Dormammu

Today's (8/22/20) required character is... Captain America!

Been a SUPER busy day so I won't say a lot here other than I went with a really interesting team both in-character and in-game. I made a group of team leaders with Mr. Fantastic and 4-star Prof. X joining the Captain. I thought it was pretty cool having the leaders of Marvel's three premier teams (Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men) all kicking tail for me today. Reed's Imaginaut power works wonderfully with Chuck's passive tile generation/buff. In fact, I don't think I even used any of Cap's abilities. (Come to find out... he's kinda expensive without IM40 at his side.)

Dormammu

Today's (8/23/20) required character is... Human Torch!

I used to like teaming the Torch with his buddy, 3-star Spider-Man. They're a good rainbow team. But I couldn't think of a third for them. So instead, I put Johnny with Reed and Sue who make a pretty good trio (though it's annoying you can't piece a FF rainbow team together. Nobody has purple).

These last 2 entries are pretty short as I have a full weekend, I'll get back to being overly wordy tomorrow!

Dormammu

Somewhere during this grand adventure I'm on I need to work in Bag-Man. I fear I may have just missed my opportunity with the Human Torch.

Dormammu

Today's (8/24/20) required character is... Falcon!

It's too bad this version of Falcon is a 3-star as his ability to generate, eliminate, and buff special tiles would make him a premier 5-star right up there with Kitty. I used to hate fights with this guy and would deny him purple at all costs, because if Falcon got his defense tiles out you could say goodbye to damaging the other team for a while until you matched some of them away. One of the worst situations one could get into in scaled PvE was fighting Falcon who buried a couple defense tiles into unmatchable corners on a yellow-heavy board. It was best to cut your losses and retreat at that point.

My gut told me to team up Falcon with his best buddy Captain America as that is his strongest in-character connection, but Cap has made it onto too many of my DDQ teams of late. I wanted someone else.

I wanted Wasp. She and Falcon share such beautiful symmetry. Fortunately Falcon and Wasp share an in-character tie, besides the fact they both have wings. They're both Avengers! As a third I chose another Avenger who seems to fit in on 99.9995% of all teams. (I verified that math using MPQ's new advanced roster screen and a calculator.) That's right, I chose the Scarlet Witch!

Here's how it works for those of you who have never used the beauty of Falcon and Wasp together:

Switch makes purple. Falcon uses purple to make defense tiles. Wasp uses yellow to change the defense tiles into strike tiles and buffs them. Falcon further buffs the strike tiles on more yellow matches. Soon, all your enemies are down and you wondered how it happened so easily (or not, since I just explained it). If someone with a ton of health is lingering around, just sting them with Wasp's black and that should take care of it.

Dormammu

Today's (8/25/20) required character is... Daken!

I'm going to be real honest here and admit that what I know about Daken could fit into a thimble. He came along after I stopped regularly reading comics so MPQ is my only exposure. I know he's Wolverine's son, he was on something called the Dark Avengers, and he has 2 claws on each hand instead of 3. Oh... and he lives long enough to become an old man with a Sith lightsaber. So with that ignorance in place, I attempted to put some kind of team together.

My choices were Old Man Logan and X-23. Daken's dad and his... sister? Distant genetic relative? Oh, I don't know. They all have claws and can heal. That's good enough for a silly match-3 game, right?

Dormammu

Today's (8/26/20) required character is... Sentry!

Ugh. Two tough days in a row for me. Here's another guy I know next to nothing about, except that when he first debuted Sentry was presented as some long-lost creation of Stan Lee's which turned out to be a hoax. Silly Marvel, who was going to believe that? Don't they know Stan Lee didn't actually create any of these characters? The artists did!*

(*Read that with sarcasm.)

So how in the tinykitty was I going to put together an in-character team for a guy I know nothing about? Well, I did what any desperate player would do - I read his in-game profile! Huh, what do you know... he was in the Dark Avengers. Wait, what? Aren't the Dark Avengers supposed to be like poor-man's versions of real Avengers? You know, Bullseye is Hawkeye, Ragnarok is Thor, Yelena is Black Widow, etc... etc. So who in the heck was Sentry supposed to represent? Oh wait, a big S on his chest, a cape, mega-powerful... I get it. He's supposed to be the dark version of Superman! That makes sense.

In that case, I decided to team Superman up with two of his old buddies - Batman and the Flash. Except in MPQ they're called Moon Knight and Quicksilver (they must be Dark Avengers too).

Dormammu

Today's (8/27/20) required character is... Storm!

Ah, mohawk Storm, wearer of Callisto's vest and leader of not one, but two mutant teams (X-Men, Morlocks). She didn't have any powers (thanks Forge) but she was able to defeat Cyclops (with his powers) one-on-one in the Danger Room to assume leadership of the X-Men and banish Scott to the pages of X-Factor for a few years along with the rest of the originals (mostly because Claremont didn't like any of the original X-Men other than Jean Grey).

Today I teamed Storm with two other X-Men who have led the team, Cyclops (4-star) and Wolverine (2-star). It was a group of X-Men leaders! But that's only because there aren't any Morlocks in the game. (That wasn't a complaint, the Morlocks were a sorry bunch of mostly uninteresting characters other than Caliban.)

Dormammu

Today's (8/28/20) required character is... She-Hulk!

I have a real soft spot in my heart for She-Hulk, one of Marvel's most underrated characters (I'm hoping her upcoming TV series fixes that). It all began for me when she joined John Byrne's Fantastic Four. What a breath of fresh air she was for that book. Gone was the Thing and his constant whining about how awful his life was, as Ben Grimm was stuck on Beyonder's Battleworld following the Secret Wars. Enter She-Hulk, who relished who she was - unafraid to be different and powerful. When she was part of the FF, it was that team's greatest time. As soon as she (and Byrne) left, Fantastic Four collapsed into an awful book and never again reached the height of that era.

Then she got funny in her own book (once again in the hands of Byrne) and broke the 4th wall, paving the way for the success of such books. I daresay that without She-Hulk, Deadpool would still be a hollow, pouch-laden, empty shell of a character (like most Liefeld creations).

So today I decided to make a team of strong, confident females and teamed Shulkie with two of her Avengers compatriots - Captain Marvel (4-star) and Mockingbird. This was a team to be feared as they work unbelievably well together, stealing truckloads of AP and decorating the board with dangerous countdowns.

Here's hoping She-Hulk gets a 5-star variant once her series lands on Disney Plus. Cheers, Jennifer.