New Pick Two Meta: 5Frankive/5IH. Thoughts on best counters?

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  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,836 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 10 November 2025, 16:53

    @entrailbucket said:

    @LavaManLee said:
    So, from my original question, I still am not seeing a good two character team to take down 5Frankie/5IH. Or are people just keeping those teams to themselves? :-)

    If you're looking for a 2-man unboosted team that can win that fight consistently and has good defensive value, there probably isn't one.

    If you don't care about defense/holding onto your points, you can run one of the various cheese teams that beats anything.

    If you do care about defense, use the boosted characters.

    I feel I am going full circle here. Yes, what are those cheese teams? Again, I must be an idiot playing this game for over ten years but I have no idea what a cheese team is. I don't care about defensive value. Just want to know what beats them well.

    Feel free to treat me like I just started playing. Going back to the actual original question: What, exactly, are the best pick two team with supports to beat Nova/IH?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,783 Chairperson of the Boards

    @LavaManLee said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @LavaManLee said:
    So, from my original question, I still am not seeing a good two character team to take down 5Frankie/5IH. Or are people just keeping those teams to themselves? :-)

    If you're looking for a 2-man unboosted team that can win that fight consistently and has good defensive value, there probably isn't one.

    If you don't care about defense/holding onto your points, you can run one of the various cheese teams that beats anything.

    If you do care about defense, use the boosted characters.

    I feel I am going full circle here. Yes, what are those cheese teams? Again, I must be an idiot playing this game for over ten years but I have no idea what a cheese team is.

    Oh! Nonsense like Multiple Man/Coulson, infinite Hawkeye or 4* Moonstone, other Kang away teams, or the various Darkveil teams.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,783 Chairperson of the Boards

    Nova doesn't really have a counter at the moment. There are some characters who do stuff with airborne, but Archangel and Space Elsa don't work because she can't be stunned, and most of the others aren't effective. Often these teams are bringing 12 green AP, so she'll be airborne, untargetable, and hitting you for 6 turns (at least).

    Hulk can be perma killed, but only by the Kamar Taj support, which is pretty limited in who can use it. Don't use permanent damage on him -- it just makes it worse!

    Black King can passively eat all her charged tiles, which is good for not taking damage but doesn't really help you kill her (or Hulk) when she's flying around.

    I think Nova is a problem but the real problem is Hulk. They should've done something to him when they hit Chasm. If they address Nova somewhere down the line (and who knows, but we're a LONG way off from anyone even thinking about that), Hulk will still be waiting there to break somebody else.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,635 Chairperson of the Boards

    You can target her Green AP pool with Chasm or Hela, and Nightcrawler is marginally effective at dodging Hulk’s aoe if you can get somebody in front of him to tank the first hit; he also can target strongest AP color with his blue. But I haven’t found a reliable partner for him to do that yet.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,783 Chairperson of the Boards

    I think it's worth pointing out that players run strong/annoying defensive teams like this (Chasm/Hulk, SW/Colossus back when that was a thing) precisely because there's no clean, widely available, strong counter to them.

    If there was some counter, nobody would be doing this.

  • WilliamK1983
    WilliamK1983 Posts: 1,363 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    Nova doesn't really have a counter at the moment. There are some characters who do stuff with airborne, but Archangel and Space Elsa don't work because she can't be stunned, and most of the others aren't effective. Often these teams are bringing 12 green AP, so she'll be airborne, untargetable, and hitting you for 6 turns (at least).

    Hulk can be perma killed, but only by the Kamar Taj support, which is pretty limited in who can use it. Don't use permanent damage on him -- it just makes it worse!

    Black King can passively eat all her charged tiles, which is good for not taking damage but doesn't really help you kill her (or Hulk) when she's flying around.

    I think Nova is a problem but the real problem is Hulk. They should've done something to him when they hit Chasm. If they address Nova somewhere down the line (and who knows, but we're a LONG way off from anyone even thinking about that), Hulk will still be waiting there to break somebody else.

    Hit-Monkey's red is perma kill. Wouldn't even know where to begin finding a partner for him to counter frankie/ihulk.

  • Pantera236
    Pantera236 Posts: 644 Critical Contributor

    @WilliamK1983 said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Nova doesn't really have a counter at the moment. There are some characters who do stuff with airborne, but Archangel and Space Elsa don't work because she can't be stunned, and most of the others aren't effective. Often these teams are bringing 12 green AP, so she'll be airborne, untargetable, and hitting you for 6 turns (at least).

    Hulk can be perma killed, but only by the Kamar Taj support, which is pretty limited in who can use it. Don't use permanent damage on him -- it just makes it worse!

    Black King can passively eat all her charged tiles, which is good for not taking damage but doesn't really help you kill her (or Hulk) when she's flying around.

    I think Nova is a problem but the real problem is Hulk. They should've done something to him when they hit Chasm. If they address Nova somewhere down the line (and who knows, but we're a LONG way off from anyone even thinking about that), Hulk will still be waiting there to break somebody else.

    Hit-Monkey's red is perma kill. Wouldn't even know where to begin finding a partner for him to counter frankie/ihulk.

    Too bad ihulk isn't a villain, Monkey could take him out even easier if he was.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,783 Chairperson of the Boards

    @WilliamK1983 said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Nova doesn't really have a counter at the moment. There are some characters who do stuff with airborne, but Archangel and Space Elsa don't work because she can't be stunned, and most of the others aren't effective. Often these teams are bringing 12 green AP, so she'll be airborne, untargetable, and hitting you for 6 turns (at least).

    Hulk can be perma killed, but only by the Kamar Taj support, which is pretty limited in who can use it. Don't use permanent damage on him -- it just makes it worse!

    Black King can passively eat all her charged tiles, which is good for not taking damage but doesn't really help you kill her (or Hulk) when she's flying around.

    I think Nova is a problem but the real problem is Hulk. They should've done something to him when they hit Chasm. If they address Nova somewhere down the line (and who knows, but we're a LONG way off from anyone even thinking about that), Hulk will still be waiting there to break somebody else.

    Hit-Monkey's red is perma kill. Wouldn't even know where to begin finding a partner for him to counter frankie/ihulk.

    Yeah, like Venom Rex can do this too, and there are a few other oddball choices (Jeff can eat all the charged tiles!) that I didn't think were worth mentioning.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,941 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 10 November 2025, 19:20

    Multiple Man with Stepford cucoos support and Ascended Coulson with Avengers tower support. With cucoo support, MM steals enemy ap every time he fires a power, so by the time he has fired his yellow on every color he has stolen all 12 of their green ap. Avengers tower has a chance to start with yellow ap and a chance to generate ap in your strongest color every time you fire a power.

    With the ap at start, the stolen ap, and generated ap I can often get enough MM tiles on the board to win before they get a turn. Worst case, they have no ap and you have to give them one turn, then all the CD's from coulson resolve on your turn and you have enough ap to auto win then.

    Not great on defense, but fool proof on offense.

  • LennoxHC
    LennoxHC Posts: 42 Just Dropped In

    It's been previously suggested, but I think 1* Hawkeye's purple infinite is the best counter to Nova / Immortal Hulk. Particularly if you just want to rack up wins. Again, as noted before, it's terrible on defense because it's easily counter-able, and the wins are often relatively slow.

    I usually use Shang as the partner. For supports, Hawkeye gets the Refreshment Cart, and then the other 2 get Quantum Realm and Black Widow batons for the starting purple AP. If the supports fire, you will likely never need to pass the turn.

  • WampaX
    WampaX Posts: 54 Match Maker

    Has anyone else noticed that iHulk just dies sometimes when he should resurrect ?

    I think that it occurs when iHulk is stunned, dies, and then dies again in the same turn OR it could be if he dies in the middle of a cascade and then dies again during the same cascade. I've been trying to figure out the exact conditions, but it does seem to be tied to dying multiple times in the same power/match sequence.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,635 Chairperson of the Boards

    I’ve seen that a number of times, I’ve never been able to reproduce it reliably either.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,635 Chairperson of the Boards

    I successfully used an unboosted 4a5 Quake, 3a5 Kamala, and 4a5 Nightcrawler to beat a boosted hulk/frankie team with a usable amount of health remaining. Not sure if it was a fluke, but it did work.

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 3,140 Chairperson of the Boards

    How high are your Quake and Crawler?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,783 Chairperson of the Boards

    I was able to use a very high level 3* Dr Strange with Kamar-Taj this event and it worked ok. I'm not sure if the base 5* version would be as good. (I also ran 672 Ares with 12 green AP to start. That worked great on the Nova/Hulk teams. Strange was really only required for the Purple Man/Hulk teams).

  • darkman84
    darkman84 Posts: 63 Match Maker

    Don't know if it was mentioned, but super easy counter for this team is Shang + ascended Hawkeye 1*. just need purple supports like batons and/or quantum realm. then keep spaming hawkeye's purple on any two purple tiles to keep it going. eventually shang will generate enough combo to destroy them all in turn 0.
    Of course the team it's squishy as hell, and pretty much non-existing on defence, but i find it pretty reliable on anything that doesn't reduce match damage (or send away like Darkveil).

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,635 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Borstock said:
    How high are your Quake and Crawler?

    Quake is 456, had a level 150 helicarrier attached that probably wasn’t doing anything but her yellow absorbs 15,121 aoe damage at this level, and Nightcrawler is 456, would have had a 5* power stone equipped.

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