New Character - Falcon (Joaquin Torres) 5*

S0kun · 6 February 2026 00:35

Note:

Thanks for your patience while we sorted out a few of our internal tools to gather up all the character stats that you're so accustomed to! We're slowly getting back to our regular cadence of character & event release information in MPQ and with the release of Falcon (Joaquin Torres), we've made some slight formatting tweaks to ability level progression that hopefully makes visualizing their scaling a little easier to digest.

Missing this time are the release events, which I'm hoping we'll be able to post with the next character release on Wednesday Feb 18th.

Character Information:

Health & Match Damage

Feeder Flow
4 Star: Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) > 5 Star: Falcon (Joaquin Torres)

Abilities

Ability: Bird of Prey

Color: Red
AP Cost: 6

Falcon soars above his enemies, looking for an opening. Deal 2 hits of 1240 damage to the target. Then reduce the damage of this ability by 443. If used while Airborne, add an extra hit, then Falcon returns from being Airborne.

(PASSIVE) If Falcon is Airborne at the start of his turn, increase the damage of this ability by 177. At the end of Falcon’s turn, if any friendly or enemy Strike, Attack, or Protect tiles had their strength changed this turn, increase the damage of this ability by 354.

Level	Base Damage	Damage Reduction	Airborne Increase	Friendly Tile Increase
1	1240	443	177	354
2	1350	442	199	398
3	1417	441	210	443
4	1550	440	243	531
5	1815	438	310	664

Ability: Wingman

Color: Yellow
AP Cost: 7

Falcon spreads his wings and takes flight. Increase the strength of a random friendly Strike, Attack, or Protect tile in each column by 10%. Falcon goes Airborne for 2 turn(s).

(PASSIVE) At the start of Falcon’s turn create a strength 55 Strike tile in a random column. When Falcon returns from being Airborne, Increase the strength of a random friendly Strike, Attack, or Protect tile in each column by 20%.

Level	Tile Buff	Airborne Turns	Strike Tile Buff	Random Buff
1	10%	2	55	20%
2	15%	2	59	25%
3	20%	2	64	30%
4	25%	2	75	35%
5	30%	3	97	45%

Ability: Feathered Decoy

Color: Blue
AP Cost: 8

Redwing swoops around the battlefield, assisting Falcon. Deal 997 damage, increased by 354 for each enemy Special tile on the board.

(PASSIVE) At the start of Falcon’s turn, reduce the strength of 1 random enemy Strike, Attack, or Protect tile(s) by 10%.

Level	Base Damage	Damage Increase	Enemy Tiles	Tile Reduction
1	997	354	1	10%
2	1064	398	1	11%
3	1108	443	2	12%
4	1240	534	2	14%
5	1506	708	3	15%

entrailbucket · 6 February 2026 00:56

I posted this in a different thread but it goes here:

Seems like he's meant to be a Sam/Juggernaut counter, but I think he's not very good at that. The special tile reduction ability is what jumps out first, but I think it's actually kind of useless against that team. Sure you can reduce the strength of some of their strikes, but they're going to make 2 million new ones every turn, so it's not going to help much.

He can go airborne a lot, and pretty easily. We've got a bunch of these guys now, so I'd probably try to use him in a "we all fly away forever" team to create maximum annoyance on defense. There aren't any good counters to airborne right now, so everybody will just have to sit around doing nothing while all your dudes flap around.

I think his red is sneaky good. The numbers at 450 aren't impressive, but I think they'll scale well, and when he's high level + boosted it'll build up quickly. It also doesn't reset when you cast it, just reduces by a small amount.

The problem will be generating red AP for him while everybody is flying around, but Ikaris can do that by making matches, and 4* Vulture's black actually generates a small amount of red for some reason, so I'd probably start there.

BearVenger · 6 February 2026 02:16

Thank you for the resumed character announcements.

amigopdude22 · 6 February 2026 03:56

Excited to see these return! My hope is that they start previewing the character a few days before like they used to and give the feeder information.

MCPenance · 6 February 2026 09:24

@entrailbucket said:
There aren't any good counters to airborne right now, so everybody will just have to sit around doing nothing while all your dudes flap around.

I could be wrong, and too tired to check, but doesn't 4* Aikku pull enemies out of airborne and deal damage?

If she does, she would probably have to be ascended to even think of contending.

Wolfveleon · 6 February 2026 09:35

Aikku and elsa bloodstone and anti him

Ed_Dragonrider · 6 February 2026 10:37

Doesn't Venom Rex also do that? I could be remembering wrong.

DAZ0273 · 6 February 2026 10:53

@Ed_Dragonrider said:
Doesn't Venom Rex also do that? I could be remembering wrong.

Afraid not.

Have we forgotten our old buddy Archangel? Of course it is a bit weird that he can't go airbourne himself but has an anti-airbourne counter.

bluewolf · 6 February 2026 12:03

@Wolfveleon said:
Aikku and elsa bloodstone and anti him

Aikku sends people airborne, not pulls them down.

5Elsa needs 8 blue to target someone who’s airborne which is ok but not easy to get with no blue ap support, really.

4 elsa can stun airborne enemies with 7 red.

5 Namor can hit airborne with 9 red.

MegaBee · 6 February 2026 12:18

Juggerduck can hit airborne targets IIRC

DAZ0273 · 6 February 2026 12:38

@MegaBee said:
Juggerduck can hit airborne targets IIRC

He can indeed! We have the winner!

Ed_Dragonrider · 6 February 2026 12:58

@DAZ0273 said:

@Ed_Dragonrider said:
Doesn't Venom Rex also do that? I could be remembering wrong.

Afraid not.

Have we forgotten our old buddy Archangel? Of course it is a bit weird that he can't go airbourne himself but has an anti-airbourne counter.

Sorry, it's 3* Rex green i was thinking of...

LuxAurae · 6 February 2026 12:58

Why is no one mentioning the OG Anti-Airborne Archangel?
Blue passive deals damage at the start of each turn as a passive and stuns them for a turn (which removes airborne IIRC).

Gymp28 · 6 February 2026 13:29

@DAZ0273 said:

@Ed_Dragonrider said:
Doesn't Venom Rex also do that? I could be remembering wrong.

Afraid not.

Have we forgotten our old buddy Archangel? Of course it is a bit weird that he can't go airbourne himself but has an anti-airbourne counter.

@LuxAurae he was mentioned. It just so happens that it’s the only useful thing that he does and he’s otherwise terrible!

But yeah, excellent point Daz, I don’t know that I’d ever really registered that Archangel, a character whose only power (certainly before being Mr. Sinister’ed) is the ability to fly, doesn’t go airborne in MPQ… madness!

entrailbucket · 6 February 2026 13:39

Like I said, there aren't any good counters to airborne right now!

DAZ0273 · 6 February 2026 13:54

@Gymp28 said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@Ed_Dragonrider said:
Doesn't Venom Rex also do that? I could be remembering wrong.

Afraid not.

Have we forgotten our old buddy Archangel? Of course it is a bit weird that he can't go airbourne himself but has an anti-airbourne counter.

@LuxAurae he was mentioned. It just so happens that it’s the only useful thing that he does and he’s otherwise terrible!

But yeah, excellent point Daz, I don’t know that I’d ever really registered that Archangel, a character whose only power (certainly before being Mr. Sinister’ed) is the ability to fly, doesn’t go airborne in MPQ… madness!

Oh ha ha, this might mean I'm blocked (TM)!

DAZ0273 · 6 February 2026 13:56

@entrailbucket said:
Like I said, there aren't any good counters to airborne right now!

Well I do once remember you saying Archangel wasn't terrible when boosted, changed your view (if you remember)? To be transparent - he is fairly terrible...

entrailbucket · 6 February 2026 14:01

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Like I said, there aren't any good counters to airborne right now!

Well I do once remember you saying Archangel wasn't terrible when boosted, changed your view (if you remember)? To be transparent - he is fairly terrible...

It's been awhile. I think I liked him because he was a 5* with a stun, but that was probably before ascension and the explosion of boosted options we get every week.

DAZ0273 · 6 February 2026 14:11

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Like I said, there aren't any good counters to airborne right now!

Well I do once remember you saying Archangel wasn't terrible when boosted, changed your view (if you remember)? To be transparent - he is fairly terrible...

It's been awhile. I think I liked him because he was a 5* with a stun, but that was probably before ascension and the explosion of boosted options we get every week.

Yeah I do think it was the stun you liked and yes sorry, dipping into ancient times here! I seem to remember Cable being boosted same week who you thought was useless and quite frankly I would never argue with you about a single thing in this game concerning how good anybody is. Boosted Cable seems pretty good now, poor Archangel has slipped down the rankings. He is probably approaching Daredevil levels of usefulness. But, he might be able to handle new Falcon?

KGB · 6 February 2026 14:58

Not sure he'll be of any use as part of an all airborne defensive team. If you fire his Red he returns from being airborne so you can't spam Red unless you also have an infinite supply of Yellow to let him go back to being airborne and the AI definitely won't manage this when it's playing on defense.

Seems to me his best partner would be a passive SAP buffer so that his Red would be increased every turn. Of course with most battles ending on turn 0, 1 or maybe 2 even that doesn't make a lot of sense.

What I am curious about is if you fire his Red repeatedly (like 4-5 times in a row) will the damage drop to 1 or will it go negative and roll over to a very large number.

KGB

entrailbucket · 6 February 2026 15:00

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Like I said, there aren't any good counters to airborne right now!

Well I do once remember you saying Archangel wasn't terrible when boosted, changed your view (if you remember)? To be transparent - he is fairly terrible...

It's been awhile. I think I liked him because he was a 5* with a stun, but that was probably before ascension and the explosion of boosted options we get every week.

Yeah I do think it was the stun you liked and yes sorry, dipping into ancient times here! I seem to remember Cable being boosted same week who you thought was useless and quite frankly I would never argue with you about a single thing in this game concerning how good anybody is. Boosted Cable seems pretty good now, poor Archangel has slipped down the rankings. He is probably approaching Daredevil levels of usefulness. But, he might be able to handle new Falcon?

I'm not sure the new Falcon will be used enough to require an answer!

Actually I was thinking about counters the other day, and why MPQ counters never do anything. Most of the counters they give us are attached to characters, and most of those characters either don't work or don't do much besides "slow X guy down a little." Even if a counter character was decent, just being a counter isn't enough, you have to be a generically strong character worth using otherwise. The only successful counter I remember was Scarlet Witch, who actually did manage to shift the metagame off of Okoye/Hulk.

But there is a secret example of a super successful counter "character": Leapfrog! Leapfrog countered an entire class of abilities (single target high damage powers) and it basically completely removed them from the metagame. The problem was that it was the most powerful support, and the only one like this, and so everybody just used it in every fight.

What if we had a ton of counter supports that were all as strong as Leapfrog, each for a different thing, so we had to choose? An anti-Hawkeye support could hit you for 50k every time you matched a critical tile, and an anti-Juggernaut support could have the BSS passive, or hit your team for 50k every time you did an AoE.