Saving the Planet

“The true measure of life is in the living. It isn't a series of do-overs and restarts… It's fighting for what you have, what you believe in… It's fighting for who you are. I am a mutant.”
   –Storm, Giant-Size X-Men: Storm Vol. 1

Wolverine springs into action, cutting through the armored skin of a Sentinel. Cyclops unleashes a devastating beam of power from his eyes. Lightning pounds Magneto’s stronghold as Storm launches an aerial assault. Though humanity commonly reviles mutants and shunts them to the edge of society, the X-Men relentlessly defend our world from deadly threats.

In X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, you and up to five others play as iconic X-Men, flying the Blackbird around the world to take on diverse missions in this fast-paced, dice-driven card game. But whether you’re flying solo or fighting alongside your friends, saving the world can be a tricky task! In today’s preview, we’ll take a closer look at the gameplay of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection and show you how to take on missions and take down the villain in a massive showdown at the end of the game.

Power Up the Blackbird

With eight different plots for you to battle, sixteen playable X-Men eager for their next mission, a full range of difficulty settings, and the ability to play with one to six players, no two games of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection are the same. But no matter which plot is driving the action of your game or which mutants are leaping into combat, the heart of every game is embarking on new missions. Completing these missions lets you build up your powers and the strength of your team, advancing through the story as you close in on the climactic showdown at the end of the game.

Every round starts with you and your fellow heroes launching out from the Blackbird and deploying to missions around the world. While you can choose to visit a location at Xavier’s school if you need a respite, you’ll most often deploy to a mission card—whether that’s a story mission that advances the narrative or a continent mission offering other rewards. Choosing the best missions for you and your team to tackle is an important strategic choice every round. Missions left uncompleted can push the threat track to dangerous heights, and you’ll need to carefully weight the benefits of success, the difficulty of the mission, and the consequences of failure.

No matter which mission you select, every mission features its own objectives that show the results you’ll need to roll on your dice. For example, to complete the top objective on Misled Mutants, you’ll need to roll two Fight, a Power, and a Teamwork. Your hero begins the mission by gathering their unique pool of six dice, with different dice reflecting your character’s strengths in combat, collaboration, or mutant powers. After you’ve rolled your dice for the first time, you get two chances to reroll any dice that you choose, before spending your dice results to complete any objectives that you can—hopefully completing the mission, or at least clearing the way for the next hero to come after you.

Rolling and rerolling your dice is an easy mechanic to grasp, but there’s a lot more at play in every mission of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection. To start with, every mutant has a unique ability that can shake up your approach to any mission. Armor can use her psionic exoskeleton to turn Power results into Fight, while Rogue lets you copy the ability of another hero deployed to your mission. And of course, you’ll rarely be starting a new mission without backup from at least one other mutant.

By sharing their assist cards, two mutants can gain access to new powers and switch up their dice pools!

When two or more mutants are at the same mission, they can help each other, sharing new abilities and mixing up their dice pools by exchanging assist cards. And that isn’t even scratching the surface of the bonds that can exist between the mutants.

A bond between two mutants can give you powerful benefits—or dangerous penalties—when two bonded mutants are deployed to the same mission!

When two heroes are tied by bonds of Admiration or Discipline, they can accomplish far more together than they ever could apart. Not all bonds are a positive force, however. Two mutants may be separated by Suspicion or Resentment, and if they are still forced to work together on the same mission, they’ll certainly reap the negative consequences of that bond.

The prospect of rerolling your dice can become complicated by the existence of the Villainy result. Nothing happens when you roll a Villainy result, but if you choose to reroll one or more dice showing Villainy, you’ll have to suffer the penalty shown on the mission card. When you take on Pyro, for instance, you risk getting burnt—each hero will suffer one damage if you choose to reroll a Villainy result at this mission! If you don’t reroll a Villainy die, you’ll face no consequences, but your ability to complete the mission with fewer dice will undoubtedly be compromised. If a mission starts to go badly, how far are you willing to push your luck?

After you’ve rerolled your dice, you’ll complete as many objectives on your current mission as you can, before turning the mission over to the next hero deployed to this location. If you and your fellow heroes can complete every objective at a mission, you’ll reap the rewards, ranging from specialized training, to rescuing young mutants, to lowering the threat track. If any objectives are not completed, however, you’ll fail the mission—and although your completed objectives remain completed, you’ll suffer the consequences of failing the mission and return to the Blackbird, where you can regroup and prepare for the next round to begin.

An Epic Showdown

You’ll tackle plenty of missions in your games of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, but as you push forward through story missions, you’ll inevitably come closer to a massive, climactic showdown against the villain. Each of the game’s eight scenarios offers distinct challenges, whether it’s the rise of sentinels oppressing mutantkind, Magneto launching a hostile takeover, or the dastardly schemes of the Hellfire Club. The ultimate challenge for the heroes, however, is the showdown.

Once enough story missions have been completed, the showdown will begin, launching all of the heroes into a desperate, winner-takes-all battle against the villains. As you can see in the image above, the showdown often takes the form of three or more mission cards placed side by side, and just like the rest of the game, you’ll choose where to deploy and spend your turn attempting to complete the objectives at your current showdown mission card.

When the showdown begins, however, there’s no chance for you to recuperate at Xavier’s school—you and your fellow mutants will be taking damage every round, as well as contending with other dangers unique to your chosen scenario. If you’re hoping to take down the villain and make it out alive, you’ll need a solid strategy and the ability to work together to execute. No matter who you face in your showdown, it will be the final climactic test of skill and cooperation for you and your fellow players.

Mutative Powers

The X-Men feel a duty to protect our world… and danger is everywhere. Gather your team of mutants, fly to your next mission, and take on some of the deadliest villains that the Marvel universe has to offer. You can look for X-Men: Mutant Insurrection to release at the end of February!

Pre-order your own copy of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection (MI01en) at your local retailer or online through our webstore today.