Moira MacTaggert
- Heroic Skeleton
- 58 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Digging Deep #2
Welcome to Digging Deep, a series where we take a deep dive into some underappreciated cards, and try to unlock their full potential. Last time I went over Dr. Sinclair. You can check that out here.
Today, it's all about the mutant support: Moira MacTaggert. Is this card underappreciated? She shows up in a decent number of decks. Currently on marvelcdb, a search for this card produces over 1,300 results. That's respectable, but pales in comparison to the most popular mutant supports. X-Gene and Utopia are at well over 2,000 each, while X-Jet is in over 3,600 published decks.
But more important than the stats, I don't hear much discussion about the card itself. You can just throw it in your mutant decks that flip a lot, and call it a day. But I think there's more to it than that.
Typically, in a solo game, you can only draw a card from this once every other turn. If you are not flipping your identity every round, then its even less than that. Instead, you could just run X-Bunker for the same price, and draw twice as much. This issue can be resolved in multiplayer, since other players can also trigger this card. By having at least 2 players with the mutant trait alternating when they flip, you can reach 100% uptime on this card.
How useful is that card draw? You only get it when flipping from alter ego to hero form. These are the turns where you already have 6 cards in hand, and maybe some other bonuses from cards like X-Bunker, Cerebro, or Weapon-X. On these turns, you may not always feel like you need it. Meanwhile, it does nothing for you when you are stuck with 4 cards as Colossus in hero form! While this can be a bit awkward, there are 2 main reasons why its still good. First, early on, those big turns in alter ego are crucial in setting up your board. That extra card could be the difference between playing an upgrade, and having to discard it. The second consideration is for the late game. When you are making a big damage push, you want to have all the card draw you can get. So while it is not always ideal, it can be very strong at certain points in the game. Another thing to note is that this card is stronger the earlier in the game that you can play it, but that is true for card draw supports in general.
So lets see who you might want to use this with. After 2 X-Men waves and 1 for X-Force, there are now 20 mutants in the game. All of them could consider running this card, mainly due to how powerful the other mutant supports are; but the best choices are those that get added benefits for flipping often. The ones that stand out for me the most are Colossus, Cyclops, Domino, Psylocke, Deadpool, Bishop, Magik, Iceman, Jubilee, and Magneto. Psylocke and Jubilee have very easy access to confuse, which makes it a lot easier to flip to alter ego. All of the other heroes that I listed have very powerful alter ego abilities and/or supports, which gives an added incentive to flip. Deadpool is especially good for this since his hero ability lets him flip his identity more often than normal. Because of this, I recommend putting Moira MacTaggert in all of your Deadpool decks!
So to summerize, use it with mutants that flip a lot, and its best in multiplayer with more than one mutant. This would be where I would end it, but we just got a new card with the Silk hero pack that I have to mention. It's the single most game changing card that we've gotten in a long time. That's right, we are talking about Ready for a Fight (RFAF)!
While I could write a lengthy article just on this one card, and how great it is with just about every hero, I want to focus on how it interacts with Moira specifically. Currently, this is the only aspect card in the game that lets you flip your identity more than once in a turn. This means that in solo, you can now get higher than 50% uptime for Moira. I already consider RFAF to be a pseudo card draw on its own, since it lets you go to alter ego more often, where you have a larger hand size. Add Moira to it, and you have a really strong combo. This card has made me reevaluate Moira MacTaggert, and truthfully, it is why I chose her for this article in the first place. So far, there are only a few decks posted that have both of these cards together, so I think there is a lot of untapped potential here! I think that now is a great time to give this support card another look. So to wrap it up, here are some links to a few of those decks that I think are worth checking out:
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