Groot is an interesting puzzle. Half of his kit wants to stack counters and the other half wants to spend them resulting in a bit of a dilemma. After some testing I think burning through the counters is the answer. You can spend several turns stacking for a big event just to have everything ruined by one bad encounter card.

The ideal scenario would be blocking for a partner, getting hit directly, and ultimately ending up around 2 HP (5 or less if you have endurance). This gives you an excuse to stay down for a couple turns to stack counters. When you flip up you’ll have 1 turn to play your events with your freshly stacked counters before repeating the process of spending them. Obviously this strategy really only works in 2-4 player and really needs to be paired with Justice to help enable your semi-frequent flipping.

This card is extremely niche and in most games there will generally be better options. That being said after 3 years playing I’ve finally found myself needing to play him. I think his best/only usage comes from a 4 player Alliance strategy. He’s expensive enough to feel satisfying as a Joining Forces target, there are enough minions for his retaliate to be useful, and he sticks around long enough for Stand Together.

Fantasy Flight missed the mark with this card. Their intention to make a multi-player scaling card was good, their execution was not. To properly scale multiplayer cards the format needs to be: (Flat value below curve plus 1 value per player). The end result of this format should be a clearly bad card at solo, close to even with other staples at 2, and then above average value at 3-4.

To fix this card it needs to read: 2-Cost: Alliance, Remove 2 threat, plus 1 additional threat per-player from a side scheme.

At Solo this would under-perform compared to what For Justice, Crisis Averted, and Multitasking can accomplish.

At 2 Players this would come up even with For Justice with the added restriction of side-scheme only targeting but the added utility of min/maxing player hands via alliance.

At 3-4 Players this would be a clear auto-include over/alongside For-Justice.

Too slow for Solo but great at 2-4 players.

A great card that allows for threat removal even when confused or flipped down to alter-ego. There are some niche situations where you may use the minion nuking effect, but generally it just functions as consistent threat removal. Due to the high cost you’ll want to use this with Hero’s that are resource rich and enjoy flipping to alter-ego. SpiderMan (Peter), Captain Marvel, Spider-Woman (Justice/Pool), and Captain America come to mind.

Core set card without review about 5 years from launching the game? It can't be...

Luke Cage is a 4-cost Protection blocker with the tough and 5 health. Only 9 other aspect cards got 5+ health. In minimum he can block twice and attack for 2. So it's like 1ER for 2 attack (standard rate) and 2ER per block which is like got 2 ally for cost 1. Not bad.

In solo this card is a little slow, but if you got a lucky 3 blocks it's very solid. In multiplayer when there is a chance for more minions, he is still a solid option.

I rate him B (for strategy with blocking) and his value goes down with the more hitting villains.