Hey everybody! I’m Rylan, one of the finalists for the Fan Internship Program. WizKids has graced me with the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite teams in Modern, Assassins!

Assassins have had a lot of nice pieces over the years, but with the introduction of the “The Target” trait in Notorious they have become a high rolling, high scoring force to be reckoned with in any format.

THE TARGET: At the beginning of the game, for all friendly characters with this trait, give a Target token to an opposing character. // For all characters with this trait, when a friendly character with the Assassin keyword KO’s an opposing character with a Target token, score 25 victory points.

Assassin teams work by marking a certain character for elimination, and then taking them out for an extra chunk of victory points. A 25 point bonus is a pretty large sum, potentially doubling the points you take in by taking out one of your opponent’s valuable support figures. Add on NOT037a Ra’s al Ghul’s ability to mark more characters as Targets, and you can score even more points! As most characters with the Assassin keyword are Rares, Assassins really shine in Pulp.

The piece that really makes this build work is Deadshot. With his “One Shot, One Kill” trait, he can take out figures 8 squares away regardless of line of fire. Although his damage is relatively low, 3 penetrating damage is enough to cripple or outright KO format staples like NOT044 Nekron. Your opponent simply cannot ignore him. The rest of the team is built to either support Deadshot, or to eliminate threats as they move in to contest him.

Deathstroke is here to give Teen Titans his keywords, letting us field support characters we’d otherwise have to break theme for. Starfire uses her Enhancement to boost Deadshot’s damage to a more menacing 4, while also flying him out of danger when the need arises. Raven uses Telekinesis to set up shots, and Orb takes figures out as they move in. Altogether you have a menacing squad that puts your opponent in a rough position. They can either move in quickly, letting you get the first strike in, or they can hang back to bait your opponent into a punishing engagement.

Moving to the standard Modern format raises the stakes with the team. The pieces that can be run are a lot more terrifying, but the tools you get access to are also much stronger.

With the Primes back in the character pool, we gain access to the menacing Talon. Talon makes it so characters marked with The Target marker can’t use defense powers when Assassins are attacking. With her around Deadshot can blow past reducers, rollouts, and most STOP clicks. With the introduction of Talon on the build though, we lose the space for Deathstroke and the Teen Titans he brought along. If we want Enhancement, and we do, we have to break theme. Without that bonus to our map roll, we need to find other ways to guarantee terrain we can take advantage of. We’ll be including the Sinestro Corps Ring to do that, giving us access to Barrier as well as Perplex.

Here is one last team idea to get you thinking:

While he is incredibly helpful, Ra’s al Ghul is a very expensive piece to run, and usually, stripping the defense powers on one character is enough to devastate your opponent’s team. The Assassin keyword has quite a broad set of characters, and freeing up those 80 points can let you do some crazy things. For example, launch a colossal crocodile into your opponent’s force to eat your opponent’s biggest threat!

Thank you for joining me for this talk on some of my favorite teams, and thanks again to WizKids for hosting this!