New 4 Legendary Character: Carnage

Carnage.. the newest 4 star character to be added to MPQ. As usual, I have no idea who this guy is from the comics or lore, but whatever. The cover art is pretty cool, as is the character model.

Carnage definitely goes for the wild, out of control play style. I don’t know if this is lore appropriate, but so far I think he is pretty awesome. Let’s look at his powers first.

In Game Cover Art

Red: Symbiote Scythes - Carnage’s red power deals damage to the target, then deals additional damage to your own team, as well as across the enemy team. At max power, it deals 4903 damage to the target, plus 1808 to all others, for 7 AP. That is some serious damage for not too much AP. A solid value in my view, although this isn’t really F2P efficient.

 Black: Alien Instincts - The black power is a passive. As an aside, why is it that new legendary characters are either countdown tiles or passives? Even worse, this one fires off of other powers, which continues the trend of Prof X and Kamala. Either way, this one sets 4 attack tiles, 2 friendly and 2 for the enemy. The friendly ones are strength 137, the enemy are strength 90 (at max level). This one is more of a non-starter for me, unless you have a lot of powers firing frequently, I don’t see it having a huge effect. Also, in the 4 star arena, the damage values aren’t that high. I would like to see Carnage paired with Falcon though, his yellow boosting your attack tiles with his blue keeping the enemy ones in check is an interesting idea.

Green: Carnage Rules - Carnage’s green power destroys random tiles and does additional damage for any special tiles destroyed. At max level, it destroys 16 and causes 651 damage per special tile. At first, I was incredibly underwhelmed, as we have seen how Doc Oct remains useless even with this power re-worked. However, this one seems to deal damage based on either a friendly or enemy special destroyed. Paired with his black, there is potential here. His green power is also exciting because it answers a real problem in team building. Moves that shake the board are great, but you can’t pair them with characters that build the board with special tiles. Hulk and Daken seem like a great pair, but in practice they just don’t work together. Carnage has the potential to work with characters that set special tiles.

I’m actually pretty excited about the direction of Carnage. A wild and crazy character sounds fun, it looks like he will be one that results in either unexpected loses or HUGE wins. I think he might capture some of the fun that is 2 star Hawkeye. So many players seem to love his speed shot with its huge damage potential on a lucky cascade, and I think Carnage could fill a similar role.

On the other hand, legendary characters are expensive and dear. Only the most dedicated (or rich…) players have a fully covered 4 star roster. For everyone else, its scraping and scrimping and praying for covers, and it makes a fun, but unproductive, character less appealing. If I’m a low budget player, I’m not spending my hard earned ISO and HP on a character that I won’t use in a key fight.