Archangel – Death Horseman

Introduction

A few days ago, we got official confirmation about the fourth Horseman. We still do not know anything about his kit, but at least certainly we can say that he will be “Death”. His teammates are not yet revealed (officially), so we will not mention them in this post. But we will talk about Archangel.

At the beginning of this year, Scopely announced its long-term MSF plan to the players. An Age of Apocalypse!!! It was well-received info, and we all waited for them to implement it in the game. In short, it is a new system where through Scourge (events), players will collect dominant game characters. Scopely announced four of them (each specialized in a different game mode).

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse

Around those characters, players are building new mighty teams. At the time, we didn’t know anything more about them, just that they will be the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. After all, four are in the game obtained by the players, we will have a chance to unlock Apocalypse itself (you can read about that in our Saga guides). 

We have three Horseman already in the game: Pestilence – Morgan Le Fay, Famine – Rogue, and War – Red Hulk. We know which character will represent the last Horseman – Death. It will be Archangel, and that is the theme of this article.

According to comics, Warren Worthington – Archangel is a Mutant, a former member of the: X-Factor, X-Force team, and Apocalypse Horseman of Death. In his case, Scopely followed lore from the comics.

Prepare for Apocalypse

By implementing the new system in the game, Scopely forced our character’s progression. To reach our main objective – Apocalypse, we will need to level up and gear up specific characters – all members of each Horseman team and five more individual characters (Spider Weaver is the first of them).

So, there are three teams right now, and we are waiting for the fourth. Darkhold – Mystic, Unlimited X-Man – Mutant, Gama – Bio. If we know that we eventually need to gear up those 15 characters to T17, we should focus on those three Traits: Mystic, Mutant, and Bio. We were leaving Skill or Tech Traits as logical options for the Death team. However, Archangel is a mutant, and this is where the plot twists.

Considering how much gear players need to gear up a single character to T17, (we need to do it five times for each of the three existing Horseman teams with Mystic, Mutant, and Bio gear), it would be only logical that the fourth Horseman team is Skill or Tech. At least, that is logical to me at this point when I still don’t know the traits of 4 more individual characters needed for Apocalypse Saga.

With Archangel as Death Horseman, the game progression balance does not exist anymore. That means we need to improve ten Mutant characters up to T17! 

Having all that in mind, I am saying this is not a good decision for Scopely from this point of view. From my point of view, Skill Trait is screaming for the next mighty Horseman, but my logic and Scopely logic are two different kinds of logic 😉

Mutant raiding team

On the other hand, we still need one more reliable Mutant raiding team. As we know, most people are struggling in Doom III raids with Mutant nodes. Each horseman team is exclusive to one of the game modes. Now, we have Darkhold – Arena, Unlimited X-Man – Cosmic Crucible, and Gama – War. Death Horseman and his team should be Raid focused according to that rotation.

So, with Archangel as Horseman of Death, players would have the new Mutant raiding team fully prepared for the end game. Raid is one of the most important (for some players, most important) game modes, but honestly, we just got OP Tech Raid team (Bionic Avengers), and the new Doom 3 is doable with existing Mutant options. I am saying that there are pros and cons, even if we consider only the Doom 3 Mutant Nodes issue.

Right now, I think Scopely deliberately slows players’ progress and buys them time to figure out what to do next. Maybe, I am exaggerating since I don’t know the whole picture.

Take a look at the past – we can see game patterns. We will focus on Monthly Events: May – Darkhold (Horseman team); June – Hero Asgardian (non-Horseman team); July – Unlimited X-Man (Horseman); August – Bionic Avengers (non-Horseman); September – Gama (Horseman); October – Tangled Web (non-Horseman). 

What to expect

So, in November, we should expect the official introduction of Death Horseman and farming 2 members of his team. In my opinion, it would be too early for Mutants. Imagine the Death team is arriving in December. In the meantime, new non-Mutant characters take place on the board, and we will have more precious time to prepare our gear for Mutants. But I think that will not be the case. We are getting Death Horseman (at least some members of the Death team) in November, as the game pattern shows. 

Considering all, I am still staying with my sentence that Archangel is not the smartest choice for a Death Horseman. We should have him as part of some future Mutant raiding team, but not as Horseman. 

We got “few” more news. One was about teams needed on nodes 5 and 10 in the Death Scourge. With Bionic Avengers (we already knew) will be the Wakanda team. And Wakanda will gain two new members soon: Nakia and Black Panter (1MM). Identical to Archangel, we do not know anything more about those two. 

Cosmic Crucible will have some updates as well. But we are not sure when that is going to happen. It will probably be near the end of this or the beginning of next year:

• History Panel
• Practice Mode
• Stage Rules in Combat
• Increased payout of Silver Promotion Credits per Knockout, per League

History Panel probably means that we can see our earlier combats. It is good because we can analyze CC better. 

Practice Mode is the best thing, in my opinion. And I am waiting for that with joy. Finally, we do not need to theory craft without the real deal. We can try our ideas for CC in the game but without consequences. Our preparation for future combat can be much better with this update.

New stage rules mean we will have updated bonuses for different character traits. That will turn around our defense setups and best offense teams.

We will have increased rewards – that’s always good.

Campaign – Hard difficulty

Scopely introduced the Campaign Hard difficulty, and they said it’s coming soon (Version 6.5). We will have different rewards than Normal difficulty. Teal Gear, among other Recourses, is the primary reward from Hard Mode Campaigns. Some nodes will feature bonus rewards in the form of character shards of older and new characters. They notice that we will have Phyla-Vell, Wong, and Sersi between the characters.

Level 75 will be the minimum requirement to play those hard modes, and for the beginning, we will have the first two chapters of the Heroes and Villains Campaigns. All character requirements for nodes will be the same as Normal Difficulty.

Some – they call them “Quality of Life Improvements” – will be added to the game:

• Remember combat speed settings across game modes. For example, if you set combat at x3 in Arena, that will be active in Blitz.
• Saved Squads for War Practice mode
• In Challenges, you can complete all available Auto Wins in that Challenge with one button.
• New “Retreat” Option in Raids – retreat ends a Raid match without battle progress, and the “losing battle” option ends with progress preserved.
• Emoji support in Chat

I do not need to explain anything. I appreciate those little fixes. For example Retreat option in Raids is an excellent idea if you ask me. Emoji are an even better new thing in the game.

Conclusion

So, same as they said at the end of their post – this year was great. They implement new game mechanics in the Marvel Strike Force. Results are some of the best and most played Game Modes this game ever has. Yes, I am talking about Scourges and Sagas. They think next year will be even better, and we hope they are right.

Even though I do not approve of some of the choices they made for this game, I still cannot say that game is not good. It is one of the best (if not the best) games in the genre – in my opinion.