Marvel’s Midnight Sunsis Firaxis’ superheroic strategy card game that puts you in command over a mix of well-known and deep-cut Marvel heroes against the forces of Lilith, HYDRA, and the elder god Chthon.
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Though it’s not as complicated as Firaxis’ other works, Midnight Suns is still full of tactical tricks that you can leverage to your advantage, as well as pitfalls you should avoid over-committing to early on. So if you want to take your heroics from street-level to cosmic, here are some pro tips to keep in mind while you play Midnight Suns.
There are light spoilers ahead in regards to the types of enemies you’ll face and the characters you’ll unlock.
7Save The Crucible Gacha For Endgame
When you unlock the Crucible, you may be excited by the prospect of modding your cards to make them overpowered, or to add synergies that don’t normally exist between characters. After all, who wouldn’t want more Bleeds, or to make hard-hitting attacks Quick as well?
Unfortunately, unless you’re incredibly lucky, chances are when you unlock the Crucible, you just won’t have the resources to get ideal mods on more than a card or two. Crucible mods are resource-intensive, and early on, it’s better to invest those resources in perfecting each characters’ decks and upgrading your cards. Only after your decks are more or less in order should you start rolling the dice at the Crucible.
6Mind Control Protectors For Fun And Profit
Protectors are one of the more annoying types of enemies in the game, given their tendency to get between you and what is likely a mission-critical target and their large, damage-absorbing shields. However, if you can control them, even briefly, then you’ll turn what would normally be a hassle of a mission into a cakewalk. Cards likeMindbreaker or Mindbenderare fantastic for this. The latter is especially expedient since it forces the would-be defender to immediately attack their ward and leave them open for the rest of your turn.
Just be mindful of when you apply this tactic against a Nest Mother. With some planning, it’s a good idea, but keep in mind that the last teammate to attack a Nest Mother will taunt every enemy on the battlefield.
5Do Massive Damage With Blade
In your first few fights with Blade in the squad, he might seem like a cool but ultimately underwhelming damage dealer. Yes, a lot of his moves are multi-hit, but they tend to be weaker per hit when compared to other party members. His damage is reliant on applying the Bleed status effect, which takes either a card play with the use of his Make ‘em Bleed card or a lucky proc on his admittedly unreliable passive. On top of that, Bleed does its damage incrementally, so anyone afflicted will probably be knocked out by other means first.
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However, one card turns Blade from so-so to one of the heaviest hitters in the game: Reaper. This card not only hits for decent damage, but it procs all the stacks of Bleed on your target at once. If you’ve utilized Blade’s multi-hit options and applied a bunch of Bleed to one target (maybe with some help from Nanite Edge,a battle item), the damage is likely lethal
4Bring Bleeds To Lilim Fights
Of all the status effects, Bleed seems like it’s the least spectacular, since it just damages enemies, and not for a lot. However, when you start going up against the Lilin, who show up en masse in the second act of the game, the ability to apply Bleed becomes invaluable. More often than not, Lilin fights include the Revenant enemy. They have a host of abilities that make them annoying to deal with: they steal life on attack, can apply Bleed, and worst of all, they come in pairs and won’t die until they both hit zero hit points — an ability they can extend to other enemies.
However, they have a very exploitable quirk. Their Blood Hunger passive makes them attack the last unit to take on a Bleed stack, which includes other enemies. You can turn them into temporary allies simply by applying Bleed to the biggest, most annoying unit in the enemy’s ranks or even turn them on each other when there’s no one else left.
3Waste Opponents’ Turns With Concealed
Through either a quirk with a game, or intentional design, the Concealed status effect is far more effective than it might initially seem. Concealed makes a unit untargetable, provided that said unit doesn’t use a targeted ability or get hit by other means like an area attack or by another knocked-back unit.
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While this is already good, what makes it overpowered is that any enemy targeting a Concealed ally, instead of picking another target, doesn’t attack at all, effectively wasting their turn. This is easily exploitable if you combine it with a Taunt effect. You can have multiple enemies targeting one teammate, and then conceal them, potentially making it so that no enemies act on their turn.
2Don’t Bother With Summoning Abilities
The idea of bringing in the cavalry seems like an attractive prospect in any situation. There’s just something appealing about having reinforcements come in and either even out the score or secure a victory. Unfortunately, these are actually some of the worst abilities that Midnight Suns has to offer.
In addition to taking up a card play, summoning cards are ridiculously expensive Heroics and, to make use of your newly-joined teammate, you need to use even more card plays to use their cards, two of which are randomly picked. On top of all that, they only stick around for two or three turns before being unsummoned. Almost any of the things you could have done with the resources spent on trying to make a summon work would have been more effective.
1Keep The Hunter In Every Fight
This is either something you’ve already been doing or something you’re loath to do, depending on how much you actually like The Hunter, but it really is more effective to just keep them in your party for every fight.
The Hunter’s variable naturemeans you can slot them into almost any team composition and you gain so much more from any fight with them than without them. Arguably the most important thing is that you gain Friendship with the two other teammates you have in a fight, something you don’t get if you exclude The Hunter. Friendship, in turn, unlocks improved versions of every characters’ passives and their ultimate Midnight Sun ability. Also, the level cap for training your characters in the T.H.R.E.A.T room is determined by The Hunter, something you want to think about when leveling your characters.
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