From Panel to Play: Elsa Bloodstone

Elsa Bloodstone is the daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone, a legendary monster hunter who began his adventure as a caveman and came across the eponymous Bloodstone, an alien artifact that grants strength, healing, and slowed aging, rendering Ulysses almost immortal. After thousands of years of life, Ulysses views his children as little more than extensions of his monster-hunting enterprise and trained Elsa ruthlessly as a young child. He often would expose her to fearsome beasts to remove her weakness and encourage bloodthirst. What it also encouraged was a hatred for her father and his brutal parenting. After his passing, Elsa took up his monster-hunting career using her late father’s fortune, the Bloodstone, and her extensive weapons and combat training.

On her quest to kill all monsters, Elsa has had many adventures across the Marvel Universe with varied heroes and villains. At one point, she even found herself among a hidden city of monsters trying to develop their own society and worked leading the Legion of Monsters to discover why their citizens were reverting to savagery. This led her to reevaluate her biases against all of monsterkind and eventually led her to have more adventures alongside monsters in the future.

Ulysses Bloodstone may have been a monster himself, but his training methods gave Elsa the tools she needed to hunt monsters. With her extensive weapons training, Elsa uses her Monster Hunting Weapons attack to engage from range 4 with the potential to either Slow enemies with Cursing Shot or Incinerate with Hellfire, based on dice results. A range-4 attack that generates power equal to damage dealt is useful enough but not enough to banish the denizens of the night. Using her Bloodstone Choker she can channel the energy into a Bloodgem Blast, a mystic attack that can be between 6–9 dice. If the attack includes a Wild result, it triggers Degeneration, which stops the target from removing damage until the end of the Activation phase. This powerful ability can stop any character with the Healing Factor superpower or completely counteract many powerful abilities like that of Age of Ultron.

More important than her individual attacks might be the weaponry she brings to aid her allies in their quest against evil. Her leadership, Legion of Monsters, brings a new twist to the Midnight Sons Affiliation. Her vast fortune serves to provide her with the mundane and mystical weapons used against the forces of the night. Whenever an allied character attacks they may pay 1 power and use 1 of 3 different special effects! Boom gives each other character within range 2 an extra 1 damage, ideal for picking away at lower-health or hard-to-hit enemies. If that doesn’t work for you, choosing Horrify will give the target character the Root special condition and make their superpowers harder to activate. This is ideal for certain defensive characters that always rely on them like Captain America or Vision, or an aggressive powerhouse like Captain Marvel, Cosmic Avenger who wants to use their abilities to charge into the fray. Finally, Silver Bullet stops any superpowers or Team Tactic Cards from reducing or preventing damage.

Elsa has extensive combat experience against all manner of supernatural and monstrous foes, and it’s taught her to always keep on her toes to avoid the teeth and claws of the unnatural. Run and Gun allows her to make an attack action then move for a single action and 2 power. This superpower may be familiar, but few characters besides her can use it as well with her ability to attack in close or far range. Her Supernatural Senses rule is another representation of her highly attuned combat sense and the power of the Bloodstone Choker she wears into battle, giving Elsa the ability to reroll any defense dice against physical or mystic attacks. What’s truly magical about this power is that it also allows you to reroll Failures, drastically increasing her chances of preventing damage with her 4 defense dice. Finally, Elsa is the Bearer of the Bloodgem. This ability is two-fold, damaging any enemy for 1 whenever they put special conditions on her. Additionally, she cannot be Advanced or Pushed by mystic attacks or enemy superpowers. The power of the Bloodstone is mysterious, and seems to grant special protections to its favored wielders, discouraging attacks against her and stopping most of the ways characters will try to move her.

Elsa Bloodstone isn’t just out to kill monsters though; she has gathered together teams to fight the forces of darkness back into the shadows and has learned how to support her allies with her unique offensive overreactions. Covering Fire allows Elsa’s player to set up an offensive protection for the entire round. Once per turn Elsa can respond to the first attack against an ally by rolling 5 dice and dealing one damage for each Critical and Wild die result. Opponents will either be forced to Daze or KO Elsa or take the offensive end of her boomstick. Combined with Bearer of the Bloodgem, this could deal even more damage!

With her new variable leadership and arsenal of weaponry, Elsa brings a new offensive angle to Midnight Sons players in the battle against evil. Any other affiliation would be happy to bring her along just to find out if there’s any hidden vampires lurking in the team, with her strong attacks, ability to prevent healing, and defensive abilities.

Thanks for joining us on today’s installment of From Panel to Play, the series where we give you your first look at how your favorite characters transition to the tabletop in Marvel: Crisis Protocol. Pre-order your copy of Elsa Bloodstone and Man-Thing at your local game store or through the webstore today!

Until next time, Atomic Mass Games, signing off!