DEEP DISH THEMES:

ORIGIN: Medusalith Amaquelin was born to Quelin and Ambur, who were both members of the Inhumans. Quelin was the brother of Rynda, the wife of King Agon. Because of that family connection, Medusalith was considered a member of Attilan's Royal Family. Her parents had elected to expose her to the Terrigen Mists when she was young, which gave her a long, thick head of red hair which she could use like an appurtenance. She became widely known by her shortened name "Medusa," after the woman in Greek mythology who had actual snakes for hair.

During her adolescent years, Medusa began to visit her cousin Black Bolt, who at a young age was quarantined by necessity since the power of his voice could cause catastrophic damage. Because of this, Black Bolt could never vocalize his thoughts. Medusa learned to communicate with him in a special sign language, and due to these regular visits, the two had fallen in love by the time Black Bolt had been released from his cell at the age of eighteen. Over the years, the two remained romantically involved and even wedded. It was during this time that Medusa knew she was marrying into the royal family, which would be a large role to fulfill for her as the future queen of the Inhumans.



PROS: It's very hard to put lipstick on a pig, but here goes nothing...The Clobberin' Time Medusa is a good option to use if you need to shave points off of your team but you really want to make use of the SR Black Bolt's special power that requires her adjacency. She's got a couple of tricks up her folicles that could aid your team in the right circumstances such as her plasticity and her multiple targeting incapacitate ability. Should your team feature Fantastic Four characters, her team ability is going to come in handy as well since she is going to act well as tie-up with her plasticity but is likely to get KO'd fairly easily and quickly. At least the FF characters on your team will get to heal a bit when that happens.

CONS: Okay...where to start...Well, I would say that the best place to start would be the fact that in the PROS section I describe her best and most useful ability is dying. There are characters that cost half of her points that can do so much more than she can. Her usefullness would practically double if her range were a four, but at a two, your opponent is likely just going to hit her once really hard and forget about her as she is pretty much obsolete at that point. Can she contribute to the team? Sure...all characters have SOMETHING to offer, but will she?...not likely.

THEME: The one thing that she does have going for her is her plethora of keywords. Ruler is one of those keywords that tends to have higher point figures, so she might be a good option to use to meet that figure requirement in that theme team. When she first appeared, she was working as a member of the frightful four, so if you're feeling nostalgic, she could be teamed up with Trapster, Sandman, and Wizard to make a team that will not likely win, but will be cool to look if anything...



PROS: What a difference 9+ years can make! This Medusa makes me forget that any other version of the character ever existed. Whether by the side of Black Bolt or on her own, she is a serious threat on the battlefield. She's not going to go toe to toe with Thanos or anything, but in her weight class, she has so much going for her. The designers were luckily thinking outside the box when making her dial. Superstrength, Blades, and Quake are just some of her abilities that I wouldn't have expected from prehensile hair. Her free action incapacitate coupled with her plasticity on her movement special power makes her a potentially unparalleled tie-up piece. Luckily she is also capable of dishing out some possible major damage while she is keeping opponents held in place as well.

CONS: Her range was helped out slightly over the CT version, but it was only by one. Should she have a higher range?...maybe, but chances are that if I am using her, I am likely to keep her in close to an oponnent anyway which makes me a little angry that I'm paying for her range and will likely not even use it. Now add in the fact that you're also paying the extra points for her to be a sharpshooter, and it just seems like so many wasted points. That is just my own playstyle, though, and I'm sure there have been plenty of people that have gotten use out of her range. It's unfortunate that she can't do anything fun with that range in the realm of incapacitate, though.

THEME: Not counting Inhumans, the most fun I've had with this piece in recent history is on a Lady Liberators team. There are a lot of fun options within this keyword to build around, and the ladies help each other out quite a bit with powers like leadership, scads of perplex, and a few of them have outwit. Unfortunately this keyword hasn't had much in the way of non-She-Hulk additions in modern age, but there are some golden age gems that can still be pulled out of their moth balls to see some action once again.



PROS: The Queen of the Inhumans has some really fun things to offer. First of all, on an aesthetic note, I love that she is in one of her "Classic" looks. Her "Inhumanity" trait allows her to use Perplex on damage values of Inhuman keyworded characters within 3 squares of her, so if you're playing an Inhumans team, you can really crank up the damage output with her. You can DOUBLY do so if she is adjacent to a friendly character doing a close attack thanks to her Empower. Her "Deadly Locks" special power is super handy. It says: Medusa can use Charge and Plasticity. During the beginning of your turn, give Medusa a free action and deal 1 penetrating damage to a single adjacent opposing character with 1 or more actions tokens. Charge and Plasticity are a nice combo as you're going to be getting in close and doing some damage first, and then you'll hold them down to prevent retaliation against other more powerful allies. Then you add in the ability to deal one penetrating damage as a free action to an adjacent opposing character with an action token on them, and you could potentially have this Medusa hitting and dealing damage WAAAAAY above her 75 point weight class.

CONS: It's unfortunate that she can only use her traited Perplex on one skill and only on characters that have the Inhumans keyword. This means that more than likely, if you are using her on a team that ISN'T Inhumans based, she is only going to Perplex her own damage while using it (Unless somehow, some way she has opposing Inhumans that she's facing and they happen to be within three squares). I mean, it's not the WORST skill to be able to Perplex, but it has a whole lot of limitations on it and doesn't exactly promote playing her on anything but an Inhumans team. The only other thing that bothers me about the figure is that she has a bare 17 defense to start out with. She's not going to be the main attacker on any team you play her on so she isn't likely to take a lot of fire or be the focus of opponents, but if you are trying to tie people up with her or if your opponent doesn't have a better option, a 17 defense with nothing stopping the attack is a ripe fruit to pluck and for 75 points. She'll probably live through one attack and be alive to contribute in a later turn, but her contributions are on a diminishing scale as she takes damage.

THEME: Given her Inhumanity trait, I would be reluctant to play her on anything but an Inhumans team. Yes, she can use it on herself, but it's going to be much more useful on a team that is ALL capable of benefiting from it. She pairs really well with the new Inhumans from the Earth X set. She can Perplex up their damage values, and with their "Terrigenisis Twice" trait, she could potentially be Perplexing their values up by +2 instead of just +1. Gorgon, Triton, and Karnak all would LOVE to have a +3 to damage when also factoring in the Empower as I previously mentioned.



PROS: One of the first things that I notice about this figure is her three range with three targets. She also has Sharpshooter so you're not likely going to be hurting for targets when you're in at least decently close. The next thing I notice is her attack special power called Grab and Squeeze. It says: Medusa can use Incapacitate. She can use it normally, or if she targets a single character and hits, she may use Incapacitate twice more as a free action, but may only target that character and modifies her attack value by -1. This has a lot of potential because you can give a completely token free character two action tokens and if you hit that third time, you could also do one penetrating damage to them since the character already had two action tokens on them. If you hit a character that had a token, you'd push them and deal TWO penetrating damage, and a pushed out character would be dealt three penetrating damage from these uses of Incapacitate. This is, of course, assuming you make all three attacks, but we'll just assume you did


CONS: I love a lot of things about this Medusa. She has some fun abilities and can do a lot of things that just aren't found on a lot of characters. What I don't love is her point total. There is no way that she should cost 100 points. She has the potential to lock down multiple characters with her Plasticity alone, and when factoring in her attack special power, she can really throw a wrench into an opponent's plans, but she is (In my opinion at least) overcosted by easily 25 points. I'm clearly not a point formula expert or anything, but I think someone overestimated how much use she is going to get out of that power. Plasticity was a little bit more of a superior power at the time so maybe that was a factor too? I'm not sure, but I know that I have plenty of other Medusa figures that work better for most of the situations that I'll need her for and I'll just let this one gather dust.

THEME: For a NON-themed game, I would add her to any Lantern Corps (Probably Red given the hair) and make sure to give her a Sniper Rifle. Three target, 10 range, Sharpshooter? YES, PLEASE! On a more thematic note, though, I'm probably going to put her on a Frightful Four themed team with Sandman, Wizard, and Paste Pot Pete! She has the right look for the era (Which is sometimes very important to me and other players) and she doesn't have anything that makes her specifically calls out a team that she SHOULD be played on, so I don't feel trapped with a specific selection.



PROS: So, once again we have traited Plasticity. She also has giant reach of three. With her range of three with three targets, she can now make either one close attack at a distance of three or up to three with a ranged attack. This gives her some versatility on the field when things like Combat Reflexes, Energy Shield/Deflection, or Stealth come up. She also has traited Telekinesis, but replaces all mentions of "6" in the power with "3" instead, so she can mobilize her troops a bit...not a ton, but it could be MORE than enough to help get that LITTLE bit of extra reach out of an attack. Her shared trait of "Terrigenisis Twice" is like the rest of her Earth X Inhumans where she gets to have an ability perplexed, you roll a D6, and if the number you roll is less than the click number she's on, the stat is now and additional +1. Note that this isn't a "Once per turn" thing and that it applies towards any time Perplex is used on somebody with this trait. It is still subject to the rule of three, of course, but with enough Perplex on your team, you could really have a force to be reckoned with throughout the entirety of their dial. I know her "Lockjaw's Tuning Fork" power is good, but it seems to be worded a bit odd for me. I don't often do this, but would somebody help me out with breaking this power down for me with exactly how this works and if it is indeed good?

CONS: I really want to love this Medusa. Her sculpt is awesome. The whole concept behind the dial is solid, and she really brings a lot to an Inhumans team. I just can't help but feel as if something is missing, though. Her whole point is kind of obscured by Lockjaw ability. I feel as if she's lost her voice which would be ironic. Sure, she has the Lethal Locks power that helps to add a bit of Medusa flair to things, but it just doesn't do enough for me. Maybe I'm jaded after all of these years of HeroClix, but I've really loved some of the tricks that they've come up with for Medusa figures over the years to help them stand out, and I just don't feel as if this one has that certain something to give her that extra "Thing."

THEME: This is one of those cases where any one of her keywords would make for a really good team for her to be on. I mean, I suppose that's why she has those keywords to BEGIN with, but at various stages in the Earth X storyline, she is ideal for each of those keywords, so kudos to WizKids for being on point with the keywords here. When it all boils down, I still think the best option for her is an Inhumans team as they are always about taking care of their own people first, but she isn't shoe-horned into any one particular team here, and I like that about the figure from a comic accuracy standpoint at least.

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

Now that we have had a little glimpse into the aspects of all the different versions of this figure, let's take a quick look at their keywords and I will tell you my number one picks to use for each keyword theme available (Named keywords are bolded):

Fantastic Four: gotg039 Medusa
Frightful Four: gotg039 Medusa
Inhumans: gotg039 Medusa
Ruler: eax060 Medusa
Illuminati: gg042 Medusa
Lady Liberators: gg042 Medusa
Politician: ffgotg002 Medusa
Earth X: eax060 Medusa

WHO NEEDS KEYWORDS?!

In this section, I'm going to list some possible theme teams that you could play this figure on that are definitely comic accurate but don't require keywords and provides links using Comic Vine and/or Wikipedia to tell you more about them. Unfortunately, using these teams mean you are going to forego keyword bonuses, but every once in a while Judges might let you slip by with one of these teams:

A-Force
Avengers
Cosmic Strangers
Future Foundation

This wraps it up for this edition of Deep Dish Themes! Thank you for reading! Feel free to post what you think about the article and feel free to nominate a character for an upcoming edition of Deep Dish Themes. Join me next time when I take a look at one of Medusa's old Frightful Four teammates and maybe he'll even bring me a dream...it's SANDMAN!

The new Medusa's "Lockjaw's Tuning Fork" to me reads at though she can carry 2 people up to three squares without reducing her movement. But you're right, there's strange punctuation in there that makes it read strangely. Maybe the moving 3 is a FREE but using the power to move more than three would be a standard MOVE?

I'm curious now too.

I think you looked at GG 39 Medusa wrong. Reread "Inhumanity." She has traited Perplex, but only on an Inhuman and anything BUT damage. Still good, but that does really change your review for her.

Regarding "Lockjaw's Tuning Fork", consider this quote from the rules:
With that rule in mind, based on how the power is phrased, Medusa can only use the Improved Movement and special carrying during the FREE action. She can only use it to move those 3 squares.
So that complicated power boils down to a short-distance group teleport.

Lockjaw's Tuning Fork is basically Sidestep taken to ludicrous extremes. Move three steps, absolutely nothing can stop you, and take two buddies along while you're at it.

It's AMAZING.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough? Fine... remember you can TK yourself. So three squares with Lockjaw's Tuning Fork, another three with TK, them Giant Reach or Range 3. Good luck staying away from her if she wants to be in your face, or pinning her down if she doesn't.

And that doesn't even get into how she can reshuffle her teammates at will, for free.

-J

“Ludicrous speed? Sir, we’ve never gone that fast before...”

Good write up! However medusa 039 CANT modify damage values.

Noted... will fix when I have a chance

I played her for the first time last night in sealed.
That lockjaw power was throwing me off for a minute also, I'm glad to see I interpreted it correctly though.
I'm curious to build a better team with her and see what she can do, my sealed team kind of sucked.