New faces and old friends. That’s the crux of a lineup of the X-Men that’s structured around two longtime favorite characters: One returning and one officially joining the team. In this edition of Comic Accurate, it’s the Amazing X-Men!

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When it comes to the X-Men line of books, one thing you can always count on is a regular shakeup to the line of books. Creative teams and rosters get shuffled all around and 2013 was no different. In the wake of the Schism between Cyclops and Wolverine, the line divvyed into multiple different teams. Cyke and Wolverine had their respective classes for young Mutants, the time-displaces original First Class of X-Men came in for their book and Storm had a team of all women. Then there was Amazing X-Men, which operated under the more traditional and contemporary style with a variety of X-Men.

The first arc to the series was both an introduction and a revival. Longtime Marvel heroine Firestar had accepted an offer by Wolverine to become a teacher at the Jean Grey School, making her an official X-Man. Mainly because she got pulled to the great beyond with several other X-Men in a quest for Nightcrawler. That’s where the revival comes in.

After being killed in the Second Coming crossover, Nightcrawler had gone to Heaven. But not all was well in the eternal paradise. Not just because Kurt felt he had unfinished business on Earth, but because his demonic daddy Azazel was mounting an attack on Heaven. So Kurt called for his friends to step into the afterlife and help out. This resulted in Nightcrawler, back among the living. And also our team for today…

Force Build 8757026 0
Set	#	Name	Team	Pts	Value
WKM	M-012	Firestar		115	SELL
WKM	M16-015	Northstar		65	SELL
UXM	050	Beast		100	SELL
UXM	051	Iceman		110	SELL
DOFP	009	Nightcrawler		80	SELL
MU	057	Storm		100	$10.99
WXM	201	Wolverine		113	$1.00
MM	F001	Automatic Regeneration		12	SELL
Force Total:				695	$11.99

Why these figures - Largely this team was built to use Firestar on a non-Avengers/non-New Warriors team; get some use out of the new Beast and also the OP kit version of Northstar. Everybody else got selected on points.

Tips for running this team - As long as your opposing force is not built around Stealth, movement and range are your best buddies here. As your opponent is undoubtedly going to be devoting a chunk of his force to swatting that unkillable gnat Wolverine, you basically just have Nightcrawler carry Beast over within four squares of those forces, Outwit the heck out of their defenses and send Northstar, Storm, Firestar and Iceman in to blast ‘em.

Let us know how the Amazing X-Men did for you! That's it for this edition of Comic Accurate! Next week is an all-new Unclixed, and in two weeks it should be a team using characters from Joker’s Wild!

I loved this arc. The art is great, the story is fun, and the lineup was almost a dream team. Great team, though I'd choose a more modern Storm for around the same costs. Love that Nightcrawler, and if it wasn't sacrilegious, I'd sculpt swap him with pirate nightcrawler from uxm. Thanks for the writeup!

Somehow I completely missed this series during my big "catch up on the X-books of the past 10 years" reading earlier this year. I'll have to look it up on Marvel Unlimited. Looks like a fun team.

I'd probably switch Wolverine for the DoFP version,though, and drop the auto regen. 700 on the dot.

Don't forget to have Firestar wildcard Iceman's Defenders TA. Keep close to him and share that 18 defense.