Real Name: Tony Masters
First Comic Book Appearance: The Avengers (May 1980)
Affiliations in Comic Books: A.I.M., Assassin’s Guild, Hydra, Masters of Evil, Thunderbolts
Marvel United Appearance: Marvel United Core Set (July 2020)
Marvel United Team Decks: None
Movement
BAM!
Civilians
Thugs
How Taskmaster Plays: Despite his low health, Taskmaster is perhaps the most difficult (and easily most frustrating) villain in the core set. He delays the heroes until the game ends. Heroes cannot damage Taskmaster if there are any Crisis Tokens in play, and heroes cannot discard Crisis Tokens on a Location with thugs or civilians.
Villainous Plot: None. Instead, Taskmaster has Special Rules
Special Rules: Heroes cannot damage Taskmaster as long as there are any Crisis Tokens on any Locations. Heroes can discard a Crisis Token from a Location with no civilian or thug tokens by using Heroics or Attack there.
BAM!: Deal 1 damage to each Hero in Taskmaster’s Location and add 1 Crisis Token there.
Taskmaster’s only means of dealing damage is through his BAM! Ability. And only half of his Master Plan cards have BAM! Effects, so you’re less likely to be KO’d. Crisis Tokens are the big issue here. Regardless of if Taskmaster deals damage or not, he always adds a Crisis Token to a Location when he BAM!s.
Crisis Tokens plus civilian/thug tokens could mean the heroes waste several actions getting Taskmaster to a state where he can be damaged. And yes, even if you’ve dealt damage to Taskmaster before, if a Crisis Token is added in a future turn, you cannot deal damage to him unless you first deal with the Crisis Token and any civilians or thugs on the Location with the Crisis Token. Ugh!
Overflow: If a civilian or thug token can’t be added to a Location, add a Crisis Token instead.
No matter how many civilian/thug tokens you cannot place on a Location, you only place one Crisis Token with Taskmaster’s Overflow ability. That’s a good thing.
It’s also a good thing that Taskmaster adds fewer civilian/thug tokens than Red Skull, and most of his cards add 3 tokens total. He does have a single card that adds 6 tokens (2 at each location), but he doesn’t get a BAM! Action on this card.
Threats
Taskmaster has 2 copies of 3 different Threat Cards. Each of his threats require 3 Heroic actions to clear, and their effects make heroes less effective.
Explosive Trap (Threat)
Clear: 3 Heroics
Constant Effect: Each civilian in this Location requires 1 extra Heroics to be rescued.
Civilians are more difficult to rescue. As soon as this Threat is cleared, civilians can be rescued as normal.
Elite Troops (Threat)
Clear: 3 Heroics
Constant Effect: Each thug in this Location requires 2 damage to be defeated.
Like Red Skull’s “Hydra Elite Troops,” “Elite Troops” makes thugs more difficult to defeat. As soon as this Threat is cleared, thugs can be defeated with 1 damage.
Entangling Trap (Threat)
Clear: 3 Heroics
Constant Effect: Heroes using Move to leave this Location must use 2 Move instead.
This one hurts the most. Move tends to be the least common symbol core set Heroes have and needing two Move to leave this Location can slow you down to a crawl. But as soon as this Threat is cleared, Move requirements revert to normal.
You can take another route to get to a Location, so there are ways around “Entangling Trap.” And “Entangling Trap” only affects a Hero if they leave the Location. If your goal is at the Location with “Entangling Trap,” you won’t need to leave.
Note: Special effects like Wasp’s “Wings” can move Wasp and any Hero at her Location to any other Location. Effects like this don’t use any Move symbols, so “Entangling Trap” doesn’t affect these cards’ abilities.
Master Plan Deck
Movement:
All the core set villains have the same total movement, their movement predominantly shows up in three cards. The rest of each villain’s movement is 1 and 0 with a couple of 2 thrown in. Since this is the case, Taskmaster (like the rest of the core set villains) is predictable in terms of movement.
Civilians:
Taskmaster adds civilians and thugs evenly and at a moderate rate. The bigger issue is Overflow, and Taskmaster’s ability to add Crisis Tokens.
Thugs:
Again, Taskmaster adds thugs and civilians evenly, and Crisis Tokens become a bigger issue.
BAM!:
Taskmaster has an equal number of cards with a BAM! and cards without a BAM!.
Special Effects on Cards
1) Dark Schemes: If there are no Heroes in Taskmaster’s Location, place 1 Crisis Token there.
Taskmaster has two copies of this Effect, and both cards are accompanied by a 0 move. Players could keep a hero at Taskmaster’s location. While Taskmaster could BAM! and deal this hero damage, you’ll need to clean up the Crisis Tokens Taskmaster places on Locations, so heroes are better served staying near Taskmaster or on the same Location with him.
2) Copycat: Add a civilian to Taskmaster’s Location for each Heroics at the bottom of the last 2 Hero cards in the Storyline.
There’s a second copy of this card that replaces civilian with thug and Heroics with Attack. What these effects are saying is that players must check the last two played Hero cards and place a civilian or thug (depending on which card is in play) to Taskmaster’s current Location. This is the easiest way for Taskmaster to cause Overflow. The most he’ll ever add is 4 tokens but the most any Location can hold is 5. Players can luck out and play the opposite symbol. I suggest keeping an eye on which “Copycat” has been played. If the one for Heroics has already been played, Heroes don’t need to fear using extra Heroics. The same goes for the Attack version of “Copycat.”
General Strategy
Taskmaster doesn’t have any Henchmen, and he doesn’t have a lot of health, so loading up on Heroes with a lot of Heroic actions would be a great idea. On the flip side, loading up on Heroes with a lot of Attack actions would be horrendous. You’ll waste a lot of your actions.
If you load up on Heroics, it should be easy to clear Threat cards and rescue enough civilians. Time this right and Taskmaster won’t have too many round where he’ll act every two hero turns (instead of three). You’ll want to stay close to Taskmaster throughout the game, clearing Threats, rescuing civilians, defeating thugs, and discarding Crisis Tokens. Bide your time until you can attack Taskmaster directly.
I recommend playing with the SHIELD Headquarters (or Great Mound from the Rise of Black Panther expansion) Location. This Location’s ability allows you to discard a card from your hand to the bottom of your deck to discard a Crisis Token. If you have either of these Locations in play, clear whichever Threat card is on top of this Location’s End of Turn space first. Then, you’ll have more options to discard Crisis Tokens.
Core Set Heroes
Ant-Man
Black Widow
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Hulk
Iron Man
Wasp
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