Moving on, let’s explore a bit of history of this game.
On launch, there were few-to-no predefined synergy bonuses between characters. The Defenders back then were a cruel joke; Iron Fist was referred to as Noodle Fist. The Avengers, then as now, had nothing to recommend them. It was instead just about grabbing the best five guys in sight and throwing them together.
This led to the first, primordial meta squad, anchored by Crossbones, Kingpin, and Yondu. The strategy: KP buffed with +offense, then the other two blasted everyone with their nukes. And they owned face. Even though none of these guys have any pre-defined synergy with each other. It was just something players came up with on their own, through theorycrafting and experience. Imagine that!
But then came the first FoxNext-designed meta squad: the new Punfenders. All those old-meta XBones/KP/Yondu squads quickly vanished from the Arena like girls ghosting on me when they find out that I play this game. Old-meta couldn’t compete with a squad that even now remains vaguely competitive in certain situations. And so it went from there. The balance shifted to dev-designed premade squads. Fury/Shield. Brotherhood. Asgardians. And, lately, Inhumans andBlack Order. It’s to the point where all meta teams — with one exception — are pre-designed and pre-approved by the devs.
I’m here tonight to talk about that one exception.
“Oh come on, Inwood,” you’re probably saying. “Everyone knows this squad and how they’re yesterday’s news. Let me know another new, bizarre squad full of hot chicks led by an older man to let me relive my stolen youth through a midlife crisis the proper way.”
First of all, how dare you get into my head, and second of all, it’s the evolution of this team that I love and that our FoxNext overlords hate.
New players may be forgiven if they think if BKT (meaning, BEST Kree Team and not “Big” Kree Team as our alliance’s war bot thinks; the joke is that it has only one Kree) evolved only as a variation of what the devs prefer you play, vanilla Guardians. But that’s not where they came from. These guys started as something else: the Tech Team… which, to come full circle, is also what has replaced them.
See, why back in my day, when we had to blitz uphill both ways through snow, and just when them-thar newfangled “Defenders” erased all the player-made meta teams, one last player-designed meta squad evolved: the tech team. They centered on the surprisingly effective core of Rocket, Starlord, and Vision. There was a long and endlesslly theorycrafted list of who could be the other 2 members they could run with, from other techies like Iron Man and Merc Lieutentant, to some non-techs like Black Widow; but other than the connection between Mr. Lord and Trash Panda, no predefined, FoxNext-approved synergies existed in the tech team. And yet they thrashed anyway, serving as the early game’s best alternative to the Defenders (with the weakness of needing a legendary character — they are pointless without Starlord).
As other FoxNext-designed teams emerged, Tech still stubbornly remained viable, especially with the introduction of Minn-Erva who just happened to be tech, turning them into their penultimate form, “Technerva.” And shortly after, with the game’s best healer in place, the tech team, the game’s last player-made meta team, which has been around in one form or another since even before the Defenders, then replaced Vision with Groot and picked its tank as Thanos to evolve into its final form: BKT.
Why this squad works so well, and why it owns U6 raids better than any of the FoxNext-approved teams, is how their powers and passives just happen to interlock and create insane synergy that FoxNext, and now Scopely, never really intended. Which pissed them off to no end.
Both Thanos and Starlord, when positioned properly as above, feed ridiculous streams of energy to the team’s nuker, Rocket, leading to a near-endless rain of his ults(and a brutal single-target attack when it’s not up). Groot’s +defense lands right after Thanos taunts, relieving one of the game’s better tanks of his biggest weakness, the lack of such a buff. The best-in-game healer absolutely clowns on Mantis and makes up for a big vulnerability of breaking up vanilla Guardians — losing Drax’s autotaunt — with her guaranteed rez, the power that makes BKT even better in Ult6 than other raid teams like Defenders, Wakandans, Asgardians, vanilla Guardians, or Fury/Shield. In addition, Minnie absolutely love enemy summoners, with their cannon-fodder dying as quickly as they do with Rocket around, feeding the team energy and heals. Finally, you have plenty of other checkboxes cleared: one of the game’s only two all-purpose debuff cleanses; a self-heal on the tank; a blind power; tons of assists.
And they’re contenders in war, even without all the war-only bonuses the poseurs depend on. I had my BKT on war defense and they wereone of my most reliable generators of defensive victories, behind only my overpowered Coulson squad and, lately, Hydra. And unlike Skull/Hydra, BKT doesn’t have any pre-arranged fuck-you’s from Scopely like Black Bolt/Inhumans, or New Brotherhood laughing off Coulson/Fury/Shield.
They’re just solid all-around, in war and out, and if they make an enemy burn their Phoenix on them, that’s a moral victory.
If it weren’t for the fact that they need a legendary, I would seriously shill for new players to hump BKT as their primary, not Asgardians.
But FoxNext is obsessed with force-feeding us pre-designed squads, so whales players will find it necessary to break up BKT once they unlock Black Maw — see below.
Finally, BKT remains a better ult6 choice (and for the greek raid with cosmic nodes) because BO has little sustain. With BO youare forbidden from replacing a member with Minnie, so they’ll never be a viable raid option.
Weaknesses/Variations: Thanos will be lost to the Black Order once players have all four of his underlings. This isn’t a big deal for newer players, but is for people who’ve already unlocked Black Bolt. For them, the unlocking of Black Maw will make running Thanos with the Black Order irresistible — outside of raids anyway. Players will then need to either run vanilla Guardians, what THEY prefer despite Guardians seriously showing their age…
…or else a far superior option: Technerva, with Vision once again pulling duty. The latter seems preferable, as vanilla Guardians are still roughly equivalent to the Defenders (no, that’s not a compliment). Vision gives all the squishy members def-up for 2 turns, on top of an ability block and a much-needed buff dispel. I highly recommend this. On top of everything else, it frees Drax for war offense duties where he’s better suited, such as with Ultron or F4.
BKT, the team FoxNext doesn’t want you to run, remains the game’s best jack-of-all-trades, and will remain a go-to for mid-grade players who can unlock Starlord but who are nowhere near unlocking Maw.
