Mech Week: The Hype is Dead

Maxx ‘The Hype’ Nitro is dead. 

Let me back up a bit.

When Bright Lights came out, several players - myself included - were incredibly excited to see a very unsupported class (or talent? who knows!) get an entire set entirely focused on supporting them. Maybe Mechanologist would be meta! 

How naive we were.

Instead of pushing Mechanologist design or providing new staples for the class, Bright Lights was mostly filled with strictly worse boost cards, the Evo mechanic (with its own set of problems), and crank items.

While the crank mechanic has some incredibly powerful interactions with Dash I/O, the hero with crank on both their textbox and weapon has been found middling at best.

Comparing Maxx Nitro to his contemporaries, we see a clear focus on two things: the crank mechanic, and Hyper Drivers.

These Hyper Drivers care a lot about boosting, and give you access to a higher density of overrate boost cards to pair with the Drivers and the abundance of resources. 

However, what do you do with all of these excess resources and the Hyper Drivers creating them? Given Maxx seems to be named after it, it’s not entirely surprising he so clearly synergizes with the Nitro Mechanoid. This gives him a tool to get over fatigue decks and to allow for a combo kill with High Octane.

…Which we just saw leave us.

While this ban was definitely necessary, it took Maxx from a cool, if gimmicky, unfatiguable boost deck into a very fragile and one-note aggro deck, completely outclassed by either version of Dash. Dash retains the ability to push dangerous on-hits with Boom Grenades, run the pistol package, or draw extra cards with Cerebellum Processor. 

And this is really unfortunate. Hyper drivers are cool. Extra action points are cool. The payoffs for both of these are very cool. Maxx just struggles to abuse these to their full effect. 

On top of that, conceptually, Maxx struggles. The idea of a Mech hero that instead of slowly building up to better and better cycles has several off turns into several on turns back and forth is an incredibly novel idea, but fits way better into the Runeblade class where setup and payoff cards are much easier to support in the wider card pool. 

So with Maxx completely outclassed strategically, mechanically, and conceptually, what is the future of our anarchist? 

Maxx may not consistently win games or perform a gameplay optimally, but he does allow veterans to go full force with a severe handicap while still having a fun time and getting respect from their fellow players.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the struggle for FAB with a casual community. I think part of the problem is that most of the heroes in the game are designed to create the best experience for their pilot possible, without considering their opponent in the experience. In contrast, Maxx is a very welcoming opponent to new players, with a clear design focus and a clear in-game goal. He also largely doesn’t do anything “unfair”, allowing casual crowds to enjoy playing against him much more than similar 'underdog' heroes like Arakni Huntsman or Riptide who mostly impede the opponent from achieving their goals throughout turn cycles.

This list gives a baseline for the hero in CC to serve as a sparring partner for new heroes. T-Bone and Pulsewave Harpoon are powerful inclusions that, depending on how the new player feels about interaction, could be cut. One fun quest to give yourself throughout the game while you are teaching is to see how big of a Gas Up-Mechanoid turn you can set up. So far my highest damage Gas Up Mechanoid turn is 27, and that required some pitch stacking.

Azalea used to sit at a very similar spot to Maxx, where there was no competitive reason to bring her to events but she had several hopefuls who kept brewing with her. It can be hard to remember, but metagames ebb and flow with what classes and playstyles are successful. Rangers are back on the downswing, but just a few months ago Runeblades were largely considered competitively unviable, and Guardians, who have spent most of the history of FAB being metagame tyrants, are seeing an all-time low in their viability. 

On several of the design podcasts, Maxx has been talked about as a problem hero in design due to how powerfully he interacted with High Octane. While the ban does make him significantly less viable in the current card pool, it opens up the future of his card design for powerful and flavorful designs that Maxx mains can really bite into. Who knows, in a year maybe we will joke about “Steampunk Revolution”, a 1 card 12 that completely wins games in an unfair way. Or maybe Banksy will have bans called for, the “Mechanologist Dawnblade.”

Or maybe Maxx will slowly waddle to LL like his old friend, Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire, finally being just playable enough for long enough to receive a bittersweet goodbye from the mains who have gotten to enjoy him for years.

Maxx has an incredibly interesting cycle that revolves around slowly building up Hyper Drivers to create turns that are increasingly above rate. However, one of the major gaps in his plan is what to do when you have 4+ Hyper Drivers. Construct Nitro Mechanoid is now a slow, grindy card that can struggle to convert properly in an all-in aggro deck. Our other options are... well, barely options.

Moonshot, on it’s face, may seem powerful, but it essentially lets you convert 2 resources and a Driver into 1 damage each. Unless you have a bunch of Drivers all at 1, you are losing value there; and even if you do, you are completely resetting your setup for *maybe* 12 damage.

What Maxx needs is more powerful payoffs for when he gets his quest complete. Construct Nitro Mechanoid is powerful but antisynergistic, and Moonshot is synergistic but not very powerful. Some boost-based design that counted Hyper Drivers without destroying them, or gave a payoff worthy of that destruction, could be a way forward. Maxx also could find some specialization, similar to Verdance, that directly pays off having Drivers or cranking them. 

Maxx inspires such joy in me. From his clear cyberpunk origins, to his focus on a niche mechanic, to his anarchist ways, he always brings a smile to my face to see at the table. Unfortunately, Maxx mains are relegated to playing him for passion instead of finding a unique edge that is common in bottom tier heroes.

Someday, revolution will rise, and Maxx will become a real hero. 

Until then, Crank and Bank.