Marvel Contest of Champions: Alliance War Season 66 Debuts the Stone / Water Tactic

Alliance War Season 66 kicks off with the brand-new Stone / Water Tactic, the first Alliance War Tactic to pull from all six Champion classes. Pre-Season begins April 8 and Season 66 launches April 22, 2026.

Marvel Contest of Champions is rolling into Alliance War Season 66, and Kabam is shaking things up in a big way. For the first time ever, a single Alliance War Tactic — the new Stone / Water Tactic — will pull from all six Champion classes, drawing directly from the Ascension pool and giving Summoners a very different flavor of war to strategize around.

What's New About the Stone / Water Tactic

Kabam's design team explained that the Stone / Water Tactic is an experiment in using Inexorable as the core defensive threat to see if "spacing" is a worthwhile direction for future Alliance War Tactics. Because the Tactic pulls from every class, the defensive trigger had to be predictable enough that any Stone-tagged defender could reliably activate it.

Defense: Stone Tactic

If the Defender is #Stone, every time they gain a Bar of Power they gain an Inexorable Passive for 10 seconds, with a 1-second cooldown and a maximum of 3 stacks. The stack potency scales per tier:

• Stone – 1: 10% Inexorable
• Stone – 2: 15% Inexorable
• Stone – 3: 20% Inexorable

Attack: Water Tactic

The counter-play comes from the Water side. If the Attacker is #Water, activating a Special Attack removes one Inexorable from the Defender. Certain actions also inflict an indefinite Splash Passive on the Defender (max 3 stacks), which is not subject to Ability Accuracy checks. Splash triggers on:

• Intercepting the Defender
• Power Draining, Burning, or Stealing from the Defender
• Gaining a Regeneration effect
• Attempting to Purify or Cleanse a Debuff
• Being Immune to an Armor Break, Armor Shattered, or any Damaging Debuff

Splash Passives reduce the Defender's Defensive Combat Power Rate and Ability Power Rate. Importantly, any time the Defender gains Inexorable, both the Inexorable and a Splash are instantly removed — making the Water Tactic a push-and-pull rhythm between attacker aggression and defender patience.

Banned and Whitelisted Champions

Alliance War Season 66 keeps its familiar tiered ban structure, with the usual suspects blacklisted and a broad whitelist drawn from both the Ascension pool and upcoming releases.

Elite Tier

Blacklist: Bastion, Serpent

Whitelist: Peni Parker, Captain America (Sam Wilson), Iron Man (Infamous), Lady Deathstrike, Howard the Duck, Spider-Slayer (J. Jonah Jameson), Ruby Thursday, Arcade, Sasquatch, The Destroyer, Man-Thing, Kindred, Mojo, Doctor Strange, America Chavez, Madelyne Pryor, Blade (Stellar-Forged), Spiral, Spider-Man (Pavitr Prabhakar), Black Panther (Civil War), Jabari Panther, Patriot, Baron Zemo, Korg, M'Baku, Doctor Bong, Hit-Monkey, Nico Minoru, Mister Sinister

Expert Tier

Blacklist: Bastion, Onslaught

Whitelist: Identical to Elite, with Serpent replacing Mister Sinister.

Challenger Tier

Blacklist: Bastion

Whitelist: Same core roster as Elite and Expert, minus Mister Sinister.

Why This Season Matters

Alliance War Season 66 is a bellwether. Kabam is openly using this Tactic as a test case for whether spacing-based defensive threats have a future in Alliance War, and the fact that every class is represented on a single Tactic is a significant departure from how AW has typically been structured. Alliances that can balance aggressive Water attackers with patient play around Inexorable stacks will have a clear advantage.

Expect more Alliance War announcements in the coming weeks as Kabam teases "new developments" tied to this season.