Marvel Champions

After taking some lumps in the Red Skull campaign, I felt ready to avenge my loss against the Green Goblin and his Risky Business (Basic). I previously lost with Spider-man and Black Widow both running their default Justice decks. I had plenty of thwarting against the schemes, but Black Widow isn't good for big attacks, so I wasn't doing enough damage to Green Goblin during his brief appearances, and he got to spend a lot of time as Norman Osborn because it takes damage to beat down his Criminal Enterprise and bring out the Goblin. Also, I was running the Tombstone module, and Tombstone has a lot of hit points for a minor villain.

This time, I played my two recent acquisitions, Quicksilver (Protection) and Ant-Man (Leadership), against Green Goblin/Risky Business (basic) plus the Electro module. It was a breeze once I got some upgrades and allies in play. Ant-Man is great at attacking in giant form, and great at thwarting in tiny form, while Quicksilver is okay at everything and often gets 2 to 3 basic actions per turn, plus card stuff. Ant-Man is also great with allies, because he can boost their hit point and damage with tech upgrades. I was a little worried that Quicksilver might become a bit boring, but so far the ability to crank out lots of damage and thwarting hasn't worn thin. Electro seemed like a potential problem, but his two appearances were brief, due to a speed-blitz by Quicksilver and a later stomping by giant-sized Ant-Man. One of Electro's cards requires discarding 7 to 8 encounter cards, but that allowed us to miss out on two potential appearances of a nemesis.

I played Quicksilver (aggression) and Ant-Man (justice) vs expert Mutagen Formula last night on stream, and had a lot of fun. They went 1-1, though the first loss was pretty close. When GG flips from 2->3 he deals you 3 encounter cards each, so you end up flipping 8 encounter cards that turn. The main scheme had 3 threat and there were no minions or side scheme,s so I thought we were safe to flip him. We got absolutely hosed by the 8 encounter cards though, and never recovered. Next time through we took an extra stalling turn to make sure we were fully healed up and ready for action before doing the flip. It also helped that Quicksilver had a nuclear turn and put out over 30 damage for the flip, taking GG3 down to 20/40 HP from the jump.

Shellhead if you want to try those decks out let me know I'll throw you some links

Edit: also he sure to try the Power Drain modular in with Klaw sometime for a fun game. They both burn through the encounter deck fast, so you'll be stacking acceleration tokens.

I sold my stuff to Jeb awhile back, but as things tend to happen with me, I found myself missing it and I now have an up to date set. Haven't messed with deckbuilding at all, but I've managed to beat the Expert versions of Rhino and Klaw. Haven't worked up the courage to try Expet Ultron, normal version was a real pain as is.

My last game was Black Panther and Cap against Expert Klaw. Cap immediately got hit with that card that discards an equipment or support, and of course the only thing he had out was the shield. Almost beat him, but it was a tough ride the entire way through. Immediately gave it another try, managed to hold on to the shield this time and was able to win but just barely.

I have been pondering a PvP scenario for this game, and this is what I have come up with so far: Civil War. Playable for 2 to 8 players. Players on each side will be running normal hero decks, but instead of a villain and an encounter deck, each side will be up against a scaling-up version of the hero with a new encounter deck. Since this is Civil War, one side will be pro-registration, pressuring heroes to work directly for the government, while the other side opposes registration. Therefore, the main scheme on each side will represent that conflict.

Unique card restrictions will apply to all players on both sides, so only one side can have a Hawkeye, for example, whether as a hero or an ally. As a twist, instead of uniqueness preventing play of an identical character, play of a redundant unique ally will force the opposing team to discard that unique ally. This will represent a superhero who has switched sides. The minions in the encounter decks will contain unique characters that are normally played as heroes or allies, which may replicate heroes or allies in use by players. If an encounter deck unique minion duplicates an existing unique hero, discard the minion and gain surge. If an encounter deck minion duplicates an existing unique ally, discard that ally regardless of which side controls it. This can represent a superhero changing sides or even just moving into a more proactive role in the conflict.

The pro-registration "villain" will be Iron Man. Based on his hero stats, he will have 8 hit points per (opposing) player for stage 1, and 10 hit points for stage 2. His encounter deck will feature heroic minions and slightly modified versions of his hero deck cards. For example, his various tech upgrades will become attachments, while his attack events work just like extra attack encounters always work. Certain tech attachments will give Iron Man additional hit points per player, especially his Mark V armor. He will have side schemes like Negative Zone Prison and SHIELD patrol (similar to Hydra Patrol). Maybe add modular sets for Under Attack and Masters of Evil (the reformed Master of Evil aka Thunderbolts joined the pro-red side in the comics). A few extra cards might do thematic things like force the anti-registration team to discard all SHIELD cards in play.

The anti-registration "villain" will be Captain America. Based on his hero stats, he will have 10 hit point per opposing player for stage 1, and 12 hit points for stage 2. His encounter deck will also feature heroic minions and modified versions of his hero deck cards. To be honest, I am having a harder time figuring out how to translate Cap's cards, and also what kinds of side schemes might come up.

The other part I haven't really worked out yet would be if it is workable to allow players to directly attack players on the opposing side. Some player may really want that, but it might make the game messier. Without direct PVP, this is effectively two nearly separate but concurrent games, with players racing to win before the other side wins.

Play will continue until one side defeats the final stage of their main scheme, or when all the heroes on one side are defeated.

that sounds like it would be a cool scenario for sure.

i got my copy of Scarlet Witch in the mail today, and I'm VERY EXCITED to play her and Quicksilver together. I'm going to run through the Red Skull campaign with them starting Monday on my stream, and man she looks like a ton of fun.

I need to read more of the Civil War storyline to get better ideas for the anti-registration (Cap) encounter deck.

In the original Avengers series, the founders were only the line-up until issue #16, when they were replaced by a controversial line-up that was soon nick-named Cap's Kooky Quartet. It consisted of Captain America and three recently reformed villains: Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye. I actually think that would make for a very solid, balanced team capable of handling any scenario in the game.

I'm still not doing any deckbuilding, so I always play the basic versions of the scenarios. Today, I took on the dreaded Green Goblin and his Mutagen Formula, with Goblin Gimmicks in the mix. Spider-man and his new friends Ant-Man and Quicksilver had a solid win. The stage one scheme was a constant threat, and we finally let it happen before we got Goblin beat down to his stage two. But otherwise we mostly controlled this game. We made it a priority to clean out all of his minions each turn, though occasionally one of those 7 hp Knights hung around for another turn. The stage two scheme made the minion beatdown mandatory, which really slowed Green Goblin's roll. None of the nemesis sidebars entered play, probably because GG's cards tend to generate extra boosts and discards.

Spider-man is appropriately a swingy character. He has some expensive big plays in his deck, like the 8 pt kick and the Webbing up that is effectively two consecutive stuns. The free Backflips are wonderful. His extra card draw every time he is attacked is great, but also speeds up his deck usage, making him more of a magnet for encounter cards over the course of a game, which befits a character who also seems so unlucky.

Everybody says that Ant-Man is fun to play, and everybody is right. His giant form is great for attacking while his tiny form is good for thwarting. His ant swarms eventually build up to be a game-change, good for smacking down a Goblin minion nearly every turn on their own. More importantly, Ant-Man has a great set of allies, plus cards to make them even more effective. Ant-man is often whatever you need him to be for the turn.

I'm still a bit concerned that Quicksilver might become boring due to efficient repetition, but I have really come to appreciate his defense cards. On a thematic level, I like that his default deck is Protection, because the green protection cards match his original Avengers costume from the kooky quartet days, and are a nice reminder of the days when he was Wanda's overprotective brother. Also thematic is his relative lack of allies. Scarlet Witch is the best one, with her unpredictable hex boosts. Multiple Man is expensive; worth it for the double meat shields, but generally less tempting than cards for defense or extra actions. Warlock keeps getting spent for the resource point.

I played the first four games of the expert campaign on stream tonight with Quicksilver (Aggression) and Scarlet Witch (Justice), and holy hell these two absolutely CRUSHED everything in front of them. They rolled through all 4 expert villains like they were nothing, even expert Zola.

Scarlet Witch is crazy and fun. Her damage output is inconsistent, but it's fun! Molecular Decay does 5 damage, then you discard 2 encounter cards and do an extra damage for each boost card. You can do crazy damage if you get lucky, plus you have ways to manipulate boost icons on cards. I love being able to use Sorcerer Supreme on her too. Playing her with Quicksilver is baller, as it makes their Alter-Ego action extremely good and their Team Up card is great as well.

She's got a few great new Justice cards too. Wiccan is an excellent 2 cost Justice ally, Crisis Averted is a great way to nuke the main scheme, and Multitasking makes me want to go make a Justice Ms. Marvel deck (it removes 2 threat from 2 different schemes, which you could boost to 4 from 2 with Sneak By... Mmmm man I love Ms Marvel).

Quicksilver continues to just shred, also. Aggression Quicksilver is so good.

Just kinda rambling I dunno. Scarlet Witch is real fun. If you want to check them out in action here's the VOD link. It's fun to watch these guys give these villains the absolute business.

m.twitch.tv/videos/942240227

I am taking on Kang for the first time. I don't mind playing a full table, and Kang deserves four opponents because he splits into four Kangs for his second stage. My team is Captain Marvel (aggression), Iron Man (leadership), Black Widow (justice), and Thor (aggression). I am starting to regret the absence of a protection deck on the team, because Kang dishes out a lot of damage. He isn't a big schemer, but the side schemes are getting to be a problem. One side scheme protects Kang from all damage, and another one prevents heroes from getting rid of the special Kang obligation cards. Whiplash also showed up and quickly got hammered, but his side scheme remains a nuisance.

Captain Marvel is a solid team member. I don't understand why so many people at BGG are disappointed by Thor, who is durable and deals out serious damage while also doing a decent amount of thwarting. Iron Man has been slow to ramp up this game, but is about to pull it together with a respectable number of tech upgrades. I still can't decide if Black Widow is one of the weakest heroes or if her deck requires a style of play that I don't appreciate. She needs time to build up, just like Iron Man or Black Panther, but her upgrades tend to be disposable one-shots, leaving her almost constantly either underpowered or holding back for the right moment.

In case anyone was on tenterhooks, these guys absolutely stomped Red Skull also. Once they're set up their damage output is unreal. It got a little dicey re hp near the end, could have gone south, but we pulled through. Thankfully the turn where we flipped 7 encounter cards didn't kill us lol. Scarlet Witch was down to 1hp, Red Skull had 38, we went nuclear and laid him out.

These are the decks in question if y'all want to try em. No scheme got past stage 1, and no game lasted longer than about 45min. Set em up and knock em down.
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/7806/quicksilver-aggression-1.0
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/7785/scarlet-witch-justice-1.0

Shellhead wrote: I don't understand why so many people at BGG are disappointed by Thor, who is durable and deals out serious damage while also doing a decent amount of thwarting. I still can't decide if Black Widow is one of the weakest heroes or if her deck requires a style of play that I don't appreciate.

People like to complain about 4 hand size heroes, I think it's the main thing. Thor is good assuming you get Asgard in play asap to get 5 hand size, and assuming there is a steady supply of minions to let him draw extra cards consistently. Team Building Exercise helped him out a lot also I think, though it's been a minute since I've played him.

Black Widow never really clicked for me either. Her gimmick is basically playing control, having a bunch of preps set up to cancel whatever the villain does. That kind of reactive play style isn't really what I want to do, but if you get it up and running and can stay ahead of the villain it can work very well.

Yeah, part of my problem with Black Widow is that I want to play proactively instead of reactively. The other problem is that I never study the encounter decks in advance, because I like to be surprised. So with Black Widow against an unfamiliar encounter deck, it takes me a while to understand when I should nerf a card and when I should hang on to that prep until a really nasty card pops up. But when I get it right, it's a great feeling to cancel a strong villain card. I expect that subsequent replays against various villains will make my games with Black Widow more fun.

I finished beating Kang I last night. It was a hard-won victory, because Kang routinely deals out attacks for 6 or 7 damage, and his Future Weapon is even worse. I got him down to 18 hit points, but his side-scheme that protects him from damage hit the table. Then Kang lucked into a couple of his force field attachments plus a random toughness card, so it took two turns of beatdown to get him. Now I am ready for stage 2, with nice random pairings. Captain Marvel vs Immortus (payback for that shameful incident with Marcus Immortus), Iron Man vs Iron Lad, and Thor will be trading blows with the violent Scarlet Centurion. Oh, and Black Widow vs Rama-Tut, which is just random. All my heroes are currently in the 7 to 9 hit point range, but they have pretty good amounts of upgrades, support, and prep in play. Light on the allies, though, after so many big hits by Kang.

Whoops, looks like those Kang's Dominium side schemes weren't supposed to be in the stage I encounter deck. Would have been a much shorter play if I could have been beating down Kang sooner.

Are you talking about Kangs Domain (I think that's the name, it's got his space ship on it and there are 4 of them)? Doesnt that side scheme not get shuffled into the encounter deck during setup? I think that one only comes in when the stage 3 side schemes threat out, but I could certainly be forgetting about a different side scheme.

Edit: you ninja'd me

I was expecting Kang stage 2 to be a light-hearted romp, with each of my heroes laying waste to a different version of Kang, free from worrying about slowly advancing schemes. But once I realized that those four Kang's Dominion cards were at stake, I knew that I would need to be merciless. It's a good thing that heroes defeating a Kang 2 get to join the fight against another Kang, because Black Widow needed help from Iron Man and Thor (!) needed help from everybody.

Kang 3 was the usual slightly harder version of the original, but this Kang was regularly hitting for 6 or 7 damage, or 2 less if I let him do a bit of scheming. We went into the fight a little shaky, and immediately had to face all four of our nemeses. Whiplash had already been hassling us since Kang I. Anyway, we did pull of a win, but on the final round, Thor had 4 hp, Captain Marvel had 3 hp, Black Widow had 2 hp, and Iron Man had been eliminated the previous turn. One of my closest games yet.

I gained a little more appreciation for Black Widow this game. once I noticed that she has some espionage-type actions that she can take even while in her alter ego form. That is a nice offset to her relatively low hit points, allowing her to be more effective in civvie form while potentially healing.

For now, I am shelving my idea for a homebrew Civil War scenario. I like to start with theme and setting and then translate them into mechanics and components and rules. But the comic book version of Civil War is rife with bad ideas, starting with the blatant and over the top heel turn for Iron Man. I could easily write this like a normal scenario with Iron Man serving as the villain. But it's hard to come up with ideas for the Captain America side of the scenario, because he is so obviously the hero.