Marvel Champions

Now that I have a Nick Fury (fan-made) deck, I felt the need to play it against the Scorpio (fan-made) scenario, since the original Scorpio was Jake Fury. But I rarely play true solo, so I picked another hero who I haven't played in a while, Captain Marvel. Nick was running Justice aspect, while Carol (Captain Marvel) was Aggression. Both were basic unbuilt decks, and Scorpio was playing with the Experimental Weapons module from the Red Skull campaign.

Scorpio is a tough opponent because he has his eleven Zodiac minions. All of them have 4 or 5 hit points, but their ATK/SCH traits can range from 3/0 to 0/3, and all have a special ability that is triggered whenever they are eliminated. That special also goes off if The Stars Are Read and that minion is on one of the four horoscope cards revealed. Scorpio himself is more of a fighter than a schemer, but his deck tends to build up acceleration tokens faster.

Things were going well at first, but a bad turn suddenly left my heroes facing five minions, including Nick's nemesis Baron Strucker. The heroes rallied, but seemed to spend much of the game just knocking out minions. The main scheme went to the second stage and became more pressing, but Nick built up a lot of resources on the table and was able to keep it under control.

Late in the game, another really bad turn dumped a few minions on us, plus Carol's nemesis Yon-Rogg entered the game. Near the end, Nick was down to 3 hit points while Carol had 2 hit points, and the main scheme was edging to certain defeat. Then Carol lucked into a great hand and hit Scorpio for 16 points of damage. Nick could have done another 10, but just needed to dish out 4 for another heroic victory.

I went back to social distancing and masking weeks ago, so Marvel Champions has been a great source of entertainment lately. I downloaded and printed off the fan-made Super-Adaptoid deck to play, plus the Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) module. The Super-Adaptoid is an old-school Avengers villain who is an android who copies the powers of his opponents. In appearance, he usually looks like a composite of various Avengers, all in shades and tints of green.

In MC, the Super-Adaptoid's special gimmick is that he has a special set of five Access cards. During the first player's turn, the Super-Adaptoid will draw Access cards each time one is triggered, and then randomly use one of those Access cards during his next turn. Each of the five Access cards refers to one of the early Avengers. So for example, Accessing Captain America is triggered if the first player performs a basic attack or uses an attack power, and it gives the Super-Adaptoid an attack bonus. Accessing Thor is triggered if the first player plays an ally, and gives the Super-Adaptoid overkill on all of his attacks. In effect, this makes the Super-Adaptoid deck seem like it is directly countering the first player. This could be really nasty in a true solo game, but more manageable in a multi-player game. The default starting Access card is Iron Man, which gives a +1/+1 to attack/scheme. The other two Accessed heroes are Giant-Man and Wasp.

The AIM module features a bunch of goons who can also Scheme for 2, and each time one enters play, they feed the Super-Adaptoid a bonus boost card for his next attack or scheme. But they also have an environment card that caps the bonus boost card to one per activation, to keep the Super-Adaptoid from casually killing heroes.

I am battling the Super-Adaptoid with a thematic team of four heroes that he is Accessing. Iron Man (leadership), Ant-Man (leadership), Captain America (leadership), and Thor (aggression), all basic. I wasn't thinking about aspects, so this is an usual situation to have so many allies on the table. Chumpblocking is not ideal against Super-Adaptoid, as one of his five Access cards gives him overkill, while another does 2 points of indirect damage if an ally blocks.

I am taking a break for today, but so far the game is going well. 11 turns into the game, and Iron Man has his full armor in play. Cap has 3 allies out. Thor has had some struggles early on, but finally has a decent set of upgrades out, including the +1 hand size from Asgard. On the other hand, both Ant-man and Cap have taken some hard hits and had to do some healing. The Super-Adaptoid has an above-average amount of healing in his deck, and the AIM beekeepers (scientist/thugs) have been showing up in numbers. But both Cap and Thor are good at clearing minions, plus Iron Man got Hawkeye out to plink incoming minions with arrows. Though none of my heroes are running justice aspect, both Giant-Man and Cap have a decent amount of thwarting ability in their decks.

Wrapped up my game against Super-Adaptoid last night... with a loss. I have a really good win-loss ration with this game, but this particular play helped me realize that I often play too cautiously. Two turns before the end, I knocked Super-Adaptoid into phase 2, and hit him one more time to get him to 71 hit points. But he was really racing along with his main scheme, with 6 acceleration tokens. The following turn, I decided to go for the kill because Iron Man had a really strong hand of attacks. In one turn, my four heroes knocked S-A down to 28 hit points. But in S-A's turn, he healed 6 points of damage, knocked Iron Man out of the game, and hit his target number for his main scheme. Game over. I did the math, and I could have beat him if I had gone all-out on the attack one turn sooner, instead of fussing over thwarting the main scheme.

FFG In Flight Report today officially announced the Vision pack, and also showed the Sinister Motives box for the first time. Miles Morales and Ghost Spider heroes in the box, Kraven, Mysterio, Doc Ock, Sandman, Electro, and Venom (Eddie Brock) on the cover. a "mini wave" of spider related content incoming with it, presumably some more Spidey heroes. IM HYPED FOR IT!!!

That sounds great. I hope that Sinister Motives is part of an overall wave of product that will include some street level hero packs, like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and especially Daredevil.

This box looks really cool. I much prefer 'street Marvel' over 'space Marvel'. They're also dropping a lot of iconic characters in it. Very excited.

But I'd be a lot more excited if we'd had anything release here since the GMW box. Which we haven't. At this point we are so far behind the release schedule it's definitely taken some shine off the game.

There's also no clarity on when anything will arrive and if all the packs will suddenly appear or if they'll continue to release on a monthly schedule despite us being so far behind.

To borrow a phrase it's curbed my enthusiasm. I have bought GMW but it's stuck behind the Level 4 lockdown in another part of the country so it hasn't arrived yet. I was going to skip this box but a combo of a great deal and wanting something new saw me snapping it up. It's been sitting up in Auckland behind the lockdown for about a month now. I have no idea when Mad Titan will arrive so I'm exploring ordering it from the UK.

The thing I'm trying to work out is if I've rinsed myself out on the game and should stop buying or if I'm just bored with my current options.

There were multiple live streams of the upcoming The Hood scenario pack today, and man it looks incredibly good. The villain makes a pool 7 out of play modular sets during setup and then shuffles random new encounter sets into his villain deck as he recruits new allies throughout the scenario. Plus it has 9 new modular sets that look like they have a lot of fun stuff. PLUS the new Standard 2 + Expert 2 look game changing. Give it to me now pls FFG. If you're interested check out the VOD of the Team Covenant stream from today on Twitch.

@Kmann, I can see how that would be extremely frustrating for sure. The constant drip of fun new stuff to play with us a big draw for sure. The indefinite MTS delay in the US is certainly a bummer, especially since the response has basically been "omg it's not GMW I love this".

Speaking of new stuff, Nebula should arrive for me tomorrow so that'll be fun. I'm definitely doing her and Gamora vs villain Nebula first thing, ignoring all unique card rules. Timeline shenanigans!

I ended up skipping the entire Guardians cycle. There are some neat ideas, but the difficulty level of GMW didn't appeal to me, and my Guardians of the Galaxy is still that plucky team from the future that showed up in a variety of Marvel titles in the '70s. I also skipped Ms. Marvel because I haven't read a single comic with her in it, and Wasp because it sounded like her desk wasn't interesting to play. Instead, I have been having some fun with the custom content, though the quality has been uneven.

But I am looking forward to everything in the pipeline post-Guardians. I dislike The Hood because he is like the Mary Sue of super-villains, but the big preview won me over because I like villain modules in this game, and his scenario incorporates several modules in an interesting way, even modules not included in his set. The boxed sets featuring the Infinity Gauntlet and Spider-man are solid ideas. And I'm really happy about the minor characters getting hero decks soon: War Machine, Valkyrie, and Vision. With Valkyrie, I can finally field a proper classic Defenders team of Hulk, Dr. Strange, and Valkyrie.

I think want to do some content on deckbuilding - On FB and reddit, I see soooooo many commenting on playing pre-cons or net-decking because they are intimidated by deck building - I've been playing CCG's since black bordered MtG, and deckbuilding is one of the primary draws for any type of customizable game, and I think I can help.

I timed myself over the last couple of weeks, because I wanted to see how much time I put in assembling a casual deck for fun play with friends (vs fine tuning a deck to take on heroic villain with the new crapstomper module.) One average, I can put together, a really fun playable deck from the sorted box of cards in just under 3 minutes. Would you guys be interested in me outlining that process?

Anyhoo, Here's the 4 decks that I built in 12 minutes last night to take on Kang 4 handed :

marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/12949/scarle...ooky-quartet-3md-1.0
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/12947/quicks...ooky-quartet-3md-1.0
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/12948/hawkeye-kooky-quartet-3md-1.0
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/12946/captai...ooky-quartet-3md-1.0

Fun stuff that happened during this game - Quicksilver was set up and running early, and was able to Serval Industries up a hand of Maximum Velocity and 2 Always be Running for a one turn K.O. on Rama Tut when everyone was split in the timestream. I built Wanda's deck to strip down to playing lots of Hex Bolts, and it did not disappoint.....I played Hex Bolt x4 on two consecutive turns. Cap finished the game off with an Avenger's Assemble with Goliath, Giant Man, Falcon, and Stinger on the table. Good times.

The only thing that tempts me about deckbuilding in this game is that I expect the games would be shorter. When I ran the basic untuned Cap's Kooky Quartet against Kang, I think that the game took hours, spread out over a couple of evenings. I probably posted about it upthread somewhere.

I like deckbuilding in this because it's super easy, so you don't have to stress about being perfectly optimized unless you want to. You can just grab stuff that seems fun in whatever kind of deck archetype you're aiming for, and typically it'll work out alright. Boothwah I'd check out whatever content you're talking about for sure

I tried out Nebula, and she seems fun but maybe too random to really be a high tier hero. Fun Tier is what I'm usually looking for in a hero, so that's fine. When you draw your techniques is really going to dictate how things go for you, since you can't delay triggering them once they're in play. Mechanically that kinda mirrors her villain form, which is swingy AF depending on what techniques your draw and what surges into what. I did play Nebula+Gamora vs villain Nebula, ignoring all the rules about unique cards. That was fun thematically, since you could potentially have 4 Nebulas and 3 Gamoras in play at the same time.

Been in a bit of a Marvel malaise recently but last night I had the urge to shuffle up.

I had the two captains already built so I just grabbed them and squared off against expert Ultron and the modular that brings in the T-Rex. Captain Marvel was leadership and Captain America was aggression. The decks aren't great but they were built so out they went.

It was a great game. Very tense with a lot of crunchy decisions. I got some lucky draws to be sure but also felt I piloted the pair well and made sound choices at pivotal times. I managed to keep him on Scheme1 for a decent amount of time and rode out the game on Scheme 2. On 3 you can't remove threat so I prioritised not letting him advance.

Ultron always feel capable of swarming you with drones and in this game the change over from Ultron 2 to Ultron 3 was brutal. He got about 7 drones out (all 2hp/2at on Ultron3) and Cap's nemesis Zemo was also hanging around. Fairly stressy as Ultron 3 can't take damage while any drones are in play.

But eventually good triumphed over evil with a final turn that saw Cap absolutely whaling on Ultron with both of his heroic strikes (6attack) and two standard attacks (3attack each) augmented with jarnbjorn adding an extra 2 hits to each. Captain Marvel then swooped in to finish the job with an Energy Channel (10 attack) and a Photonic Blast (5attack).

Game ran a couple of hours and was a blast the whole time.

I recently took another shot at the fan-made Super-Adaptoid scenario, this time with She-Hulk (aggression) and Spider-Woman (aggression/justice). It crushed us. With only two heroes, Super-Adaptoid's adaptations are more focused, to the point where at least one hero seems to be temporarily screwed over each turn. I probably could have mitigated this by timing She-Hulks identity switches better, but at some point the main scheme had too much threat on it and I couldn't risk She-Hulk going to alter ego anymore. So she kept getting stunned, and that left her shut out of the game at times, with Spider-Woman unable to pick up all the slack. Normally this game scales very nicely from one to four heroes, but Super-Adaptoid is an exception, where you are better off taking in a team of 3 or 4. And that team will need to run a variety of aspects or at least different kinds of decks.

As usual this year, Friday night = laundry night = Marvel Champions night. Based on a couple of different recent posts I made here, it seemed like a brilliant idea to send Cap's Kooky Quartet (basic/untuned) against the Super-Adaptoid (S-A) and his buddies from Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.). Nope, got beat again.

Game started suspiciously well, including Hawkeye drawing a perfect starting hand of upgrades, which made me realize that I didn't shuffle these decks after my last game. So I shuffled and started over, and got mediocre hands. In fact, both Leadership decks (Cap and Hawkeye) didn't deliver any allies for a while.

Ultimately, the allies weren't that helpful, because two of S-A's adaptations significantly undermine chump-blocking. The Thor upgrade is potentially triggered if the first player plays an ally, and gives S-A overkill on all his attacks. The Wasp upgrade is potentially triggered by a Defense attack or effect, and causes the defending hero to take 2 indirect damage anytime that a character he controls takes damage... even if he is taking the damage himself.

The real problem is the A.I.M. module is really nasty, and has a decent synergy with S-A. When the A.I.M. side scheme comes out, the Supreme Scientist of A.I.M. can't be damaged as long as there is an A.I.M. beekeeper in play. And those beekeepers gain surge, plus the side scheme has an acceleration token and 3 threat per player. Even without that side scheme, the beekeepers enter play if they show up as boost cards, and give the villain a boost card whenever a beekeeper enters play. Fortunately, there is an A.I.M. environment cards that starts the game in play, and that caps booster cards to one per activation. On one really bad turn, S-A received four boost cards, and then unleashed them with his attacks and scheming next turn. The nasty combo effect is that S-A is frequently dealing out overkill for 3 to 9 points of damage, which is fairly murderous.

To make matters worse this game, Scarlet Witch's nemesis Luminous entered play via Shadows of the Past. Her side scheme increases all boost numbers by one point, so now S-A is potentially hitting for 4-10 damage.

I demand a rematch, but I am going to swap out A.I.M. for the fan-made Enchanteress module. I always liked Enchanteress and her sidekick Executioner.

After Ultron there was nowhere left for the two Cap's to go apart from back in the box so I took some time to tear them down and then netbuilt Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman.

I haven't played MM much since getting her and even though I really enjoyed SW she hasn't been out of the box since completing my first run through the Red Skull campaign last year.

An online radomiser spat out Absorbing Man with the Weapons Master modular for the duo to face off against. This was notable as I've only played RoRS villains in the campaign - which I've completed three times - so it was a first to face one outside of RoRS.

The first night Absorbing Man squeaked out a scheme win as I re-learnt the ropes of the two heroes. But last night the pair cruised to a handy victory.

Absorbing Man has a rep for being too easy - and he kinda is - but he's still a lot of fun to play against. Even outside of the campaign the delay tokens that get added each villain turn add some nice pressure and makes the scenario feel like a flat-out race to victory. This is a unique vibe from the other scenarios I currently have.

He also has some nifty tricks up his sleeve and in the early turns he caused me some problems with mandatory discards and his constant pinging of indirect damage.

So while he may be on the easier side the scenario's race vibe makes it a lot of fun to play against.