Marvel Champions

Laundry night, and I am once again stomped by Super-Adaptoid, with his new allies, Enchanteress and Executioner (E&E). Cap's Kooky Quartet did better this time, and even managed to break through to Super-Adaptoid's second stage, but he still schemed his way to victory.

E&E aren't quite as vile as AIM in terms of synergy with S-A, but they still made quite an impact. Enchanteress attacks you with the highest printed ATK of a friendly character in play, her side scheme has a crisis symbol, and she has a couple of cards that either discard an ally or confuse a hero. Each time the Executioner enters play, the Enchanteress is put in play directly from the encounter deck or discard pile, and she can't take damage while Executioner is still in play. So that means that Enchanteress tends to show up twice as often as any other minion.

Thanks to having both Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in play, I was able to use their Order & Chaos cards to prevent both of their Nemesis characters from showing up. Every member of the quartet played well this game, but I think that I lost again due to cautious play. By that, I mean that I usually don't spend much time attacking the main villain unless the threat on the main scheme is really low. Instead, I take occasional opportunistic attacks on the main villain while making damn sure that the main scheme is under control. But S-A has several healing cards in his deck, so the incidental attacks tend to get healed again while I am busy focusing on thwarting.

I also had the usual problems with S-A: some overkill and quite a bit of indirect damage getting tossed around, plus occasional stun or confuse effects. I'm going to put together another team and make one more run against S-A, this time swapping out the Enchanted module for the easiest module in the game: Bomb Threat.

With suspicions that it might be too unbalanced, I put Super-Adaptoid to a final test: Bomb Threat module vs Dr. Strange/protection, on basic. It was rough going at first, while Doc was putting his upgrades together, but he did get out some Med Teams right away, which helped offset all the damage he was getting from S-A.

By mid-game, it was a real contest. I don't normally play true solo, so it was unnerving when S-A got his first acceleration token for going through his deck, effectively doubling the speed at which he approached victory. But Strange has some okay base thwarting, plus astral projection and one of his Big Five spells. Thanks primarily to the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, I finally flipped S-A to stage 2. By the time I got the Crimson Bands back again, I was ready to go in for the win. I couldn't quite get S-A that turn, but I still had the Crimson Bands handy the next turn, thanks to that one mystic card that lets Strange put a spell back on top of his deck instead of discarding after use.

I still think that S-A is a hard villain to beat, and nearly impossible when he has the AIM module. Might have to match him up with Dr. Strange again, just to see if that AIM module is too much. I am also going to try adding that AIM module to some other villain to see how much it unbalances things.

This week the randomiser saw Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman facing off against expert Zola guarded by the Hydra Patrol.

After a strong start on the first night the heroes got swarmed and overwhelmed by minions after going to Zola 3.

I thought about tinkering with the decks but ultimately was too lazy. Instead I decided to try an all out assault strategy.

This saw some risky calls being made, like on turn one using two crucial Ms. Marvel set-up cards to pay for Big Hands and getting an early 8points of damage on Zola.

It was pretty exciting and it was impossible to know if these decks could actually pull it off. Especially as more minions joined the fun and they started to get Zola's mutated tech upgrades making them more and more formidable.

It all came down to the last turn with Zola sitting on 11 hp and surrounded by nine minions. Ms. Marvel couldn't attack as two of the minions engaged with her had just received the upgrade which gives them guard.

Fortunately Spider-Woman had an opening through the swarm to hit Zola with a venom blast and a dropkick before Hulk stormed into deliver the finishing blow.

Really fun game and both these heroes are fun to pilot. They've overcome some solid challenges the last week or so and have earned a rest. I'll leave next game's heroes to the whims of the randomiser I think.

Kmann, that randomizer is cool, but I will need to make my own custom one (just an excel spreadsheet, no graphics) so I can include the various custom heroes, scenarios, and modules that I have. Which aspects were you running? It sounds like Spider-Woman was running Aggression, but what was her other aspect? I don't have the Ms. Marvel deck, because I haven't read any comics with her, and because I heard that her starter deck isn't good and I always play untuned starters. Nine minions! I don't normally see nine minions even when I am playing with a team of four heroes, because I tend to make it a priority to eliminate minions unless I am making a final push to defeat the villain.

Both were just net decks I grabbed.

Spider-Woman was aggression/protection but in keeping with her role all her protection cards dealt damage.

Ms. Marvel was on thwart duty with Justice. The deck made her a thwarting machine which was great for managing scheme but less effective at taking care of minions.

I largely ignored the minions as much as I could in the winning game, only really clearing ones with guard, but Zola sends plenty after you.

I haven't read any Ms. Marvel comics either tho I hear they are really good. But she's a lot of fun to play. Lots of interesting descisons when playing and build possibilities. This deck was tuned for thwarting but she's an all-round character who's very capable at dealing big damage.

It's probably a drawback of always playing on standard setting with the default decks, but I feel that I can't ignore minions for long. Since my games probably take more turns than expert-level games, those minions would cumulatively do more damage if left in play. In my last game, with the notoriously strong default Dr. Strange/protection deck, a simple Hydra Bomber (possibly the weakest minion in the game), became more than an annoyance when I left him in play for a few turns. He kept pinging me for 1 damage or popping my Tough status cards. It was very satisfying to finally dispose of him with a Momentum Shift.

Laundry night = Marvel Champions. Rhino with A Mess of Things (Scorpion) module vs Black Panther (Protection) and Wolverine (fan-made) (Aggression), all on standard difficulty. Rough start, with heroes focusing on getting upgrades out while Rhino gets in a few extra attacks courtesy of treachery cards. Black Panther does his usual rope-a-dope until getting a few Panther upgrades in play and unleashing some Wakanda Forever. Wolverine doesn't need much setup, but he just happened to get several upgrades and supports out early and then start dealing out some nasty damage. Thanks to more encounter card shenanigans, Rhino got his scheme as close as 11/14 complete before the heroes got it under control. BP finished him off with three Wakanda Forevers in rapid succession.

A player in Norway of all places just got their hands on The Hood and War Machine packs and has posted up all the WM cards on Reddit:

www.reddit.com/r/marvelchampionslcg/comm...l_war_machine_cards/

Consensus there is split - surprise, surprise. Some people think the costs are too high for a lot of the new aspect cards. I can't comment on that cos I'm not that analytical a player, but I do share disappointment that there's some ally reprints. Marvel has a gajillion characters so there's really no need to see Falcon again or another copy of Mockingbird.

The 'grab a pack and play' concept of MC is a strength but it can also feel like they lean into it as an excuse to fill out the pack with oldies sometimes. I haven't read any WM comics but I'm confident there'd be some minor characters that pop up regularly in his world that they could have used to fill the non-signature ally slots . This would have made his stand-alone pack just that little but more thematic and unique amongst the already released characters and that little bit more desirable to pick up by established players. That really should be a design rule instead of this repacking of allies we're seeing.

Anyway, rant over.

My take after a quick browse through his cards is that he looks fun to play. I'll probably grab it when it releases.

A full Vision preview is out now:

hallofheroeslcg.com/vision/

He seems decent, but it looks like he will be more fragile than I expected. His default DEF is 0, though it becomes 2 if he is in dense form. Intangible, he is unable to defend but takes 2 less damage from each attack. I guess that's great against minions, but he is going to get punked by the main villain.

Using my homebrew random scenario generator, I started a big game last night. Scorpio plus A.I.M., against Moon Knight (all aspects), Blade (Protection), Hulk (aggression), and Iron Man (leadership). Scorpio has 11 minions (the rest of the Zodiac) and A.I.M. has at least four minions, so we have been clearing waves of goons. Iron Man has done most of the thwarting, but Scorpio gets an unusual amount of scheme acceleration, so we're now at a crisis point with the main scheme at 18/28 and poised to pick up at least 8 more at the start of Scorpio's every turn. Hulk has taken a surprising amount of damage, so he had to flip back to Banner for a turn. Moon Knight has a tricky deck that includes all 4 aspects, 2 hero identities, and 3 alter ego identities, so that has given Scorpio extra scheming chances. I probably should have gone full attack last turn and now maybe it's too late unless I spend a couple of turns doing huge thwarting. I have been hording Blade's blood tokens, so he could certainly start helping out in a bigger way.

Vis looks solid - 2/2/2 in the from you are going to camp in on hero most of the time- The real sleeper is the basic event they added - REBOOT - 1 cost event : Ready a friendly Android character and heal them 1 damage.

This is kind of like Vision card # 16,17,18 the way Sorcerer Supreme is the 16th Dr. Strange ( or Wanda) card. This is strictly better than Super Powered Glide, part of Spider Woman's kit...SPG does provide the rarely useful aerial trait, but I think 1 hp and the ability to play the ready during alter ego make this is demonstrably better card.

So when I look at his kit I see a 2/2/2 that has 3 1 cost ready and heal events, on top of his other goodies. He's missing the resource generators that would put him up in Cap tier - but i think he's going to be just below that. His event recursion upgrade could be kind of nuts too - In solo, I could easily see building stun lock decks that recycle his defense event.

It's not a big deal, but I noticed that Vision doesn't have any cards that give him the Aerial trait. It should have been something that he can do while intangible.

My panic about Scorpio was premature. I forgot that he has a two-stage scheme, because I recently played so many games against a single-scheme villain. So I continued playing last night, and both allowed Scorpio to get to his second scheme and also defeated his first villain stage. Hulk and Iron Man are reliably effective now, having both gotten a decent amount of upgrades and support in play. Moon Knight is unreliable but occasionally very effective, because both of his hero forms only have a hand size of four, but his deck is loaded with cheap cards. Blade (protection) is a very solid defender, and good for occasional mook removal, but his whole blood token thing just falls flat without a customized deck. He starts out with 4 tokens and can sometimes gain 1 token, but he starts each turn by losing a token. So the blood tokens become an occasional little bonus after about turn 3 or so, despite being the focal point of his design.

I think that I need to get aggressive and push for the kill now. Scorpio II has maybe 55 hit points left, so it will take 2 or 3 turns to take him down. Meanwhile, his main scheme is about 2 to 3 turns away from completion. And the A.I.M. Scientist Supreme just entered play, and his "attack" ability is actually just an additional scheming situation for Scorpio. To make matters worse, the Scientist Supreme doesn't take damage as long as there is at least one A.I.M. beekeeper in play, and last turn dumped 3 beekeepers into play.

In the final stretch, Scorpio plus A.I.M. was a cakewalk. We just righteously beat on him for two turns and he was done. Then I went back to the randomizer and got: Ultron plus Anachronauts plus Enchanted, versus Wolverine (aggression), Black Panther (protection), Scarlet Witch (justice), and She-Hulk (aggression).

I haven't played against Ultron in a long time, so I have been overwhelmed by the relentless waves of drones. Every turn, I am adding some combination of 8 drones or points on the main scheme. Scarlet Witch is great at thwarting, and the rest of the team is great at clearing drones, but it's exhausting. And the cards that are good for clearing drones are using resources that I would normally spend to bring out allies, upgrades, and support.

Black Panther has a pretty good setup by mid-game, but the rest of my team has little in the way of permanent cards in play. Since the drone cards use player cards as proxies, Wolverine got screwed because his claws got used as a drone. He might get the claws in his second pass through his deck, but it isn't a sure thing. In theory, there is still time to turn this around, but phase 2 Ultron will have 88 hit points.

Yea Ultron is a grinder. Great scenario design, but it can be a real slog too. He's the only time I really like Wasp, but she's so good with a beefed up ATK that you can distribute among targets as you see fit.

In other news, I got an order in process email from Asmodee re Mad Titans Shadow, so I guess that's finally sabot to come out in the US. Pretty excited about it.

Once again, I beat myself by waiting at least one turn too long before going on the attack. Managed to get Ultron down to 42 hit points before he won.

That's great news about Thanos. He was probably getting tired of being stuck on a ship off the coast of California.