Marvel Champions

Since I will be passing within a mile of GameZenter (fka Fantasy Flight Games Event Center) tonight, I will be stopping by to see if they have Mad Titan's Shadow in stock. U.S. retailers are expecting to have it tomorrow, but GameZenter will have it early if anybody does.

GameZenter only had copies of Mad Titan's Shadow available for pre-order pick-up, and the last one got picked up just as I got there. They acknowledged that there was a big stockpile across the lot, inside Asmodee, but they said that they wouldn't get any of that until today. So I drove over to the other local game store, and got it there.

For my Thanos campaign team, I chose Iron Man (Justice) and Thor (Aggression), along with the two new heroes, Adam Warlock (all aspects) and Spectrum aka Monica Rambeau (Leadership). Thematically, Iron Man fought Thanos before anybody else in the pages of Iron Man #55, and Adam Warlock has a long history with Thanos as both enemies and reluctant allies. Thor, because the last two scenarios are tied to his homeland, and Spectrum because she came with this set. Both Adam and Monica are very flexible. Adam is running all four aspects, while Monica has the ability to switch into three different forms to focus on either attacking, defending, or thwarting.

The first mission is against the Black Maw, the telekinetic threat who fought Dr. Strange, Iron Man, and Spider-man in the movies. His gimmick is spells that come into play and trigger after a defined number of turns. There is no way to prevent or get rid of these spells, but at least you know what will happen when they go off: damage and stun or confusion effects. We're doing okay so far, but probably need to go heavy on the attack next turn.

My copy of MTS should be here Tuesday. I'm very stoked to finally get my hands on it.

A couple of very bad things happened mid-game. Monica's nemesis Radioactive Man showed up, and his side scheme has a crisis (!) symbol, so we can't thwart the main scheme until we get rid of his side scheme. And getting rid of it results in 1 damage to all friendly characters. Radioactive Man is also nasty, and he and his side scheme returned for two encores as the game continued. The other bad thing was a single turn that hit us with 3 of our hero obligations.

I managed to recover from these calamities and eventually got in a groove where Iron Man was thwarting faster than the villain could scheme, while the other heroes slapped Ebony Maw around regularly. But spell damage and Radioactive Man hassles really added up to some damage, so there were some very close calls and a lot of resting in alter ego form. We pulled off a win, but it was ugly.

Monica was very effective. Like Ant-Man, she benefits from changing forms often, and each form is efficient at something specific. Adam Warlock was more disappointing. I rarely used his battle mage power because he rarely had a card to spare. He has some nice, cheap allies, but lacks the leadership cards to really capitalize on his allies. He has some decent spell effects, but they function like Scarlet Witch's spells, requiring significant discarding to get the full benefit.

Warlock looks like he will be a blast to deckbuild for and play around with, but whether hes actually any good or not remains to be seen

Just got my MTS. Gonna do a standard campaign, with Spectrum, Warlock, and....trying to decide to go 3 or 4 handed.

So stoked. Might check for a netdeck on Warlock, cause I could spend all night chasing crazy combos with him.

boothwah wrote: Just got my MTS. Gonna do a standard campaign, with Spectrum, Warlock, and....trying to decide to go 3 or 4 handed.

So stoked. Might check for a netdeck on Warlock, cause I could spend all night chasing crazy combos with him.

So, I ended up opening an imperial stout I had been saving and I spent far more time sleeving the cards and building a deck for Warlock. Tonight, we take on Ebony Maw.

Ah_Pook wrote: Warlock looks like he will be a blast to deckbuild for and play around with, but whether hes actually any good or not remains to be seen

I don't enjoy deckbuilding, but it seems like it would be more fun building a deck for Spider-Woman or Gamora, where you can work on specific synergies between two aspects. Warlock's one-card limit will make it difficult to build specific card combos and actually pull them together during a game. Warlock does have some good cards, but I didn't get a chance to appreciate them during my first game with him, due to forced discard effects, including his own spells. So I didn't get to play with either Soul World or Karmic Staff. Cosmic Ward did prevent Shadow of the Past, at least for one player. But when Shadow of the Past afflicted Monica, Warlock's Cosmic Ward couldn't help her.

Started the second scenario last night: Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive are attacking the Avengers Tower, and I am defending with the aforementioned team of Iron Man, Thor, Spectrum, and Adam Warlock. The scenario is somewhat similar to the Wrecking Crew, with the two villains taking turns as the main villain, each advancing their own scheme. Their goal is to destroy the Avengers Tower and seize one of the Infinity Stones, so this scenario turns the tables. Instead of having the villains try to win by either advancing their scheme to victory or defeating all the heroes, now the villains are trying to do a total amount of damage to the Avengers Tower (or defeat all the heroes) before the heroes can defeat them.

Like the Wrecking Crew, this duo's schemes trigger a specific nasty game effect and then reset to zero. When Proxima's scheme hits the target number, it inflicts a large amount of damage on the Avengers Tower. When Glaive's scheme hits the target number, you deal an extra set of encounter cards out to the players. While extra encounters are bad news, it's obvious that Proxima's scheme is the one to focus on. Both villains are more focused on combat than scheming.

So far, it's going well, aside from the heroes taking a lot of damage. Iron Man pulled together a respectable suit of armor within three turns and has really been the MVP so far. Spectrum and Thor had gotten in some big hits, but Adam Warlock is just doing okay. Moreso than most heroes, Adam needs to really focus on getting supports and upgrades out during his first trip through his deck. I succumbed to temptation a few times and did some big attacks or thwarts that required a lot of discards, so I missed out on a couple of key upgrades for Adam's kit.

Radioactive Man is back. If I didn't know any better, I would begin to suspect that he is going to end up with the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanks in part to R.M., I was facing three different side schemes with the crisis (!) icon at one point, which would be a huge nightmare in a typical scenario. This time, the only really negative effect was that Glaive's scheme reached its target number, giving us a rough turn with lots of encounter cards.

I walked into my FLGS over the weekend for the first time in forever, and the manager had set aside the first round of full character art promo cards and the first promo playmat (bluish, with all the characters on it) for me.

As a degenerate completist, I already have these goodies. Anybody want them? Price of shipping. PM me.

Got my shipping notice for War Machine, hot on the heels of MTS (which came yesterday and I haven't had the chance to even open yet). when it rains it pours, i guess

I'll be amazed if MTS releases here this year. Which is a real downer as the response has been so positive. Three of the Guardians have finally made it to shops in really limited quantity, but the release schedule going forward is still looking sparse. I can't see us catching up anytime soon.

I've said before that I'd decided not to buy into the GoG cycle but that was an easy decision when the supply chain was rocking. Now that's its ground to halt I've gradually started to think about reversing that call. I've been hovering over the 'Buy now' button on Star-Lord, Venom and Gamora for the past 3 weeks.

I decided to not buy into the Guardians cycle and instead downloaded, printed, and sleeved some fan-made hero decks, villain scenarios, and modules.

Good: Wolverine (hero), Scorpio (scenario), Leader (scenario), Enchanted (module)

Okay: Black Knight (hero), Blade (hero), Nick Fury (hero), Super-Adaptoid (scenario), AIM (module), Masters of Evil - expanded (module), Future Imperfect (module)

So-so: Daredevil (hero), Moon Knight (hero), Maestro (villain) - Daredevil was kind of boring, but his Bullseye nemesis is good; Moon Knight might be fun for a deckbuilder; Maestro was extremely hard to beat, almost as bad as Ronan.

Haven't tried yet: Innocent Bystanders (module), J. Jonah Jameson (module)

Kmann wrote: I'll be amazed if MTS releases here this year. Which is a real downer as the response has been so positive. Three of the Guardians have finally made it to shops in really limited quantity, but the release schedule going forward is still looking sparse. I can't see us catching up anytime soon.

I've said before that I'd decided not to buy into the GoG cycle but that was an easy decision when the supply chain was rocking. Now that's its ground to halt I've gradually started to think about reversing that call. I've been hovering over the 'Buy now' button on Star-Lord, Venom and Gamora for the past 3 weeks.

This is 100% where I am with Arkham LCG, as well. Auto preorder of the new cursed delivery date content (Edge of the Earth) because god knows how much they made or when I might see it again if the first print runs out.

Kmann wrote: I'I've been hovering over the 'Buy now' button on Star-Lord, Venom and Gamora for the past 3 weeks.

Those three heroes are really fun, so if you buy them you'll probably have a good time! Star lord is a must if you like playing Leadership, Venom is just fun all around (plus he has some really good cards for certain deck types), and Gamora has fun deck building rules that let you play off suit which I always enjoy.

Edit: also I sleeved up MTS this afternoon and the scenarios look really really fun. Excited to get it to the table.