Marvel Champions

boothwah wrote: Meanwhile, Black Panther builds an Avengers dispensing Pez machine that poops out a bunch of b listers and Cap.....who then rally to give the rich African ruler even more resources, and eventually the game ends with everyone shouting "Avengers Assemble" and "Wakanda Forever" and the villain going from stage 2 to dead in 2 turns.

I was trying to turn Hawkeye into my Avengers Dispenser but just could not get it to gel. Seemed to fit in with his old West Coast Avengers thing thematically, but it was too slow for most scenarios and he'd always end up just shooting the shit out of people because he can be so good at that. I'll try this Black Panther one out, looks great.

played Hela and Loki with the War Machine/Iron Man decks ive been running.

Hela is a great scenario. reminiscent of Escape The Museum, which was probably my favorite scenario from Galaxy's Most Wanted. the focus is on getting through a series of powerful minions and side schemes to rescue Odin. lots of fun stuff going on here. definitely going to replay this one soon.

Loki seems really fun too! i had an extremely dramatic game vs him. Whiplash showed up early (Iron Man's nemesis) and caused trouble (discarding upgrades and generally being annoying), and we got hosed by there not being many minions in the encounter deck by TWICE discarding like 18 cards and failing to find a minion (getting 2 rapid acceleration tokens). but we whittled him down and had him at 20 HP in his final form with about 24 dmg in hand to finish him next turn. both heroes were low on HP (4 and 5 respectively i think), but we had TONS of allies out to block for us. during the villain phase we flipped Whiplash's card that discards 5 cards from each hero's deck and does 1dmg per discarded energy resource, which did 4dmg to Iron Man and killed him out of nowhere. War Machine was left with 4hp (taking 1 dmg from the energy resource attack). War Machine did 10dmg and flipped down the Alter Ego, as the Loki variant in play had Retaliate 1 WM was down to 1HP after attacking him 3 times. WM draws up and has all the damage he needs to kill Loki on the next turn. Loki schemes putting the main scheme up to 25/28 threat. but then the Time Stone goes off, which discards 4 cards from the hero's deck and places 1 threat on the main scheme for each different type of card discarded. flip 3 different types and thats the game. SO CLOSE! the surprise KO by Whiplash was just the kind of thematic fun that I love in this game.

So anyway, MTS is a great box. strong recommend. I see myself playing all these scenarios many times. plus the modular sets are GREAT. the Frost Giants one with Laufey (6hp, 4atk, toughness, and 4(!) boost icons) and multiple copies of Frozen which makes your hero unable to ready, the Legions of Hel one that summons your allies against you as zombies... just tons of really fun stuff in this box.

Black Panther seems like a great choice for Leadership. Cheap hero cards, strong resources, leaving him free to spend on allies. Aside from Wakanda Forever and defending/retaliating, he feels like he is missing something.

I want to take another shot at the Thanos campaign, but don't have the luxury of leaving the game set up while my friend is still in town. He tried Marvel Champions and liked it, but wants to try various other games in my collection before revisiting MC. I want to swap out Iron Man and Spectrum and try running a team of Adam Warlock, Thor (aggression), Dr. Strange (protection), and Scarlet Witch (justice).

jeb wrote:

boothwah wrote: Meanwhile, Black Panther builds an Avengers dispensing Pez machine that poops out a bunch of b listers and Cap.....who then rally to give the rich African ruler even more resources, and eventually the game ends with everyone shouting "Avengers Assemble" and "Wakanda Forever" and the villain going from stage 2 to dead in 2 turns.

I was trying to turn Hawkeye into my Avengers Dispenser but just could not get it to gel. Seemed to fit in with his old West Coast Avengers thing thematically, but it was too slow for most scenarios and he'd always end up just shooting the shit out of people because he can be so good at that. I'll try this Black Panther one out, looks great.

I've found that Hawkeye works better with Aggression than Leadership, as long as another player can help protect him.

jeb wrote:

boothwah wrote: Meanwhile, Black Panther builds an Avengers dispensing Pez machine that poops out a bunch of b listers and Cap.....who then rally to give the rich African ruler even more resources, and eventually the game ends with everyone shouting "Avengers Assemble" and "Wakanda Forever" and the villain going from stage 2 to dead in 2 turns.

I was trying to turn Hawkeye into my Avengers Dispenser but just could not get it to gel. Seemed to fit in with his old West Coast Avengers thing thematically, but it was too slow for most scenarios and he'd always end up just shooting the shit out of people because he can be so good at that. I'll try this Black Panther one out, looks great.

Here's my last attempt at a West Coast Avengers build that could use some updating

marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/12662/hawkey...t-coast-avengers-1.0

If you're going for thematic, your West Coast Avengers deck should dump Black Knight, Squirrel Girl, and Stinger, and replace them with Tigra, War Machine, and Iron Man.

Shellhead wrote: If you're going for thematic, your West Coast Avengers deck should dump Black Knight, Squirrel Girl, and Stinger, and replace them with Tigra, War Machine, and Iron Man.

WM and IM work in leadership.....but Tigra is aggression. I went with a bunch of b listers to represent Darkhawk, living lightning, firebird. And all those other weirdos.

You totally could pull it off, if you teamed up with IM and ran him with aggression to nab Tigra.


I'm currently working an a super thematic Hawkeye deck based on the series. Leadership, with the only allies being Kate, Cosmo ( as a stand in for Pizza Dog), Mockingbird and Ronin. When I get back from in- laws Xmas, I'll put it up. It's not great - like it's better than a pre-con and handles standard fine, but not quite "let's run it through the expert gauntlet."

i forget if it was here that someone mentioned this Dr Strange Aggression Ally Voltron deck, but man I made a versino of this and holy hell it is fun. and also powerful AF. strong recommend.

marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/14968/dr-str...eme-puppetmaster-1.0

the gist is you use Rings of Raggador to put Tough on your allies so they can use Enraged and attack without taking consequential damage, and you throw Sidearm and Energy Spear on them too, and also play Boot Camp. also you have 1 beefed up Guardian and Avenger ally in play so you can use As One for like 14+ damage. also a powered up Cosmo to cycle your invocation deck and not tacke consequential damage... its just a wild deck idea. love it love it love it.

it (plus Justice Ms. Marvel) absolutely CRUSHED expert The Hood, even with backup from the ally hating Crossfire's Crew modular.

edit: 1HP Wasp ally was on the board for the entire game, and was swinging for 7atk almost the entire time

Also, not to double post, but The Hood slaps. He's right up there with Green Goblin for best scenario pack... Might give the nod to The Hood but it's close. Mainly he's got so many fun Modular sets, but GG comes with a lot of great ones too.

Just took 3 really fun decks off the table after trouncing the MTS expert campaign - Rocket/Justice, Thor/Agr, Captain Marvel/leadership - I'm going to post the Captain Marvel deck because it is stupid broken fun. I think there are probably like 4 or 5 different version of similar decks on MCD....but this version and selection of cards has worked universally well for me - The cliff's note version of the deck is :

Strength in Numbers + 6 allies + insane resource generation + Black Panther grabbing SiN or Avengers assemble + Mighty Avengers = repeatable mid game turns of 20+ thw/att. It just carries games in multiplayer.....I'm keeping the list primarily to pair with that one guy that's going to want to play Hulk.

I got Vision and Valkyrie in the mail today, and I am sooooo stoked. I was an 80's kid. I spent my allowance buying my comics off the waterfall rack at the 7-11 7 miles from my house, stuffed them in my backpack and rode my bike home every Wednesday - And my main books were Defenders and Avengers -And Valk and Vision were cool because they were only in the team books - For some reason, the Wonder Man's, and Valkyries, and Scarlet Witch's were way more exciting and interesting to me, because they didn't have their own books. They were like extra special because you only got them in small doses.

So this box was super satisfying, because I pretty much have most of the stuff for the stories that I've been retelling in my head since I was 10.

Mutants are the theme for the next big box after the Spider-Man. I was really hoping we were going to have a little bit more time before they let the X-men out. I get it. Those 90's kids watched the animated series the same way G.I. J.O.E. was appointment tv for me. For a Marvel 80's kid, the 90's was the Apocalypse - X-Books reproducing like tribbles, foil covers, horrible art, crossover everything. And then 2 decades of only getting X-Men or Spider-Man in other media. So while there is a lot I love about the X-men, I am not ready for the fire-hose of crap that could be unleashed and I hope that it doesn't take up all the bandwidth for the next year or so.

I think there would be a fair consensus on the core group of X-men everyone wants to play with : Cyclops, Jean, Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Ice Man, Angel, Xavier....and probably Cable and Deadpool and Kitty because of their crossover presence and popularity. Then there is the Universe of characters that have an oversized presence in the hearts of X-Fans (and especially 90's x-fans) - Gambit, Rogue, Bishop, Dazzler, the New Mutants, Magik, Havok, Banshee. etc

That's like 2 years of stuff ......there's a lot of stuff I would appreciate more than any of the second tier mutant stuff : The Fantastic Four, Moon Knight, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Falcon, Silver Surfer, Namor, Blue Skinned Beast, Wonder Man, Black Knight, Punisher, Ghost Rider, Shang Chi, Blade, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez......I hope the Mutant cycle is a once a year blip for a bit rather than the first wave in an unending tide of X-everything.


and then there's some deep cuts that you know just aren't in the cards.......Hellcat, Captain Britain, Firestar, Justice, Brother Voodoo or Dr, Druid, Sunfire, Jack of Hearts, Quasar, Nighthawk - One day I will probably dabble in creating some custom content, just to fill out my classic Defenders line up.

boothwah, that post is a love letter to this game and shows why it has the staying power it does. Any actual game of MARVEL CHAMPIONS can be a little underwhelming, but the access the game gives you to the memories and feelings of those bike rides with the latest in your backpack are not going to be there from some better-designed Daviau masterpiece or whatever. I honestly love reading the posts you and Shellhead make about the classic Defenders or Cap's Quirky Qompanions or whatever. And I see it in myself when I really do my damnedest to get West Coast Avengers online. Why? I don't even know, I just feel like I need Tigra to be out there doing shit I guess.

I was thinking about bailing on my subscription to this, but I can't if X-Men are the next big thing. That is what got me into Marvel in the first place. Uncanny X-Men #176, with Cyclops destroying the logo with an optic blast. How can I pass up a chance to feel that again?

(I looked up that issue to see the cover again and reminisce and read this:

The editors initially objected to the cover because they couldn't understand why Cyclops was mad at the X-Men logo - they wanted him blasting the squid. However, the image was unarguably awesome, so they eventually kept it (but not before an alternate was drawn).

They aren't wrong! It was so awesome I remember it literally four decades later.)

I'm more attached to the X-Men than to any of the other Marvel properties so it's kinda cool to see this in the pipeline. (I just picked up and started re-reading Lobdell/Bachalo's "Generation X", which I liked a lot in its day yet never finished.)

I really like the thematic element of switching between superhero and alter ego presented in MC's earlier sets; how well does that work for the X-Men, who don't have alter-egos as such? I mean sure you can go Hank McCoy/Beast or Logan/Wolverive or whatever but the only difference between most mutants in "hero" mode and "civilian" mode is a costume. At any rate, I'm glad my favorite heroes will be benefitting from years of development in the design space.

I'm still on hold with this game, because my friend is in town for maybe just 10 more days and we have a work-in-progress Sleeping Gods game parked on my gaming table. So I haven't even allowed myself to go to the store to pick up Valkyrie, Vision, The Hood, and maybe War Machine.

Boothwah, have you ever read the Avengers/Defenders War crossover from the '70s? If not, you should try to pick up the full-color Epic Collection reprint soon. It's one of the all-time great comic book crossovers, featuring the Avengers, Defenders, and two classic villains. Better still, writer Steve Englehart was writing both Avengers and Defenders at the time, as well as Captain America and Dr. Strange, so he handles all the characters well. The event also features cameo appearances by Sunfire, Dr. Doom, Man-Thing, the Human Torch, Dracula, Luke Cage, Ka-Zar, Spider-man, Nick Fury, Ghost Rider, and both Adam Warlock and Thanos... years before those last two ever met each other.

Speaking of the classic Defenders, I can't wait to run them against the various villains. Doctor Strange and Hulk work well as a team, and Valkyrie can run interference against the minions so Hulk can slam the big bad. I also look forward to putting Vision with some classic Avengers line-ups, or even just team-ups with Scarlet Witch.

I'm a little disappointed about the impending X-Men release. It was inevitable, but I was hoping that the Fantastic Four would come first, because their headcount neatly matches the player limit for this game, and Dr. Doom is one of the all-time great villains. It will be nice to get an official Wolverine, but the fan-made one that I downloaded and sleeved is actually one of the best fan-made sets for this game.

Shower thought this morning.....

When they finally do FF, I'm hoping they do a couple of adjacent characters specifically Namor and...the Inhumans?

I mean none of them really deserve their own pack except for Black Bolt, and a case could made for Crystal, who was an Avenger and with the FF. So......A Black Bolt pack where his build restriction was he could not play any allies that did not have the inhuman trait, and then packed in the royal family as allies in his kit.

I finally emailed Asmodee, my Valkyrie and vision preorders have been sitting there for almost a month with tracking numbers already generated that just say "shipment ready for UPS". Their web store sucks so bad any more.