Marvel Champions

Virabhadra wrote: Shell, what's your setup for playing 4-handed? I have the official "4 player" mat and there's barely enough room on it for the bad guys and one late-game hero.

I never use mats, and I'm shocked that the official 4-player mat is only 26 inches square. When I play four-player, I am probably taking up more like 36" by 48" worth of table.

In my setup, each hero gets room for a 4x4 grid of cards. The top row, from left to right, is discard, deck, hero, and a favorite weapon or upgrade like Combat Training. The rest of the space is for upgrades, supports, personas, and allies. When I'm not playing a given hero's turn, I put their hand down on a random support or upgrade in their area, unless they have a useful interrupt card in hand, like Backflip or Counter-Punch, in which case I leave their hand crossways on top of their deck.

The middle of the table is where I put the hit point dials for the heroes and the villain, plus I leave space for minions to engage specific heroes. Then I have the main villain set up in a row, from left to right, with discard, deck, villain, attachments, and main scheme. Side schemes go to the right of the main scheme, unless it is a crisis(!) side scheme, in which case I put it in front (closer to the center of the table) of the main scheme to remind me. To the left of the villain's row is a pile of damage and misc (green) tokens, and the pile of scheme and acceleration tokens go to the right, near the schemes. At the far side of the table is where I put the nemesis decks and any other cards that could enter the scenario on a contingent basis, like modular sets for the Hood. I'll post a picture tomorrow.

I've got an FFG mat that's the same size as their "4p" marvel one, and I find it to be the perfect size for 2 handed solo play. I don't know what universe they're in where 4 players with of stuff are fitting on there.

I was going to post a picture of my new set up and storage a bit ago, but I gave up on trying attach my jpeg to the post.

I'm using a large gaming mat that is the size of the 4p and I still need two more reg mats for 4 handed, until....

My friend got a 3d printer. I can no longer sit in silent judgment on lifestyle gamers. I am one of them......

So he made some hero stands that hold the hero and their decks and status cards. And then a villain stand. They look sharp and cut down table space.

I have a second art box and broken token insert coming, as he made these fantastic horizontal dividers, and I'm needing to move into a second box.

Would be very keen to see the set-up with the stands. I've seen some very snazzy/useful ones for Arkham Horror LCG but not so much for Champions.

Wrapped up my work-in-progress game, with Cap, Valkyrie, and Iron Man against the Hood. We knocked the Hood into his second villain stage shortly before he rolled into his third and final main scheme stage. In addition to Crossfire's Crew, the Masters of Evil, and Whiplash, the Hood eventually brought in Experimental Weapons, Bomb Scare, Hydra Patrol, and Baron Zemo. He also had four side schemes in play, and a total of 6 acceleration icons.

We mostly ignored the side schemes, aside from Iron Man using his helmet plus aerial ability to ding every scheme for a point each turn. Hawkeye was great for zinging incoming minions, and Jessica Drew went to town on the main scheme. In the final two turns, Valkyrie switched her death glow to the Hood and hit him three times. Iron Man had a big final turn, and Cap finished off the Hood with a Shield Toss. My heroes had an average of 3 hit points each, so this game was going to end badly if it had lasted one or two more turns.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2022/4/1/hamming-it-up/

Spider-Ham pack announced. Looks real fun/silly.

I had a feeling that Spider-Ham would be a fun deck, but I was originally going to pass on it because I'm just not into the character. But that modular set looks pretty cool and a great challenge for Spider-characters.

It's laundry night in the Marvel Universe, so here is my current work-in-progress 4 player game, featuring Absorbing Man and his friends, the Wrecking Crew (modular set). The heroes are, from left to right, Hawkeye, Spectrum, War Machine, and Spider-man, all running leadership for laughs. The game is getting a little tense. The single-stage main scheme is at 33/48, which is precarious, but Absorbing Man is on his second villain stage and only has 46 hit points. Absorbing Man is about to start his turn and we will almost definitely survive that, but probably can't come up with 46 points of damage in one turn. Our downfall has been a lack of thwarting power.

For true solo and two-handed players, leadership is pretty big, because an ally or two can really shut down the villain's attacks for a turn. In games with 3 or 4 heroes, I think that it's generally better to have a spread of aspects, with at least one justice deck and one aggression deck.

As mentioned upthread, a four-player game takes up a 3'x4' area on my gaming table:

tinyurl.com/4ue2ch97

Last summer, I played a three-heroes game with three actual players. One of my friends was already hooked on the game and the other was playing for the first time. We played Dr. Strange/protection, Spider-man/justice, and She-Hulk/aggression against the Kang mini-campaign. We won, but it was really close.

Since then, the first-timer played a few more games at a Marvel Champions event at the FFG Event Center. Then he picked up a lightly-used core set for $25. He came over today and I helped him inventory the contents. Everything was in nice condition, but one Energy card is missing. He can replace that for $0.10 plus postage from either Asgard's Gate or Crazy Jackalope Games. I also showed him Hall of Heroes and the Marvel Champions Randomizer. While I was showing him the randomizer, it suggested that we play two-player with Ant-Man and War Machine, so we did. Then we played a game.

I'm still having a lot of fun with The Hood, so we tackled that scenario. with Ant-man/leadership and War Machine/leadership. As usual, a nemesis popped up early, and this one was Yellowjacket. he is supposed to screw with Ant-man, but his special really nerfed all my War Machine tech upgrades. Fortunately, that was from a side scheme with just four threat on it, so we made it go away soon. It showed up again late in the game, plus the Hood got juiced up on some Pym particles three times, which gives him +2/+2 on his next three activations, each time. So the Hood was hitting us for 5 plus a flip, thanks to his two guns. On two separate occasions, he got in a cheap bonus attack that we couldn't block due to tapping against the regular attack.

The modulars included Bomb Scare, Enchanteress, Hydra Assault, but the only one that made much impact was Mr. Hyde. Calvin Zabo showed up a couple of turns before the end of the game, but we made sure to not take him out. Then Hyde Formula turned him into Hyde, and the resulting damaged finished off War Machine. But we already had the Hood down to 2 hit points on his second stage, so all it took for the win was a single blow from a giant-size Ant-man. Good game.

After the game, my friend asked what he should buy next. I advised him to not buy anything immediately and just focus on playing the core set scenarios until he had a better idea of what he liked playing. He also asked me to email him links to some sites I showed him, including Hall of Heroes, a scenario randomizer, and a couple of single card dealers. He also begged me to send him lists of the single cards that I bought to make a She-Hulk deck and also to do some deckbuilding. I sent him all that, but emphasized that he should play the core set for a while before buying anything else.

Instead, he went out and bought the Red Skull campaign box plus the hero packs for Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Dr. Strange, and War Machine. He also bought most of the singles that I bought. I guess my enthusiasm for Marvel Champions is dangerously contagious, at least at close range.

I just picked up Sinister Motives last night. Won't have time to play until tonight, but at least opened the box and looked at the rules.

When Sinister Motives was first leaked, online X-fans were so certain that Sinister Motives was going to be the start of an X-men cycle for this game, featuring a Mr. Sinister campaign. The first thing that I saw when I opened the Sinister Motives box was a glossy one page ad sheet for... X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, an FFG board game that was published last year. There ya go, X-fans!

Shellhead wrote: I just picked up Sinister Motives last night. Won't have time to play until tonight, but at least opened the box and looked at the rules.

When Sinister Motives was first leaked, online X-fans were so certain that Sinister Motives was going to be the start of an X-men cycle for this game, featuring a Mr. Sinister campaign. The first thing that I saw when I opened the Sinister Motives box was a glossy one page ad sheet for... X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, an FFG board game that was published last year. There ya go, X-fans!

The next campaign box got leaked back in December and is called Mutant... Something I forget. The leaks have been 100% correct so far, so they're coming soon looks like.

Despite my cancelling my preorder through Asmodee and deleting my payment info from their site they still sent me Sinister Motives. I opened it up last night and sleeved/organized it. Gwen looks REALLY fun and powerful. Miles looks good too. I didn't dig into the scenarios much, but the modulars I looked through look awesome. One in particular (Down To Earth I think?) is all focused on balancing super hero vs sorry ego, and has stuff that finds your obligation and puts it into play, stuff like that. Very cool.

Edit: really can't stress enough how completely awful the Asmodee web store is.

I've heard such bad things about their webshop from everyone.

Ah_Pook wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I just picked up Sinister Motives last night. Won't have time to play until tonight, but at least opened the box and looked at the rules.

When Sinister Motives was first leaked, online X-fans were so certain that Sinister Motives was going to be the start of an X-men cycle for this game, featuring a Mr. Sinister campaign. The first thing that I saw when I opened the Sinister Motives box was a glossy one page ad sheet for... X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, an FFG board game that was published last year. There ya go, X-fans!

The next campaign box got leaked back in December and is called Mutant... Something I forget. The leaks have been 100% correct so far, so they're coming soon looks like.

I went looking, and you are talking about Mutant Genesis. The price is the same as the price for the other boxed campaign sets, so it's safe to assume that it will contain 2 hero decks, 5 villain scenarios, some campaign cards, and some modular sets. Because it is named Genesis, I would expect a focus on the original X-Men run. So maybe a Cyclops leadership deck that includes allies like Angel, Beast, and Iceman, and a Jean Grey justice deck. Villains could include Magneto (& the Brotherhood of Mutants as a modular set), Sentinels, Juggernaut, maybe Living Pharoah/Living Monolith with a huge boost if he gets to his second stage scheme. That would leave all the X-fans very thirsty for another campaign box that would feature the more diverse X-Men from the '70s through the present.

Shellhead wrote:

Ah_Pook wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I just picked up Sinister Motives last night. Won't have time to play until tonight, but at least opened the box and looked at the rules.

When Sinister Motives was first leaked, online X-fans were so certain that Sinister Motives was going to be the start of an X-men cycle for this game, featuring a Mr. Sinister campaign. The first thing that I saw when I opened the Sinister Motives box was a glossy one page ad sheet for... X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, an FFG board game that was published last year. There ya go, X-fans!

The next campaign box got leaked back in December and is called Mutant... Something I forget. The leaks have been 100% correct so far, so they're coming soon looks like.

I went looking, and you are talking about Mutant Genesis. The price is the same as the price for the other boxed campaign sets, so it's safe to assume that it will contain 2 hero decks, 5 villain scenarios, some campaign cards, and some modular sets. Because it is named Genesis, I would expect a focus on the original X-Men run. So maybe a Cyclops leadership deck that includes allies like Angel, Beast, and Iceman, and a Jean Grey justice deck. Villains could include Magneto (& the Brotherhood of Mutants as a modular set), Sentinels, Juggernaut, maybe Living Pharoah/Living Monolith with a huge boost if he gets to his second stage scheme. That would leave all the X-fans very thirsty for another campaign box that would feature the more diverse X-Men from the '70s through the present.

My misplaced hope is that it is Core Box #2. If it was X-men, and self contained I think it will be an insane seller, and people would eventually start looking at back catalog stuff to expand. It would be a good point to have a new launching point too - There's a $600 catch up fee in place right now if you are a got to have it all type (THIS GUY) - And a new core and the subsequent X-Men packs would be a great jumping in point.

IF that is the case - MY wild-!@# guestimate is :

5 heroes - 4 aspects -

Cyclops
Storm
Jean Grey
Jubilee
one of the 90's faces - Gambit/Bishop/Rogue

Wolverine is a stand alone pack, like Cap - Same for Deadpool, Cable

My guess for the scenarios - Sentinels rounding up mutants encounter - Take down at Sentinal base - Boss fight big master mold thing - Brotherhood - then Magneto.

The Living Monolith thing is a cool idea.

There's lots of great Xmen stories that revolve around the Savage Land - That could be cool, with Sauron and the mutates as an encounter - Magneto had a base there or something.

I agree that they should do a new base set for the X-Men, because the X-fans are often a separate fan base from the rest of the Marvel fans, and it would be a big seller for FFG. Plus, I personally wouldn't mind getting another set of dials. I could use extra dials for scenarios like the Wrecking Crew and Proxima Midnight/Corvus Whatever, plus it would be nice to have a dial for the main scheme, because I sometimes run out of tokens for all the schemes. But the leaked price points towards a standard campaign box. Then again, that same leak shows the Nova hero pack priced like a campaign box, and we already know that one will just be a hero deck.

I hope to see a few surprises with the villain scenarios for the X-men cycle. I personally find Mister Sinister uninteresting and maybe not sufficiently different from Arnim Zola in terms of likely deck design. But Arcade and his Murderworld could be fun. Do a Kang style split for a multi-player group at the beginning, with each hero facing a different death trap situation and possibly getting help as other heroes overcome their own traps. Which reminds me, I would like to the Danger Room expressed as a side scheme that inflicts damage until it is defeated.