Marvel Champions

Finished Venom Goblin today, though it was actually he who finished me. Due to various card effects, Ghost-Spider got hit with a stack of six (!) facedown encounter cards. Fortunately, she was in alter ego, so should have been safe. She got more minions, bringing her up to a total of 8 (!!) minions engaged with her. She got hit with two points of indirect damage despite being in alter ego, and then Venom Goblin forced her to flip into hero ID with just 3 hit points (!!!) so he could attack her. She survived mainly due to luck, with two hit points. Then Venom Goblin went on to get lethal surprise attacks on both Spider-Men, taking them both out of the game.

At that point, it was hopeless. Several of the minions against Gwen had the patrol trait or guard trait, so she couldn't thwart or attack Venom Goblin. Gwen whacked a couple of the weaker minions and then went back to alter ego to heal. They did a bunch of scheming and she took another two indirect damage. She brought out the Miles ally, finally legal now that the Miles hero was out of the game, and he whacked another minion while she healed in alter ego. The following villain phase, Venom Goblin schemed out for the win.

I will play one more time with this team, but the only thing that I really learned was that Venom Goblin spams out attachments and minions like crazy, and certain attachments need to be eliminated immediately. The Hawkeye ally was worth his weight in gold, so I will make sure to use the Call to bring him out as often as possible. Otherwise, I will need some luck to beat Venom Goblin.

I haven't checked in on this thread in a few months, since my cards were in transit from the US and I couldn't play. But I just wanted to check in and say that I finally got around to trying the game true solo, with a single deck, and I much preferred it to playing two decks by myself.

The single biggest factor was the speed of the game. It takes literally half the time, so if things go pear-shaped it's trivial to get it set up again and go one more time. Beyond that I think I was better able to plan things out when there was only one deck to juggle what I was doing. I think I could just parse out what the best move was when I wasn't trying to manage twice as many cards.

Anyway, I haven't bought anything since War Machine, so I'm a few releases behind and I'll probably be that way for a while. Though Sinister Motives does look like something I want to grab eventually.

Aside from the final scenario, Sinister Motives is the best campaign. I did play Venom Goblin a second time, and lost again. This time, we did take out his nasty attachments as soon as possible, but he crushed us with the scheming. Instead of coping with the secondary effects of his glider, I let him put 2 extra scheme down for too many turns, and never got Miles' SHIELD justice machine rolling. I might try one more time with my team of 3 Spiders, maybe with just a frontal assault on the bad guy in hopes of taking him out before he schemes to victory.

A friend came over yesterday to play some Marvel Champions. We had never played a campaign before, so I of course suggested Sinister Motives. He played Adam Warlock/everything while I played Captain Marvel/justice. The first game, I smashed things but let my friend take the lead on strategy, rather than coach him on how I beat Sandman. We lost because my friend normally plays justice decks, so he kept spending allies for the resources instead of putting allies in play. He understands chumpblocking, but Sandman's attacks are always for indirect damage, so chumpblocking doesn't work against him. But at least a couple of allies would have been handy for managing that sandy streets environment, though my friend was overly concerned with Warlock's card flow tricks. Also, my nemesis entered play, and that is never a good thing. I gave him some feedback after we lost, and he insisted on immediately replaying the scenario. Second game was a big decisive victory for us.

I'm 3/5ths of the way through my standard campaign of Sinister Motives - WHAT FUN!

I can't wait to play all 3 scenarios as stand alones - I'm starting to get a ways up the rep track and I think I'm going to finish with symbiote suits, but not sure if it's worth it - I'll play it as it lays, either way.

Anyone else game Venom to get him used up as quick as possible so he didn't get held hostage with Snitches Get Stitches?

I ended up running a heavily modded Prot Gwen, and I through the spiderverse bits in for giggles and theme - Glad I did that - Basic Peter Parker ally is the shiz. Gwen was so dizzy from untapping all the time. Still have yet to cast Ticket to the Multiverse - I keep using it for the double resource and shuffling it back in.

I ran Miles with a modded shield set up (-3 field agents and Dugan, and i puled the sv allies) added Nick, Heli, Avengers mansion, war wachine and Power of All. Miles chilled in AE alot. And then once the deck was emptied of all that stuff, his turns were nuts - throwing out status effects left and rights, and tons of damage.



Shield Justice does a lot of work - Probably going to build a Bruce Banner, Agent of Shield, deck. I haven't played Hulk in ages.

If you are playing the Sinister Motives campaign, I recommend that you strive to get every possible VP in each scenario. You will want to get to a 25 reputation by the end of the fourth scenario so that your heroes earn the symbiote suits for the finale. Otherwise, you will need efficient decks with strong thwarting and attacking ability.

The default Miles/SHIELD deck is great. Agent 13 and Dugan are expensive, but you can the discount, and they are both great in the first two scenarios against the environment cards. Field Agents are good for keeping them alive if you using them for the normal attacks and thwarts.

Ghost-Spider has a weird default deck. Half the protection cards are crappy, but it still functions quite well as a highly defensive deck with a decent amount of counter-punching. Like you, I always use Ticket for the double resources instead of the card ability.

Friend came over yesterday, so we resumed the Sinister Motives campaign with the second scenario, featuring Venom. We cleaned Venom's clock (pun intended) with a very solid victory. He is capable of some very big attacks, but gets distracted once the heroes get the clock tower bells ringing. With some occasional chump blocking, Venom is possibly the easiest villain in this campaign.

But Venom is more of an anti-hero than a villain, so he joined us as an ally for the third scenario. With six hit points, a THW of 2 and an ATK of 3, Venom looked like a serious asset for us despite his bonus encounter card icon. But we got screwed on turn 2, when Mysterio turned him against us and we were forced to put him down. At a 4 cost, we just never got around to putting him back in play and eventually lost to a rapidly scheming Mysterio. It was a crushing defeat, with us only hitting Mysterio for a grand total of 3 points of damage the entire game, despite me running a Captain Marvel/aggression deck. We will take another shot at Mysterio this coming weekend, but the forecast calls for pain.

So I finished the Sinister Motives campaign - I had all the upgrades, and despite the board looking incredibly busy tp start, Venom Goblin ended up being not that big of a deal with the full slate of campaign perks. I think we rushed him out on turn 5. And he didn't pull his glider which is definitely a stroke of luck in our favor. I used steady to good effect and Miles played 3 Arachnobatics during the last 2 turns for 11 damage once and 9 damage twice. Gwen had some ghost kicks stored on George Stacy and 2 skilled strike in hand. and did 20ish damage on the final round.

I love every one of these scenarios and plan on playing them as stand alones repeatedly - Good stuff - Moves up to the top of my recommended buy list for conver....new players.

Had a 2 player game with a friend last night - He pulled aggro Gwen (Skilled strike and Chase them down!) with Godslayer and Jarnborn - I love playing with him, because he hasn't grokked this stack of cards for unhealthy amount of time like I have, and I learn a fair amount adapating to his play style - I operate in a White/Blue mentality in most of my deck building and playstyle - Focusing on not losing, and then once board control is set, overwhelmingly smashing the villain - Eric is more Red Deck Wins - He plays his damage cards when he could be clearing threat off ALL the side schemes! BLASPHEMY! He points out "That's just an extra threat each round. No big whoop." And he is right, which is infuriating.

When I first started playing, I always strived for board control before beating down the villain for the win. But I have had many challenging games where that wasn't possible, so the trick was to time when to let go of board control and try to beat down the villain fast before the win. Whenever I play two-player games with one of my friends, they tend to play a justice or leadership deck and try for board control while I play aggression and go for the villain's throat. The most challenging scenarios seem to require both a strong aggression deck and a strong justice deck.

Continued with the Sinister Motives campaign with my friend. After our first loss to Mysterio, I advocated that we just beat him down right from the start. That did not go well. Way too early in the game, my friend got caught untapped with a second villain attack in the round, and got knocked out of the game. I tried to continue but lost the following turn as Mysterio schemed for the win. So we had to play Mysterio again, immediately. This third game went great, primarily due to luck and some hard lessons learned from our first two losses. One ongoing problem is that my friend is thematically uncomfortable with chump-blocking. He keeps spending Pip the Troll for resources instead of using him as a really cheap double-blocker.

We moved on to fight the Sinister Six. When I previously played this scenario three-handed solo with Spider-man, Spider-man, and Ghost Spider, it was fun and not too hard, with lots of pummeling of the villains. This time was bad. We kept getting impediments that blocked us from thwarting the main scheme or going after the crucial tunnel side-scheme, and we only knocked out out a few of bad guys. Finally, my friend got caught without a blocker again, and got hit with a surprise attack for too much damage. We plan to try the Sinister Six again soon.

The SHIELD tech has been a mixed bag. The Wrist Navigator works well with my friend's Adam Warlock deck, because it boosts his card flow. But the Shock Knuckles have rarely been helpful to my Captain Marvel/aggression deck, because she is usually tapped to defend herself.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2022/5/19/mutant-genesis/

X-Men!

lol iconic Xmen like shadowcat.

I figured they'd do a new base set with this. This has huge vibes with me, most likely way to get me to buy in. I'm guessing there are a lot of people like me who aren't already all in on a different coop lcg.

Well to be fair, they are giving us iconics in the Cyclops and Phoenix packs that they said were releasing concurrently with Mutant Genesis - Yay! and Ouch My Wallet!

Mutant Genesis looks good. Although many fans were expecting this to be a new base set, it makes more sense for FFG to force all those mutie lover newcomers to buy the original MC base set. I was expecting this new campaign to feature Cyclops as one of the two heroes, because Cyclops is so specific to the X-Men but maybe not popular enough to sell as an individual hero pack. Cyke has always been my favorite X-Men, so I look forward to his deck. Phoenix? Not sure how they will express her power level without making her OP compared to the other heroes.

Looking at these card previews, I see some interesting details. Kitty and Peter are only mutants in alter ego; as heroes, they are X-Men. Kitty functions like a new and improved Vision. Her card Phased Strike would be especially useful in the Sinister Motives campaign, as a couple of those scenarios feature really nasty villain attachments. Colossus gets the same 4 hand-size as all the other physical powerhouses (Hulk, Thor, She-Hulk), and has the minimum hit points to benefit from the upcoming Unshakeable upgrade in the SP//dr set. His card Made of Rage is a reference to the excellent Joss Whedon run on Astonishing X-Men circa 2009. Professor X functions like a discount Nick Fury, and will likely hit the table a lot more often. Wolverine can thwart forever, but attacking will use him up quickly. Though he is not specifically mentioned as one of the six individual hero deck expansions for Cycle 6, it's safe to bet that one of them will be Wolverine.

They really lean into the Tough status card in this set. The Sentinels are all tough. Magneto and his whole Brotherhood are all tough. Polaris deals out a tough status card when she enters play. Colossus can have multiple Tough cards. Looks like each Brotherhood member is worth 2 VP, so maybe this campaign will have a reward track similar to Sinister Motives. Magneto looks to be another ridiculously difficult final villain for a campaign, right in line with Red Skull, Loki, or Venom Goblin.

Once I get the Cyclops and Phoenix decks, I will implement a new house rule. Every time the villain attacks Cyclops, the Phoenix player must shout SCOTT! Every time the villain attacks Phoenix, the Cyclops player must shout JEAN!

Tough is the new surge. lol.

Gotta say that this box looks like it will live up to the hype. The Villain design all look cool/interesting and an X-wave is going to bring a lot of people in.

I'm glad they didn't go with a new core box. With so many heroes in the game I personally find villain content more desirable.

Standard art rant below...


With that rant over I'm very much on the hype train for this box and that mutants are coming into the game. Am hoping Wolverine (in the classic yellow and blue!) and Gambit are incoming.

You'd have to pay the big artists to use real Marvel art. It's such a fucking travesty across all the non-comic products just to not have to pay the top artists, Barnes complained about this a lot.