Marvel Champions

I recommend subbing in the basic Hope ally for the scenarios that use her, but that's just me you can get some really degenerate nonsense going with the encounter set one, which I found warped the scenarios quite a bit.

I really like how Stryfe fucks with your decks economy, it's an interesting effect to play around with.

My friend and I finished the NeXT campaign. It's the easiest campaign, even easier than the Red Skull campaign, because the Red Skull remains a challenging final boss unless your thwarting is strong. We battled Juggernaut with Cyclops and Storm, and continued to switch characters for each scenario. We battled Mister Sinister (flight/strength) with Angel and Domino, then Stryfe with Deadpool and Domino. We had no trouble with Stryfe once my friend noticed the advantage of going to alter ego more often against Stryfe.

At this point, my friend has played every scenario I have except for Klaw, Ultron, Spiral, and Mojo. He has also played most my non-Aggression decks. Fortunately, this game has a lot of replay value, so we can do some mixing and matching with individual scenarios and various modular sets.

The Age of Apocalypse boxed set is starting to arrive in stores. I don't plan to get it. I still enjoy Marvel Champions, and the boxed sets are the best value in the game aside from the base set. Why not?

The heroes don't inspire me. Bishop has a mullet, a huge gun, and hails from a future dystopia. In the game, this translates into a hero deck built around resource cards and the temporal keyword, which feels flat and unengaging. Magik is a mutant sorcerer with a dark edge, which translates into maneuvering specific cards into being on top of her draw pile and reaping various unthematic benefits from them.

Most of the scenarios don't interest me. Unus the Untouchable was originally a mutant villain with a powerful force field defense, but now he looks like a generic Kree soldier in very bulky body armor and leading a vast horde of similarly equipped troops. The Four Horseman looks more interesting as another one of those multi-villain scenarios, and does appear interesting. The third scenario is Apocalypse, who has always looked like a grotesquely large and muscular clown. His scenario has an unpleasant quantity of acceleration tokens, which demands players to run decks with strong thwarting capacity, or Deadpool. The fourth scenario features an evil version of a founding X-Man: Dark Beast. His scenario is the most tempting one in the box for me, as he uses time travel to send heroes through various critical points in mutant history, including a trial by combat on the moon against the Imperial Guard (Marvel's homage to DC's Legion of Super-Heroes). The final scenario is Apocalypse, again. There is a new mechanic involving side missions that can only be completed by allies, and it looks like more trouble than it is worth.

And finally there is cost. I have spent several hundred dollars on this game, despite receiving the base set as a Christmas present from my ex and also getting store discounts on all the expansions. I don't feel the need to collect every release for this game, so I have only acquired about 70% of the expansions.

Despite everything I wrote above, I'm not done with Marvel Champions yet. The upcoming Iceman hero deck looks fun, and I am really hoping that the next wave of expansions will be focused on the Fantastic Four and their allies, like Namor and the Silver Surfer. And I hope there will be a street-level wave of expansions after that, featuring characters like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.

Finally got MC back on the table and tried out Angel (aggression) and X-23 (leadership) vs expert Unus, the first villain in the Apocalypse box.

Scattered thoughts:

Angel is ridiculous. Honed Technique Dive Bomb definitely needed to do 4 more damage and cost 2 less and return to your hand to do it again. He's so insanely nuclear, but also pretty linear... Like you put the aerial cards in your deck and you go the fuck off. It's fun to make the number go big but probably only every once in a while, as piloting him doesn't really have much of the fun nuance I enjoy.

X-23 is extremely fun w/ sidekick honey badger. Readies for days, and fun sequencing stuff to play around with as her stats are getting boosted at various times throughout her turn and stuff. Really fun hero kit imo, and the new Sidekick card seems especially made for her.

Unus is a fun first scenario. Straightforward, but solid. Nasty attachments and a bunch of minions. Ally hate but it powers up the villain and minions instead of pushing an alternate loss condition like Project Wideawake did, which is a cool twist. Good start to the new box.

Standard 3 is a huge win. It replaces Shadows of the Past with a permanent card that builds up counters and puts your nemesis set into play once it hits 3 counters, or your nemesis activates against you if it's already in play. Then it replaces Advance and Assault with cards that activate against you and also put a counter on the nemesis thing, and a few other nasty tricks. Really fun stuff.

Probably going to build an aggression Magik deck and drop Angel, I think Magik looks really fun and I always like a new Mystic to play with.

Also Sidekick decks are my new shit, officially. I'm like going through the list of heroes and their signature allies mentally working out who needs to get Sidekicked up.

My old friend came over yesterday. He finally got addicted enough to buy some cards, and picked up the NeXT Evolution boxed set despite my recommendation that he needs the base set for the tokens, cards, and hit point wheels. He just really loves playing the Domino deck. Since we had recently played through the NeXT campaign, we went old school and played two scenarios from the base set, just because we have already played almost every other scenario in my collection.

He played the untuned Domino/justice starter while I played a highly-tuned Hulk/aggression deck, against Klaw and the Masters of Evil. We really dominated the game early on, and it was starting to look too easy. But Domino's nemesis Topaz showed up, and her side scheme really pumped up Klaw's attacks, along with a couple of attachments that Klaw picked up right around that time. We got battered and Klaw whipped through his deck a couple of times, so the main scheme was a concern. But we finally pulled it together and Hulk finished Klaw with a 13-point punch.

We kept the same heroes and took on Ultron. I got Hulk's retaliation upgrade in play early on, so between that and Domino's guns, we did a pretty good job of clearing the drones most turns. But I had forgotten the very nasty twist of the final stage of Ultron's main scheme, which forbids the players from removing threat. We tried to step up our attacks on Ultron and go for the win, but he lucked into a bunch of scheming in a single turn and crushed us. Due to holiday plans, we didn't have time for rematch, but I'm sure my friend will now feel the need for an Ultron rematch and go purchase the base set.

Shuffled up for the first time in a few months this week. I saw I had a handful of heroes still in shrink so cracked open Sp//dr. I pit her against Rhino and Lady Deathstrike, which is a modular I hadn't used before.

The first two nights they steamrolled me. I barely got a hit on Rhino and was bogged down by threat and minions. Her hero hand size of 3 kept me behind the pace and I couldn't get her set up.

On Thursday I'd had enough of that nonsense so hit up MCDB and found a deck called 'Interfacing with the Triforce'. It was protection which I wanted to keep Sp/Dr in as that was her precon aspect.

Well, it was a completely different game. Sp/Dr became a monster. Resources a-plenty and hitting hard and often. I took Rhino all the way from stage 1 through to stage 3 as I was having so much fun with the deck.

The precons are usually fairly average but boy, Sp//Dr's is atrocious.

SP//dr has an okay starter deck, but pitting her against Rhino is a mismatch. Like Iron Man, SP//dr needs time to get set up, and Rhino comes out swinging and has that single-stage main scheme that is so unforgiving.

I knew that my friend would be obsessed with beating Ultron, and sure enough, he was back for more on Friday. He continued to play his untuned Domino/justice deck. For the first two games, I ran a Bruce Banner/justice deck that completely turns the Hulk deck inside out. It is big on putting out lasting resources like Ingenuity and Bruce Banner's lab, and keeping Hulk in alter ego for most of the game. It also runs a significant number of SHIELD cards. My Bruce deck finally got up and rolling at full speed right about the time that Domino got killed. In our rematch, we both struggled for a while, and Ultron managed to get to his unstoppable third stage on his main scheme, and we couldn't deal out damage fast enough to beat him.

For the third game, I played a lightly-tuned War Machine/leadership deck, while my friend continued with Domino/justice. We did really well, holding Ultron at stage 2 of 3 on his main scheme, while dealing enough damage to get him to his second stage. Then we had a couple of rough turns. His drones were 2 ATK at this point, and War Machine got dented by two of them during the villain's activation phase. My friend drew a Concussive Blast during the encounter phase, and that finished off each of our allies that we had been holding back for emergency blocking. Then I drew Gang-Up, and Ultron and those two drones knocked War Machine out of the game. Domino died the following turn. That night, I actually had a mild nightmare about replaying Ultron and getting beat again. It is extremely rare that I dream about games like that.

My friend might be heading out of town soon. If he is still around next weekend, he will probably want another rematch with Ultron. If we manage to win, the only two unplayed scenarios left in my collection are Spiral and Mojo, and they both look more annoying than fun.

Mojo is sick, but the clock on it is maniacal. You need to bring some heat on that one. One of the better scenarios.

Spiral is okay but you can get really hosed by deck rng so it can go either way.

Don't how much longer my friend will be in town before returning to Florida, so when he came over on Saturday, I didn't bring out Spiral and Mojo. I will eventually give those scenarios a try, but I can't shake my gut instinct that they will be more annoying than fun.

First game: We finally beat Ultron, with Domino/justice and War Machine/leadership. It played out pretty much as you would expect, with Domino managing the schemes while War Machine cleared the drones and put the hurt on Ultron. Still surprising that we both got killed in our previous attempt with these same two decks against Ultron. The big difference was our response to Upgraded Drones. Last game, we thought we could ignore the Upgraded Drones and just go in for the kill on Ultron, wrapping up the game in 2 or 3 turns. But with +1ATK and one extra hit point, those Upgraded Drones were a serious menace. This time, we got rid of the Upgraded Drones card as fast as it showed up.

Second game: Custom scenario featuring Maestro, the evil genius Hulk from the future. He is trying to kickstart his radioactive wasteland future by setting off nukes in key cities to bring about World War III. My friend continued to play Domino/justice, but I switched to Wolverine/aggression. Maestro has a unique gimmick, the ability to deal out a Dazed status card to heroes and allies. Dazed works just like Stunned or Confused, except that it prevents a hero or ally from tapping to defend. Maestro also has a built-in ability to give a Dazed status card to a hero who takes damage from an undefended attack. Domino spent most of the game dazed, and eventually got defeated, but Wolverine was able to finish the game with a win.

Third game: We both had other plans for the evening, so only 90 minutes or less to play one more game. I picked Sandman plus the City in Chaos (featuring Rhino). We stuck with the same team of Wolverine and Domino, and won easily. We did both adjust our play style to focus on playing allies, because allies are great at clearing the sandy street environment from the Sandman deck. Normally the basic Colossus ally feels a bit expensive even with the X-discount, but he was awesome in this scenario. Able to tank a villain attack with Toughness, then clear 3 sand counters every turn for the rest of the game.