Marvel Champions

Game one tonight was Ultron (expert) with Under attack vs Dr Strange. It was a cake walk sine I drew Wands + Master of the Mystic arts - turn one and dropped quincarrier, Wong, and Hawkeye in opening hand. He never got to stage 2.

marvelcdb.com/deck/view/114254

Game 2 is Scarlet Witch leadership vs Risky Business plus Mess of Things. I'll update after I'm done.

Win. No sweating. marvelcdb.com/deck/view/114265

@Boothwah do you ever play 2 handed? I think it strikes the best balance of playtime vs fun. I've never played 4 handed, as it seems like for me or would be too long and fiddly to keep track of everything.

I got my tracking number for GMW, should be here Saturday. I'm tentatively planning a bonus live stream Sunday but we'll see if it actually shows up.

Edit: also I forget if I said this but Ms Marvel Justice w/ Multitasking is SO GOOD. man I love Ms. Marvel.

Running 2 heroes is a pretty good balance overall for this game, but I find myself drawn more to running 3 or 4 heroes. I like the team dynamics, and more heroes means potentially more aspects and the ability to have each hero focus on their strengths. For example, Hulk can really shine in in a bigger game, as long as he has teammates who can work on thwarting the schemes while he smashes bad guys.

Ah_Pook wrote: @Boothwah do you ever play 2 handed? I think it strikes the best balance of playtime vs fun. I've never played 4 handed, as it seems like for me or would be too long and fiddly to keep track of everything.

I got my tracking number for GMW, should be here Saturday. I'm tentatively planning a bonus live stream Sunday but we'll see if it actually shows up.

Edit: also I forget if I said this but Ms Marvel Justice w/ Multitasking is SO GOOD. man I love Ms. Marvel.

I play alot of everything, and two handed would be my default if I was logging all my games- Solo can be very swingy, but I've been enjoying the challenge of building random solo viable decks for expert - I mean I already know i can breeze through most everything with Cap protection stunlock solo, or Ant Man Justice, etc. I would agree with you that two handed is a good balance.

Two-handed is the way to go.

I think Hulk is really strong. We use Hulk/Dr Strange as "Easy Mode." Maybe solo he's bad? Anyway, he can kill the whole world. Agree that he needs help drawing, but if you manage that, he can sweep the board.

I got my SW and QS packs a couple days ago and noted on their posters they are using the "experimented on" origin from MCU instead of Magneto's mutant kids from the comics side. I guess there won't be any X-men or Fantastic Four build-outs soon.

Holy shit, I've been looking over the cards in Galaxy's Most Wanted while sleeving it and this looks like a pretty brutal step up in difficulty. Can't wait to get into this.

Couple highlights:

Quickstrike minion that when it attacks and damages you it removes a random card in your hand from the game
Quickstrike minion that when it attacks and damages you it removes the top card of your deck from the game
Bunch of boost effects that give overkill, bunch of attachments that give overkill/piercing etc

Just a bunch of nasty nasty stuff. Plus it looks like the upgrades you get in the campaign are going to be much less... Gamebreakingly good? than the RORS upgrades.

Man I'm extremely excited about all this stuff.

I get my GMW box sometime next week, but spoilers already up so I've been reading.....and yes the campaign is a definite step up from RotRS. The upgrades are not as game breaking, but you do get them for the rest of the campaign if I read the rulebook right. This one....I will definitely not be running the precons at all. In expert, you are not allowed to switch out decks...the first collector scenario looks brutal. Nebula looks brutal.

Yea just looking at the first collector scenario and it looks BRUTAL. Love it.

Saying you can't change your deck just means I'm never going to play the expert campaign, that's a garbage rule. I'll probably do what I did in RORS, which is play the standard scenario rules with the expert villains. Found that to be much more fun in RORS personally. Having to worry about persistent health was not fun, all it did was make your decks worse with healing cards and make you game the end of scenarios so you could heal before last hitting the villain.

For 3 months after Christmas, Marvel Champions was the only game that I played. I have 15 heroes and all the villains published so far. It's a great game, and I will definitely play it from time to time, alone or with friends. But I'm not jumping on Galaxy's Most Wanted at this time. I have nothing against it, and it would be great to pick up more villains, but I will likely be spending quality time with Sleeping Gods and maybe Cursed City for the forseeable future. I like the space villains in the GMW box, but I am more neutral about Rocket Raccoon and Groot. They're okay, but they are minor characters in the overall Marvel setting, and I would be more excited about the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, as well as Daredevil and some other street-level heroes.

yea i think if youre in for the next cycle of releases its because this is a lifestyle game for you at this point. i live stream it 1/2 times a week so im playing it all the time, but if i wasnt playing it that regularly i would be bowing out for sure. the amount of stuff already out is plenty unless youre deep in.

Shellhead wrote: For 3 months after Christmas, Marvel Champions was the only game that I played. I have 15 heroes and all the villains published so far. It's a great game, and I will definitely play it from time to time, alone or with friends. But I'm not jumping on Galaxy's Most Wanted at this time.

Ah_Pook wrote: yea i think if youre in for the next cycle of releases its because this is a lifestyle game for you at this point.

I've been thinking along these lines in the long build-up to the GMW cycle and it looks like I'm not the only one. I wanted a lifestyle game when I got in and feel MC has delivered on that in both game and surrounding community.

The game's been hitting the table at least 2-3 times a week for well over a year now and I haven't burnt out on it. I definitely feel I've gotten my money's worth and can't see myself shelving it anytime soon.

But I'm also weighing up the next cycle. I've been waiting for more campaign play for months so I'll definitely be picking up GMW when it finally releases here and I'll keep up with scenario packs but I may sit out this next wave of heroes.

I have everything released so far so adding more heroes to the pool doesn't feel hugely necessary - even though the mechanics of the two that have been revealed so far do look really fun/interesting/cool and getting new aspect cards is always a good thing.

So we'll see what happens. I might go the way it was sold of "only pick up the heroes you like,". Although, that said, a lot of heroes I didn't have much interest in have turned out to be awesome to play so... yeah, I've made no real decision either way. Fortunately delivery times here are so late here I've got plenty of time to mull it over.

I've also recently started playing Arkham Horror LCG (borrowed a friend's set) and am really digging that so I may jump on the next campaign cycle of that when it starts.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/4/5/venomous-sting/

Venom, but Space Venom With Guns? I don't know anything about this version of the character, but his cards look fun and also new Justice cards.

session report after missions 1+2 of the campaign. mission 1 is a minion swarm villain, and was fun. when you flip from stage 2->3 you discard 4 cards per player from the encounter deck and put all minions discarded into play engaged with players. i only flipped 2 thankfully, but i think if you flip like 6 minions it would go a little less well for you. plus he has an attachment that gives him Stalwart, a new keyword that makes hi unable to be stunned or confused. fun stuff.

mission 2 (The Collector) stonewalled me harder than anything in this game to date. any card that leaves play goes into the collection, and if there are 5 cards per player in the collection you lose. So thats any allies or attachments or upgrades you play when they leave play, any minions, attachments or side schemes the villain plays when they leave. you can remove 1 thing from the collection per player per turn, either by exhausting your hero or spending 2 resources. i got buried under minions and allies in there, and he schemes for a ton too and has a 1 stage main scheme where you lose if it threats out. AND when you flip from stage 2->3 you put threat on the main scheme equal to the number of cards in the collection. its SAVAGE. going to have to completely rebuild my decks to take it on i think.

edit: i feel like this Collector scenario is the first one in the game that really needs specific counter deckbuilding, and not just "build a good deck" general deckbuilding.

I don't like the sound of what they did with Collector. He was a moderately interesting villain until the Korvac saga finally put all of his past interactions with the Avengers into a new perspective. But Hawkeye managed to beat him in a fight where Collector beat both Thor and Iron Man, and yet Hawkeye would completely screwed in a Marvel Champions match with the Collector, either alone or with other heroes.

Shellhead wrote: I don't like the sound of what they did with Collector. He was a moderately interesting villain until the Korvac saga finally put all of his past interactions with the Avengers into a new perspective. But Hawkeye managed to beat him in a fight where Collector beat both Thor and Iron Man, and yet Hawkeye would completely screwed in a Marvel Champions match with the Collector, either alone or with other heroes.

Actually Justice Hawkeye was one of the decks I was thinking might fare pretty well for him. His sig ally bounces back to hand instead of discard and he can fire off thwart events for the scheme and still have loads of damage in his deck of arrows.

I don't think I'll ever be sending Black Widow in to infiltrate the museum....yikes.

Basically this campaign throws a wrench into the disposable ally chump blocking strats. Ronan has a bunch of overkill effects. I'm looking forward to deckbuilding for it.

I get my box Friday, and I'm planning on letting Cap prot, teamed with Quicksilver Justice get first crack at it.