Marvel Champions

I think it was always the intention to be mix and match, they just messed up by naming both the campaign and game mode Expert. The original campaign rules don't explicitly tie campaign and villain difficulty together.

I went and played Rhino and Crossbones with a bunch of the GMW modular sets added in, and they were fun/nasty. Kree Militants is 8 extremely nasty minions and a nasty attachment, and it really juiced up Rhino. Him getting overkill as a boost effect when he hits like a truck is nasty, and having to constantly deal with 6-7hp minions slows the fight down so you have to survive his attacks more often. It would have been a fun fight if I hadn't been playing with Hulk

Edit: I do think they went a little too minion heavy with the GMW modulars... Most of them are like 9-10 minions and maybe 1 non minion card. I like minion heavy modulars, but stripping out everything else makes them kinda one note.

Got preorder processing notifications for Star Lord and Gamora. They look really fun! I can't imagine buying the stream of stuff for this game if I wasnt streaming it, it's too much

Ah_Pook wrote: I think it was always the intention to be mix and match, they just messed up by naming both the campaign and game mode Expert. The original campaign rules don't explicitly tie campaign and villain difficulty together.

Yeah that makes sense given how modular every aspect of the game is. It wasn't made very clear tho. I assumed when playing 'expert' I would play the expert campaign. That worked fine for Red Skull but clearly is a death sentence in GMW. Having seperate names for the mode and campaign difficulties from the start would have helped.

But even with this clarification it's still concerning that only a team with the very top-tier heroes like Strange have a chance to beat expert/expert GMW.

Finally played Marvel Champions with another human being. An old friend is back in town for a few weeks and stopped by this evening to play board games. But after playing Marvel Champions once, he was hooked.

First, we played against Klaw (basic) plus A Mess of Things (Scorpion). I played She-Hulk/Aggression and he played Ant-man/Leadership. We were doing pretty well and had just beat Klaw I, when my friend suddenly got taken out. He had carefully calculated that he could handle one more Klaw attack before needing to flip and do some healing, but a treachery card gave Klaw a second attack against him. Rather than try to win by myself with my friend just watching, I conceded.

Then we went up against the Wrecking Crew (basic). My friend played Spider-Woman/Aggression/Justice. I wanted to make sure we won this one so my friend would like the game, so I ran Dr. Strange/Protection. We initially focused on Thunderball, even though Wrecker was the active villain, because Thunderball is so nasty with the stuns. Then Piledriver took over as main villain, and an attachment forced us to just fight Piledriver. By the time we ousted Piledriver, we both had a good array of upgrades, supports, and allies in play, so each bad guy went out faster than the one before, until we won. Spider-woman was reliably attacking, but Strange was only intermittently useful because his untap clock was at the bottom of his deck, and a shortage of allies forced Strange to keep tapping for defense.

Got my friend addicted to Marvel Champions. He came over again yesterday, and we went up against Kang the Conqueror, Master of Time. My friend played Quicksilver/Protection, so I picked Hulk/Aggression. I make extra effort to not over-coach new players of games, allowing them some breathing room to explore a game. So I didn't describe the whole Kang mini-campaign to him, I just let him know that there would be three stages and then explained the relevant rules as we started each stage.

Kang I was a fairly easy fight, and I ended it with that Hulk card that gives him +10 ATK for a single hit, plus overkill if paid for with just physical resources. I actually hit a Macrobot with 4 hit points that was guarding Kang, and overkill damage finished off Kang I. Then we got split up, with Hulk fighting Rama-tut and Quicksilver against Immortus. Hulk was feeling rundown, so put his ally Brawn into play to slow down Rama-tut's scheming while I took a turn to recover and ditch some Kang obligations. Some are tolerable, but I had the one that did a point of damage to Hulk every time he took a basic action. Then I came back with a couple of very effective turns and wrecked Rama-tut. Quicksilver started out well against Immortus, but got bogged down with a couple of obligations. Switching to alter ego really slows down Quicksilver. I joined the fight, but Quicksilver rallied to win on his own.

Kang III was going okay, partly becaused we denied him access to his damage-preventing Dominion side schemes. But we were gradually wearing down and needing to flip back to alter ego for healing. Especially with my arch nemesis Abomination in play, since he hits for either 3 or 5, usually 5 against the Hulk. My friend was still struggling with the idea of chump blocking. He understood the logic of it, but it didn't feel right to him to sacrifice his allies so callously, so he was only chump blocking half as often as he should have been doing. This left Quicksilver taking more hits and doing more recovery and less thwarting.

Finally, the end arrived. Kang started a turn with 7 points on his main scheme, and needed 20 on it to win. Hulk was currently in Dr. Banner form. Kang starts the turn by adding 3 scheme (including 1 from an acceleration token on the main scheme), so he is at 10. Then he schemes because he can't attack Banner, and flips a card with 3 boost icons, taking him to 15. Then Abomination schemes for 2 more, so 17 out of 20 on the main scheme. And during the encounter card phase, Quicksilver gets an encounter card that allows Kang to scheme again. Our only chance was if Kang flipped a card with zero boost icons, which was very unlikely. Instead, Kang flipped a 3-boost, taking him to 22 scheme and our crushing defeat.

Sounds like a fun game. The Kang scenario is so good. Easily my favourite.

i played some games tonight with Hawkeye and Spiderwoman, who i hadnt played with in a while. took them up against Expert Mutagen Formula w/ the Kree militants modular set from GMW and it was a spicy meatball for sure. the entire deck was brutal minions. it was a grind, but eventually we turned the corner and pulled out a win. it took forever and a half to get out from under the garbage that came out at the beginning of the game. when every other card that comes out is a 7hp minion with guard and patrol it certainly slows you down.

After a long and exhausting road to best the expert Klaw/Anachronauts combo, and with GMW still not available here, I've taken a bit of a break from MC. Instead I've been playing through the Dunwich campaign in Arkham Horror, which I borrowed from a friend.

But last night I couldn't be bothered setting up the AH scenario I'm on and fuelled by all the Kang talk here I decided to dust off MC and take a run at him. My 'not being bothered' also extended to setting up heroes so I just grabbed my Klaw-defeating Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver decks and went at it.

Highly optimised to deal with all Klaw's nonsense I promptly lost to Kang on the first main scheme when he threated out.

I wasn't playing to win, I just wanted to shuffle some cards around rather than watch TV. Even with the loss it was a fun little game and a nice change of pace from AH.

Played my first games with Star Lord and Gamora tonight. They seem fun, but also i feel like I didn't utilize them fully, or maybe theyre not great? I feel like Star-Lord basically letting you play on Heroic to get free cards is a bad trade, but I'm a sucker for it. I think it makes the game significantly harder and swingier for him, but it feels fun while youre doing it so... i dunno. He has some incredible Leadership synergies (+1 THW for all Guardian characters you control, and also he makes all Allies he plays Guardians, for example), but I don't really love Leadership so yknow. Gamora feels like she has HUGE potential, but I need to mess with her deck building a LOT more to maximize it. I was running her with Aggression with 2xTackle, 2xConcussive Blow, and 2x For Justice as her off suit events. I feel like I want to play her in Justice with 3x Tackle and something else as her off suits but I havent really played around with it yet. I do love me some rules breaking deck building heros though.

Took them up against Klaw + Space Pirates and got spanked HARD. then took them up against Klaw + Anachronauts and won... not super easily but it felt way less like a curb stomping anyway. A single Advance at the wrong time would have ended it repeatedly, but hey thats the game.

Also, I think the Space Pirate modular might be the new Hardest Modular? 5 minions all with quickstrike and 2atk that all permanently remove cards from the top of your deck or your hand FROM THE GAME when they damage you, plus 2 treacheries that find pirate minions and put them into play, plus a side scheme that gives all enemies +1 atk... i mean its just brutal. they come up constantly, and they just decimate your deck. its at least an interesting design, unlike most of the GMW modulars that are just "i dunno, 10 minions?"

Good feedback on Star Lord. Ever since the announce I've been wondering about his 'draw all the encounter cards' design and if it would be fun or annoying. I tend to dislike getting hammered with encounter cards... but I do like the push your luck aspect of it.

Thinking about it more postmortem, SL feels like the ultimate win more hero vs easy scenarios, and like suicide vs hard scenarios. Choosing to play Ronan on Heroic 2 to get some marginal benefits and play a free card a round seems like choosing death, but he will absolutely let you style on standard Crossbones and do absolutely ridiculous stuff.

That said I feel like he has some truly great Leadership pieces in his pack, and some serious potential as a Leadership hero even without leaning hard into his gimmick.

Giant man for 2cost + Laser gun + Comms Implant + Reinforced Suit + Inspired + Power Gloves + Teamwork + Target Practice... 8hp, attacking for 8-10 a pop for his first 5 attacks (not all at once but that's the high end)... I mean okay let's voltron this baby that's before you get into Blaze of Glory or other event shenanigans. Yea there's potential there.

Spoke to the FLGS yesterday and they're saying June for GMW and the first two hero packs and then July for the next two. So not long to wait now which is great, but the flipside of course being that it's quite an expensive proposition to pick up three months worth of content in one go. It's the same amount, yes, but mentally it feels very different dropping that much cash at once.

Had a great rematch against expert Kang last night. I used my totally-unoptimised-for-Kang justice SW and protection QS decks again as I couldn't be bothered tearing them down and making new decks.

Game ran for around two hours and was a lot of fun. It's such a cool scenario. I really think they nailed it with this pack; the difficulty is spot on, the story is great and it feels very thematic as you play.

There were lots of cool little moments, the Spider-Man ally being whisked away through time never to return thanks to the Time Travel Hi-Jinks obligation being one memorable highlight.

Once SW & QS were both built up they were a force to be reckoned with. QS smacked down the 22hp Kang Rama-Tut in two turns to join SW in her time zone against Kang Immortus, not that she needed much back-up at that stage. He did help get rid of a pesky T-Rex that had travelled through time with her though, which was handy.

The duo were in control for the second half of the game but it never felt like a sure win - threat was accelerating quickly by stage 3, one turn saw 10 go on, and there were plenty of guard minions and obligations to deal with. It made each turn a brain burning puzzle and QS and SW are just both really fun heroes to play.

I'm not sure what challenge I'll play against next but I'm feeling like taking Spider-Man for a run again as it's been ages since he came out of the box. I'm thinking I might go back to core and pair him up with Iron-Man. That could be fun.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/...pjDCvN5oRMFp0oytxurk

Some crazy stuff in there. Balance The Scales 0_0

Titan's Shadow looks cool, but I intend to wait and see. I'm not interested in banging my head against the wall while losing repeatedly to GMW, so I want to see if other players think Titan's Shadow is a little less difficult and/or more fun.

Yea, it remains to be seen whether they make this one fun or not

Adam Warlock looks like a super crazy deck building challenge. Equal numbers of cards from all 4 aspects and they have to all be singles... sounds ridiculous. I can't tell if you could even make a good deck that way, but I'm excited to play with it.