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Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.

Marvel Champions

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23 Jun 2022 11:19 #333867 by Ah_Pook
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23 Jun 2022 11:50 #333869 by Shellhead
I'm not a huge X-Men fan, but there have been several extended runs on the title that I enjoyed. Thomas/Adam, Claremont/Cockrum, Claremont/Byrne/Austin, Whedon/Cassaday, etc. But I looked through this preview and I am cyked. I was worried that a Cyclops deck would be a bunch of boring blast cards, but they really captured the essence of the character with all these tactical upgrades and his innate optic blast ability. Another nice touch is making him able to include X-Men of any aspect in his deck. And the Full Blast card is even better than I hoped, though there should also be a wide-angle blast that lets him attack multiple enemies. So far, there has been no preview of his nemesis, which has me curious.

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23 Jun 2022 11:55 #333870 by Shellhead

boothwah wrote: Not terribly excited about goofy Spider packs that come next from a theme standpoint, but they probably will be fun and then I'll end up reading a bunch of Spider-Manga.


I will probably never be interested in reading a comic with Spider-Ham, but he was okay in the Spider-verse movie and his deck looks reasonably fun. And there is something perversely appealing to me about having a goofy character beat on some of my most hated villains in this game. Also, that Inheritor module in his pack looks deadly serious and really challenging.

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23 Jun 2022 15:25 #333874 by Shellhead
Still having fun with the Banner deck. I am currently playing the custom Super-Adaptoid scenario, running Hulk (Banner)/justice and custom Wolverine/aggression against it. The first game was a bust, with Abomination entering play on turn 1 and the Banner deck taking too long to get rolling, allowing S-A to scheme to victory with not much damage on his first stage.

I'm not finished with this second game yet, but it's going really well. Banner has a serious array of upgrades and allies in play, although it would be better if he could get a few more SHIELD cards in play. Wolverine is also set up well. Oddly enough, both Abomination and Sabretooth are in the mix now, but haven't been as much trouble this time around. Part of it has been luck. S-A keeps drawing 0 or 1 boost icons for his scheming, while Wolverine keeps lucking into nasty attacks just after a nasty minion or two enters play. At one point, he did a nice job simulating the Valkyrie deck, taking out 4 minions in one turn.

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23 Jun 2022 17:43 #333876 by boothwah
Nova is currently my favorite hero to abuse. In multi-player games he is the bee's knees in Justice or Aggression. Unleash the Nova Force is stupid stupid fun, with all the untapping and card drawing - ask your friends to be patient, and explain before the game that every minion or side scheme they leave at 1 threat or 1 hp on their turn is a gift on those Nova turns.

If you though Thor was a good time against Ultron, Honed Technique Aggression Nova would definitely be your thing. One turn, after getting about 6 drones on the villain phase, I drew through my deck 1.5 times, between Nova Force draws and recycling No Quarter. Ended the game with a Unleash the Nova turn, where i cleared off 4 drones, 2 side schemes, and took Ultron from stage 2 to stage 3 with 12 health left. so we could just punch him with dudes on the table after we survived the villain phase. Dive Bomb + Honed Techinque is sooooooooooooooo good in multiplayer.

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23 Jun 2022 23:40 #333880 by Shellhead
Super-Adaptoid beat us. Thought that I had the main scheme under control, but it was just one of those turns where the encounter cards (2 for each hero) featured a surprising amount of scheming, plus the A.I.M. module often gives S-A a facedown boost card.

So I moved on to a new scenario and team. Red Skull plus the two recommended Hydra modules on standard. My heroes were Hulk (Banner)/justice, Captain America/leadership, Black Widow/justice, and Nick Fury (custom)/justice. Which may seem like an excessive amount of justice, except that this is the Red Skull, the nastiest schemer in the game so far. His big gimmick is that he automatically gets another side-scheme into play every turn.

The Sleeper came out early, and it is scary with 20 hit points, but Banner drew into his big attack card (+10 ATK), so I flipped into Hulk form and smashed the Sleeper, who conveniently already had 7 points of damage from Nick and the Widow. We are holding down the main scheme reasonably well, but the side schemes may become a problem, despite the crucial assistance from Jessica Jones. Will finish this game tomorrow night while doing laundry.
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24 Jun 2022 10:55 #333884 by Ah_Pook
Red Skull is still the best really hard villain they've done, imo. A simple but fun and unique gimmick, and no overreliance on surge or just plain huge numbers to beat you. Plus you can really change up the scenario depending on the modulars you use.
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24 Jun 2022 13:33 #333891 by Shellhead
I agree that the Red Skull is the best hard villain. I still haven't made decks that are good enough to beat either Loki or Venom Goblin, and I have decided that the best way to beat Ronan is to never play his scenario. I feel that my current game against the Red Skull could go either way, though we will probably get murdered if Nick Fury's nemesis Baron Strucker enters play. A majority of the Strucker cards are powered up by the number of Hydra cards on the table. Even worse if Cap's nemesis Baron Zemo is also in play.

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25 Jun 2022 00:25 #333894 by Shellhead
Made progress in my four-hero game. This is the most fun that I have ever had playing the Red Skull scenario. Nick Fury has a unique card called the Helicarrier Iliad, and it allows a chosen player to search their deck (but not their discard pile) for a card and add it to their hand. The Iliad is an upgrade that costs 3, plus you need to tap another SHIELD card to use it. And you can only use it once per turn. (I checked and this custom Iliadcard has since been weakened... tap it for the chosen player to search the top five cards of their deck for a SHIELD card and put it in their hand.)

So in this game, every turn Nick is fishing one of the following cards out of someone's deck, depending on turn order and what is left in a given player's deck at the time.

Hulk/Banner: Hulk Smash, so he can punch the Red Skull for 13, or Homeland Intervention for the big thwarts.
Captain America: Hawkeye, for the ability to ping incoming minions for 2 damage each.
Black Widow: Winter Soldier, for a potentially cheap but durable 2/2 ally, or Grapple Hook for the ability to cancel a treachery card, especially Shadow of the Past.
Nick Fury: Jessica Jones for the big thwarts, or First Aid to heal Jessica Jones.

As a result, my team has continued to prevent Red Skull from scheming to victory, and have even defeated his first villain stage. At the moment, his main scheme is on the final stage but at less than half the target number, and the Skull himself has 56 hit points left on his second villain stage. There are no minions in play at the moment, but three side schemes. The one really bad thing is that there are six acceleration tokens in play, so Red Skull starts every turn by adding 10 threat to the main scheme and then adding another side scheme into play. All of my heroes have a good array of cards in play, so I will probably go all in on a frontal assault after the next time I smack Red Skull with a Hulk Smash.
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26 Jun 2022 22:50 #333917 by Shellhead
My friend's travel plans changed significantly, so he is in town for at least a few more weeks. So he wanted to tackle another campaign. So we are doing the Rise of the Red Skull campaign on standard, with slightly modified decks for Iron Man/justice and Vision/protection. I was worried that the Vision deck might not be good enough, but it was fine and my Iron Man deck rocked. We took down Crossbones with shocking speed, but had to work a bit to get Absorbing Man. The combined games took less than 2.5 hours.

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04 Jul 2022 13:09 - 04 Jul 2022 16:44 #334008 by Shellhead
On Saturday, my friend came over to continue our campaign against the Red Skull. First, we took on Taskmaster, and we had a solid win. And as soon as we won, we had regret because we only rescued Elektra from a concentration camp, leaving behind Shang-Chi, Moon Knight, and White Tiger. It wasn't that we literally left prison camp side schemes in play, we just happened to only get one in play before we defeated Taskmaster. I suppose that is a self-balancing reward, in that any decks efficient enough to win quickly maybe don't need the free allies. Any decks that struggle to beat Taskmaster will have a better opportunity to grab some or all of the free allies.

Next, we faced Zola, or Arnim Zola as he is known in the comics. His schtick is bringing out durable allies and slapping attachments on them to buff them. Another solid win for my slightly tweaked Iron Man/justice and Vision/protection. The biggest improvement I made to my Iron Man deck was to include two copies of Enhanced Awareness, which is an upgrade that you can tap up to three times to gain a blue (science?) resource. That is the specific resource that Iron Man needs to activate his boot jets, which double the efficacy of several other armor cards in his deck.

Finally, we faced the Red Skull. In previous solitaire games, I have gone after the Red Skull with 4-hero teams and really struggled to beat him until I swapped aspects to pump up my thwarting and attack abilities. But this game was a rout for the Skull and his Nazi lackeys. Every turn, the Skull brought out another side scheme, and we usually dispatched said scheme on our next turn. At the same time, we typically knocked his main scheme back to 0 or at least the low single digits, every turn. We whipped the Red Skull like he was just the Red-Headed Stepchild (with apologies to anybody here with red hair). I don't know if I am ready to play Expert level yet, but Iron Man and Vision had a nice synergy. As my friend summed up the campaign, we were both capable of strong thwarting and strong attacks, and if either of us had a bad turn, the other could usually handle whatever needed doing that turn.

My friend is leaving town after next weekend, but he wants to play MC at least one more time, with our Iron Man/Vision team going after Venom Goblin.
Last edit: 04 Jul 2022 16:44 by Shellhead.

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07 Jul 2022 11:42 - 07 Jul 2022 11:43 #334092 by Ah_Pook
Yooooooo Phoenix looks awesome. Restrained/Unleashed Phoenix force with different effects for cards depending on which one you have... Plus that Dark Phoenix Nemesis holy shiiiiiiit that's awesome stuff.

Edit: forgot the link www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2022/...sing-from-the-ashes/
Last edit: 07 Jul 2022 11:43 by Ah_Pook.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Shellhead, Gary Sax, sornars, Kmann

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07 Jul 2022 12:11 #334094 by Shellhead
That Phoenix deck looks better than anything I imagined. I was worried that we would either get an unimpressive or overpowered Phoenix but it looks like this deck walks a fine line between both, with potential for veering out of control. Besides the villains of the X-campaign box, I am really looking forward to playing Colossus, Cyclops, and Phoenix. However, the Shadowcat deck seems like a less-exciting version of the Vision deck.

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07 Jul 2022 13:56 #334097 by Gary Sax
Have they ever done anything like this dark phoenix/consume the world side threat to balance a powerful hero before? Seems a pretty daring design.

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07 Jul 2022 14:45 #334098 by Shellhead

Gary Sax wrote: Have they ever done anything like this dark phoenix/consume the world side threat to balance a powerful hero before? Seems a pretty daring design.


No. this is new. Every nemesis enters play with their side scheme, but until Phoenix, none of these side schemes could directly cause a loss. Hers is especially exciting because it enters play with 6 threat and an Amplify icon that adds a boost token during each enemy activation. Dark Phoenix has the Villainous trait, so she gets a boost card each time she activates. So she could scheme for two, draw a boost card with three boost icons, then add one more for Amplify, for 6 threat. If the players don't put her down immediately (and she is Tough and has 12 hit points) or thwart her side scheme, they could lose the game after her first activation. And if they take time a couple of turns to shut down Dark Phoenix, that might be enough time for the villain to win.

To make matters worse, the Phoenix obligation card can also put Dark Phoenix and her side scheme into play, unless she is Restrained. So the Phoenix player needs to hold back and keep her Restrained as much as possible, despite the temptation of using her cards to greater effect if she is Unleashed. It's like a game within the game, and I can't way to try it.
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