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In this series, I highlight cards that I am currently enjoying. These are by no means the most powerful cards. They aren't even necessarily my all-time favorite cards. They are simply cards that I am really enjoying right now. At the end of the article you'll find a decklist that I've enjoyed using them in and a gallery that displays all the cards highlighted. Web of Life and Destiny This card is the crux of Web-Warrior builds, so I'm tackling it first. Web of Life and Destiny is amazing if you're a Web-Warrior, because it's a free resource generator. However, it is definitely worth the cost for non-Web-Warriors. This card rewards you for letting allies do what they do best... getting knocked out. Not only does it generate card draw, it lets you choose which player gets the draw. That's super important for the deck below, but it's also incredibly flexible and helpful for the team. Something else I really like about this card is that it only cares if the ally leaves play. Meaning that if an effect would force you to discard an ally or you're at your ally limit and need more space, you can still benefit from the ally being lost. Additionally, Web of Life and Destiny helps unlock Web-Warrior builds for heroes that are not Web-Warriors. Like many characters in the game, some of the Web-Warrior allies are trait-locked, meaning you must have a specific trait to play the ally. However, the Web-Warrior trait-locking is what I would call a "soft-lock." They don't require that your hero has the trait, only that you control a card with the trait. Enter Web of Life and Destiny. Not only does it give you the fantastic boon of giving any player a card draw when a Web-Warrior leaves play, it can facilitate playing all of the allies that have the soft-lock. If you're running any Web-Warrior build, this card is a must. Across the Spider-Verse Another auto-include for any Web-Warrior build, Across the Spider-Verse lets you ensure you can bring back your multiverse friends. Not only that, it can be triggered multiple times off a single play. You can choose to have yourself or another player repeat the ability, and then that person can choose themselves or someone else, and on and on and on until you run out of the things you need to pay the costs. As a bonus, this is also a nice way to get around Peter's Requirement ability, and it's a small discount compared to playing the 3+ cost allies from hand. Ghost-Spider This is likely one of the most powerful allies in the game, even if you're not running Web-Warrior. Not only will Ghost-Spider give you a card draw from Web of Life and Destiny, she will also hand-pick the hero event you most want from your deck. And since hero cards are usually the best cards (cough Legal Practice cough), you can snag something incredibly important. This is the one Web-Warrior ally that is worth running even if you run no other Web-Warrior cards. Just make sure you can get her into play with the likes of Make the Call. SP//dr SP//dr has some similarities with one of my other favorite allies: Starhawk. Both can be recurred into hand with their own ability, meaning that they become incredibly reliable and consistent cheap allies. Personally, I love cheap allies that incentivize you not to block with them, so SP//dr gains some brownie points from that. Here, SP//dr is essentially becoming a 1 cost source for 1 damage and 2 threat removal each turn (1 cost due to her drawing you a card from Web of Life and Destiny and not starting in your hand). Spider-Man: Peter Parker Spider-Man is incredibly flexible, and he can really accelerate your tempo. For Web-Warrior heroes, he's great for helping you be more flexible or really lean into a boosted stat. For non-Web-Warriors he is great for amping up allies like SP//dr. Honorable Mentions: Spider-Man (Spider-Men?) Hobie Brown and Otto Octavius are strong allies as is, and they can be powerhouses in the right deck. They can be deck dependent though, and they don't have quite the same overall impact. For example, Otto is naturally insane with the SP//dr hero, but essentially does nothing in the deck below. Hobie has some strong thwart, and he can crank out some unpredictable non-attack damage on the villain. Try It Out It's a little late for Christmas, but the gift giving continues with Captain Marvel. This is a deck that I took to Con of Heroes last year, and I had a blast handing out cards left and right. Shout-out to MrSelfDestruct from discord for reminding me of this deck, inspiring me to make some updates to it, and suggesting the new Mission Leader upgrade! Here it is on MarvelCDB! The whole point of this deck is to be as generous as possible. You can play it solo perfectly fine, but if you love playing support roles while still getting stuff done, then this is for you. Things you can give away: Carol Danvers' Commander card draw ability Avengers Mansion card draw Helicarrier discount Web of Life and Destiny card draw Mission Leader card draw Maria Hill card draw Players their own allies with Regroup An ally with Call for Backup A support with Build Support Basically you will be everyone's best friend. If you don't mind having a thick deck, feel free to toss in some reinforced suits or other ally upgrades for your friends. Some other notes: Agent 13 can ready Alpha Flight Station, which means in alter-ego you're getting bonus cards! Build Support can grab whatever you need most, but its primary target should be Web of Life and Destiny. Mission Leader only triggers if you are in hero form, so watch the timing. You'll be in alter-ego a decent bit with this deck. If you give the deck a spin, let me know how it goes! 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The goal of these articles are to expound upon rules found in the Learn to Play and Rules Reference Guide, incorporating relevant interactions that may fall outside either of the above. Hopefully these provide some insight and answer any questions you may have. Forms are one of the unique features of Marvel Champions that help to capture the thematic element of being a superhero. As a baseline, each identity card has two forms: alter-ego and hero. Alter-ego form is essentially your time away from the fight. While in alter-ego, the villain will progress their scheme, pushing toward one of their win conditions. There will be a number of cards and abilities that are exclusively usable in alter-ego form, and they will be labeled as such. Hero form is when you’re in the fight and messing up the villain’s plan. Most of your identity’s attacking and thwarting will happen in hero form. As above, there will be cards and abilities that are only usable in hero form. If a card ability is not labeled “hero” or “alter-ego”, it is usable in any form. As a baseline, you can choose to flip your identity card once per turn to change from one form to another. In addition to this, there are abilities that cause you to change form. These abilities do not count as your once-per-turn flip. It’s worth noting that the once-per-turn flip and changes from card abilities are not connected, so one cannot prevent the other from happening. Beyond these two built-in forms (alter-ego and hero), some heroes feature additional forms. Three heroes feature a “three-sided,” folding identity card that has an additional hero form (Angel, Ant-Man, and Wasp). Three others feature separate upgrade cards with the form keyword (Shadowcat, Spectrum, and Vision). Your once-per-turn flip can be used for the “three-sided” identities, but not for the separate form cards. Upgrades with the form keyword. There are a number of abilities that trigger on changing form. While you will find these abilities on all types of cards, all the current aspect and basic cards that trigger on changing form are Hero Response abilities. Most heroes will only be able to use them when flipping from alter-ego into hero form. This means at best they are only usable about half the game, and often less. Ready to Rumble and Moira MacTaggert stand out from the others, because they are played to the board and usable when needed. Moira also can be triggered when other players change to hero form, making it even more useful. Cards triggering on changing form. The heroes that have additional forms have more access to triggering these abilities. Changing from one hero form to another or changing your non-identity form upgrade meets the triggering condition for the "after you change form" abilities. This means these six heroes have more access to the form changing abilities throughout the game. Summary Additional Form Heroes: "Three-Fold" Identity Angel Ant-Man Wasp Form Upgrades Shadowcat Spectrum Vision Form Changing Cards: Lay Down the Law Moira MacTaggert Moxie Perseverance Ready to Rumble Surprise Attack Relevant RRG Sections: Ability (specifically Triggered Abilities) Form, Change Form Identity

Welcome back to the Mojoseum! Round 2 is officially done, and the results are in! Here are your Round 2 winners: Doctor Strange & Phoenix Angel & Spectrum Cable & Spider-Man (Peter) Ms. Marvel & Nova Black Panther & Captain America Captain Marvel & Venom The Black Panther & Captain America team up just managed to sneak ahead of Spider-Ham & War Machine. At the time of writing this, they were a single vote apart! If you want to see how the results shook out, here are the original articles. Just keep in mind that the voting doesn't actually close, so votes can fluctuate. Round 1, Part 1 Round 1, Part 2 Round 2 There is also a bracket at the end of the article! Now on to the good stuff! We have a new slate of baddies to go up against, and teams will pair off as before. Here are the three matchups for Round 3! Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 To Be Continued... That's it for this week! In two weeks I will post the results of Round 3 and the final matchup! In the finals the three remaining teams will all go up against the same villain. Below is the overall bracket.

Tracking all the triggers and abilities in Marvel Champions is one of the easiest things to mess up in this game. There are conditions on nearly every card, and as the game goes on, there are only more things to track. In this article, we’re going to take a look at triggering conditions for abilities, trigger windows, and timing priorities. We’ll do a few examples along the way, and there will be a few hidden answer examples at the end if you want to test your knowledge. Psst! I know after that title you were expecting a bouncing, stuffed tiger, but you're stuck with me instead. I’m here as the “Ackchyually” guy. In some cases being perfectly technical gets in the way of learning, so there will be some stuff Astrodar leaves out, glosses over, or even makes up for the sake of clarity. I’ll let you know when this happens. I’ll also include some fun* tidbits of extra info along the way. Don’t worry, though! You have my word that his info is still correct, regardless of omissions and made-up terms. Scout's Honor!** *Fun in a “I don’t understand what the word fun means” kind of way. **Technically he made me say that. Triggered Abilities Abilities are essentially any non-trait text in a card’s text box. Some are constant abilities that are always active when a card is in play, while others are keywords defined separately in the rules. Others yet are triggered abilities, where the text is preceded by a bold timing trigger indicating the ability is only active when triggered. These triggered abilities are what we’re focusing on in this article. While some triggered abilities are optional, others are mandatory. I've listed them below. While we won’t really go into it here, keep in mind that some of the timing triggers on abilities are also labeled Hero or Alter-Ego, which further limits when they can be triggered. Mandatory Triggered Abilities Boost Forced Interrupt Forced Response Setup* When Defeated When Revealed Optional Triggered Abilities Action Interrupt Resource Response *It’s worth noting that Setup is a keyword, while Setup is a timing trigger. There is no separate RRG entry for Setup, however, the ‘Ability’ entry and ‘Appendix II: Setup’ mention the timing trigger. See! "Fun!" Setup abilities are the first that you’ll run into during a game. These occur during step 12 (on the main scheme) and step 16 (on identity cards) during the game’s setup. After that, the easiest ability to understand is the Action ability. This is the easiest, because the triggering condition is… you! As long as it is the player phase and no other game step or ability is being resolved, you can choose to trigger an Action ability. This can be on your turn or another player’s turn! Resource abilities are nearly as simple, and they can be triggered when you’re paying the cost of another card or ability. There may be further limitations imposed, such as limiting the card type that a Resource ability can be used for (i.e. “generate an energy resource for a DEFENSE event”). The remaining triggered abilities all come with a timing trigger (Interrupt, Response, When Revealed, etc.) followed by a triggering condition in the ability text. For example, Upside the Head has the ‘Response’ timing trigger with “after your hero makes a basic attack and damages an enemy” as the triggering condition. Triggering conditions generally have “when” for an Interrupt or “after” for a Response as part of the description. Interrupt and Response timing triggers are worth diving into a little deeper. The timing trigger tells us the relationship between the triggering condition and the timing of the ability. An Interrupt ability will occur entirely before its triggering condition, while a Response ability will occur entirely after the triggering condition. One place where this really matters is with abilities that have multiple sentences or sentences with multiple effects. These are important to highlight, because while you cannot respond to an effect before it's done resolving, you can respond between sentences of an ability. Let's look at some examples. You're playing She-Hulk, and you're in alter-ego with the following hand: Split Personality, Surprise Attack, and four other cards each with a single resource. You play Split Personality, leaving only Surprise Attack and one other card in hand. The first sentence of Split Personality has you change form. If you do nothing else, you will resolve the second sentence and draw two cards, bringing you up to She-Hulk's hero hand size of four. However, you are allowed to respond between sentences. This means that you can play Surprise Attack (since it triggers on changing form), leaving you with no cards in hand. Then the second sentence resolves, allowing you to draw up to your full hand size. Keep in mind that moving on to the second sentence of Split Personality closes the window for 'form change' triggers. If during the resolution of the second sentence you were to draw into Surprise Attack, you cannot play it. Remember that while you can respond between sentences of an ability, you cannot respond in the middle of a sentence. Let's take a look at Spectrum to illustrate this point. If you play Gamma Blast, you will change to Gamma form and deal 7 damage. Those things happen simultaneously, and you cannot interrupt or respond to any part of it until the full sentence is resolved. This means you cannot trigger Gamma's Response ability to deal 1 damage until after the 7 damage has already been dealt. Bummer if your target has a Tough. So far we've been going through timing triggers, but that isn't the whole picture. Now let's dive into trigger windows. Trigger Windows When a triggering condition is met, it opens a window during which any ability with a matching triggering condition may be resolved. Multiple triggering conditions can be met at once, but only one window is opened. For example, the “after the villain attacks” condition shares a window with the “after your hero defends” condition. For the most part, a window stays open as long as players choose. However, it closes once the players do one of the following: move on by proceeding with another game step choose to activate an Action ability return to an outer trigger window (see below) resolve an ability or effect that invalidates or closes a trigger window There better be something below! What the hell is an outer trigger window? The first two are pretty simple. Essentially the players choose to move on, because there is nothing they want to do in the current trigger window. Once an Action ability is activated or you have moved to a new games step (such as finishing the villain attack and moving to deal encounter cards to players) you close all open windows. With the final two methods, there will be things that allow a window to remain open (even while playing other cards) or that prematurely close a window. Nested Trigger Windows After a trigger window is opened, secondary windows may be opened by abilities being resolved during the initial window. These windows are nested inside one another, meaning that when a new nested window opens, it doesn't close the current window. In other words, you can play Response and Interrupt abilities to this new trigger without closing the current window. As an example, we’ll look at Ms. Marvel’s Morphogenetics ability, Turn the Tide, and Justice Served. As the Ms. Marvel player, you use an event to clear the last threat on a side scheme. This opens up a window to play all cards that trigger off: your hero thwarting scheme being defeated all threat being removed from a scheme etc. As you can see, there are multiple triggering conditions, but they will share only one window. You chooses to play Turn the Tide, whose triggering condition has been met. Upon resolution of Turn the Tide, a second window opens up for all cards that trigger off your hero attacking playing an attack event etc. Thanks to this second window, Ms. Marvel can trigger her Morphogenetics ability, exhausting her identity to bring Turn the Tide back into hand. We don’t have anything else that triggers off playing an attack event or our hero attacking, so we let this window close and return to the outer trigger window*. Since the second window was nested inside the first, the first window hasn't closed, meaning we can play Turn the Tide again. After that, we have no further abilities to use, so we let this window close and move on. *I’m not sure if Astrodar knows this, but there is nothing about ‘nested’ or 'outer' windows in RRG 1.5. Actually there’s nothing about it in 1.6 either, but I’m not supposed to know that. It seems he is really just using these concepts to help demonstrate how players are choosing to close a trigger window by moving on with the game. To further the example above, let's assume the same situation given, but you also have Justice Served in play. Now you can pull Turn the Tide into hand a third time, by doing the sequence shown below. Invalidated Trigger Windows While most of the time players can choose to close a window at their whim, occasionally triggered abilities will invalidate or close a window. The best explanation here is, again, through Ms. Marvel. As the Ms. Marvel player, you are being attacked and dealt 5 damage. Luckily, you have Wiggle Room in hand, so you play it. As an Interrupt, its effect takes place before the damage is dealt, reducing the damage to 2 and drawing you a card. Being the clever Ms. Marvel player that you are, you trigger her Morphogenetics ability to pull Wiggle Room back into hand. Similar to our example above, the 'when you would take any amount of damage' window is still open. You play Wiggle Room a second time, reducing the damage to 0 and drawing a second card. What if, however, there were only 2 damage initially being dealt? The beginning of the sequence is the same. You play Wiggle Room and use Morphogenetics to bring it to hand. However, at this point you have reduced the damage to 0. The 'when you would take any amount of damage' window has closed, because there is no longer any damage being dealt. This means you cannot play Wiggle Room a second time, no matter how much you want that card draw. Similar Triggers and Timing Priorities First and foremost, it is important to remember that the triggering condition is the really important part! The timing trigger simply tells you when the ability happens in relation to the trigger (An Interrupt is before and a Response is after) and the ability’s priority if multiple abilities trigger off the same triggering condition. When there are multiple abilities that trigger from the same triggering condition, they will resolve according to the priority timing chart on page 5 of RRG 1.5. I have reproduced it here. Timing: Constant abilities, keywords, and acceleration, amplify, crisis, and hazard icons Status cards “Forced Interrupt” abilities “Interrupt” abilities “Boost,” “When Defeated,” and “When Revealed” abilities “Forced Response” abilities “Response” abilities Consequential damage Remember that the triggering condition must be met first. The timing chart only applies within the same trigger window. If there are multiple abilities with the same triggering condition and timing trigger, you can resolve them in the order of your choice. Let's take a look at some Protection upgrades as an example. Forcefield Generator, Energy Barrier, and Defensive Stance are all upgrades with the "when you would take any amount of damage" triggering condition. This means they will all have the same trigger window. Forcefield Generator has a Forced Interrupt ability, so it must be resolved before the Interrupt abilities on Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance. If Forcefield Generator prevents all the damage, Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance cannot be triggered. However, if there is still damage left over after Forcefield Generator, you can choose the activation order for Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance, because they share the same timing trigger. When you have cases like above, it's worth emphasizing that you should ensure they do actually have the same triggering condition. There are many similar, but different, triggering conditions to track. This is a particularly good spot to talk about ‘would.’ In Marvel Champions, ‘would’ shifts a triggering condition to an earlier point in time. Using the example from RRG 1.5, “when a character would be defeated” occurs before “when a character is defeated.” This is important, because it can prevent some triggering conditions from ever happening. For example, let's look at some defense events. Both Defiance and Preemptive Strike have Interrupt abilities that depend on a boost card being turned face up. However, Defiance's trigger cares about when a boost card "would be turned faceup," while Preemptive Strike cares about when a boost card "is turned face up." This means Defiance actually triggers at an earlier point. If you play it, the boost card is discarded instead of being turned faceup, and Preemptive Strike does not have an opportunity to trigger. As another example, we can look at an interaction Colossus may run into with Master Mold. Armor Up and Master Mold's ability both care about the villain activating. Though Master Mold is more specific, requiring a scheme activation, there is no timing difference between a villain activating, scheming, or attacking. Activating is just the more general term that encompasses both scheming and attacking. However, Armor Up's Interrupt ability has the trigger condition 'when the villain would activate,'* while Master Mold's Forced Interrupt ability has the condition 'when Master Mold schemes.' If these shared a window, Master Mold would trigger first. However, 'would' pushes Armor Up to an earlier time, meaning it is actually triggering in a different window. *I know what you're thinking. "Astrodar has lost it. There is no 'would' on Armor Up." While that first bit is true, the second isn't! There is an errata for Armor Up that changes 'activates' to 'would activate.' This allows the interactions to all work properly. You can find the errata on page 55 of RRG 1.5. Windows During Enemy Attacks To give us an idea of what triggering conditions we may see during an enemy attack and when we might see them, let’s look at this list below. This list isn’t guaranteed to be complete, but it does contain the most common triggers. (At least he’s honest about the carefree way he throws rules to the wind.) “when [character] attacks”, “when [character] initiates an attack”, “when [character] activates” when [character] basic defends turn boost card faceup deal damage take damage defeated (if applicable) leaves play (if applicable) after [character] attacks, after [character] activates, after [character] defends Conditions 3-7 each have a ‘when’ and ‘after’ version that occurs before/after the listed condition. Remember that adding ‘would’ to any of the above statements shifts it immediately above the same statement without ‘would.’ It’s also worth noting that in the outline above, I only pointed out the basic defense trigger. A ‘when [character] defends’ trigger can happen at any point in the process due to various timing on defense events. If you don’t use a basic defense, but later play a defense event, that would create the ‘when [character] defends’ triggering condition. I want to emphasize that dealing damage and taking damage are two separate steps during an attack. For example, let’s look at Rhino with a Tough status card and his Armored Rhino Suit attached. For the sake of precision, the RRG 1.5 entry for Tough states: If a character with a tough status card would take any amount of damage, prevent all of that damage and discard a tough status card from that character instead. Our two triggering conditions are “when any amount of damage would be dealt to Rhino” and “if a character with a tough status card would take any amount of damage.” If we attack Rhino with a 2 ATK hero, we exhaust our hero and deal 2 damage to Rhino. This opens up the ‘dealing damage’ window, triggering Armored Rhino Suit’s Forced Interrupt and placing the damage on the card instead. Since there are no more abilities that trigger on ‘dealing damage,’ we close the window and move on. There is no longer any damage for Rhino to take, so the ‘taking damage’ window never opens, and Tough* does not interact in any way. *This is a good time to mention that the first sub-bullet to the third bullet of the Damage section is incorrect. If that’s not enough bullets, I swear I’ve got more. We know this entry is incorrect via the Official Rules Specialist, Alex. Dealing damage happens first, then tough, then taking damage. Conclusion I hope this helps give you a better grasp on triggering conditions and timing windows. With luck, I’ll be back to make any adjustments based on a new RRG, rules answers, or maybe even just with more examples. For now, you can find a few more examples below. Thanks Thanks to the discord rules gurus who helped out with this one: igorbone, journeyman2, SCOE, Scott Hill, and Theorel. Get a load of this guy! He doesn't even give me credit in the Thanks section? What's a guy gotta do around here to get a little recognition for all his hard work? Relevant RRG Entries Ability p4 Action p5 After p6 Appendix II: Setup p43 Forced p17 Interrupt p21 Resource Ability p30 Response p31 Tough p36 Triggered Ability p37 Triggering Condition p37 When Defeated Abilities p39 When Revealed Abilities p39 "Would" p40 Examples Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Question 1: Building upon the example given in the article, let’s say that Ms. Marvel has Counter-Punch in hand and Indomitable in play. If she plays a defense event (aka defends against an attack), how many times can she play Counter-Punch? (If you're getting stressed about playing Counter-Punch for Ms. Marvel's measly 1 ATK, pretend she used Repurpose during the player phase to boost her ATK to 4.) All Dressed Up, and Something Must Go Question 2: Both of these attachments are on one minion, and that minion has two hit points. What happens if you attack it and it takes two damage? Question 3: Both of these attachments are on one non-elite minion, and that minion has two hit points. What happens if you defeat the player side scheme Take Out the Guards? The Thorn in Thor's Side Question 4: Loki has 1 damage on him. Thor swings his mighty hammer, exhausts his identity, and deals 3 damage to Loki. If the top card of the encounter deck is a treachery, will you be able to trigger Battle Fury? *Back in my day, Loki's ability was optional. However, someone decided it was an error that needed to be errata'd to a Forced Interrupt. You can find the errata on page 54 of RRG 1.5. Though depending on how frustrated one is by Loki healing sixteen goddamn times, one may choose to ignore that errata. #PlayHowYouWant

It's officially 2024, which means it is time for all the end of the year retrospectives! Before I dive into a little bit about my Marvel Champions year, I'll announce the winner of the hero pack contest. The winner is... Jamie! But wait! In a much less exciting version of a fourth name popping out from the Goblet of Fire, it seems we have a bonus winner! ZetaRinGrina! (I had a little extra floating around, so I bumped it up to have two winners. A pro of being in charge.) The winners have been emailed. Thank you everyone for entering. I loved reading your favorite things about the game, and I've shared a couple favorites below: How modular it is, and honestly, the great online community around it! The theme!! Getting to essentially command a team of Marvel heroes against the villains of your choosing is the "grown-up" equivalent to smashing your action figures around. Imagining comic scenes coming to life is a reason this game is so special for so many people. The joy of customization and all cards are listed and not random (hero packs and etc) Astrodar's 2023 2024 saw seven expansions containing: 8 heroes 5 scenarios 12 modular sets a new player card type (player side schemes) a new aspect ('Pool) Deadwolf from the Marvel Champions Community Server shared their "Best of 2023," which inspired me to share mine here. Below you will find all my favorites of the year! If there is a close runner-up, I've included them in parenthesis. I also pulled allies and side schemes into their own category to help show off some of the fun cards. Favorite: Hero: Cable (X-23) Ally: Honey Badger (Outlaw) Aspect Ally: Fantomex (Armor) Player Side Scheme: Call for Backup (Lock and Load) Aggression Card: Bombs Away Justice Card: Upside the Head Leadership Card: Med Lab Protection Card: Taunt 'Pool Card: Tic-Tac-Toe Basic Card: Digging Deep Scenario: Juggernaut Modular Set: Flight Most Played: Heroes: SP//dr Drax Black Widow Aspect Aggression Protection is my favorite aspect, but this year Aggression just snuck ahead for number of plays. I played a lot of SP//dr Aggression at Con of Heroes and a lot of Drax Aggression for Solo Champions League. X-23 gets a big shoutout. The only reason Cable beat her out is that I don't feel I have enough plays of her to for sure move her ahead. But she is a lot of fun. Outlook I think the game is in a really solid place right now. NeXt Evolution was such an incredible box to play through. The designs really rewarded things like going to alter-ego and defending. It’s a box that I would easily recommend for someone just getting into the game. ‘Pool was a really fun surprise, and I love both how silly it is and that the silliness is pulled out from the standard aspects. Age of Apocalypse has been announced, and I’m excited for its release in March. In the meantime, I’m going to be diving into these X-Force heroes more!

Pssst! There is a holiday giveaway going on until January 1, 2024! You can enter here! Welcome back to the Mojoseum! Round 1 is officially done, and the results are in! Here are your Round 1 winners: Cyclops & Wolverine Doctor Strange & Phoenix Psylocke & Thor Angel & Spectrum Colossus & Deadpool Cable & Spider-Man: Peter Ant-Man & Shadowcat Ms. Marvel & Nova Spider-Ham & War Machine Black Panther & Captain America Captain Marvel & Venom Gamora & X-23 If you want to see how the results shook out exactly, here are the original articles: Round 1, Part 1 Round 1, Part 2 There is also a bracket at the end of the article! Now on to the good stuff! We have a new slate of baddies to go up against, and teams will pair off as before. Here are the six matchups for Round 2! Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match 4 Match Match 6 To Be Continued... That's it for this week! Next week I will post the results of Round 2 and the semi-final match-ups! Below is the overall bracket!

As a gift to each of you, I have made this ode to Night Before Christmas. If that's not enough of a gift (ya greedy little elves!), there's a contest below for a hero pack! ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my decks Not a creature was stirring, not even T-Rex; The cards were all sorted from front to the back, divided so neatly by new Tesseracts. The heroes were nestled all snug in their sleeves, While Vision and Shadowcat phased through their dreams. My cards were all ready and my playmat the same, So I settled on in for another quick game. First I pulled out my phone to see all the chatter. I opened up discord to see what was the matter. I scrolled past the messages of fixes for Hulk and questions of when the next article posts. Discord was quiet this holiday night, so I pulled up Cerebro to choose me a fight. When what from the randomizer should appear, But Ronan with Mystique and, of course, Goblin Gear. With a dastardly villain and no hope for change, I knew in a moment it was time for Strange. More rapid than eagles I pulled out his kit, Then saw blue and gray as I chose Leadership. Now Fury! Now, Kaluu! Now Hill and Professor! In, Panther! In Stinger! In, Beast and White Tiger! Grab Rapid Response, Regroup, Make the Call! Now recur cards! Recur cards! Recur them all! As I looked at my deck, I thought “Oh of course!” Then added to it every double resource. The Mystic locked cards were added on top. Then Triskelion and Call for Backup. And then, in a twinkling, with my deck looking grand The scenario started, and I drew up my hand. As I mulliganed away the cards that were unwanted, I drew up again, certainly feeling quite daunted. He was dressed in his armor, his hammer in grip, A hazard icon sitting right on his ship. A side scheme he pulled from the deck on Stage II, A crisis icon limiting what I could do. With a hand full of cards and Rings of Raggadorr, I flipped up to hero to fight the Accuser. Allies were played, Invocations resolved. The puzzle of using each resource was solved. But soon my turn ended, and I gritted my teeth. Apparently Bands was still underneath. Without any stun or confuse to give aid, the villain phase started much to my dismay. The threat it increased. The amount was absurd. The main scheme was already ready to burst. The villain activation was up ahead, and I knew right away I had everything to dread. He wasted no time, but went straight to his work, attacking with two boost cards like a jerk. Then dealing encounter cards, oh what a bother. Surprise! Fanaticism; forced to surge to another. I drew Advanced Glider then, of course, was accused. I wish I could say I was left only bruised. I said as I scooped the few cards from the fight, What was even the point? I’ll call it a night. No Marvel Champions players were hurt in the creation of this rhyme. Contest Thanks for making it this far! Simply click the button below and fill out the Google form to enter the contest. Contest rules are as follows: Giveaway restricted to those residing in the US and Canada. The winner gets one hero pack of their choice from an online retailer that reasonably ships to their address. The winner will need to provide an address for shipping. The winner will be drawn on January 2, 2024. The winner will be contacted via the email address provided below. If the winner doesn't respond within 48 hours, a new winner will be selected. Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Welcome back to the Mojoseum! Following up on last week's post, this is the second half of Round 1! As a reminder, I have randomly paired heroes into teams. Two teams will face off against a semi-randomly assigned scenario. I chose some scenarios for each round, then randomly assigned them modular sets and teams. Your job is to vote on which team you think can handle the scenario best. You have the freedom to choose whichever aspect you want for each hero. The team with the most votes will move on to the next round to match up against another team and a new scenario. So let's take a look at the second half of the round, consisting of 6 matchups! Match 7 Match 8 Match 9 Match 10 Match 11 Match 12 To Be Continued... Thats it for this week! Next week I will post the results of Round 1 and the Round 2 pairings. There are 3 remaining rounds, and each will be posted a week apart. We'll see you next week, and in the mean time let me know if you have any fun team names for the teams above!

Things have gotten out of hand, and as usual it has fallen to your team to fix it. Multiple issues have risen across the globe, so you're going to have to split your team up. Assign your team members to scenarios and guide them to success! Rules: You can only use one team for the challenge. You can only use each hero once. You can only use each aspect once. You can use one bonus card each scenario. The bonus card does not count against your deck and starts in play. You can only use each bonus card once. Bonus cards cannot be used in deck-building for any scenario in the challenge. Pick a team and assign your heroes to their missions! Avengers: Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, She-Hulk, Spider-Man: Peter Parker, Vision Avenger Bonuses: Avengers Mansion, Avengers Tower, Quincarrier, Quinjet Guardians: Adam Warlock, Drax, Gamora, Groot, Nebula, Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Venom Guardian Bonuses: Charlie-27, C.I.T.T., Jack Flag, Knowhere Adam Warlock Note: Because Adam Warlock must use four aspects, simply remove one aspect of your choice from your options for the remaining challenges. X-Men: Colossus, Cyclops, Gambit, Phoenix, Rogue, Shadowcat, Storm, Wolverine X-Men Bonuses: The X-Jet, X-Mansion, Utopia, Danger Room Challenges: Brotherhood of Badoon with Ship Command, Enchantress, and Spectrum's Nemesis Set Zola with Ransacked Armory Venom with Symbiotic Strength and Nasty Boys Thanos with Weapon Master and Military Grade The Space Stone Special now reads: Discard 5 cards from the encounter deck. Place this card in the Infinity Stone deck discard pile. Example: If I chose to use Guardians, I could choose Rocket Racoon in Aggression to take on Zola. I'm taking Jack Flag as my bonus card, so he will start in play. In my next challenge, I can take anyone but Rocket in Justice, Leadership, or Protection (or 'Pool!). I can also take any bonus card except Jack Flag. Team-Up! This challenge was designed with true solo in mind, but if you want to add a second player, do the following: Each hero can only be used once. Each player can only use each aspect once. The first player chooses a bonus card to put into play under their control. Congratulate or Commiserate! Come join me on discord or reddit to discuss who you chose and how the challenge is going! I hang out in the following spaces: Marvel Champions Community Discord Living Card Games Discord Reddit Post This is something I am considering turning into a recurring series. Let me know if you enjoyed it and if you'd like to see more!

Welcome to the Mojoseum! As I'm always up for a good show, I have created a series of trials to find who the best (or maybe luckiest) pair of heroes is this year! I have randomly paired heroes into teams. Since we have an odd number of heroes, one hero was unfortunately left out. And the first recipient of the "The Computer Didn't Pick Me" award goes to Wasp! Sorry Wasp. Two teams will face off against a semi-randomly assigned scenario. I chose some scenarios for each round, then randomly assigned them modular sets and teams. Your job is to vote on which team you think can handle the scenario best. You have the freedom to choose whichever aspect you want for each hero. The team with the most votes will move on to the next round to match up against another team and a new scenario. So let's take a look at the first half of the round, consisting of 6 matchups! Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match 4 Match 5 Match 6 To Be Continued... Thats it for this week! Next week I will post the second part of Round 1. There will be 4 total rounds, each posted a week apart. We'll see you next week, and in the mean time let me know if you have any fun team names for the teams above!

Recently I joined Nelson All Over Cards in a roundtable discussion of the new Age of Apocalypse announcement. You can check it out on YouTube!

Continuing mankind’s obsessive need to shove everything in a box, I have grouped the scenarios into categories that share a similar feel of play. This isn't saying that each scenario in the category plays exactly the same. Nor is this categorization based exclusively on the mechanisms of the scenario, though you will see a strong influence from that. Instead, the goal of this categorization is to present similar styles of scenario to help a player or play group determine which scenario they may want to play. For example, if you have just completed the journey that is Hela, perhaps you’d like to play another “adventure style” scenario. Take a peek at the Adventure category, and you'll find Hela alongside some other similar scenarios. Below you'll find a short list of the categories. If you want to skip ahead, click the link to the category you're interested in. You'll find a blurb on what the category is, and I give a brief comment on each scenario in the category. These comments are not intended to give you a synopsis or review of the scenarios, but rather to justify their inclusion and to point to some interesting play. Fisticuffs: Roll up your sleeves, because this is a fistfight. Attrition: Death by one thousand cuts. Swarm: It's like a clown car, but the scenario is the car and minions the clowns. Boss: Queue the cut scene, we've got ourselves a boss battle. Adventure: Buckle-up Bilbo, you’ve got an adventure ahead of you. Guardian: We’re the Guardians of the… Senator or Tower or you know… whatever. Thief: Hey! That’s my stuff! The Hood: Variety is the spice of life. Methodology Before we dive in, I want to include some of the thought processes behind these categorizations. I am taking a very general approach to the scenario. I am accounting for the required modular sets, but not for the recommended modular sets. If the recommended modular sets make a notable difference in how a scenario feels to play, I’ll be sure to note it. Otherwise, any modular sets you add will be adding their own flavor*. For example, the Swarm category features scenarios with a lot of minions. A high minion mod like Band of Badoon is going to make any scenario feel more like a Swarm scenario regardless of which category the scenario is in. I also am not specifically considering Standard or Expert. If there is a notable difference between the two, I’ll comment on it. But generally the scenario as a whole has the same general vibe. *I have my own categorization of mods in the works, but in the meantime, check out Get Up and Game's modular set breakdown on BoardGameGeek! This can be a helpful guide in how modular set choice will influence the scenario's style. Fisticuffs I would point to this category as being the quintessential Marvel Champions experience. These villains are straight up bruisers. You’ll be duking it out with the villains, and their main focus is knocking you down. They tend to hit hard and hit often. Juggernaut This scenario is so focused on defeating you, that it removes one of the main loss conditions in Marvel Champions: losing to threat. Instead, each time the main scheme threshold is met, you’ll simply get attacked by Juggernaut, regardless of your identity's form. You’ll have to manage his helmet carefully, as with it, his attacks have overkill, restricting the usefulness of having allies block for you. While Juggernaut does include a secondary loss condition with Hope Summers, there’s surprisingly little in the scenario that actually focuses on her. But since it is there, we’ll also give Juggernaut an Honorary Guardian categorization (see below). MaGog One of the few scenarios that offers an alternate win condition, MaGog is nothing but a duke-it-out fist fight. You can only win the scenario by impressing the crowd, but the primary way to do that is by defeating MaGog again and again. Just as mentioned with Juggernaut, MaGog also removes threat as a primary loss condition. Instead the scenario shifts scheming out to progressing MaGog’s secondary loss condition: winning the crowd’s favor. Rhino For many players, Rhino was the first experience with Marvel Champions. He is built to hit hard, and with some of the more recent modular sets, he can be buffed out to be quite the threat. He is the quintessential Fisticuffs scenario. (Yes, I realize I've already used 'quintessential' twice. I'm going to use it some more, so learn to deal with it, bucko!) Ronan Ronan the Accuser has some high pressure across the board, but his primary focus is knocking you silly. He has five activation treacheries in his scenario, meaning that once you include Standard cards, he has eight different treacheries that give him extra attacks. On top of the extra activations, he has a permanent hazard icon, meaning you’re seeing more encounter cards each round. He is a tough fight, and easily the most difficult in this category. For this reason, you’ll also see him over in the Boss category. Venom With a unique twist on the format, Venom’s attacks are made powerful by extra boost cards that pile up each time you damage him. When he hits, you’re going to need some strong support or blocking. Those boost cards can really build up, pushing some incredible damage and triggering some rough boost abilities. Wrecking Crew The first of the multi-villain scenarios to make the list, Wrecking Crew doesn’t bring anything particularly different than the other Fisticuff scenarios beyond having multiple villains. The main scheme pressure is limited, and the active villain is very much just looking to hit you hard. Attrition While the villains in these scenarios can still hit hard, they come along with many smaller effects that either apply pressure across multiple fronts or lean into one particular front, like indirect damage. These scenarios can be a lot more disruptive than your Fisticuffs scenarios, handing out status effects, exhaustions, encounter cards in your deck, and more. Absorbing Man Keying off the environment cards Absorbing Man is mimicking, the treacheries in this set have a wide range of abilities, each adding a bit more pressure on the players. Keep an eye out though, because he can hit decently hard if given the chance. Brotherhood of Badoon Surely this one is an error. This is one of *the* premiere minion scenarios. I hear you. You are not alone if you think that. But, take a moment and hear me out. And don't call me Shirley. Drang’s invasion offers a multitude of ways to add pressure. First, he will be occasionally raining down some indirect damage from his Badoon Ship. As the scenario progresses, the indirect damage will come more frequently. Beyond that he taxes your access to the Milano through a bunch of side schemes and treacheries. The scenario as a whole generates a lot of threat to deal with. Now... this is one of the scenarios where the recommended modular set can make a huge difference. The recommended mod is Band of Badoon, a set with ten minions in it. By itself, that modular set will make any scenario feel like a Swarm scenario (see below). However, if you play on Expert, Drang III’s “When Revealed” effect can throw a bunch of minions on the board for a huge tempo change. It is a lot of fun, and if you’re looking to preserve that, ensure that you use minion heavy mods. Because of that stage III ability, Brotherhood of Badoon gets an Honorary Swarm categorization. However, that stage III ability is the only thing in his set that pertains to minions. And it can completely whiff, even with a big minion mod. If you swap out the recommended mod for something else, you completely lose the Swarm vibe. Crossbones Crossbones has one main approach: pull the trigger. He’s going to be dealing a lot of small damage packets with Crossbones’ Machine Gun, his Full Auto treachery, and Hydra Bomber. However, he also features 3 modular sets, and he can gain a lot of variety from those inclusions. Ebony Maw The spells cast by Ebony Maw can be really disruptive, but you can see them coming. This lets you play around the effects to a point, shifting to ensure you’re prepared for the upcoming effects. You’ll see extra damage, exhaust effects, ping damage, and ping threat. As a point of interest, 8 of 17 encounter cards in his set have surge on them, which means you’ll feel the modular sets you add a lot more than most scenarios. Klaw Klaw can really let modular sets with boost abilities shine! His own encounter cards are fairly varied in effect, and they all lean into being fairly disruptive. He heals himself, stuns and exhausts heroes, and forces discards from hand among other things. Mysterio Mysterio is the king of annoying little sting effects. You could say... wait for it... it's the quintessential Attrition experience. He will seed your deck with encounter cards, forcing you to deal with them as extra encounter cards later. Many of his cards deal small amounts of damage or place small amounts of threat. However, they recur often, building pressure as they go. As the number of encounter cards in your deck builds, you can feel each card draw become more tense. Risky Business The majority of Risky Business focuses on forcing a flip back and forth between Norman Osborn and Green Goblin, dealing a lot of damage along the way. Lots of the effects on the encounter cards are small, pushing Green Goblin toward flipping back and Norman Osborn further from flipping. Sandman Sandman’s attacks deal indirect damage, preventing you from effectively blocking with allies and punishing you for damaging your hero. His City Streets environment burns through the encounter deck, forcing acceleration tokens to build faster than usual. Many of his effects are small, but they spread out the damage and build permanent threat pressure through the acceleration tokens. Taskmaster With a lot of small effects like retaliate, damage from flipping to hero form, rebound damage, and forced discards from hand, Taskmaster really fits the bill for Attrition. In addition, he offers the players plenty of help by offering up allies that have been captured by HYDRA. Swarm These scenarios feature a lot of minions or minion-like characters. There are two subcategories here. First is the Overlord category, where one main villain pumps out minions. Second is the Gang Up category where there are potentially multiple villains, some with minion counterparts that show up again and again. So why not split them into two separate categories all together? Partially because I decided to do subcategories semi-last second, but was too lazy to rewrite a few things. And partially because I want to retain a category that is minion focused. The difference between the two subcategories is distinct, but both do focus on minion (or minion-like) characters. Swarm: Overlord Master Mold Master Mold will produce a Sentinel minion every time he schemes. Additionally, you’ll start the game engaged to a minion, and all Sentinel minions have guard. This really amplifies their inclusion in the scenario, because you simply can’t ignore them. The minions in the scenario and required set are also pretty beefy, so you’ll have to put some effort into defeating them. Mutagen Formula There are twelve minions built into this scenario, and ten of those can enter play from their boost effect. This scenario truly feels like a swarm as Green Goblin launches minions out at you. Bonus tip: If you like Band of Badoon and don't mind bending the rules a bit, you can make a similar modular set using the goblins in Mutagen Formula. To make this Goblin Army modular set, you can just take any ten goblins (or all twelve, I won’t judge). However, I recommend the following: 1x Goblin Knight 4x Goblin Soldier 4x Goblin Thrall 1x Monster Toss them in anywhere, but I find they work really well with Klaw (go boost go!), Venom (yay boosts!), Zola (beefy goblins!), and Brotherhood of Badoon. Ultron Why bring your own minions when you can just create some from the players’ decks? Ultron can really churn out minions in the form of drones, but Ultron II in particular amps it up. While the minions in this scenario will be quite small, there is a continuous stream of them during the game. Zola The Mad Doctor also has a minion producing ability, churning out a new minion roughly every three turns. In addition, you’ll find two other side schemes that produce a minion when defeated. Tying this to the nine minions in his scenario and a bunch of attachments that surge if a minion isn’t in play, you will have a constant flow of minions to defeat. Honorary Overlord: Brotherhood of Badoon There is really only one ability in this scenario that interacts directly with minions, and it only happens once. However, it is a such a volatile and fun moment when Drang III's "When Revealed" ability triggers, that Brotherhood of Badoon with a minion heavy modular set earns an Honorary Overlord title. The recommended set is Band of Badoon, and it is one of the best. However, there are some mods and mod combinations that can create a similar effect. I've listed some below, noting how many are minions (minions/total cards). There are definitely more fun combinations than this, but these do a great job at seeding the deck with enough minions. Kree Militants (8/9) Menagerie Medley (9/9) Sinister Assault (6/6) + Beasty Boys (2/4) Hydra Assault (5/6) + Hydra Patrol (5/6) Black Tom Cassidy (5/7) + Mutant Insurrection (4/5) Goblin Army (I mention this in Mutagen Formula's comment.) Swarm: Gang Up Mansion Attack In this assault on Xavier's school, you’ll see a number of enemies show up as both the villain and as minions. The scenario features a variety of ways to pull the minion versions into play, causing you to fight these enemies over and over throughout the course of the game. This scenario is widely variable, but one of the main through lines is seeing the Brotherhood minions pop in and out of play. On the Run This is one that may feel like an odd inclusion here, so I’m going to back up my “vibes check” with some numbers. Within the scenario there will be multiple points where the Marauder minions are pulled into play. First, you will put one into play with each player during setup. Then, you will do this again after defeating the villain the first time. In the encounter deck, there will be 6 minions and 5 encounter cards that put those minions into play. That means on Standard, 11 out of the 24 encounter cards can put minions into play. Once you include the two modular sets (assuming 6 cards each), you’re still at about one third of the deck being minion focused, even if you only use mods with no additional minions (the recommended setup sits between 45-50% of the deck being minion focused). And that is on top of the two times a game where each player is guaranteed to get a minion. Rest easy. I’m done with numbers! The above is all to say that you’re going to see a lot of minions here, and because a lot of them will end up gaining Guard, they’re going to feel like a big part of the scenario. And I haven’t even mentioned yet that being engaged with a Marauder minion will cause the villain to scheme instead of attack! Sinister Six Surely this is a mistake! You've copied and pasted into the wrong spot! I didn't, and I told you not to call me Shirley. While this scenario has very few actual minions in it, the Sinister Six villains are all minion-like in their ATK, SCH, and health. They will be popping into play repeatedly, always giving the feel of a minion target being available. You still have to make some adjustment here though, as a minion-focused player deck will not have adequate targets in the scenario, despite it being a Swarm scenario. Boss These are the scenarios that feel the most like a boss fight. There are some pretty major effects to go along with big attacks and schemes, and there is generally pressure coming on every front. This is the one category that is more indicative of difficulty. It’s also the category that kind of builds itself, as you’ll notice each of the final villains from the campaign boxes are in this category. Loki Sporting the Infinity Gauntlet, Loki has multiple forms of himself that pop in and out of play. These different forms have a variety of strengths, meaning you have to answer for anything that may show up. Additionally, the pressure from the Infinity Gauntlet is amplified by some of his encounter cards. This scenario is even more deserving of the Boss category at Standard, as with the exception of the three Expert modular set cards, it is exactly the same difficulty as Expert right up until you win. Magneto Magneto takes you through multiple schemes during the battle against him, adding an adventure like element to his scenario. His recurring ability to pull magnetic cards from the discard pile add a lot of pressure, and you can feel the added tension as you watch the magnet counters tick up. All in all, he very much feels like a boss battle. Nebula One of the few scenarios in this category that aren’t the conclusion of a campaign box, Nebula sneaks into the Boss category based on her more difficult games. Surge can create huge tempo changes in her favor, and between both her techniques and evasion counters vying for your resources there is a lot of additional pressure in the scenario. That said, she can be quite variable. You can luck into some good draws that avoid building up her techniques, making the scenario much simpler. Red Skull With his unique mechanism that focuses on side schemes, Red Skull pumps out a lot of threat you need to deal with. You’re essentially playing each round with a permanent hazard icon that exclusively pulls side schemes. There are a few mods that can really send Red Skull over the top, such as the infamous Legions of Hydra. Ronan Making his second appearance in this article, Ronan certainly deserves to be in the Boss category. He applies a lot of pressure across all fronts, but first and foremost he is looking to attack you. Stryfe Stryfe is one of (if not the) most disruptive villains in the game. The way that he messes with your play area and the cost of your cards can really create a unique Marvel Champions experience. At times you feel almost sluggish trying to overcome the tax on playing cards. Additionally, with his ability to have a massively boosted attack, his attacks do actually feel threatening. All in all, he joins the ranks of final campaign box villains as another boss battle. Thanos To me, Thanos is the quintessential boss battle. The scenario is really quite simple. He focuses on activating against you, triggering the Infinity Gauntlet, and hitting you really hard. While there’s really not much else going on beyond that, the scenario feels grand. Venom Goblin If there were any of the bosses that got Honorary Attrition, Venom Goblin would be it. There are a ton of small effects that build up over the absurd number of encounter cards that he can throw at you. The main scheme specials are triggering all over the place, each putting just another bit of pressure on the heroes. However, he still feels like a sprawling battle, forcing you to really manage the board state and be prepared for huge tempo swings. Adventure These scenarios feel a little less like a fist fight and more like an adventure. There are defined stages where the scenario progresses along in its story, though those stages may be through schemes, villain stages, or other methods. Escape the Museum As you race out of the museum, you’ll find the Milano, dodge the Collector’s ship, and thwart your way to victory. There is a clear progression of stages here, and you feel like you’re working your way through an adventure. Hela The scenario that defines the category*, Hela has you trudging through Hel looking to save Odin and defeat Hela. You’ll work your way through three beefy mini-bosses and three locations before rescuing Odin and dealing with Hela directly. It’s quite the romp, and well deserving of the Adventure category. *That was my clever way of not saying quintessential. Kang The progression of this adventure has you moving through time and space as you battle against various versions of Kang. In the second act, you'll move into separate play areas, each player facing off against a separate Kang. While defeating the Kangs is the focus, this still feels very much like an adventure. Honorary Adventure: Mojo You’ll battle your way across various shows in the Mojoverse as you work to defeat Mojo. While this scenario is far more variable than the others in this category, the progression here still provides unique stages of the game, and as the show environments swap, the game changes significantly. The reason this only lands in Honorary is that you may never see the progression, as it isn’t tied directly to the win condition. Instead, it is a progression toward a loss condition as the encounter deck runs out. Guardian In these scenarios, there is a secondary loss condition involving some entity you need to protect. Be it a person or a building, you must protect it to complete your mission. Mister Sinister On the final main scheme stage of Mister Sinister, every time he attacks, he will attack Hope Summers. While you can go entire games without him reaching this third stage, Sinister puts a lot of pressure on the main schemes and really pushes toward that final stage. Since it becomes the full focus of the scenario at that point, you must be prepared to defend Hope multiple times, something that merits Mister Sinister being a Guardian scenario. Morlock Siege During the villain phase of Round 3, Morlock Siege introduces the Morlocks. These are the characters you are working to protect, because they are your secondary loss condition. If you lose all the Morlocks, you lose. Since there is a delay in their introduction, you can conceivably win games before they ever show up. However, most of the time the focus of the scenario will be on attacking the Morlocks you control. Sabretooth A recreation of the classic X-Men event, in this scenario you need to rescue and then protect Senator Kelly. If you control Robert Kelly and don’t defend Sabretooth’s attack, the damage will be dealt to Senator Kelly. If he is defeated, you lose the game! Make sure you keep him in play! Tower Defense As you square up against Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight, you’ll need to defeat them before they destroy Avengers Tower. There are some encounter cards that damage the tower unless you have an encounter card cancel, but for the most part, you’ll be making a choice each activation that will either prevent or result in damage being dealt to Avengers Tower. Left unchecked, the villains will destroy the tower and you will lose the game. Honorary Guardian Both of these scenarios have Hope Summers as a required mod, meaning there is a character that you have to protect in order to not lose. However, neither of them have much by way of encounter cards that actually threaten Hope, which is why they’re just getting the Honorary Guardian title. Juggernaut Juggernaut has two copies of one card that targets Hope. If you are in Hero form when you reveal Trample, Juggernaut will attack the ally with the fewest remaining hit points (which may be Hope). As a boost card, it will deal 1 damage to an ally you control (which may be Hope). The two copies of this card can certainly lose you the game, but it is more of a “be prepared” thing than the whole scenario being focused around it. You can quite literally remove Hope Summers from the setup and have zero impact on the rest of the scenario. If you want more on Juggernaut, you can reference his Fisticuffs entry. Stryfe Stryfe has one card that targets Hope (Mental Transferal), and it only targets her during the first portion of the scenario. It’s a pretty easy card to work around, assuming you can come up with a source of 1-2 damage. This is another scenario with a secondary loss condition that isn’t integrated enough to justify full inclusion into the Guardian category. However, it still deserves an Honorary Guardian. If you want more on Stryfe, you can reference his Boss entry. Thief These scenarios feature villains that are trying to take your stuff (and sometimes their own stuff, those low down fools). You need to defeat them before they get everything they’re looking for. Infiltrate the Museum He takes your stuff. He takes his stuff. This dude has a fever, and the only cure is more stuff. Infiltrate the Museum was the first scenario to introduce a secondary loss condition, and it is a rough one. Any time a card leaves play to go into a discard pile, it is added to The Collection, which has a measly 5 per player limit. You can dig cards back out, but each player can only do this once per round by exhausting your hero or spending 2 resources. This can be a tough fight, especially if you’re not specifically building decks to handle it. Project Wideawake This scenario is essentially the offspring of Infiltrate the Museum and Taskmaster. Project Wideawake also features a "Collection" through Operation Zero Tolerance, though it has a smaller limit of only 3 more than the number of players. Alongside this smaller limit are much more relaxed conditions for adding cards. The first condition is that allies that have been defeated by an enemy attack will be added here. Second, breaking the threat threshold is removed as a loss condition. If you break the threat threshold, you will be adding a card to Operation Zero Tolerance. From Taskmaster we see the shared genetics of rescuing allies by defeating side schemes, though the allies we see in Project Wideawake are a little muted by comparison. The Hood Your experience with these scenarios are defined more by the modular sets you chose to include than by the scenarios themselves. A better category name might be something like Variety Show (lots of different mod combinations) or Scenario with No Personality that Just Takes on the Personality of the Person They're Dating* (self-explanatory). However, I find The Hood funny, so here we are. These scenarios offer a lot of options and variety, but due to that, the experiences can vary widely. *Okay, this doesn't really work, because the scenarios do have their own feel and personality to them. But why let reality get in the way of a joke? The Hood Modular Set: The Villain… I mean... The Hood is a scenario that will really be emphasizing some or all of the seven modular sets chosen at the beginning of the game. Some organized and thoughtful groupings can make the scenario to fall into many of the categories above. Alternatively, random groupings can give you variety that falls all over the place. Ultimately your choices are going to influence how this scenario feels to play. Below I’ve included a few modular combinations that can help make The Hood land into the Fisticuffs and Swarm categories. Fisticuffs: For these, you’re looking for extra activations and ways to boost the power of the activations. Almost any villain attachment mod does that second part. This Isn’t My Final Form!: Experimental Weapons, Flight, Goblin Gear, Osborn Tech, Super Strength, Telepathy, Weapon Master 1-2 Punch: Symbiotic Strength, A Mess of Things, Weapon Master, Goblin Gimmicks, Brothers Grimm, Ship Command, Goblin Gear Swarm: Really any assortment of minion mods work, but Ransacked Armory is fantastic for Swarm builds. It comes with 2 minions, a card that surges if there are no minions, and 4 cards that either attach to a minion or pull a minion if there isn’t one in play. Alien Invasion!: Armies of Titan, Band of Badoon, Black Order, Children of Thanos, Kree Militants, Menagerie Medley, and Space Pirates. HYDRA!: Hydra Assault, Hydra Patrol, Legions of Hydra, Ransacked Armory, Captain America Nemesis Set, Black Widow Nemesis Set, Spider-Woman Nemesis Set Spiral While Spiral certainly shares a lot of lifeblood with Risky Business, Spiral actually contributes very little to the encounter deck. There are only 6 Spiral cards in the encounter deck, and two of those have Surge. This means that outside the baseline feel of chasing Spiral through the different shows, your games are going to be far more impacted by the Show environments and modular set encounter cards you are dealt. Spiral is restricted to 3 of the 6 show modular sets included with MojoMania. That means there are 20 different combinations that she can run, giving plenty of variety. As a variety reference point, Mister Sinister only has 3 combinations of his required modular sets. Mojo Just like The Hood, Mojo will drip-feed modular sets into the game, but unlike The Hood, he makes sure you see and feel those sets immediately. First, the environment will swap out, changing the board-wide effect. Second, the first player is dealt two cards from the set, and the rest are placed on top of the encounter deck, ensuring those are the next cards you see. While Mojo’s variety isn’t as unrestrained as The Hood, there is still a lot of variety that comes with six show modular sets in MojoMania. If you’re looking for some more variety, check out the Mojo Cinematic Universe, an unofficial modular set from Con of Heroes 2023. You can find it and many other print-and-play modular sets from the convention here! Conclusion Hopefully this is a helpful guide for picking out scenarios you may enjoy playing next or maybe even help you assemble a custom campaign of similar or different styles of scenarios. As more scenarios are released, I'll be coming back to update this list. Who knows, over time we may see categories get added or split to encompass all the new stuff. Thanks Thank you as always to Unicorn for allowing me to use the card scans from the Cerebro project. Thanks to the discord hive-mind for the lively discussion on this topic. In particular, thank you to Andy N, Fernafalej, Journeyman2, Markzilla, MegiDolaDyne, SCOE, thearguerandtheclueless, and Theorel.