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  • Hero Refresher Double Feature: Playing through Every Hero (Parts 6 & 7)

    The Long and Short of It: I'm playing through every hero using decks suggested to me by other players. Here is who I'm covering today: Colossus Protection Domino Basic Ms. Marvel Justice Spider-Woman Aggression/Leadership War Machine Leadership and.... Captain Marvel Leadership Hulk Protection Nebula Justice Vision Leadership X-23 Justice Colossus Protection Suggested By: u/Flying_Toad Created By: u/Flying_Toad Encounter: Absorbing Man Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I, Standard III Deck: Colossus - Heart of Steel This deck was the most outside my wheelhouse so far, especially for solo. Featuring no allies and focusing on defending, it relied heavily on getting set up quickly and keeping threat down. This was a counterintuitive way to play Colossus for me, because I am used to flipping often with him. However, with such little thwarting available, I had to be particularly careful about how I managed the threat. That said, this deck excels at triggering the “take no damage” clauses on a number of cards. If your DEF doesn’t hold up, your Toughs certainly will. I lost my first round on Expert, so I jumped down to Standard. The game on Standard reminded me just how strong of a rush hero Colossus can be. I actually had to play a third game where I leaned into the defense gimmick, because my second game where I rushed didn’t involve a single Protection card. This was definitely an interesting take on defense oriented builds! Domino Basic  Suggested By: MrSelfDestruct Created By: MrSelfDestruct Encounter: Thanos Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Domino All Basic This was a really fun match-up. One of the funniest tidbits to this match was that I never actually got rid of Thanos’s Helmet, which gives him retaliate. Thanks to Domino’s Pistols and Diamondback’s non-attack damage, I was able to skirt by, receiving limited retaliate damage in return. As a whole, this deck highlighted the size of the basic package Domino can utilize. Not once did I feel I was missing power due to not tapping into an aspect. There were plenty of opportunities to feel clever, since I had to be a little more judicious with how I was using my various attacks and allies. This is a deck worth checking out, and if you want to splash in your favorite color, you absolutely could. Ms. Marvel Justice Suggested By: Man-is-Obsolete Created By: Man-is-Obsolete Encounter: On the Run Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: I got 99 problems, but threat ain’t one Ms. Marvel is a top 3 hero for me, and that was reaffirmed with this deck. Her ability to generate an absurd number of resources and cycle cards using Aamir, Nick Fury, and Moon Girl is crazy. I love all the different hooks she has for card draw and combo building. I was running this in solo, but it would easily handle multiplayer threat levels. Man-is-Obsolete suggests swapping out Turn the Tide for Even the Odds at high player counts, which makes sense. This is definitely a deck I would grab for another game. Spider-Woman Aggression/Leadership Suggested By: Gondo Created By: Gondo Encounter: Infiltrate the Museum Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Hang Up Your Christmas Banners, We're Calling for a Carol This was a really fun way to turn Spider-Woman into a rush deck of sorts. Utilizing her alter-ego ability to look at the top card of the deck was incredibly helpful for safely swinging with Hulk. I also had her apartment out, which I used to reshuffle the deck for Hulk a couple of times. Between the cheap events and the 5 damage from Hulk each swing, it felt smooth burning down The Collector. This was a neat deck to revisit Spider-Woman with, and it definitely encouraged me to take another look at her kit beyond the double aspect ability! War Machine Leadership Suggested By: JOMO Created By: JOMO Encounter: Tower Defense Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Mission Commander James Rhodes War Machine has been pretty low on my list of preferred heroes for a long time, mostly because I have always found him to be clunky. There were always leftover cards or unspent ammo counters. The efficiency puzzle just didn’t shake out to where I liked it. On top of that, I struggled to have success with him when I played with him. That all said… this deck felt really smooth to play. I still had the occasional left over card, but I felt like I was getting a lot done. Tower Defense gives a decent bit of wiggle room on flipping to alter-ego, so that may have helped. Having Suit Up to help grab Iron Man (and thus grab important tech) was a super clean way to accelerate set up. This deck left me with a much better impression of War Machine than I had going into. Conclusion Just kidding! This is where the Conclusion would usually be. However, we're doubling up to get this finished before Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. releases. Captain Marvel Leadership Suggested By: MegiDolaDyne Created By: MegiDolaDyne Encounter: Spiral + Fantasy + Sci-Fi + Horror Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Captain Mutant Captain Marvel is a top 3 hero for me, so I knew going in that I would probably enjoy playing this deck. What caught me off guard is how absolutely amazing she is with Mutant Mayhem. With her draw engine, it is super easy to get more than one Mutant Mayhem into hand. Then with Beast on the board, the second Mutant Mayhem is essentially free, because you can grab her three resource Energy Absorption card. With Children of the Atom giving all of your allies (except Spider-Woman) the X-Men and X-Force trait, you have a lot of flexibility on how to use Mutant Mayhem. This was a really fun deck, and it is absolutely worth trying out. Hulk Protection Suggested By: KnightAdz Created By: KnightAdz Encounter: Risky Business Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Hulk Protection Luckily, I rolled into Risky Business with Hulk! Granted, I generated that luck by rerolling when I got Ronan, then again when I got Mansion Attack, and yet again when I got Magneto. So as luck would have it, I rolled Risky Business on my first roll (that followed the first three) ! I’m going to be honest here… I truly don’t mind Hulk, particularly in multiplayer. But I do have some limit on what I want to take him against. Something that I liked about this deck was all the healing available with a basic recovery. After his lab and Down Time are out, you’re healing for 8 with each recovery. It lets you lean into his health pool as a resource in a fun way. I am a sucker for Starhawk, and I love how he interacts with Hulk by helping to smooth his hand in hero form. I had a good time, and it did give me a hankering to try a two-handed game with Hulk again. Nebula Justice Suggested By: stumpyfjord Created By: stummpyfjord Encounter: Wrecking Crew Difficulty: Expert Deck: Nebula - Justice A long while back, Nebula used to be in my top 10. She has faded somewhat, mostly because I hadn’t felt the desire to revisit her. This was a fun deck to go back to her though! Float Like a Butterfly is a neat inclusion here. I like that you can time your techniques to confuse an enemy and then have a boosted attack with your attack technique. Wrecking Crew was mildly interesting, because it undercuts her strongest solo technique, Wide Stance. Since you have to target the active villain’s deck, you aren’t always able to perfectly set up the villain phase. With how much confuse was available in solo play, it opened up the option of using the Sonic Rifle as a damage source (even if it can’t be boosted by Float Like a Butterfly). I had fun with this, and I’d be interested in pairing it up in a two-player game. Vision Leadership Suggested By: fantastic_fox_79 Created By: fantastic_fox_79 Encounter: Kang Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Vision - Air Supremacy I love Vision’s versatility! When he first released, he felt unwieldy, but in hindsight I am not sure why. This deck certainly didn’t feel that way, though I did keep forgetting that Vivian isn’t aerial (namely because her Basic version is). Having a non-attack like Aerial Supremacy gave a nice way for Vision to deal damage even when he was in Intangible form, which helped smooth out the sequencing when playing cards. It was a fun deck concept, and I enjoyed it! X-23 Justice Suggested By: ArbiterFrosty Created By: ArbiterFrosty Encounter: Dark Beast Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: X-23 Justice This was a tough one for me! I have been coming around to using fewer overall allies, but having only one ally took some adjustments.I figured that after my earlier plays with AndyN’s single-ally Venom deck , I would have a decent grasp of it. Despite the similarities in recurring a single ally, this deck played very differently. I lost my first two games against Dark Beast. I couldn’t decide if The Savage Land discarding cards was causing the issue, or if I wasn’t understanding how to pilot the deck. So rather than change things up, I just buckled down and tried again… and again. The third time was the charm! I had to be more patient, but I was able to set up the framework and get Honey Badger cycling with Sisterhood and buffed with Danger Room. In the end what really impressed me was how many similar mechanisms this deck shared with AndyN’s Venom deck (recurring an ally, taking damage to generate resources/buffs, lots of healing and status effects), while feeling and playing completely different. Conclusion (for real this time) Thanks for sticking around for the double feature! My next few will also be double features, as I finish out the series. I did get a lot of extra decks submitted to me that I want to cover, so given enough time, I may even have a bonus article to cover a few of those. See you next time!

  • Hero Refresher Double Feature: Playing through Every Hero (Parts 8 & 9)

    The Long and Short of It: I'm playing through every hero using decks suggested to me by other players. Here is who I'm covering today: Ghost-Spider Justice Iron Man Protection Phoenix "Aggression" Scarlet Witch Leadership Wolverine Aggression and... Doctor Strange Aggression Groot Justice Iceman Aggression SP//dr Leadership Spider-Woman Leadership/'Pool Ghost-Spider Justice Suggested By: VJakson Created By: VJakson Encounter: En Sabah Nur Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Let's do things differently this time I’m a big fan of Ghost-Spider Justice, and I’ve even written about a deck I ran through NeXt Evolution a while back ( shameless plug ). This was another fantastic Ghost-Spider deck, and I really liked her interaction with Upside the Head. With many heroes, Upside feels like a limitation, because you are most likely targeting the villain with a basic activation, when you might be wanting to do something else. Here, Ghost-Spider's ready allows you the flexibility to do both. I never got the "George Assesses the Ticket" combo to go off*, because my obligation came out at an odd time. And being the great daughter I am, I never actually went to save George Stacey after that. I had a couple turns where there just wasn’t much to do, because I was hit with an exhaust effect. So much is tied to your basic activation, so if you lose that, it can undercut your entire hand. I think with more plays, I could easily see play lines that help protect against having nothing to do with my hand though. This was a fun deck, and a great refresher on Ghost-Spider. *" George Assesses the Ticket" combo: Tuck all three Assess the Situations under George Stacey, pop them on the same turn, and then trigger Ticket to the Multiverse to take advantage of the +3 hand size twice. Iron Man Protection Suggested By: Caldias Created By: Caldias Encounter: Brotherhood of Badoon Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Aerie Man Says: Sometimes The Best Defense is No (Basic) Def Iron Man is a blast to play, and this was a unique take on a Protection build for him. I liked how it tapped into his HP using cheap, non-exhaust defense events. The deck ran smooth, and it’s probably the best I’ve felt about playing his Mark V Armor for the extra 6 HP. Angel’s Aerie is a neat card that hasn't been tapped into enough. I love it in a Drax deck that I run**, and here was another solid spot for it. This is a really fun deck, and definitely worth trying out. **I know it's weird if you think about it too much. But it's really fun. I'll write about it soon. Phoenix "Aggression" Suggested By: stumpyfjord Created By: stumpyfjord Encounter: Mister Sinister Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: .M- Live, Laugh, Love There are only three Aggression cards in this deck, and it's three copies of Psychic Assault. So this is effectively a Basic deck (or a single swap away from any other aspect), which lets you lean into using The Power in All of Us. Piloting this deck, I had a tense game against Mister Sinister. He got Flight and then Telepathy, and the overkill from the get-go offered some tough decisions. This was the first game that I have used Rise from the Ashes, Phoenix's upgrade that prevents her from being defeated before healing her to full health. I actually triggered it on the hero phase to ready my hero and squeak in a bit of extra damage. While playing this deck, I often felt resource flooded. I was able to build quite the board, but once everything was out, I found myself with more resources than options more often than I would have liked. I used Telekinesis nearly every turn, which was great for additional damage. Telepathy I didn't use much, because I had many other sources of threat removal. I was warned that the deck was more built for multiplayer, but it handled solo well. I imagine the extra threat accumulation in multiplayer would have justified using Telepathy more, and helped with the resource flooding. There are a few things I’d swap around for my own personal play style in solo, but I this deck definitely reminded me of how stable Phoenix can be in the early game. If it looks interesting to you, I think you'd enjoy splashing it into whichever aspect is your favorite! Scarlet Witch Leadership Suggested By: SDx Created By: SDx Encounter: Venom Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Scarlet Witch Leadership This was an interesting deck that offered many routes toward dealing damage and removing threat without actually attacking or thwarting. I was Webbed Up on the first turn of the game, and I never actually removed it. I ultimately lost this game to an untimely scheme, but Scarlet Witch feels as powerful as ever. For my own play style, I would have liked another ally or two that stuck to the board. That said, between status effect generation, Make the Call, and Groot sticking around, I didn't feel that I was in desperate need of blockers the majority of the game. This deck was a strong reminder on the power of Scarlet Witch's Hex Bolts. Wolverine Aggression Suggested By: VillainTheory Created By: VillainTheory Encounter: Sabretooth + Zero Tolerance + Brotherhood Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: The Best at What He Does I took this deck into a thematic rivalry: Sabretooth. This is certainly not my favorite scenario, but it was fun having a plethora of burst damage available. I could slowly manage the board, then quickly burst down a stage of Sabretooth to avoid his healing. It was a nice balance between my normal tempo-based game play and a more complete control style. Many Marvel Champions games have a steady progression through the first stage, followed by a lull before flipping and bursting the villain down. Here it really felt like two separate cycles. While Aggression isn’t my preferred aspect, this felt like a nice showcase of it. Conclusion I can't believe you fell for that two articles in a row! This isn't the conclusion. We've got more heroes to cover in this double feature! Doctor Strange Aggression Suggested By: AndyN Created By: AndyN Encounter: Four Horsemen Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Wizard of Asgard This match up offered some fun wrinkles for Doctor Strange. With his ability to use the invocation deck hampered through Pestilence turning off his hero ability, I had to lean a lot more into the themed Asgard allies. I thought this deck still felt very strong, and I loved the theme. It easily shifted into a damage heavy role after cleanly controlling the board through the early game. This was an enjoyable way to revisit Doctor Strange, and it highlighted that I can still have a lot of fun with him, despite not being a fan of his normal play lines. Groot Justice Suggested By: ArbiterFrosty Created By: ArbiterFrosty Encounter: MaGog + Sitcom Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Groot Justice This was a fun, quick match up. I am fairly certain that I view Groot in a much more favorable light than most, and this deck reinforced how much I enjoy his play lines. The deck is designed to do some massive threat removal, but you can also easily flex into some damage roles. I happened to play this while tired, and I definitely read “Think Fast!” incorrectly. I played under the assumption that you couldn't "take" the damage, due to the growth counters getting in the way. However, that isn't a cost, so you can still play it! Despite playing the whole game, almost never using "Think Fast!", there was enough threat prevention that it wasn’t needed. The deck will only be better when I play it correctly! And I will take every chance I get to shout out how strong "We are Groot" is. If you haven't played Groot in a while, I highly recommend revisiting him.  Iceman Aggression Suggested By: DanTheCrow! Created By: DanTheCrow! Encounter: Dark Beast Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Iceman is as Cold as Ice and Willing to Sacrifice (allies) I’ve been playing a lot of Iceman Protection recently, and I really enjoy this hero. Outside of the precon, this was the first time I’ve played him in Aggression. Utopia is a much needed card for Iceman, and this deck had plenty of allies to help trigger it. He's actually one of the characters that I like Utopia best with, namely because I love how it feeds into his Frostbites. Overall, I prefer where he is at in Protection, due to increased access to readies. Playing this deck, I felt my path was attack → play ally → attack, so I primarily interacted with Utopia and the allies. I don't view that as a negative, I just wanted to note that was where my play style took me. That said, I enjoyed the ally set and how they were incentivized to stick around a bit. Even though I didn’t engage with some of Iceman's cards, I had fun with this deck, and I feel as positive as ever about Iceman! SP//dr Leadership Suggested By: ScarletRhodey Created By: ScarletRhodey Encounter: Mutagen Formula Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Peni's Web-Warriors SP//dr is another top 3 hero for me. I find her play lines offer a lot of decisions and flexibility in what you want to do with your turn. That said, this was perhaps my most odd game with her. I’ve written about this previously, but with a full mulligan, Peni has about a 90% chance to end up with an interface on turn one. In this game, despite getting Aunt May and Uncle Ben to really help me dig, I just couldn’t get anything! All of my interfaces and All Systems Go were in my bottom 15 cards. It was mathematically interesting, but did it make for a rough start! SP//dr is incredibly strong though, so I was able to persevere and pull out a win. I played a second round, and getting that turn one interface felt a lot better! Suit Up was really nice here, allowing me to grab VEN#m, flip up, and get Sidekick set up. I had a lot of fun with this deck. Spider-Woman Leadership/’Pool Suggested By: Deadwolf Created By: Deadwolf Encounter: Mysterio Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Spider Woman Leadership/Pool "Wait, wait, wait! This isn't what I paid for! You featured a Spider-Woman deck last week!" Not to worry! There is a reason I am returning to Spider-Woman. You might even think it's a good one! I find that Spider-Woman plays so differently deck to deck, that I needed to really revisit her a few times with different aspect combinations. Don't be surprised to see another one show up! This was an incredibly smooth deck that played quite differently from Gondo’s Spider-Woman deck that I featured last week. I adored Sidekick with Captain Marvel, as it gave a really solid draw engine. And as FFG knows, the quickest way to my heart is through card draw. There was also a built-in way to heal her, and it could be supplemented with Tic-Tac-Toe. You had readies galore, and you could capitalize on the Spider-Woman's stat boosts with them. With all the sustain from Side-by-Side, Healing Factor, Contaminant Immunities, and basic recoveries, it was breezy keeping Spider-Woman near or at full health. This meant the Self-X resource cards from ‘Pool always generated 2 or 3 resources. It was fun seeing the way ‘Pool and Leadership supplemented Spider-Woman’s natural kit in this deck. Conclusion Well there you have it. The End. La Fin. Het Einde... at least until next week where I throw out another double feature in my attempt to get through this before Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. releases in the US. Make sure to check back next week to see my clever use of a translator to say "The End" in even more languages.

  • Hero Refresher Double Feature: Playing through Every Hero (Parts 10 & 11)

    The Long and Short of It: I'm playing through every hero using decks suggested to me by other players. Here is who I'm covering today: Hawkeye Justice Ironheart Leadership Quicksilver Aggression She-Hulk Justice Starlord 'Pool and... Drax Protection Jubilee Aggression Magneto Protection Spider-Man (Miles) 'Pool Spider-Woman Aggression/Protection Hawkeye Justice Suggested By: ScarletRhodey Created By: ScarletRhodey Encounter: Taskmaster, Red Skull Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I (both), Standard (Red Skull) Deck: Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD I really enjoyed this deck! The theme was solid, and it was a nice pregame for the upcoming S.H.I.E.L.D. box. I really enjoy Hawkeye’s arrow system, but it always feels a little at odds with building and using whatever aspect cards you bring. This deck definitely felt a lot more build-oriented than I usually play. It breezed through Taskmaster, so I decided to stress test it on Expert Red Skull. It didn’t have quite enough threat management to keep up while building, but switching over to Standard Red Skull made for another great game. Surprisingly, despite seeing the rockiness of some of his kit again, this made me excited to revisit Hawkeye with my own deck building. (Feel free to insert your favorite "I can fix him!" meme.) Ironheart Leadership Suggested By: BandofSirens Created By: VillainTheory Encounter: Zola Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Beast of Burden Leadership is ridiculous. Ironheart is ridiculous. And Ironheart Leadership is absurd! This was a fun deck, with tons of card draw. The card draw available made it easy to compensate for the low hand size in the early game. Zola’s retaliate was a non-issue with Ironheart’s Maximum Efficiency action that lets you spend her counters for ping damage. The game really felt like it had two parts: "Upgrade and Control", then a single turn of "Burn, Baby, Burn!". Weirdly enough, I don't actually love the one turn rush down for Stage 3 on a villain. It always feels like I'm doing my absolute best to ignore the game I just set up. That's really what keeps Ironheart down in my personal preferences, though I do have fun with her. I had a good time with the deck, and Ironheart is as strong as ever! Quicksilver Aggression Suggested By: VJakson Created By: VJakson Encounter: Mutagen Formula Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Always Be Jarbornin' (A) Quicksilver It’s been a long while since I’ve played Quicksilver. While he started out pretty high for me, he has slowly made his way toward the bottom of my preferences over the years. That said, I had a good time playing this deck. What this showed me was that I probably should revisit Quicksilver in some modern settings, and that I shouldn’t play Quicksilver with Standard III. His nemesis set is incredibly brutal, and it becomes impossible to avoid with Standard III. That alone dragged out my game with Quicksilver, pushing to 17 rounds to get a win. I think to really enjoy Quicksilver, I'll need to play him in multiplayer, and lean into some deck-building that overlaps a little less with some of the more recent designs (looking at you X-23). She-Hulk Justice Suggested By: corbintm Created By: corbintm Encounter: Sandman, Sinister Six Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Reverse Lawyered She-Hulk has grown on me a lot since the Core Set, especially with the rules changes that allow her to keep her Superhuman Strength upgrades out longer. This deck looks to capitalize on that using a plethora of stuns and confuses. The write up to this deck is quite thorough, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you are interested in She-Hulk. Sinister Six actually gave me a bit of a run for my money. It took a long time to stabilize. I really liked Deft Focus here, especially since it can pay for Limitless Stamina to make your readies cheaper. With lots of flipping, you could really crank out some damage. In cases of a lot of threat, like you see in Sinister Six, it was pretty tense trying to keep the main scheme managed as well as the side schemes that came out. All in all it was a fun game, but I didn’t really feel like I had the deck figured out. I ended up taking it against Sandman, and I really enjoyed this match-up. I felt a little less tension from the threat, and I was able to keep pace better. The boosted stats were nice for managing sand counters, letting me double dip a bit on the boosted stats. This was an interesting She-Hulk deck, and it is worth checking out. By the end of my plays here, I was really hoping for some similar mechanics on a new design. I love her card draw, flipping abilities and cards, and threat prevention in AE. I would love to see all those mechanisms revisited. Star-Lord ‘Pool Suggested By: Boomguy Created By: Boomguy Encounter: Escape the Museum Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Player Count: Solo, 2-player (Captain Marvel Justice) Deck: Galactic Pool Cleaner This is an interesting deck, that I was somewhat familiar with before it was even submitted. I saw it played at Con of Heroes last year, and even played alongside a slightly different version. Because of that, I was well aware of the shenanigans that it could do in multiplayer. That said, once I hit the table solo with it... I didn’t love it. Let me clarify... “It’s not you, it’s me” and all that. I really like Star-Lord. I don’t love the ‘Pool play style. I really don’t like them mixed. In solo, there was just too much pressure to afford the big allies and do everything else. Trying it in multiplayer opened a lot more options. It’s still not my preferred way to play, but there was room to lean into the deck. I think the route of spending all your resources in order to mulligan is really clever, and that was my favorite part of the deck. If nothing else, it made me want to revisit a few heroes to try that out. Contusion You thought I was going to make the conclusion joke again, didn't you! But nope... instead, I just wasted a small moment of your time wondering if "Contusion" was a typo or not. Wait, wait! Where are you going? There's still five more heroes to cover! Drax Protection Suggested By: VillainTheory Created By: VillainTheory Encounter: Kang Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Welcome to the Bub Club I’m a sucker for the Guardians, and Drax is no different. I really liked "Come Get Me, Bub!" in this deck, especially with Leading Blow alongside it. It made it easy to get the heal and tough, take out the minion, and still have a few cards to do other things. The healing in this deck was actually preferable to using What Doesn’t Kill Me, in my opinion. What Doesn’t Kill Me makes for some awkward hands, especially before you have Dwi Theet Mastery out. However, with this deck, you either used a Med Team sitting on the board or "Come Get Me, Bub!", which still left you plenty of cards and resources to get other stuff done. I only found myself wasting an unused card in one hand through the entire game. This deck was really smooth, and I bet it would do even better in multiplayer. It was a nice boost to my already positive opinion on Drax. Jubilee Aggression Suggested By: VJakson Created By: VJakson Encounter: Morlock Siege Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Jubilee Updated Hot Topics I haven’t played a ton of Jubilee, but I did think this was a fun deck. The Aggression hooks were solid, giving you a way to pay for big events, then follow them up with decent damage from her sunglasses. There was a lot of confuse available, so I could flip often. The hardest part was dealing with the indirect damage from Harpoon. I am sure I capitalized on the extra Morlock ally you get in solo in order to survive the scenario. That said, Boom Boom was the real star here. I was able to get her out early and build some solid damage on her. Avoiding retaliate while dealing area-of-effect damage was extremely satisfying. I would absolutely run this deck again, hopefully in a multiplayer game. It left me on a positive note for Jubilee. Magneto Protection Suggested By: AndyN Created By: AndyN Encounter: On the Run, Mutagen Formula, Unus Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Pillars of the Earth (No Basics Magneto Protection) This deck had limited itself to no Basics by design. I have been enjoying challenges like that, but I was still surprised to find how much that impacted the game play here. "Come Get Me, Bub!" never felt like a good play, because I was constantly struggling to manage minions. The economy felt just a little off. The allies themselves were all expensive, the tech was expensive, and his resource generator in kit only cares about Magnetic cards. I had a good time with the deck, but I think I really would have preferred it in multiplayer. The Magnetic Missile and Wrapped in Metal combo just felt very rough to put together. Part of that was due to On the Run still seeing traits on the Maurader minions. I couldn’t let the minions sit, because it meant that the villain was scheming. Mutagen cleaned that up a little bit, though I did have the bad luck of naturally pulling Monster and Goblin Knight back to back, which are the only two elite minions in the scenario. I ended up winning the match, but still felt I wasn’t fully grasping the deck. I tried once more against Unus, and again, "Come Get Me, Bub!" just never felt good to play. I think maybe I just had barely enough thwarting to stay in the game, and just barely enough damage in the kit to mostly manage the board. But I didn’t feel like I excelled in either. It was tough getting Repurpose to fire as well with how taxing the set up was. That is all to say, I enjoyed my plays with the deck. I just either I don't understand it well enough to pilot it, or it isn't my play style. I need to play around with Magneto more to pin down what exactly I feel I am missing. This is one I would have liked to run in multiplayer before posting, but I ran out of time (I've got to meet those deadlines set by my terrible boss... me). For now though, I feel pretty neutral about Magneto. Spider-Man (Miles) ‘Pool Suggested By: Caldias Created By: dr00 Encounter: Loki + Sci-Fi + Guerilla Tactics Difficulty: Standard I + Expert I Player Count: 2-player (Storm Aggression) Deck: What's Up Danger? The write-up for the deck mentioned it was meant for multiplayer, so I figured I would take it directly to a multiplayer game. I paired up with my friend tjjj (of Marvel Jesus fame) who piloted a Storm Aggression deck alongside me. This was a really smooth deck. It’s all the goodies from Basic Web-Warriors, while tapping into just five ‘Pool cards. The ‘self-X’ resources were great for supporting the aspect cards. They were consistently two or three resources. Get Rage-y was a really nice way to increase the tempo on some of the allies. And Rock, Paper, Scissors was a really solid card draw engine. Loki is no slouch, and he gave us some tense moments through our game. Cell Phone had some solid moments of letting characters activate out of turn. It was extremely helpful for cleaning up turns. All in all, I was left with a solid reminder of how much I enjoy Spider-Man, and this also gave me a bit of a boost on 'Pool. Spider-Woman Aggression/Protection Suggested By: Astrodar Created By: VillainTheory Encounter: Klaw + Band of Badoon Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Card Drawcula - Halloween Vampire Deck I like to call this combination Mono-Spider-Woman (thanks genetics!), and it’s actually one of my favorite color combos for Spider-Woman. This specific deck has been on my play list for a long while. When I decided to feature multiple Spider-Woman decks, I figured I might as well toss it into the mix. I really enjoyed the Pinned Down/Bring It combo, and between What Doesn’t Kill Me and Contaminant Immunity, I could let minions sit a little bit to help with the timing of drawing into Pinned Down. Compared to the other two Spider-Woman decks featured, this one felt like the ready effects were a lot more valuable. With cheap options of cards to play, it was easy to get 3-4 counters built up on a turn. I had a bunch of fun with this, and I highly recommend it. Conclusion That's it! 11 articles (some doubled up) with 5 heroes per article. That's 55! Well... except I did do some extra Spider-Woman decks. So I still haven't covered Rogue or Valkyrie. To be honest... there's a reason they keep getting pushed back. I'll be back for one final article in this series covering Rogue, Valkyrie, Spider-Woman (again?!), and a quick conclusion for the entire experience. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and I'll see you next week!

  • Hero Refresher: Playing through Every Hero (Part 12)

    Have you ever dragged your feet on something so hard you knew there was an underlying reason you didn’t want to do it? Neither have I. I definitely didn’t put off writing this article due to my aversion to writing when I feel negative about something. I certainly didn’t use the prerelease week of the new Star Wars Unlimited set to justify not writing. And I absolutely did not reorganize my entire Marvel Champions and Star Wars Unlimited collections in order to avoid Eeyore-ing my way through writing an article. I told myself I would finish this before Agents of SHIELD got here. Yet here it is, sitting on my desk. Judging me. I really want to play it, so here we go finishing the series. The main reason I have been dragging my feet is because I don’t love being negative. As a whole, when it comes to my hobbies, I am borderline overly optimistic. Unfortunately… I kind of feel negative about these last couple of heroes. Not completely, but enough to know that they aren’t for me.  My final two heroes are Valkyrie and Rogue. Valkyrie was the one I was most worried about, and true to my instinct, I did not enjoy my first few plays. I had a couple different Aggression decks given to me. These were tried and true deck-builders, so I trusted the decks would be solid. I tried solo first, and then I played alongside a Justice deck. Game after game the play just felt frustrating. Until… it didn’t. I had a fun game! Something clicked during that game, and Wagner began playing in the background as Valkyrie carved her way through the scenario. The villain crumpled under Valkyrie’s might. So I tried again. Then again once more. All three games were perfectly enjoyable.   Great, right?  Well, yeah… I guess so. While I am nowhere near putting her at the top of my preferences list, I truly enjoyed the three plays I had with Valkyrie after whatever epiphany I had that escaped my notice. However, with the cornucopia of heroes we have, I’m not sure I want to spend that much time not enjoying plays before I can have my fun. To be clear, I think this is a “me thing.” I have a couple friends that really enjoy playing Valkyrie, and I’ve played alongside them as they had fun with her. Some of my favorite games from Con of Heroes were playing alongside Josseroo piloting Valkyrie. But whatever it is with how I engage with the game, there was a large barrier between me and having a good time. I overcame that barrier. But it was there, and it was a lot of effort. I wish I could tell the same tale for Rogue. I also didn’t enjoy my plays with her. There were a lot of moving parts that I couldn’t get to click. I couldn’t break away from my preferred play style to engage with the combos the deck facilitated. The deck was perfectly fine. I just couldn’t engage with it the way it was intended. Again, I chalked this up to just not being a fit for me. I intended to revisit Rogue some more after having my epiphany with Valkyrie, but I realized I simply didn’t want to.  So what did I learn from this whole experience? That I am a bad judge of how long it will take me to play through a list of heroes. Also, I definitely narrowed down what my preferred styles are. I found that it can be a lot of fun picking up someone’s deck and running with it. I found that I shouldn’t be bashing my head against something trying to force myself to have fun with it. But I also reinforced that there is fun in there somewhere for someone to find. I had a lot of fun with this series, and I would potentially do it again. But I am excited to play my own decks again! Without further ado, here are the quick rundowns of Valkyrie, Rogue, and the final Spider-Woman deck I covered. Valkyrie Aggression Deck 1: Overkilliest Valkyrie redux Created By: Josseroo Deck 2: ...and they will know us by the trail of dead v2.1 Created By: VJakson Two-player games were paired with Ms. Marvel Justice ( 99 Problems deck covered here ). I played a lot of games with these two decks. It was on the order of 30 some odd games. Enough that I'm not going to bother writing them all out here. I tried out these decks solo, and it went about as well as I expected. I never felt like I could get going, especially in Expert. However, these were meant to be multiplayer decks, so that’s not too crazy of an outcome. So off to multiplayer I went! I felt like this is where I really started getting a vibe for how Valkyrie can play. I needed some thwarting support, so I went with a deck I had enjoyed earlier in the season. I found that flipping a lot with Valkyrie helped to get that set up going, and otherwise I focused on just throwing out Death Glow and cleaning up minions. I really wish I could point to what I did differently in the game where I started having fun. However, it is the first time I legitimately enjoyed playing Valkyrie. That left me with a bit of a conundrum. Do I give heroes I don’t enjoy the 30 some-odd plays it took for me to enjoy Valkyrie? As more and more heroes are added, I’m going to find it harder to want to sink that time in. Rogue Protection Suggested By: Boomguy Created By: ClassyRobot Scenarios: Crossbones (Standard III + Expert I) Project Wideawake (Standard III + Expert I) Absorbing Man (S3 + E1, S1 + E1) Unus (S1 + E1, S1) Ebony Maw (S1 + E1, S1) Deck: Mega (Wo)Man I want to open by saying I really don't think this is a bad deck. I can't reinforce that enough. ClassyRobot has put out a lot of decks I have enjoyed. In particular, I loved the paired Rocket and Groot decks: G'NR ( Groot 'n Rocket ). Any criticisms I have in this write-up are oriented toward Rogue, how her kit interacts with the deck, and my own play style. Definitely give this deck a try for yourself to see if you like it! I tried this against Crossbones and Project Wideawake to kick things off. Either I didn’t understand the deck (totally plausible), or my play style didn’t mesh with it. The games mostly felt frustrating to set up. As I tried to get traited cards out to enable other cards, the scenario pressure ultimately put too many wrenches into the combo machine I was trying to run. I had turns where I literally could play nothing, because I didn’t have an ally or tech already in play. It was too easy to get behind on the board while trying to set up. To try and find some space to set up, I took this against Absorbing Man. I was able to get the win, but I still felt a lot of the same issues. I also realized that Standard III really isn’t helping Rogue’s case. Mystique is a decently nasty nemesis minion, and this deck feels pretty slow to set up. You want to set up her economy cards (Deft Focus, X-Gene), your Tech for Repurpose, and your Androids for Reboot and Ever Vigilant. But your economy cards don’t pay for your Tech or Androids. So you feel like you can do some stuff, but you're sacrificing building one angle to build/play another. I moved on to Unus and Ebony Maw with Standard I + Expert I. It really wasn’t any better. I decided to give myself the space to set up, so I tried Unus on Standard I. It felt a lot better here, though I still felt a lot of the same inefficiencies. I just had the space to work around them. I’m chalking this one up to either needing a better pilot or needing multiplayer to jump into Expert. This is one of the few heroes that I’ve soured on across this experience, and I don’t love that. Again, that's not a comment on the deck itself. My qualms are really with weaknesses that come from Rogue’s own kit and how they contrast with my own play style. If you have another deck for me to try or tips on how to play her, definitely let me know! Spider-Woman Aggression/Justice Suggested By: Astrodar Created By: stilonxy Encounter: Mysterio Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I Deck: Float like a Honed Butter Knife I'm closing out with another Spider-Woman deck! This is one that has been on my play list for a while. I really enjoyed the Float Like a Butterfly and Honed Technique combo. Spider-Woman has great access to Confuse, and Venom Blast is a great card to get boosted up to 8 easy damage. Press the Advantage was amazing, because it was so easy to hit the triggering condition. All in all there were a lot of cheap cards to boost Spider-Woman’s stats, while also getting boosted themselves. Again, this felt very different to the other Spider-Woman decks I featured. It is definitely worth checking out! Conclusion That's it! That's the end of the series. I should probably write something more profound here, but I'm off to play the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. expansion.

  • How I Travel with Cards

    Disclaimer : In this article I'm going to s̶h̶i̶l̶l̶... discuss a lot of the products I use with my storage and transportation. Since I'm talking about and linking to a lot of products, I want to be upfront that I have no relationship with these companies. My only sponsor is my wonderful wife, who pays for all my ridiculous hobbies (love you!). Mostly though, I want to apologize for my laziness and the terribly posed and lit pictures. With Con of Heroes right around the corner, I've been prepping to traveling with way too many cards. I figured I might as well share what I do! It's probably not the best way, but it is my way. I actually use this same set up for my weekly play, both for Marvel Champions and Star Wars Unlimited. For Champions, I usually set up a box with a 4-8 heroes and 4-8 scenarios, and it acts as a "campaign box" for a week or two. I love this because it takes all my prep work and condenses it into one session. I pop on a movie, build some decks, and have a chill time. When it comes time to play, my decision space is drastically reduced, and it's way easier to get things to the table. For my SWU weeklies, I like having this setup to keep 4-5 decks handy as well as all my trades and tokens. The Stuff Here is a quick list of the products you'll see below. I'll show various pictures of my packing set up for this year's Con of Heroes. I'm also including pictures of the cards in some other boxes I use. The links below are to help you see which product I'm specifically talking about, but if you're looking to purchase anything, definitely check your local game store. Burger Token boxes and the Quiver case are the only products I can't get locally. Gamegenic Lair 600+ Gamegenic Lair 400+ Quiver Card Case Burger Token Perfect Fit deckboxes in various sizes Chessex 12mm dice Gamegenic Token Silo inserts Gamegenic Matte Prime sleeves in various colors laser cut status tokens (courtesy myself) First, I want to talk about Burger Token deckboxes. I love these things. They are a little flimsy, so it's not something you're going to chuck into a backpack on their own. However, in conjunction with another storage system, they are amazing. They are thin enough that they fit almost everywhere you'd put normal sleeved cards. They come in a variety of sizes, meant to hold both unsleeved and sleeved cards. I have only ever used the sleeved versions. They shake out to be about $1 per box before shipping. I use a variety, but most commonly I use the 50 Sleeved (50 S) size. I love this size, because it fits a 40-45 card hero deck and their nemesis set. You can put about 10% more cards in a box than the listed size, so you can get about 55 cards into a 50 S. If you tend to build larger decks or are using someone like Doctor Strange or Iceman that come with extra cards, you'd probably want to jump up to the 60 S. I also use the 80 S, 60 S, 30 S, 22 S, and 15 S, which you'll see in the images below. Without further ado, here is the important stuff. Storage Here is the Gamegenic Lair 600+, packed to the brim: This is my main travel solution for Con of Heroes. On the top left you'll see two stacks of a 22 S and a 15 S. Next to those is a 30 S. As a note, the 50 S is too large for that top section. You won't be able to put the lid back on. Here are all the cards and boxes that are inside. You can find a full list at the end of the article . This does not show the dice and tokens. Is that a Jubilee in there? Of course it is! I'm going to be giving out 100 Jubilee alt-arts at the con, so come find me to get one! Here are the drawers: The small drawers can fit a 22 S and a 15 S stacked. They may be able to even fit their 43 S, but I don't have any of those (yet). Reddit user xgenzero confirmed that you can fit a 43 S in the drawer! The 50 S however is too large. If you want to keep your 12mm dice a little more organized, they fit into the 22 S really well. When I'm using a Quiver, that's how I pack dice and tokens. The small orange inserts are from a Gamegenic Token Silo. The height fits well, but during flights a few of my tokens definitely jumped out. They didn't make it out the drawer, but a couple slipped out of the inserts. These work great for keeping things organized once there though. So that is the quick overview. I fly with this in my carry-on. It's pretty heavy, weighing in at 8.3 lbs (3.8 kg). Since I have it all together, I figured I might as well show it in some of the other boxes I have used. Here is the Gamegenic Lair 400+ and a Quiver Card Case. I have also included images that show what all from the Gamegenic Lair 600+ didn't fit into these. That's it! I hope seeing some of this was helpful. Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions (astrodar on discord, infinitesquarewhale on reddit). What's in the Box? If you're wondering what exactly is in the box, here are all the heroes, scenarios, and modular sets I'm bringing. I've included links for the hero decks, but these are not 100% finalized. Most of them are decks I modified from my Hero Refresher series. Heroes Spider-Man (Miles) 'Pool Valkyrie Aggression Psylocke Justice Venom Leadership Rocket Raccoon Protection Jubilee Basic Sideboard Player Side Schemes Aerial Events and Upgrades Honoraries and General Good Stuff Scenarios Thunderbolts Sandman Risky Business Mysterio Sinister Six Mutagen Formula Brotherhood of Badoon En Sabah Nur Modular Sets Standard Standard III Expert Band of Badoon Black Tom Cassidy Celestial Tech City in Chaos Cosmic Entities* Crazy Gang Gravitational Pull Guerrilla Tactics Hard Sound Hellfire MCM Madness (custom mod) Mister Hyde Pale Little Spider Personal Nightmare Power Drain Power of the Atom Supersonic Symbiotic Strength The Inheritors Tough Decisions (CoH 2024 mod) Weapon Master Wrecking Crew Extras Assorted sleeves Boxes and Sleeves for Con of Heroes scenario and custom content Conclusion That's it from me! I hope that this helps someone at some point. Most likely that someone will be me when I go to pack next year. *Cosmic Entities is just the 4 Cosmic Entities (from Adam Warlock's precon) used as a bonus mod. It's a fun way to lighten up a scenario. Treat them as being owned by the scenario and having 0 boost icons. Or for some added relief, you can treat them as having a boost effect that says "Resolve the When Revealed ability."

  • Community Suggested Scenarios 4

    It's been a long while since my last post on this series, but I finally have the time to revisit it! That said, in light of the recent announcement introducing the Current and Legacy Environments, I thought it was worth taking a moment to think about what that might mean for this series. Then I realized that was future-Astrodar's problem. So onward and forward! One of my favorite things about Marvel Champions is the modularity. There are so many ways to mix and match scenarios and modular sets, to the point that at times it can be daunting! This series will be highlighting some community favorites, in hopes of helping players find new ways to play the game and branch out from the suggested modular sets. These scenarios (and those upcoming) were suggested by community members. If you have any favorite combinations, let me know using this form ! I cannot promise I will feature every suggestion, but I will credit any suggestions that I do use. In the near future, I'll add a page that gathers the featured scenarios together for easy reference. Without further ado, here are the scenarios I am highlighting today! Venom: Space Fright Scenario : Venom (Sinister Motives) Modular Set : Menagerie Medley (Galaxy's Most Wanted) Venom is all about getting extra boost cards for his activations against you. So what better way to add some zip to his zap than by amping up what boost effects he has available? Menagerie Medley exclusively features minions, and six of those minions have boost effects. With Psionic Ghosts leaping into play off a boost effect and Starsharks dealing extra damage to your characters, it becomes difficult to avoid that extra damage. If you want some similar vibes, Band of Badoon (Galaxy's Most Wanted) also features exclusively minions, and every one of them has a boost effect. You can see a little more about them in the third scenario featured in this article. Attachment Issues Scenario : Thanos (Mad Titan's Shadow) Modular Sets : Brothers Grimm (The Hood) Weapon Master (Rise of Red Skull) Thanos and the Brothers Grimm are coming hard in this scenario. With Brothers Grimm as the only minion in the deck, you're nearly guaranteed to see them. Not only does their boost icon put them into play, the Space Stone (which discards cards until you find a minion) will either pull them out or burn through the encounter deck to reset it and give you an acceleration token. The attachments from the Brothers Grimm modular set essentially have a faux-surge effect, adding to the pressure the scenario puts out. And finally, Weapon Master is guaranteed to get its bonus effects, due to the Infinity Gauntlet having the weapon trait. If you're wanting similar vibes, but with a little less "activate and surge," try replacing Weapon Master with Goblin Gimmicks (Green Goblin) or Celestial Tech (Age of Apocalypse) . Sonic Boosts Scenario : Klaw (Core Set) Modular Set : Band of Badoon (Galaxy's Most Wanted) Klaw is guaranteed two boost cards when he attacks, so this is another scenario that loves boost effects. The Band of Badoon exclusively contains minions, each with a boost effect. These effects may give extra boost icons to attacks, give the attack overkill, or even push minions into play. Each card feels like it impacts the scenario whether it is coming out as a boost or being revealed. If you want something with a similar vibe, Menagerie Medley (Galaxy's Most Wanted) is mentioned above in the Venom scenario. It also features only minions, most of whom have boost effects. Conclusion That is it for this round! Remember that if you have a suggestion you'd like me to take a look at, you can submit it through this form . I cannot promise that the combination will be featured. However, as long as you include your username (or whatever name you wish to be known by), I will credit the suggestion to you! Speaking of crediting people, here is a list of the players that helped me gather suggestions on the first batch of Community Favorites. CastleFrank47 classyrobot Dansome FakeSki Ǵreg Ice Nine journeyman2 MegiDolaDyne MrSelfDestruct regenshine ScarletRhodey

  • Do You Need the Marvel Champions Core Set?

    The short answer is "no." The best answer is "probably." The nonsensical answer is "Beyonce likes pizza." I see this question pop up regularly, so I figured I might as well write out my suggestions for players looking to get into the game. So do you have to buy the Core Set, or can you start with another release? To avoid burying the lede, you can buy into the game and play it without getting the Core Set. It’s just a bit more work. I'll go into it in full below, but here's a link to the end of the article where I have my final recommendation . What You'll Need You’ll need to gather together the following fundamental pieces in order to play. player cards scenario cards standard set (for standard difficulty) expert set (for expert difficulty) threat tracking method damage tracking method counter tracking method acceleration tracking method status effect tracking method The Core Set provides all of the above in a neat little box, ready to go. By design, this is the best place to start. It provides you with the following items so that up to four players can play the game. 5 heroes 3 scenarios Enough player cards to have 4 decks built Standard modular set Expert modular set threat tokens damage tokens counter tokens acceleration tokens status cards 4 hero health dials 1 villain health dial Like I said, this is the best place to start. I cannot emphasize that enough. The Core Set heroes are a lot of fun, and they still hold their own against recent releases. On top of that, there are three solid scenarios in the box. If you want to get into Marvel Champions, I absolutely recommend getting the Core Set. “But Astrodar!” you say. “I simply cannot abide Spiderman. He’s a criminal, that’s who he is. A vigilante! A public menace! What’s he doing in my Core Set?!“ If the Core Set Avengers theme or whatever else about it doesn’t speak to you, you can start elsewhere in the releases with a bit of finagling. To state the obvious, if you want to play the game, you will need to buy at least some of the game. The player cards and scenario cards you will get with whatever hero, scenario, or campaign expansion you decide to buy. However, there are only a couple expansions that have a standard and/or expert set, and you’ll generally be looking at third party solutions for all the tokens.  Standard and Expert Sets At a baseline, you need to get a standard set. This is pretty non-negotiable, because the scenarios are designed around this set’s inclusion. Namely it provides extra villain activations and a way for your hero’s nemesis set to enter the game. There are two places other than the core set to get a standard set. The Hood scenario pack Age of Apocalypse campaign expansion The Hood scenario pack includes Standard II, which is an alternative standard set meant to be used in place of the original standard set. However, it is also meant to be more challenging. It boosts the villain’s stats during their activations, makes blocking the attacks harder, and gives the villain a keyword (Steady), which means some of your hero’s abilities won’t be as strong against them. The rest of the pack contains a single scenario, the Expert II set, and a plethora of other modular sets. Personally, I find the scenario decently fun, but with a lot of randomness that can escalate the scenario quickly. To be frank, this is not a favorite among the online community. All in all, this isn’t my preferred suggestion for getting a standard set. The Age of Apocalypse box is the third box of the mutant waves and the seventh campaign box overall. It contains Standard III, another alternative standard set. Standard III has become my baseline choice for a standard set. It mirrors the original standard set in a lot of ways, but it also provides a “count-down” to your nemesis set coming out. Each time a card from Standard III is revealed, you get closer to your nemesis coming out, making it less “will it come out?” and more the inevitable “when will it come out?” If you’re looking to skip the Core Set, this is the expansion I would start with. Expert is a little bit different. The Expert set is just 3 cards. Each provides some pretty intense pressure. However, a good portion of the Expert difficulty comes not from the expert cards, but from using the more difficult villain stages which are included with the scenario. While your games will be different, you can get away with skipping these cards altogether and still jump up to expert difficulty. If you do want an alternative expert set without getting the Core Set, you can again look to The Hood. It has a 4 card Expert II set, which like Standard II bumps up the difficulty compared to the original sets. Personally, I actually really like Expert II, so I use it in place of Expert I in a lot of scenarios, usually alongside Standard III. Tokens The tokens and tracking methods are much easier to proxy. Many people just use dice, myself included. I have a number of 12 mm dice in red, green, and yellow to represent damage, all-purpose counters, and threat. Additionally I have one black die that I use to track acceleration tokens. While I would suggest getting three different colors of dice, you can get by with fewer. I suggest a minimum of two different dice styles for counters, because there will be many times when two types of counters are on one card (like an ally with damage and all-purpose counters). There is a scenario where you can end up with all three types of counters on a single card, but that’s easy enough to work around for one scenario. I would recommend just a single unique die to track acceleration tokens. A six-sided die works fine for the majority of scenarios. For the villain, the damage totals are quite high, especially in three and four player games. Dice can be used here as well, but it gets a little unwieldy. A health dial is pretty handy, and I suggest picking one up. There are lots of health dials available on sites like Etsy or through companies like Gamegenic. If you plan to play four player games often, you’ll want to make sure your dial can go into the triple digits. A few of the villains can pop over 100 health. Hero health is also easier to track with a dial, but dice can be used just fine here. Even using all the health increases available, the values are generally going to be under 30 health for the majority of heroes, with only a few having access to cards to jump them higher than that. This is where I remind you that you get four player dials and a villain dial in the Core Set. It’s a pretty sweet deal. The health dials are the only tracking method I haven’t upgraded, because they work so well. As a completely budget-friendly option, there is always pen and paper to track life totals. Status effects are the final missing piece to playing the game. There are three status effects that you need to be able to track: Stunned, Confused, and Tough. The core set provides cards to track these (Can you tell I really think you should get the Core Set?). However, you can use additional dice or custom tokens. When I’m traveling light or simply too lazy to grab the tokens I use for status effects, I simply use a die set to 1 and placed next to the stat the status corresponds to (i.e. I put a die set to 1 next to my THW stat if my hero is confused). Also, these never have to be shuffled, so you could just write it on a small piece of paper to create some budget status effect cards. If you are one who likes to get premium tokens, many of these issues can be solved by using third party solutions. Some of my personal favorites are Buy the Same Token and Burger Tokens. Burger Tokens is the more budget friendly option, as they provide stickers meant to go on pennies (or hardware washers). They are easy to assemble, and you can get a full set of tokens for something like $30 (plus shipping). Buy the Same Token is a premium solution, offering a range of basic tokens and custom tokens to mark keywords or specific counters. However, it will run you over $100 for a full set of Core Set tokens. Again, I’ll be frank… if you’re shelling out the money for Buy the Same Token, just buy the Core Set first. You can get the fancy stuff later. I mention these two specifically, not because I have any direct relation with the companies. They are simply the two that I have personally tried and enjoyed. There are a lot more options out there on sites like Etsy, and you can always make your own if you have access to something like a 3D printer or laser cutter. Conclusion All in all, I’ll reiterate that the Core Set is a fantastic product. I highly recommend picking it up. But if you are looking to skip, just make sure to do the following: Get a Standard set from Age of Apocalypse or The Hood Get a way to track things, such as using dice, third-party tokens, or whatever else. For your final, “I’m just a solo player that wants to really go light” suggestion, you can just get a hero pack and The Wrecking Crew scenario pack. This is the only scenario in the game that doesn’t require a standard set. Together these will run you about $40 at MSRP, which is halfway to getting the Core Set. My personal suggestion for jumping into the game without the Core Set: Age of Apocalypse 3 sets of 12 mm d6 dice (different colors) for token tracking 1 unique d6 for acceleration tracking Pen and paper for tracking villain HP (or just use the dice) This gives you everything you need for two players to jump into the game. Grab some hero packs or another campaign expansion if you want to do three or four players. I hope this was helpful for anyone looking into the game! If you have questions, feel free to ask! Fair warning, my answer may just be “buy the Core Set.” If you have suggestions for new players on ways they could skip the Core Set if they wanted, let us know that as well!

  • Progression League: Round 2

    Round 1 is officially in the bag, and I was soundly defeated by KennedyHawk from the MCM and SAGA podcasts. We had a fun game, but it definitely highlighted some flaws with my current deck. After leading my previous article by covering how you should look for bombs (powerful cards to build around), I promptly ignored that and went for a swarm deck that lacked any real end game. I definitely felt the lack of a strong closer, because Kennedyhawk was able to manage my swarm, undercutting my ability to go wide and push damage. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred the Mandalorian deck I outlined in the previous article. And jumping ahead a bit, I have another solid argument for switching over to it! Here is the opening of my next three packs , and I had some solid pulls! You can find my full card pool for Round 2 in this spreadsheet . These packs gave me two new leaders: Han Solo and Fennec Shand. Both are worth considering... later. I am not yet seeing a reason to take Fennec Shand over The Mandalorian, and Han is similar to Bossk. Both need a little more time for the Aggression card pool to grow. I'll dive deeper into what is there for him in later articles when more packs are available. In my previous article , I outlined a Mandalorian deck that I was considering. The new packs brought some fantastic cards to support it, including Rivals Fall and the legendary Mandalorian unit himself. With my lack of an end game last round, I really like the idea of pivoting back to The Mandalorian and taking advantage of the bombs in my card pool like The Mandalorian, Chewbacca, and Fennec Shand. My updated list is as follows: I considered dropping Kuil, because I worried that he would discard key pieces. Limited formats mean you often only have one copy of strong cards. In this case, I don't risk losing my bombs, as most of them have Vigilance as an aspect, so I opted to keep Kuil. My weaknesses with this deck are the space arena and removal. I will need to be careful playing any Vigilance/Villainy, because I know Brutal Lethality is in the mix for every player. Additionally, capture is rough for this deck, because it will clear the upgrades on my units. These are definitely weakness that can be played around. I can spread out my upgrades or focus on my leader if I know Fell the Dragon or Rivals Fall is not likely to be in the mix. Next I am matching up against Ryan from Man vs. Meeple! Here is a link to their website where they cover a variety of games.

  • Community Suggested Scenarios 3

    One of my favorite things about Marvel Champions is the modularity. There are so many ways to mix and match scenarios and modular sets, to the point that at times it can be daunting! This series will be highlighting some community favorites, hopefully helping players find new ways to play the game and branch out from the suggested modular sets! These scenarios (and those upcoming) were suggested by community members. If you have any favorite combinations, let me know! After the first few articles have been posted in this series, I'll add a page that gathers them together for easy reference. Without further ado, here are the scenarios we are highlighting today! The Brawl Scenario : Juggernaut (NeXt Evolution) Modular Set : Hope Summers (NeXt Evolution) Wrecking Crew (The Hood) Brutes of a feather, flock together! Not only will the villain be hitting hard, the Wrecking Crew minions come out strong. You'll be dealing with big bodies and big attacks in this all out brawl. Much Obliged Scenario : Kang (The Once and Future Kang) Modular Set : Sitcom (MojoMania) Don't feel obligated to play this scenario, but if you do, be prepared for obligations galore! Trouble at Hand Scenario : Stryfe (NeXt Evolution) Modular Set : Personal Nightmare (Sinister Motives) What can go wrong by getting more cards in hand? This scenario leans into Stryfe's focus on your hand by adding cards like Fool's Paradise (increase hand size by 2) and additional cards that attack your hand. That's it for this article! Be on the look out for more scenarios to be posted in upcoming articles and on the upcoming Community Favorites page! And don't forget to let me know what your favorite combinations are! Acknowledgements Lots of community members have chimed in on these community favorites. I want to acknowledge everyone who has contributed. For these first few articles, I'll include the list here. Once the main page goes live that gathers them all together, I'll move the acknowledgement list there! So thank you to everyone below that has contributed so far! CastleFrank47 classyrobot Dansome FakeSki Ǵreg Ice Nine journeyman2 MegiDolaDyne MrSelfDestruct regenshine ScarletRhodey

  • Star Wars Unlimited: Progression League

    I know, I know! Star Wars: Unlimited? On a blog about Marvel Champions?! Well before you get your pitchforks out, I'll lead by saying I am still very much playing Champions and will be writing articles covering various aspects of it. However, I'm also going to be branching out to cover some Star Wars: Unlimited and other various board games my family and I are playing. So without further ado, here is my first Star Wars: Unlimited post. SWU Content Creator Progression League I have had the incredible fortune of being invited to play in a Star Wars: Unlimited Progression League run by NelsonAllOverCards ! I am ecstatic to be joining the league, and I want to kick off this article by covering what a Progression League is and how I will be covering it. Each set of Star Wars: Unlimited has two main products: a starter box and booster packs. The starter box comes with two ready-to-play decks, and each booster pack comes with 16 randomized cards (1 leader, 1 base/token, and 14 cards for deck-building). For the progression league, each player starts with a card pool consisting of the Shadows of the Galaxy starter box and 3 Shadows of the Galaxy booster packs. Using these cards, we each build a deck consisting of one leader, one base, and 50 cards. We are then paired up against another league member for a match. Each following round, we will add an additional 3 booster packs, giving us access to new cards and leaders! As the league goes on, we can change our deck either by upgrading it with new cards or switching leaders and builds altogether! I plan to record the opening of my 3 packs each round and write a follow-up article going over my deck-building process and updates. Then I will have a quick blurb about my game each round, covering who I played, what they were playing, and where my deck or piloting has flown or faltered. This is essentially an extended limited format, meaning that we don't have access to all the cards right from the get-go as you would in a normal constructed format. I hope these articles will give some insight into limited format deck-building, as well as help me dig into ways to improve my own game-play and deck-building. All in all, I am thrilled to be a part of this progression league, because I love engaging with Star Wars: Unlimited in limited formats like this. Round 1 Deck Construction You can find the video where I am opening my starter boxes and my first three packs here! Videos are definitely not the norm for me, so the quality is a bit abysmal. However, it’s a quick, easy, and verifiable way to show what cards I pulled each round. I have also included my card pool in spreadsheet format here , in case anyone wants to take a gander and see what kind of decks they might build. If you want to know more about specific cards, you can find them on the official database or on SWUDB , a fan run deck-building site and card database. To kick things off, the starter decks are Cunning/Vigilance (The Mandalorian leader) and Command/Vigilance (Moff Gideon leader). This means that we’ll have a plethora of Vigilance cards, and a decent start on Command and Cunning. My first three packs added in very few Aggression cards and very few cards pushing me toward Heroism. Again, you can find the full list in this spreadsheet . For deck-building in a limited format like this, I like to start by considering two main things: What leaders do I have, and what bombs did I pull? By "bombs," I essentially mean powerful cards that are worth building around. This doesn't necessarily translate to "which Rare or Legendary cards did I pull?" In fact, one of the great things about SWU is that the power curve is surprisingly shallow across rarities (as you'll see below). These two factors are going to have the largest impact on my deck-building. Here are the leaders I have access to during round 1: The Mandalorian We’re going to tackle the Heroism side first, because I pulled no additional Heroism leaders. This means Mando is my only choice on that side of the card pool. Chewbacca was the bomb I pulled for Heroism, which works well with the Cunning/Vigilance card pools that the starter deck provided. I also pulled the rare card Mystic Reflection, but with Grogu being the only Force unit in my pool, there isn’t a strong incentive to put it in the deck. On the Cunning side, I have both Fennec Shand and Enfys Nest (both uncommon cards) that add some solid back-end for a limited pool. Since we have some decent late game, let's see if there is anything in the rest of the pool that incentivizes building this deck. Village Protectors pops out instantly as a strong sentinel unit. Snapshot Reflexes is an upgrade that both triggers Mando's ability, while not costing us action efficiency. We have around a dozen decent 2-cost units, meaning we have strong odds of getting a turn 1 play. We also see a decent space presence with about a dozen space units. All things said and done, there is a decent card pool use. Piecing things together, my Vigilance Mando deck would look like this: My largest concerns with this deck are that I would be running a relatively low number of upgrades (six), meaning I'm triggering Mando's ability less. Razor's Crest helps that by pulling upgrades back to hand from the discard pile, but realistically I'm running this deck for access to Chewbacca and Village Protectors, both of which I would not use elsewhere. Potentially this is worth revising with more bounty cards to get further use from my leader ability. Villainy Options To look at the Villainy side, I have a lot more options. Doctor Aphra really doesn’t call to me in a limited format, so I am taking her out of consideration. I don't foresee me building with her, even as my card pool grows. Bossk is very appealing, since he deploys on 5 resources. However, he requires I use Aggression, and with a grand total of 7 Aggression cards there isn't much to work with. It does include Kylo's TIE Silencer (a Legendary card), but while the stats are nice for a space unit, I can get those same stats from the uncommon Mercenary Gunship I pulled. I have generally found the 4-resource cost to steal the ship tends to be more expensive than removing it any other way. At that point, it’s as good as Kylo’s TIE, but can be run in any aspect combination. Hunting Nexu is also a strong card, but with so few Aggression units, it will likely not gain access to its raid ability. All in all, Aggression just didn’t have the cards to support a full deck, though Bossk may become very appealing as the card pool grows. This leaves me with either Gar Saxon or Moff Gideon. Moff Gideon Both Cunning and Vigilance offer some solid cards for Moff Gideon, but Vigilance offers more cards that work well with his leader ability. It also offers some better removal options with Fell the Dragon and Calculated Brutality. By way of bombs, there isn't much here beyond Gideon's Cruiser. That's perfectly fine, because Gideon's ability pushes us toward a swarm deck. Rather than put resources into a few high-value units, we'll spread resources out over many low-value units. Taking a look at our low end, we have a lot of units that cost three or less. General Tagge jumps out, because we have around twenty trooper units in our card pool. Anything that buffs our cheap unit great, so alongside Tagge we have Outland TIE Vanguards that can help bump up the stats. We also have a number of ramp options to accelerate our resource accumulation. Superlaser Technician and Price on Your Head will both accelerate how quickly we can hit our late game, allowing us to drop Gideon's Cruiser or smuggle out a Pirate Tank. That is a little at odds with wanting to pump out units, because we will likely burn through our hand dropping small units. Usually we would look to stop resourcing cards in order to quickly drop more units. However, it also offers us some options on how we play depending on who we match up with. Putting it all together, it looks like this: Gar Saxon Gar Saxon requires we take Vigilance, which we don't mind since we have a strong pool of cards in Vigilance. Aggression is weak in our pool, as mentioned above, and we have nothing that pulls us toward mono-Vigilance. That leaves Command and Cunning for us to evaluate. Cunning offers most of the top end we saw with our Mando deck, but as a whole, I find myself pulled toward Command. This is going to offer a similar set of cards we looked at for Moff Gideon. Command offers flexible ways to get upgrades on units through Outland TIE Vanguard and General Tagge. The Rickety Quadjumper offers additional ways to get experience upgrades on units, but it is unreliable. It also doesn't have the stats to really help manage the space arena. For upgrades, Mandalorian Armor is great, especially for Gar Saxon. Resilient offers a bit of staying power. Legal Authority is soft removal, which can be incredibly strong in limited formats. Privateer Crew is interesting here, as the smuggle option makes it into a 6-cost unit with 6 power and 5 hp. The Client and Cargo Juggernaut come into play with an upgrade, giving them Saxon's bonus. As a whole there are a lot of options for taking advantage of Gar Saxon's leader ability, and it isn't locked to attacking other units. The deck would shake out to look like this: Conclusion All things said and done, I had to decide between these three decks. I think all will work well in the format, but in the end, I am going with the Gar Saxon Command deck. While he deploys a turn later than Gideon, I think the stat boost limitation from Gideon isn't as flexible as the boost from Saxon. For round 1, I have been paired with Kennedyhawk from the MCM and SAGA podcasts. After my match is complete, I’ll post a short write-up detailing which deck I picked, how the match went, and what changes I would make moving forward. With the following round, I’ll have another video and write-up detailing the new cards I have access to and if those will push me to another leader/aspect combination. I would love to hear what deck would you choose, and how might you build it differently. Author's Note: If you have any comments or suggestions on this style of article, let me know! I'm trying to find a nice balance between needing to show every card discussed and not showing enough cards for readers who may not know them all. I would love feedback on this aspect of the write-up!

  • Categorizing Hero Playstyles

    In a previous article , I categorized heroes according to how complex their piloting is. To help give another tool for players in helping choose which heroes they may like to play or pick up, I’m going to continue this series by categorizing heroes according to their playstyle. So what do I mean by playstyle? My aim is to get at the essence of what these heroes feel like to play. “Feel” is an inherently subjective term, but I think we can still capture some common throughlines that players can agree on. Are they fast out the gate? Do they need time to reach their potential? These are, of course, things that can be drastically modified by aspect and deck-build, but I still think it is helpful to categorize the core of each hero. It's also worth noting that all heroes will see some build and power increase across the game, even if using a rush-style play. That all said, I have defined three categories that can capture the general feel of a hero’s playstyle: Zero to Hero Good to Go Ebb and Flow Below you'll find what defines each category, which heroes fall into it, and a small tidbit on each hero. If you want to skip to any particular section, you can click the links above. Zero to Hero These heroes have a large differential between what they can accomplish on an early turn compared to a late-game turn. They tend to have a low impact on the early game. I’m starting with Zero to Hero because it has a quintessential Marvel Champions vibe to it. With these heroes, there is a massive gap between what you can do in the early game and the late game. You have a lot of building to do, and while some heroes may build faster than others, you can certainly feel a difference in how you’re impacting the board. The poster-hero for this would be Iron Man. You can do next to nothing in hero form without some upgrades in play, but you've got a high ceiling on what you can do once built. Adam Warlock While Adam has a lot he can do early in the game thanks to his Battle Mage ability, he doesn’t feel nearly as strong as during the late game when his upgrades are out. Between a standard resource generator with his staff and a suite of upgrades that trigger off using his Battle Mage ability, a late game turn will feel far more powerful than his first turn. Discarding any card you don’t want to get two new cards and a ready is huge, even if you don’t get the aspect effect from Battle Mage . Ant-Man Ant-Man can come out the gate with at least 3 threat removal or 4 damage thanks to his hero form abilities and basic activations. This means he can actually have a pretty decent impact on the early board. However, he doesn’t feel fully unleashed until his helmet, Giant Strength, and Army of Ants are out. Wrist Gauntlets are often overlooked, but they are an incredibly powerful and flexible upgrade. They too contribute to the full power Ant-Man can have in the late game. Black Panther Wakanda Forever is one of the most powerful scaling cards in the game. With each Black Panther upgrade played it becomes stronger. While you don’t need to build his full suit for it to become effective, your turn one will feel much different than a late game turn with The Golden City and his suit in play. Cable Cable is our first hero that doesn’t rely exclusively on building out their board to increase their impact on the game. Instead he will be boosting and building the power of his events and upgrades as he puts side schemes in the Victory Display. While approaching things very differently, the flow of his game still very much fits into Zero to Hero. Colossus Colossus is likely the furthest away from ‘zero’ out of all the heroes in this category. His opening level is so strong, I considered creating an entirely separate category just to account for it. Right out the gate, Colossus gains a Tough with his flip to hero form. This Tough can power a number of his events, and his high health means he can use it and still not worry much about the first villain phase. However, his following turn will see him with a smaller than average hand size and potentially the need to generate additional Toughs. He has a number of upgrades that really power up his Tough usage, namely Iron Will and Titanium Muscles. Once those and at least one Organic Strength are out, Colossus feels even more powerful, generating card draw, toughs, and status effects galore. Domino Domino has some incredibly unique powers that are online from turn one. However, to fully utilize them, she needs to get out some subset of upgrades and supports. Once you have out some combination of her pistols, Probability Field, Pip, and/or The Painted Lady, you’ll be blowing up the board. Drax Another hero that has a non-traditional power ramp, Drax is powered up by taking hits from the villain. Once he has maxed out his vengeance counters, Drax has +3 ATK, card draw following a villain attack, reduced cost events, powered up thwarts, and incredibly strong defense events. In addition to his vengeance counters, Drax does have some traditional build with Dwi Theet Mastery, Mantis, and Drax’s Knife. Ghost-Spider While Ghost-Spider has some kick (pun intended) from the get-go, she really increases in impact and power by having her bracelets and dad on the board. She can still have a strong impact on early turns, so she steps outside the norm a bit on that front. However, with a few good events tucked away on George Stacey and rebates on response and interrupt cards, she’ll have a lot more flexibility in how she reacts and more options to impact the board. Additionally, she has Ticket to the Multiverse, which is a hefty investment for a later one-time payout. That payout is greatly improved once Ghost-Spider has been built up. Hawkeye While Hawkeye has access to his arrow suite from turn one, his toolkit doesn’t fully unlock until his quiver and at least one resource generator is out. Even then, it doesn’t really hit until you’ve built up some arrow options on your quiver. By late game you’ll essentially have an “arrow turn” and your normal turn using your hand. Iron Man Iron Man is the quintessential build hero. He can build quickly, especially with some aggressive mulligans, but a turn one Iron Man is very different from a late game Iron Man. By the late game Iron Man will feel like you play one turn using his upgrades on the board and a second using what is in your hand. Ironheart While not nearly as rough of an early game as Iron Man, Ironheart has a similar feel to her build. First, she has a suite of upgrades that give you a lot of board control. Second (and primarily) she will upgrade her suit throughout the game, boosting her stats, hand size, and the power of her upgrades. Ms. Marvel Ms. Marvel has one of the larger build suites in the game. Once you have 2-3 upgrades and 2-3 supports out, you’ll find that you’re incredibly resource rich and have lots of options to boost damage and thwart. One thing to note about Ms. Marvel is that a lot of her build is locked to alter-ego, so in solo and some high pressure scenarios, she’ll have a lot less build she can or needs to do. Quicksilver As the epitome of a Keystone hero ( from the previous article ), Quicksilver's power feels very reliant on getting Friction Resistance into play. And, while Quicksilver’s upgrade suite looks a little bland, you shouldn’t shy away from the stat boosts. As his stats and ready sources are built up, you’ll find that you are accomplishing far more in the late game, especially with Friction Resistance readying each time Quicksilver readies. She-Hulk She-Hulk can have a strong opening, but ultimately lands in Zero to Hero due to her small hand size and Focused Rage upgrades. She feels much stronger with access to more cards. Additionally, since she will spend a decent amount of time in alter-ego for many builds, Superhuman Law Division is one of her better threat removal options. SP//dr Perhaps the fastest build hero in this list, SP//dr still has a lot of upgrades she wants to get into play. However, by late game you will essentially be taking multiple turns worth of actions as you get full use from All Systems Go. As a note of interest, there is a 90% chance of getting one or more interfaces in your opening sequence. Despite the small hand size, SP//dr and Peni can reach just as far into their deck as many other heroes, meaning they are getting to the build cards just as fast. Star-Lord Star-Lord is going to be generating a lot of extra encounter cards over the course of a game, and he very much wants his helmet, boots, and Leader of the Guardians in play to help counter that. Each of these help offset the extra encounter cards by preventing damage, generating card draw, and increasing threat management capabilities. Additionally Star-Lord will be playing one or both Element Guns, making his damage access quite strong in the late game. Thor Due to his alter-ego hand size of five, Thor has a much lower floor than many heroes during the first turn. Turn one he will for sure have access to 3 ATK, but he has to put Mjolnir into play, leaving him only four cards to build and/or impact the board. As you get out his resource generators and Asgard, he’ll feel a lot more online. Valkyrie With turn one access to Death Glow, Valkyrie can be targeting enemies and powering up a few of her cards. However, until she gets out some weapons and Valhalla, Death Glow has limited overall impact on her turns. War Machine Due to his ammo counters, War Machine could also almost go in the Ebb and Flow category. However, his early and late game are relatively independent from his ammo counters. In addition to that, you aren’t really building up the counters so much as just gaining them initially and preserving them through his gauntlets. However, with his various weapon upgrades and Upgraded Chassis out, War Machine feels completely different. His biggest building point is his Munitions Bunker. You can essentially build your end game as you load it up. Good to Go These heroes have a small differential between what they can accomplish on an early turn compared to a late-game turn. They tend to have a high impact on the early game. Good to Go heroes will also have some build, but there is a much smaller difference between what you can do in the early game and what you can do on a late-game turn. These heroes come out firing, and they can really impact the board from the get-go. This is a great category to find rush heroes. Nova is my favorite hero to embody this category. On the first turn, you have your helmet and can be doing some serious work. If you have Unleash Nova Force and the targets for it, you can be wiping the early pressure the scenario sets. Captain America From turn one, Captain America can thwart for 4-6, attack for 4, or do some combination there-in. While this has a lower impact as player count goes up, it is nothing to be ignored. His villain phase is covered, as he will have 3 DEF and access to a ready the following turn. He also has potential for a full damage block, dependent only on how soon he draws Shield Block. Captain Marvel Captain Marvel has essentially bought her way into this category. Her insane access to resources has limited reliance on build, so while it will be better by the late game, it’s not significantly different than the early game. This means that on turn one you can already be impacting the board or building as needed. Doctor Strange Doctor Strange’s strongest events are available on turn one. He’ll certainly see some increase with his cape and Wong, but really he has some incredible strength from the get-go. Gamora Gamora has some inexpensive events, and her hero ability elevates them from turn one. You’ll see a pretty standard power increase across the game for her, but she’ll have a strong board impact early on. He ping damage and thwart does lose some impact at high player counts, but it can still be valuable to do a little bit of everything. Hulk Hulk is one of the best rush heroes in the game, which is a strong indication that he can come hard out the gate. He certainly has some build that he can do, but his turn one and late game turns can feel relatively similar in power. Nova While Connection to the Worldmind won’t give you access to extra resources during setup, Nova essentially has two resource generators out the first turn thanks to his helmet. He doesn’t have a whole lot of build beyond that. Additionally, Unleash Nova Force can make for some incredibly powerful turns, so as long as there are targets, Nova’s early game Unleash can be quite similar to his late game Unleash turns. Phoenix Phoenix has an interesting progression depending on build. If you are focusing on her Restrained side, she is essentially fully powered on turn one. However, if you are focusing fully on Unleashed, you’ll have a brief “build” across a few turns as you work down her counters. Really I find it comes down to playstyle preference. It tends to hit somewhere in the middle where you’ll hit a turning point in the game that you’ll flip from Restrained to Unleashed. Either way, she has a lot of board impact from turn one. Rogue While Rogue may be looking to set up a number of combos, her events are essentially full powered on turn one. Within her kit she only has one upgrade, so you will have to look to your aspect choice for any further build. In the most basic form of play, Rogue will attach Touched to the villain the majority of the game. This means she will see little increase in power from her events over the course of a game. In more combo heavy decks, Rogue will see more build to a (hopefully) bigger payout with whatever combo you have set up. Scarlet Witch Scarlet Witch has some fantastic cards that offer her some control and consistency, but realistically her Hex Bolts and attacks are fully powered turn one. She has some minimal build from her crest and Sorcerer Supreme. Shadowcat When you can block infinite damage turn one, it is mandatory you are in this category. Shadowcat’s greatest strength is her defending abilities. She starts the game with a resource generator and full damage prevention. She’ll definitely add some cards to the mix over the course of the game, but it’s hard to start at a higher point than this. Spectrum Not only can Spectrum start the game with a stat of 3, she has the choice of which stat that is. She’ll add in some resource generators and aspect upgrades along the way, but her board impact turn one is both strong and flexible. Spider-Man (Miles) Miles Morales is another hero that could realistically get through an entire game without playing an actual upgrade or support. He has a few that are helpful, but from the get go he has access to strong events and powerful status effects. Spider-Man (Peter) Peter Parker has a strong start with his Scientist resource in alter-ego. Turn one he has a defense of 3 and potentially a full damage block with Backflip. He can impact the board in a lot of ways depending on his card draw, and he really doesn’t have to prepare for that first villain activation in the way that other heroes do. Star-Lord Hold up! Wasn’t Star-Lord in Zero to Hero? Yes. Yes, he was. However, he offers a totally different approach to the game with his rush strategy. Star-Lord is one of the best heroes for turn one wins. He can quickly and easily power-up his events, preventing the villain from ever activating. Just make sure that you actually do win turn one, or you're likely going to be in a world of hurt. Storm Storm will not only power herself up right off the bat, she’ll power everyone else as well. A lot of board control can be gained from +1 ATK for the hero phase, and -1 ATK during the villain phase can be incredibly helpful for creating space to build further on turn two. Venom Venom will start the game with a resource generator (his hero ability) and a weapon in his hand, meaning on turn one, he has access to 8 resources. He is likely the easiest one to hinder for setup, since if you include too many weapons you have a chance to slow down access to his strong and flexible in-kit weapons. Vision Vision’s events are incredibly flexible, and while they can depend on what form you’re in, they have the same impact turn one as they do in the late game. He has minimal build available in his kit, but some builds will be looking to recur Vivian using 616 Hickory Branch Lane. Even with this, there is minimal setup to get it running. Wasp Wasp is probably the hero here that could most likely be slotted into Zero to Hero, but almost all of her build would come from aspect cards. She has some great events and board impact from turn one though, so she makes the cut. Wolverine Wolverine gets his claws during setup, which means he has access to strong discounts on attacks turn one. He's a great candidate for rush, especially in solo. Ebb and Flow These heroes will alternate between a building phase followed by a phase of spending or losing that build. Ebb and Flow heroes have an interesting playstyle. If you’re a fan of Spirit Island, these heroes remind me of Ocean’s Hungry Grasp. There is a bit of build up, spending or losing that build up, then building up again. As the game goes on you’ll see a general incline, but your turn-to-turn will have a cycle of building and using. The epitome in this game would be Black Widow. You build up her preps, then spend them later. Your power is at its peak with a board full of preparations, and with each one used, you reduce your strength. Black Widow Taking advantage of Preparations, Black Widow has some really interesting play reacting to what the encounter deck is doing. You’ll build up preparations through your turns and spend them to counter the villain. While the Winter Soldier is the only card impacted directly by the preparations being in play, Black Widow certainly loses a lot of power and control when they are gone. Her suit and hero ability won’t trigger without preparations, and she can no longer respond to the encounter deck, which is her greatest strength. Cyclops Cyclops is an interesting ebb and flow hero, because his buffs and debuffs generally affect the entire board before being lost at the end of the round. He has relatively easy access to his temporary Tactic upgrades through his alter-ego ability and Tactical Brilliance, however the feel of the round can be very different depending on what Temporary upgrades are in play. An Exploit Weakness turn will feel very damage heavy, but following turns may feel a bit lackluster with ping damage. Gambit Gambit has a lot more going on in his kit than charge counters, but the counters have a lot of impact on his events and aspect cards. You’ll see this ebb and flow as you build up a charge, spend them, then build them again. Groot Groot’s growth counters will build up through events and his alter-ego ability. Then they will be lost through damage, an event, and Groot’s upgrades. His events are also powered up by how many growth counters are on Groot, so you’ll see periods of time in the game where they are weaker or stronger. Nebula Nebula’s techniques are harder to control, but you’ll see yourself play a number out, gain passive benefits, then trigger their active abilities and discard those upgrades. There are some unique play-lines that can let you keep some techniques in play or take further advantage of them while they are in play, but in the end you will likely see this ebb and flow as techniques enter and leave play. Rocket Raccoon Rocket has two lines of ebb and flow. His tech cards have counters that can be replenished, but he also has ways to discard tech in order to draw cards. So you will see this ebb and flow of weapons charging up, being spent down, thrown out, then played again. Spider-Ham Spider-Ham is the most flexible when it comes to what you can do with his ebb and flow counters. Toon counters are easy to come by and can be used to power up events, trigger upgrades, and even be spent as resources on whatever you darn well please. With how easy toon counters are to come by, there may even be times that you lose the ebb-and-flow feel. Spider-Woman Spider-Woman’s ebb and flow is a fair bit different then the others. As the round progresses, you will play cards and boost her stats. Then at the end of the round she’ll lose the boost, and you’ll have to start again the following round. It’s a much faster cycle, but you very much still have the ebb and flow vibe. Star-Lord Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous. Yes. Yes, I am. However, Star-Lord will see some ebb and flow to the strength of his events, the size of his hand, and the amount of damage he can prevent with his boots. Each of these are impacted by the number of encounter cards dealt to Star-Lord. As his future problems pile up, his events and helmet power up. Conclusion Hopefully this resource is helpful for helping pick which heroes you may find appealing or want to play. As more heroes are released, I'll be updating this to include them. And who knows... maybe with enough outliers, I'll even add additional categories. Thanks Thank you to the discord brain trust for engaging in conversation about this. In particular, thanks to MegiDolaDyne, Jimmydm90, journeyman2, and thearguerandtheclueless.

  • Community Suggested Scenarios 2

    One of my favorite things about Marvel Champions is the modularity. There are so many ways to mix and match scenarios and modular sets, to the point that at times it can be daunting! This series will be highlighting some community favorites, hopefully helping players find new ways to play the game and branch out from the suggested modular sets! These scenarios (and those upcoming) were suggested by community members. If you have any favorite combinations, let me know! After the first few articles have been posted in this series, I'll add a page that gathers them together for easy reference. Without further ado, here are the scenarios we are highlighting today! Guerilla Cyberwarfare Scenario : Ultron (Core Set) Modular Set : Guerilla Tactics (Sinister Motives) What goes best with a never ending flood of enemies? Side schemes that give them each a hazard icon, of course! Make sure you keep on top of both the drones and the side schemes, because this scenario has the potential to quickly get out of hand. The Mill! Scenario : Sandman (Sinister Motives) Modular Sets : Power Drain (Green Goblin) City in Chaos (Sinister Motives) I hope you brought your acceleration icons, because Sandman and Electro both are looking to quickly discard through the encounter deck. For the classic Sandman/Rhino team up, we have City in Chaos here, but if you want some additional discard effects, try out the Arcade modular set instead! * Fun Fact : You'll see effects discarding cards from a deck called "mill effects" or "milling." This term comes from Magic: The Gathering, where the Millstone card first introduced the effect to that game. The term "mill" was even added as a keyword in later sets. Jurassic Park Scenario : Crossbones (Rise of Red Skull) Modular Sets : Sauron (Iceman) Savage Lands (Age of Apocalypse) Temporal (The Once and Future Kang) Crossbones is breaking into the secret SHIELD facility in The Savage Land. Will you be the hunter or the hunted as you take on Crossbones, Sauron, and a variety of dinos! That's it for this article! Be on the look out for more scenarios to be posted in upcoming articles and on the upcoming Community Favorites page! And don't forget to let me know what your favorite combinations are! Acknowledgements Lots of community members have chimed in on these community favorites. I want to acknowledge everyone who has contributed. For these first few articles, I'll include the list here. Once the main page goes live that gathers them all together, I'll move the acknowledgement list there! So thank you to everyone below that has contributed so far! CastleFrank47 classyrobot Dansome FakeSki Ǵreg Ice Nine journeyman2 MegiDolaDyne MrSelfDestruct regenshine ScarletRhodey

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