Marvel Champions

From a thematic standpoint, this whole X-Force wave is probably a hard pass for me. Though a life-long fan of comics, I stopped buying comics from the early '90s until 2000 because of the widespread terrible artwork and writing of the Image guys that soon infected both DC and especially Marvel. We got all these grim and gritty anti-heroes with guns bigger than their heads and dozens of pouches on their costumes. Most of the Image guys drew like they flunked out of art school. I also dislike the Morlocks, the Marauders, and Mister Sinister. Pretty much the only thing that interests me in this campaign is the Juggernaut scenario.

However, I learned early on that this game can make a character more (or less) interesting to me with the specific implementation in the game. For example, I never had any use for Spider-Woman in the comics. She seemed like a lazy attempt to extend the Spider-man brand, and her ability to fly seemed completely unthematic for a spider-themed character. But in Marvel Champions, she offers interesting deck-building opportunities because she can include two aspects in her deck, and she gets a temporary boost to all of her stats for each different aspect she plays in a turn. And her hero-specific cards include all four aspects, making her an unusually flexible character.

So on that basis, I will take a closer look at this set, though probably still pass on it. Offhand, all of the villain scenarios look like minor variations of what we have seen in the past. Domino has a novel mechanic focused on discarding the top of her deck and retrieving cards from her discard pile, which can potentially lead to some really strong and focused deck designs. But I'm not very interested in the deck design aspect of this game, and I feel that her discard mechanic is not sufficiently different from cards used by Adam Warlock and Scarlet Witch.

Cable is more interesting to me, because of his focus on side schemes. The new player side scheme card type finally answers a question that I have had in my mind for a while: How will this game express the genius of Reed Richards? Probably with player side schemes to represent the kinds of one-off inventions that Reed often cobbles together while the rest of the Fantastic Four stalls the bad guy. Reed's side schemes will probably be restricted to characters with the Genius keyword, and then Reed will have other cards that make him the best at using these genius player side schemes, like an alter ego ability and a lab location. Cable's other ability involving side schemes does seem fun, as he can remove side schemes from the game (at least until the end of the scenario), and gains bonuses from doing so. I hate the side scheme deck in the Red Skull scenario, so I would love to play Cable against Red Skull, or maybe team him up with Captain America in that scenario.

Dominos schtick is putting what you want on top of her deck so you can then discard it for the effect you want, which seems like fun deck manipulation shenanigans. Cable being baseline 3/3/3 (once you clear technovirus) with readies already makes him pretty BEEFY. Plus he gets access to the fun Psionic cards... He seems like he's gonna be a powerhouse.

I also was a casualty of the '90's Marvel (ALL XMEN ALL THE TIME, GHOST RIDER AND PUNISHER WITH POUCHES TOO!) As an 80's kid, it was too much - I tapped out sometime around X-factor 20ish and never looked back. Cable/Domino/Bishop/Psylocke/etc are about as foreign to me as any DC backlot JSA character.

I will still buy every bit of it. Probably end up reading some of the stories on Marvel Unlimited - Web Warriors did that for me. After playing with all the cards I wanted to read Spider-Verse (almost done - 2 issues left) - Good stuff.

Man I did a deeper read of the new stuff and it just looks super fun. Domino has all time hero kit favorite potential for me, she looks so so fun with her deck shenanigans. Exactly the kind of design I like.

While doing laundry, I started a two-handed game of Wolverine/aggression and Quicksilver/protection against Green Goblin and Scorpion. At this point, Green Goblin is on the second stage of both his main scheme and himself, with little progress on either. Quicksilver is focused on thwarting and stunning, while Wolverine shreds Green Goblin and the minions.

Omega Red came out early, but was only a big problem that first time due to his side scheme preventing his defeat. Scorpion has only entered play once, and Wolverine quickly dismissed him, but other cards in his set keep stunning Quicksilver. Wolverine does a lot of damage and Quicksilver might be able to set up multiple attacks, so we might be able to beat Green Goblin in just two more turns. Probably three or four.

Ah_Pook wrote: Man I did a deeper read of the new stuff and it just looks super fun. Domino has all time hero kit favorite potential for me, she looks so so fun with her deck shenanigans. Exactly the kind of design I like.

With any card draw she should be able set up and recur any combo she wants with deck manipulation in both forms. Looks fun.

Laundry night, so Marvel Champions. Storm/leadership and Valkyrie/aggression versus The Wrecking Crew. Good game. I typically struggle a bit against the Wrecking Crew no matter what deck I run. Valkyrie is also a struggle to run, because some of her hero cards are flawed. And I have a lousy track record of keeping Storm from getting defeated in the early part of a game.

But this time, everything worked out. Storm got several good upgrades and supports out early, and generally had at least one ally handy to take a block. The relatively few minions gave Valkyrie fewer opportunities to shine, but she got in some nice hits and blocks throughout the game. At one point, Valkyrie did get knocked down to one hit point, but managed to bounce back quickly due to two Godlike Stamina cards and some normal recovery. In the final stretch, Thunderball was the last villain, and we had him down to 18 hit points. Storm was stunned, but Havok hit him for 6 damage and Storm got him for 2 more with Thunderstorm. Then Valkyrie did an ATK of 5, followed by a Quick Strike for 5 more and the win.

Took another look at the player side schemes in the previews for NeXt Evolution, and rated them:

Technovirus Purge: A+. For a measly 5 points worth of thwarting, the Cable player gains a permanent +1/+1/+1 to his hero stats.

Call For Backup: B+. At a cost of 3 thwart per player, this a fair price for an average ally, and potentially a good deal if players have expensive allies.

Establish Perimeter: B. At a cost of 2 thwart per player, this is an okay price for a Tough status card.

Take Out the Guards: C-. At a cost of 4 thwart per player, this looks like a bad deal to me. It only works on non-elite minions, which often have 4 or less hit points anyway. I could see this being okay in a scenario where non-elite minions are often getting good attachments, like Sentinels or a scenario that includes the Ransacked Armory modular set.

There is a default assumption in this game that it smoothly scales at all player counts, but that isn't completely true. True solo is swingy, while three- and four-hero games tend to struggle against the final boss in each campaign, especially if there isn't at least one aggression deck and one justice deck in play. Extending this idea to the player side schemes, Technovirus Purge is the only one that I would definitely play in a four-hero game. And also Call For Backup and Establish Perimeter, but only if Cable is in play. Otherwise, player side schemes in a high player count game are a big drain on thwarting actions. Unless you have two justice decks in play, you will be hard pressed to do that much thwarting without also addressing the main scheme and any side schemes in play.

Psylocke

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2023/4/27/flurry-of-blades/

Incredible Justice cards. Hero looks bonkers too... 2 resource generators that start in play, 3thw/3atk that you can swap back and forth between... Hopefully it overcomes her 4 hand size, which I'm still real wary of even though the last couple they've done have been baller.

Psylocke looks like another recursion deck. Great for the serious deckbuilders, but I find recursion makes a deck more repetitive and less interesting. I'm not into the character or the deck style, so this is probably a pass. This whole cycle might be a pass, but I am interested in seeing what they do with Deadpool.

Last night, I played Captain Marvel/aggression and Rogue/protection against Scorpio/experimental weapons. Scorpio is one of the better custom scenarios, though on the easy side. In mechanical terms, it's a two stage scenario (7 per, then 12 per) with 11(!) minions. Stage 1 Scorpio is 1*/2 with 15 hp per, while stage 2 is 1*/3 with 17 per (and stage 3 is the same as Stage 2 except with 19 hp per plus an acceleration token on the main scheme). The minions all have 4 or 5 hp, and each has a different special ability that is triggered when defeated.

What makes this scenario distinctive is the separate Signs deck. Various effects trigger an effect called Read the Stars, which involves drawing and discarding the next 3 cards in the signs deck. If a given sign card matches Scorpio or one of the minions currently in play, their special ability is triggered. You also Read the Stars any time that Scorpio schemes. Despite his low scheme attribute, Scorpio is a scheming villain. He has some cards that give him acceleration tokens, either temporarily or permanently. With 11 minions, there are sometimes turns where it's very inconvenient to do any thwarting at all.

This was a fun game. Captain Marvel with aggression is a very straight forward hitter, but she eventually built up a nice set of upgrades and supports. Her ally Tigra was useful for finishing off minions. Her other allies Mockingbird and Spider-Woman helped by Stunning and Confusing Scorpio. Rogue also was effective, delivering occasional stuns with her attacks, which was nice because experimental weapons and the Zodiac Key sometimes got Scorpio hitting for a base five damage plus boost. Rogue's ally Iceman was great for this scenario, as he can stun up to three minions as they enter play. When Rogue borrowed cards from Captain Marvel, it was 50/50 whether she went for Crisis Intervention (thwart) or Photonic Blast (attack).

I should have stuck to the two-hero games for now, but I have been re-reading the Roy Thomas run on Avengers lately, so I wanted to play some 4-hero games. I also wanted to play classic Avengers against Masters of Evil. Sadly, the only suitable choices for a Masters of Evil scenario are either The Hood (to cram in seven possible Masters-related modular sets) or Klaw (an actual member of the Masters of Evil). For both games, I went with The Hood, though I changed out some of the modular sets in the second game. I used three nemesis sets in place of modular sets: Baron Zemo (Cap nemesis) and Radioactive Man (Photon nemesis).

First game: Iron Man/justice, Quicksilver/protection, Black Widow/justice, and Hawkeye/leadership. Starting modular set was ideal... the Masters of Evil. I later got Baron Zemo, Mister Hyde, and Crossfire's Crew in the game, and Avalanche also appeared. This was a brutal smackdown by the villains, leading to a very bad turn where three of my heroes got defeated. Late in the encounter turn, Crossfire popped up and assassinated Black Widow. Then the side scheme from Crossfire's Crew appeared and killed Iron Man. Mister Hyde murdered Quicksilver. The following turn, Hawkeye was left facing 8 minions, and he didn't have an explosive arrow handy, so game over. The Hood only took 9 points of damage, and the game was short enough that Hawkeye never drew his quiver, and Iron Man only got 5/7 of his armor in play.

Second game: Thor/aggression, Vision/protection, Black Widow/justice, and Captain America/leadership. The first modular set was the Wrecking Crew, followed by Radioactive Man, Enchanteress, and the Brothers Grimm. Seems like an oversight that Enchanteress is not a Mystic minion. This game went a lot better, but I still lost when the Hood schemed out for the win. Part of the problem was that I kept forgetting to use Black Widow's prep cards when potential triggers showed up. The turn that Enchanteress entered the game was at a point when the encounter deck was nearly empty, so suddenly 3/4 of my team was either Seduced or Beguiled. Really, all of my decks except Vision functioned quite well, and my biggest mistake was waiting too long to go for a final beatdown on the Hood. I need two more turns of beatdown to finish the Hood, so I should have gone for the kill at least two turns sooner.

I've been chipping away at Mutant Genesis for the past six weeks or so and finally wrapped up a couple of nights ago. Heroes were Cyclops leadership and Wolverine aggression and were for the most part their precons.

I can't recall exactly for each one, but the various scenarios took me on average three tries to beat on Standard. Sabretooth might have been four and Magneto definitely was at least four attempts.

Magneto was challenging and this is where I really started messing with the pre-cons and ditching cards I wasn't playing. While it was great to finally beat Magneto it was a little bit of a cheesy win as I'd replaced the majority of Cyclops' deck with allies. Still, a win's a win.

Leadership gonna leadership, and a wins a win. Magneto is tough.

I was expecting to skip this entire current wave of Marvel Champions products, but I'm actually happy about the Angel pack that was just announced. He has an extra form with a double-sized folding identity card for his three forms, allowing to shift between a hero form that thwarts well to a hero form that is all attack and defense but has an built-in acceleration token. His various hero cards tend to work differently depending on which hero form he is in, and he breathes new life into the underused Aerial keyword. I hope that the additional aspect cards in his pack will offer cards that I can use in my Spectrum/leadership, Thor/aggression, and Valkyrie/aggression decks. Spectrum has Aerial right on her hero card, and Thor easily gains Aerial with Mjolnir. Valkyrie needs to get her flying horse in play to gain Aggression, but will take any help she can get.

Thematically, Angel makes for some versatile teamup action with other heroes. He is best known as a member of the original X-Men, but he has also been a member of X-Force, Defenders, and the original Champions. So far, the only other original Champion in the game is Black Widow, as well as as ally cards for Hercules and Iceman.