He's A Bit of a Fixer-Upper: Returning to Marvel Champions and Figuring Out Angel

 

Two years and change, that's how long it's been since my last Marvel Champions blog post.

It's not been two years since my last blog on other games, or even two years since I last mentioned Marvel Champions in a blog, but... yeah... I've been gone a while.

I left the game about halfway through X-Men cycle - I enjoyed Storm a lot, played through the campaign with Phoenix and Cyclops, and then just kinda drifted away.  My evenings spent playing Marvel Champions became evening spent painting miniatures and while I kept current on expansions for a while I honestly didn't even register the Next Generation box coming into my FLGS.

Now, though, I'm dipping my toe back into the water and trying to get back up to speed.  I found a Boxing Day deal online that was too good to refuse so I got back to pretty much entirely up to date on packs and with a backlog of new cards and mechanics to wrap my head around.  Player Side Schemes?  What the heck?  

It's honestly been a little bit overwhelming so far - effectively cracking open 18 months of content all at once and trying to make sense of how it all fits together and how it would impact my existing decks for existing heroes.

• Colossus
• Shadowcat
• Wolverine
• Mojo Mania
• Gambit
• Rogue
• Cable
• Domino
• Angel
• Psylocke
• X-23

And that's without even mentioning this guy...

...I have no idea at all what to make of him yet!

I think he probably gets that a lot.

Getting Up To Speed

In the past I've liked to write blogs where I can bring something to you that I know is good.  Something tried and tested and proven, and maybe it's going to help you learn something new about how the game works or how to have fun playing it in a new way.  Right now, though, I don't feel like I can do that but then I was tinkering with one of my decks this morning and I thought that maybe actually just having somebody talking their way through their thought process for that would be interesting.

So let's do that instead.

I have already made a Colossus deck that I like a lot, but because I play two-handed (or dual-wield as I like to call it) I needed another hero to go alongside Colossus and that hero needed to carry the bulk of the thwarting load so had to be either Leadership or Justice, preferably Justice.

My first stop was Rogue because she looked like a lot of fun, but I very quickly came to the conclusion that Rogue wasn't going to cut it for me.  You may love Rogue but so far I found her very frustrating: Touched was rarely adding much, Superpower Adaptation was a nothing card I had 3 copies of, and it always felt like I needed to be able to move Touched mid-turn rather than choose at the start of the turn.

So I shitcanned my Justice Rogue deck and moved onto a Justice Angel deck.  Angel is one of the OG X-Men and thus one of my favourite Marvel characters, because for some reason I spent my childhood in early 80s reading classic back issues of the start of Spider-Man and the X-Men.  You wouldn't find many people excited to see a module based on The Enforcers but I'd be there for it.  Anyway, Angel/Archangel seemed to be along the same lines as Ant Man - thwart form and attack form - so seemed like my sort of thing and would suit a Justice build quite well so I threw a deck together to give it a try.

To give it a proper test I've been running my returning heroes into the Sabertooth encounter from Mutant Genesis (Expert) and so I lined that up for Colossus and Angel.  I'd played through it with the Colossus/Rogue pairing and while we'd won it was entirely down to Colossus and Rogue had been carried the whole way.

With Angel in place of Rogue it was... well... it was actually kind of the same story.  My Colossus deck is really strong and builds up fantastic economy while both Rogue and Angel have struggled to match it.  Angel was probably a bit stronger than Rogue but had hit a lot of the same issues - half the time I felt like I needed to be Angel because I was a Justice hero and trying to do lots of thwarting, but I also needed to be Archangel to use the Techno-Wings for their cost discount on Aerial thwarting events.  Then as Angel fell behind the curve he started taking damage, so now I needed to go to Alter-Ego to heal as well... it just wasn't possible to be every form every turn.

I played the encounter to the point where it was clear we'd stabilised and were going to grind out a win with Steel Fist hits from Colossus, then stopped.  I'd got what I needed out of the game - I now knew that my Angel deck needed work.

He's Just A Bit Of A Fixer-Upper

I think there's three stages to tinkering with decks and trying to make them better:

1) Diagnose the Problem

This is definitely the hardest part of the process.  Hard because it often takes some insight to look beyond something obvious to understand some deeper themes that you need to tackle, and hard because if you get it wrong everything that follows is going to be misdirected.

In this case I looked back at what I had been doing with Angel that I didn't want to be doing and what most immediately struck me was that by midgame I was having to change form with him all the time, to the extent that it was Metamorphosis that I was having to cycle back into my deck with his location.

Metamorphosis is not Angel's best card and I needed to playing cards that impacted the game a lot more than this, but I felt trapped into keep changing form.   I was low on health so I needed to be in Alter Ego to recover, but I also wanted to be in Angel form to thwart schemes effectively and draw cards, but I couldn't do that because everything I wanted to do was expensive so I needed to be in Archangel form to use Techno-Organic Wings for their cost discount.

There's maybe two problems rolled into one here and flipping form was trying to cover over two deficiencies - an economic one that I needed the Techno-Wings for, and a defensive one that meant I had to go back and recover more often than I'd like.

The other thing I noticed was that while I thought I was playing an Aerial themed deck I didn't actually have that many Aerial cards.  Power of Flight and Avian Anatomy might be resources for playing Aerial cards with but they aren't Aerial themselves, neither are the Techno-Organic Wings, while allies like Captain Britain might be Aerial but aren't an Aerial event for some other triggers.  It was all a bit more fiddly and self-defeated than I thought it was going to be so I had a couple of turns where I drew loads of resources and nothing to really do with them, and it seemed whenever I got Cannonball down he was sucking up consequential damage at a crazy rate instead of being immune.

2) Find Solutions

I pulled the deck apart and laid it out.  Usually I'll sort it by cost because that helps me to visualise the cost curve, and usually I'll keep the 15 hero cards separate from the others.  I can't change any of those 15 cards but I do need to bear their costs in mind when I'm looking at the Aspect/Basic cards I'm including.  In Angel's case he brings A LOT of 3-cost cards that crowd up the top end of the deck and cut out options I'd usually be using from my aspect and basic cards.

The next thing that I did was pull aside the cards that I was less happy with - what had I been drawing and just shrugging about or wishing was something else?

• 2x Power of Flight
• 2x Ready to Rumble
• 2x Turn The Tide
• Lay The Trap

There's a bit of a trend here, I think.  Ready To Rumble, Turn The Tide and Lay The Trap are all cards you want to see once you're set up and your deck is motoring, but because I was never getting to the stage where I was feeling powerful and settled they were unwanted.  Power of Flight didn't fit that category, but it was sticking it in the unwanted pile that made me rethink how my economy had been working.  I'd found myself needing to hit One Way or the Other just to draw cards to try and draw double resource cards like Power of Flight just to keep moving.  My economic development was very flat and didn't really build up over time, and that was why I was hung up on Techno-Organic Wings.  I needed more long term economy so that I didn't need to keep flipping to Archangel.

I like Skilled Investigator and it felt odd to have left it out originally so that extra card draw was an easy addition to make, and a lot of Angel's own kit are actually Thwart events so I was looking at Sense of Justice.  X-Gene, Sense of Justice and Team-Building Exercise all overlap slightly in what they can make cheaper so there's some competition in having them all out at the same time (should that happen) but I think they can co-exist in the same deck easily enough.

A synergetic choice popped up at this point that seemed to tick all the boxes.  I didn't like Lay the Trap but if I switched that player side scheme out for Specialised Training then I would be moving that slot in my deck from endgame damage to economic asset because it draws cards.  And because I was going to stay as Angel more I could be confident I wanted Surveillance Specialist, and the +1 Thwart would then play into the hands of being able to ready Angel with Techno-Organic Wings while still drawing a card for economic advantage.  I've already got Heroic Intuition in the deck so in theory I can now get to 4 THW and be able to ready each turn with the wings, which is a massive amount of threat reduction!

The other aspect of form flipping I wanted to avoid was taking too much damage.  It's not easy to mitigate damage in Justice but I could head that way with some sideways changes.  I added Endurance to my list of upgrades, and I decided to switch Agile Flight (an Aerial card that removed threat across the board and couldn't block) for Quasar (an Aerial card that removed threat across the board and can block!).

And, finally, if Specialised Training meant I definitely wanted to make basic Thwarts and I wanted Aerial cards in my deck then I should probably replace something like the Ready to Rumbles with Yaw and Roll.

3) Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

This final step is basically going back through your second step and checking it was actually solving the problems you identified in the first step!  That might sound obvious but when you're deep into your stack of cards it can be easy to get distracted by a new combo or fancy upgrade that you've never used before and want to try out.  Is this the right time to use it?  Is it giving you what you went looking for?

In this case I'd started out with identifying 7 cards that I wasn't happy with, but in the end I'd actually changed a couple of other pieces as well.

Avoid needing to be Archangel - long term economy

• Turn The Tide  ->  Skilled Investigator
• Turn The Tide  ->  Sense of Justice
• Lay The Trap  ->  Specialised Training
  

Avoid needing to be Alter-Ego - damage mitigation

• Power of Flight  ->  Endurance
• Agile Flight  ->  Quasar

Increased Aerial keywords

• Ready To Rumble ->  Yaw & Roll
• Ready To Rumble ->  Yaw & Roll
  
• Quake  ->  Vivian

I made one last change that was a bit of a wildcard and may backfire, but it's an experiment: I removed the third copy of One Way or Another and added IPAC, the X-Force support.  My initial plan had been for One Way of Another to fuel my deck by drawing lots of rich resource cards and that hadn't worked, I now had some long term economy cards but I expected to have some crunch turns where I needed to solve a board state issue while ALSO playing a new longterm economy card.  Having IPAC on tap could help me power over those turns.  In theory.  I'll see how it goes.

So, assuming I want to use Techno-Organic Wings to ready Angel most of the time and will only flip to Archangel for the discount in an emergency, my long term economy cards have increased from 2 (X-Gene, Team Building) to 6 (X-Gene, Team Building, Skilled Investigator, Sense of Justice, Surveillance Specialist, IPAC).  Like I mentioned above the economy cards all overlap a bit but they do offer discounts on different cards.

Assuming I count each ally as defensive because it can tank an attack, my defensive cards have gone from 8 (six allies and two Aerial Agility) to 10 (seven allies, Endurance and two Aerial Agility).  A modest increase but if IPAC doesn;t work out I can always jam Quake back into the deck, or Cypher.

I've also increased my Aerial cards from 13 to 16 by adding Yaw & Roll and Vivian.  That's a small increase but by taking out one of my Power of Flight (and wanting to use Techno-Organic Wings to ready) I've also reduced the number of things looking for the Aerial keyword.

I was happy that my changes answered my needs, especially on the economy side.  And just as importantly I felt like somewhere in here I'd gained a proper plan - get to 4 THW and ready myself, with powerful basic Thwart actions keeping the villain in check and drawing more cards.  I'd be happy to use One Way or Another, I've got Skilled Investigator, I've got Surveillance Specialist... a thwarting Angel is a happy Angel.

After changing 9 of the 25 cards I've added to Angel's identity cards (over 1/3rd of the cards changed!) my updated deck was this one...

Is it better?  No idea!  I'll let you know I guess.  Hopefully sitting over my shoulder as I think about how I wanted to change the deck has been useful for seeing how I approach things, and can help you in future.  Kinda doesn't matter, Colossus is going to come and save the day anyway... he can carry any partner, it seems.

Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends - Finding Strength In Numbers

In my last blog I teased that I'd finally found the solution to my Spider-Man woes.  For those who didn't read it, I bemoaned the fact that Spidey was my favourite superhero as a kid but I just hadn't been able to find a deck that I enjoyed playing with him.

My three criteria for enjoying a deck were...

• I LIKE being proactive, doing lots of stuff and drawing lots of cards
• I LIKE having heroes whose abilities are unusual or unpredictable
• I LIKE beating the villain as quickly and effectively as possible

I'd tried several times but found that Spider-Man leaned so heavily into Protection and defensive play being his natural home that I just hadn't found a dynamic Spidey deck that I liked.  And then, with my last desperate roll of the dice before putting Spidey away for good, I found a deck I had fun with.  

It turns out that the missing ingredient... was friendship!

 

View this deck on MCDB

STRENGTH IN STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

I've already written about the Leadership event Strength In Numbers a couple of times.  I find it an interesting one because it so often divides opinion with many players not really understanding the point of it (I was one of these people once) and other players who think it's completely amazing (I'm one of those people now).

My personal journey with Strength In Numbers began when I used it to solve my problem with Black Panther not being able to find both his suit pieces and Wakanda Forever quickly enough.  After that I switched Wakanda Forever for Blaze of Glory and it became the engine behind my Ronan-beating Star-Lord rush deck.

Since then I've continued using Strength In Numbers in several decks, most notably in creating a Hulk deck that could actually smash things reliably, and then once we had the latest wave of Leadership cards I revisited the Black Panther deck and used it to fly through the Mad Titan's Shadow campaign unbeaten.

In short, I think Strength In Numbers is one of the strongest strategies in the game.  I don't think it naturally suits every hero, but when your hero has the necessary ingredients you will struggle make a better deck through any other strategy, and even if your hero isn't a great fit for Strength In Numbers you can probably make it work.  I've also found that heroes can fit into Strength In Numbers for different reasons - what Hulk or Spider-Man bring to the table is different to what Star-Lord or Black Panther bring, for instance.  Better in some ways, worse in others, I've already been surprised a couple of times by how well Strength In Numbers works with somebody and I'm sure I've got more suprises ahead of me.

I think it's also very true that recent expansions have worked so well with Strength In Numbers that the archetype - which was already powerful before - has become INCREDIBLE.  Compared to six months ago we've got some fantastic new allies who are cheap but help us draw more cards, more powerful resource generation and we even got some great new top-end toys that synergise with what we're already planning to do!

If you've not tried Strength In Numbers yet then I think the best way I can explain it to you is that it's a powerful engine that drives your deck forwards and accelerates everything you're doing.  But like all engines it needs fuel to pump into it, and it also needs all that extra power it generates to be connected to something on the other end.

You want to play multiple allies as quickly as possible, so a Strength In Numbers deck should prioritise 1 and 2-cost allies, and should also pack a good number of allies so that you can see multiples as quickly as possible.  I aim for 10-12 allies in any Strength In Numbers deck.

You want plenty of card draw effects too, not just Strength In Numbers itself but supporting it with things like Nick Fury is important as it all shrinks your deck and means you see more of the fuel and Strength In Numbers that you really want to draw.  Some players are afraid of drawing through their deck too quickly and dealing themselves more encounter cards... don't be, you're going to be getting much stronger by moving quickly than the villain will by seeing an extra encounter card every few turns.

Ultimately you want some big hit to tag on the end of it, but while that's a key requirement I've found it's actually less important than just having lots of burst economy in your deck.  If Strength In Numbers is your engine then burst economy is the oil that keeps it all moving smoothly and easily.  Power of Leadership, Power In All Of Us, Band Together...things like this are your friends, while cards like Quincarrier or Helicarrier that you might be used to using are geared to longer slower strategies.  Playing those type of cards alongside Strength In Numbers is literally pouring diesel fuel into your brand new Porsche and you'll bring it to a shuddering halt.

WHO IS STRENGTH IN NUMBERS GOOD FOR?

As much as I'm a massive fan of Strength In Numbers I don't think it's for everyone - not every hero fits the mold particularly easily.  Through using Strength In Numbers across several different heroes I think I've come up with a good idea of the desirable traits a hero should look to have:

• Economy to play multiple allies quickly
• Able to keep allies alive
• Cost-effective big finishing blow
• Be an Avenger

It's not essential to have all of those traits, indeed arguably very few if any heroes have all of them, but the more your hero can lay claim to the better fit you're going to be for Strength In Numbers

Economy to play multiple allies quickly - Strength In Numbers works best when you've got 3+ allies in play so you need to be able to get to that point as quickly as possible.  To me this makes burst economy like Vibranium, Limitless Strength or Star-Lord's What Could Go Wrong? ability much more valuable than the slow & steady economy you get from cards like Super-Soldier Serum, Helicarrier etc.

Able to keep allies alive - allies aren't cheap and you want lots of them in play.  The best way to develop having 4 allies on the table instead of 2 is to avoid them dying all the time!  This can take multiple forms: either having a hero who can useful defend villain attacks himself so he doesn't need allies to block for him, having effects that heal your allies so that they don't keep dying to consequential damage, or even giving your allies Tough if they're going to be fighting on your behalf. 

Cost-effective big finishing blow - those first two points get you through the early game and into midgame, but for the endgame you really want something that is the reason why we're trying to draw lots of cards and get loads of resources for in the first place.  You need the payoff!  Wakanda Forever, Blaze of Glory, Avenger's Assemble, Hulk Smash... these are the big hits that are going to put the villain into the ground.

Be an Avenger - if you're not an Avenger this one is kind of a bummer, but there's no denying that it all gets a lot easier if you know the right people.  Most of the best allies for Strength In Numbers are Avengers, and specifically in cards like Stinger, Avenger's Tower, Captain America (ally version) and Avengers Assemble there's extra support if you're part of the right team.

You *DON'T* have to tick all of these boxes, but the more you tick the better it gets I think, and there's some really good heroes that Strength In Numbers doesn't really help out at all.

AND FINALLY... HERE'S MY DECKS

I want to leave you by showing the four Strength In Numbers decks I'm actively using an explaining how they're each a little bit different...

You've already seen my Spider-Man version, and to an extent I think this one lies at one end of the Strength In Numbers spectrum because of the nature of what Spider-Man brings to the game.  One of the biggest things Spidey brings to the deck is that he's good at defending his allies with his high DEF and he also draws a lot of cards naturally thanks to his Spider-Sense.  The *downside* of this approach is that his damage output is actually pretty low as he's very often exhausted on his turn because he defended a villain's attack.  Spidey is therefore quite a slow & steady version of the deck that's trying to keep a team of solid heroes in play for a longer period and really sweat them to do all the work with Mighty Avengers and Avengers Assemble.  This actually also suits Spidey because part of his big output for Band Together is used Webbed Up to tie the villain down, or drawing cards to see Enhanced Spider-Sense as often as possible and control what is coming at you.

Interestingly, I think my Hulk deck is actually the one that's closest to Spider-Man in playstyle.  Hulk was the hero who proved to me the value of having the hero do the hard defensive work and giving your allies time and space to build up, as with DEF 3 and a whopping health total Hulk can easily eat a bunch of villain attacks to the face.  This means that Hulk is more interested than anyone else in getting the maximum 6 allies out at once (3 + Stinger + Triskelion + Avengers Tower) simply because he can actually soak the damage that lets you get there.  However, unlike Spider-Man, Hulk doesn't have the control tools so he tends to do some pummelling along the way and eat into the villain's health total.  He's not using Avenger's Assemble as a common play, he's really looking to get the villain into range for a massive 'Hulk Smash & Avengers Assemble' turn where you just obliterate the villain at once.

The latest version of my Black Panther deck switches roles a little bit - Black Panther *could* defend his allies if he wanted to, but he's not as good at it as either Hulk or Spidey so instead he lets his allies defend him a lot of the time.  The big pivot here comes in bringing cards like Ready for Action and Rapid Response to keep allies on the table in a cost-effective way.  What's missing, compared to Hulk & Spidey, is the need to really pump the allies up because once T'Challa gets his Black Panther suit rolling he can be drawing through his whole deck every couple of turns and shouting Wakanda Forever twice per turn tends to be all you really need out of life.  The allies mix is a lot more defensive as a result - Mockingbird, Ironheart - as they're just buying you time to become the true king of Wakanda.

And finally, Star-Lord has been sitting on the naughty step ever since I decided he was just far too good to actually be fun, but he was one of my seminal Strength In Numbers decks.  More than any of my other options, Star-Lord just brute forces the whole thing with his sickeningly powerful hero ability to reduce the cost of cards by 3, and a stack of amazingly good cards in his hero pool like Daring Escape, Star-Lord's Helmet and Sliding Shot.  Oh, and Blaze of Glory as the kicker at the end.  Star-Lord doesn't care about defending his allies, or even about keeping them alive... there's always going to be another one along next turn to replace them and they're basically all free because your hero effect is busted.  None of the other Strength In Numbers decks can match Star-Lord for the raw economic power he brings to the table, and that means he can just plough into the villain head-on.  It'll be ugly, but it'll also be over in three turns so who's counting?

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So there you have it, if you've never really felt like you understood what Strength In Numbers is for I hope I've inspired you enough to step into the adrenaline-fuelled sugar rush of drawing your whole deck every three turns and just playing Marvel Champions on fast forward for a change.  And if you're already been loving some Strength In Numbers action then I'd love to hear the heroes that have worked for you... I'm always on the lookout for new Strength In Numbers fun!