Saving The Galaxy - my run at the Expert GMW campaign

Last week I shared how I had been updating my Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch decks in preparation for taking on the Galaxy's Most Wanted campaign, and now I want to share how that run at the campaign went, and maybe a few insights or tips about the scenarios and villains that I met along the way.

I was going to be playing the Expert campaign with all the trimmings.  Bring on the pain!

And for a reminder, here are the two decks that I took into battle (click to enlarge the pics)

I ran the pair against Expert Mutagen Formula and beat it first time, which meant I was as ready as I was going to be heading into Galaxy's Most Wanted.

All together now...

Drang - Brotherhood of Badoon

Drang is the first villain that you face in the Galaxy's Most Wanted campaign, and in most ways he's a very conventional villain.  He's primarily a physical threat trying to kill you with damage and he's got a bunch of pretty typical minions from his Band of Badoon module.  The two things that Drang brings that are a bit different are the indirect damage you have to cope with from his ship every few turns, and that his Side Schemes come loaded with much more threat.

Fortunately I'd done my homework about the extra threat in Galaxy's Most Wanted scenarios so I knew the Milano's sole purpose was to burn 3 threat off the main scheme every turn.  From there the game actually went pretty straightforwardly, and I think Drang is probably very similar to somebody like the Mutagen Formula Green Goblin.

We got a strong start and cleared Badoon Blitz off the table right away, and by the end of my second turn my heroes were well in charge and had started to build up their economy.  We had an iron grip on Drang's board state all the way up to when I flipped him to Drang III, when I realised that I hadn't actually read what he did next and I had five Badoon soldiers flung at my face!

It took a turn or two to fully stabilise again after that, and again that's no worse than facing Green Goblin III, then I decided to finish Drang off as quickly as possible before his supercharged Stage III ship did too much damage.  I even had time to flip Ant-Man into Alter-Ego to take a recover action and get some health back for the next scenario!

Drang in Hindsight

The numbers on the cards are bigger - more threat on the side schemes, more damage from the minions - but aside from that Drang is a really typical villain.  Beat down the initial Badoon Blitz side scheme that he gets in the campaign and he's just pulling 1 encounter card per player, just like Rhino did back in the core set.  You've got to watch the damage from the Badoon Ship but all in all I think Drang really only kicks up a notch once he flips to stage III.  Drang III is not to be messed with, so only flip him once you're ready to finish the fight.

INTERMISSION - THE MARKET

A solid victory over Drang gave me 5 units to spend in the market.  Ant-Man beefed up his defences with In Defiance and Armor Plating, while Scarlet Witch beefed up her threat removal with Brainstorm and Hyper Thrusters.

The Collector - Infiltrate The Museum

By the time I got to face The Collector the scuttlebutt on the internet had already told me that I was in for a really tough game and that he had a unique mechanic by stealing cards from you and adding them to his collection.  Drang had been a pretty straightforward villain right up to his Stage III blitz but I felt like this was going to be a completely new challenge and I wasn't quite sure how I would cope with it.

Once again I opened up with a really strong start, though, and Scarlet Witch played Nick Fury via Chaos Magic and drew into a slew of economy cards, so she ended the first turn with Avengers Mansion, Deft Focus and my shiny new Hyper Thrusters in play!

As the game progressed Scarlet Witch just assembled more and more economy, then Ant-Man got set up too and we just got the point where I was so in control that I decided to farm the Collector so I could complete him with 0 threat on the main scheme and no cards in the collection as I could pull them out faster than they were going in.

And that was it... Expert campaign Infiltrate the Museum cleared very easily with 0 threat and 0 cards in the collection!  The raw power of my setup had let me control all of the Collector's cards (which really weren't very good) and I had plenty of spare economic firepower to remove a card from the Collection every turn until they'd all gone.

Yeah, so I'd missed something very important: I didn't think he was collecting his own cards, just my cards.  No wonder I'd found it so easy to keep the Collection under control!  Oh well, I guess that meant it was time to replay the scenario, but if I'd been able to keep him so under control the first time I expected I'd still win easily, just not quite as cleanly.

It turned out that my playing it wrong in the first game almost cost me the second game.  I mistakenly thought I could control the Collector, keep the Collection small and win at my leisure later in the game once I was set up, just like I had the first time around.  About 3/4s of the way through my second game I realised this wasn't true at all...you can't control the Collection and cards will inevitably go in faster than you can pull them out.  The Collection is a ticking doomsday clock and you need to get out before it blows.  By the time I realised this I was facing a table of minions that I couldn't afford to send into the Collection so they were going to eat me alive, and another use of my Hyper Thrusters would defeat The Next Generation and send it into the Collection to cost me the game too.

With my window for victory closing rapidly I put pedal to the metal and threw every ounce of damage I could find at the Collector (The Next Generation came in handy for supercharging my Molecular Decays) and scraped out of the encounter two turns later with 19 out of 20 threat on the main scheme and 9 out of 10 cards in the Collection!

Infiltrate The Museum in Hindsight

I really like this scenario, I think the designers have worked hard to create a fiendish puzzle that counters a lot of the most common tactics players have used (like chump blocking) to genuinely force us to change how we approach the encounter and the actions that we take.  I'm not sure it's an encounter I will replay very often for fun - it's a little bit too much like taking maths exams for a hobby - but I think it's a well designed brain teaser. 

I know a lot of people are struggling with this encounter, though so here’s my tips:

• You can remove 1PP card from the collection each turn but he’s going to add >1PP on average so the clock is ticking. Every time you skip removing a card your defeat gets nearer so start doing it from turn 1.

• Chump blocking with allies accelerates the collection being built. Do it sparingly, and it means stun effects and defending with your heroes instead is really helpful.

• If you're playing Expert then watch your transition to Collector III - push the main scheme threat down then do it before the collection gets too big.

• KILL HIM! Long games are not your friend as you will hit a point (like I did) where you can’t actually kill any more of the things he puts out and just have to live with them being in play. This will kill you, so kill him first.

INTERMISSION - THE MARKET

I only had the two units to show for my heroes sneaking into the museum.  Scarlet Witch bought Creative Solution and Ant-Man bought Contingency Plan.  Spoiler alert: Creative Solution is AMAZING.  Contingency Plan is not.

The Collector - Escape The Museum

Sheer. 

Blind. 

Panic.

I've only played this encounter the one time. I beat it in five turns and I don't want to go back.

TBH I'd like to think that my experience was not the typical experience and a lot of other people. In the initial run of attachments that the Collector got during Setup was the Cloak of Hercules and a bunch of Amplify effects, so right from the outset he was handing out 8 or 9 damage attacks like they were candy.

I jabbed the "remove 5 threat" button on Library Labyrinth as fast as possible and cleared the first stage immediately.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire... Stage II was even worse than Stage I! I mashed the Library Labyrinth button faster than a newbie Streetfighter player using Chun Li and by turn 4 I'd blasted out of the Museum Ship's hangar in the Milano.

Out of the fire and into the pits of hell... somehow Stage III was even worse than Stage II! I didn't even have the Library Labyrinth to help me out any more, I just had a new Museum Ship environment card that was throwing lava at me!

In a crazy flurry of final threat-clearing Scarlet Witch had a phenomenal turn of chaining Hex Bolts together and removed a ton of threat to punch us out of the encounter before the Collector got to take his 5th turn and kill us in about a dozen different ways.

Escape The Museum in Hindsight

What the fuck was that? What just happened? Am I dead? Are you an angel? Is this heaven?

At some point I'm going to replay this scenario and see if it's completely different when you don't pull the Cloak of Hercules in Setup and you can actually play a game against it. My heroes just ran screaming for their lives.

INTERMISSION - THE MARKET

We crawled out of that hole with low HP and 1 unit each.  I immediately spent those units to reset my health to full.  No market for me this time!

Nebula 

After narrowly escaping the Collector's clutches I might have been about to face a daughter of Thanos but I found myself agreeing with Han Solo...

This game went very similarly to the game against Drang, and in fact if anything I found Nebula easier because I had the advantage of cards I'd bought from the Market in the campaign by the time I got to her. I know a lot of players have found Nebula very difficult but I think the way that my two heroes ramp up their power level through the game was something that Nebula couldn't cope with and after a strong start we rapidly overwhelmed her.

I couldn't avoid her pushing through to the second stage of her main scheme, but other than that things went very smoothly. It helped that I had her stunned the vast majority of the time, which reduces how many boost cards she gets to reveal for boost effects - right from the outset I had her fighting at like 50% of her capacity because of the stuns, and held her there for much of the game. 

I think my hero choice made a massive difference in this game, though.  Playing as Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch meant most of her signature Technique cards were only minor annoyances rather than gamechangers.

• Cuthroat Ambition: can't take more than 5 damage? Whatever, I'm rarely swinging for more than that anyway. Put 1 threat on the main scheme? That's no danger, I'm removing it much faster than it's going on.

• Evasive Maneuvering: Stalwart is a pain in the bum but it's going to go away, Drang's Spear was worse. I'm stunned? Doesn't stop me using Hex Bolts or Army of Ants - as I talked about when I went through the decks I'm using I think I'm pretty stun-resistant.

• Unyielding Persistence: Stalwart again? Still not bothered. And you're going to be tough? Well, Army of Ants says I don't care.

• Weapon Mastery: I've beaten Dr Zola so Retaliate is no problem, and it's yet another thing that doesn't stop Hex Bolts or Army of Ants. Take 1 damage? Whatever.

• Wide Stance: reduce damage from attacks by 1?  You know what's still not an attack? Hex Bolts and Army of Ants. Discard a card... whatever.

Maybe if you're other heroes who actually deal damage through attacks Nebula becomes a much bigger problem, but I found I could pretty much ignore the vast majority of her cards.

Nebula in Hindsight

Writing that list of her Techniques really rammed home just how much my hero choice sidestepped a massive chunk of this scenario. Nebula was the easiest villain I faced in the whole campaign but I doubt she's supposed to be. If I need to replay Escape The Museum to see if it gets easier then maybe I need to replay Nebula with some other heroes to see if she gets harder!

INTERMISSION - THE MARKET

Beating Nebula handily gave me one final burst of units for the market ahead of Ronan.  Ant-Man bought the Heavy Cannon to add to his army of ants and reset his health, while Scarlet Witch grabbed Onrush to counter more of Ronan's encounter cards.  Because Scarlet Witch recycles her deck so quickly I was hoping I'd see cards like Creative Solution and Onrush often enough to make a difference

Ronan The Accuser

Reading other player's accounts of facing Ronan The Accuser made me feel like I was on one of those landing crafts heading for Omaha beach at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. 

Players were reporting being dead before they even got onto the beach - they were down in 1 or 2 turns and their bodies littered the breakwater and sand traps as my own landing craft approached and I was about to launch my attack...

...and it was tough but I made it onto the beach. Boots firmly on the ground within three turns, and all of Ronan's initial rush taken care of. My heroes started to gather their things and push up the beach towards the enemy's position. We hunkered down behind a sand dune and assembled go ready to punch through the sea wall and flip Ronan to Ronan III.

Then we were up into the bunkers, clearing them one-by-one in bloody combat but always managing to move forwards until finally we had Ronan himself in sight, down to 20HP and I was about to deliver the killing blow... 

...when a sniper took my head off.

In four encounter cards, the turn before I killed him, Ronan saw three extra attacks which drained me of my ally blockers then forced me to counter his third extra attack by exhausting the Milano. Then his fourth card, now the Milano was exhausted, was an Advance to win the game.

"Goddamn, that was unlucky," I thought, "but at least now I know I can definitely beat him. Let's have another try"

Reset. I'm inbound to Omaha beach. Now I'm out of the landing craft, this time I made it safely onto the beach in two turns instead of three turns thanks to an INCREDIBLE Scarlet Witch turn 2 (Nick Fury, Creative Solution, Brainstorm, Hex Bolt, Hex Bolt) that cleared up all Ronan's side schemes at once. Make my way up the beach, break the seawall defences and move inland to Ronan III... then a mortar round landed right on top me and another combination of encounter cards killed me out of nowhere. This time he saw one Fanaticism (probably his most dangerous card) and I weathered the storm then he saw his second copy on the very first encounter card reveal after the first Fanaticism had been discarded.

"Goddamn, that was unlucky," I thought, "let's have another try"

Reset. I'm out of the landing craft and safely onto the beach in three turns, press inland and move onto Ronan III... then I stepped on a landmine and was catapulted 30 feet up into the air. This time Ronan pulled an Advance - Pincer Attack - Cut The Power - Mastermind combination from his encounter cards, meaning that he was suddenly 2 threat away from winning the game and I had to clear a huge Crisis side scheme before I could even start on the main scheme. There was no way to get the main scheme down far enough that Ronan wouldn't win at the start of his next turn.

"Goddamn, that was unlucky," I thought, "let's have another try"

I don't remember this scene in Saving Private Ryan...

Long story short: it kept happening, and eventually I realised that when you keep getting incredibly unlucky like I was... it's not luck at all.

Only once out of all my runs at Ronan did I really struggle from a bad opening hand and not get as far as flipping him to Ronan III. But what I found was that even when you deal with that incredible amount of stuff that Ronan begins the game with he remains very dangerous. There are so many possible combinations of Very Bad Things in his deck that if you hang around long enough one of them is going to happen to you.  Although I could control all his minions and side schemes, doing so meant that my progress to beating him was slow enough that I was giving him lots of time to find a combo kill.  

It wasn't bad luck, it was... inevitable. 

I drew a line under it.  Ronan had beaten me. 

The Scarlet Witch deck could handle the pace but with the amount of damage that Ronan was swinging about my whole Ant-Man strategy of preventing incoming attacks completely was dead in the water. All his Ant-Man stuff was great, but I was effectively playing half a deck against the toughest encounter in the game and it wasn't enough.

To make myself feel better I played against Standard Ronan and beat him at the first attempt. But it was still tough, and these are my two favourite strong heroes that had bested the rest of the Expert campaign being made to sweat in beating Standard non-campaign Ronan.

Ronan in Hindsight

A lot has been said about the difficulty of Ronan. As I've blogged about already Marvel Champions players come at the game from so many different personal perspectives - playing solo, playing groups, playing preconstructed decks, playing standard, playing expert, playing him with the campaign additions. With so many different perspectives it's hard to get everyone talking about the same thing without getting crossed wires.

I think it's telling that despite all those different perspectives pretty much everyone seems to agree that Ronan is bullshit. Players having a reasonable experience against Ronan without having to adjust how they approach him (like I played against Standard in the end to beat him) are few and far between.

Everyone has their own opinion on the matter and most are firmly-held so I'm not looking to sway anyone, but this is what I think: 

Firstly, I think Expert Ronan is probably about right. He's INCREDIBLY hard but Expert players are the ones who were most likely to say the game was too easy up to now. I came close to beating him and none of my games were immediate blowout defeats, so I think if I brought stronger decks (or at least, an Ant-Man not so clearly struggling in the encounter) then I'm confident I could take Ronan down, I just need to give him less time to find the kill combos. Players have already beaten him on Expert and we know that our best decks are only going to get better and better over time as new cards become available, so a big boss villain that we are barely able to beat today is probably what we need to challenge ourselves against for the next 6-12 months.

Secondly, I think Standard Ronan is too difficult. A lot of the difficulty they've put into pushing players to the limit in Expert mode is unavoidably baked into Ronan's encounter deck, so dropping the Setup position from Expert to Standard doesn't do as much to reduce the overall difficulty of the scenario as it has on other villains in the past. All the wipeout combos I lost to in Expert are in his deck in Standard, and he's just as likely to see them. If Standard mode exists so that players can have a nice hour playing with their favourite Marvel superheroes and have a fun time then getting roflstomped by Ronan is going to leave them with a really bad taste in the mouth, especially in campaign mode.

Finally, I think that although the design of Standard Ronan is off the designers have got a really tricky/impossible job to do in trying to create content that works for all the myriad different ways that players are going to come at it. I think players need to be prepared to be more flexible in taking steps that the designers have recommended to change the encounters up to the difficulty level they're going to enjoy playing against. Players have been happy to house-rule or change things up when scenarios are too easy and they want more of a challenge, but it seems there's a stigma preventing players from making changes to make things easier instead of harder. In the end the only person who is going to benefit from doing this is you. If it makes your time playing the game more fun then do it, and the designers have explicitly given us permission to do whatever we want to ensure we have fun. If you're struggling with Ronan then take the help that's being offered.

Some example ideas for making Ronan a bit easier:

• Replace the Kree Militants module with Brotherhood of Badoon

• Reduce all Hinder values by 1

• Remove 1x Single Minded Fury and 1x Fanaticism from Ronan's deck

• If you're playing the campaign use the Standard side of Kree Supremacy

Epilogue

And that's the end of my (first) campaign run.  We gave it our maximum effort and we got close but ultimately fell short  I'm going to put these decks away and try something new, maybe build my way back up to feeling ready to have another run at the campaign.  Maybe never touch the campaign again and find some other ways to have fun. 

 

The Galaxy's Most Wanted campaign was really challenging and it was satisfying to progress through it so smoothly but looking back was much of it actually 'fun'?  I'm not sure any of it was, the villains are all taking it far too seriously for there to be much time for you to have fun.

Maybe I'll go back to fighting Klaw and Green Goblin for a bit, and I've still not played the Kang scenarios.  

I don't think I'll be rushing back to face Ronan or the Collector for a while, though, it's not quite my idea of a fun evening.