Variant Detected! Mixing It Up With Modules

In the Marvel Champions community I feel like we all spend a lot of time talking about how to be better as the heroes in Marvel Champions - who are the best heroes?  Which are the best aspects?  Which heroes work well together?  What's the best Hulk deck?  How do you beat Ronan?  I've been doing the same thing in my blog, which have mostly been written from the perspective of making new hero decks or throwing myself as the Rise of Red Skull and Galaxy's Most Wanted campaigns.

Marvel Champions is a co-operative game where players work together to defeat the villain, who is controlled by the game's clever mechanics.  That means we're also responsible for creating the threat that our heroes must face and the puzzles that we must solve as players.  Each villain and each scenario comes with a recommended set of modules for you to experience, and for many of us those recommendations form their own little sacred timeline (to borrow from the zeitgeist) that we're often very hesistant to change.

But the game wasn't really intended to be that way.  Right out of the Core Set the designers were giving us different modules that we could use to change those scenarios and create new variant timelines with.  Rhino doesn't have to have a Bomb Scare as his distraction and the Absorbing Man doesn't need to be working for Hydra.  Ultron can be an intergalatic threat if you want, Ronan could be separated from his Kree Militant army and, yes, there may even be room in these timelines for a Loki or two...

There's a Loki, and there's some Ancient Warriors.. is this my Infiltrate The Museum run?

I feel like there's a whole second half to customising the game but we talk about it very rarely: how do you build a better villain?  I want to change that so in this blog let's talk about the nature of evil, learn about the modules and the villains, and in doing so hopefully come up with some new and interesting challenges for our heroes to overcome.

BUILDING BLOCKS OF EVIL

I don't know about you but while I've always understood that the villain modules were optional and the scenarios customisable I've rarely actually changed them from their recommended settings.  In large part that's because once you've included Galaxy's Most Wanted there's 23 different modules you can switch in and out, and 15 different villain scenarios (not including the Wrecking Crew or Risky Business).  That's a pretty daunting ~350 different options before you even get into the possibilties of adding multiple modules at once.  

With so many options where do you even start with working out what modules are going to work well with what villains?  How do you know what pieces fit where?

Well *I* started by looking at all the different modules to see what they did, and what I found is that there's actually only three broad types of module...

• The Brute Squad - modules stacked with multiple minions.  These usually go into villain scenarios who are lacking in minions in their own card pools, or who may need lots of Guard effects to slow the heroes down.
  
  
• Rent-A-Villain - these are modules that tend to centre around one powerful minion with an assortment of effects that either support his theme or help to find that minion and put them into play.  They're usually used in scenarios where the villain's deck makes them pretty tough to begin with - Guards, healing, high Hit Points - but are looking for a different threat to add to the mix.
  
  
• Villain Buffs - these modules are entirely minion-free and instead focus on giving dangerous attachments to the villain, or tricky new Side Schemes.  Villains who reach for the buff modules tend to be very tough already, or have loads of minions.

You can take all the existing modules and fit them pretty comfortably into those three pots (below), and I think doing so gives you a really solid framework for how to think about what the modules are for...

But I didn't stop there.  When you look at some of the modules like Power Drain, A Mess of Things, or Legions of Hydra I've always thought they looked a lot like a hero's Nemesis set.  You get a powerful minion, you get a side scheme, and you get a few supporting cards for the theme... the fact that Electro is in a module while Vulture is Spider-Man's nemesis seems mostly like an issue of semantics to me and they're pretty much interchangeable.  So on top of the existing official modules I looked through the nemesis decks of the heroes and pulled out some examples where I felt they would make particularly good bonus modules for us to mix scenarios up with.

I've not used every hero's nemesis in the table above.  Some of the time I've felt like that nemesis set was designed to be used against the particular hero (Doctor Strange's nemesis set references the Invocation deck for instance), and other times I've just decided the theme or mechanics wouldn't really fit for some reason.  But that's just my opinion and if you think differently and really want to throw Furnax and Avalanche into the mix then it's your game and you get the thumbs up from me to do whatever you want!

Most of the nemesis decks tend to follow the 'Rent-A-Villain' formula but there are a few that are closer to 'Brute Squad' style modules with multiple faceless minions.  The Hydra-themed sets like Spider-Woman (The Viper & Hydra Regulars), Captain America (Baron Zemo & Hydra Soldiers) or Black Widow (Taskmaster and Hydra Mercenaries) are good examples of this and I think they make great replacements for, or complements to, the existing Hydra modules.

A couple of other nemesis options to call out for specific reasons are the Hulk nemesis and the Rocket Racoon nemesis.  Hulk's does two special things - firstly all the cards have three boost icons so it significantly increases the threat of big Assault/Advances, and secondly it comes with three copies of Clash of the Titans so it adds a lot of attacks to the villain deck.  It makes Hulk's nemesis a good module for making the villain a much bigger direct threat to the heroes.  Heading in the opposite direction is Rocket Raccoon's nemesis module because with two Planetary Invasions it's good at helping you force specific minions into play.  So if you had a Rent-A-Villain type of character that you really wanted to be a big part of the scenario you could add the Planetary Invasions to give you more chances of that minion landing in play (and sticking around long enough to make a difference).

But what if you reveal Shadows of the Past and you're playing the hero whose Nemesis deck is already being used?  Well you can houserule it any way you like but the simplest solution I found was to change Shadows of the Past so that it also searched the deck and discard pile for your nemesis minion and side scheme, not just the removed from the game area.

KNOW THINE ENEMY

Now that we know what the modules do the next thing we need to work out is what the villains want from their modules to make sure that we're putting together combinations that are complementary to each other.  Just like I did with the modules I went through all the villains and looked for similarities and striking differences.

This gave me some really useful insights as to what FFG's designers feel they need their modules to do.  For example if you look at the scenarios who make use of 'Villain Buff' modules - Ultron, Mutagen Formula, Dr Zola - they're the three scenarios with by far the most minions.  And not only do they have minions baked into the villain's deck they also tend to have Guard minions (Dr Zola doesn't have natural Guards but he makes them with his attachments).

This was also really helpful for helping me to work out how big I wanted my villain decks to be once I had put my new modules in.  The Core set villains were all around a pretty tight 30 cards (including the 7 Standard cards but not counting the 3 Expert cards) but then for the next cycle of villains that tended to bloat up to more 35-40 cards.  Galaxy's Most Wanted has brought it back down again to the 30-35 range, although in the campaign you would be adding more Badoon Headhunter cards at each stage, so Nebula and Ronan could well be more like 40 cards by the time you get to them.

Rhino just wasn't the same after I added the Galactic Artifacts module...

What I took from this is twofold - firstly that I probably don't destroy Rhino's scenario if I add more cards because there's villain decks doing just fine with 33% more cards in, and secondly that FFG's designers were using deck size as a tool to focus play down onto a few key effects when they wanted to.

Another thing I noticed from this comparison was that some of the Core Set villains - Klaw and Ultron - are still the villains with the biggest health pools (Kang only beats them because he drags the fight out over three phases).  That means later villains are a bit more at risk of being rushed down by aggressive heroes and they may need a bit more help from minions and from Guards.  Heroes with a higher hit point pool like Klaw and Ultron (and Nebula or Ronan to some extent) can be pretty adventurous in what they add, though.

I now knew what the modules did and I also knew what the villains needed, so instead of being daunted by the sheer number of possibilities available to me I felt like I now had the structure to go in and start changing things with confidence that I would be creating some good play experiences.

I think we're ready to mess with the sacred timeline and mix things up!

I haven't actually put Loki into Mutagen Formula, this is just a picture I found. 
You totally could having Loki flying a Goblin Glider if you wanted, though!

MIXING IT UP!

In the table below are some recommended new modules for each villain so far.  Some of them I've actually played and enjoyed myself already, some of them are still on my 'to-do' list.  I'm going to go through each one and talk a little bit about why I picked the modules that I did but first there's something important I want to say...

These are not the only modules you can try with these villains. 

Hopefully by now you've followed what I said about how FFG have been picking module types for their scenarios and you've maybe even had a few ideas of your own.  If you want to pick some of the scenario combinations below and try them out then I hope you'll enjoy them, but if something else sounds like more fun to you then it's your game and you can play it the way you like.  We've been given all the tools we need to shake the game up and keep it interesting for ourselves so let's use them!

Rhino w/ Band of Badoon

Because he's the first scenario you face when you're starting out Rhino is the training wheels villain.  He only reveals his 1 encoutner card per player per turn, there's no fancy abilities on his villain card, he's got low boost values on his cards and there's no Boost abilities or Surge cards at all.  It's not easy to make Rhino more relevant for the modern age but I think adding Band of Badoon is probably the best to do it.  The Badoon all come with Boost abilities and both the Badoon Grunt and Badoon Assassin in particular work for Rhino by giving him extra threats in play (Badoon Grunt is both a free minion but also probably an extra encounter card to reveal) or by making his attacks more dangerous by adding Overkill.  The main obstacle here is trying to come up with a story reason for why the Badoon are helping Rhino out - maybe they're using Rhino as bait to lure out some heroes and ambush them?

Another option for Rhino is to add more Hydra cards (he already has Hydra Mercenaries in his deck).  One feature of Rhino being the training wheels villain is that his Main Scheme only has one stage and a pretty low threshold for victory.  It's often frustrating to lose to a big Advance that you couldn't avoid but if you maximise the amount of Incite from Hydra Regulars by adding both Hydra Patrol and Spider-Woman's Nemesis modules you could make the main scheme a bigger danger for the players to manage without adding more 'I lost the game out of nowhere' moments from Advance.

Klaw w/ Menagerie Medley & Anachronauts

For a lot of players Klaw remains the go-to villain that you return to time and time again after clearing up any new content that has been released.  I'm in that boat and I think it's with good reason - he's got a lot of health so makes for a decent opponent, his ability to reveal two boost cards means he interacts twice as well as any other hero with any boost effects you put in, and his deck is a nice tight 30 cards (which he boosts through twice as quickly) so he makes Acceleration tokens a bigger issue in long games.  Klaw's original Masters of Evil module is a great fit for him with all their boost effects and I like to double down on that by adding the Anachronauts (who are basically Masters of Evil II) alongside either the original Masters of Evil or Menagerie Medley.  It all makes Klaw's double-boost attacks that much more dangerous, but the larger deck does reduce the threat from Acceleration tokens.

The other thing I like to do with Klaw is to lean the other way and use Power Drain as the only module, which has lots of boost effects that force you to speed through the encounter deck even faster!  It makes Acceleration tokens stack up at an alarming rate and when I was playing Scarlet Witch against it I often had 4 or 5 Acceleration tokens in play and was rushing to finish the game before he would complete his main scheme.

Ultron w/ Galactic Artifacts

Ultron is another evergreen favourite among players as his drone-spawning effects are so distinctive and powerful that he remains a potent threat even a couple of years after the Core Set landed.  Because he doesn't struggle for minions in his own card pool it's an opportunity to bring in some of the Villain Buffs modules that don't get used so often.  I've added Galactic Artifacts to give Ultron a more cosmic feel (and a pretty big power level hike!) and you could even go the whole way and do 'Ultron In Space' by adding Ship Command too.

Mutagen Formula w/ Power Drain & Spider-Man Nemesis

Everyone has a favourite superhero and Spider-Man is mine so I love any opportunity to throw in the classic Spidey villains and relive some more of my childhood.  With Power Drain and the Spider-Man Nemesis modules I've gone for Electro and Vulture helping Green Goblin with his nefarious scheme to take over New York.  You know, I feel like I've seen those boys together somewhere...

Crossbones w/ Under Attack, Captain America Nemesis & Black Widow Nemesis

We're into a run of Hydra-themed scenarios here from the Rise of the Red Skull campaign and what I decided to try and do for all these was to stay true to their theme rather than go too wild and start bringing in space pirates and flying sharks.  Crossbones' main weakness is his very low health pool so the combination of Black Widow Nemesis and Captain America Nemesis brings in lots of Guard minions to buy him time.  Switching Weapon Master for Under Attack is a little bit of change for change's sake, but the Vibranium Armour also helps to keep Crossbones standing.

Note: Be careful with Crossbones' modules. Although Weapons Master is not strictly essential you do want some weapons in the deck for his Raid The Armory treachery - if he has to start discarding cards and there's nothing to find you're going to speed right through until the deck is empty and give yourself an Acceleration token, which isn't really what Raid The Armory is supposed to do.  If in doubt keep Weapons Master in his deck.

Absorbing Man w/ She-Hulk Nemesis & Legions of Hydra

You can't ignore the opportunity to reunite Creel with his beloved Titania so the She-Hulk Nemesis is an obvious addition and for maximum theme points you should also be putting them into a team with the Masters of Evil (though mechanically he'll probably welcome the Guard minions from Legions of Hydra more).

Taskmaster & Hydra Patrol w/ Spider-Woman Nemesis & Hydra Assault

It's a good reminder here that the Hydra Patrol module is *not* optional for Taskmaster (his 1A setup puts the Hydra Patrol side scheme into play) but I shook the rest up by adding even more Hydra Regulars from the Spider-Woman Nemesis module and the Hydra Assault module to even further beef up Taskmaster's army of goons.  One of the big problems with Tasksmaster is that his main scheme has a big 12PP target on it for victory so the decision to take damage instead of placing threat isn't usually a hard one.  More Incite from the Hydra Regulars puts more pressure onto balancing those two resources of threat and health.

Dr. Zola w/ Hulk Nemesis

Something big is lurking in Dr Zola's lab... adding Hulk's Nemesis module brings the Abomination into play for Zola to perform his experiments on, as well as three Clash of the Titans so the superpowered minions will go on the offensive for the good Dr.  Zola is one of the most feared villains in the game and although I think his reputation is a little undeserved it's because he's got so many signature minions that it's actually quite hard to shake his play experience up very much as there's very little room left for a module to sit on top without him becoming like a 50 card deck.  Unless...

...unless you decide to treat his minions as their own sub-module and pull them out to be replaced with something else.  If you take out all 10 of Zola's minions you've plenty of room to drop in other Brute Squad modules to fill the gap and then it's up to you what Zola is experimenting on.  Maybe it's more Hydra soldiers, maybe he's opened a Temporal portal, or maybe he's got a whole menagerie of subjects.  I haven't played it yet but I'm looking forward to trying Dr Zola with Menagerie Medley and Rocket Raccoon's Nemesis so that Planetary Invasion can give me even more wacky monsters to face.  The one minor rules change you'll probably need to make is replace "each player puts a Bio-Servant into play" from Zola's setup instructions into "each player puts a minion into play" so that it works whatever modules you decide to add.

Red Skull w/ Black Widow Nemesis, Captain America Nemesis, Spider-Woman Nemesis

Throughout the run through the Rise of the Red Skull scenarios I've been pulling in from various nemesis sets and now for the Red Skull I decided to throw them all in at once - Black Widow's Nemesis, Captain America's Nemesis and Spider-Woman's Nemesis.  That means Red Skull is being assisted by three of the most dangerous Hydra henchmen - The Viper, Baron Zemo and even the Taskmaster!  It also adds three more side schemes to his Side Scheme deck.

Another recommendation I've had given to me, for if you really want to make things hard for yourself, is to put the Doomsday Chair into Red Skull.  Adding those side schemes to his side scheme deck mean it's only a matter of time before MODOK is sitting in play and those schemes can take a real effort to remove!

Kang w/ Menagerie Medley

I'm in a minority in not really enjoying Kang's scenario very much (I think the second phase adds nothing but, ironically, time).  Kang's rulebook already suggests including whatever module you want from the three that you get with him - Temporal, Master of Time or Anachronauts - so in order to mix it up some more I'd recommend trying out either the Space Pirates or the Menagerie Medley.  Space Pirates have the secondary mechanic of removing cards from the game and that plays into what some of Kang's Obligations already do so they fit to his theme, while the Menagerie Medley fits pretty well in terms of bringing oddities from across time and space to fight for Kang.  However because Kang's own deck is so big (like for Zola) any module you bring only has a pretty small impact on how Kang is going to play out.

Brotherhood of Badoon & Ship Command w/ Anachronauts & Master of Time

In the Galaxy's Most Wanted campaign it turns out that Drang is doing the bidding of Ronan, but in this variant timeline it's Kang who the Badoon invasion force works for.  The Master of Time is here to oversee the invasion of Earth personally alongside his elite commandos The Anachronauts, who replace the plucky underdogs of the Badoon army.  For a lot of the Galaxy's Most Wanted scenarios the Ship Command module is mandatory and this is one of them.

Infiltrate The Museum w/ Temporal, Thor's Nemesis & Star-Lord's Nemesis

Any encounter with The Collector's broad and varied collection gives you storyline permission to include almost any module you want so you can go wild (and they pretty much all work nicely with hie Collection victory mechanic too).  In this case I decided that The Collector almost certainly has at least one Loki in his collection, and surely he'd have a Tyranosaurus Rex too.  Adding Star-Lord's Nemesis was about the potential for Mr Knife's ability to do nasty things with Inconspicuous Boxes, but Spartoi Cunning would be some welcome relief for players as it attacks and disrupts your hand so is at least a break from cards going into The Collection.  

For the record that's Temporal, Thor's Nemesis & Star-Lord's Nemesis modules - I've played a few games against this and they've been bonkers fun!

Escape The Museum w/ Anachronauts, Masters of Evil, Hulk Nemesis

Pretty much the same is true for Escape The Museum as it is for Infiltrate The Museum and you can include almost any module you want and have it make sense.  One thing I do note is that this is an encounter where you can leave the Ship Command module out - it's only referred to in game terms for the Museum Ship environment card and that still functions if The Milano isn't in play.

You could pull the same trick as FFG did and use all the same modules for Escape as you did for Infiltrate but this time I mixed it up again by adding a bunch of scary minions so that the heroes had to keep dealing damage while trying to keep on top of the main scheme's threat.  Anachronauts and Masters of Evil are the combination that I've already mentioned I use sometimes with Klaw, and Hulk's Nemesis module is included mainly for Clash of the Titans to make those big minions matter more.

Nebula w/ Experimental Weapons & Weapon Master

Of all the changes I've made to scenarios for this blog I think Nebula may be my favourite and for one big reason: there's no minions.  Taking out Nebula's recommended Space Pirates means you're now faced with fighting off Nebula alone and that's a really scary proposition because Nebula isn't messing around.  Experimental Weapons and Weapon Master add permanent buffs to Nebula alongside her existing stack of frustrating and powerful Technique attachments, and Weapon Master also brings a couple of extra villain activations so that Nebula will keep hitting you and hitting you.  

I've played against this Nebula and, frankly, she ripped me a new one.  I thought that by taking Space Pirates and their 'boost surge' abilities out of Nebula's deck I would be breaking up some of the Surge trains that she likes to get (where she Surges from card to card back to back) and that would make Nebula easier, so I stepped up to playing against Expert.  It didn't feel much easier as Nebula stacked her Power Gauntlets onto her Energy Shield... attack after attack rained in (Weapon Master that surges for Techniques is also pretty mean) and I was overwhelmed.  It felt like being pursued by the T-1000, and all those experimental upgrades felt right on-theme for Nebula too!

Ronan & Ship Command w/ Band of Badoon

Ronan is a turd blossom.  The only thing Ronan really needs from his module is to be less of a turd blossom so I recommend swapping the beefy Kree Militants out for the slightly more manageable Band of Badoon, which at least retains the space theme for Ronan.  If you're more inclined to change up the theme and got crazy with Ronan then what you're really looking for is lots and lots of minions in his modules as his main deck is packed with nasty attacks so he just needs whatever warm bodies you decide to give him as bodyguards, be they Hydra Soldiers, Ancient Warriors or Pirate Lackeys - you could probably throw in any Brute Squad modules that you wanted and it would work.  He'd still be a turd blossom, though.

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WARNING: NEXUS EVENT

I feel like working it through in this methodical way has given me a much better understanding of how I can change the scenarios and keep them fresh without completely derailing how they would play out.  I've already had a lot of fun revisiting old scenarios with new cards and there always seems to be new ideas to try.  

What's better yet is that we're now only a few weeks away from The Mad Titan's Shadow being released.  When that happens I'm sure everyone is going to knuckle down and focus on playing through the new scenarios and defeating the new villains but once we're out the other side there's going to be even more modules to try in combination with even more villains!  Customisable module sets are a gift that keeps on giving and with each new scenario pack or campaign box the potential options increase exponentially.  

I can't wait to see what we can come up with, but if you'll excuse me I'm off to help Dr Zola attach some Pain Inhibitors to a Starshark... don't worry, it's all in the name of science!