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.