Introducing my Hero Roster

Very quickly, I've added a Page (which apparently is different to a normal post somehow) which I will maintain with my 'active' list of current hero decks.  It's supposed to show up on the vertical Navbar to the right of my blog but because I don't know what I'm doing it seems a bit hit and miss whether it's actually there or not.

Anyway, it looks like this ^^^ and may be worth checking in on now and then as I will always be tinkering with my favourite decks as new cards come out (my Spider-Woman deck is now a Leading Blow/Jarnbjorn combo deck, for instance).

You can find my Hero Roster HERE

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!

Trusting the Rush - how I learned to give up control (and beat Ronan in the process)

A lot of my most recent blogs and deck ideas have been driven by my gradually changing a core approach to how I'm playing Marvel Champions.  My successful run through the Rise of the Red Skull campaign with Ant-Man and Captain America had come by controlling the villain, taming their offense and threats then finally squeezing the life out of them once I was ready.  It's the approach I took into my first run at the Galaxy's Most Wanted campaign with Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch but it's ultimately one that saw me fall short of controlling Ronan The Accuser.

A bit bruised from my encounter I ran back to the world of having fun with non-GMW scenarios.  But the lesson stuck with me that my attempt to control Ronan had failed and, perhaps unconsciously at first, I shifted focus with my decks to move out of that comfort zone of being in control... to be faster and more aggressive.

I've shared the decks I've been enjoying exploring and playing along the way - Spider-Woman & Black Panther, Star-Lord, Iron Man - but I haven't shared the results of my exploits until now.

With the team of Star-Lord & Gamora I have faced the following...

• Kang - Expert: win in 4 turns
• Red Skull - Expert: win in 4 turns
• Brotherhood of Badoon - Standard: win in 3 turns
• Infiltrate The Museum - Standard: win in 2 turns
• Escape The Museum - Standard: win in 3 turns
• Nebula - Standard: win in 4 turns
• Ronan The Accuser - Standard: win in 4 turns

That's seven of the toughest Standard difficulty scenarios defeated in a combined total of 24 turns.  And I'm not cherry-picking my results, by the way, those were back-to-back with each scenario defeated swiftly at the first attempt.

At first my progress was hesistant.  I was new to Star-Lord and new to trying to rush villains instead of control them.  I worked my way up through the scenarios slowly but as victory followed victory I got bolder.  I never set out intending to face Ronan but having gone 2/3/4 turns as I worked my way through the GMW villains I wanted to see if I could beat Ronan in 5 turns and complete the pattern.  I didn't do it 5 turns... I did it in 4 and was a whisker away from doing it in 3!

By the time Standard Ronan was in my rear view mirror I no longer had any doubts about the power of Star-Lord (I'm pretty sure he's better than Doctor Strange) and I was wondering if those sort of results were at all replicable with any other hero so I threw my Black Panther and Spider-Woman decks at Standard Ronan too.  It was definitely harder with Wakanda Forever replacing Blaze of Glory as my big finisher, but I still successfully rushed Ronan down in 4 turns with these B-list heroes.

There was only one hurdle left to clear: Expert Ronan.  This weekend I beat him with Star-Lord & Gamora in 4 turns at my first attempt.  That's my first ever victory against Expert Ronan, with or without the campaign modifiers, and after struggling for so many games with great heroes like Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch the Star-Lord rush burned through Ronan like he was nothing.  Again.

• Ronan The Accuser - Expert: win in 4 turns

Rushing obliterated the toughest scenario in the game where control had repeatedly failed.

FYI: I'm not going to talk much about my particular Star-Lord and Gamora decks, but if you want to try and repeat my feats of cosmic heroism then you can find them here: Star-Lord & Gamora.

CHAMPIONING THE RUSH

My immediate success has blown me away but what I've found is that there seems to be a resistance to rushing among a lot of Marvel Champions players... an assumption that it's not a good strategy to take and you've got to be lucky to have it work out.  Although I've not written about these games in my blog I've been sharing them in other channels as I go along and had to deal with a fair bit of friction from players along the way.

"Rushing doesn't work, it's not reliable.  Do you just fold the games where you don't get a perfect draw?"

Well, it worked without fail the last dozen or so times I've done it, with different heroes against different villains.  You play the cards you draw just like everyone else, but you build and play to move quickly.

"Maybe you can do it in solo but not multiplayer"

I'm dual-wielding two heroes and it's working fine, and although I think doing it at 4 players would be tougher I think the card pool is getting deep enough that you can probably do it.

"Star-Lord is a really risky high variance character, dealing yourself all those encounter cards is going to mean you win some games and lose some games"

I've only been winning games.

"Star-Lord won't work against somebody like Ronan, his cards are too good it's not worth the cost of giving him an encounter card"

I beat Ronan in four turns.

"But it wasn't Expert Ronan.  Rushing won't work against Expert Ronan - he has 11PP extra hit points over Standard."

I beat Expert Ronan in four turns too.  And I put him on -16HP on turn 4.

At some point I think you've got to at least accept the possibility that rushing is a completely viable and powerful strategy.  And I think I know why.

WHY IT WORKS

At it's heart, Marvel Champions is an efficiency race between the heroes and the villain.  The villain's efficiency is dictated by the rules of the game and the scenario - how many things he starts off with, how quickly he gains threat, how many cards he reveals from the encounter deck, how damaging those cards are or how difficult they are to deal with for the heroes.  It's like jumping on a treadmill and setting it to a steeper or flatter incline while the heroes have the task of running fast enough that they don't fall off the back of the treadmill (and ideally fast enough that they've got a little left each turn to put towards actually winning).

This drive for efficiency is why some cards are good and other cards are bad.  It's why Clear The Area is better than For Justice! for example - removing 2 threat for 1 card is more efficient than removing 4 threat for 3 cards.  It's also why tougher villains throw out minions with larger hit points, it's so they can drain more of your resources in dealing with them and make you less efficient.

The most efficient response to any card the villain reveals is to ignore it completely because you're going to end the game before that card becomes relevant.

My game against Expert Ronan is an excellent example of this so I want to share it.  Here is Ronan's board state at the end of the game...

When the game ended Ronan had 6 cards in play.  I had completely ignored all of them (the Stunned Kree Commando was a side effect of Spider-Girl being played) because none of them stopped me from defeating Ronan before he actually made them count.

But looking at those cards on the table at the end of the game is far from the complete picture.  During the course of the game I had dealt myself 26 encounter cards in four turns...

• 6 = 1PP x 2 heroes x 3 villain phases
• 3 = Kree Command Ship x 3 villain phases
• 3 = Universal Weapon, Cut The Power and Superior Tactics per the scenario
• 4 = 4x What Could Go Wrong?
• 3 = 3x Daring Escape
• 5 = 5x Surge keywords
• 1 = 1x shuffle the Universal Weapon away
• 1 = 1x Star-Lord emptying his player deck
• 26 TOTAL

Out of those 26 cards I had only had to slow down my rush to deal with 6 of them.  I'd basically completely ignored over 75% of Ronan's cards!  

Shadows of the Past, Special Delivery and Blind Side were all dealt with by exhausting the Milano so they were solved at minimal cost.  Cut The Power, Kree Lieutenant and Superior Tactics were the only ones that significantly swallowed up resources, and in hindsight I may not even have needed to deal with Superior Tactics and I misplayed by taking it on.  I also shuffled the first copy of Universal Weapon into Ronan's deck on the first turn, but that cost me no resources.

Everything else was absorbed as part of the rush, I think I chump-blocked one or two attacks but never with important allies and I took other hits straight to the face because I knew I could take it and keep piling pressure onto the villain.  My offense was much stronger than Ronan's was and I knew it.  This plays to one of the inherent advantages of an aggressive strategy - you get to take your whole hero turn before the villain does anything, so you're always a turn ahead in the damage race.  Never forget that in a game of Roshambo it's always best to be landing your hits first!

It made me think about how so many players have complained about Ronan being almost like playing on "Heroic 1" because of all the extra cards he gets from Kree Command Ship and all his Surge cards.  Committing to a rush strategy completely erased this advantage that Ronan had because I was ignoring 75% of his cards: I wasn't playing "Heroic 1", it was more like I was playing "Heroic -1"!

And this is why rushing works.  If you can commit to it fully you can remove the villain's agency and reduce him to having just a handful of cards in his encounter deck that will actually affect the outcome of the game.  Minions that don't have the Guard keyword?  Irrelevant.  Acceleration tokens?  Irrelevant.  Crisis schemes?  Irrelevant.  Hazard schemes?  If you're ignoring 75% of his cards then giving him another card is probably not going to matter either, so they're irrelevant too.

IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE

One of the most important parts of rushing is that it has to be a team strategy.  If the rest of your team is setting up to play a patient control game then Leeroy Jenkins-ing yourself alone isn't going to make you any friends. 

You almost certainly won't have the firepower to rush the villain down by yourself and in putting damage to the villain ahead doing your part to solve threats like minions and side schemes you're just pushing more workload onto your teammates right at the point when they're trying to set up their economy cards for a long slog.

This is probably where the 'rushing only works in solo games' stereotype comes from, because when you're on a team of one you don't have anyone else to worry about bringing along with you.  It's probably true that building decks to support an all-out rushing gets harder at higher player counts, but as the card pool deepens I think it gets easier and easier to avoid significant conflicts.  If you wanted to then all four players could bring Aggression decks, for instance, and the only thing you'd have to worry about is cross-chatter in having the same unique allies in play at the same time.  

Players avoiding the same aspects usually makes a lot of sense in multiplayer games but it's not essential, especially if you're building to rush the villain down.  You don't have to be locked into the roles of "somebody needs to be Justice for schemes and somebody else needs to be Protection to keep us alive" because the answer to every question your team would face is "kill the villain before it matters" and so long as you've got a moderate amount of thwarting or healing in your hero kit it's probably enough for those clutch situations where it really matters.

Just make sure you've got likeminded players around you before you charge in!

PITFALLS

The big danger to rushing is that if you aren't *quite* fast enough it can lead to a cascade failure.  If you're not going to be fast enough to kill the villain before his encounter cards kill you then you're going to have to divert energy from killing the villain into removing the encounter cards instead.  That in turn slows you down and puts you even further from victory meaning he'll see more encounter cards and you'll have to deal with those... which slows you down even more meaning he''ll see more cards...

In several of the games that I won in that initial rush I would have lost horrifically had the game gone just one turn longer.  This is partly by design - I only threw the kitchen sink at the villain knowing that I was going to win by doing so - but it's also a side effect of ignoring so many encounter cards and trusting that you're going to get the finish line in time.  If you duck for the line and don't quite make it then there's a good chance it's going to be adios muchachos when the villain gets that extra opportunity to swing back at you.

And there is another pitfall to deciding to rush the villain: it's the possibility that it might actually work.

Huh?

When I described why rushing was a successful strategy I explained that what you're really doing is removing the villain's agency from him - he can no longer affect the game.  If the villain was another human player they'd be having a Negative Play Experience (NPE) because they weren't allowed to actually play the game.  Thankfully the villains are just pieces of cardboard and don't have feelings, but ultimately that NPE may wind up bouncing off them and onto you - after all, you've just succeeded at winning a game of Marvel Champions by avoiding playing Marvel Champions.

If rushing has meant you're ignoring 75%+ of what the villain is doing and reducing them to just a cardboard punching bag then it's arguable that you've reduced the experience of playing the game to just being an exercise in scorekeeping.  If you know your deck is reliably going to deal lots of damage and you know that the villain's cards aren't going to be able to stop you then all that's left is to watch it happen and keep track of the hit points.  In the past I've been a bit scathing about all the solo decks that rely on the crutch of stunlocking the villain as essentially cheesing their way through the game by ignoring half of it... but a successful rush strategy seems to ignore more like three quarters.

Is what's left still enough of a game to be worth playing?

HOPPING ONTO MY STAR-LORD SOAPBOX

Is the game worth playing when you know you're going to win?

It's a question I'm asking myself now about Star-Lord in particular.  That game I played against Expert Ronan wasn't just like having the satisfaction from finally climbing Everest it was like hiring a helicopter to fly me up to the top to take selfies as the summit: somehow it had all happened very quickly and very easily.  Where am I supposed to go from here if I've trivially defeated the toughest villain in the game in 4 turns without even breaking a sweat?  I could add the campaign cards in and go again, but the whole reason the deck works is that it doesn't card what cards the villain has so adding a few new cards is unlikely to change anything.

When I first introduced my Star-Lord deck last month I said "it's not the most dominant deck I've played...this is by far and away the most absurdly ridiculously bonkers, fun, death-defying and outrageous deck I've ever played".  I'm a month wiser now and along the way I've become pretty sure Star-Lord rush actually is the most broken and powerful deck in the game for all the reason I've outlined above.  Star-Lord rush literally transcends anything the villain can do and leaves them with blank cards.  Doctor Strange has been the benchmark for broken heroes so far, and may fit more comfortably into any random assembly of heroes, but he still allows the villain to play the game in a way that Star-Lord doesn't.  Winds of Watoomb is an incredibly good invocation but in What Could Go Wrong? I've got +3 cards stapled to Star-Lord's hero card for me to use it every turn without having to exhaust... and then if I get Star-Lord's helmet down I can effectively get to play two Winds of Watoomb every turn!

My experience of jumping aboard the Star-Lord rush train to see where it took me has been exhilarating - a wild ride that had a lot of white knuckle moments as I scraped through games that I had won just seconds before I lost them.  Hindsight tells me now that the danger I felt was possibly an illusion and my victory was always assured.  

I'm not done with playing aggressively but maybe it will soon be time to retire Star-Lord and play Marvel Champions again instead...

Hulkbuster Armour - finding an Iron Man I enjoy

It's been a couple of week since my last blog and in that time I've still been bouncing back and forward between trying to the new heroes (Star-Lord continues to amaze me - beating Ronan in 4 turns!) and revisiting some of the old ones I never really gave time to.  That served me well in finding Spider-Woman and Black Panther decks that I liked in the past and now I'm playing Iron Man a lot at the moment.  But it's taken finding an unconventional approach to Iron Man to make me enjoy a hero I'd never really liked before.  

Here's three key facts...

1. I'm playing Aggression
2. It has Hand Cannons in as extra Tech upgrades
3. Can you believe I was the first person to think of calling their deck 'Hulkbuster' on MCDB?

IRON MAN ORIGIN STORY

There's two heroes that I've still never played: Doctor Strange and Quicksilver.  I own all the expansion but I've never actually played either of those guys.  In Doctor Strange's case it's the stigma that not only does everyone say he's too powerful for the game, but that I can read his cards and see that they're right without ever having to put them on the table.  In Quicksilver's case it's something different - it's because I've told myself that I don't like the 'Builder' type heroes who spend ages setting up the board in order to have it all pay off in some big combo turn.

The main reason that I think I don't like 'Builders' (or what other players call 'set up heroes') is down to a dreadful experience I've had with one guy: Tony Stark.

You didn't do ok, Tony.  You were crapola on toast.

Back when I very, very, very first got into Marvel Champions and only had the core set it was Iron Man who was the first hero that I played after I got done with the Spider-Man & Captain Marvel introductory games.  I was still playing against Rhino and it was a car crash of awfulness where I hated everything that Iron Man was doing - I felt like had to be in Hero form ASAP to stop Rhino from scheming out immediately but then I had a hand size of like 3, so I was crippled and lost anyway despite apparently owning the world's most advanced super-suit.

Iron Man got punted into a dark hole pretty rapidly and I only pulled him back out a month or two later after I spotted that with Electrostatic Armour and Energy Barrier I could have more Tech cards and maybe actually have a proper hand size if I played him in Protection.  So I made a Protection Iron Man, the sort of thing that many players have already made and a pretty typical type of Iron Man deck... and I hated that too.  Something in the Protection aspect wasn't really jiving for me, especially when it was doubling down on a slow hero like Iron Man.  Sitting around and waiting for something to happen... I'm sure it's a good deck but it's just not the way I wanted to play the game.

Then I found more proactive heroes like Hawkeye, Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch so Iron Man got thrown back into the same dark hole.

A couple of weeks ago word got around to me that Aggression Iron Man was pretty fun, and I discovered I'd missed that the Hand Cannons from Galaxy's Most Wanted are a Tech upgrade.  I've already liked using Hand Cannon in my Scarlet Witch deck so I knew I liked them and it was the spur I needed to pick Iron Man out and dust him off for a third time.  Helped by some wise words about how to approach making Iron Man's hand size work I seemed to hit on the magic formula and found something I really liked: the Hulkbuster.

View this deck on MCDB

I AM IRON MAN

The Hulkbuster is an Iron Man deck for people who don't like playing Iron Man.  It sets up quickly then it starts blowing things up... and once it's started it doesn't really stop throwing out big attack numbers until there's nothing left to hit!

STEP ONE: Mulligan HARD for your tech. You draw 6 cards, you can mulligan for up to 6 more cards, you're almost certain to stay in AE on turn 1 so then you see another 6 cards, plus two shots of Tony Stark's Futurist ability.  That's as many as 24 cards in your deck that you'll see over two turns and it means you have a >85% chance to see & play 4 Tech cards.  It means the Hulkbuster can jump into Hero form on turn 2 with a good normal hand size very reliably.

^^^ This turned out to be the secret I was missing for all Iron Man decks in general, btw.  Having 10 Tech cards makes you much more reliable at seeing them by turn 2 than I had realised.  Virtually nothing is more important to you than getting those upgrades into play because you're going to starve to death without them.

STEP TWO: Stabilise the board and improve your armour. Because you were in AE on turn 1 the chances are you need to play catchup, especially on threat. Into The Fray and Looking For Trouble can help with that and you've lots of cheap attacks to remove opposing minions. You also want to keep expanding your armour whenever possible on the first pass through your deck so you can build to the max 7 card hand size. Don't be too precious about your minions, they're just meat shields for you to keep you upright and firing Repulsor Blasts.

STEP THREE: Bust some Hulks. On your second pass through the deck you should have your armour set up and a big hand size. With your upgrades out in play you're going to be drawing a lot of firepower every turn and it's time to take the fight to the villain. The combination of Angela/Looking For Trouble with Relentless Assault/Into The Fray and then Moment of Triumph as a kicker on top should be able to keep you healthy. Your Hand Cannons and Powered Gauntlets make it easy to set minions up for some big overkill hits and recovering a lot of health from Moment of Triumph.

STEP FOUR: I dunno. I saw a Shawarma joint about two blocks from here...

Hulkbuster Strengths

Once you've got your suit powered up there's not a lot of heroes who can consistently patrol the table and keep control of the villain's cards as this Iron Man deck.  You've got threat removal from your Mark V Helmet, Into The Fray and your native 2 THW (and the Arc Reactor to ready you) then for minions you've also 10 attack events, Powered Gauntlets and those tasty Hand Cannon attacks.

Hulkbuster's healing comes from Moment of Triumph, and all of your attacks can hit for big numbers and trigger big heals.  Just as importantly with things like your Powered Gauntlets you're able to chip minions down to the point where you can max those overkill hits when you need them.  Healing is important for Iron Man because although he gets to a ton of HP (this build maxes out at 20HP once you've got everything in play) he only has 1 DEF so if you've not got allies around to take hits for you he's going to take a lot of villain attacks on the chin.

The biggest strength for me, though, is how aggressive this Hulkbuster suit is once you're ready to turn his attention to the villain.  A couple of Hand Cannons in play, a Repulsor Blast and a Supersonic Punch can easily be 22 damage and you'll still have resources spare from your 7 card hand to play an ally or another attack!  It really helps you to push through those final villain stages as fast as possible and that's not something you get from every Iron Man deck.

Hulkbuster Weaknesses

Although you're not completely without tools for them I've found Side Schemes to be problematic for the Hulkbuster, especially once you get to the big ones in Galaxy's Most Wanted.  You've got a native 2THW but unless you have the Arc Reactor and the Mark V Helmet online that's all you've got and it's probably not enough.  You've also not really got any great Thwarting cover from your allies, two of which even have 0THW themselves.  It's not all bad - Looking For Trouble and Into The Fray make you very good at controlling the main scheme threat so you can usually cope with Acceleration schemes, and you've enough removal that you won't immediately keel over to Hazard schemes either, but a Crisis scheme can definitely slow you down a lot.

The other big issue I've felt is that if I don't land the Quincarrier into play you're not going to be able to activate your Rocket Boots and go Aerial every time you'd like - maximising Energy resources for Repulsor Blasts means there's not many Mental resources around.  When the Quincarrier gets to your hand you need to bear that in mind when you're deciding if you want to take the tempo hit to play it or not because without it your suit pieces will lose a fair bit of power.  It's not essential to play Quincarrier every time you draw it but it does help this deck by more than just being a ramping resource.

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So that's 2 out of 3 down.  I thought I hated the 'Builder' archetype but I've now got Black Panther and Iron Man decks that I really enjoy playing.  I think the trick is that I've been able to make them faster and more proactive, with low cost curves and it's worked twice.  Maybe I need to get over my prejudices and give Quicksilver a try after all... surely the fastest man on Earth can't be that slow can he?

However I'm also back playing X-Wing a little bit now so my blogging time will be split between that and Marvel Champions.  We'll have to see which game wins out and gets the most love!