2 hours ago, Amanal said:

Isn't the hero, hero cards and nemesis cards new content?

For the most part I am not going to think of this as an LCG and look for a complete playset. Champions seems more like a boardgame with an aggressive expansion cycle. The idea of buy and play doesn't seem that bad. Over time the card pool may develop into something closer to an LCG, and if the game captures my friends and my imaginations we may delve into the rabbit hole that is deck construction.

Sure, it’s new content. But it doesn’t expand the deckbuilding pool, unless you want to use the new character. Deckbuilding drives a lot of people that play these games, myself included. If you can’t customize a character, then you’re just playing a board game.

When the new character in a pack is Kamala Khan, which I have little desire to play, then those twenty cards for the character I won’t play is a waste to me.

2 hours ago, gokubb said:

When the new character in a pack is Kamala Khan, which I have little desire to play, then those twenty cards for the character I won’t play is a waste to me.

So the other 30-40 cards in the pack are blank?

8 hours ago, gokubb said:

Sure, it’s new content. But it doesn’t expand the deckbuilding pool, unless you want to use the new character. Deckbuilding drives a lot of people that play these games, myself included. If you can’t customize a character, then you’re just playing a board game.

When the new character in a pack is Kamala Khan, which I have little desire to play, then those twenty cards for the character I won’t play is a waste to me.

That argument is like saying "I don't want to play NBN or Anarch [Netrunner factions] so those 20 cards were a waste to me." I didn't play Anarch or NBN, but I never viewed the cards as a waste.

Saying "it doesn’t expand the deckbuilding pool, unless you want to use the new character" is, I think, inaccurate. It absolutely expands the deckbuilding pool. And then some people opt out. Which is your choice. But there are going to be cards in every pack that don't appeal to some people.

2 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

That argument is like saying "I don't want to play NBN or Anarch [Netrunner factions] so those 20 cards were a waste to me." I didn't play Anarch or NBN, but I never viewed the cards as a waste.

Saying "it doesn’t expand the deckbuilding pool, unless you want to use the new character" is, I think, inaccurate. It absolutely expands the deckbuilding pool. And then some people opt out. Which is your choice. But there are going to be cards in every pack that don't appeal to some people.

It’s nothing like saying I don’t want NBN or Anarch cards. Those cards can be mixed in the other factions. Not the same comparison at all.

Like I said, those twenty cards expand the deckbuilding pool only if you want to use the new character. How is that inaccurate? Argue semantics all you want, but with getting two hero packs every four months, then for general deckbuilding outside which hero you choose, the card pool is going to grow by around thirty cards every four months. That’s if they don’t do reprints. That is not a lot of options and the game may get stale quickly because of it. My only argument here is that leaves no room for reprints and I would be disappointed if they included any.

Again, it only gets stale if you're not using all the cards.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on whether hero cards count as adding to the card pool.

As for stale... Using Smash-Up style archetype building, there are 30 decks available after Cap drops. When Ms. Marvel drops, there are 42. That's a 40% increase in available deck archetypes.

I'm sorry you don't want to mix those cards in to your collection, but that's on you.

There’s nothing wrong with skipping a pack cause you don’t like the hero or maybe the villain scenario.

Buy what you want. It is a beautiful thing.

14 hours ago, gokubb said:

It’s nothing like saying I don’t want NBN or Anarch cards. Those cards can be mixed in the other factions. Not the same comparison at all.

Like I said, those twenty cards expand the deckbuilding pool only if you want to use the new character. How is that inaccurate? Argue semantics all you want, but with getting two hero packs every four months, then for general deckbuilding outside which hero you choose, the card pool is going to grow by around thirty cards every four months. That’s if they don’t do reprints. That is not a lot of options and the game may get stale quickly because of it. My only argument here is that leaves no room for reprints and I would be disappointed if they included any.

It still expands the card pool, whether you choose to use it or not. The card pool is the available options, not the ones you choose to use.

I won't use certain characters in VS, such as Purple Man, but that doesn't make the card not exist. It's still part of the card pool, I just choose not to use that part.

15 hours ago, gokubb said:

My only argument here is that leaves no room for reprints and I would be disappointed if they included any.

Fair enough, but right now we are speculating at best, Aspect cards and the Generics could have a large overlap with previous cards or little to none. I expect here there would be a minimum of overlap, as that creates the desire to buy the pack even if the hero isn't a first choice for you and creates more variety in the game.

Being able to grab a hero, aspect and some generic cards makes the game fairly quick to set up and the game play is easy to teach. This simplified deckbuilding and that you and your friends can also add to the villains deck, does create a fair degree of variety, but it may fall short of the type of deck building you have with L5R, Netrunner and GoT.

I think here, to be fair if you want deckbuilding to be similar to L5R etc. then maybe those games would be a better fit. Not every LCG needs to be a deep, ongoing deck building experience. I would think that simplified deckbuilding and super heroes may well make the game beginner/casual friendly and to be fair I think FFG got it pretty close to right. It also makes the game one that you can just pull off a shelf and play with friends if the mood takes you that way.

With Christmas coming perhaps we'll see this game in stores that aren't exactly game/hobby stores.

On 8/8/2019 at 7:02 AM, Amanal said:

This simplified deckbuilding and that you and your friends can also add to the villains deck, does create a fair degree of variety, but it may fall short of the type of deck building you have with L5R, Netrunner and GoT.

Which are three very competitive LCGs

The style of deckbuilding in Marvel looks solid for a dedicated coop

I really hope reprints are not a thing. If they feel the need to add some cards from the core set to make the hero decks "playable" out of the box, I would be really disappointed.

The game is designed in a way that there are no must include cards like mana in Magic or locations in VS 2PCG. It would make no sense to me to include reprints in MC hero packs.

Sure Nick Fury and Avengers Mansions might look strong, but they can always be substituted by other similar cards. Not all decks need to include the same 5-10 cards to make them viable.

And for God's sake, if reprints do happen, they better not be the crappy resource cards. Those are pretty bad cards, that I don't want extras of, specially the aspect ones.

Considering there is a hard limit to how many of those resource cards you can actually put in a deck, the neutral resource cards would be a waste to include in future products considering anyone buying that pack will most likely have a core set already. I could see an argument for the aspect resource cards (the "Power of" cards). They are boring but very useful. If two people are playing the same aspect having some dupes might be an attractive proposition. That said I am with you. I'd rather not get cards reprinting in future packs if we can help it to ensure the player pool is as wide as possible early on in the game's life. Right now it will be pretty narrow for a while and the card pool will grow asymmetrically, which is always not ideal if a player has a favorite aspect. That said I'd rather they do the distribution this way than the traditional way. Having decks ready to go in packs is such an upside that I'm willing to take the downside.

Well I reckon I'm probably in for one core, one villain and one hero pack. Get a feel for how they are doing things with this game's releases. From there I'll likely pick and choose packs "a la carte" style.

Or I'll just buy everything. Who knows?

2 hours ago, TheSpitfired said:

Well I reckon I'm probably in for one core, one villain and one hero pack. Get a feel for how they are doing things with this game's releases. From there I'll likely pick and choose packs "a la carte" style.

Or I'll just buy everything. Who knows?

I’d like to think I’ll be choosy and just go for the stuff I really want, but I can already tell by how excited I am at fighting the Wrecking Crew that I won’t be able to stop myself getting everything for this game... Solo mode means I’m likely to want to have a whirl at everything even if my gaming group aren’t keen on everything multiplayer...

On 8/6/2019 at 10:51 PM, gokubb said:

Sure, it’s new content. But it doesn’t expand the deckbuilding pool, unless you want to use the new character. Deckbuilding drives a lot of people that play these games, myself included. If you can’t customize a character, then you’re just playing a board game.

When the new character in a pack is Kamala Khan, which I have little desire to play, then those twenty cards for the character I won’t play is a waste to me.

Each pack would have cards from at least one aspect. While you don't have a say of which cards you include of a particular hero's suite, you could, in theory, alter the hero's aspect.

On 8/12/2019 at 6:33 PM, Turtlefan2082 said:

Each pack would have cards from at least one aspect. While you don't have a say of which cards you include of a particular hero's suite, you could, in theory, alter the hero's aspect.

Each hero comes with 1 identity, 15 signatures, 1 obligation and 5 nemesis cards, so that's 22 cards dedicated to the hero. That's a significant part of the pack, even if there are still plenty of cards left (at least 25, possibly up to 35).

1 hour ago, Khudzlin said:

Each hero comes with 1 identity, 15 signatures, 1 obligation and 5 nemesis cards, so that's 22 cards dedicated to the hero. That's a significant part of the pack, even if there are still plenty of cards left (at least 25, possibly up to 35).

They are 60 card packs, so presumably 38 more cards (even though that would leave you with a few extra).

I’m assuming each pack will come with a legal 40 card deck list and some extra copies of some of the cards in it...

7 hours ago, FearLord said:

They are 60 card packs, so presumably 38 more cards (even though that would leave you with a few extra).

I’m assuming each pack will come with a legal 40 card deck list and some extra copies of some of the cards in it...

Probably mot extra copies of cards in it. They will just have a full playset of each card.

It feels more likely that we will get some cards for the other Aspects.

I'm excited for the announcement for Captain America because I feel like the Hero Pack distribution is the last key piece of information for the die hard nerds.

We won't know what's in a campaign box for some time, but those tend to be "moar good stuff" as opposed to the day-to-day "how does the meta grow" pool.

42 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

I'm excited for the announcement for Captain America because I feel like the Hero Pack distribution is the last key piece of information for the die hard nerds.

We won't know what's in a campaign box for some time, but those tend to be "moar good stuff" as opposed to the day-to-day "how does the meta grow" pool.

Same! We know it's going to be a 60 card pack, and we can account for 47 of those cards. I need to know how they're gonna fill it out. I wonder if those 13 cards will be spread amongst the other Aspects, or if they'll all be Leadership too.

9 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Each hero comes with 1 identity, 15 signatures, 1 obligation and 5 nemesis cards, so that's 22 cards dedicated to the hero. That's a significant part of the pack, even if there are still plenty of cards left (at least 25, possibly up to 35).

Be that as it may, nobody is saying you have to buy Hero X, but like other LCGs, you miss out on potentially good cards to add to your hero decks

2 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

I'm excited for the announcement for Captain America because I feel like the Hero Pack distribution is the last key piece of information for the die hard nerds.

We won't know what's in a campaign box for some time, but those tend to be "moar good stuff" as opposed to the day-to-day "how does the meta grow" pool.

For what it's worth
someone on bgg (i'll have to find the link) said the hero packs are $13. The same poster ended up being right about scenarios being $20, so it's possible they really are $13. In which case it's only 50 cards.

11 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

For what it's worth
someone on bgg (i'll have to find the link) said the hero packs are $13. The same poster ended up being right about scenarios being $20, so it's possible they really are $13. In which case it's only 50 cards.

The website states there are 60 cards in a Hero pack. Suppose whoever wrote it could be wrong, but it seems like the kind of thing marketing would have checked before publishing an exact number.

Could be wrong, but I've yet to see anywhere where $13 is listed as MSRP. I'm sure they will be $13, but I doubt that's the MSRP.

Ah, I've found it. Team Covenant subscriptions are $13 per. Regular price $15.

13 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Each hero comes with 1 identity, 15 signatures, 1 obligation and 5 nemesis cards, so that's 22 cards dedicated to the hero. That's a significant part of the pack, even if there are still plenty of cards left (at least 25, possibly up to 35).

Did they say anywhere that every hero is going to have fifteen signature cards, and each nemesis set will be five cards? Just because that's the way the base set works, there's no reason to believe they all will be the same. Arkham investigators, for instance, all started with a thirty card deck and a single weakness card, but didn't stay that way long.