First game - Solo, Victory, Tutorial Spider-Man deck vs Rhino I+II (standard, Rhino, Bomb Scare)

I didn’t have enough sleeves on hand to sleeve the entire core, so I started out with just the tutorial cards. The tutorial deck pairs Justice with Spidey, and I think it really worked to shore up his base card shortcomings in that area (thwarting tied to minion defeat, only 1 THW stat, spidey ally has only 2 hp and 1 THW).

My path to Victory started out fairly strong with a Web kick in hand, moving to Rhino II by turn 2. In retrospect, I probably could have waited a round to develop my board/ensure there was zero threat on the main scheme as the difficulty goes up, and the margins for failure are pretty tight. Once into Rhino II, I spent the rest of his deck just treading water (burning off threat, taking out side schemes, fending off minions, and slowly getting out permanents). Rhino cycled his deck once, I cycled Spideys twice before I was in a position to actually harm him (owing to a combination of stuns/confused on Spidey, and a series of Tough status cards on Rhino and minions like Sandman).

Allies did a lot of work, especially with keeping the schemes manageable, so I look forward to trying out Leadership.

I also started solo with Spider-Man starter deck and lost as soon as I got to Rhino II. His armored suit and tough cards/minions with tough cards absorbed a lot of damage and I went from 3 to 7 threat in one go and lost. I should have taken more damage and stayed in hero form a bit longer to avoid the threat storm because Aunt May support heals a lot each alter-ego turn. Black Cat was also nice because she can attack without taking obligated damage

1 hour ago, ewardell said:

I also started solo with Spider-Man starter deck and lost as soon as I got to Rhino II. His armored suit and tough cards/minions with tough cards absorbed a lot of damage and I went from 3 to 7 threat in one go and lost. I should have taken more damage and stayed in hero form a bit longer to avoid the threat storm because Aunt May support heals a lot each alter-ego turn. Black Cat was also nice because she can attack without taking obligated damage

I definitely spent a number of rounds just treading water, keeping the threat down for exactly that reason. Based on all the Play videos I’ve seen, it’s a constant point of failure, allowing what seems like a small amount of threat (slightly under 50%) to accumulate, and then suffering a sudden spike that ends the game.

When the rate of change is anywhere from 1-8, in a single turn (Automatic increase of 1, scheme of 1, say the villain schemes for +3, the. Advances to scheme again on the encounter for +1, a minion with 2 scheme), keeping the scheme clean is priority 1, all things being equal.

Second play, this time two players, Victory as Captain Marvel Aggression, teammate had Spider-Man Justice. My teammate did a yeoman’s job keeping the threat down while we built up our board, whittling away Rhino

Once Rhino was down to 5 hp, I pounced, dealing 30 points in a single round (several photon blasts with a fully powered Energy Channel) pretty well instagibbing Rhino. Marvel’s damage output is really amazing.

Third play, solo, Captain Marvel Aggression. Victory in 4 turns. Her burst is exceptional from what I can see.

6 hours ago, Derrault said:

Once Rhino was down to 5 hp, I pounced, dealing 30 points in a single round (several photon blasts with a fully powered Energy Channel) pretty well instagibbing Rhino. Marvel’s damage output is really amazing.

There’s got to be another piece to this... Photonic Blast is 3 resources for 5 damage. Even if you played all 3 (for 9 resources? how?) that’s 15, an Energy Channel makes 25.

What am I missing?

Don't let the tutorial games lull you into a false sense of accomplishment. The tutorial game leaves out some critical game mechanics (e.g. adding a permanent Threat token if Enemy Encounter deck is depleted and shuffled, and adding 1 facedown encounter card if you deplete your deck). The game does get harder when you move onto Klaw and Ultron.

15 hours ago, Buhallin said:

There’s got to be another piece to this... Photonic Blast is 3 resources for 5 damage. Even if you played all 3 (for 9 resources? how?) that’s 15, an Energy Channel makes 25.

What am I missing?

Start as Danvers (6 cards), commander does +1, Alpha flight nets +1, mansion +1, flip to Marvel; including the carrier, that’s 9 cards + 1 resource reduction.

3x photon (first one paid for with energy absorption drew into another, 2nd paid for with an Energy and a haymaker, 3rd was just 3 cards) + Energy Channel (precharged during Rhino I) is 25; Basic ATK + Combat Training is 3, Tac Team already in play deals the final 2. I think there was actually room to deal more, including allies, but that’s overkill at that point.

2 hours ago, Deltmi said:

Don't let the tutorial games lull you into a false sense of accomplishment. The tutorial game leaves out some critical game mechanics (e.g. adding a permanent Threat token if Enemy Encounter deck is depleted and shuffled, and adding 1 facedown encounter card if you deplete your deck). The game does get harder when you move onto Klaw and Ultron.

To clarify, just the Tutorial decks; regular rules were in use for all play throughs.

Play throughs 4 (Black Panther, Protection) and 5 (Iron Man, Aggression), Victory for both.

Black Panther started out strong, running into most of his upgrades and the wakanda forevers on a regular basis. Ran into a cash flow problem about halfway through, when all the expensive cards showed up at once. Otherwise it worked out alright.

Iron Man was, as expected a real whip saw of an experience. Zero upgrades pulled after three rounds, forcing early swapping into hero form to thwart down the scheme, sticking there until it was under control.

The saving grace was pulling Pepper Potts, which enabled playing the first upgrade that showed up two rounds later, fortunately it was the helmet, which helped to get the threat under control, and the second was the Mark V armor, making it possible to survive a few extra turns until more gear showed up.

After which things picked up, using futurist to burn into the necessary upgrades (spending any extra upgrades that could then be pulled back using Stark Tower). once the entire suit was up and running it was fairly easy to swap back and forth, being able to ready up from the reactor when in hero mode enables a recovery as well each round.

6th Playthrough, She-Hulk Aggression, Victory

Lucked into both Focused Rages early on, followed up by Avengers Mansion. Drew into all three One-Two Punches and a combat training to burn through Rhino I in short order; a nice big hit from Rhino with some more focused rage leads to a huge Gamma Slam for 13 to finish off Rhino II.

Our first play was awesome and I can see where we made some tactical mistakes.

Rhino /Break-In/Bomb Scare vs 3-Player ( Iron Man /Ldr + Black Panther /Agr + Spidey /Prot)

Note: I did however make a small mistake forgetting to put the neutral cards in my Iron Man deck, so we will re-run this back tomorrow. The other two decks were fine.

As it was, toward the end of the game we had an unresolved Breakin and Takin (a side plot adding an extra encounter card) which lead to the following 2 fairly epic parts to the game:

1) The first was predicated with Black Panther on 2 Health with the Scheme down to 1 Threat left . Black Panther flips (his first of 2 encounter cards) Ritual Sacrifice while on his Alter-Ego side. The deck was boost rich so this had a high probability of taking out T'Challa. Spidey responded with Get Behind Me . Spidey was able to exhaust and defend again st the attack.

2) The next two cards were Charge (+3 atk each) with Enhanced Ivory Tusk (+1 atk) already on Rhino II. It was now Spidey s encounter flip - Assault . Egads, Rhino was going to attack for 10 with no way to defend and no ally cards. Spidey had nothing in hand and was surely dead, when Black Panther reminded Spidey he had Spider-Senses which let him draw a card. He ripped Backflip off the topdeck and Rhino was left wondering what just happened.

- IceHot

That’s pretty awesome @IceHot42

Just finished the 7th/8th play throughs using Captain Marvel/Leadership vs Rhino I/II + Bomb Scare and Klaw I/II + Masters of Evil.

7th was mostly just a shake down run to get a good feel for the deck before taking on Klaw.

I think I had what might be the single worst start possible for Klaw; the first minion revealed was a Weapons Runner...that comes with surge when revealed, which revealed Shadow from the Past. So I got to start with three schemes (main, defense network, Psychomagnetron) with two minions already in play.

On the bright side, I commander drew directly into a photon blast, so that at least took Yon Rog off the table immediately. Unfortunately, the very next encounter was to draw for a master of Evil minion, removing approximately half of Klaw’s deck to get Radioactive Man into play...followed by the bonus card from the magnetron putting Whirlwind into play. I managed to stanch the process, but not before they flipped into Scheme #2. At which point I was able to board clear and have a full set of rotating allies to help keep the threat down.

Once it really gets going Leadership is pretty great, and Marvel’s card drawing thrives when you have most of your permanents into play. Anyway, a hard won Victory achieved.

Our first "proper" game (after a few false starts with egregious rules errors) had standard Rhino I/II come down to a one turn "use it or lose it situation" with She-Hulk gamma slamming the snot out of him the turn previous and following up with a Superhuman Strength, One-Two Punch combo the next turn with Black Panther finishing him off after her.

If that hadn't happened, and we didn't manage to thwart any of his threat, he would have won on his next villain phase (curse you threat amplifiers). It was on a knife's edge due to a nasty late-game villain round when some side schemes got pulled and a run of surges tapped out his deck and saw the threat amplifiers jump suddenly, taking Rhino from a bumbling oaf to an inspired criminal in a shockingly short amount of time.

Hilarious thing that game was my buddy having the most perverse mixed-blessing luck with pulling his Wakanda Forever cards. He was pulling lots of them (like you want to with BP), just not quite when he wanted them. At one point, he had no less than four of them in his hand after pulling two of them in two consecutive turns (before he had his upgrade line kitted out enough to really justify them). He very begrudgingly ended up spending one to resolve the issue.

By the way, if you play She-Hulk, get used to flipping her a lot . You REALLY need her alter-ego's hand size to prep you for her spike damage; it's a balancing act between her limited hand size in Hulk mode and the cost of some of her big tricks (like gamma slam).

On 11/1/2019 at 8:02 PM, IceHot42 said:

2) The next two cards were Charge (+3 atk each) with Enhanced Ivory Tusk (+1 atk) already on Rhino II. It was now Spidey s encounter flip - Assault . Egads, Rhino was going to attack for 10 with no way to defend and no ally cards. Spidey had nothing in hand and was surely dead, when Black Panther reminded Spidey he had Spider-Senses which let him draw a card. He ripped Backflip off the topdeck and Rhino was left wondering what just happened.

I love this sooooooooo much.

9th-Black Panther Protection/10th-She-Hulk Aggression/11th Spider-Man Justice playthroughs vs Klaw I/II + Masters of Evil

They all played a little different, Black Panther took the longest, his output comes in spurts and Protection is either low/no cost (making the 2 value resources useless), or high cost (in which case I was drawing none of my resource cards). Ultimately just ended up slowly grinding Klaw down with retaliate, having to use cards that would have gone into doing direct damage just to put out Constant minion fires.

She-Hulk just went so much smoother, got out combat training right off the bat, and she just smashed face after that point with one-twos, split personality was the MVP card after that, fueling a couple strong burst turns.

Spider-Man has a lot of great tools for neutralizing villain turns, and of the three playthroughs his was the only one that actually held Klaw to stage 1 by the time victory rolled around (albeit, it took cycling his entire deck to do that).

Yesterday I played a solo She-Hulk aggression deck against Rhino. I came out swinging and was onto Rhino II within two turns. Got that one down to six health and had just enough cards combined with one attack action to kill him on my next turn. So of course the encounter card I drew was "Hard to keep down". So on the next turn instead of being able to lay a final beat down, I threated out. It's amazing how fast it can swing from certain victory to defeat with just one card. It just feels like an epic superhero battle with the wild swings. I love it.

I've played 9 times so far. Only used the starter decks.

5 solo Spider-Man Justice and two 2 player Captain Marvel Aggression and 2 solo Captain Marvel.

I'm 9-0 so far and have been left wondering if I'm getting a rule wrong, but I don't think I am. It feels 'too easy' at times, but admittedly I'm playing on the easiest possible settings and Spider-Man Justice seems almost custom built for introductory solo play. You simply control the threat and then kill Rhino in the meantime with Spinning Web Kick, attacks and Black Cat.

I thought that Captain Marvel Aggression would be tougher in solo, since you have little to no tools to deal with threat, but she can deal damage so fast, sometimes you can ignore it. Energy Channel is even better in solo too.

I have got a little lucky at times - I haven't had Shadows of the Past resolve against me yet and the whole 'Rhino schemes + Advance and wins in one turn' hasn't come up either.

Once I've had a few more plays with the other 3 heroes I'll definitely be exploring more difficult Villains, settings and modular sets

Got the game yesterday.

First thing I noticed - the villain hit point dial goes up to over 200! I wonder what FFG might do with that?

Anyway,first playthroughs - all versus default Rhino:

Solo Spiderman Justice mashes Rhino every time. No challenge.

Solo Capt Marvel Aggression was a win but a much closer match than my Spidey playthroughs as she can't mitigate threat like Spiderman Justice does.

Solo Black Panther Leadership relies on luck of the draw more than the above. Never had more than two upgrades in play at once. Got stuck cycling for Wakanda Forevers and pulled the treachery that forces you to discard upgrades twice. When finally drawing Wakanda Forevers I had only one upgrade at most left in play. Lost both attempts.

2 player Capt Marvel (agg) and Black Panther (lead) was a more strategic play. The difficulty increases here because now you're going through the Encounter deck faster, drawing side schemes and minions at an increased rate which begin to ramp. Due to side schemes in play (including Usurp the Throne nemesis scheme) I was at one time drawing three encounter cards per player during the villain phase which in the end proved too much for my valiant heroes. I only had time for one 2 player game but it was definitely way more fun than solo!!

Finished out my standard Klaw playthroughs with Iron Man Aggression, and then went into Spider-Man Justice for Ultron I/II. The drones provided both an interesting change, although it’s not clear to me that the module for Under Attack is strictly harder than either Bomb Scare or Masters of Evil.

With all the drones, I can’t help but think Masters of Evil’s big minions would prove to be more difficult. Ended up cycling the Spider-Man deck several times, thanks to all the drones, until I was able to have enough threat management tools on board to take the increased threat application option instead of adding a drone.

Further to my attempts at playing Black Panther (leadership) solo.

I still think BP is a bity hit and miss due to reliance on cycling and luck of the draw, but every now and then BP feels really good to play.

In my last playthrough I had all BP upgrades in play and then drew three Wakanda Forevers in a single hand and could afford to play them all!! A game-changing round to say the least.

Did my first foray into increased difficulty levels, Rhino II/III + Bomb Scare + Standard vs Spider-Man/Justice.

Rhino doesn’t seem to get appreciably more difficult just from his stages, III only adds some extra damage and requiring 2 additional actions (one to remove stun, one to clear toughness). Mindful that Rhino is capable of instagibbing the scheme with unfortunate card draw, I played fairly conservatively, often reserving a great responsibility or a spider sense card from round.

4 hours ago, Derrault said:

Did my first foray into increased difficulty levels, Rhino II/III + Bomb Scare + Standard vs Spider-Man/Justice.

Rhino doesn’t seem to get appreciably more difficult just from his stages, III only adds some extra damage and requiring 2 additional actions (one to remove stun, one to clear toughness). Mindful that Rhino is capable of instagibbing the scheme with unfortunate card draw, I played fairly conservatively, often reserving a great responsibility or a spider sense card from round.

I’d argue the most difficult thing about starting the game in Stage II is that you start with Breaking and Taking Side Scheme in play. That adds immediate pressure to the game, but Rhino on expert isn’t too much harder than on Standard. He’s still got the simplest mechanics and the most straightforward game plan. I would just throw in the expert cards as well though. They make the game a little harder and gives you a clearer difference between ‘standard’ and ‘expert’.

6 minutes ago, FearLord said:

I’d argue the most difficult thing about starting the game in Stage II is that you start with Breaking and Taking Side Scheme in play. That adds immediate pressure to the game, but Rhino on expert isn’t too much harder than on Standard. He’s still got the simplest mechanics and the most straightforward game plan. I would just throw in the expert cards as well though. They make the game a little harder and gives you a clearer difference between ‘standard’ and ‘expert’.

Possibly also switch out Bomb Scare, for a different module, like Legions of Hydra. That actually combos a bit, with the Hydra Mercs in Rhino's deck.

8 hours ago, FearLord said:

I’d argue the most difficult thing about starting the game in Stage II is that you start with Breaking and Taking Side Scheme in play. That adds immediate pressure to the game, but Rhino on expert isn’t too much harder than on Standard. He’s still got the simplest mechanics and the most straightforward game plan. I would just throw in the expert cards as well though. They make the game a little harder and gives you a clearer difference between ‘standard’ and ‘expert’.

8 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Possibly also switch out Bomb Scare, for a different module, like Legions of Hydra. That actually combos a bit, with the Hydra Mercs in Rhino's deck.

That’s my general plan; do all the basic villains on standard with the default modules using each hero and the default aspects; then upgrade them to their II/III; then expert; then module swapping.

Did back to back She-Hulk Aggression/Leadership runs against Rhino II/III with expert cards and Bomb Scare.

I lost the initial aggression run (first loss!) and had to rerun it because I forgot that III + Charge + Boost is actually probably going to deal 9 damage, so it’s not generally safe to be in hero mode against that with only 7 HP.

Leadership was interesting; She-Hulk has some really powerful turns thanks to her chaining card draw possibilities (start in alter-ego for 6, flip to hero to get 2 more from the focused angers, end with split personality to go back to alter ego for 6 more +1 for avengers mansion (playing Fury for +3 more and Maria for another +1); for a total of 19 cards in one turn.