Anyone else feel the core set experience is bland? I’m a co-op LCG veteran and was looking forward to this. Unlike LotR and AH, there is a really poor deckbuilding experience. During play throughs, I noticed at least half the core is junk that should never see play once the card pool grows. Those double resource cards aren’t very good. Nick Fury is way too expensive. Situational cards don’t seem very good.

Also, the difficulty seemed to be really low. I played Spidey Justice against Rhino and won easily. Black Panther Leadership against Klaw and won easily. Iron Man Aggression against Ultron and won easily. I remember Arkham taking a good group and some luck to get through the third scenario. And, in LotR, the Dol Gulder one was super tough, making you rethink deckbuilding to tackle it.

Hopefully as the card pool grows I’ll get more enjoyment from this. Right now it just seems like a less interesting dumbed down hybrid of the other coop games.

1 hour ago, gokubb said:

Anyone else feel the core set experience is bland? I’m a co-op LCG veteran and was looking forward to this. Unlike LotR and AH, there is a really poor deckbuilding experience. During play throughs, I noticed at least half the core is junk that should never see play once the card pool grows. Those double resource cards aren’t very good. Nick Fury is way too expensive. Situational cards don’t seem very good.

Also, the difficulty seemed to be really low. I played Spidey Justice against Rhino and won easily. Black Panther Leadership against Klaw and won easily. Iron Man Aggression against Ultron and won easily. I remember Arkham taking a good group and some luck to get through the third scenario. And, in LotR, the Dol Gulder one was super tough, making you rethink deckbuilding to tackle it.

Hopefully as the card pool grows I’ll get more enjoyment from this. Right now it just seems like a less interesting dumbed down hybrid of the other coop games.

I mean, Nick Fury has been my MVP for a number of playthroughs, especially in leadership with the Triskelion. He’s saved my bacon frequently by eliminating 4 threat and eating a big attack all too frequently for me to think of him as overpriced.

For the difficulty, your mileage may vary. It’s entirely possible to have Rhino, even on easy difficulty, get enough threat in a single round to go from no threat, to loss.

Well, make sure you're playing the rules correctly obviously (sounds a bit too easy compared to other experiences). Are you sure you're doing the resoures correctly? You discard 1 resource icon for each resource needed to play a card, so those Double Resource cards are great because they save you from discarding an extra card, which can help you play multiple cards(a 4 cost card essentially costs 5 cards including the card you're playing). It has alot of similar but different mechanics to other LCGs also, so make sure you're not using the rules from one of those by mistake

1 hour ago, retrodaniel said:

Well, make sure you're playing the rules correctly obviously (sounds a bit too easy compared to other experiences). Are you sure you're doing the resoures correctly? You discard 1 resource icon for each resource needed to play a card, so those Double Resource cards are great because they save you from discarding an extra card, which can help you play multiple cards(a 4 cost card essentially costs 5 cards including the card you're playing). It has alot of similar but different mechanics to other LCGs also, so make sure you're not using the rules from one of those by mistake

I’m playing it correctly. The only high cost cards I’ve been putting in are one Avengers Mansion, one Hellicarrier and Mockingbird. Everything else has been two or less except those hero specific that had to be in there.

I actually don't feel that there are any terrible stinkers among the player cards. Haven't tried protection though. Standard difficulty does seem like it may be too easy, but I feel the difficulty adjustment system works well. I do worry about whether deckbuilding will feel fleshed out any time soon. My biggest worry is I'm not sure how much room there is for this system to grow over time. Hopefully that won't be an issue though.

7 hours ago, gokubb said:

During play throughs, I noticed at least half the core is junk that should never see play once the card pool grows.

This is an interesting statement. Half the cards are junk that shouldn't be used, and yet you're winning easily. That would seem to imply that scenarios are really easy if you can beat them easily with a crap deck. Is that everyone else's experience? I haven't picked this up yet.

24 minutes ago, Vince79 said:

This is an interesting statement. Half the cards are junk that shouldn't be used, and yet you're winning easily. That would seem to imply that scenarios are really easy if you can beat them easily with a crap deck. Is that everyone else's experience? I haven't picked this up yet.

Yeah, that's one thing I've noticed is that a lot of the cards are absolute trash. Things like tenacity are completely unplayable, and there are various cards that just aren't good in each aspect.

That said, as far as difficulty goes, we beat Rhino easily but lost to Klaw with She-Hulk and Black Panther. Black Panther is the weakest of the core heroes (his unique upgrades are just wayyyyyyy too expensive), but still, it felt difficult.

That said, the basic game is lackluster with the scenarios. I didn't really feel like anything was happening at all. We were just generating economy to beat the villains economy essentially. This should change with the Green Goblin pack, what's been spoiled in that looks very interesting. Haven't played Ultron either, but doubt he's that cool.

For credibility’s sake, our playgroup plays Arkham Horror on hard difficulty.

we beat the demo Rhino scenario easily. That probably won’t be the same experience for all skill levels.

there is an expert mode for crazy people like ourselves, which we will probably begin with immediately.

i can’t speak to deck building because the game has been out a day and I got mine this afternoon. I know some people have had it for awhile, but it does seem too early to judge.

One of the game’s strengths is the different ways of tweaking the difficulty.

chuck in the expert encounter set, play against the higher villain levels and throw in the hard modular sets.

I had a game of solo justice Spider-Man that felt super easy, had Rhino down to 2 life left, then drew a hand full of my 2 resource neutrals. Frame work added 1 threat, Rhino added 2, Shocker, Vulture, and a Hydra goon all added 1 each. Obviously lost that one. Big turn for the baddies.

12 hours ago, gokubb said:

Anyone else feel the core set experience is bland? I’m a co-op LCG veteran and was looking forward to this. Unlike LotR and AH, there is a really poor deckbuilding experience. During play throughs, I noticed at least half the core is junk that should never see play once the card pool grows. Those double resource cards aren’t very good. Nick Fury is way too expensive. Situational cards don’t seem very good.

Also, the difficulty seemed to be really low. I played Spidey Justice against Rhino and won easily. Black Panther Leadership against Klaw and won easily. Iron Man Aggression against Ultron and won easily. I remember Arkham taking a good group and some luck to get through the third scenario. And, in LotR, the Dol Gulder one was super tough, making you rethink deckbuilding to tackle it.

Hopefully as the card pool grows I’ll get more enjoyment from this. Right now it just seems like a less interesting dumbed down hybrid of the other coop games.

In my solo experience Rhino did seem easy. Just played a 4 player game and got past Rhino 1 and Rhino 2 crushed our team. Side schemes can really stink. The extra card from the enemy deck is super bad. It does feel like a streamlined Lotr game but I still enjoyed the games I have played. I think the reason for the "trash" cards is to feel okay discarding them for resources. Maybe you are getting really lucky against the villain deck?

4 hours ago, Supertoe said:

Black Panther is the weakest of the core heroes (his unique upgrades are just wayyyyyyy too expensive)

Maybe that's why he has 2 double wild resources in his signatures.

I’m 9 plays in since picking it up Friday. I’ve only lost twice so far (solo using the starter Captain Marvel deck vs the starter Rhino deck and my first time playing Expert Klaw solo), but there’s lots of ways to ramp the difficulty up.

Most of my games against Rhino have been pretty easy, most of my games vs Klaw on expert have been extremely tight. Our 4 player game against him I was convinced we were going to lose.

I’m intending to play mostly on Expert going forwards I think, and I’m looking forward to mixing up the modules. I will say that after 9 games since Friday evening, I’m still pumped for more!

2 hours ago, ScottGilbert25 said:

In my solo experience Rhino did seem easy. Just played a 4 player game and got past Rhino 1 and Rhino 2 crushed our team. Side schemes can really stink. The extra card from the enemy deck is super bad. It does feel like a streamlined Lotr game but I still enjoyed the games I have played. I think the reason for the "trash" cards is to feel okay discarding them for resources. Maybe you are getting really lucky against the villain deck?

I’ve found it beneficial to spend additional time in the first stage building up a decks infrastructure (locations/personas/tech/max out 3 allies) and then pass over to the second stage with enough juice to burn it out in 1/2 turns.

So I think I have been playing the hazard rule wrong. Is it an additional card to each player or one additional card per symbol?

33 minutes ago, ScottGilbert25 said:

So I think I have been playing the hazard rule wrong. Is it an additional card to each player or one additional card per symbol?

One card total per hazard icon; dealt in player order (so if you have 3, with 4 players, the 4th player doesn’t get one additional, the other three would).

3 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Maybe that's why he has 2 double wild resources in his signatures.

And double wilds are nice, but it still doesn't quite make up for how expensive they are.

3 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

And double wilds are nice, but it still doesn't quite make up for how expensive they are.

On the bright side, having a bunch of permanents means you cycle your deck that much faster later on.

I can see where you're coming from as to it feeling Blah, but I think there's a lot of potential. Granted, there's not a lot of deck-building (yet) for people who enjoy doing that, but in the long run I can see that being a bonus since it will be more accessible to people who either don't have the time or just don't want to deck-build, which could make it more of a must-buy for an entire demographic that would normally pass individual deck types of card games by. I'm still not what I would consider a great deck-builder, but I'm decent and getting better and I remember how frustrating it could be to be looking at a massive card pool and trying to build a deck when I wanted to add everything (I didn't get into LOTR until about 1 1/2 years ago and didn't really get into AH until about a year ago).

For those of us who have been playing games long enough to be able to deal with more complicated rulesets, this definitely feels a little like something is missing, but I can see complication being added over time as new cards and heroes join the card pool.

Also in my experience the game is easy, but I think that was done on purpose: we are Marvel Heroes and we are the best!!

Anyway, if you're looking for a challenging experience, try Ultron in Expert Mode. I tried it twice and I haven't won it yet.

I see a lot of people talking about how easy Rhino is... pretty sure that's the point. He's Journey Down the Anduin or The Gathering - an intro game to learn it.

IMHO a lot of this is also because they've done the difficulty better. It's much finer grained than in the previous co-op LCGs where you go from trivial intro to crushingly hard (Midnight Masks, Escape from Dol Goldur) in the space of a game or two. The villains and modular sets both provide different ramps, as does the expert mode. If you're trivially beating Expert Ultron with MODOK then yeah, you're probably above the curve for the game. But not having an Escape from Dol Goldur in the core set strikes me as a feature, not a problem.

22 hours ago, gokubb said:

I noticed at least half the core is junk that should never see play once the card pool grows. Those double resource cards aren’t very good. Nick Fury is way too expensive.

Kind of hard to say that half the cards are junk if we haven't seen how the card pool grows. Possible that our expectations of efficiency aren't properly calibrated yet. I generally disagree about the double resource cards, but I do think Fury's not great in this one.

Can’t really fathom people thinking Nick Fury isn’t good... if you take the card draw, he’s effectively a net cost 1 for 2 damage or 2 Thwart and a free block... that’s without factoring in the utility of the card draw itself and the flexibility to do other stuff...

just got done playing against ultron and the modak combo and i have to say the game ain't easy nor is it really hard (we won) we use iron man and she hulk to win and it felt amazing trying to figure out what is the best for beating this. i have to say this game can become boring after many replays but thanks fully they are suppose to come out with lots of expansions.

On 11/2/2019 at 4:25 PM, gokubb said:

Also, the difficulty seemed to be really low. I played Spidey Justice against Rhino and won easily. Black Panther Leadership against Klaw and won easily. Iron Man Aggression against Ultron and won easily . I remember Arkham taking a good group and some luck to get through the third scenario. And, in LotR, the Dol Gulder one was super tough, making you rethink deckbuilding to tackle it.

Are you playing solo or teamed, and if teamed are you multiplying health, threat, etc. correctly by the number of players/heroes?

The game seemed stupid easy to us our first couple games because we were forgetting to set the right multiplier levels for various things like villain health. Once we corrected our mistakes, it got significantly more challenging.

Because if you're solo and beating them easy, then I can't relate because I've not played solo, but if you're playing teamed and making those statements, I have to believe you are doing some fundamental things wrong. I simply can't see those being truthful statements unless you've made a mistake or two somewhere.

If, SOMEHOW, you really are doing everything by the book, then the only thing I can suggest is expert mode against the higher difficulty modular schemes.

My spider-sense leans towards humble-brag otherwise.

On 11/2/2019 at 5:25 PM, gokubb said:

Also, the difficulty seemed to be really low. I played Spidey Justice against Rhino and won easily. Black Panther Leadership against Klaw and won easily. Iron Man Aggression against Ultron and won easily. I remember Arkham taking a good group and some luck to get through the third scenario. And, in LotR, the Dol Gulder one was super tough, making you rethink deckbuilding to tackle it.

If i were you, i would give another read through both rulebooks.

Perhaps you overlooked something important in the rules