After the tough time I had with any hero solo against Expert Green Goblin Mutagen Scheme I was expecting a similar challenge here. Captain Marvel leadership blasted through the Crew without too much difficulty although it does take time but I never felt under the pump. As Iron Man (my favourite) its more challenging but then Iron Man solo tends to be more challenging until he gets his armour then it was clear sailing. I was disappointed that there is only one main scheme not two like with Green Goblin. Maybe in future FFG will provide generic schemes that any villain can do to provide some more variety in stories and threats.

This whole pack felt underwhelming to me compared to Green Goblin. I really appreciated the new modular decks, and felt like there just wasn't much variety with the Wrecking Crew. There was so much overlap between their decks, I felt like there wasn't much new to discover. And yeah, they haven't been particularly challenging so far, though I haven't tried the super-expert mode of A side then B side yet. The fact that their side-schemes are mostly an inconvenience means that you can flip back to Alter-Ego pretty much any time, as long as you mind the main scheme. They do have quite a few extra attacks in their decks though, so I could see some people getting knocked out out of the blue. All the more reason to take it easy and flip back to recover often, though.

10 hours ago, AradonTemplar said:

This whole pack felt underwhelming to me compared to Green Goblin.

I've played each aspect once against them and I don't see myself doing it again anytime soon. In my opinion this scenario suffers from being disappointingly shallow, which is made worse by its lack of modularity, which is made even worse by the thought that we're not supposed to have any new scenarios until the July box.

I can safely say that the only villain who's easier than wrecking crew is "Risky Buissness / Norman / Goblin".

Wrecking Crews extreme mode don't prove any additional challenge at all, only longer playtime. It's in fact easier to play it extreme (A+B sides) compared to only side B. You have more time to build yourself or your partners up if you multiplay, before entering into the villains B side.

Me and my friends tried a couple of additions, house rules, that would increase the enjoyment of the encounter.
Some examples are:

1. The main scheme has the +1(man) symbol instead of only +1 flat.
2. When any sidescheme gets maxed out (10), add an +1 acceleration token to the main scheme. (In addition to the normal +1 acceleration token that the main scheme gets every time any encounter deck gets depleted and reshuffled.)
3. Add modular sets to each pile of encounter cards (4 in total).
4. Let there be 2 active villains at all times, and when a card tells you to activate another hero, just read the text 2 times to calculate wich villain would be active or not.
5. Build a 5th encounter deck, located next to the main scheme. The deck contains only of basic, expert, and obligation cards, nothing else. The rules are that during the -draw encounter cards- phase, all players draw 1 encounter card from the active villains encounter deck, and the "first player" draws 1 additional encounter card from the "main scheme encounter deck". Then resolve all encounters in player turn order. All encounter cards return to their corresponding pile after resolving. When the "main scheme encounter deck" gets reshuffled, add +1 acc token to the main scheme. When a card from the "main scheme encounter deck" tells you to draw, discard, or in any way affect "the encounter deck", you only touch the main villains encounter deck. That way, the "main scheme encounter deck" will only get to see 1 draw every round, and all cards in "main scheme encounter deck" will eventually see play.

So far, we have tried nr. 1, 2 and 5 at the same time, and died.
We have also tried only nr 1, and that was too easy.
Next time we will test out 1 and 5, and see how it goes.

My playgroup consists of 1, 2, 3 or 4 players at the same time, and I noticed that adding more players doesn't increase difficulty.

(Btw, something we always add to the risky buissness goblin, is that all players, no matter how many, draws 2 encounter cards each during the encounter phase.)

I had similar thoughts to making it more difficult- add an acceleration token to the main scheme and add an encounter deck to each of the villains decks, I have not tied it yet though. Your idea number 5 looks neat too!

Yeah I was surprised that only one vilain attack and use a encounter.

it’s a crew. So I expected they at lest all attack (only the active vilain use the encounter).

56 minutes ago, Slobosoy1 said:

Yeah I was surprised that only one vilain attack and use a encounter.

it’s a crew. So I expected they at lest all attack (only the active vilain use the encounter).

Under that, flawed, reasoning they all need to scheme at the same time when in alter-ego.

You’d need either lots of consistent healing or thwart to even have a chance. No hero in the game could take two group attacks from the Crew. In fact if the attack is undefended everyone but She-Hulk and Captain Marvel lose on the first attack.

The schemes aren’t as oppressive as early, but they’d build up much quicker and then you get hit with damage regardless of form, stun, 1/10 of the deck getting milling and upgrades getting tossed.

Might be worth trying the Most Threat and Least Threat both activate and deal encounters. It is a lot of damage, but the scheming should be managable. It's literally making the encounter twice as hard, so I suspect it'd be quite tough, but probably more exciting.

What if the Crew has one pooled health and they can't be defeated one at time? When you attack you're attacking the active villain so the only time Piledriver's retaliate will trigger is if he is the active Villain. Similarly, if a Villain has a tough status card, they only lose it if they are the active villain or with an AOE.

Last night I played as for the first time as Captain Marvel against them (using all standard rules) and because of a very lucky first turn I knocked Bulldozer out with my opening hand. I thought the game was easy with Captain America but even he didn't one turn KO any of them. By the end of the game I was just bored with the challenge. It feels like it takes longer to setup than to beat. I'd rather play Mutagen Formula.

Just played Wrecking Crew with a good mate. We found it embarrassingly easy - just time consuming.

Wonder if it will get an official fix of some sort?

I find Wrecking Crew to be best played with 3-4 people. They are able pull of some really crazy combos the more encounter cards that are drawn each turn. One or two player games don’t really do justice to the scenario because the encounter decks don’t have any room to pull off their combos with fewer players. I don’t even pull Wrecking Crew out of the box if I’m not playing with at least 3 people. I’ve played several games where a hero got completely obliterated because of an unexpected attack from bulldozer who was only activated because of a change in active villain due to an encounter card. But that has only happened in 3-4 player games.

Also because of the crazy combos Wrecking Crew can pull off when each member is still alive, I’ve wanted to try combining each villains health into a single health pool so they are all alive until the end of the game. Has anybody tried this?

27 minutes ago, The Team said:

I find Wrecking Crew to be best played with 3-4 people. They are able pull of some really crazy combos the more encounter cards that are drawn each turn. One or two player games don’t really do justice to the scenario because the encounter decks don’t have any room to pull off their combos with fewer players. I don’t even pull Wrecking Crew out of the box if I’m not playing with at least 3 people. I’ve played several games where a hero got completely obliterated because of an unexpected attack from bulldozer who was only activated because of a change in active villain due to an encounter card. But that has only happened in 3-4 player games.

Also because of the crazy combos Wrecking Crew can pull off when each member is still alive, I’ve wanted to try combining each villains health into a single health pool so they are all alive until the end of the game. Has anybody tried this?

The longer we go the clearer it is to me that the whole game is balanced for 3-4 players. Solo isn’t terrible, but people are going to have to adjust difficulty more to suit their desired play experience.