I sleeve the encounter cards in red ultra pro sleeves. The hero deck cards in blue. Hero cards in top loaders. And any other double sided cards in clear. I have years worth of sleeves because I used to sleeve my xwing rebel cards in red and my imperial cards in blue. Having trouble finding more red though... again, I'd rather be playing than looking for sleeves. Core set is still providing enough enjoyment that I haven't felt the need to get Gobbie up and running. I'm sure this week though, if not tonight.

I'm in the UK. Captain America and Green Goblin arrived in the post today.

Still waiting for Ms. Marvel but bought from a different supplier. Have received an email to say it's posted though.

Originally, on another thread, I posted that I would not be buying Ms. Marvel as she's not a character I'm invested in and it's not necessary to buy everything for this game. But as I watched the available stock for pre-orders dwindle I caved in and purchased. What can I say - I'm weak!! If Marvel Champions had a will power score, mine would be zero.

Edit: And 24 hours later Ms. Marvel arrived in the post. Happy Days.

2 hours ago, Janaka said:

Originally, on another thread, I posted that I would not be buying Ms. Marvel as she's not a character I'm invested in and it's not necessary to buy everything for this game. But as I watched the available stock for pre-orders dwindle I caved in and purchased. What can I say - I'm weak!! If Marvel Champions had a will power score, mine would be zero.

She's worth the protection cards if nothing else. You made the right call!

She's definitely worth it. I wasn't very interested in her either, but she's got a pretty fun play style. I still need to play her deck more to really get a sense of how it works and how I want to tweak it, but I've been having too much fun throwing Cap's shield around (though to be fair, he's my favorite superhero). Today I'm planning on getting Ms. Marvel to the table.

My Ms Marvel pack arrived today. I think she is quite interesting to play, I’ve not really managed to get it right yet. The pre- constructed deck seems very low on thwart to me.

still waiting for Green Goblin

2 minutes ago, Daft Blazer said:

My Ms Marvel pack arrived today. I think she is quite interesting to play, I’ve not really managed to get it right yet. The pre- constructed deck seems very low on thwart to me.

still waiting for Green Goblin

That's been my problem as well. She seems to play better as part of a team. Her board is really slow to set up and I often find myself having to use cards I need for her overall efficiency to pay for other cards that I also need for that same purpose. I'm sure a big part of my problem is that I choose the wrong ones to play, though. And the fact that I don't know really know how to combo her deck well since I haven't played with it much. As you said, she is interesting to play and I'm not saying she's a bad hero. I'm glad I bought her deck, just been spending more time with and tweaking Cap.

47 minutes ago, Daft Blazer said:

My Ms Marvel pack arrived today. I think she is quite interesting to play, I’ve not really managed to get it right yet. The pre- constructed deck seems very low on thwart to me.

still waiting for Green Goblin

I find that, until you get the returnable allies into play, you want to hold onto one of her thwart events, bouncing it back when you use it.

Had Green Goblin, Cap and Ms Marvel waiting in my mailbox yesterday (and the new Arkham pack - Christmas come.....late?)

Only tried cap so far, but 3-0 against Ultron (Standard difficulty) with his pre built deck.

I hard Mulligan for Aamir Khan. Another tip is count her Ms.Marvel upgrades in play and her cards in the discard before you use her alter-ego ability. Early on I was using it like crazy, before I realized I wasn't going to find anything in the deck! This power can also make the game harder on yourself from giving you extra encounter cards.

Lastly, don't forget her hero ability can be used on any (attack, defend, thwart) event, not just a Ms.Marvel one.

Very fun, but I haven't been super successful with her- struggling against expert Klaw currently.

Is justice a better fit with Ms Marvel? We did 3 player yesterday, Ms Marvel Justice, Cap America Aggression and Cap Marvel Leadership - long game, 2hrs, but we held Klaw in the first stage (standard difficulty). Ms Marvel did some heavy lifting thwarting, and made good use of the new Justice card that deals 4 damage when you clear a side scheme.

43 minutes ago, Daft Blazer said:

Is justice a better fit with Ms Marvel? We did 3 player yesterday, Ms Marvel Justice, Cap America Aggression and Cap Marvel Leadership - long game, 2hrs, but we held Klaw in the first stage (standard difficulty). Ms Marvel did some heavy lifting thwarting, and made good use of the new Justice card that deals 4 damage when you clear a side scheme.

I’ve wondered if it would be best for her solo? Because she needs to be able to flip, and can’t do so if there’s too much threat on the board. (And somebody even suggested Leadership, so that the allies can thwart while you’re in Alter Ego mode—which doesn’t sound bad.)

That said, I think Aggression/Protection/Justice are all perfectly acceptable options for her right now. Depends on what you need her to focus on for the rest of the team.

I’m going to try her with 3 x Tenacity - to get maximum use of her ability.

7 hours ago, Daft Blazer said:

I’m going to try her with 3 x Tenacity - to get maximum use of her ability.

Yeah I built a deck for her last night that I haven’t tried yet, focusing on putting bounce-able events in there, and including tenacity.

Tenacity is going to be 100% better when we get the Physical resource version of the ”Enhanced” upgrade cards, though. Those are excellent for consistently triggering abilities like Iron Man’s aerial off his boots.

On 12/23/2019 at 9:45 AM, CaffeineAddict said:

It's not a great start for the game, to be honest - I'm on the fence about collecting this one, and FFGs current approach to its UK customers isn't pushing me in the "invest in this one" direction.

Edit: an hour later I just got the dispatch notice from gameslore for the new packs, which was a surprise.

You would think that Fantasy Flight would have learned from the fiasco that was the Arkham Horror release, especially with a license that is much bigger than Lovecraft. But here we are with shortages once again.

I had been interested in this game, but frankly, I have moved on since it seems like FF cannot get their act together when it comes to supplies.

The Armada Super Star Destroyer was a year late, Destiny is now three months late and counting and it has been pushed back not just once but twice.

I tend to think that a product being delivered on time is the rarity.

I think that FFG relies too much on just in time production and never estimates the demand properly, then suffers for shipping delays, Chinese New Year and Uncle Bobs' Birthday. Perhaps FFG could learn how to use KickStarter to get a better idea of demand for a game.

7 hours ago, Amanal said:

I tend to think that a product being delivered on time is the rarity.

Which is why FFG rarely gives us a release date. A product not being "on time", is 95% of the time because the community at large figured it should be released by that date, where FFG rarely say so. (Champions being the exception here because an actual release date was given in advance)

That doesn't take anything away from the fact that accurately estimating demand isn't their strong suit. However, I've always found the product they deliver to be of excellent value and that more than makes up for having to wait a bit sometimes or not being sure when a product is releasing. Marvel Champions for instance is a game I enjoy immensely and not having the three released packs myself doesn't make me want to quit the game. I'll just get them at some later date. It's fine and not the end of the world or anything.

I hope FFG does some more obscure heroes. Ms. Marvel appears to not have sold as well as the other two, it's been in stock for a long time, so that's the only one I have. I just ordered GG though, it's showed up. Captain America still out of stock.

I read somewhere that they're changing distributors at some point this year.

That's awful.... The thing that bugs me about FFG is they take these huge licenses like Marvel, Star Wars, but they produce them like Kick Starter rewards. I always see "Star Wars Destiny" listed as a in store product at my local GameStop but they never have any new "Star Wars Disteny" packs.

20 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I read somewhere that they're changing distributors at some point this year.

To be fair to FFG, if a large part of the problem lies with their distributor (which is entirely possibly since they have one distributor), this could be good. But one thing that is definitely FFG's fault is low production quotas, and a new distributor isn't likely to make that better.

2 hours ago, maniakmedic said:

To be fair to FFG, if a large part of the problem lies with their distributor (which is entirely possibly since they have one distributor), this could be good. But one thing that is definitely FFG's fault is low production quotas, and a new distributor isn't likely to make that better.

To be fair to them again, would you rather they over-estimated, lost money on things and then cancelled the line or were closed down?

Just now, Tonbo Karasu said:

To be fair to them again, would you rather they over-estimated, lost money on things and then cancelled the line or were closed down?

You mean, like, normal business risks?

I'm not sure why people give game companies slack they don't give others. Take Kickstarter for example. If someone went up to you and asked for an interest free loan, you'd laugh in their face. Or we can call out biased or inaccurate reporting at CNN or Fox, but BGG seems immune.

I'm not trying to be combative, this is just a pet peeve, that people tend to give game companies benefits like this, in the general case.

1 minute ago, Supertoe said:

You mean, like, normal business risks?

I'm not sure why people give game companies slack they don't give others. Take Kickstarter for example. If someone went up to you and asked for an interest free loan, you'd laugh in their face. Or we can call out biased or inaccurate reporting at CNN or Fox, but BGG seems immune.

I'm not trying to be combative, this is just a pet peeve, that people tend to give game companies benefits like this, in the general case.

Yes. I mean that they have looked at the situation and decided that, for business reasons, it's better to err on the side of caution than not. If need be, there can be another run. It's a normal business response to a normal business risk.

14 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

To be fair to them again, would you rather they over-estimated, lost money on things and then cancelled the line or were closed down?

Of course not, but at the same time they've had a lot of time to figure out what sells and what doesn't. If they don't have somebody on staff who keeps an eye on that sort of thing, they're doing it wrong. There are LOTR LCG packs that are chronically out of stock, even after reprints. And as Supertoe just pointed out, this is a normal point of business, and being that I came to board and card gaming after I was already a big video gamer, I'm a lot less forgiving of the board gaming norm of shorting supply, ignoring customer inquiries, and almost complete radio silence when it comes to delays. I get that there are usually a lot of moving parts when it comes to board games, but refusal to acknowledge delays or respond to valid questions from customers (like "where are the playmats?"), is straight-up dumb. Big video games get delayed all the time and the development companies almost always let people know the delay is happening. As a whole, board gamers give way too much leeway to board game companies.

On 1/25/2020 at 4:25 AM, Supertoe said:

I'm not trying to be combative, this is just a pet peeve, that people tend to give game companies benefits like this, in the general case.

Mostly to continue the chain of thought as anything - I think though this is largely because we are all playing games for fun, so we tend to be more forgiving.

If my local super market had the same problems as FFG it would go broke.

We hear it all the time, "FFG makes great games but.... " It would be great if FFG removed the but from that sentence.

On 1/25/2020 at 4:25 AM, Supertoe said:

Take Kickstarter for example. If someone went up to you and asked for an interest free loan, you'd laugh in their face.

I have seen companies use KS to remove some of the risk, and generally you get a cheaper game or special components for the same price as you would in a store.

I wonder if we can solve the problems with technology, maybe an FFG app. I nominate my prefered FLGS, and when I see a new game like "Fallout Shelter" I can nominate my interest. Perhaps after 10-20 people expressed an interest, stores could be asked to opt in to a demo program that would send a release-kit and demo-kit to the store for them to drum up interest in a game. At some point I pre-order or say I am not interested in making a purchase. Upon release day FFG knows the commitment shown and interest shown.

Like KS is disruptive for business capital there could be some form of disruptive process that helps the manufacturer, distributer, game store and gamer a win here.

On 1/23/2020 at 8:57 PM, Palpster said:

Which is why FFG rarely gives us a release date.

I think the games mat is a great example. How many people had to cancel their order because the mat did has not come out with the game? Some of those people don't come back, so the expectation should be managed by FFG better.