Anyone else struggling with this game? We must be doing something wrong because we rarely have a fighting chance; the encounter deck just piles on too quickly.

One example: I was playing solo as Spiderman against Rhino. Sandman was engaged as a minion. Rhino attacked with 3 and I defended with three but boost gave him +1. Sandman attacked and I took three more damage. Then my encounter card was Gang Up, so Rhino does 3 more damage and Sandman does 3 more damage for a total of 10 that turn, wiping out all my hit points in a single phase. That's infuriatingly rediculous...

In the interactions you described, it seems you followed the rules correctly.

A few tips:

Prioritize killing minions with high attack like Sandman so you don't have to take his hit come villain phase.

Keep allies with 1 hp in play to take an attack from the villain, so situations like this might be avoided.

Don't kill stage one village until you are set up with some supports/upgrades etc.

Try to empty your hand as often as you can.

Obviously situations like the one you describe may still happen, but they are low probability if you incorporate some of the above tips.

Hope you give the game another shot, and good luck!

2 hours ago, mike8104 said:

Anyone else struggling with this game? We must be doing something wrong because we rarely have a fighting chance; the encounter deck just piles on too quickly.

One example: I was playing solo as Spiderman against Rhino. Sandman was engaged as a minion. Rhino attacked with 3 and I defended with three but boost gave him +1. Sandman attacked and I took three more damage. Then my encounter card was Gang Up, so Rhino does 3 more damage and Sandman does 3 more damage for a total of 10 that turn, wiping out all my hit points in a single phase. That's infuriatingly rediculous...

I was in the same boat. I just could not work out what to do. But allies are a very useful tool. You really need them to take hits, thwart, etc. I initially wasn’t pro hero, but I have come around. Rhino is a very swingy villain if you get the wrong card encounter draw. Honestly, if you get schemed out, don’t worry about it, that was just bad luck. Maybe, if you get schemed by a bad card draw, perhaps give all -1 and go from there.

6 hours ago, mike8104 said:

Anyone else struggling with this game? We must be doing something wrong because we rarely have a fighting chance; the encounter deck just piles on too quickly.

Solo can be very swingy. If you are unlucky with player card and encounter card draws the game can end very quickly, especially against Rhino who can scheme from zero to lose with a single Advance or do heaps of damage with e.g. Charge + Assault/Gang Up.

As someone who has played a fair bit of Arkham Horror LCG, it still took me three attempts to beat both standard Rhino and Klaw with the out-of-the-box Spiderman deck. Early game, focus on setting up with cards like Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier and allies and prioritise keeping threat down and defeating minions as soon as possible rather than piling damage on the villain. Also, try to use as much of your hand as possible each turn. My first couple of plays I tended to hang on to cards that I thought might be useful in the future rather than use them as resources. Finally, I've found the Captain Marvel deck in the back of the learn to play guide (the Leadership aspect one, not the pre-built Aggression one that comes in the box) to be better for solo play. In my experience, playing with two players makes the game quite a bit easier than solo.

It definitely takes some experience to get a handle on solo play, compared to multiplayer. In Multiplayer, everything is doubled, but you can stagger things like the villain scheming/attacking, so he won't necessarily double-scheme for two players, and it also lessens the impact of things like the Advance card, where a single extra scheme is only about a quarter of the main scheme threat amount, rather than half or more. You have to get multiple really bad draws to have a bad time with multiplayer, but in single, it just takes one bad flip.

Also, though, Spider-Man can be really, really tough solo. He doesn't have a lot of threat removal innately, and what he does have relies on minions coming into play, which is unreliable in solo play. You have to make really good use of allies to thwart and take one big hit from the enemy. If you're going solo, I recommend using either Leadership or Justice. Those should give you the time you need to set up and recover when necessary.

It took me several games to come to appreciate the value of getting allies into play, using them for a couple turns, then sacrificing them on their third (or whatever) hit point.

On 2/19/2020 at 9:42 PM, mike8104 said:

Anyone else struggling with this game? We must be doing something wrong because we rarely have a fighting chance; the encounter deck just piles on too quickly.

One example: I was playing solo as Spiderman against Rhino. Sandman was engaged as a minion. Rhino attacked with 3 and I defended with three but boost gave him +1. Sandman attacked and I took three more damage. Then my encounter card was Gang Up, so Rhino does 3 more damage and Sandman does 3 more damage for a total of 10 that turn, wiping out all my hit points in a single phase. That's infuriatingly rediculous...

General priorities: Keep Threat down, Build out your board, Remove Side Schemes/Minions, and, dead last, Attack the Villain.

It's all about preparation. It's more obvious with Heroes like Black Panther or Iron Man, but solo play always should follow the same MO.

You don't rush into a fight without some planning (that's why Aggression is seen as the worst Aspect for solo play). You need to keep the threat low, the side schemes off the board, and the HPs high until you're ready to take on the big bad guy.

Unless you can hit for 30+ damage in one turn, but I can hardly see how you could manage that on turn 2 or 3...

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

General priorities: Keep Threat down, Build out your board, Remove Side Schemes/Minions, and, dead last, Attack the Villain.

I've also been struggling. Granted, I've only played twice, both times solo with Captain Marvel against Rhino, but didn't make hardly any progress before there was 7 threat on the main scheme. Need to try staying in hero form and getting allies out.

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

General priorities: Keep Threat down, Build out your board, Remove Side Schemes/Minions, and, dead last, Attack the Villain.

Key word being general, as there are exceptions (Klaw with his thin deck and mechanic of cycling through it faster means at a certain point you really need to prioritize just smashing him quickly)

5 hours ago, Cable2 said:

Key word being general, as there are exceptions (Klaw with his thin deck and mechanic of cycling through it faster means at a certain point you really need to prioritize just smashing him quickly)

Of course! If you’re running into acceleration tokens, it’s probably a good idea to pick up the pace.

Thanks guys! Some very helpful advice and I think I just had bad luck on a couple occasions. I've since played three more times with another player and had Black Panther with Iron Man. Defeated Rhino fairly easily, barely squeaked out a victory with Klaw (with the terrible deck cycling), and defeated Rhino again on Expert. Having a rough time with Ultron; his ability seems way over-powered with losing a card AND it becoming a minion every time he attacks. I can only do "Wakanda Forever!" with my Energy Daggers so many times...

It's a fun game but there are times when the mechanics still seem a bit unbalanced and can be impossible if a specific combination comes up.

Klaw's pretty tough, to be honest. He can have some very unfortunate flips. Ultron's not too bad once you have enough practice at him. Learning how his three scheme stages work and how to minimize the damage is pretty important.

Playing with multiple players definitely helps even the game out for you. I felt like I was learning two different games, playing solo and multiplayer.

On 2/23/2020 at 10:18 AM, mike8104 said:

Thanks guys! Some very helpful advice and I think I just had bad luck on a couple occasions. I've since played three more times with another player and had Black Panther with Iron Man. Defeated Rhino fairly easily, barely squeaked out a victory with Klaw (with the terrible deck cycling), and defeated Rhino again on Expert. Having a rough time with Ultron; his ability seems way over-powered with losing a card AND it becoming a minion every time he attacks. I can only do "Wakanda Forever!" with my Energy Daggers so many times...

It's a fun game but there are times when the mechanics still seem a bit unbalanced and can be impossible if a specific combination comes up.

Your retaliate on Black Panther should auto-kill the ones on him, so you effectively only have to deal with the ones on Iron Man at that point.