Does somebody have a video or step-by-step play through where they actually beat Ultron on expert mode (it need not be Heroic) preferably with Under Attack without missing rules.

I have yet to see it.

I have seen TC videos, but they keep skipping the drone minion attacks.

I have seen videos where players optimize their decks to 40-cards then de-optimize Ultrons deck by adding extra modules

I have yet to beat it multi-player, and I am sure somebody has but I want to see all the steps.

Please post a link or play-by-play if you got one.

-IceHot

I watched this one and thought they did a good job of showing everything they were doing.

https://youtu.be/JsPrX5AgN24

Thanks that was an awesome play (clearly he had an awful lot of well-timed draws, but it can be done). The only down side I saw was that Power Drain is an easier set for Ultron then Under Attack. Hopefully though there are some things we can adjust that will help us defeat the big guy.

Regarding Ultron whether it be Expert up to Heroic 3 is you must have Justice and you must have Under Surveillance (The Van) to keep Ultron in Crimson Cowl main scheme for as long as possible. If playing two or more players you should have Leadership and play Squirrel girl as often as possible vs Ultron II while Hawkeye is necessary for Ultron III (he adds on 1 HP to all Drones making them invulnerable to Squirrel girl). Thor is ok with his lightning strike but Captain America is Better while Iron Man is the one to take down Ultron fast (Captain Marvel is also good if 3 player). Good Luck. I have beaten Ultron on Expert with stock Black Widow and Dr Strange on Solo (yes surprised me too) so maybe try them out too.

Ive beat him solo with Black Panther Aggression (non-optimzed 50 -card deck) after only a few tries. But multiplayer is a different beast. Thanks for the suggestions we will keep trying.

15 hours ago, James Ravenwood said:

Regarding Ultron whether it be Expert up to Heroic 3 is you must have Justice and you must have Under Surveillance (The Van) to keep Ultron in Crimson Cowl main scheme for as long as possible. If playing two or more players you should have Leadership and play Squirrel girl as often as possible vs Ultron II while Hawkeye is necessary for Ultron III (he adds on 1 HP to all Drones making them invulnerable to Squirrel girl). Thor is ok with his lightning strike but Captain America is Better while Iron Man is the one to take down Ultron fast (Captain Marvel is also good if 3 player). Good Luck. I have beaten Ultron on Expert with stock Black Widow and Dr Strange on Solo (yes surprised me too) so maybe try them out too.

More than possible to do solo, I’ve done it using She-Hulk aggression (core set default decklist) against expert Ultron paired with each module so far released. Multiplayer should be substantially easier.

On 5/31/2020 at 1:17 PM, Derrault said:

More than possible to do solo, I’ve done it using She-Hulk aggression (core set default decklist) against expert Ultron paired with each module so far released. Multiplayer should be substantially easier.

Ultron Expert is substantially more difficult in multiplayer mode as his deck spins very fast and you always hit nasty stuff much more consistently when drawing twice the number of cards. When I watch the close wins it always relies on the nasty stuff coming up in less troublesome groupings. But it is far easier for Ultron to pair up much more often in multiplayer. Not to mention how quickly he goes through his deck and gets to the acceleration tokens.

feel free to post your own two-handed solo against under attack expert ultron.

And just to be perfectly clear Under Attack is by far the hardest module for Ultron in the game

Thanks those tips worked and we finally beat Ultron Expert Under attack 2-player with an interesting pairing Iron Man Leadership and Spidey-Justice. I mulliganed for the Van but didnt see it until much later (all my vans were drones).

Also we only got one Helicarier on the board to stick and no web shooters till the bottom of the deck.

The key was a rather strange element of luck as it was getting down to the end of the game and we just finished stage II Ultron. Spidey had 3 hit points left and the board was mostly empty except a lot of side schemes and a fully stacked IM. We then flipped one of Iron Mans treachery cards that dealt 3 damage to Spidey taking him out before his 3 encounter cards revealed. This seemed bad but ended up being ok as we avoided most of the extra drone cards as a result for the remainder of the game and we were able to put 2 less thwart on phase 2 (with one less player to trigger a choice) each round.

On 6/3/2020 at 10:55 PM, IceHot42 said:

Ultron Expert is substantially more difficult in multiplayer mode as his deck spins very fast and you always hit nasty stuff much more consistently when drawing twice the number of cards. When I watch the close wins it always relies on the nasty stuff coming up in less troublesome groupings. But it is far easier for Ultron to pair up much more often in multiplayer. Not to mention how quickly he goes through his deck and gets to the acceleration tokens.

feel free to post your own two-handed solo against under attack expert ultron.

And just to be perfectly clear Under Attack is by far the hardest module for Ultron in the game

Under Attack adds nothing noteworthy, and none of the cards force the encounter deck (or your deck) to cycle faster. The worst it has is upgrades that require exhausting to get rid of. It’s easily weaker than most of the alternatives.

Multiple heroes does cycle the encounter deck faster, and result in more combined cards, but it also doubles your resources, ally capacity, and the threat cap, which is the most dangerous part of solo play. Multiplayer is by far easier for every villain except the Wrecking Crew, where the most likely way to lose is from acceleration tokens.

On 6/10/2020 at 4:44 PM, Derrault said:

Under Attack adds nothing noteworthy, and none of the cards force the encounter deck (or your deck) to cycle faster. The worst it has is upgrades that require exhausting to get rid of. It’s easily weaker than most of the alternatives.

Multiple heroes does cycle the encounter deck faster, and result in more combined cards, but it also doubles your resources, ally capacity, and the threat cap, which is the most dangerous part of solo play. Multiplayer is by far easier for every villain except the Wrecking Crew, where the most likely way to lose is from acceleration tokens.

Do you actually play solo or perhaps you are just speculating.

On 6/12/2020 at 4:54 PM, IceHot42 said:

Do you actually play solo or perhaps you are just speculating.

Yes.

On 6/13/2020 at 6:40 PM, Derrault said:

Yes.

do you play solo only or multiplayer?

I've beaten it true solo with my Leadership Iron Man deck and Justice Iron Man. That's all I've attempted against him in Expert. I may do a playthrough on my channel soon.

3 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

do you play solo only or multiplayer?

I only play solo (although I've tested out two-handed); in any case, the real killer in solo is the low threat threshold on some schemes (i.e. it's possible to threat out in a single round on Rhino from 0), and that's almost entirely obviated by having two players.

Numerous legends cycles the experience deck quicker, and bring about progressively joined cards, yet it additionally pairs your assets, partner limit, and the danger top, which is the most perilous piece of solo play. Multiplayer is by a long shot simpler for each miscreant aside from the Wrecking Crew, where the most probable approach to lose is from increasing speed tokens.

12 hours ago, Derrault said:

I only play solo (although I've tested out two-handed); in any case, the real killer in solo is the low threat threshold on some schemes (i.e. it's possible to threat out in a single round on Rhino from 0), and that's almost entirely obviated by having two players.

Rhino places 2 threat on, Schemes twice for 3 each, now at 8. Then he encounters Advance twice and scheme for 3 more each time now 14. Its less likely in multiplayer because your not both likely to be in alter-ego mode and the Rhino deck is weak, there are not many cards that make his deck dangerous.

But that is a poor understanding on the differences between solo and multiplayer as usually it is the reverse. Yes you have twice the resources and twice the threat cushion, but you also have twice as far to go and the villain also has twice the resources. Thus, when its easy and you are likely to win ( Rhino ), then 2-player is four times as easy, but when its hard (Ultron) and the villain is more likely to win, then its 4 times as hard.

Consider a strong card like the Van even against something as trivial as Break-In. The Van adds over 57% to the scheme in solo. But 28.5% in 2-player. The ratio is the same but you now have to play two strong cards to get the same effect.

Even with the Van its highly unlikely to stay in Stage I of Ultron Expert for more than a couple of turns 3-player.

10 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

Rhino places 2 threat on, Schemes twice for 3 each, now at 8. Then he encounters Advance twice and scheme for 3 more each time now 14. Its less likely in multiplayer because your not both likely to be in alter-ego mode and the Rhino deck is weak, there are not many cards that make his deck dangerous.

But that is a poor understanding on the differences between solo and multiplayer as usually it is the reverse. Yes you have twice the resources and twice the threat cushion, but you also have twice as far to go and the villain also has twice the resources. Thus, when its easy and you are likely to win ( Rhino ), then 2-player is four times as easy, but when its hard (Ultron) and the villain is more likely to win, then its 4 times as hard.

Consider a strong card like the Van even against something as trivial as Break-In. The Van adds over 57% to the scheme in solo. But 28.5% in 2-player. The ratio is the same but you now have to play two strong cards to get the same effect.

Even with the Van its highly unlikely to stay in Stage I of Ultron Expert for more than a couple of turns 3-player.

Rhino has a scheme of 1 on all stages.

There are only 2 Advance cards in the deck, which has 33 cards when using Bomb Scare.

The chances of getting an advance card are 1/33, and two would be 1/33 x 1/32 or 1/1056
So, for every 1056 rounds you play, it's probable that you'd get a single double-advance occurance.

Now, double advance does 'not' guarantee a scheme out. For example, even on solo, Rhino would need to have a combined 4 boost icons to actually scheme out from 0.
On two-handed, with a cap of 14 he'd need a combined 8 boost icons (average of 2 for each scheme).

This is even more unlikely because there simply aren't enough 2 or 3 boost icons in the deck.

18/31 (after removing the two advance cards) are 0 or 1 boost. If you get a single boost 0, you won't threat out, because there's only 1 boost 3.
There are 7/31 boost 0 cards, and the probability of getting none over 4 draws is: 24/31 * 23/30 * 22/29 * 21/28, or

.7741935483870968 x .7666667 x .7586206896551724 x .75 = .33 (1/3)
.33 x 1/1056 = .0003125 = 3 in 10,000 draws result in a double advance that leads to a threat out from 0 when using 2 players.

And it's 100% preventable if either player is: Playing protection with Black Widow (ally), playing She-Hulk, using Justice using Surveillance Van, using justice using Spycraft, or has Emergency (Basic card that prevents 1 threat) in hand.

Against Klaw or Ultron the odds are higher because both have lower threat caps on the first scheme, higher numbers of boost icons on cards, and Ultron has Ultron's Rage for more opportunities to get encounter cards that cause an extra advance.

That being said, it's entirely possible for Ultron not to advance his scheme past the first stage, even in solo (She-Hulk can, in theory, hold him indefinitely, thanks to Objection!.

19 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

Rhino places 2 threat on, Schemes twice for 3 each, now at 8. Then he encounters Advance twice and scheme for 3 more each time now 14. Its less likely in multiplayer because your not both likely to be in alter-ego mode and the Rhino deck is weak, there are not many cards that make his deck dangerous.

But that is a poor understanding on the differences between solo and multiplayer as usually it is the reverse. Yes you have twice the resources and twice the threat cushion, but you also have twice as far to go and the villain also has twice the resources. Thus, when its easy and you are likely to win ( Rhino ), then 2-player is four times as easy, but when its hard (Ultron) and the villain is more likely to win, then its 4 times as hard.

Consider a strong card like the Van even against something as trivial as Break-In. The Van adds over 57% to the scheme in solo. But 28.5% in 2-player. The ratio is the same but you now have to play two strong cards to get the same effect.

Even with the Van its highly unlikely to stay in Stage I of Ultron Expert for more than a couple of turns 3-player.

Using Surveillance Van to make your point is a little disingenuous, since it’s easily (by like, a really long way) the card that’s most demonstrably better in solo over multiplayer because of what it’s doing. It doesn’t really take account of the fact that it’s always useful to have, but just represents much more in Solo. The threat cap is exponentially higher in multiplayer games, so the villain requires all heroes to be in an equally bad position to win by threat. Which is something a well put together team can build for to some extent (to avoid both going into alter ego at the same time or to cover each other’s weaknesses, etc as opposed to a solo deck which must cover all situations and sometimes leaves you no option but to flip back at the wrong time to avoid an attack that will kill you).

I'm just going to call out bad stats here.

If there's 2 Advances in 33 cards, the odds of getting 1 on a single draw is 2/33, not 1/33 (assuming no other cards are in play). However, if you're playing expert, Breakin' and Takin' is out, so it's 32 cards. The odds of getting 2 Advances on the first draw are 2/32 x 1/31 = 1/(31*16). Once you start having cards in the discard, it get's progressively more likely, but the branching probabilities get out of manual calculation quite quickly.

23 hours ago, Derrault said:

Rhino has a scheme of 1 on all stages.

There are only 2 Advance cards in the deck, which has 33 cards when using Bomb Scare.

The chances of getting an advance card are 1/33, and two would be 1/33 x 1/32 or 1/1056
So, for every 1056 rounds you play, it's probable that you'd get a single double-advance occurance.

Now, double advance does 'not' guarantee a scheme out. For example, even on solo, Rhino would need to have a combined 4 boost icons to actually scheme out from 0.
On two-handed, with a cap of 14 he'd need a combined 8 boost icons (average of 2 for each scheme).

This is even more unlikely because there simply aren't enough 2 or 3 boost icons in the deck.

18/31 (after removing the two advance cards) are 0 or 1 boost. If you get a single boost 0, you won't threat out, because there's only 1 boost 3.
There are 7/31 boost 0 cards, and the probability of getting none over 4 draws is: 24/31 * 23/30 * 22/29 * 21/28, or

.7741935483870968 x .7666667 x .7586206896551724 x .75 = .33 (1/3)
.33 x 1/1056 = .0003125 = 3 in 10,000 draws result in a double advance that leads to a threat out from 0 when using 2 players.

And it's 100% preventable if either player is: Playing protection with Black Widow (ally), playing She-Hulk, using Justice using Surveillance Van, using justice using Spycraft, or has Emergency (Basic card that prevents 1 threat) in hand.

Against Klaw or Ultron the odds are higher because both have lower threat caps on the first scheme, higher numbers of boost icons on cards, and Ultron has Ultron's Rage for more opportunities to get encounter cards that cause an extra advance.

That being said, it's entirely possible for Ultron not to advance his scheme past the first stage, even in solo (She-Hulk can, in theory, hold him indefinitely, thanks to Objection!.

The math I understand (where you got it right), yet I dont follow much of what your point is. You said it was possible to threat out in one turn from Rhino in solo and I showed the same is true in multi-player even though less likely. Which is the whole point.

I also dont follow your argument On Jenn Walters she cant even keep up with the 2 treat placed on the scheme at the start of the villain phase let alone the threat place by Ultron when he schemes.

14 hours ago, FearLord said:

Using Surveillance Van to make your point is a little disingenuous, since it’s easily (by like, a really long way) the card that’s most demonstrably better in solo over multiplayer because of what it’s doing. It doesn’t really take account of the fact that it’s always useful to have, but just represents much more in Solo. The threat cap is exponentially higher in multiplayer games, so the villain requires all heroes to be in an equally bad position to win by threat. Which is something a well put together team can build for to some extent (to avoid both going into alter ego at the same time or to cover each other’s weaknesses, etc as opposed to a solo deck which must cover all situations and sometimes leaves you no option but to flip back at the wrong time to avoid an attack that will kill you).

The whole point is that a strong solo card is less strong in multiplayer. But more importantly your math is wrong. The threat capped is raised linearly in multi-player not exponentially your chance to win/lose is adjusted exponentially as you add players, thus when the scenario is easy to win, its four times as easy to win with 2-players and when the scenario favors the villain its 4 times as hard.

Which is why playing Rhino multiplayer or doing the math on Rhino is merely confirmation bias.

Try playing something challenging multi-player and get back to me.

I've seen a lot of people do a lot of bad math. I think the whole point is that Rhino winning in one turn, is highly improbable. Ultron over scheming on Crimson Cowl, highly probable.

And I completely agree with you IceHot42, I've never seen a video where someone actually won against Ultron without cheating. And I have beat Ultron with my brother before on expert, with Under Attack, and with accountability.

It's not impossible, and I don't understand why everyone is freaking out and doing all this almost useless math. Just fight, and WIN!!!

6 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

The whole point is that a strong solo card is less strong in multiplayer. But more importantly your math is wrong. The threat capped is raised linearly in multi-player not exponentially your chance to win/lose is adjusted exponentially as you add players, thus when the scenario is easy to win, its four times as easy to win with 2-players and when the scenario favors the villain its 4 times as hard.

Which is why playing Rhino multiplayer or doing the math on Rhino is merely confirmation bias.

Try playing something challenging multi-player and get back to me.

So you picked the only card in the game that is noticeably stronger in solo than multiplayer? Obviously, some effects will be more or less effective at different player counts, but the only 2 cards where that significantly tips the scales in terms of a cards power that I can think of off the top of my head are Van (better solo) and Get over here (better multiplayer). Most other cards scale well in terms of their usefulness.

I don’t think it’s as easy as saying ‘Rhino’s deck is weak, so seeing more of it makes him weaker’ and ‘Ultron’s Deck is hard, so seeing more of it makes him harder’ - In solo mode, you need to be able to deal with multiple sides of a scenario yourself - whether you build to deal with them all slowly, or just ignore aspects of it in favour of winning quickly. This is easy against Rhino, as the scenario is quite linear - there aren’t too many factors to consider and his health is relatively low, so it’s actually possible to attack quickly and heavily and still win without doing too much to mitigate threat.

Ultron is definitely harder - in solo, you need to chew through his health pool, which is quite a bit more than Rhino’s, deal with multiple minions and watch the threat, all of which makes it tougher to deal with. If you’re talking about any 2 random heroes with random aspects, I’d probably accept that adding multiple players might increase the difficulty, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case at all in the reality of a properly picked team of heroes and aspect so that they compliment each other, as the heroes gain significantly from being able to cover each other while they heal, look out for each other in terms of crowd control, etc...

I’ve played Expert Ultron a lot on both true solo and 2-handed solo and while my sample size is smaller for 2 handed, my win rate is significantly higher for 2 handed.

6 hours ago, FearLord said:

I’ve played Expert Ultron a lot on both true solo and 2-handed solo and while my sample size is smaller for 2 handed, my win rate is significantly higher for 2 handed.

I realized last night my math is based on a premise that might not be shared. I played solo to get a different perspective. I am walking through each module with 2 different random heroes (solo) for each villain. So far still on Rhino with a 100% win rate, but nonetheless I still had that aha moment.

With Rhino, I am essentially going to win unless something unlikely happens (getting bagged turn 1). With 2-player that unlikely thing happening is exponentially less likely to occur twice.

However as I progress eventually I will get to a villain where the exact opposite is true...I am going to lose unless somethings go rather well for me. When I play multi-player the odds of something going rather well for us is exponentially less likely.

So it dawned on me that the "Decaders" just arent experiencing that side of the curve. The odds are they are going to win, so the odds are even better multi-player.

However, imagine Galactus where even the Decaders need everything to go perfect to win. Now imagine needing that unlikely situation to occur for both players.

So here is how you step into my moccasins. Find the Expert Villain (V) - Module (M) Heroic (H) that gets your win rate down to 33% and then double dip that multi-player and let me know if it still seems across the board easier to you.

Full Disclosure, I play with my son casually (he is a really good player - doesnt miss villain things), but we for the most part dont min-max our hero/aspect selection for the scenario which is likely shaping my experience. To beat Ultron we had to go Spidey/Justice + Iron-Man/Leadership, several prior plays with She-Hulk/x+Hero2/x, and Panther/x + Hero2/x, and Thor/agro + Hero2/x all failed. My solo victory oddly enough came from Panther/aggro Core Set only (with my son providing suggestions). Everything else we beat in 1 or 2 play sessions . And also my other play group had to walk down Into Ithilien to easy mode after 3 sessions of humilliation.

On 6/17/2020 at 5:07 PM, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'm just going to call out bad stats here.

If there's 2 Advances in 33 cards, the odds of getting 1 on a single draw is 2/33, not 1/33 (assuming no other cards are in play). However, if you're playing expert, Breakin' and Takin' is out, so it's 32 cards. The odds of getting 2 Advances on the first draw are 2/32 x 1/31 = 1/(31*16). Once you start having cards in the discard, it get's progressively more likely, but the branching probabilities get out of manual calculation quite quickly.

Ah, thank you. So, a 1/496 chance instead of a 1/992.

Still, remote.

edit: also, once one of the advances is pulled, if the other isn’t it becomes a 0 probability event until reshuffle.

@IceHot42

” I also d ont follow your argument On Jenn Walters she cant even keep up with the 2 treat placed on the scheme at the start of the villain phase let alone the threat place by Ultron when he sche mes .”

You place 1 threat in solo, and Ultron has a scheme of 2. If he draws a 0 on the boost, use Objection! and there’s only 2 threat on the scheme, which is 1 less than it takes to complete.

If you’re asking how she removes threat in Alter-Ego, it’s from the SHLD and Hellcat.