I have heard a lot of people say that the game is too easy and needed “Heroic” mode to be challenging. I would agree that sometimes it is too easy, but having played the game primarily as 2-player I didn’t feel there was a need for a Heroic mode. Ultron Expert was a particular bane for us and it felt we had 30 or 40 fails before we actually beat him. I watched videos of folks claiming it was an easy game only to find critical play mistakes in nearly every video I watched.
There are a lot of strong players are the forum here so I hypothesized that the disconnect had to do with multi-player vs solo play. Mathing it out in my head it seemed that when the game is easy (Rhino/Risky Business), the game will be four-times as easy in multi-player. However, when the game is hard (Ultron expert) it will be four-times as hard in multi-player.
Is my gut perception correct? Am I just a bad player? They say, “the proof is in the pudding”. So I decided to create a challenge to see if my gut could be backed up by observable data (at least from my own perspective). So here is the challenge I created…
First to keep things streamlined between games I decided to build a deck for each hero and test it a little in solo to make sure it played decently. I decided I would have no more than 4 decks with a single aspect, and no less than 2 decks with each aspect (once we got Dr. Strange). Black Widow, Dr. Strange, and Hulk would be added to the random rotation on arrival provided I could win at least once each against Rhino and Klaw expert. The following are the aspect pairings I went with…
- Ms. Marvel/Justice
- Spider-Man/Justice
- Black Panther/Justice
- Black Widow/Justice
- Capt. America/Leadership
- Iron Man/Leadership
- Capt. Marvel/Protection
- Dr. Strange/Protection
- Thor/Aggression
- She-Hulk/Aggression
- Hulk/Aggression
Once the decks were decided, my son and I would progress through each Villain (except Wrecking Crew) for each module with a random multi-player pairing (9 matches for each villain). If the game was misplayed, we would toss it out and play again.
In Corollary, for the Solo side I would play each Villain-Module twice so that my solo inexperience could catch up (ie. 18 matches per villain). The way this would work is that I would chose a random hero and play Bomb Scare. Then win or lose I would choose a new random hero and play Bomb Scare again. I would then play MoE with the same hero. Then I would get a new random hero and play MoE again, followed by Under Attack with the same hero. Repeating the process through Power Drain.
I have now completed all the solo plays, plus all the multiplayer plays through Ultron Expert and a few Risky Business plays. We will continue to collect data through the end of Mutagen Formula (which wil probably be delayed once we get Red Skull). Here are the results (all expert plays)…
- Rhino Solo (15 Wins – 3 Losses) vs Rhino Multi-player (8 Wins – 1 Losses)
- Klaw Solo (13 Wins – 5 Losses) vs Klaw Multi-Player (5 Wins – 4 Losses)
- Ultron Solo (12 Wins – 6 Losses) vs Ultron Multi-Player (0 Wins – 9 Losses)
- Risky Business Solo (15 Wins – 3 Losses) vs Risky Business Multi-Player (3 Wins so far no losses yet)
- Mutagen Formula Solo (2 Wins – 16 Losses)
So to some degree it seems to have confirmed my hypothesis. However, Mutagen definitely Feels like it is going to be easier Multi-Player. If you have a hero that doesn’t flip in solo, you can just lose on turn one. The pairing of heroes makes that much less likely in multi-player.
Here were the module records…
- Bomb Scare Solo (6-4) vs Multi-Player (3-1)
- Masters of Evil Solo (7-3) vs Multi-Player (2-2)
- Under Attack Solo (6-4) vs Multi-Player (2-2)
- Legion of Hydra Solo (5-5) vs Multi-Player (2-1)
- M.O.D.O.K. Solo (4-6) vs Multi-Player (2-1)
- Goblin Gimmicks Solo (8-2) vs Multi-Player (1-2)
- A Mess of Things Solo (9-1) vs Multi-Player (1-2)
- Running Interference Solo (6-4) vs Multi-Player (2-1)
- Power Drain Solo (6-4) vs Multi-Player (1-2)
So before claiming the game is too easy, I recommend giving Ultron Multi-Player Expert a try or better yet run the whole challenge for yourself and report back with your results.
Edited by IceHot42formatting