On 10/10/2020 at 4:30 AM, FearLord said:

Yeah I found Iron Man was particularly slow in this game (due to losing 8 cards to the obligation), but he breezed through the second stage as Iron Lad’s retaliate was just a liability vs all my Energy Barriers...

Kang I is always where the trouble starts. Having played it a dozen times or so, we spend the most amount of time on Kang I and if we beat him then we win the game.

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2020 at 5:13 AM, Daft Blazer said:

Help me out here folks!

playing solo, single hero:

main scheme 3b says;

“After this stage is completed, place 1 set aside kings dominion face down under stage 4A, at the end of the phase remove kang (II) and this stage from the game and combine your game area with another game area” - which is stage 2B, which tells you to advance to 4A, this tells you to reveal kang III.

So, you can advance from kang I to kang III, without defeating kang II, by letting stage 3 complete?? What am I doing wrong?

you can "game" the game a lot. Stage one is pretty soft, so you can easily just keep Kang at a couple hit points and just keep eliminating the threat while you get your board set up if you so choose, same for a couple of the stage 3 versions of Kang.

And this is true of a lot of the scenarios. One reason Green Goblin Risky Business is considered so easy is you can easily just sit in Hero Mode building an unbeatable board and can attack as needed just keeping it to 1 or two tokens....it is no big deal if it gets to a large number because you should be well set to keep threat at zero and flip him when you are ready to one-shot him. We often deliberately DON'T do it just to make that scenario harder. Just depends on what we want from the game that particular day.

So it completely depends on what you are looking for in the game. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the scenario, determining its weakness and attacking that. Some scenarios, in fact, if you don't do that you will struggle with.

If you are good at removing threat, letting him have one Kangs Dominion is almost irrelevant, 3 threat is no issue. I have run through it I think 7 times so far and only once have I had a Kangs Dominion hit the table and it was a minor speed bump that had essentially no impact on the game, but I also tend to have a dedicated thwart machine so your mileage may vary

3 hours ago, darthweasel2 said:

you can "game" the game a lot. Stage one is pretty soft, so you can easily just keep Kang at a couple hit points and just keep eliminating the threat while you get your board set up if you so choose, same for a couple of the stage 3 versions of Kang.

And this is true of a lot of the scenarios. One reason Green Goblin Risky Business is considered so easy is you can easily just sit in Hero Mode building an unbeatable board and can attack as needed just keeping it to 1 or two tokens....it is no big deal if it gets to a large number because you should be well set to keep threat at zero and flip him when you are ready to one-shot him. We often deliberately DON'T do it just to make that scenario harder. Just depends on what we want from the game that particular day.

So it completely depends on what you are looking for in the game. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the scenario, determining its weakness and attacking that. Some scenarios, in fact, if you don't do that you will struggle with.

If you are good at removing threat, letting him have one Kangs Dominion is almost irrelevant, 3 threat is no issue. I have run through it I think 7 times so far and only once have I had a Kangs Dominion hit the table and it was a minor speed bump that had essentially no impact on the game, but I also tend to have a dedicated thwart machine so your mileage may vary

Kang I soft? On Expert at least I don’t think that’s true - his threat is the same as a Rhino, but his attacks are either accelerating the threat or hitting harder than Rhino 3...

15 minutes ago, FearLord said:

Kang I soft? On Expert at least I don’t think that’s true - his threat is the same as a Rhino, but his attacks are either accelerating the threat or hitting harder than Rhino 3...

And then there's the fact that some of his obligations can nerf your deck hardcore (looking at you, Stolen Memories and Depowered).

1 hour ago, maniakmedic said:

And then there's the fact that some of his obligations can nerf your deck hardcore (looking at you, Stolen Memories and Depowered).

And a fair few of the cards have 2 or 3 boost icons or special boost actions.

I feel like this is the second longest scenario (timewise) next to the Wrecking Crew.

Kang is tougher for some heroes than others. As has been pointed out Obligations and the greater number than normal 3 point boost cards can really hurt you. Kang 1 will either hit you for =2 or increase threat each attack which can put pressure on those heroes that don't manage threat well and can be put on the defensive stalling their own attacks. This snow balls through the Kang 2s and then you get cleaned up by Kang 3 who has the same bonus to hit/threat as Kang 1. I found that those that can handle threat - Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Spider Woman and Dr Strange have an easier time than the other heroes. Black Widow I found had to work due to her lower health (especially if she doesn't get her suit) but if she does then she too can win well. The obligations can disrupt you though and should never be left unmanaged.

But the good thing is that it is a really fun scenario that has a lot of replayability because each game can be different given which Kang 2 and which mod you take.

I have had good luck with Black Widow - I've really found her 15 cards make her into a swiss army knife of sorts. Usually some of her cards like Dance of Death and Covert Ops I use as resources because I want more prep cards out - Rapid Response in a leadership ally deck is just too good and I want those out as often as possible!

Against Kang I have found situations where I used Dance of Death to get rid of tough status cards and deal damage, or used Covert Ops to remove threat and confuse Kang so I could flip and recover for a turn. In short I have found her cards to be very versatile against Kang.

All that being said, the deck I built can't come out of the gate running and takes a minor bit of work to setup. If the right Kang cards come out early I do get in trouble pretty quick!

20 hours ago, FearLord said:

Kang I soft? On Expert at least I don’t think that’s true - his threat is the same as a Rhino, but his attacks are either accelerating the threat or hitting harder than Rhino 3...

I find him pretty easy. Of course, a large part of my philosophy is threat mitigation. I lost one game early to threat on a very unlikely back to back unexpected scheme but other than that it has never really been a problem. And if one can keep threat under control, it is no issue dealing with his attacks, the only time it is an issue is when he gets the overkill +2 card, cannot think of the name off hand, but even there I often have ways to minimize the effect.

One of my favorite games, I did not attack even once, I just kept using stuff like Counterintelligence, Attacrobatics, Covert Ops...Black Widow, with Synth Suit and a suite of Justice cards was often doing 1-6 points of damage almost every turn...not when she flipped down of course, but seldom needed to.

But it does point to something someone mentions further down the thread, I note I have tended to have either Black Widow or someone like Spiderman, Hawkeye or Captain America who has a card that invalidates the big attacks. Since other than stage 4 he doesn't really flood you with minions, it has never been an issue to deal with the obligations, although some of them I kind of like when they hit...thin my deck 8 cards? Yes please! Unless it hits a key, unreplaceable card, that is doing me a favor. Depowered does require an instant flipdown but since I always have threat well under control, that is sometimes a good thing.

I suspect a lot of it could be playstyle (which I include deckbuilding as part of) because I actually rank Wrecking Clue more difficult than most people. And that likely has to do with I am so well equipped for threat that sometimes my damage dealing suffers a little bit. I have a pretty strong suspicion that if you and I were to rank the scenarios by difficulty there would be some pretty huge differences...I think most people find Zola tough and I think he is the easiest of those scenarios in Red Skull for example. That certainly is not the wider consensus as far as I have seen.

As an aside, and specifically in regard to deck builds...I had a Hulk build I really liked, it was Leadership which allowed him to thwart at will. But the group I build the decks for, the guy playing Hulk likes the "I am just picking which way to do damage" aggression build and since he plays Hulk in our group sessions, I built it that way for him. I believe Sub-Optimal Orbital Leap and Chase Them Down are the only two thwarting cards in the deck. When I play as Hulk, which is rare, I will be the first to admit I play him poorly. The guy I built him for, by contrast, is magnificent with him. He found combinations I did not even realize were in the deck and Hulk is a deadly force to be reckoned with. Time and I again I have seen him make plays that I was like, "that is awful....oh wait, that was brilliant" and a lot of it has to do with playstyle. When it was Leadership he was a drag on the group but I was very effective.

I bring that up because it bears on which scenarios I think are easy and which are tough. The ones that tend to require a lot of threat quickly (Absorbing Man, Crossfire, Ultron, the last stage of Kang) are far more likely to cause issues for me than scenarios that build up threat quickly. When 4,5,6 side schemes come in on one villain turn, I never stress because I will generally clear them up that turn or maybe one more. Pop in 6 or 8 strong minions? I may give a different answer....I suspect you are a much stronger attacking player than I am just based on what you mentioned above.

I find it depends on the hero how easy it is to win. Play a themed Hulk, She-Hulk or Thor (ie all with Aggression) and you are going to find Kang Expert really tough to beat because you just don't have the thwart ability. Play them with Justice and the paradigm changes. While I won't say you can only play solo with Justice (which isn't true as both Captains can pretty much win with any aspect) or Leadership these two aspects do make it more likely you will triumph.

Heroic is the answer to upping the challenge or if that's too hard include Ronan rather than Kang's set. Having Ronan hunting Captain Marvel through time and space was both tense and and bloody challenging.

after Friday have some additional thoughts. I have typically played it between 1 and 3 decks. Friday we played with 4 people and the scaling definitely increased the difficulty. At one point we were 1 threat from losing and had I think 12 threat on a crisis sided scheme. It probably did not help that on the first turn we had incredibly bad hazard cards that left each of us with minimum of 2 obligations that put us behind. With literally any other hazard card...we would have taken Shadows of the Past over the "everyone have an obligation" thing. Sadly, our Thor player got slapped with 3 obligations turn one...16 of his key cards and the Helmet he had already played gone and he did not bother removing any of those obligations until the next to last turn of the game. Not the way I would play it, but it worked for him.

When you have 1 or 2 obligations...they are a minor inconvenience at worst (unless you have...say..Shield Block in hand, get Depowered and then the villain gets a bonus attack. Percentage chance low, but can still wreck your round). They can be dusted quickly with minor headache. But when you have that many, meaning at least 2 people cannot play hero cards, you are going to struggle with threat. Fortunately, we were able to clear the crisis and 15 threat off the main scheme letting us buy a turn to get back in control...but that was close. Had the last hazard card been an advance I would have lost to threat for the second time ever.

Once we got it under control, we then were able to take the time to set up for level two. Thor had Hall of Heroes, both God of Lightnings, Jjarnborn, Martial Prowess, can't remember the other, and Lightning Reflexes...and a couple allies...Captain America had 3 allies, team training, Hawkeye had double Expert Marksmen, quiver, Quincarrier, Mockingbird, Quake, Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, Dr Strange had Helicarrier, Wong, Brother Voodoo, Clea, Med Team, Avengers Mansion, Indomitable....we were untouchable...

...and then our Dr Strange player walked straight into a double depowered, when he flipped down, an advance and threated out in one turn. It was hilarious. We came out of stage two with just the one side scheme and the 4th stage was pretty easy. We were easily able to keep threat at zero and on the final turn, at least three of us could have done 20-33 hp of damage and the weakest attacker (me) had double arrows, 2 allies and would have done I think is was 16.

The overall point is I can see where with more players and bad draws the first phase could be problematic. With unlucky obligation draws, I can see where a group that scuffles with the threat could have issues with using it as a setup time. Was different perspective to anything I had encountered in this particular matchup.

I may post some thoughts on Team Covenants approach at some point, I think they illustrate it pretty well. They have a pretty aggressive playstyle, and some of the times when watching them they make moves that drive me nuts...that sometimes pay off and other times that one ill timed card flip that they could have made no issue wrecks them.

I think it has a lot of value in studying different playstyles as, like most games I have played, the more playstyles you CAN play, the better off you are. It opens eyes to possibilities you might have missed otherwise. I plan to run a few Aggression characters for a while as that is far and away my weak spot. I have run characters that defend for 3-9 hp (or no damage at all) 2-3 times a turn, I love having 4 allies out in Leadership w/Avengers, Justice is probably my favorite...but when it is time to wipe out a villain with a lot of damage, not my strong suit.

Can you discard wildcard energy to get rid of the Obligations that require the specific energy types?

21 minutes ago, IceHot42 said:

Can you discard wildcard energy to get rid of the Obligations that require the specific energy types?

You had to go and ask, didn't you?

Rules Resource pg. 14:

Quote

RESOURCE

Resources are used to pay the cost to play cards and to pay certain ability costs.

• A player can generate resources to pay a cost by discarding cards from their hand to generate the resource or resources indicated at the bottom-left corner of the card, or by using card abilities that generate resources.
• There are three types of resources in the game: energy, mental, and physical. Wild resources can be used as any of these types.
• To pay the cost of playing a card, a number of resources equal to (or greater than) the card’s cost must be generated. For most cards, any type (or mix of types) of resources can be used to pay this cost.
• …
• …

See also: Cost, Wild Resource

Everything seems great so far. Pg. 19:

Quote

WILD RESOURCE

When a player generates a wild resource, they must specify which resource type (energy, mental, or physical) it is being used as.

• When resources are not being generated for a cost, a wild resource does not have any characteristic other than “wild resource.” In such contexts, wild resources cannot be interpreted as any of the other resource types.

So, the obligation card Weakened has the text:

Quote

Forced Response: After you use a basic hero power, take 1 damage.

Alter-Ego Action: Discard a [STRENGTH] resource from your hand -> discard this obligation.

If we go to pg. 5:

Quote

COST

A card’s resource cost is the numerical value that must be paid to play the card. Some abilities have a cost described in the ability text that must be paid to use the ability.

• An arrow icon (→) in ability text distinguishes a cost from an effect, in a “pay cost → resolve effect” format.
• While paying a cost, a player is permitted to generate resources beyond the specified cost.
• …
• …
• …
• While a player is paying a cost, that player must pay costs with cards and/or game elements they control.
• If a cost requires a game element that is not in play, the player paying the cost may only use game elements that are in their own out-of-play areas.

Let's look at Concussive Blasts attachment:

Quote

Attach to the Villain.

The villain gains retaliate 1.

Hero Action: Exhaust your hero and spend [ENERGY] [ENERGY] resources -> discard this card.

TLDR: I believe, that because the obligations' costs are, "discard a [given] resource from your hand," and not ,"spend a [given] resource," that you cannot discard a wild resource in place of a strength or energy or mental resource for these cards. Thanks for that, now I can't do it anymore either. 😝

IceHot42: Contrary to Ducris I'd say yes. If the Obligation said - Discard a printed resource (ala Iron Man's Repulsors) then no you can't use a wild. But as it doesn't I read the exact same rules Ducris is quoting and say that the wild resource is declared as a for example Physical resource and therefore can be discarded as such to remove the Obligation. That's how I have been playing it any way. Its not that being a deal as few decks have more than 3 wild cards anyway.

14 hours ago, James Ravenwood said:

IceHot42: Contrary to Ducris I'd say yes. If the Obligation said - Discard a printed resource (ala Iron Man's Repulsors) then no you can't use a wild. But as it doesn't I read the exact same rules Ducris is quoting and say that the wild resource is declared as a for example Physical resource and therefore can be discarded as such to remove the Obligation. That's how I have been playing it any way. Its not that being a deal as few decks have more than 3 wild cards anyway.

You could be right.

There are edge cases where it's massive. I forget who I was playing as, but I only had 2 mental resources remaining in my deck (the rest were in play) and Kang had locked 1 of them under Stolen Memories (which needs a mental resource to remove). Ultimately, my teammate had to rescue my memories, after we were joined back up from our time apart.

I like the idea that wilds don't count because it makes this tougher to overcome.

At the end of the day its what you personally enjoy. Some of my team for example wonder why they have to give up their upgrades from one scenario to another ie RotRS when Kang you don't. Given that all the scenarios in RotRS happen within minutes or an hour of each other it does make little sense other than its what the game dictates but I'm happy, for the team enjoyment, to tweak the rules. So if you want to make the game a little harder its fine to assume the wild cards cannot be exchanged for a stated resource. It is a little grey.

If a wild resource isn’t wild, then what’s the point of it? Really.

Oh, hey, what's your take on Iron Man's Repulsor Blast & flipping wilds?

3 hours ago, Duciris said:

Oh, hey, what's your take on Iron Man's Repulsor Blast & flipping wilds?

Hi Ducris, as it states on the card Iron Man's Repulsor's can only use "printed" energy so wilds do not work. Its actually the reason why I feel wilds do work versus Obligation as otherwise it would state on their cards that only printed resource types must be discarded to end the obligation.

On 10/14/2020 at 11:49 PM, James Ravenwood said:

I find it depends on the hero how easy it is to win. Play a themed Hulk, She-Hulk or Thor (ie all with Aggression) and you are going to find Kang Expert really tough to beat because you just don't have the thwart ability. Play them with Justice and the paradigm changes. While I won't say you can only play solo with Justice (which isn't true as both Captains can pretty much win with any aspect) or Leadership these two aspects do make it more likely you will triumph.

Heroic is the answer to upping the challenge or if that's too hard include Ronan rather than Kang's set. Having Ronan hunting Captain Marvel through time and space was both tense and and bloody challenging.

I haven’t tried Hulk or Thor yet, but She-Hulk has zero difficulty with Kang.

On 10/10/2020 at 8:51 AM, FearLord said:

Yes - if Kang 2 defeats you with damage, you lose. If he completes his scheme, then you get a Kang’s Dominion Side Scheme and advance to the final stage. So if you hit the time split bit you can advance by hiding in Alter ego, but it hurts you a little in the final stage.

I know I had to come here and see what I did read wrong. I played my first game against Kang yesterday and I thought that Kang III was a real, real bad meanie. I was unable to beat him, although I sort of breezed through the previous stages. I kept drawing Time Portals and badly timed Rampage side schemes that buried me with obligations. I had to divide my best effort between them and the main scheme, until I lost in the truest Marvel Champions way ever: drew an Advance at the worst time possible. 😂

Anyway what I haven't told yet is that I also had 2 Kang's Dominion on the table. I had no time nor resource for them, which means that I never even managed a single damage on Kang III.

My mistake was that for each Kang II that I actually beat (I played two-handed), I also added the Kang's Dominion side scheme as instructed... when the stage would have been completed. But they weren't. That's when Kang II wins. 🤦‍♂️