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Fritzler posted:For Marvel Champions obviously some things haven't come out on time due to COVID. New release schedule with Black Widow, Dr. Strange, Hulk and Red Skull box coming in June, July, August and September. IDK when my store will even be open, so may be longer for me. Are these for re-releases? Because I received my Dr. Strange and Black Widow two weeks ago. I'm in Europe though so that might have something to do with it. Still missing Thor, Hulk, and Ms. Marvel though I pre-ordered them months ago.
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May 20, 2020 14:20
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Drone posted:Are these for re-releases? Because I received my Dr. Strange and Black Widow two weeks ago. In North America FFG shut down their shipping, so Black Widow and Dr.Strange still haven’t come out. Europe never did that and so just kept on trucking with the packs releasing them like normal.
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May 20, 2020 14:24
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There was a brief window in which Americans could get BW through B&N. A friend of mine has her.
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May 20, 2020 14:28
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Has Strange even gone on pre-order on Amazon yet?
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May 20, 2020 14:38
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smug jeebus posted:If you're playing it a lot and you enjoy it, it's probably worth your while to get everything except Wrecking Crew. So is the consensus that Wrecking Crew is a waste of time? (I already bought it, so I care less if it's a waste of money.)
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May 20, 2020 15:10
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It's a little more complicated to run, unchallenging, uncustomizeable, doesn't utilize some of the more interesting mechanics like the nemesis cards, and the pack itself doesn't provide any cards that can mix with other villians. E: as an aside, my galaxy-brain take is that they dredged up the Wrecking Crew for those mechanics because they knew they were weak and wanted to gauge the reaction and adjust before releasing a Sinister Six or Children of Thanos expansion that some people might get genuinely angry about. smug jeebus fucked around with this message at 15:43 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 15:33
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smug jeebus posted:There was a brief window in which Americans could get BW through B&N. A friend of mine has her. I didn’t really count that because it was US only and a “oh you blinked and missed it” scenario and not a full release.
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May 20, 2020 15:58
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Wrecking Crew definitely felt like an experiment. It was much easier than the idea would suggest, fighting 4 villains simultaneously. Each villain had some unique abilities but they simply didn't come up enough thanks to card draw and leading villain mechanic. I'm certain that the idea will be improved upon in some future scenario.
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May 20, 2020 16:01
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I only got a chance to play Wrecking Crew once. When their mechanic of passing active villain works right they can do some devastating rounds, but I felt that it only happened once in the game. Overall I like the concept of the team fight but it feels like they need to flush it out. That being said if you have it not point in not trying it at least once and if you don't it's no major loss.
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May 20, 2020 16:20
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I have it and I played it once (all A side) in a pub-game. I had fun, but I never felt like I was on the ropes. I was wondering if the all B side was harder. Because if the all B side is sufficiently solveable, then yeah, it seems like a bit of a lost opportunity.
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May 20, 2020 17:02
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Thirsty Dog posted:I just have the base set and am going to be playing solo or with my girlfriend for the foreseeable future. What's best to pick up next?
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May 20, 2020 17:38
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Fritzler posted:The nice thing about these LCG's is that you can go any order. Green Goblin adds the most variety to villain decks (between two scenarios and encounters). You can look at heroes you want, but I will say Thor seems less fun in single player. Ms. Marvel plays differerntly than other heroes I've played where you want to be swapping her over and back, and I would definitely recommend her. Captain America seems to be the "best" of the heroes released so far if you care about that. I haven't gotten Black Widow or Strange yet (waiting for my store to open to get from them anyways), but people seem to really like Dr. Strange a lot. I really like what they did with Kamala. Needing to bounce between Hero and Alter-Ego really captures the feel she's a teenager out late with parents who don't want her to be. And she can be surprisingly good at just about... anything really with a good draw.
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May 20, 2020 17:51
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Thanks all.
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May 20, 2020 21:03
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Now that it's been out for a bit and the treadmill of releases has started, is Marvel Champions a better pickup coop game than Arkham Horror? I've read some reviews and watched some and it seems to come down to Champions is more streamlined but doesn't have a legacy aspect yet. Arkham Horror conversely has a legacy mechanic and is much less forgiving.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:37
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I think there won’t be a clear answer until the Red Skull expansion to say for sure. I never got into Arkham as I found it a bit more complex, but the story element was really great. Champions is good for a pick up and play experience but there’s no story aspects and I think it’s definitely hurting right now from a lack of villains to play against. Both of those problems might be solved with the Red Skull big box expansion which will add a lot more villains and there’s a story element between them.
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Jun 10, 2020 00:08
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The biggest thing Marvel Champions has done is that I can actually get people to play it. I haven't gotten anyone to try Arkham Horror more than once or twice; it's too punishing. And most of my group won't even touch Arkham as they don't care for the theme. Telling people "hey, here's a coop superhero card game with a premade deck!" has done wonders. I've noticed that the raw cardplay aspect also keeps people engaged, because you're always drawing up to hand size- there's no absolutely, 100% dead turns for a player. I've had people soured on games like Netrunner cause they run out of money and can't play all the fun cards in their hand, and Marvel Champions ensures you're always gonna get to play cards rather than take abstract basic actions.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:05
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I also found it pretty easy to be the local Marvel Champions booster. With Arkham it feels like too much of a commitment for lack of a better term.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:10
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Dawgstar posted:I also found it pretty easy to be the local Marvel Champions booster. With Arkham it feels like too much of a commitment for lack of a better term. This was my problem with Lord of the Rings LCG as well. You need to commit to learn how decks work and what all the cards do. Marvel Heroes is much more about using your hand to get stuff done on the current board state than it is about building the future and working towards combos.
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Jun 10, 2020 06:44
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I tried introducing some friends of mine (who are super into high fantasy and Tolkien in general) to LotR LCG and they bounced off it after a single session due to the perceived complexity and the need to do deckbuilding. Introduced the same friends to Marvel Champions and so far we've had several games with them and they love it. M:C's deckbuilding requirement isn't nearly as strict, and it's also slightly easier for someone who doesn't want to invest time and effort into theorycrafting a deck. So far at least (since M.C.'s pool of existing cards is still quite small, especially compared to LotR) it's been easier to get people to play because you can sell the deckbuilding as simple plug-and-play.
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Jun 10, 2020 10:07
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Arkham's deck building is far simpler than LOTR and you can only tweak the decks as you go through the campaign.
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Jun 10, 2020 10:40
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Is there actually deckbuilding in champions yet?
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Jun 10, 2020 10:55
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There has always been deck building, but the cardpool is still small so it is limited. By the end of the year, we will have a big box and at least 3 more heroes (my LGS hasn't gotten Black Widow yet), so the cardpool will be approximately double the size before quarantine shut everything down. I've said this before and I'll say it again, the biggest advantage Marvel has over the other co-op LCGs is that every hero can be built at once pretty easily. The core set has five heroes but only enough cards for four, but buying one redundant hero pack fixes that problem. At that point, deckbuilding becomes swapping cards between already built decks, and the relatively small pool of unused cards. This is amazing, in my opinion. In all other LCGs, you'll have a few built decks and a majority of cards will be in storage. If you want to try a new investigator in Arkham, you'll need to start from scratch and most likely disassemble other decks to make what you want. In Marvel, you still need make some hard decisions about who gets what cards, but the hero packs have a fair number of cards that were introduced in previous products. So it isn't as bad. You can sit down with your friends, ask them who they would like to play of the current eight available heroes, and pull the deck out. In that way, even with a limited cardpool, Marvel has more variety than Arkham. There is no way I'll have eight investigators built at once. In a few years, when Marvel has as many products as Arkham, it will be very cool to ask people who their favorite marvel character is, and most likely it will be available among the dozens of hero decks you have been maintaining and refining over the years. The villain scenarios have the same advantage. There is no way you can have more than a handful of Arkham scenarios built at once because the overlap in little encounter packets is significant. So you need to do a lot of setup and teardown every game. In Marvel, there are max three packets per scenario, and you can leave two of the three prebuilt. So setup becomes mixing in one packet of 'standard' cards and teardown becomes fishing these cards out. It isn't that bad. And if the scenarios become too repetitive, you can swap the modular packets between them. So in a similar manner, in a few years you'll have a pool of prebuilt scenarios that might need one packet mixed in at worst. You can ask your friends who their favorite villain is and most likely there will be at least one scenario featuring them. The end result is that you have a game where there are fewer 'extra' cards that live out their days in binders. A majority of cards, scenario and player, will always be stored in a playable deck that can be played at anytime. But you can still build decks however you want by swapping cards around. This is a huge deal, in my opinion. It makes the game hit the table more often, and makes each purchase feel like a better value.
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Jun 10, 2020 12:03
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That's all true, but you're also comparing a campaign game with what is basically a one-and-done game. You might not have eight different investigators built but what are the chances you'd actually need to?
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Jun 10, 2020 19:12
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I really bounced off Marvel. I'm not sure if it's the gameplay or just that I'm sick of Marvel stuff, but I really couldn't get into it. Regarding ease of deckbuilding, I really wish they'd bring back the system they used for Star Wars LCG. The "Just pick ten sets of 5 cards each" was a really cool system, and I'd love to see it appear somewhere else.
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Jun 10, 2020 20:27
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Yeah the Marvel theme doesn’t interest me much but at least it’s familiar. The alter-ego mechanics are a good fit and so far I have enjoyed the deck building options available. Not having to buy duplicates of sets is really nice. Looking forward to more content because that’s what’s missing at the moment.
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Jun 10, 2020 20:32
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Gloomy Rube posted:Regarding ease of deckbuilding, I really wish they'd bring back the system they used for Star Wars LCG. The "Just pick ten sets of 5 cards each" was a really cool system, and I'd love to see it appear somewhere else. I think one of the flaws in the Star Wars LCG was that they didn't totally commit to the highlander model. FFG loves it's swing-y 1-off cards but I think we can see from EDH/Commander that those are kind of ok if the whole format is fairly inconsistent at a core level, but they're really poo poo when the game is extremely consistent. Doing a mashup of Star Wars + Conquest + Game of Thrones would be great. Choose 1 faction that contains a faction card + a "plot" card + a pod of 10 cards of that faction and augment it with 5 other pods of 1 plot cards + 10 cards.
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Jun 10, 2020 21:01
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Yeah, my favorite mechanics that FFG comes up with (plot cards, pods, asymmetric play) never seem to get any love. But Gandalf keeps coming back.
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Jun 10, 2020 21:05
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Arkham Horror is also hurt by (imo) one of its strengths, in that it is extremely punishing if you aren't really versed on card game fundamentals. Playing to your outs, maximizing resources, pushing towards a win state rather than playing to not lose. Playing it without at least a rough understanding of those mechanics is grueling and feels unfair.
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Jun 10, 2020 21:34
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My play group thas fun with Marvel for a few weeks, then we all just kind of had enough, for a variety of reasons. To be fair, we are probably not the exact target demographic, since we have played a lot of Arkham and Netrunner. Marvel is clearly intended to hit a slightly more casual audience, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's probably a very good design decision. I think one of my bigger issues is that it felt like they didn't really make most of the cards interact in interesting ways, aside from the hero specific stuff. The design space means that the non-hero specific cards pretty much need to be designed to only interact with villain cards, because the hero cards are going to have a lot of specifics attached to them. Same issue with scheme cards, they just all feel very generic and samey. It doesn't feel the narrative of the schemes matches what you are doing in any way. Some of this will probably change as time passes and they get a chance to play around with the game space.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:03
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Lemony posted:My play group thas fun with Marvel for a few weeks, then we all just kind of had enough, for a variety of reasons. To be fair, we are probably not the exact target demographic, since we have played a lot of Arkham and Netrunner. Marvel is clearly intended to hit a slightly more casual audience, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's probably a very good design decision. I see this. They aimed for a much different demographic than Arkham or Netrunner, and it shows in the ways you mentioned. The Hulk's pack spoiled a while ago, and I was disappointed because of how simple and straightforward it is. Of course, he will be a very popular pack to buy, so aiming for simplicity makes sense. However, the introduction of a campaign and Spider woman's interesting deckbuilding options pushes the game in the right direction for me in the red skull box. I have hope that by the time they have a few cycles out, there will be something for everyone.
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Jun 14, 2020 14:58
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So I’ve played Black Widow a couple times now, and I really love the preparation mechanic because now you know you have a buffer for when bad things happen. Had a treachery pop up where the villain would attack me, but had a grappling hook out so that doesn’t happen! She’s also the first deck where I’m experimenting with going to the 50 card limit instead of the 40 card minimum because preparations are so low cost, especially once you have both cost reducers our that you can easily empty your hand each round. I decked myself about 5 times playing against Ultron. I’ve heard really good things about Doctor Strange so I’m excited for that pack in a couple weeks. My only complaint right now would be a lack of villains, as wrecking crew was a wet fart of a release. I haven’t gone back since the first time me and my friend played against them because the hassle involved with them never feels worth it enough to setup.
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Jun 20, 2020 14:32
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Which aspect do you like to run with Widow?
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Jun 20, 2020 14:34
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I’m running her with the Justice aspect she comes with (but heavily modified) because i feel it definitely suits how she plays. There’s a Justice preparation card that you can fire off even in alter ego mode that stops 3 threat from being placed, and she has a card that removes 4 threat and stuns the villain that can be used in alter ego as well (it’s not a hero action, it’s just an action). With all the scheme prevention it means you can stay in alter ego a lot more to build yourself up to flip to hero and then unload preparation cards. With her safe house you can keep getting that prevent 3 threat card as well which pretty much saved our rear end in our fight against Ultron. I can’t see the other aspects working as good for her right now until they get more preparation cards.
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Jun 20, 2020 18:11
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Marvel champions Kang pack looks very very cool. If you're playing multiplayer - first phase everyone is all together. Then Kang splits you up into different time periods and you fight different versions of him until you beat him and all come back to fight Kang again at the end. If you're just playing solo, decent replay-ability because Stage 3 has 4 different Kangs you can play.
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Jul 9, 2020 22:56
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Wrecking Crew promised "new" mechanics and failed to deliver, but this is pretty fantastic. Kang not getting a boxed set is maybe surprising. Can't wait to have more villains.
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Jul 9, 2020 23:12
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My local store got Dr.Strange a week late so I finally got him to the table today and holy moley is he good. I’ve never liked the defence aspect but it really works with him, especially since his stats for thwarting and defence are decent (I thought Miss Marvel sucked on defence and was way more suited to aggression). His invocation deck is a blast to manipulate and make huge key moves. I would say his overall weak point is that he really doesn’t have a wide variety of damage with the defence aspect but can put it out on blast when need be. I want to play him a couple more times but between Black Widow and now Strange they’ve done some good work. I’ve seen what Hulk brings to the table next though and while I still have to play with him to see how it goes I’m way less excited. The Red Skull expansion cant come soon enough because I’m getting sick of facing the same villains over and over.
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Jul 11, 2020 04:58
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New expansion information released for Marvel Champions. Ant-Man, Wasp, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch now all officially confirmed and have new synergy mechanics that mean when you play with Ant-Man and Wasp together they have cards that work with each other. That carries over to new big box expansion Galaxy’s Most Wanted which will have Groot and Rocket as the two heroes which means rest of Guardians will more than likely follow.
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Jul 30, 2020 13:09
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Man it's weird that they announce the second big box expansion before shipping the first big box expansion.
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Jul 30, 2020 13:39
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So they had a Marvel Champions specific stream. Hall of Heroes already has the cards up grabbed from the stream. https://hallofheroeslcg.com/browse/ New things: Ant-Man and Wasp have “fold out” cards (apparently a thing in a Transformers ccg?) so they have 3 forms each. Event cards that require 2 people to use, Ant Man and Wasp have one event that lets you ready yourself for only 1 cost but both have to be out on field. They did say was possible to do solo because of allies, so all decks probably have an ally version of their partner hero. Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon all shown off, check the link for card info. New campaign for big expansion shows they have different loss conditions for scenarios. Looking really good.
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Jul 30, 2020 16:10
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Drone posted:Man it's weird that they announce the second big box expansion before shipping the first big box expansion. Very surprised that Warlock is an ally for Quicksilver but love it. Guess he fits Guardians as well as X-men, but glad to see. Fritzler fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Jul 30, 2020 16:35
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