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X-23 spoils on the Facebook group. Some interesting aggression stuff but nothing too outstanding in that aspect. As usual the cost / effect on the aggression cards is bad. Justice however is getting a 2 cost event that cancels treacheries if you have a side scheme in the victory display. Straight up cancel, not just a discard and draw a new one like the spy upgrade.
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Sep 11, 2023 12:21
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The Black Stones posted:Critical hit is pretty good to be able to bust out a stun on command, but the other cards are ones that have been around (triumph) or modifier stuff which isn’t super great. The specializations are definitely going to be a staple. X-23 looks like the weakest of the X-Force group so far. Not bad like Colossus but I''m going to thumbs down any hero that doesn't get their own thwart action card and instead gets a "basic thwart modifier" card. Granted her hero power means she'll probably be able to get a ready off on her turn. The Honey Badger gimmick is alright, but recurring her with Sisterhood seems less good than just running Leadership and boosting her HP and then keeping her alive with First Aids, or going Protection and giving her the training upgrade and keeping her alive with Med Teams.
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Sep 11, 2023 18:29
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Moderately. Some heroes are better than others and some preconstructed decks are better than others. Overall the precons are generally used to show off the new cards in that aspect and not be a viable deck that can carry you through a campaign. They're playable for sure as long as you aren't taking on Expert+ or some of the harder villains.
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Sep 12, 2023 08:21
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The Black Stones posted:A fair warning that some heroes were pretty turd when they came out (Thor) and really started to shine after they got a lot more support later on. So if you go in release order and play Thor you might have a bad time but if you grab the packs that compliment his deck he’ll be incredibly good. I'll add to this by saying not necessarily just the hero packs, but also modulars. Toss in a modular with a high density of minions and Thor feels much more fun to play because there's stuff for him to stomp on. Inheiritors, Iron Spider's Sinister Six; new box has Nasty Boys and Marauders; there's quite a few options out there. Finally got around to playing Strife and he's quite interesting. He's definitely one that I'll probably have to actually build around. It's interesting that because you can't really avoid going to 2B you have to build your deck with the idea that your cards are going to all cost 1 more which makes 0 cost stuff that you'd normally want to use a lot weaker than the high cost stuff you might normally avoid. It's a very smart design and is going to make a campaign where you can't change anything from start to finish quite different than what we've seen before. My initial thought was that he's going to be weak to burst damage, but he can hit the main scheme really hard in that first phase, so I guess you'll want to lower the side scheme a lot then kill him, flip it, clear the Living Bomb side quickly and then try to burst his more difficult form down before he starts wrecking you. This is probably the best box set they've done other than Sinister Motives. Every scenario is interesting and unique and I think I'd only give the edge to Sinister Motives because the sinister six scenario itself is my favorite scenario in the game. The heroes are both solid A-tier heroes as well. I hate saying this because I don't want it to be like this, but if it takes them 6 months between releases for us to get quality product like this then I'd be happy with it.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:51
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I'm definitely curious to try it. The Team Covenant preview made it look decent enough; like it had some legs on it. Unfortunately, it's also one of those things that living in a country outside the U.S. makes hard to get as TC's international shipping has always been bad enough that I never wanted to support them even at the height of their tokens and custom game pieces.
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Sep 18, 2023 18:56
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I find the aspect better than the hero, for the reasons Golden Bee mentioned. Deadpool seems far too reliant on his gimmick of being killed from damage and resetting. This strategy seems good only for rushing, and I generally prefer to play a longer game and build some kind of engine or establish a large board. I'll give him a try but like Spider-Ham I think he's going to sit in my box gathering dust. Star-Lord was not my favorite either, but I enjoyed playing him as a OTKO hero. I think he had the largest burst potential before Ironheart came along, and now that's trumpted by Domino.
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Sep 21, 2023 09:22
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Golden Bee posted:If it’s not-for sale work among a fan base, I don’t see why it’s bad if they use AI generated art work. AI is deleterious when it takes jobs from humans, not when it’s bad aesthetically. Exactly this. And at the same time you get what you pay for. It's unreasonable to expect the best designed stuff from teams of people that are all donating their time, and while you can playtest out bad designs you can't do the same for art as it's a limited resource and any artist worth their salt is going to want to get paid. I would even go so far as to say it's better to use AI art because a lot of the art that is already used in custom content is rarely done with the consent of the original artist or the publisher that probably owns it. Like if I wanted to go make a custom Batman hero for Marvel Champions, I'm just going to google some batman panels and general art to put on the cards, and I'd say it's worst to do that without permission than use AI. CitizenKeen posted:Fan continuations of games are built on the premise of "I desire [thing], but you own the rights to [thing]; gently caress IP." It's funny because the defacto stance on this fan content was basically started by Decipher that told fans to essentially make whatever to keep the game going as long as they didn't attempt to profit from it or infringe upon the IP of other stuff which is why all the Star Wars and Star Trek cards didn't use new art was so that there was no legal infringement of pushing players towards printing their own game. It's been a *fairly* recent thing IMO that these games started to get daring enough to try and push custom content into having whole new cards; specifically with Star Wars/Trek CCGs. FFG opened the door a lot more with the fan continued versions of Netrunner/Conquest as they were basically like "do whatever as long as you aren't profiting from it". Recently I started checking out other old CCGs; notably Star Wars TCG, and DBZ(Panini/FanZ) and in the cases with those games they just straight up stole art from the shows without regard for the creators to keep the content coming. poo poo the Star Wars TCG did a whole 2 sets of MCU Avengers using footage from the movies so in case any of these things ever blows up, it would probably be best for all these groups to switch to a system of using AI.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:43
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SettingSun posted:The AI art genie is never going back into the bottle. The tech is only going to get better with time, and the effect on the industry will be massive. It will become commonplace to utilize Midjourney et al for art when it infeasible to have a human do it. I expect smaller teams to do things like this across the industry within a few years. Bigger corps who could totally hire a bunch of artists will do it too, unless something drastic happens like the Supreme Court ruling definitively that AI generated assets cannot be protected under copywriter or something. Twenty years ago when I was getting my degree in digital art, it was more or less the same complaints but with Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator/etc. You're still going to have someone's hand on the wheel it's just the amount that it gets turned is different. Ultimately, it comes down to what the public is going to consume. I hate to go all Asmongold, but everyone is going to get on their soapbox and rant right up until the next Lorcana set comes along with AI art and then suddenly the sales go right back up.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:52
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Back on the topic of MC, they just put out a teaser for the next product which looks like a new Deluxe(probably X-Factor) featuring Apocalypse and the horsemen. https://fb.watch/nOBsdU8gyn/
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Oct 20, 2023 20:59
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The Black Stones posted:Very weird that they’re doing a teaser. I don’t think they’ve done one before. They usually just toss the announcement on their home page. That’s what I’d like to see. Even more strange given that the teaser is for an announcement in ~2 weeks. Like you'd think this was the kind of thing they would have wanted to drop in September. I'm really curious who the female characters are going to be. Feels like the male heroes have to be Nightcrawler, Beast, and Iceman. Magick, Jubilee, and Emma Frost?
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Oct 21, 2023 15:55
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Standard 3 seems slightly harder than Standard 1 since you can't dodge "Shadows" as effectively; you pretty much have to plan for it to happen. Bishop was a strange choice popularity wise, but I guess he was in a movie and has featured in some stories fairly recently. His gimmick looks kind of bad though; I guess we'll see. Magik looks awesome, and she's bringing in more powerful cards for Strange and Wanda it looks like. They say this is the end of the mutant trilogy of expansions at the end so I guess we're not getting anything mutant wise past this? Odd they didn't give it the X-Factor tag then; instead mixing X-Force and X-Men stuff together. The "mission" side scheme gimmick seems really annoying and a dumb way to weed allies out of your deck. The one they previewed makes it seem like it's not even worth potentially losing your allies forever. Not only that but the allies have to be good at scheming? I'm very non-plussed by the concept thus far. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since we don't really know how they're going to work fully but being forced to run allies to handle side-schemes that my hero can't touch sound like absolute poo poo for every aspect except leadership. Unus, Horsemen, and Apocalypse all look fine. The shadow heroes look like they're going to be Iceman, Jubilee, Nightcrawler, and Beast. It's really dumb they'd go with Jubilee over Emma though; maybe it's some kind of diversity thing that they needed to have another ethnic character, or I don't even loving know there's nothing in the past 30 years of comics that would possible make you think Jubilee is somehow a bigger character in the world of the X-Men than Emma Frost is but whatever, I guess we gotta make sure those 40 year olds that watched the X-Men animated series in the early 90s are looped in. This is just very frustrating as a fan of the comics. I thought maybe since Hope was featured in the last cycle there was someone out there that had actually read a comic since they were in high school but I guess maybe not.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:31
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Golden Bee posted:The creators of the Marvel comics game don’t read comics, because they had an idea for a Jubilee character and not an Emma one? It's not the idea, it's that you're trying to put out the characters that are of major importance and significance. If you ask someone who read comics within the past, 10/20/30 years which character is more of a major character in the X-Men storylines, Emma would only lose out to Jubilee if you go back 30 years. X-23 is a more recent character but she was at least majorly featured in a film. Jubliee has nothing going for her, she has less screen time than Emma did. She has featured as a central character in NO major comic storylines, while Emma has been at the forefront of many of them. The only reason you might think of Jubilee as a more famous X-Men character is because she was on the team during the early 90s comic boom and was in The Animated Series that aired on FOX. The wikipedia entries for Jubliee for the last DECADE fit on a single window, while Emma takes four and most of those entries are stubs. It's extremely out of touch with the actual fanbase, and doesn't even cater to a casual one very well as it wasn't like she was featured heavily during the boom period.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:18
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The Black Stones posted:Hey I’m only in my late 30’s I will admit I'm kind of biting my tongue saying that because there are some parts of the 90s TAS that should not be forgotten. CitizenKeen posted:I feel like Marvel Champions is one of the more "kid friendly" of FFG's games, and Emma Frost feels like a slightly harder pitch for a game played by kids. They toned down Psylocke sexuality; they can tone down Emma. Emma was the lead female in the Wolverine and the X-men cartoon also, so it's not like she hasn't been in a role aimed at children. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 21:15
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DLC Inc posted:that new Sidekick stuff is gonna be awesome with a Spider-Man voltron deck for Black Cat. Someone on Facebook suggested that they make a version for every aspect; which I agree with and hope they do. It's silly how a pair of cards can create a completely new archetype of deck, and yet they can't seem to do this for aggression. Aggression really needs some subthemes that change how it plays. They also really need to figure out how to let Aggression thwart without tying it into an uncontrollable board state. The upgrade that lets you thwart a side scheme using your atk really should have been a permanent upgrade for your hero rather than an attachment.
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Nov 4, 2023 06:41
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The Black Stones posted:Sorry should have been specific. The Marvel Champions Next Evolution one that just came out. It's dumb to me that they don't sell these direct to players after a certain period. If you live in a place that doesn't bother ordering them, or they just randomly only send them to whoever they feel like and that doesn't include you; then you really have no way to get them. I don't actually want the promo stuff for MC, but getting the stuff for previous FFG games was a pain. They were all print on demand so there was no reason to not try and make money off them once the season was over by putting them up for sale on the website. Hell they could even charge more than the stores pay so that stores would have to lower their prices on ebay to resell them and that would benefit the consumer a ton.
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Nov 19, 2023 22:54
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CitizenKeen posted:
That's why I said out of season. After a cycle of promos ends and a new one begins the old ones should be available for everyone to purchase if they want them. Supporting OP is a great idea in theory but if it's 50/50 that your LGS is going to get them, or that you have to go way out of your way to find an LGS that does then that kind of defeats the point. Also having stores just turn around and flip the kits isn't better for consumers either. These kits aren't like FNM promos where WotC would send them out like candy on Halloween. Sadly FFG OP just isn't at that level and as a result many customers, have a negative experience instead of a positive one. I'm really curious to see how the Star Wars game turns out. The art is so bad on the normal card, I feel like I'd need to get the some of the alternate arts just to enjoy it.
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Nov 20, 2023 07:46
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CitizenKeen posted:But assume the there's OP in my town, but I know I can just order them in a few months. I'm not in a rush - what's the incentive to go get them at my LGS if I can just order them online? They have to be exclusive or the value to the OP program is nil. Like, it's exclusionary and it sucks if you're excluded, but I feel like that's the name of the game. Looking at the exclusive cards at something like Flesh and Blood, which most stores around me can't get, sucks too. The incentive is that would you get them for free(* cost of the event), you'd be able to experience the release event with other people, and you'd get them months early. The point of the OP is to get people to go out to the store and partake in the event, but if they just want the cards they're already just going to order them online.
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Nov 20, 2023 09:44
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CitizenKeen posted:
I'm not missing the point of the OP promos. What is the point of OP promos for a game that doesn't need to have a scene at your LGS? Ignoring the distribution issues of FFG/Asmodee, there's no reason to have OP for coop LCGs beyond the release of an expansion and then not offer them to your players. An OP promo is designed to help maintain a scene or promote the release of a new product. 95% of the player base for this game are not buying this and then sitting down in the store to play with other players. They aren't showing up weekly to play with their buddies. This is game played by families, small game groups, and individuals. I have no problems with OP promos for games like Netrunner, Star Wars, L5R, SWU; that's all fine because those are competitive games that are designed to be played at store with other people. I played FNM for years and while the promos were cool, they were a bonus that rewarded people for doing the thing they already wanted to do: show up and play. I ran Netrunner, and L5R for years; still have a ton of promos(sent a bunch of Netrunner ones to people from SA for free because we had extras). No problem with them not selling promos for those games because those games had a scene that needed to be reinforced with prize support. This is not about me, because if i wanted the Marvel Champions promos I could have them. There is zero reason for a cooperative/single player game to have restricted promos.
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Nov 20, 2023 16:40
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X-23 and Deadpool came in on Monday. Haven't played with Deadpool yet, although I did throw some of the 'pool aspect cards into Adam Warlock just to see how it would play and it was not very good, or at least I haven't found the right combination yet that makes it work; it just feels too weak losing out on one of his powers. X-23 is amazing though. I thought she was going to be kind of middle of the road and not very fun to play but actually she's like Captain America 2.0 with huge bomb potential. I'm running a Leadership deck that builds up Honey Badger for a huge 50+ damage turn in order to one shot the villain in expert mode. Tested against Magneto and am currently at 10/2, the losses being from triple attack turns early in the game. Overall though, she's very well rounded and a lot more fun to play than I thought she would be. I'm hesitant to say she's S-tier but she's definitely high A. Having a very cheap deck is also quite nice. Deadpool looks pretty strong given his damage potential but I also wonder how interesting he's going to be game to game. If you are always just bombing out with Maximum Effort and This Card is Fire every game he could be pretty boring. X-23 can be built in more versatile ways. Having listened to a few content creators for the game, it seems like this was a big complaint of Archangel: his kit is so strong that you're just playing it every game and you don't really care that much about your aspect cards. I never really thought too much about that, but I do think it's a valid criticism and probably a reason I won't be rush back to play Angel even though he's very good.
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Nov 22, 2023 17:08
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Iceman is the first preview of the last group of X-Men. I can't say I really are that much about Iceman and his gimmick isn't super interesting but he might be alright. The aggression theme of attacking enemies with upgrades attached is also a bit too fiddly for my tastes, but I am happy to see that they aren't abandoning player side schemes.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:06
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The Black Stones posted:I think Iceman looks cool. Great compliment to Cyclops, and it’s a new interesting way to try lock down a villain. They’ve been overly relying on Steady or Stalwart to make it so that any heroes whose gimmick is to confuse or stun loses a bunch of their toolkit. Iceman seems neat because he provides a way to be effective even in those scenarios. Nightcrawler is going to be interesting to me, but Beast and Jubilee are extremely boring and I hope they have some interesting designs in mind to spice them up. Assuming they have the license beyond this X-Men arc, I figure we're getting an extended Marvel Knights arc. Fantastic Four won the fan poll on Facebook last time I checked but with the Netflix stuff becoming MCU canon I think we're getting that stuff looped in. Daredevil, Elektra, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Misty Knight, Moon Knight, Echo, and Punisher. Maybe even looping into a few Young Avengers with Hawkeye(Kate), America Chavez, and Stature(or whatever name Cassie is using now). I don't think we'll see FF until they join the MCU and the game could be long dead by then. I don't see Disney doing the LotR thing and just letting them toss out a wave every year till the end of time. Re: Iceman. He looks just ok to me, at least the X-Men have a good way of readying with allies and Utopia. That said, he looks like he can't handle schemes for poo poo so I hope the missing cards in his card are very strong thwart ones. He's another hero that's going to play a million times better with Cable letting him get his upgrade asap.
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Jan 20, 2024 17:37
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