March 20, 2025 • 32 mins
Welcome to Road to Knowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast. This episode's guest is sl0th. This is the third in a series of conversations about the MODOK League Season 03 draft: preparation for the draft, drafting strategy, and hero matchups against the four scenarios. Please go listen to Episode 55---or visit the league website linked below---for a more detailed overview of the season.
MODOK Season 03 League website: https://modokleague.wordpress.com/modok-league-season-03-big-bads-season/
MODOK League Discord server: https://discord.gg/6b4zBfchhA
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Hey friendos, welcome to the Road to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. Today we're talking about the
Modoc League season 3 draft. Modoc League is a Marvel
Champions organization designed only for couples.
Modoc it is a two hero team league where people can play
with a partner or two handed on their own.
(00:30):
This season is played with a modified version of expert using
standard three with the twist that an extra pursued counter is
put on pursued by the past at the start of each villain phase.
So we have 4 challenges this season, Ultron with Under Attack
and Infinity Gauntlet, Strife with Hope Summers, Personal
(00:50):
Nightmare and an Acronauts. This is a Con of Heroes
challenge from last year. Red Skull with Hydra patrol,
State of Emergency and Brothers Grimm, Mojo with Black Tom
Cassidy, Super Strength flight and telepathy.
And this season features 2 divisions, A10 team real time
(01:11):
division that drafted live and anine team turn based division
that drafted asynchronously over2 days.
Each team drafted against the other teams to pick 4 heroes,
one from each of four different groups.
Leadership was banned. And if you want more details on
the season, I recorded episode 55 as a preview to this.
(01:34):
You can go listen to that, get alittle bit more on the details.
I'm your host, Josh Saru, and it's time to take you to my
conversation with Sloth. And we're welcoming Sloth to the
pod. Ryan, how are you doing?
Pretty good, pretty good. It's been a been a good couple
weeks here. So yeah, it'll be on again,
yeah. Yeah, we we've, we've had you
(01:55):
pretty recently. So we were going to check in
about your draft prep and you know how the draft unfolded for
you and then what you're thinking of doing with your
heroes. It's worth noting you were one
of the teams that was in the live draft and there was 10
teams all together and you had the very first pick.
We did. Yeah, we did.
(02:15):
Which really changed the way I would normally look at a draft
because that meant we also had the last pick.
So we framed almost all of our draft picker or draft priority
around what group we were OK with having a choice of two
(02:36):
right at the end. And there ended up being some
surprises, and we'll hear about that too.
But OK, yeah, so tell tell us a little more about your your
draft prep. Yeah, so we, we, I mean, every
group kind of had, I feel like two or three, you know, could be
first pick heroes. I mean, you had, you know,
(02:59):
Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, even Spider Man to an extent.
And then you know, Spider Ham, Ironheart and X-23 is a crazy
group. Yes.
Scarlet Witch, Magic, Deadpool, Captain America, Cable, like
they're all really strong. So we, we do wherever we went,
we had a pretty strong, you know, S tier pick in, in round
(03:22):
one. So then we took it apart and
we're like, OK, so which one? If we have a pick of two, you
know, which bottom 2 heroes in our opinion, are we OK being
stuck with because we have last pick?
And we decided that we were OK with pretty much any any hero
from Group 4. Our preference would have been
(03:43):
not Hulk. But I was going to say.
Which includes Hulk, yeah. But we thought we always had a
like, if we got Hulk, it would be Hulk plus one, you know?
And we were OK with pretty much everyone else.
Absolute worst case, we figured we'd have to learn how to play
Deadpool because neither one of us have ever played him, but
(04:04):
that ended up not being the case.
We ended up with Deadpool and Vision in our last pick, so we
went with Vision thinking he'd be pretty good into Ultron.
Yes, I I had a bit of a chat with Kakita Jamie about that,
that very thing because they also drafted Ultron in the other
draft. And yeah, there's definitely
some some valuable things. But so yeah, you've you've not
played Deadpool. I think you know, one of the
(04:27):
things that Deadpool Deadpool has access to piercing and so
you know, against the Red skull match up as an example, that's
that could be pretty good. And in round four, if you're
really going to race down Mojo Deadpool might be a a pretty
valid thing to do. I haven't really tried to do 2
handed rush much so I don't havethe best sense of how viable it
(04:49):
is. But yeah, so actually
ironically, round 4 Mojo is the round we've actually played.
We we had when we looked at our our heroes, we kind of paired
them up and thought we could go with our our original strategy
was a double aggression rush Strat on Mojo.
(05:11):
Right. And we just got wiped off the
board. We did find out neither one of
us could read and we were discarding 4 cards per player
per turn. Whether or not they were an
alter ego. Yes, important.
(05:32):
So we did discard more cards that we had to, but but we went
back to the drawing board on that one.
And I guess not to spoil some ofour picks, but we we ended up
with Captain Marvel and Justice and Miss Marvel and Aggression.
We did lose a match. It was really unfortunate.
(05:53):
I got just enough as Miss Marvel.
No, well, it ended up being threat that killed us, but I got
just enough taken away from me on the last turn to kill him
before telepathy went in the deck that we were like too
damaged short. And then it was very much a like
(06:16):
we thread out after this one andthen attempt to.
So we we did. We did go for attempt to.
I started with home technique inmy hand and that one we did win
on the turn before telepathy went in the deck where we would
have thread out if we didn't winas well.
(06:38):
Again, so repeat. So repeat, but this time we were
able to bring it home. So we we were able to secure the
the four points because we have the -1 for the second attempt.
Right. But, and we, I think we had both
collectively played Mojo about 3times.
(06:59):
It's just not a a villain I super enjoy and I think Chase is
in the same boat. Both of us kind of like to build
out our boards and our play style.
So the ones that really tax you kind of sitting back and getting
built, you know, like Mojo puts a pretty, pretty hefty clock on
there. It's just not as fun for us to
(07:20):
play against, you know, as a group.
So we we elected to do that one first in our testing with our
with our heroes and then base the rest of our our rounds off
of what we had That worked in a pairing for that one.
So right, Well, let's. Look, let's look back to the
(07:42):
draft. So we kind of we know why you
ended up with Vision as the 4th and I do.
I do really like this position that the first team can be in to
really just kind of think through this is a group that we
are just going to plan to take very last.
So you had very first pick. Yep.
(08:03):
And we went with Captain Marvel on that one.
For me, it's a really comfort hero and Chase has played her a
fair number of times as well, and she's just rich.
It feels, you know, you can kindof make anything work with her.
So we, we figured regardless of where, you know, what aspect she
ends up in, she'll be able to pay for whatever she needs or,
(08:25):
you know, that kind of stuff. And then there was a little bit
of a more of a run on Group 3 than I thought there would be
coming back to us in in the next.
Pick second pick. So yeah, here.
So Cable, Captain America, Cyclops, Nova, Venom, and then
(08:46):
Domino all all went from Group 2before it came to you.
Yeah, 'cause we then, you know, had the the last pick of round
two of the draft. Yeah, which really kind of
surprised me. I was not expecting a run on
Group 3 the way it did. Thankfully though, our top pick
out of that group, because we knew there was no chance we were
(09:08):
getting like Captain America or Cable was Miss Marvel who fell
for us. It's another hero that I'm
pretty comfortable with. It's probably my most played.
OK. And so we, we took Miss Marvel
and then group 2 was pretty wideopen at the time, which was our,
(09:29):
you know, we were in some form it was going to be a 2/3 split,
you know, going into that back-to-back pick, I think only
really the top 3 heroes arguablybeen taken out with X23
Ironheart and and Spider ham. So we we chose another hero that
both of us are pretty comfortable with in Ghost Spider
(09:51):
so that we can bounce back and forth.
Who's playing water? You know, we don't.
We're not. Both of the previous rounds
we've been stuck playing the same hero on the same aspect for
most of it. Right, so.
We really like to open it up andjust grabbing heroes that we're
really kind of comfortable with as a group to kind of open up
who gets to play what. And it doesn't feel like we're
playing twenty matches on, you know, whoever.
(10:17):
I was I was just noticing. So you at the point that you
picked Miss Marvel and you, you said you had a very highly
rated. Also left in that group was
Angel, Star Lord and Wasp. Yes.
And and then Shihal Ku ultimately didn't get picked.
Yeah. And then?
(10:37):
But but what's interesting is inthe other draft.
So in the in the asynchronous draft, Angel actually went third
overall. Yeah, I think Angel has some
great. Potential it's so interesting
how you know different the the groups are valuing that.
(10:57):
Yeah, please keep going. Yeah, I think Angel has some
great potential in some of the scenarios.
To be honest, Chase kind of leftme in charge of the draft
because he was busy, so we picked the hero I like.
Yes, I like that. It was probably down to Angel or
(11:19):
Miss Marvel would have been likeif one or the other had gone,
that was the other one was goingto be our pick in that spot.
I think Star Lord, especially into someone like Mojo, had
potential to go really fast and do a bunch of damage.
Yes. But he's a bit of a liability
into that match up too, and I don't have the self-control to
(11:42):
not put 3 encounter cards in front of me every turn.
If you let me play something forfree and the only cost is I have
to take another card out of the enemy deck, it's happening.
I hear you. Well, that Star Lord was our one
of our two heroes last round, and he actually went he went up
my personal. I was he was, I was already very
(12:03):
high OnStar Lord, but he actually went even higher on my
list 'cause I I did have to force to myself to really find
the sweet spot of of where to play him.
Yeah, I do feel like he loses a little bit of power without
leadership as well. But.
(12:24):
And we, we, we actually one of the big perks of Miss Marvel is
into Red Skull, I feel like because she can just clear so
much threat. Our team ended up drafting Miss
Marvel. We got her as our fourth hero,
which is unbelievable. Wow, we were in the middle of
the pack and fully agreed, right.
Miss Marvel is somebody that we we are looking at for for that
(12:48):
match up. Yeah, so.
But yeah, so and then, you know,like I said of the of the two,
we had Deadpool and Vision and it was just we're both more
comfortable with Vision and we felt like he went, he paired
really well into Ultron. You kind of ignore like half of
(13:09):
his nemesis kit in Ultron because his nemesis is Ultron
just can't enter play. And then the Ultron drones
environment doesn't stack. You know, they both just set
drones to a base HP and and attack and throw out of one.
So they, you know, through two of his his five cards just do
nothing. And since we're guaranteed this
(13:33):
season, you know, it feels like to get at least one, probably
both of your modular sets in thedeck.
Yeah. Usually that seems pretty
strong, so. And then your your third pick,
which came immediately after your second pick because of
where you were positioned, right?
So you you were looking at grouptwo or Group 4, but you'd
(13:56):
already said you were going to let Group 4 go.
So you're basically just lookingstraight at group two.
Things that had already gone were X-23, Spider, Ham,
Ironheart, and, and that was it.So we have Adam Warlock, Gamora,
Ghost, Spider, Nebula, Phoenix, Rogue, Spectrum, and yeah.
(14:17):
So I mean, from the start, Valkyrie and Nebula were pretty
low on our list. I feel like Valkyrie could do
really well into, like, Ultron, you know, But she's just not
versatile enough. We wanted to, you know, people
who could be played in a couple aspects if we had to.
Yeah. You don't.
You don't have to tell me. I know, and then quite honestly,
(14:43):
I like Phoenix as a hero. Her nemesis is God awful and the
fact that you're pretty much guaranteed to get it just really
makes her hard to pick. Agreed.
It is it is so hard to want to take that and be like, yeah, I
know I'm getting this and I'll deal with it at some point.
(15:03):
And then Rogue kind of just fellby the wayside of we didn't
really want to pick her back-to-back because we had
Rogue last season and we wanted a change up and of you know, who
we who we took. And then didn't you have nebula
in the first season? We did.
Yes, we did. Yeah.
(15:24):
OK. Yeah.
Which was another reason we didn't want to take Nebula.
And then they kind of left us down to Gamora, Ghost, Spider,
Adam Warlock and Spectrum as our, you know, our possible
choices at that time. Yeah.
Neither one of us really likes Adam Warlock that much, which I
(15:45):
know is crazy. He's strong.
And we we kind of draft more on who we enjoy playing.
You got a lot of games potentially.
Yeah, you do. And you know, it's, it feels
like, it just feels like more ofa slog when you don't
particularly enjoy the hero and then you've got like five games,
you know, or whatever. And then Ghost fighter
(16:09):
protection is just crazy. It's super duper and she's also
great in aggression. Really.
Yeah. So we thought she could, you
know, she could be played in justice too, and you do pretty
much the same thing you do in inaggression with her.
So we thought that she had kind of a lot of Lex pick potential
(16:29):
and is strong and we're both fairly comfortable with playing
her. So it was just a all around kind
of comfort pick there of the ones that were left.
Yeah, makes. Sense and then it came round 4
you had Vision or Deadpool because Rusty ended up doing
(16:52):
everybody else some favors by taking Hulk in the third round
and Valkyrie in the 4th. So so Hulk was even off the
table. So you actually had two legit
picks and we we already kind of checked in on that.
Yeah. OK, so that's cool.
I, I mean, I, I that's a really fun suite of heroes.
I actually really enjoy all of them.
(17:13):
Yeah, so it's been, it's been fun trying to plan it out and
like both of us are like, man, we want to play Vision into
Ultron 'cause you're going to draw like 1000 cards probably
you're. Going to play aggression and
yeah, yeah. So what, you know, we had a a
(17:33):
brief disagreement over who got to actually play Vision into
Ultron and who Chase did win that one.
And then that was so we we kind of always had Ultron or vision
penciled into Ultron. Like that was never going to
change. You know, Miss Marvel was
(17:54):
pretty, pretty penciled into RedSkull.
And then we sat down and we threw our heads against Mojo for
what felt like way too many games to try to figure out what
our pairing was there because that would determine, you know,
the rest of our pairings throughso.
Yeah, so the what did you decidefor for your second hero for
Ultron? Right now it's looking like
(18:16):
ghost spider, Injustice potentially.
We haven't quite decided it's ghost spider.
We're just not sure of the aspect so.
And then, tentatively, we're looking at Captain Marvel and
Vision into strife. OK, but.
(18:39):
We'll see how how that feels. Yeah, so that, you know, I, I
already talked about this a little bit with Kakita, Jamie,
but the, you know, our our plan for strife was we were trying to
get heroes that really could blow up their stats to really
take advantage, advantage of hope.
(19:00):
And so of course, from that specific lens, Miss Marvel is
terrible. Yes, yeah.
And with Captain Marvel is 2 to one for defence I believe.
Right. Yes, until you put out her.
Her. Helmet.
Helmet. Yep.
(19:21):
Yeah, and Vision is also a 222 depending on his his side.
Yes, Yep. OK, yeah.
And then Vision has the ability to to bypass the crisis icon.
Yes, yes, so vision can bypass the crisis and then he, you
know, kind of in his kit naturally he has like either
(19:42):
depending how you look at A5 attack or five throat events.
So we felt like he was pretty flexible.
You can put up in like Justice but still have the ability to do
some damage if you need to. Yeah, it's interesting that, I
mean, in that way I kind of findhim a little bit similar to
Angel in the kind of has access to burst damage or burst thwart
(20:06):
in his kit. Yeah.
Yeah. And then we both like the
Captain Marvel kind of get a energy channel down there, try
to build it up, you know, and then if you can get a lay of the
trap out there, you know, if youcan how to pop both of them,
(20:28):
that's 20 less damage you have to do into the into the third
phase of the villain. Yes.
So it's a a substantial amount of damage if you can get those
set up, you know, and built up over the course of the game.
So. Well, this this is definitely a
kind of a classic solo ChampionsLeague tactic is kind of using
the skip the second or skip the final stage through justice
(20:51):
because the Bishop ally is also really good for that because you
can get him up to six attack. Yeah.
And then and then followed on a on a side scheme.
Is that the right one? That sounds right.
That's 'cause that's the one that lets you go get an ally,
right? Oh.
No, no, I didn't mean followed, sorry.
(21:13):
Whatever the whatever the one isthat you do for damage when you
defeat the side scheme. Oh, yeah, OK, I know which one
you're talking about. I just can't think of it off the
top of my bed. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yeah, there's if, if you have, if you have the time to
kind of thread the needle, you have really good access to to
being able to do quite a bit of burst damage at once with
(21:35):
Justice, which is really neat. And then both, I feel like both
Captain Marvel and Vision have really well costed granted into
phase 3 of Strife, slightly lesswell costed attack events, but
you know, they're, they're not bad for the price you pay for
the damage. So.
(21:57):
Oh, it is followed OK. Oh, it is.
I have the wrong one. It's just.
It's just a very funny name for what it does.
And then Red Skull, Miss Marvel's your one hero.
And then what were you thinking of for your other?
Right now we've penciled in ghost spider protection, OK,
because we are a little, I'm getting a little out of control
(22:20):
with some of those attachments. I think what was it I had, I had
broken down like everything thatcould get attached to him and it
was there was a feel 12345678 like 10, I think 11, right?
(22:42):
Hilarious. So, you know, it, he can get
some crazy stats. So we, we felt like protection
is kind of needed there. So that'll probably be where a
ghost spider protection ends up.Plus, as you're protecting just
naturally as a ghost spider, youcan do some damage or lose some
(23:03):
threat, you know, with her, her interrupts.
Yeah. Well, and then because some of
the defense events also or or energy barrier allow you to do
some ping damage, You know, Red skull ends up with a lot of
(23:23):
tough. So, so piercing is good, but
also just anything that that is able to just do kind of an
errant one damage to to help take care of that.
Yeah. So we, you know, we feel like
the protection kind of lines up well into that one, pairing it
with Justice in that, you know, both kind of have some innate
damage in their kit. So I, I don't think we'll be too
(23:45):
starved for damage, but well, wehave, you know, some unpaired
stuff we can move ghost spider into like aggression if we need
to or, you know, do some other stuff if that just isn't working
for us. So.
Right. And then did you seriously
(24:06):
consider pool at all for any of them?
We have not just because at one point one of us needs to play
pool. Yeah, I seem to recall from
previous conversations Pool was not really a.
Manchester. In your wheelhouse.
Yeah, I it, it kind of came out when I was taking a break from
(24:27):
the game and I just haven't really gone back to look at it.
So I at some point here I need to just go dig it out and take a
look at the cards and and figureout, you know, try Deadpool or
figure out somebody else that looks good in Pool.
(24:47):
Maybe just pull a deck off of Marvel CDB for somebody.
Well, a thing that's interestingthat Kakita Jamie pointed out is
that the in the red Skull match up the a lot of those side
schemes that got added to to ourversion of it do have negative
icons. So they they feed into a lot of
(25:09):
the pool stuff. Yeah.
So there's kind of potentially some neat opportunities there.
Personally, in Pool, you know, my favorite thing is to have
laser swords. So just heroes that have lots of
access to readying themselves and then you know, So if you're,
if you're ever looking to play some pool, I would definitely
(25:31):
recommend trying just to find a laser swords deck that looks
enticing to you all. Right, I'll have to also look
into that because I, I should, you know, learn how to play it
just because it is a game aspectin the game, I think a lot.
Of people are. Strong.
So yeah. I mean, honestly, at this point,
(25:52):
the biggest thing is it's just such a limited card pool.
There's only a few, there's onlya few things that you really try
to do with it. And you know, maybe some heroes
have cards that synergize well with them, but in general it
just feels like it, unless you're trying to be a complete
chaos agent and really just do the full negative icon stuff
(26:15):
that the terrorizes the whole table.
There's only a few things you really do.
Listen, don't, don't put it pastme.
I mean, I think you got to try it at some point.
Yeah, I the last game we played in four player, I built the
leadership deck where the whole purpose was just to sneak attack
big allies in and then go down swinging them at the villain.
(26:42):
It didn't go very well, but it was pretty funny when I yeah, it
was pretty funny when I threw a a hero or did like 2 activations
and threw the hero at the villain.
So. Or at least I thought it was.
Yeah. Well, as I tell, as I tell my
kids, the the most important person to find your jokes funny
(27:03):
is you. Yeah.
One thing I want to loop back toon on your prep, a couple people
I spoke to had very exhaustive spreadsheets kind of laying out
everything. Do you, do you two kind of
really get into the nitty grittyor how do you do that part of
(27:24):
the prep for yourselves? Yeah.
So my, my draft prep was pretty low this time.
I kind of just, we went through and we ordered the heroes by
like our particular ranking of them, you know, it.
Last time we had tried to like look at people's previous picks,
stuff like that, try to predict what we thought, you know, would
maybe happen. And this time, with it all being
(27:48):
heroes, it was like there is no no previous data to look at or
anything, you know? Yeah, as.
Far as what goes where we think these heroes are strong, I would
have never guessed like X-23 went second for I I mean, she's
strong and I think she's really good, but you know, some of the
remaining heroes on the board I think would have gone before
(28:12):
her. However, I got really bored one
day a couple weeks ago after we had the draft.
So I went through and I actuallybroke down every villain deck
into like maximum threat that can be put on threat added per
turn, number of minions, number of side schemes, what the side
(28:32):
schemes do. Any boost effects any like bad
treacheries we want to avoid andfor all all four of them.
And then just kind of use that when deck building to look at
like, OK, there's a whole bunch of boost effects we'd like to
avoid in this one. Maybe we should consider, you
know, target acquired or maybe ghost spiders a little more
(28:55):
value in here because she can cancel a treachery, right?
And then completely ignored it all for Mojo and just tried to
kill him in like 5 times. So.
Yeah, I, I do. I do enjoy that type of prep as
well. It's a thing in solo Champions
(29:17):
League. I, I definitely have, have often
done and then other times I usually just tell, tell myself
I'm just going to play it a couple times and see where the
pain points are. Mm hmm.
And then, you know, inevitably, five games later, something
shows up that I had kind of forgotten was in there because I
didn't really scrutinize the theencounter deck.
(29:40):
Yeah, I will say Paparazzi mightbe one of my least favorite
guards now in a building deck and the one of the, oh, I forget
which one, one of the games, theCaptain Marvel discard all the
(30:01):
lightnings in your hand card. Yeah, hit me and I4 of my 5-6
cards in my hand were lightnings.
OK. And that that felt really bad.
I I do very much appreciate you started with with Mojo and then
(30:22):
looped around to the the start. Mm hmm, so.
But have you? Have you, you haven't even
actually really started working on Ultron, so.
That's no, we short order, yeah.We're trying to set up a time
this week to get together and gothrough and look at it and do
it, Yeah. And then hopefully there's an.
(30:45):
Extension coming so. Yeah, yeah, I know it's it
sounds weird to say that we voted for the two weeks
extension when we already completed one of the rounds, but
maybe completing ground first orfour first wasn't the smartest
choice. Right, right from.
A time management standpoint. That didn't really lean into
what you needed. Yeah, well, no.
(31:07):
I actually, I think TJJJ was asking me about, you know, can
we play, you know, from a kind of a due date perspective, can
we play the fourth round first? So kind of similar to you.
Cool. Well, Sloth, thank you so much
for coming on and, and sharing your, your draft experience and,
(31:31):
and all your thoughts. I think it's been really fun to
hear it because you know, everybody has such a interesting
mix of heroes. Really being able to think about
each of the, the villains and how you're going to attack.
It has been has been great to chat with people about.
Yeah, I I really enjoyed the thewide breadth of heroes this
season. You know picking 4 heroes was
(31:53):
gave a lot of choices and stuff so.
Cool. And and listeners, thanks for
for tuning in and we'll catch you next time.
Ryan. Awesome.
Thank you. Thank you.
Hey friendos, welcome to the Road to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. Today we're talking about the
Modoc League season 3 draft. Modoc League is a Marvel
Champions organization designed only for couples.
Modoc it is a two hero team league where people can play
with a partner or two handed on their own.
(00:30):
This season is played with a modified version of expert using
standard three with the twist that an extra pursued counter is
put on pursued by the past at the start of each villain phase.
So we have 4 challenges this season, Ultron with Under Attack
and Infinity Gauntlet, Strife with Hope Summers, Personal
(00:50):
Nightmare and an Acronauts. This is a Con of Heroes
challenge from last year. Red Skull with Hydra patrol,
State of Emergency and Brothers Grimm, Mojo with Black Tom
Cassidy, Super Strength flight and telepathy.
And this season features 2 divisions, A10 team real time
(01:11):
division that drafted live and anine team turn based division
that drafted asynchronously over2 days.
Each team drafted against the other teams to pick 4 heroes,
one from each of four different groups.
Leadership was banned. And if you want more details on
the season, I recorded episode 55 as a preview to this.
(01:34):
You can go listen to that, get alittle bit more on the details.
I'm your host, Josh Saru, and it's time to take you to my
conversation with Sloth. And we're welcoming Sloth to the
pod. Ryan, how are you doing?
Pretty good, pretty good. It's been a been a good couple
weeks here. So yeah, it'll be on again,
yeah. Yeah, we we've, we've had you
(01:55):
pretty recently. So we were going to check in
about your draft prep and you know how the draft unfolded for
you and then what you're thinking of doing with your
heroes. It's worth noting you were one
of the teams that was in the live draft and there was 10
teams all together and you had the very first pick.
We did. Yeah, we did.
(02:15):
Which really changed the way I would normally look at a draft
because that meant we also had the last pick.
So we framed almost all of our draft picker or draft priority
around what group we were OK with having a choice of two
(02:36):
right at the end. And there ended up being some
surprises, and we'll hear about that too.
But OK, yeah, so tell tell us a little more about your your
draft prep. Yeah, so we, we, I mean, every
group kind of had, I feel like two or three, you know, could be
first pick heroes. I mean, you had, you know,
(02:59):
Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, even Spider Man to an extent.
And then you know, Spider Ham, Ironheart and X-23 is a crazy
group. Yes.
Scarlet Witch, Magic, Deadpool, Captain America, Cable, like
they're all really strong. So we, we do wherever we went,
we had a pretty strong, you know, S tier pick in, in round
(03:22):
one. So then we took it apart and
we're like, OK, so which one? If we have a pick of two, you
know, which bottom 2 heroes in our opinion, are we OK being
stuck with because we have last pick?
And we decided that we were OK with pretty much any any hero
from Group 4. Our preference would have been
(03:43):
not Hulk. But I was going to say.
Which includes Hulk, yeah. But we thought we always had a
like, if we got Hulk, it would be Hulk plus one, you know?
And we were OK with pretty much everyone else.
Absolute worst case, we figured we'd have to learn how to play
Deadpool because neither one of us have ever played him, but
(04:04):
that ended up not being the case.
We ended up with Deadpool and Vision in our last pick, so we
went with Vision thinking he'd be pretty good into Ultron.
Yes, I I had a bit of a chat with Kakita Jamie about that,
that very thing because they also drafted Ultron in the other
draft. And yeah, there's definitely
some some valuable things. But so yeah, you've you've not
played Deadpool. I think you know, one of the
(04:27):
things that Deadpool Deadpool has access to piercing and so
you know, against the Red skull match up as an example, that's
that could be pretty good. And in round four, if you're
really going to race down Mojo Deadpool might be a a pretty
valid thing to do. I haven't really tried to do 2
handed rush much so I don't havethe best sense of how viable it
(04:49):
is. But yeah, so actually
ironically, round 4 Mojo is the round we've actually played.
We we had when we looked at our our heroes, we kind of paired
them up and thought we could go with our our original strategy
was a double aggression rush Strat on Mojo.
(05:11):
Right. And we just got wiped off the
board. We did find out neither one of
us could read and we were discarding 4 cards per player
per turn. Whether or not they were an
alter ego. Yes, important.
(05:32):
So we did discard more cards that we had to, but but we went
back to the drawing board on that one.
And I guess not to spoil some ofour picks, but we we ended up
with Captain Marvel and Justice and Miss Marvel and Aggression.
We did lose a match. It was really unfortunate.
(05:53):
I got just enough as Miss Marvel.
No, well, it ended up being threat that killed us, but I got
just enough taken away from me on the last turn to kill him
before telepathy went in the deck that we were like too
damaged short. And then it was very much a like
(06:16):
we thread out after this one andthen attempt to.
So we we did. We did go for attempt to.
I started with home technique inmy hand and that one we did win
on the turn before telepathy went in the deck where we would
have thread out if we didn't winas well.
(06:38):
Again, so repeat. So repeat, but this time we were
able to bring it home. So we we were able to secure the
the four points because we have the -1 for the second attempt.
Right. But, and we, I think we had both
collectively played Mojo about 3times.
(06:59):
It's just not a a villain I super enjoy and I think Chase is
in the same boat. Both of us kind of like to build
out our boards and our play style.
So the ones that really tax you kind of sitting back and getting
built, you know, like Mojo puts a pretty, pretty hefty clock on
there. It's just not as fun for us to
(07:20):
play against, you know, as a group.
So we we elected to do that one first in our testing with our
with our heroes and then base the rest of our our rounds off
of what we had That worked in a pairing for that one.
So right, Well, let's. Look, let's look back to the
(07:42):
draft. So we kind of we know why you
ended up with Vision as the 4th and I do.
I do really like this position that the first team can be in to
really just kind of think through this is a group that we
are just going to plan to take very last.
So you had very first pick. Yep.
(08:03):
And we went with Captain Marvel on that one.
For me, it's a really comfort hero and Chase has played her a
fair number of times as well, and she's just rich.
It feels, you know, you can kindof make anything work with her.
So we, we figured regardless of where, you know, what aspect she
ends up in, she'll be able to pay for whatever she needs or,
(08:25):
you know, that kind of stuff. And then there was a little bit
of a more of a run on Group 3 than I thought there would be
coming back to us in in the next.
Pick second pick. So yeah, here.
So Cable, Captain America, Cyclops, Nova, Venom, and then
(08:46):
Domino all all went from Group 2before it came to you.
Yeah, 'cause we then, you know, had the the last pick of round
two of the draft. Yeah, which really kind of
surprised me. I was not expecting a run on
Group 3 the way it did. Thankfully though, our top pick
out of that group, because we knew there was no chance we were
(09:08):
getting like Captain America or Cable was Miss Marvel who fell
for us. It's another hero that I'm
pretty comfortable with. It's probably my most played.
OK. And so we, we took Miss Marvel
and then group 2 was pretty wideopen at the time, which was our,
(09:29):
you know, we were in some form it was going to be a 2/3 split,
you know, going into that back-to-back pick, I think only
really the top 3 heroes arguablybeen taken out with X23
Ironheart and and Spider ham. So we we chose another hero that
both of us are pretty comfortable with in Ghost Spider
(09:51):
so that we can bounce back and forth.
Who's playing water? You know, we don't.
We're not. Both of the previous rounds
we've been stuck playing the same hero on the same aspect for
most of it. Right, so.
We really like to open it up andjust grabbing heroes that we're
really kind of comfortable with as a group to kind of open up
who gets to play what. And it doesn't feel like we're
playing twenty matches on, you know, whoever.
(10:17):
I was I was just noticing. So you at the point that you
picked Miss Marvel and you, you said you had a very highly
rated. Also left in that group was
Angel, Star Lord and Wasp. Yes.
And and then Shihal Ku ultimately didn't get picked.
Yeah. And then?
(10:37):
But but what's interesting is inthe other draft.
So in the in the asynchronous draft, Angel actually went third
overall. Yeah, I think Angel has some
great. Potential it's so interesting
how you know different the the groups are valuing that.
(10:57):
Yeah, please keep going. Yeah, I think Angel has some
great potential in some of the scenarios.
To be honest, Chase kind of leftme in charge of the draft
because he was busy, so we picked the hero I like.
Yes, I like that. It was probably down to Angel or
(11:19):
Miss Marvel would have been likeif one or the other had gone,
that was the other one was goingto be our pick in that spot.
I think Star Lord, especially into someone like Mojo, had
potential to go really fast and do a bunch of damage.
Yes. But he's a bit of a liability
into that match up too, and I don't have the self-control to
(11:42):
not put 3 encounter cards in front of me every turn.
If you let me play something forfree and the only cost is I have
to take another card out of the enemy deck, it's happening.
I hear you. Well, that Star Lord was our one
of our two heroes last round, and he actually went he went up
my personal. I was he was, I was already very
(12:03):
high OnStar Lord, but he actually went even higher on my
list 'cause I I did have to force to myself to really find
the sweet spot of of where to play him.
Yeah, I do feel like he loses a little bit of power without
leadership as well. But.
(12:24):
And we, we, we actually one of the big perks of Miss Marvel is
into Red Skull, I feel like because she can just clear so
much threat. Our team ended up drafting Miss
Marvel. We got her as our fourth hero,
which is unbelievable. Wow, we were in the middle of
the pack and fully agreed, right.
Miss Marvel is somebody that we we are looking at for for that
(12:48):
match up. Yeah, so.
But yeah, so and then, you know,like I said of the of the two,
we had Deadpool and Vision and it was just we're both more
comfortable with Vision and we felt like he went, he paired
really well into Ultron. You kind of ignore like half of
(13:09):
his nemesis kit in Ultron because his nemesis is Ultron
just can't enter play. And then the Ultron drones
environment doesn't stack. You know, they both just set
drones to a base HP and and attack and throw out of one.
So they, you know, through two of his his five cards just do
nothing. And since we're guaranteed this
(13:33):
season, you know, it feels like to get at least one, probably
both of your modular sets in thedeck.
Yeah. Usually that seems pretty
strong, so. And then your your third pick,
which came immediately after your second pick because of
where you were positioned, right?
So you you were looking at grouptwo or Group 4, but you'd
(13:56):
already said you were going to let Group 4 go.
So you're basically just lookingstraight at group two.
Things that had already gone were X-23, Spider, Ham,
Ironheart, and, and that was it.So we have Adam Warlock, Gamora,
Ghost, Spider, Nebula, Phoenix, Rogue, Spectrum, and yeah.
(14:17):
So I mean, from the start, Valkyrie and Nebula were pretty
low on our list. I feel like Valkyrie could do
really well into, like, Ultron, you know, But she's just not
versatile enough. We wanted to, you know, people
who could be played in a couple aspects if we had to.
Yeah. You don't.
You don't have to tell me. I know, and then quite honestly,
(14:43):
I like Phoenix as a hero. Her nemesis is God awful and the
fact that you're pretty much guaranteed to get it just really
makes her hard to pick. Agreed.
It is it is so hard to want to take that and be like, yeah, I
know I'm getting this and I'll deal with it at some point.
(15:03):
And then Rogue kind of just fellby the wayside of we didn't
really want to pick her back-to-back because we had
Rogue last season and we wanted a change up and of you know, who
we who we took. And then didn't you have nebula
in the first season? We did.
Yes, we did. Yeah.
(15:24):
OK. Yeah.
Which was another reason we didn't want to take Nebula.
And then they kind of left us down to Gamora, Ghost, Spider,
Adam Warlock and Spectrum as our, you know, our possible
choices at that time. Yeah.
Neither one of us really likes Adam Warlock that much, which I
(15:45):
know is crazy. He's strong.
And we we kind of draft more on who we enjoy playing.
You got a lot of games potentially.
Yeah, you do. And you know, it's, it feels
like, it just feels like more ofa slog when you don't
particularly enjoy the hero and then you've got like five games,
you know, or whatever. And then Ghost fighter
(16:09):
protection is just crazy. It's super duper and she's also
great in aggression. Really.
Yeah. So we thought she could, you
know, she could be played in justice too, and you do pretty
much the same thing you do in inaggression with her.
So we thought that she had kind of a lot of Lex pick potential
(16:29):
and is strong and we're both fairly comfortable with playing
her. So it was just a all around kind
of comfort pick there of the ones that were left.
Yeah, makes. Sense and then it came round 4
you had Vision or Deadpool because Rusty ended up doing
(16:52):
everybody else some favors by taking Hulk in the third round
and Valkyrie in the 4th. So so Hulk was even off the
table. So you actually had two legit
picks and we we already kind of checked in on that.
Yeah. OK, so that's cool.
I, I mean, I, I that's a really fun suite of heroes.
I actually really enjoy all of them.
(17:13):
Yeah, so it's been, it's been fun trying to plan it out and
like both of us are like, man, we want to play Vision into
Ultron 'cause you're going to draw like 1000 cards probably
you're. Going to play aggression and
yeah, yeah. So what, you know, we had a a
(17:33):
brief disagreement over who got to actually play Vision into
Ultron and who Chase did win that one.
And then that was so we we kind of always had Ultron or vision
penciled into Ultron. Like that was never going to
change. You know, Miss Marvel was
(17:54):
pretty, pretty penciled into RedSkull.
And then we sat down and we threw our heads against Mojo for
what felt like way too many games to try to figure out what
our pairing was there because that would determine, you know,
the rest of our pairings throughso.
Yeah, so the what did you decidefor for your second hero for
Ultron? Right now it's looking like
(18:16):
ghost spider, Injustice potentially.
We haven't quite decided it's ghost spider.
We're just not sure of the aspect so.
And then, tentatively, we're looking at Captain Marvel and
Vision into strife. OK, but.
(18:39):
We'll see how how that feels. Yeah, so that, you know, I, I
already talked about this a little bit with Kakita, Jamie,
but the, you know, our our plan for strife was we were trying to
get heroes that really could blow up their stats to really
take advantage, advantage of hope.
(19:00):
And so of course, from that specific lens, Miss Marvel is
terrible. Yes, yeah.
And with Captain Marvel is 2 to one for defence I believe.
Right. Yes, until you put out her.
Her. Helmet.
Helmet. Yep.
(19:21):
Yeah, and Vision is also a 222 depending on his his side.
Yes, Yep. OK, yeah.
And then Vision has the ability to to bypass the crisis icon.
Yes, yes, so vision can bypass the crisis and then he, you
know, kind of in his kit naturally he has like either
(19:42):
depending how you look at A5 attack or five throat events.
So we felt like he was pretty flexible.
You can put up in like Justice but still have the ability to do
some damage if you need to. Yeah, it's interesting that, I
mean, in that way I kind of findhim a little bit similar to
Angel in the kind of has access to burst damage or burst thwart
(20:06):
in his kit. Yeah.
Yeah. And then we both like the
Captain Marvel kind of get a energy channel down there, try
to build it up, you know, and then if you can get a lay of the
trap out there, you know, if youcan how to pop both of them,
(20:28):
that's 20 less damage you have to do into the into the third
phase of the villain. Yes.
So it's a a substantial amount of damage if you can get those
set up, you know, and built up over the course of the game.
So. Well, this this is definitely a
kind of a classic solo ChampionsLeague tactic is kind of using
the skip the second or skip the final stage through justice
(20:51):
because the Bishop ally is also really good for that because you
can get him up to six attack. Yeah.
And then and then followed on a on a side scheme.
Is that the right one? That sounds right.
That's 'cause that's the one that lets you go get an ally,
right? Oh.
No, no, I didn't mean followed, sorry.
(21:13):
Whatever the whatever the one isthat you do for damage when you
defeat the side scheme. Oh, yeah, OK, I know which one
you're talking about. I just can't think of it off the
top of my bed. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yeah, there's if, if you have, if you have the time to
kind of thread the needle, you have really good access to to
being able to do quite a bit of burst damage at once with
(21:35):
Justice, which is really neat. And then both, I feel like both
Captain Marvel and Vision have really well costed granted into
phase 3 of Strife, slightly lesswell costed attack events, but
you know, they're, they're not bad for the price you pay for
the damage. So.
(21:57):
Oh, it is followed OK. Oh, it is.
I have the wrong one. It's just.
It's just a very funny name for what it does.
And then Red Skull, Miss Marvel's your one hero.
And then what were you thinking of for your other?
Right now we've penciled in ghost spider protection, OK,
because we are a little, I'm getting a little out of control
(22:20):
with some of those attachments. I think what was it I had, I had
broken down like everything thatcould get attached to him and it
was there was a feel 12345678 like 10, I think 11, right?
(22:42):
Hilarious. So, you know, it, he can get
some crazy stats. So we, we felt like protection
is kind of needed there. So that'll probably be where a
ghost spider protection ends up.Plus, as you're protecting just
naturally as a ghost spider, youcan do some damage or lose some
(23:03):
threat, you know, with her, her interrupts.
Yeah. Well, and then because some of
the defense events also or or energy barrier allow you to do
some ping damage, You know, Red skull ends up with a lot of
(23:23):
tough. So, so piercing is good, but
also just anything that that is able to just do kind of an
errant one damage to to help take care of that.
Yeah. So we, you know, we feel like
the protection kind of lines up well into that one, pairing it
with Justice in that, you know, both kind of have some innate
damage in their kit. So I, I don't think we'll be too
(23:45):
starved for damage, but well, wehave, you know, some unpaired
stuff we can move ghost spider into like aggression if we need
to or, you know, do some other stuff if that just isn't working
for us. So.
Right. And then did you seriously
(24:06):
consider pool at all for any of them?
We have not just because at one point one of us needs to play
pool. Yeah, I seem to recall from
previous conversations Pool was not really a.
Manchester. In your wheelhouse.
Yeah, I it, it kind of came out when I was taking a break from
(24:27):
the game and I just haven't really gone back to look at it.
So I at some point here I need to just go dig it out and take a
look at the cards and and figureout, you know, try Deadpool or
figure out somebody else that looks good in Pool.
(24:47):
Maybe just pull a deck off of Marvel CDB for somebody.
Well, a thing that's interestingthat Kakita Jamie pointed out is
that the in the red Skull match up the a lot of those side
schemes that got added to to ourversion of it do have negative
icons. So they they feed into a lot of
(25:09):
the pool stuff. Yeah.
So there's kind of potentially some neat opportunities there.
Personally, in Pool, you know, my favorite thing is to have
laser swords. So just heroes that have lots of
access to readying themselves and then you know, So if you're,
if you're ever looking to play some pool, I would definitely
(25:31):
recommend trying just to find a laser swords deck that looks
enticing to you all. Right, I'll have to also look
into that because I, I should, you know, learn how to play it
just because it is a game aspectin the game, I think a lot.
Of people are. Strong.
So yeah. I mean, honestly, at this point,
(25:52):
the biggest thing is it's just such a limited card pool.
There's only a few, there's onlya few things that you really try
to do with it. And you know, maybe some heroes
have cards that synergize well with them, but in general it
just feels like it, unless you're trying to be a complete
chaos agent and really just do the full negative icon stuff
(26:15):
that the terrorizes the whole table.
There's only a few things you really do.
Listen, don't, don't put it pastme.
I mean, I think you got to try it at some point.
Yeah, I the last game we played in four player, I built the
leadership deck where the whole purpose was just to sneak attack
big allies in and then go down swinging them at the villain.
(26:42):
It didn't go very well, but it was pretty funny when I yeah, it
was pretty funny when I threw a a hero or did like 2 activations
and threw the hero at the villain.
So. Or at least I thought it was.
Yeah. Well, as I tell, as I tell my
kids, the the most important person to find your jokes funny
(27:03):
is you. Yeah.
One thing I want to loop back toon on your prep, a couple people
I spoke to had very exhaustive spreadsheets kind of laying out
everything. Do you, do you two kind of
really get into the nitty grittyor how do you do that part of
(27:24):
the prep for yourselves? Yeah.
So my, my draft prep was pretty low this time.
I kind of just, we went through and we ordered the heroes by
like our particular ranking of them, you know, it.
Last time we had tried to like look at people's previous picks,
stuff like that, try to predict what we thought, you know, would
maybe happen. And this time, with it all being
(27:48):
heroes, it was like there is no no previous data to look at or
anything, you know? Yeah, as.
Far as what goes where we think these heroes are strong, I would
have never guessed like X-23 went second for I I mean, she's
strong and I think she's really good, but you know, some of the
remaining heroes on the board I think would have gone before
(28:12):
her. However, I got really bored one
day a couple weeks ago after we had the draft.
So I went through and I actuallybroke down every villain deck
into like maximum threat that can be put on threat added per
turn, number of minions, number of side schemes, what the side
(28:32):
schemes do. Any boost effects any like bad
treacheries we want to avoid andfor all all four of them.
And then just kind of use that when deck building to look at
like, OK, there's a whole bunch of boost effects we'd like to
avoid in this one. Maybe we should consider, you
know, target acquired or maybe ghost spiders a little more
(28:55):
value in here because she can cancel a treachery, right?
And then completely ignored it all for Mojo and just tried to
kill him in like 5 times. So.
Yeah, I, I do. I do enjoy that type of prep as
well. It's a thing in solo Champions
(29:17):
League. I, I definitely have, have often
done and then other times I usually just tell, tell myself
I'm just going to play it a couple times and see where the
pain points are. Mm hmm.
And then, you know, inevitably, five games later, something
shows up that I had kind of forgotten was in there because I
didn't really scrutinize the theencounter deck.
(29:40):
Yeah, I will say Paparazzi mightbe one of my least favorite
guards now in a building deck and the one of the, oh, I forget
which one, one of the games, theCaptain Marvel discard all the
(30:01):
lightnings in your hand card. Yeah, hit me and I4 of my 5-6
cards in my hand were lightnings.
OK. And that that felt really bad.
I I do very much appreciate you started with with Mojo and then
(30:22):
looped around to the the start. Mm hmm, so.
But have you? Have you, you haven't even
actually really started working on Ultron, so.
That's no, we short order, yeah.We're trying to set up a time
this week to get together and gothrough and look at it and do
it, Yeah. And then hopefully there's an.
(30:45):
Extension coming so. Yeah, yeah, I know it's it
sounds weird to say that we voted for the two weeks
extension when we already completed one of the rounds, but
maybe completing ground first orfour first wasn't the smartest
choice. Right, right from.
A time management standpoint. That didn't really lean into
what you needed. Yeah, well, no.
(31:07):
I actually, I think TJJJ was asking me about, you know, can
we play, you know, from a kind of a due date perspective, can
we play the fourth round first? So kind of similar to you.
Cool. Well, Sloth, thank you so much
for coming on and, and sharing your, your draft experience and,
(31:31):
and all your thoughts. I think it's been really fun to
hear it because you know, everybody has such a interesting
mix of heroes. Really being able to think about
each of the, the villains and how you're going to attack.
It has been has been great to chat with people about.
Yeah, I I really enjoyed the thewide breadth of heroes this
season. You know picking 4 heroes was
(31:53):
gave a lot of choices and stuff so.
Cool. And and listeners, thanks for
for tuning in and we'll catch you next time.
Ryan. Awesome.
Thank you. Thank you.
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