September 2, 2025 • 64 mins
Welcome to Road to Knowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast. This episode I talk, one-on-one, with sl0th and Grrreg about their MODOK League Season 04 drafts, their early games in this season and their experiences in Season 3.5.
For more detailed overview of these two seasons:
- https://modokleague.github.io/s3.5/
- https://modokleague.github.io/s4/
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 going to be talking
about the Modoc League Season 4 draft, as well as touching a bit
on season 3.5, which was an experimental season that took
place in between season 3 and 4.I'm your host Josh Roux, and
(00:29):
joining me this episode a bit later for one-on-one chats about
their season 4 draft and a little bit about season 3.5 are
Sloth and then Greg. So for those of you who are new
listeners or who have been skipping those episodes, tell
you a little bit about Modoc league.
It's a two hero league where teams and they're called couples
(00:55):
with AK in in this league. That's what the K in Modoc
stands for. They draft heroes and often
aspects from a pool against the other couples in a fantasy
sports style draft. And then the couples take those
up against the scenarios that I've created and it's, you know,
usually a sequence of challenges.
(01:17):
There's a bunch of new changes that happen in season 4 trying
to increase the accessibility inseason 3.5.
I piloted a new scoring system that has persisted into season
4, and that is that each scenario has 6 progressively
harder difficulty levels where the couple earn their points by
(01:41):
defeating the highest difficultylevel.
Doesn't matter how messy the board is, how many turns it
takes, any of that, they just have to get a win.
And so it's really about kind ofthat increasing difficulty in
climbing that mountain and trying to get to the highest
quality that you can. As part of that, I created a
(02:02):
friendly neighborhood division and a gauntlet division, which
are the non competitive and competitive divisions
respectively. The main difference between
these is how the scoring actually works.
Where in the friendly neighborhood division couples
can have as many attempts as they like at each difficulty in
their request to score their points for that highest
(02:23):
difficulty defeated. They don't have to distinguish
between their practice games or their official attempts they
because they can just try as many times as they like.
In contrast, in the Gauntlet division couples have a maximum
of one attempt at each difficulty level.
So you know, those couples will tend to engage in practice games
before their initial attempts because they they're restricted
(02:45):
in their total number of attempts.
It's possible to fail at, for example, level 4 and then still
go try level 5 and succeed thereand you would still get 5 points
for defeating that higher level.So anyway, these changes were
all pretty well received by the community.
The current scoring and divisionformat persisted through season
4. I'm going to tell you a little
(03:07):
bit more about Season 4 and actually a little bit more about
Season 3.5 and then we will jumpinto the one-on-one chats.
So Season 3.5 was the CRE preconparty and it was just a one
round season. And this has happened in
between. And the idea is I'm introducing
(03:28):
print and play content and some deck building constraints or
changes or whatever it is. And this was Claw with the
modular set that features Ronin and the print and Play 1.
And then the, you know, 6 difficulty levels went kind of
(03:51):
just having that as you do. And then as you start creeping
up in difficulty, you're gettinginto standard 2 and Expert 2
sets. The formidable Foe environment
is introduced. The Cree Supremacy side scheme,
which is part of the campaign shows up at the highest
difficulty levels and we also get Sonic Converter added as
(04:13):
well at the easier levels for a little bit of a boost for for
the couples. People can have access to the
Milano without having to take the rest of that modular set.
So a nice range of difficulties.Nobody managed to tackle or
defeat level 6, but level 5 was was in fact defeated by a couple
(04:39):
teams. One of the teams is actually,
what are the folks we're going to be talking to?
So Sloth's team managed to defeat that.
Season 4 is a something's missing season.
And so it's the idea that something that's usually
required is not actually presentin round 4.
(05:02):
O1 dude, where's my ship? We have the Brotherhood of
Badoon that's just commonly known as Drang.
We have Goblin Nation, which is a modular set suggested by
Astradar for for this scenario specifically, which is pulling
one of the side schemes and a bunch of the goblins out of
mutagen formula. We have Extreme Risk which is
(05:26):
the Thunderbolts Modular set with Joystick Standard three and
Expert one, and the thing I justdescribed for you is more or
less the base difficulty for about Level 3, except for the
Shipcommandmodular is removed completely from this.
So you have no access to the Shipcommandmodular, which is
(05:46):
often helping you by being able to take off large amounts of
threat. Remember that Drang adds 2
threats per player, so that threat really put on.
And then additionally we have that the regular nemesis sets
are not actually used. Instead we use the Iceman
(06:07):
Nemesis set and the Badoon Headhunter as a nemesis set and
the the teams get to assign those to their two heroes.
So that's what that scenario is all about, team.
Our couples have access at the two lowest levels to the Milano,
but beyond that they don't have access to it.
(06:27):
They get the badoon at levels 5 and 6.
The Badoon blitz size scheme from the campaign shows up.
Drang actually gets the InfinityGauntlet at levels four and five
as well and or five and six. And then at level 6, I change
the thresholds for the counters that make things pop to go a
(06:49):
little bit lower. So it gets it's really nasty.
Crosser bones is round four O 2.This is Crossbones with
Deathstrike, the supersonic. That's one of the Thunderbolts
modulars, the hounds modular andthen standard 3IN expert one.
(07:12):
And what's missing is the regular experimental weapons
modular set. Instead we add the heat seeking
missiles from supersonic, the blasters from supersonic, the
admantium upgrades from the deathstrike one, and then Ahab's
energy spear from hounds and theother admantium upgrades.
That's in Deathstrike gets shoveled into the encounter deck
(07:37):
at the easier difficulty levels,couples actually have access to
improved condition upgrades and then kind of what I described as
Level 3. And then as we go up from there,
we get that, sorry, Crossbones gets an additional attachment
that gets added right at the beginning and we go through
(08:01):
level 4, the formidable flow on the standard side.
So that's just giving steady to all enemies.
And since it's on the standard side, it doesn't have the extra
acceleration icon. And at level 5 that switches to
super strength, which also just gives the villains steady, but
also gives them plus one and then flight as the flight
(08:25):
attachment shows up at level 6. So that is what the scenario
looks like. We also have missing Nemesis
sets again and the replacement nemesis sets for this one are
the Hawkeye nemesis set. That's the one with Crossfire
and then the running interference one for for the
other heroes. So you assign one of those to
(08:46):
one hero and the other to the other.
So that is you know what the overall season looks like for
this. The draft for this one was we
had four groups. There's two groups of heroes,
two aspect groups. In each case there was three
(09:06):
more choices added to each of those groups than what was
needed for drafting. And then each couple would draft
2 heroes and two aspects. And again, it's like a fantasy
draft style where a team or a couple will draft from one of
the groups a hero or an aspect. They can't go back and draft
(09:26):
again from that group later. It's a Snake style.
So then as you get to the bottomof the initial first round draft
order, you come back through in reverse order.
And then by the end, every team has two heroes and two aspects
that they're welcome to mix and match however they like and then
go take on those challenges. There were no banned heroes at
(09:50):
all. And these drafts, actually, this
draft actually progressed in a really interesting way because
we had a full 12 teams for the Gauntlet Division, which is what
we're going to talk to Sloth about a little bit.
And then a full 12 teams for theFriendly Neighborhood Division,
which is what we're going to talk to Greg about.
And these, these did proceed quite a bit differently from
(10:12):
each other. The Gauntlet Division had it
through the 1st 2 rounds, it wasall heroes except for three
aspects got taken an aggression,a leadership, and then another
aggression. And then of course that means it
(10:33):
flip-flopped. And then it was all most
completely aspects after that for around 3:00 and 4:00.
And then in the Friendly Neighborhood division, well the
hero that first was Maria Hill. In the Gauntlet Division, the
hero that went last was Star Lord in the gauntlet division,
or sorry, in the friendly neighborhood division.
(10:54):
So this was the non competitive division.
The team that had the first pickwent with leadership, so they
actually took an aspect right out the gate.
And then we saw a bit of a mix and match of people taking
aspects versus taking heroes. So it went, you know, aspect,
(11:15):
hero, hero, aspect, aspect, hero, aspect like that.
And by the 3rd pick of the second round, all the
leaderships were gone. In contrast, in the Gauntlet
division, the last leadership didn't go until the 2nd last
pick of the entire round. So these ones really proceeded
(11:40):
quite a bit differently and thatwas really, really fun and and
interesting. Nobody decided to pick pool.
So I think of the future, I'm going to change how pool gets
incorporated so that people don't feel like pool is kind of
staring them down and they don'twant it because clearly nobody
wants to go out of their way to to take pool.
So that's the summary of what the round was like.
(12:01):
We are going to jump into our chats with Sloth and Greg and
joining us is Sloth. Ryan, how are you doing?
Pretty good, pretty good. Enjoying this long weekend with
no plans for me, so it's been nice to take a break and a
breather and relax. A thing of beauty.
(12:21):
We we are currently a couple weeks, I guess, or somewhere in
that neighborhood into season 4 of Modoc League.
And I wanted to talk to you about the draft that happened
and what's been going on. But maybe just because we didn't
have a chance to talk about season 3.5 at all on the pod.
(12:42):
Let me loop back to that a bit. So you you participated in
season 3.5 for, for the listeners, season 3.5.
The idea was I wanted to start bringing in some print and play
content and doing kind of a little offseason, one round
season that will happen with some deck building restrictions
(13:03):
and other things. That is a little easier for
people to not feel FOMO if they don't actually participate, but
to for those that like to continue having those challenges
to to participate in that. So you and Chase were were one
of the participating couples in that one.
You want to tell us a little bitabout how the that offseason
(13:25):
challenge went? Yeah.
So it kind of fell at a time where when we talked about it
after the draft, we both had very little time that we like
lined up in free time for us. We did the draft honestly on our
board of like looking at everybody we knew we wanted
(13:47):
someone that had a leadership pre con and then the other pick
was chases and we kind of avoided Captain Marvel just
cause we've we've had a thing every round where we're really
trying to avoid heroes we've previously drafted.
Fair enough. We are kind of using this as a
(14:09):
way to play heroes we don't playas much either and just, you
know, get some more reps on themand try to understand their kit
and stuff better. So we went with Magneto, who was
probably our our top pick for that potential draft going in.
And then I think we got Jubilee on the like return pick who
(14:32):
Chase really enjoys and we thought had a fairly decent
justice pre con. So we got together for one game
and I talked to Chase into playing it on five stars instead
of four like he wanted to. And we somehow managed to kind
of just slug through it long enough to get to where we were
(14:54):
ahead and I could start kind of triple or activating at least a
turn as as Magneto. I had kind of switched over to I
wish I would have ran more of them than I ran in the final
deck list. But like you got this to ready
me couple make the calls, stuff like that to really kind of bump
(15:18):
my basic activations right and you know, just activate two or
three times. I had a utopia in there, stuff
like that. He Magneto readies himself once
per turn. So, you know, we were really
able then to kind of just push through and win it fairly
quickly once we got the board under control.
(15:40):
Right and got this just cause a lot of people might be a card
they don't play with very much. So this is A1 cost event that is
also a tactic and it says hero response.
After you exhaust your hero to make a basic thwart or attack,
discard an ally you control. Add that ally's matching power
to your hero's power. For this use readier hero.
Yeah, so it was just another ready for Magneto.
(16:02):
I think it actually came in Magneto's kit in his precon
deck. It was a card I hadn't really
looked at much before this deck.And then a lot of the allies
that came in kind of, you know, as the allies that came with
Magneto had kind of a base 22 orclose to that stat line anyways.
(16:25):
So he was kind of always gettinga decent boost out of it, you
know, for that attack and or Thor, whatever it was, and and
then moving on. So cool.
And yeah, I mean, I guess I didn't explain the the challenge
all that thoroughly, but so the idea was that we had Claw with
the Ronin Modular. There was a print and play one
(16:48):
that was released during the pandemic called Creed Fanatic
where there's boost effects on all on so many of these cards
that the boost effect is to bring the card in play.
Yeah. And and then so that couples
with claw, who's giving you 2 boost cards per attack to very
(17:09):
to do its best to try to bring some of that stuff into play.
And then as you were mentioning,the deck building restriction
was that people had to start with a pre con and then they
could go down to 1 copy of anything in the pre con, but not
fewer than than that. So if there was an ally in
(17:29):
there, you were stuck with that ally.
There's 3 copies of a certain event, like let's say you got
this. You had to keep a minimum of 1.
So there was a little bit of deck building flexibility, but
not a ton. Yeah, yeah.
I will say one of the cards thatreally, really stood out for us
was the Raft in in Chase's Justice deck There all three of
(17:51):
the big minions, including run and we kind of just stuck under
the Raft, right. And then because we had, we had
made the conscious choice that we were only ever putting the
three of them in there, that we never cycled them out, right.
Yeah. So we only had to deal with
Ronan once and I think both of our the two other big minions
(18:16):
that were in there ended up under there.
I can't remember I'm off the topof my head right now.
It might have just been both of our nemesis.
Yeah, OK, cool. So, yeah, good, good to hear
about that. Offseason 1, I think that I
think that worked well. I don't know what where are you
(18:41):
at right now? I mean, in terms of does an
offseason thing like this feel like a thing that you can just
let go of or go engage with depending on where you're at or
you just going to feel always drawn to participate in whatever
gets thrown at you? So I think for both Chase and I,
the draft is one of the highlights, yes.
(19:01):
So we're probably going to take every chance to draft we can.
OK. I think there's a comment in the
Discord the other day about likepeople didn't even necessarily
need to play, they just do drafts to draft.
Yeah. And I think I'm right there with
them, so. Yeah, well, I have to put some
sort of clothing on the draft soit feels like there's a purpose,
(19:23):
right? Yeah.
But yeah, there's. So this new season has been
actually great and we'll, you know, we'll talk about it a
little bit more and I'll do an intro at the start of the show
to kind of let the listeners know a little bit more about
what, what everything is involved in this season.
But the, you know, we've been having lots of folks sharing
(19:43):
their play results on the discord and really kind of
seeing how things are going. And we've got lots of folks that
got very early 6 star victories,much to my disappointment, I'm
sure their excitement. But I, I want, I kind of want
that six star to be. You know, very, very rare.
So I guess I got to crank up thedifficulty knob just a little
(20:05):
higher. What are you going to do it?
Really surprised me, just like how quickly and then the number
afterwards of six star victories.
Yeah. So, yeah, why don't you take us
through and what your kind of overall draft strategy was.
We had 12 teams in the gauntlet or competitive division, and
(20:31):
this is this is the one where you can have a maximum of one
try at each difficulty level andthen you get points according to
the highest difficulty that you you ultimately defeat and you
were 8 out of 12. Yes, yeah, you know we
definitely like to sit more in that middle back end of the pack
for drafting for both of us I think.
(20:52):
So it was really, really a nice to kind of sit there in that in
that pack. We didn't do as much this time
as far as like charting out everything and like what the
villains did and everything. We just didn't have the time
between the two of us. We did kind of make our priority
list of who we wanted. And again, it it did kind of
(21:15):
play around, you know, like someof the people we've already
played kind of just got slid farther down.
Like Captain Marvel was in the Pool A and Miss Marvel is one of
my favorite heroes in Pool 2 or B, but you know, both of them,
we kind of slid down our rankings just because they we've
already played them. Right.
(21:35):
And then what? What sort of things, what sort
of things are you trying to prioritize?
Like, you know, looking at the scenarios, what things stood out
to you as you know, things you need to pay attention to for
what you might be drafting in a hero.
Yeah, We wanted really strong kind of just generic threat
removal between the two and their kit with the minions that
(21:55):
are in both Badoon and then a little bit the other one.
We wanted to be able to have theability to grab aggression if
needed. As a second aspect, the plan was
always if we could get it to kind of grab leadership and just
see how the draft went as far as, you know, where our pick
order was or rounds or groups. We both really liked Captain
(22:22):
America into it. He was probably our our number
one overall pick for the well, actually Maria Hill was our
number one overall. I think Maria Hill's bordering
on broken. Yes, agreed.
The stuff you can do is just silly with her.
But that obviously went pick 11,so it's not to be.
(22:45):
So Captain America was our second pick.
We actually had a brief discussion about just taking
Thor for the minion slaying and ultimately chose to go with
Captain America in hopes that Thor fell back to us, which did
not happen. I think he was picked 2 after us
by lack of Little B. We both happen to know Spartacus
(23:10):
and we've been playing with him quite a bit outside of this as
well and should have known that there's no way Thor would have
ever made it to us because it wasn't even passed him.
But like that was that was an oversight on our part.
So we we took Captain mayor because we figured he has, you
know, pretty strong and consistent activations and
Thornton in his kit. So we should be able to at least
help manage it. And then on top of it just has
(23:34):
like a good kit. I think if I looked right on
like starting on five star is it?
The second scenario is always steady if I'm not mistaken.
Yes. Once they get, or maybe once
it's four-star, once they get formative, both foe for
(23:56):
Crossbones. Yeah.
So like the the stun that kind of cause, another one we would
have really looked at would havebeen like Miles Morales for just
villain control. Yeah.
But it definitely he also got taken right after us, but it it
definitely kind of decentivized that pick.
(24:16):
Just having the, you know, wanting to push for those higher
rounds and having steady on the board.
I think in my opinion, and I I could be wrong.
I know people are kind of mixed on her.
Magic probably is the strongest hero in Pool 2 or hero pool 2.
(24:38):
Right, so so that that pool to real quick recap of what was
what was in there was Colossus, Domino, Hawkeye, Iron Man,
Jubilee, Magic, Miss Marvel, Rocket, She Hulk, Spider Ham,
Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider Woman, Justice, Thor,
Wasp. Yeah, I mean, she's definitely
up there. I think you know Spider Ham and
(25:00):
in certain scenarios, Miles. Yeah.
Yeah, but I don't think it's wrong.
I don't think it's wrong to say magic was the most powerful one
there. Yeah.
So we decided on the flip then with her still being available
that we were just going to pick magic there 'cause we had talks
about taking our first. Our plan, the 1st place
tentatively had been take Cap ifhe was there or whoever we
(25:24):
thought was strongest on the board and then take probably
leadership in Round 2. But I think at that point only
like 3 aspects had gone off the board.
And only one of them was leadership.
And only one of them was leadership.
So we decided to risk it and just solidify a really strong
duo and go with, well, worst case we can make it work in
almost any aspect right between the two of them.
(25:49):
Yeah. And there was, there was 6
copies of leadership all together in the draft.
And so at that point there was only one and you were looking at
5:00. And yeah, the way the draft was
going, it really was hard to tell if there was going to be a
run on leadership or what. Yeah, it, you know, it's one of
those where it's like any, I really thought at any point like
Aggression could just have a runwhen it got down to like 3
copies of Aggression left there.Right.
(26:12):
And then aggression, just, yeah,aggression just stayed around
until we, you know, it lasted through US in Round 4.
And I was, I was really surprised.
But so then it became, you know,we picked leadership I think is
one of the last maybe 3 remaining leadership picks, 4
(26:34):
remaining leadership picks, I don't remember.
And then let it slide and just chose to go.
We thought both of them have really strong Fort in their kits
so having one of them an aggression for minion slaying
just made a lot of sense. Right.
So. And yeah, we we had 4, maybe a
(27:00):
little bit more of the 12 teams being new to the league.
And you know, those folks often can throw wrenches into the meta
where you think you kind of understand how people are going
to prioritize things. And then new folks, they have
their own set of, you know, obviously everybody has their
own set of priorities. But you know, once you've
(27:22):
drafted a few times, you kind ofhave sense of how people might
prioritize things and you can anticipate things a little bit.
But the but the new folks reallymade it feel sometimes almost
random. Yeah, yeah.
And. That was exciting, some of the.
Heroes that went early, I think really made sense.
They're good, you know, strong. Yeah.
(27:45):
But I definitely like some of them.
I just definitely wasn't expecting like that kind of a
pick there. Right.
But that's also part of what makes a draft so fun is, you
know, having to pivot or having to rethink it or, you know, what
do we change our valuation on things just because they're not
going or they are going, you know, so.
And, and how much you can hope that something might actually
(28:08):
drop to you because of these types of unanticipated picks,
right? You're like, OK, well, you know,
there's only two things that seem really strong left in this
pool and a whole bunch of peoplethat still need stuff from this
pool ahead of me. But I can, I can hope.
Yeah, hold on hope. One last good pick.
(28:31):
And sometimes it sometimes it works out.
I mean, yeah. So you you kind of had this
amazing. You got Captain America, you got
magic. So these are two heroes that you
kind of put at the top of, you know, top two at least in each
of those pools. Yeah, got a leadership which is,
you know, I already know for youa top aspect pick.
(28:51):
Yeah. And you were hoping for
aggression to really help with these minions and you you
managed to have the second last one fall in your lap.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah.
So it, I would say it really worked out well for us as far as
like what we hoped for. Like I said, maybe as far as
like picks we would have made different.
(29:11):
Like if Maria Hill had been on the board 8, which I don't think
ever is going to be a case, I definitely would have taken her.
And then we probably would have taken Thor over Magic.
Just he seems like he'd do really good into these two
scenarios. Right.
Other than that, I mean, that was probably, if we could have
(29:32):
drawn up a draft for ourselves, you know, one of the top drafts
we would have drawn up for ourselves so.
Well, I love it. Yes, thanks.
Thanks for sharing. I know you, you and Chase
haven't had a chance to actuallyplay any so we can't really
check in on how these are going,but I'm going to talk to to Greg
after I have a chance talking toyou.
(29:53):
So and I know he's had a little bit of practice on some of the
stuff. So we'll hear a little bit about
how somebody's round has been going.
Josh Reed junior and I have not really had a chance to play yet
either. We had we had I got the
innovation ultimate. I don't know if you ever played
the board game well, card game innovation, but they re released
and revised a whole bunch of thesets and expansions and
(30:18):
everything. And so Josh Reed junior and I
played quite a bit of it over our holidays.
This summer I haven't played it,but it sounds like it could be
interesting so. It's it's a, it's an absurdly
tactical card tableau building card game where you you can kind
(30:42):
of never depend on the board state the next time it's your
turn to be how it was the previous turn.
So you really have to figure outhow to just kind of make use of
what you have in front of you tocontinue progressing the game.
And some people it just feels too random.
And other people kind of once they know how all the
interactions work, it just feelslike this amazing problem
(31:02):
solving that you have to do every single turn.
So it's pretty can be pretty satisfying, but it could be a
little bit off putting for some folks.
Basically, yeah. Sounds interesting, might have
to try to talk Chase into it sometime it.
It is it is a game that is available on board game arena.
OK, if if you do play games online at all.
(31:23):
So that's kind of a way you can always just try it out to see if
it tickles your fancy in any way.
Yeah, it'd be a good idea to tryit because we we do mostly play
online, so. There you go.
Yeah. Beauty OK, well sloth, thank you
so much for for dropping in to to share your 3.5 and four
(31:43):
season drafting and and your experiences overall.
Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, talk to you again.
Talk. To you later.
And joining us now very, very frequent visitor, Greg, how you
doing? I'm so honored to be here as a
(32:03):
two person couple. My first time, long time.
First time, yeah, but first timeis a two person.
Yeah, this is exciting. So you are kind of relatively
new to the lead. You joined us for the offseason
Challenge Season 3.5, which was also where I introduced this
(32:27):
notion of what is now called in a friendly neighborhood division
or mode and the gauntlet mode. So the non competitive and the
competitive where the main thingwith the non competitive is you
can try each challenge as many times as you want and if you
manage to win, you get points for that and you get, you know,
whatever the highest level of challenge you beat.
(32:48):
You. You get that many points for
that highest level and you can just try as many times as you
want. So there's a lot less pressure
and you just kind of go in and you can tune your decks while
you're trying to play against it.
And sometimes you just like out and keep going, right?
Yep. You, you joined US 3.5.
Tell us a little bit about overall that experience.
(33:08):
Yeah, I mean, I was jealous about the drafts.
You know, we even did going around, right, right.
We even did that fun draft that we did on this podcast in for
SCL that was just a for fun draft, right?
You know, who could draft the the the best set of heroes.
And so just drafting random stuff is always super fun.
(33:30):
And this it's, it's so much moreinteresting to me than a fantasy
football. So I was eager to, to play with
that. And also the, the, the friendly
neighborhood idea I think is also appealing because I love
the play of champions, but I'm not hyper competitive.
So, you know, just kind of doingit is more fun than, you know,
(33:53):
winning it to me. So that's why I thought 3.5 was
a great way to ease in, especially because it was also
the pre con round and just a single challenge.
So the commitment was relativelylow and I had a great time.
Even though I sort of eventuallyhit my head against the wall too
many times. I just was happy with the three
stars I ended up getting. But but I had AI had a ton of
(34:15):
fun with the draft and then I itit it inspired me to to like
perhaps over prepare for for round 4.
We'll. Prepare.
We'll get into it, but. Yeah, yeah, I will.
I will look forward to hearing about that.
So yeah, you, you ended up with in in in 3.5 you.
(34:37):
Spider Woman and and A War Machine were my 2.
Right. And and so again, this was you
know, you were allowed to modifythe pre con, but you kind of had
to go in. So you had you were locked in
with aggression and justice on on Spider Woman and then
leadership with with war machine.
And right, this is a scenario that flipping down wasn't overly
(35:03):
prohibitive. So, you know, the one of the
biggest challenges with War Machine is just kind of playing,
playing in a scenario where you can't flip down reasonably often
because him keeping those counters up is so important.
Yeah, exactly. And and I the main reason I took
(35:24):
him was I was I think he was theonly hero left at the time that
had a leadership pre con. So it was almost more for the
aspect than the hero. I think in retrospect, I
probably would have done something differently because
war Machine, I think unless you have like really good ability to
lock down a threat. I hide some but but not, you
know, not as strong. And, and, and so I had, I had a
(35:48):
good time at at the lower levelswith that, but then I, I, I
forget what specific card gets introduced in, in a four-star
difficulty, but it was just killing me.
So, so in retrospect, yeah, I think, I think a shiny bobble of
leadership was something actually I ended up avoiding in
in round 4, but I probably wouldhave gone for a stronger hero
(36:11):
and and maybe just, you know, dealt with protection or
whatever other aspect I would have got.
Right. We, well, we, so yeah, we got
the formidable faux environment which is adding an acceleration
counter and daddy and then and then his Sonic converter
attachment also comes into play.So kind of going from not having
(36:31):
those things to having those things is definitely a decent
jump. Yep, Yep.
Yeah, I think it was the Sonic converter that was just, I
forget what ends up that doing, but it it was it was it.
Stuns you if you take any attackdamage from him.
That yeah, that was it, yeah. That that was really hard to
sort of claw out from and and get get rid of early on.
(36:53):
And then I was just in a hole. Especially like, because War
Machine is such a build hero, you know, there's build stuff
for a Spider Woman, but she can she can kind of live on events a
little easier early on. So yeah, it it it was again, it
was it was great to get draft experience and a fun challenge.
The other thing about Modoc, obviously, is that I don't play
(37:17):
a lot of two handed back When I played Arkham a lot, it was it
was all I played because true solo and Arkham is just too
punishingly hard and kind of frustratingly hard.
So to make Arkham work, you kindof need to play two or one time.
I played three handed, which waswhich was something, but
champions work so well solo. I usually don't do it, but it it
(37:38):
that and going to the kind of heroes sort of opened my eyes to
how you build decks differently for multiplayer and how you can
you can, you know, you know, chump luck for each other and
some things that are just kind of basic multiplayer strategies
that just hadn't been baked in my brain for being a solo
player. Right.
And then do you, do you play with physical cards when you're
(38:00):
playing? Here, Yeah, yeah, I do.
I, I have two decks next to me and basically if, if I have
about 5 minute break, I'm able to kind of jump on and play a
hand each, you know. So I kind of have always a a
game set up in my office off to the side and you know, I'm just
able to tinker with it when I have a little downtime.
(38:22):
Right, you have you have a side desk or something if I remember
correctly. Exactly.
Yeah, I got my work desk and I got my Marvel Champions desk.
And so is this, is this a place where you've used lots of little
stands and things like that to kind of be able to use the space
better? Or is it just actually a nice
big space? It's it's big enough I can fit
(38:43):
mostly to, you know, to mats side by side on it.
The thing I've really come to love recently is I bought some
weighted counter dice, I think from, from burger tokens, maybe
sells them. And they're the kind of dice,
they're six sided dice, but theyhave little pluses and minuses
that tell you, you know, what direction to go to, to ratchet
(39:06):
up or down as a counter that cleans up the boards so well.
They're so easy to see the the fact they're weighted means they
don't really jostle at all. And they're, they're so like
just, they just feel so good in your hands.
You know, it's that like board game premium bit get bit thing
to get you. So that, but that also condenses
the space. I don't have a lot of like
(39:27):
random tokens on there. I I, I make the got a lot of use
out of it. The one thing I can't use is is
I have this mat from you saw it kind of heroes where you can
pack a lot of carts together. And, and, and the mat has a like
a way to shift up to show if something is ready or exhausted.
So you don't have to turn it side by side.
But I don't have I can't use those mats on when I do 2
(39:48):
handed. But I figured it out.
It's it's it's still enough space.
OK, yeah, we we have at our at our house.
So when I'm playing with Josh Rd.
Junior, we have a table that thetop lifts off of and you can
play underneath. So we, you can just our dining
room table. We just, you know, pull that off
and play our games and then put it back when it's time to
(40:08):
actually eat. Right.
I have the same table for my kitchen table downstairs and my
wife and I have a legacy game underneath that that the last
time we played is like March. So.
So it's like I either have to put that game away and say that
we're probably not going to get back to it or we need to finish
it, but. OK, well, fair enough.
(40:31):
So well, let's let's check in with season 4.
So you were saying you did some preparation for the the draft
and I was just going to check inand remind myself.
So you out of 12 teams in the friendly neighborhood draft or
were you were second? Yes, which which definitely
influenced my strategy because Iknew I'd get whatever I wanted
(40:51):
pretty much the first pick and then I was going to be suffering
in the second pick and the last pick.
So yeah, I came into it knowing,knowing I had to to work around
that. OK, so yeah, tell tell me more
about what you were trying to doand all the heart breaks that
you suffered. Yeah, it was.
I think the biggest heartbreak was just sort of letting go of
(41:14):
leadership before I even startedbecause I, I heard from other
drafts how much it went and it sort of, you know, surprisingly
went even harder, I think in thefriendly neighborhood draft than
in Gauntlet. So I said, well, let's the
heroes mean a lot. So let's focus on heroes.
And then I'll just, you know, sort of play with what aspects
are available when I got there. And so I, I took the, the two
(41:39):
groups of heroes and I, I pulled2 sets of stats.
I pulled the villain theory tears because I saw you use that
in your bot ranking. And then I also pulled the win
percentage from stats that are on board game geek that aren't
perfect, but are, you know, not a bad indicator of sort of the
quality of a hero. And some are pretty have pretty
(42:03):
high consensus. But occasionally, you know,
villain theory would be, you know, down on a hero, but the
stats would be would be higher or vice versa.
So you occasionally would get a little bit of different
perspectives. But what it showed me was there
was about three to five heroes in Group 2 that I'd be pretty
unhappy with if I ended up with them.
(42:25):
So I said, well, because I want,but in, in, in in contrast,
Group 1 was pretty good. You know, there wasn't any
really hero I would would have been awful to have.
And plus, I knew I'd have my choice of maybe 3-4 or five
leftover if everyone took from Group 2 as their first hero.
And actually a lot of people diddo that.
(42:46):
I think maybe people saw the same thing I saw, because I
looked at the first round of draft picks and pretty much
every hero except for Silk was aGroup two hero.
So I think people did see that Group 1 is as a deeper bench
than two. So you pick your stars out of
two and then you're fine with whoever you get in one.
(43:07):
So, so I, I kind of worked it that way.
I, I basically picked my top 2INgroup 2 because I knew I had
second pick. I knew I'd get one of those two.
And then I ranked the Group 1 heroes.
And then the plan was just to take the highest one left who
who you know in Group 1 when it came back to me, and then work
on aspects from there. So what I want to check in on
(43:29):
this group too. I won't do the entire list of
what's there, but I'm so the theundrafted heroes because there
was three extra per group for this draft.
So the the undrafted ones were Hawkeye, Hulk, and Iceman.
Who else were you hoping to avoid that was in that group?
Who made you think? Yeah, I mean Colossus just
(43:52):
because the hand size and I've never really had a ton of fun
with Colossus. I didn't really want him Falcon
2 new and like early reads on Falcon was was a little
underwhelming, I think. And I'm also, even though a lot
of people do like Cherie, I I realize my loss aversion play
style makes me piloting Cherie atrouble because I don't want to
(44:13):
get rid of those upgrades, but yet you must get rid of the
upgrades for her to actually be good.
So, so, you know, if I, if I ended up with Sharia, I'd be
fine and I could have probably made Colossus work, but but
those were the ones I probably were, were saying there's just
too many heroes I'd have to sacrifice, you know, to get got
(44:34):
you. But the rest of them were quite
good. I thought, you know, like even,
you know, Black Pantry, T'challaor Wolverine, like I'd be happy
with any of those, even, you know, maybe even Iceman.
I'm not 100% sure but but I justknew there was enough bad apples
in that bunch to to pull my top 2 which and and so basically I
(44:54):
went in thinking Magic or Storm were kind of the ones I thought
were the most versatile and could do the most and so pairing
them with any aspect would wouldhave been fine.
And so I played with Storm recently when I went to Gen.
Con this year and I played in the Loki event and I saw this
guy who, who was a brand new player, but he had bought Storm
(45:17):
and he was just doing anything he could with Storm.
And so I said, well, that's shows you how versatile Storm
is. Even like a brand new player can
make her, you know, sing pretty well.
But I hadn't played magic at Honand I knew she was great.
So I, I, I went with her when I,because I did have the choice,
DJJJ and Jared took leadership as their first pick.
So I pretty much could pick any hero I wanted.
Yes, yes. Yeah.
(45:40):
So I went with magic. Yep, and I really have liked her
I've I've I've again, the puzzleis so fun with her and you know,
we can talk about deck building in a bit, but then I just sort
of sated sat and wait waited forthe groups that come back around
and I think I did again in my ranking for Group 1.
(46:01):
I had my 4th pick available. So I was pretty happy with
Venom. I think people we're mostly
picking in the top half that I had.
So I think my choices and their choices were pretty similar.
But it was I was really kicking between Domino and Venom and
then Pebbles picked picked Domino right in front of me.
(46:22):
So it made my choice real easy. Made it easy, yeah.
So what went ahead of you was Silk, Ironhart, Psylocke, and
then Domino right before you, asyou were saying.
Yep, Yep. And then yeah.
And then a handful of group of group 2 stuff that because,
yeah, look like I said in in that first round, almost
everything was group 2 except for the silk pick.
(46:46):
Yeah. And so, yeah, then I was just
picking aspects up and I was giving myself the nod for
protection because I played a lot of protection at the count
of heroes, a lot of the readyinghe cards, but also healing I
thought was helpful for for me to not flip down.
(47:08):
The the thing I, I didn't reallyrealize in my head until I
played it was I, I looked at it,I didn't, I didn't do any
practice games against Drang or Taskmaster ahead of time.
But, but I looked at the scenario and said, Oh my God, so
many minions. I need to be able to handle
them. So protection I thought would be
good for healing and not flipping down.
But then if you're not flipping down, you need to deal with
(47:30):
minions. And so that's why I went
aggression on the way back then in my practice.
And when I actually started playing, I, I started realizing,
Oh, I forgot that four threat goon the main every turn and we
don't have the mulatto to deal with that.
So, so in retrospect, maybe justice would have been better
because both venom and magic have a lot of attack, you know,
(47:53):
so, so maybe the heroes themselves could have handled
the attack and maybe maybe minions, but having justice
might have given me a few other tools to control things a little
bit better. But I, I, I made them both work.
I'm, I think I eventually, I, I've played a lot of games for
Drang so far and I just finishedlevel 4 yesterday.
So I feel OK. You know, I, I may, I may fall
(48:15):
apart at 5:00 and 6:00 if I try them.
But but I got aggression to workafter a handful of rounds of
tinkering because I I definitelyhave not stuck with the decks I
ended up with. Yeah, fair enough.
Yeah. You know, we, we, we had the
same evaluation right when especially when looking at Drang
(48:36):
where it's there's a lot of threat pressure happening
simultaneously. There's a lot of this indirect
damage, so either wanting to flip down often or have ways to
heal and there's a lot of minionpressure.
So there's, there's quite a few different ways that you're
needing to figure out how to keep things under control,
(48:59):
which, which is pretty, I mean, it's definitely a lot of
different things happening. And then yeah, when we get up to
five and six, we have kind of full Infinity Gauntlet right on
4. There's a gauntlet without the
stones deck. Oh, he's just got a + 1 + 1.
(49:19):
Right, right. So that that leap from 3 to 4 is
not too bad, especially if you are doing a lot of chump
locking, which was essentially what I landed on because there
isn't really overkill in the scenario.
And I was trying, I started withdecks that were very tricksy
that we're trying to do things like energy Spears on guardians
and mutant protectors with magic, because you can kind of,
(49:40):
you know, use her extra, you know, hand size slot to get
mutant protectors in place. And they're all a little too
tricksy. But then I, I realized that,
gosh, given all the things you just said between threat and
attack and, and, and the indirect damage, having just a
ton of Trump blockers and peopleto absorb, absorb indirect
(50:01):
damage was the way to go. So that I, I read to my deck and
just sort of meat and potatoes, just like lots of two costs,
three costs, you know, blockers for me and just, you know, stay,
stay alive until you can get built up enough and then you
can, you can turn the corner. Cool.
And then you've you've also tried out the the Crossbone
(50:22):
scenario. I just tried it out yesterday,
yeah, for the first time so and I did it on level 1, so standard
essentially. So that was the thing I was
going to say. So you your approach so far has
been that you play through the difficulties starting on
difficulty 1 and kind of just ramp them up?
(50:43):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of fun that way because in, in
Louisiana, I like that friendly neighborhood, right?
You don't get penalized for losing and instead of practice
games, I thought, well, let's just find out what the scenario
is, you know, without the sort of expert piece you know yet and
just just play with it. And then, you know, like you
said, you just keep adding and adding and adding and either it
(51:06):
gets hard enough, but you can retinker for it, you can get past
it or, you know, like I said, I'm not super competitive, so I
can also just tap out whenever it gets not fun anymore.
But so far it's been it's been fun.
I think the drain scenario is really that sweet spot of a ton
of pressure and you're sweating it a lot, but it is winnable.
(51:29):
At least you know, at least through level 4, you know I
haven't. Like I said, I haven't tried 5
and 6 yet, but it's, it's, it's no picnic at all because you
know, you have, you know, potentially joystick coming out.
You have minions at every turn. So many minions come out from
boost icon, reflex, you know, soyou're not just getting them
from your counter cards. And so you really just have to,
(51:53):
you know, keep things under control enough while you get
built up. But that is hard to do.
And then even when you're built up, you have to do that
transition, you know, when you're playing expert to, to, to
go to, you know, the Level 3 of Drang and then you get 3 more
minions, you know, So it's, there's just a lot of ups and
(52:13):
downs in that scenario, but in, in a really satisfying way, I
think it is a very fun scenario.So hats off to the design team,
Joss. Well, this one, this one was an
Astrodar. An Astrodar suggestion that I
can't even remember where I heard him.
Yeah, he like pulling out a bunch of goblins out of mutagen
(52:38):
formula and and pulling them in into this one.
So that was kind of A cause 'cause those goblins are pretty
annoying, right? There's a bunch of guard,
there's a bunch of take extra damage, which is then piling on
to take the indirect damage from.
Right, right. From from that, from the ship
that drank has and all that stuff.
So yeah, it it it does synergizewell with the scenario.
(52:59):
Yeah, for sure, and it it it didafter I tried the little Mimi
Mimi net decks that were a little too cute to be, you know,
for their own good for this scenario when it went back to
there's just, you know, re looking at it from from a fresh
start and saying, OK, I have a lot of minions and what are my
tools? And so pin down obviously
(53:21):
relatively new card, which is sosatisfying to throw it on that
that goblin soldier. I forget the one that's five
health but only pings you one and one and gives you a bad
effect if you kill it. So nice just to throw a pin down
on that and go like we will dealwith you when we deal with you.
But. Right now, if ever, because
there's no right. Your SCL brain wants to get rid
of it eventually, but you don't have to.
(53:42):
Right, right. And the only reason I would get
rid of it is then I used Hall ofHeroes, which I hadn't used the
ton until now. And that was super satisfying to
be able to have Venom just, you know, accumulate things.
And then there's enough confuse in either of the kits that I was
able to occasionally get it confused so Venom can flip down
and get all those cards. So that that was super fun.
(54:06):
So yeah, when I when I retooled the DAC it, it became at least
viable to to win at levels 3 and4.
But again, a challenging but viable.
So what? What has been your strategy with
Protection Magic? It it's mostly been a
combination of lots of cheap X-Men minions especially like
(54:30):
armor is great, Polaris is great'cause they can give you toughs
and. Up against crossbones though,
'cause those toughs I. Realized that immediately and my
practice gave yesterday for crossbones.
Like Oh well, luckily I was ableto clear his his attachment
early, you know, 'cause then he loses piercing.
But yes, but but that there is definitely going to be heavy
(54:53):
moments when you can't do that. Yeah, so, so right.
It's it's been that it's been a lot and then it's been a lot of
readying and healing cards. So like what doesn't kill me
those kind of cards. And, and, and then mostly just
lots of lots of actual basic cards because that basic spell
(55:14):
is just a great card, you know, because it has such flexibility.
Like I said, threat's a problem and healing is a problem and
basic card does, you know, it's 2 cost card to three of those,
which is pretty good deal, I think.
And so yeah, that plus all the sort of basic Mystic card, like
source of Supreme and all the stuff you have and, and that
spiritual meditation, I think isthe one that kind of tutors your
(55:36):
deck. So she has a lot of tutoring of
her deck, so she can go through it pretty quickly.
I actually went with 50 card decks on both of these because
again, magic can tutor so she can get through her deck faster.
And then same with the the setupability of venom and and locked
and loaded still can get you your weapons pretty fast.
(55:57):
You know, and, and I but I went for a bigger deck because I
just, I just put so many chump lockers in there.
I do like in 9-9 to 12 allies, just, you know, keep throwing
bodies at people. Right.
And then you still want your ratios with some of your other
cards as kind of. In my.
Experience, yeah. Right, right.
(56:18):
So it was a way to get the ratioof allies above in an odd way, I
was, I was deluding the hero's kit a little bit because there
were a lot of, in this case, a lot of good cards for the
scenario that weren't, that weren't what they had, you know,
and, and plus, like I said, Magic has a lot, you know,
stepping disc and a lot of ways to pull those magic cards back
(56:39):
into play. So I never felt I was away from
her cards whenever I needed them.
And Venom's big, you know, the card you want is the running gun
once you once you built up. So, but, but at that point, I've
also built out the board enough.My deck has gotten thinned down
to, you know, maybe like 40 cards because I played a lot of
supports and upgrades. And you're still always trying
(57:03):
to pump out allies. Exactly.
Just constantly making sure I have two or three blockers out.
And again, that's the thing, my SCL brain or my solo brain can't
figure out anymore, which was atone point I was getting panicked
because, you know, Venom didn't have a blocker and Magic had two
or three. And then I'm like, well, Magic
blockers can block for Venom. It's like, oh, right, right,
(57:24):
right. Yeah, it's not solo.
It's not solo. It's yeah, the The funny thing
about playing two handed like you are as opposed to playing
with a partner is, I mean, obviously the mental load is
higher, but you, you never have to feel guilty about asking for
(57:44):
somebody to chat block for you or anything like that.
You kind of, you're not dealing with the loss of version that
the other person might experience, right.
So that's that's kind of a neat difference.
Yeah. Right, right.
Yeah, that's right. Avengers mentioned it's just
like, who needs the card this turn?
And right. And like, then there's no
narcissism in the same way that there is if it's actual two
(58:06):
people. Right now, if that starts to
creep up in my head, I want you to call an ambulance for me.
But so far, so far it's OK. You'll.
Be like, no, I don't. I don't think Magic wants to do
that right. Magic has been treated poorly
this whole game. Venom.
We need to have a talk after this.
Or boundaries. Cool.
(58:29):
Well, thank you, Greg for for sharing your, your experience in
the in this. And it's it's good to have you
joined and I feel like a nice early proponent of of the non
competitive side as well. So that's been awesome.
Yeah, thanks. I I, like I said, I I love the I
love the non competitive nature of it.
(58:52):
It also makes me feel less guilty for not sort of getting
the highest score in SCL. You sort of it trained that
five. It's it's it's five stars or
lose, you know, like, you know, if you ain't first or last.
So you always get a little disappointed if you get the
four-star here. You have pushed the difficulty
up so high for those higher levels that I feel like, OK,
I'll, you know, I'll find my, I'll find my, my frustration to
(59:15):
fun points and just, you know, deal with it that way.
So it's, it's, it's good to havethe challenge.
And it's also good to if you want to stretch yourself, you
can. And if you don't, you don't have
to. Yeah.
You have permission to let go. And I mean, part of the other
strategy with it was for people to not maybe feel quite as
guilty if they only played a little bit.
(59:35):
You know, they just tried each scenario a couple times and that
was all that they did or whatever it was as opposed to,
you know, definitely on the morein the Gauntlet division in
general, people are, you know, trying to tune their decks and
play lots of practice games before they actually kind of go
do their official attempt. So you just you just have
permission to just engage with the scenario, see what it was
(59:59):
like with the picks that you hadand move on.
And yeah, and I think that's worked.
I think that's I think that's actually worked well.
Yeah, yeah. I was surprised because I think
only a couple of us did friendlyneighborhood in 3.5.
But yeah, we got a full, full 12people in the in the in the
draft this year. So that that was great.
It was evenly split. So that was that was very cool
(01:00:19):
to see. And I will be curious as things
go on, you know, if that kind ofcontinues to be true or if
there's end up being migration in one of the directions or the
other? Right, right.
And it's interesting, you know, like TJJJ and Jarrett, I think
are really good players and you know, they they did friendly
neighborhood probably because they're they're playing remotely
and and, you know, didn't necessarily have the time to to,
(01:00:43):
you know, to give themselves the, you know, the pressure to
to make things as perfect as possible.
But you know, we have really good players in this, in this
draft division as well as as gauntlet.
So it's it's not a skill thing. It's more of a just, you know,
what kind of experience you want.
Yeah, well, and I mean, this kind of goes back to your SCL
piece, right, where it's also a mechanism to avoid burnout,
(01:01:05):
right, That I think for most of us, SCL was hard to not play it
from a competitive perspective and to just kind of go play your
games, you know, pick a deck, goplay your games and be done with
it. I mean, in the final season, I
think everybody's a lot more willing to let go because they
don't mind if their performancesdon't quite line up with how how
they were doing before. But yeah, so I think, you know,
(01:01:29):
for Jared and and TJ, for example, it it's just kind of a
mechanism to avoid burning out. Yeah, exactly.
That's why it's great. And so, yeah, I think, I think
this non competitive side that everybody can choose to
participate in, I think it's doing a lot of things in a way
that I feels really, really positive for kind of the long
(01:01:51):
term of of this league. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's great.
It's definitely super fun. Always a joy, always, always an
absolute joy to chat with you. Always a joy too.
And the last thing to call out is is the just posting the GIFs
during the draft is a is a highly underrated fun
(01:02:11):
experience. So if you ever are out there and
want to join, just having GIF fun or GIF fun, depending on
what you call it is worth it. I, I, I got in my head, I said,
oh, I'm going to post Olivia Newton John from Xanadu talking
about her song, her song magic to post magic.
(01:02:31):
And then I, I chickened out and posted that plus a superhero Jif
on top of it. But then that song was through
my head for three days and it probably will be now in my head
after. Again, because you brought it up
again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right. So that one is definitely what I
can't, I do not take credit for because that is, you know, the
big picture of the format of this is based on a leak that
(01:02:54):
Banana Cup shoot ran many, many moons ago called Scheme League.
And that was, you know, I joinedand that's how they did it.
And so that just kind of became the default.
And but yeah, it, you know, the,the overall draft experience
people really enjoy and that's certainly a part of it that just
kind of heightens the the joy. Yeah, for sure.
(01:03:17):
Especially when you get to get to the the aspects, because then
you have just so much leeway. I literally typed in protection
in the the the the GIF sorter indiscord and the first thing that
came up was Jackie Chan and animated condom like hugging
each other. Yes.
What do you type in protection? And I'm like, well, this, this
(01:03:40):
is clearly what the response should be.
So it is. It's hilarious what what pops
up. Beautiful.
Well, yes, thanks again for for joining and we will talk to you
soon all. Right.
Thanks Jazz.
Hey friendos, welcome to The Road to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. Today we're going to be talking
about the Modoc League Season 4 draft, as well as touching a bit
on season 3.5, which was an experimental season that took
place in between season 3 and 4.I'm your host Josh Roux, and
(00:29):
joining me this episode a bit later for one-on-one chats about
their season 4 draft and a little bit about season 3.5 are
Sloth and then Greg. So for those of you who are new
listeners or who have been skipping those episodes, tell
you a little bit about Modoc league.
It's a two hero league where teams and they're called couples
(00:55):
with AK in in this league. That's what the K in Modoc
stands for. They draft heroes and often
aspects from a pool against the other couples in a fantasy
sports style draft. And then the couples take those
up against the scenarios that I've created and it's, you know,
usually a sequence of challenges.
(01:17):
There's a bunch of new changes that happen in season 4 trying
to increase the accessibility inseason 3.5.
I piloted a new scoring system that has persisted into season
4, and that is that each scenario has 6 progressively
harder difficulty levels where the couple earn their points by
(01:41):
defeating the highest difficultylevel.
Doesn't matter how messy the board is, how many turns it
takes, any of that, they just have to get a win.
And so it's really about kind ofthat increasing difficulty in
climbing that mountain and trying to get to the highest
quality that you can. As part of that, I created a
(02:02):
friendly neighborhood division and a gauntlet division, which
are the non competitive and competitive divisions
respectively. The main difference between
these is how the scoring actually works.
Where in the friendly neighborhood division couples
can have as many attempts as they like at each difficulty in
their request to score their points for that highest
(02:23):
difficulty defeated. They don't have to distinguish
between their practice games or their official attempts they
because they can just try as many times as they like.
In contrast, in the Gauntlet division couples have a maximum
of one attempt at each difficulty level.
So you know, those couples will tend to engage in practice games
before their initial attempts because they they're restricted
(02:45):
in their total number of attempts.
It's possible to fail at, for example, level 4 and then still
go try level 5 and succeed thereand you would still get 5 points
for defeating that higher level.So anyway, these changes were
all pretty well received by the community.
The current scoring and divisionformat persisted through season
4. I'm going to tell you a little
(03:07):
bit more about Season 4 and actually a little bit more about
Season 3.5 and then we will jumpinto the one-on-one chats.
So Season 3.5 was the CRE preconparty and it was just a one
round season. And this has happened in
between. And the idea is I'm introducing
(03:28):
print and play content and some deck building constraints or
changes or whatever it is. And this was Claw with the
modular set that features Ronin and the print and Play 1.
And then the, you know, 6 difficulty levels went kind of
(03:51):
just having that as you do. And then as you start creeping
up in difficulty, you're gettinginto standard 2 and Expert 2
sets. The formidable Foe environment
is introduced. The Cree Supremacy side scheme,
which is part of the campaign shows up at the highest
difficulty levels and we also get Sonic Converter added as
(04:13):
well at the easier levels for a little bit of a boost for for
the couples. People can have access to the
Milano without having to take the rest of that modular set.
So a nice range of difficulties.Nobody managed to tackle or
defeat level 6, but level 5 was was in fact defeated by a couple
(04:39):
teams. One of the teams is actually,
what are the folks we're going to be talking to?
So Sloth's team managed to defeat that.
Season 4 is a something's missing season.
And so it's the idea that something that's usually
required is not actually presentin round 4.
(05:02):
O1 dude, where's my ship? We have the Brotherhood of
Badoon that's just commonly known as Drang.
We have Goblin Nation, which is a modular set suggested by
Astradar for for this scenario specifically, which is pulling
one of the side schemes and a bunch of the goblins out of
mutagen formula. We have Extreme Risk which is
(05:26):
the Thunderbolts Modular set with Joystick Standard three and
Expert one, and the thing I justdescribed for you is more or
less the base difficulty for about Level 3, except for the
Shipcommandmodular is removed completely from this.
So you have no access to the Shipcommandmodular, which is
(05:46):
often helping you by being able to take off large amounts of
threat. Remember that Drang adds 2
threats per player, so that threat really put on.
And then additionally we have that the regular nemesis sets
are not actually used. Instead we use the Iceman
(06:07):
Nemesis set and the Badoon Headhunter as a nemesis set and
the the teams get to assign those to their two heroes.
So that's what that scenario is all about, team.
Our couples have access at the two lowest levels to the Milano,
but beyond that they don't have access to it.
(06:27):
They get the badoon at levels 5 and 6.
The Badoon blitz size scheme from the campaign shows up.
Drang actually gets the InfinityGauntlet at levels four and five
as well and or five and six. And then at level 6, I change
the thresholds for the counters that make things pop to go a
(06:49):
little bit lower. So it gets it's really nasty.
Crosser bones is round four O 2.This is Crossbones with
Deathstrike, the supersonic. That's one of the Thunderbolts
modulars, the hounds modular andthen standard 3IN expert one.
(07:12):
And what's missing is the regular experimental weapons
modular set. Instead we add the heat seeking
missiles from supersonic, the blasters from supersonic, the
admantium upgrades from the deathstrike one, and then Ahab's
energy spear from hounds and theother admantium upgrades.
That's in Deathstrike gets shoveled into the encounter deck
(07:37):
at the easier difficulty levels,couples actually have access to
improved condition upgrades and then kind of what I described as
Level 3. And then as we go up from there,
we get that, sorry, Crossbones gets an additional attachment
that gets added right at the beginning and we go through
(08:01):
level 4, the formidable flow on the standard side.
So that's just giving steady to all enemies.
And since it's on the standard side, it doesn't have the extra
acceleration icon. And at level 5 that switches to
super strength, which also just gives the villains steady, but
also gives them plus one and then flight as the flight
(08:25):
attachment shows up at level 6. So that is what the scenario
looks like. We also have missing Nemesis
sets again and the replacement nemesis sets for this one are
the Hawkeye nemesis set. That's the one with Crossfire
and then the running interference one for for the
other heroes. So you assign one of those to
(08:46):
one hero and the other to the other.
So that is you know what the overall season looks like for
this. The draft for this one was we
had four groups. There's two groups of heroes,
two aspect groups. In each case there was three
(09:06):
more choices added to each of those groups than what was
needed for drafting. And then each couple would draft
2 heroes and two aspects. And again, it's like a fantasy
draft style where a team or a couple will draft from one of
the groups a hero or an aspect. They can't go back and draft
(09:26):
again from that group later. It's a Snake style.
So then as you get to the bottomof the initial first round draft
order, you come back through in reverse order.
And then by the end, every team has two heroes and two aspects
that they're welcome to mix and match however they like and then
go take on those challenges. There were no banned heroes at
(09:50):
all. And these drafts, actually, this
draft actually progressed in a really interesting way because
we had a full 12 teams for the Gauntlet Division, which is what
we're going to talk to Sloth about a little bit.
And then a full 12 teams for theFriendly Neighborhood Division,
which is what we're going to talk to Greg about.
And these, these did proceed quite a bit differently from
(10:12):
each other. The Gauntlet Division had it
through the 1st 2 rounds, it wasall heroes except for three
aspects got taken an aggression,a leadership, and then another
aggression. And then of course that means it
(10:33):
flip-flopped. And then it was all most
completely aspects after that for around 3:00 and 4:00.
And then in the Friendly Neighborhood division, well the
hero that first was Maria Hill. In the Gauntlet Division, the
hero that went last was Star Lord in the gauntlet division,
or sorry, in the friendly neighborhood division.
(10:54):
So this was the non competitive division.
The team that had the first pickwent with leadership, so they
actually took an aspect right out the gate.
And then we saw a bit of a mix and match of people taking
aspects versus taking heroes. So it went, you know, aspect,
(11:15):
hero, hero, aspect, aspect, hero, aspect like that.
And by the 3rd pick of the second round, all the
leaderships were gone. In contrast, in the Gauntlet
division, the last leadership didn't go until the 2nd last
pick of the entire round. So these ones really proceeded
(11:40):
quite a bit differently and thatwas really, really fun and and
interesting. Nobody decided to pick pool.
So I think of the future, I'm going to change how pool gets
incorporated so that people don't feel like pool is kind of
staring them down and they don'twant it because clearly nobody
wants to go out of their way to to take pool.
So that's the summary of what the round was like.
(12:01):
We are going to jump into our chats with Sloth and Greg and
joining us is Sloth. Ryan, how are you doing?
Pretty good, pretty good. Enjoying this long weekend with
no plans for me, so it's been nice to take a break and a
breather and relax. A thing of beauty.
(12:21):
We we are currently a couple weeks, I guess, or somewhere in
that neighborhood into season 4 of Modoc League.
And I wanted to talk to you about the draft that happened
and what's been going on. But maybe just because we didn't
have a chance to talk about season 3.5 at all on the pod.
(12:42):
Let me loop back to that a bit. So you you participated in
season 3.5 for, for the listeners, season 3.5.
The idea was I wanted to start bringing in some print and play
content and doing kind of a little offseason, one round
season that will happen with some deck building restrictions
(13:03):
and other things. That is a little easier for
people to not feel FOMO if they don't actually participate, but
to for those that like to continue having those challenges
to to participate in that. So you and Chase were were one
of the participating couples in that one.
You want to tell us a little bitabout how the that offseason
(13:25):
challenge went? Yeah.
So it kind of fell at a time where when we talked about it
after the draft, we both had very little time that we like
lined up in free time for us. We did the draft honestly on our
board of like looking at everybody we knew we wanted
(13:47):
someone that had a leadership pre con and then the other pick
was chases and we kind of avoided Captain Marvel just
cause we've we've had a thing every round where we're really
trying to avoid heroes we've previously drafted.
Fair enough. We are kind of using this as a
(14:09):
way to play heroes we don't playas much either and just, you
know, get some more reps on themand try to understand their kit
and stuff better. So we went with Magneto, who was
probably our our top pick for that potential draft going in.
And then I think we got Jubilee on the like return pick who
(14:32):
Chase really enjoys and we thought had a fairly decent
justice pre con. So we got together for one game
and I talked to Chase into playing it on five stars instead
of four like he wanted to. And we somehow managed to kind
of just slug through it long enough to get to where we were
(14:54):
ahead and I could start kind of triple or activating at least a
turn as as Magneto. I had kind of switched over to I
wish I would have ran more of them than I ran in the final
deck list. But like you got this to ready
me couple make the calls, stuff like that to really kind of bump
(15:18):
my basic activations right and you know, just activate two or
three times. I had a utopia in there, stuff
like that. He Magneto readies himself once
per turn. So, you know, we were really
able then to kind of just push through and win it fairly
quickly once we got the board under control.
(15:40):
Right and got this just cause a lot of people might be a card
they don't play with very much. So this is A1 cost event that is
also a tactic and it says hero response.
After you exhaust your hero to make a basic thwart or attack,
discard an ally you control. Add that ally's matching power
to your hero's power. For this use readier hero.
Yeah, so it was just another ready for Magneto.
(16:02):
I think it actually came in Magneto's kit in his precon
deck. It was a card I hadn't really
looked at much before this deck.And then a lot of the allies
that came in kind of, you know, as the allies that came with
Magneto had kind of a base 22 orclose to that stat line anyways.
(16:25):
So he was kind of always gettinga decent boost out of it, you
know, for that attack and or Thor, whatever it was, and and
then moving on. So cool.
And yeah, I mean, I guess I didn't explain the the challenge
all that thoroughly, but so the idea was that we had Claw with
the Ronin Modular. There was a print and play one
(16:48):
that was released during the pandemic called Creed Fanatic
where there's boost effects on all on so many of these cards
that the boost effect is to bring the card in play.
Yeah. And and then so that couples
with claw, who's giving you 2 boost cards per attack to very
(17:09):
to do its best to try to bring some of that stuff into play.
And then as you were mentioning,the deck building restriction
was that people had to start with a pre con and then they
could go down to 1 copy of anything in the pre con, but not
fewer than than that. So if there was an ally in
(17:29):
there, you were stuck with that ally.
There's 3 copies of a certain event, like let's say you got
this. You had to keep a minimum of 1.
So there was a little bit of deck building flexibility, but
not a ton. Yeah, yeah.
I will say one of the cards thatreally, really stood out for us
was the Raft in in Chase's Justice deck There all three of
(17:51):
the big minions, including run and we kind of just stuck under
the Raft, right. And then because we had, we had
made the conscious choice that we were only ever putting the
three of them in there, that we never cycled them out, right.
Yeah. So we only had to deal with
Ronan once and I think both of our the two other big minions
(18:16):
that were in there ended up under there.
I can't remember I'm off the topof my head right now.
It might have just been both of our nemesis.
Yeah, OK, cool. So, yeah, good, good to hear
about that. Offseason 1, I think that I
think that worked well. I don't know what where are you
(18:41):
at right now? I mean, in terms of does an
offseason thing like this feel like a thing that you can just
let go of or go engage with depending on where you're at or
you just going to feel always drawn to participate in whatever
gets thrown at you? So I think for both Chase and I,
the draft is one of the highlights, yes.
(19:01):
So we're probably going to take every chance to draft we can.
OK. I think there's a comment in the
Discord the other day about likepeople didn't even necessarily
need to play, they just do drafts to draft.
Yeah. And I think I'm right there with
them, so. Yeah, well, I have to put some
sort of clothing on the draft soit feels like there's a purpose,
(19:23):
right? Yeah.
But yeah, there's. So this new season has been
actually great and we'll, you know, we'll talk about it a
little bit more and I'll do an intro at the start of the show
to kind of let the listeners know a little bit more about
what, what everything is involved in this season.
But the, you know, we've been having lots of folks sharing
(19:43):
their play results on the discord and really kind of
seeing how things are going. And we've got lots of folks that
got very early 6 star victories,much to my disappointment, I'm
sure their excitement. But I, I want, I kind of want
that six star to be. You know, very, very rare.
So I guess I got to crank up thedifficulty knob just a little
(20:05):
higher. What are you going to do it?
Really surprised me, just like how quickly and then the number
afterwards of six star victories.
Yeah. So, yeah, why don't you take us
through and what your kind of overall draft strategy was.
We had 12 teams in the gauntlet or competitive division, and
(20:31):
this is this is the one where you can have a maximum of one
try at each difficulty level andthen you get points according to
the highest difficulty that you you ultimately defeat and you
were 8 out of 12. Yes, yeah, you know we
definitely like to sit more in that middle back end of the pack
for drafting for both of us I think.
(20:52):
So it was really, really a nice to kind of sit there in that in
that pack. We didn't do as much this time
as far as like charting out everything and like what the
villains did and everything. We just didn't have the time
between the two of us. We did kind of make our priority
list of who we wanted. And again, it it did kind of
(21:15):
play around, you know, like someof the people we've already
played kind of just got slid farther down.
Like Captain Marvel was in the Pool A and Miss Marvel is one of
my favorite heroes in Pool 2 or B, but you know, both of them,
we kind of slid down our rankings just because they we've
already played them. Right.
(21:35):
And then what? What sort of things, what sort
of things are you trying to prioritize?
Like, you know, looking at the scenarios, what things stood out
to you as you know, things you need to pay attention to for
what you might be drafting in a hero.
Yeah, We wanted really strong kind of just generic threat
removal between the two and their kit with the minions that
(21:55):
are in both Badoon and then a little bit the other one.
We wanted to be able to have theability to grab aggression if
needed. As a second aspect, the plan was
always if we could get it to kind of grab leadership and just
see how the draft went as far as, you know, where our pick
order was or rounds or groups. We both really liked Captain
(22:22):
America into it. He was probably our our number
one overall pick for the well, actually Maria Hill was our
number one overall. I think Maria Hill's bordering
on broken. Yes, agreed.
The stuff you can do is just silly with her.
But that obviously went pick 11,so it's not to be.
(22:45):
So Captain America was our second pick.
We actually had a brief discussion about just taking
Thor for the minion slaying and ultimately chose to go with
Captain America in hopes that Thor fell back to us, which did
not happen. I think he was picked 2 after us
by lack of Little B. We both happen to know Spartacus
(23:10):
and we've been playing with him quite a bit outside of this as
well and should have known that there's no way Thor would have
ever made it to us because it wasn't even passed him.
But like that was that was an oversight on our part.
So we we took Captain mayor because we figured he has, you
know, pretty strong and consistent activations and
Thornton in his kit. So we should be able to at least
help manage it. And then on top of it just has
(23:34):
like a good kit. I think if I looked right on
like starting on five star is it?
The second scenario is always steady if I'm not mistaken.
Yes. Once they get, or maybe once
it's four-star, once they get formative, both foe for
(23:56):
Crossbones. Yeah.
So like the the stun that kind of cause, another one we would
have really looked at would havebeen like Miles Morales for just
villain control. Yeah.
But it definitely he also got taken right after us, but it it
definitely kind of decentivized that pick.
(24:16):
Just having the, you know, wanting to push for those higher
rounds and having steady on the board.
I think in my opinion, and I I could be wrong.
I know people are kind of mixed on her.
Magic probably is the strongest hero in Pool 2 or hero pool 2.
(24:38):
Right, so so that that pool to real quick recap of what was
what was in there was Colossus, Domino, Hawkeye, Iron Man,
Jubilee, Magic, Miss Marvel, Rocket, She Hulk, Spider Ham,
Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider Woman, Justice, Thor,
Wasp. Yeah, I mean, she's definitely
up there. I think you know Spider Ham and
(25:00):
in certain scenarios, Miles. Yeah.
Yeah, but I don't think it's wrong.
I don't think it's wrong to say magic was the most powerful one
there. Yeah.
So we decided on the flip then with her still being available
that we were just going to pick magic there 'cause we had talks
about taking our first. Our plan, the 1st place
tentatively had been take Cap ifhe was there or whoever we
(25:24):
thought was strongest on the board and then take probably
leadership in Round 2. But I think at that point only
like 3 aspects had gone off the board.
And only one of them was leadership.
And only one of them was leadership.
So we decided to risk it and just solidify a really strong
duo and go with, well, worst case we can make it work in
almost any aspect right between the two of them.
(25:49):
Yeah. And there was, there was 6
copies of leadership all together in the draft.
And so at that point there was only one and you were looking at
5:00. And yeah, the way the draft was
going, it really was hard to tell if there was going to be a
run on leadership or what. Yeah, it, you know, it's one of
those where it's like any, I really thought at any point like
Aggression could just have a runwhen it got down to like 3
copies of Aggression left there.Right.
(26:12):
And then aggression, just, yeah,aggression just stayed around
until we, you know, it lasted through US in Round 4.
And I was, I was really surprised.
But so then it became, you know,we picked leadership I think is
one of the last maybe 3 remaining leadership picks, 4
(26:34):
remaining leadership picks, I don't remember.
And then let it slide and just chose to go.
We thought both of them have really strong Fort in their kits
so having one of them an aggression for minion slaying
just made a lot of sense. Right.
So. And yeah, we we had 4, maybe a
(27:00):
little bit more of the 12 teams being new to the league.
And you know, those folks often can throw wrenches into the meta
where you think you kind of understand how people are going
to prioritize things. And then new folks, they have
their own set of, you know, obviously everybody has their
own set of priorities. But you know, once you've
(27:22):
drafted a few times, you kind ofhave sense of how people might
prioritize things and you can anticipate things a little bit.
But the but the new folks reallymade it feel sometimes almost
random. Yeah, yeah.
And. That was exciting, some of the.
Heroes that went early, I think really made sense.
They're good, you know, strong. Yeah.
(27:45):
But I definitely like some of them.
I just definitely wasn't expecting like that kind of a
pick there. Right.
But that's also part of what makes a draft so fun is, you
know, having to pivot or having to rethink it or, you know, what
do we change our valuation on things just because they're not
going or they are going, you know, so.
And, and how much you can hope that something might actually
(28:08):
drop to you because of these types of unanticipated picks,
right? You're like, OK, well, you know,
there's only two things that seem really strong left in this
pool and a whole bunch of peoplethat still need stuff from this
pool ahead of me. But I can, I can hope.
Yeah, hold on hope. One last good pick.
(28:31):
And sometimes it sometimes it works out.
I mean, yeah. So you you kind of had this
amazing. You got Captain America, you got
magic. So these are two heroes that you
kind of put at the top of, you know, top two at least in each
of those pools. Yeah, got a leadership which is,
you know, I already know for youa top aspect pick.
(28:51):
Yeah. And you were hoping for
aggression to really help with these minions and you you
managed to have the second last one fall in your lap.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah.
So it, I would say it really worked out well for us as far as
like what we hoped for. Like I said, maybe as far as
like picks we would have made different.
(29:11):
Like if Maria Hill had been on the board 8, which I don't think
ever is going to be a case, I definitely would have taken her.
And then we probably would have taken Thor over Magic.
Just he seems like he'd do really good into these two
scenarios. Right.
Other than that, I mean, that was probably, if we could have
(29:32):
drawn up a draft for ourselves, you know, one of the top drafts
we would have drawn up for ourselves so.
Well, I love it. Yes, thanks.
Thanks for sharing. I know you, you and Chase
haven't had a chance to actuallyplay any so we can't really
check in on how these are going,but I'm going to talk to to Greg
after I have a chance talking toyou.
(29:53):
So and I know he's had a little bit of practice on some of the
stuff. So we'll hear a little bit about
how somebody's round has been going.
Josh Reed junior and I have not really had a chance to play yet
either. We had we had I got the
innovation ultimate. I don't know if you ever played
the board game well, card game innovation, but they re released
and revised a whole bunch of thesets and expansions and
(30:18):
everything. And so Josh Reed junior and I
played quite a bit of it over our holidays.
This summer I haven't played it,but it sounds like it could be
interesting so. It's it's a, it's an absurdly
tactical card tableau building card game where you you can kind
(30:42):
of never depend on the board state the next time it's your
turn to be how it was the previous turn.
So you really have to figure outhow to just kind of make use of
what you have in front of you tocontinue progressing the game.
And some people it just feels too random.
And other people kind of once they know how all the
interactions work, it just feelslike this amazing problem
(31:02):
solving that you have to do every single turn.
So it's pretty can be pretty satisfying, but it could be a
little bit off putting for some folks.
Basically, yeah. Sounds interesting, might have
to try to talk Chase into it sometime it.
It is it is a game that is available on board game arena.
OK, if if you do play games online at all.
(31:23):
So that's kind of a way you can always just try it out to see if
it tickles your fancy in any way.
Yeah, it'd be a good idea to tryit because we we do mostly play
online, so. There you go.
Yeah. Beauty OK, well sloth, thank you
so much for for dropping in to to share your 3.5 and four
(31:43):
season drafting and and your experiences overall.
Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, talk to you again.
Talk. To you later.
And joining us now very, very frequent visitor, Greg, how you
doing? I'm so honored to be here as a
(32:03):
two person couple. My first time, long time.
First time, yeah, but first timeis a two person.
Yeah, this is exciting. So you are kind of relatively
new to the lead. You joined us for the offseason
Challenge Season 3.5, which was also where I introduced this
(32:27):
notion of what is now called in a friendly neighborhood division
or mode and the gauntlet mode. So the non competitive and the
competitive where the main thingwith the non competitive is you
can try each challenge as many times as you want and if you
manage to win, you get points for that and you get, you know,
whatever the highest level of challenge you beat.
(32:48):
You. You get that many points for
that highest level and you can just try as many times as you
want. So there's a lot less pressure
and you just kind of go in and you can tune your decks while
you're trying to play against it.
And sometimes you just like out and keep going, right?
Yep. You, you joined US 3.5.
Tell us a little bit about overall that experience.
(33:08):
Yeah, I mean, I was jealous about the drafts.
You know, we even did going around, right, right.
We even did that fun draft that we did on this podcast in for
SCL that was just a for fun draft, right?
You know, who could draft the the the best set of heroes.
And so just drafting random stuff is always super fun.
(33:30):
And this it's, it's so much moreinteresting to me than a fantasy
football. So I was eager to, to play with
that. And also the, the, the friendly
neighborhood idea I think is also appealing because I love
the play of champions, but I'm not hyper competitive.
So, you know, just kind of doingit is more fun than, you know,
(33:53):
winning it to me. So that's why I thought 3.5 was
a great way to ease in, especially because it was also
the pre con round and just a single challenge.
So the commitment was relativelylow and I had a great time.
Even though I sort of eventuallyhit my head against the wall too
many times. I just was happy with the three
stars I ended up getting. But but I had AI had a ton of
(34:15):
fun with the draft and then I itit it inspired me to to like
perhaps over prepare for for round 4.
We'll. Prepare.
We'll get into it, but. Yeah, yeah, I will.
I will look forward to hearing about that.
So yeah, you, you ended up with in in in 3.5 you.
(34:37):
Spider Woman and and A War Machine were my 2.
Right. And and so again, this was you
know, you were allowed to modifythe pre con, but you kind of had
to go in. So you had you were locked in
with aggression and justice on on Spider Woman and then
leadership with with war machine.
And right, this is a scenario that flipping down wasn't overly
(35:03):
prohibitive. So, you know, the one of the
biggest challenges with War Machine is just kind of playing,
playing in a scenario where you can't flip down reasonably often
because him keeping those counters up is so important.
Yeah, exactly. And and I the main reason I took
(35:24):
him was I was I think he was theonly hero left at the time that
had a leadership pre con. So it was almost more for the
aspect than the hero. I think in retrospect, I
probably would have done something differently because
war Machine, I think unless you have like really good ability to
lock down a threat. I hide some but but not, you
know, not as strong. And, and, and so I had, I had a
(35:48):
good time at at the lower levelswith that, but then I, I, I
forget what specific card gets introduced in, in a four-star
difficulty, but it was just killing me.
So, so in retrospect, yeah, I think, I think a shiny bobble of
leadership was something actually I ended up avoiding in
in round 4, but I probably wouldhave gone for a stronger hero
(36:11):
and and maybe just, you know, dealt with protection or
whatever other aspect I would have got.
Right. We, well, we, so yeah, we got
the formidable faux environment which is adding an acceleration
counter and daddy and then and then his Sonic converter
attachment also comes into play.So kind of going from not having
(36:31):
those things to having those things is definitely a decent
jump. Yep, Yep.
Yeah, I think it was the Sonic converter that was just, I
forget what ends up that doing, but it it was it was it.
Stuns you if you take any attackdamage from him.
That yeah, that was it, yeah. That that was really hard to
sort of claw out from and and get get rid of early on.
(36:53):
And then I was just in a hole. Especially like, because War
Machine is such a build hero, you know, there's build stuff
for a Spider Woman, but she can she can kind of live on events a
little easier early on. So yeah, it it it was again, it
was it was great to get draft experience and a fun challenge.
The other thing about Modoc, obviously, is that I don't play
(37:17):
a lot of two handed back When I played Arkham a lot, it was it
was all I played because true solo and Arkham is just too
punishingly hard and kind of frustratingly hard.
So to make Arkham work, you kindof need to play two or one time.
I played three handed, which waswhich was something, but
champions work so well solo. I usually don't do it, but it it
(37:38):
that and going to the kind of heroes sort of opened my eyes to
how you build decks differently for multiplayer and how you can
you can, you know, you know, chump luck for each other and
some things that are just kind of basic multiplayer strategies
that just hadn't been baked in my brain for being a solo
player. Right.
And then do you, do you play with physical cards when you're
(38:00):
playing? Here, Yeah, yeah, I do.
I, I have two decks next to me and basically if, if I have
about 5 minute break, I'm able to kind of jump on and play a
hand each, you know. So I kind of have always a a
game set up in my office off to the side and you know, I'm just
able to tinker with it when I have a little downtime.
(38:22):
Right, you have you have a side desk or something if I remember
correctly. Exactly.
Yeah, I got my work desk and I got my Marvel Champions desk.
And so is this, is this a place where you've used lots of little
stands and things like that to kind of be able to use the space
better? Or is it just actually a nice
big space? It's it's big enough I can fit
(38:43):
mostly to, you know, to mats side by side on it.
The thing I've really come to love recently is I bought some
weighted counter dice, I think from, from burger tokens, maybe
sells them. And they're the kind of dice,
they're six sided dice, but theyhave little pluses and minuses
that tell you, you know, what direction to go to, to ratchet
(39:06):
up or down as a counter that cleans up the boards so well.
They're so easy to see the the fact they're weighted means they
don't really jostle at all. And they're, they're so like
just, they just feel so good in your hands.
You know, it's that like board game premium bit get bit thing
to get you. So that, but that also condenses
the space. I don't have a lot of like
(39:27):
random tokens on there. I I, I make the got a lot of use
out of it. The one thing I can't use is is
I have this mat from you saw it kind of heroes where you can
pack a lot of carts together. And, and, and the mat has a like
a way to shift up to show if something is ready or exhausted.
So you don't have to turn it side by side.
But I don't have I can't use those mats on when I do 2
(39:48):
handed. But I figured it out.
It's it's it's still enough space.
OK, yeah, we we have at our at our house.
So when I'm playing with Josh Rd.
Junior, we have a table that thetop lifts off of and you can
play underneath. So we, you can just our dining
room table. We just, you know, pull that off
and play our games and then put it back when it's time to
(40:08):
actually eat. Right.
I have the same table for my kitchen table downstairs and my
wife and I have a legacy game underneath that that the last
time we played is like March. So.
So it's like I either have to put that game away and say that
we're probably not going to get back to it or we need to finish
it, but. OK, well, fair enough.
(40:31):
So well, let's let's check in with season 4.
So you were saying you did some preparation for the the draft
and I was just going to check inand remind myself.
So you out of 12 teams in the friendly neighborhood draft or
were you were second? Yes, which which definitely
influenced my strategy because Iknew I'd get whatever I wanted
(40:51):
pretty much the first pick and then I was going to be suffering
in the second pick and the last pick.
So yeah, I came into it knowing,knowing I had to to work around
that. OK, so yeah, tell tell me more
about what you were trying to doand all the heart breaks that
you suffered. Yeah, it was.
I think the biggest heartbreak was just sort of letting go of
(41:14):
leadership before I even startedbecause I, I heard from other
drafts how much it went and it sort of, you know, surprisingly
went even harder, I think in thefriendly neighborhood draft than
in Gauntlet. So I said, well, let's the
heroes mean a lot. So let's focus on heroes.
And then I'll just, you know, sort of play with what aspects
are available when I got there. And so I, I took the, the two
(41:39):
groups of heroes and I, I pulled2 sets of stats.
I pulled the villain theory tears because I saw you use that
in your bot ranking. And then I also pulled the win
percentage from stats that are on board game geek that aren't
perfect, but are, you know, not a bad indicator of sort of the
quality of a hero. And some are pretty have pretty
(42:03):
high consensus. But occasionally, you know,
villain theory would be, you know, down on a hero, but the
stats would be would be higher or vice versa.
So you occasionally would get a little bit of different
perspectives. But what it showed me was there
was about three to five heroes in Group 2 that I'd be pretty
unhappy with if I ended up with them.
(42:25):
So I said, well, because I want,but in, in, in in contrast,
Group 1 was pretty good. You know, there wasn't any
really hero I would would have been awful to have.
And plus, I knew I'd have my choice of maybe 3-4 or five
leftover if everyone took from Group 2 as their first hero.
And actually a lot of people diddo that.
(42:46):
I think maybe people saw the same thing I saw, because I
looked at the first round of draft picks and pretty much
every hero except for Silk was aGroup two hero.
So I think people did see that Group 1 is as a deeper bench
than two. So you pick your stars out of
two and then you're fine with whoever you get in one.
(43:07):
So, so I, I kind of worked it that way.
I, I basically picked my top 2INgroup 2 because I knew I had
second pick. I knew I'd get one of those two.
And then I ranked the Group 1 heroes.
And then the plan was just to take the highest one left who
who you know in Group 1 when it came back to me, and then work
on aspects from there. So what I want to check in on
(43:29):
this group too. I won't do the entire list of
what's there, but I'm so the theundrafted heroes because there
was three extra per group for this draft.
So the the undrafted ones were Hawkeye, Hulk, and Iceman.
Who else were you hoping to avoid that was in that group?
Who made you think? Yeah, I mean Colossus just
(43:52):
because the hand size and I've never really had a ton of fun
with Colossus. I didn't really want him Falcon
2 new and like early reads on Falcon was was a little
underwhelming, I think. And I'm also, even though a lot
of people do like Cherie, I I realize my loss aversion play
style makes me piloting Cherie atrouble because I don't want to
(44:13):
get rid of those upgrades, but yet you must get rid of the
upgrades for her to actually be good.
So, so, you know, if I, if I ended up with Sharia, I'd be
fine and I could have probably made Colossus work, but but
those were the ones I probably were, were saying there's just
too many heroes I'd have to sacrifice, you know, to get got
(44:34):
you. But the rest of them were quite
good. I thought, you know, like even,
you know, Black Pantry, T'challaor Wolverine, like I'd be happy
with any of those, even, you know, maybe even Iceman.
I'm not 100% sure but but I justknew there was enough bad apples
in that bunch to to pull my top 2 which and and so basically I
(44:54):
went in thinking Magic or Storm were kind of the ones I thought
were the most versatile and could do the most and so pairing
them with any aspect would wouldhave been fine.
And so I played with Storm recently when I went to Gen.
Con this year and I played in the Loki event and I saw this
guy who, who was a brand new player, but he had bought Storm
(45:17):
and he was just doing anything he could with Storm.
And so I said, well, that's shows you how versatile Storm
is. Even like a brand new player can
make her, you know, sing pretty well.
But I hadn't played magic at Honand I knew she was great.
So I, I, I went with her when I,because I did have the choice,
DJJJ and Jared took leadership as their first pick.
So I pretty much could pick any hero I wanted.
Yes, yes. Yeah.
(45:40):
So I went with magic. Yep, and I really have liked her
I've I've I've again, the puzzleis so fun with her and you know,
we can talk about deck building in a bit, but then I just sort
of sated sat and wait waited forthe groups that come back around
and I think I did again in my ranking for Group 1.
(46:01):
I had my 4th pick available. So I was pretty happy with
Venom. I think people we're mostly
picking in the top half that I had.
So I think my choices and their choices were pretty similar.
But it was I was really kicking between Domino and Venom and
then Pebbles picked picked Domino right in front of me.
(46:22):
So it made my choice real easy. Made it easy, yeah.
So what went ahead of you was Silk, Ironhart, Psylocke, and
then Domino right before you, asyou were saying.
Yep, Yep. And then yeah.
And then a handful of group of group 2 stuff that because,
yeah, look like I said in in that first round, almost
everything was group 2 except for the silk pick.
(46:46):
Yeah. And so, yeah, then I was just
picking aspects up and I was giving myself the nod for
protection because I played a lot of protection at the count
of heroes, a lot of the readyinghe cards, but also healing I
thought was helpful for for me to not flip down.
(47:08):
The the thing I, I didn't reallyrealize in my head until I
played it was I, I looked at it,I didn't, I didn't do any
practice games against Drang or Taskmaster ahead of time.
But, but I looked at the scenario and said, Oh my God, so
many minions. I need to be able to handle
them. So protection I thought would be
good for healing and not flipping down.
But then if you're not flipping down, you need to deal with
(47:30):
minions. And so that's why I went
aggression on the way back then in my practice.
And when I actually started playing, I, I started realizing,
Oh, I forgot that four threat goon the main every turn and we
don't have the mulatto to deal with that.
So, so in retrospect, maybe justice would have been better
because both venom and magic have a lot of attack, you know,
(47:53):
so, so maybe the heroes themselves could have handled
the attack and maybe maybe minions, but having justice
might have given me a few other tools to control things a little
bit better. But I, I, I made them both work.
I'm, I think I eventually, I, I've played a lot of games for
Drang so far and I just finishedlevel 4 yesterday.
So I feel OK. You know, I, I may, I may fall
(48:15):
apart at 5:00 and 6:00 if I try them.
But but I got aggression to workafter a handful of rounds of
tinkering because I I definitelyhave not stuck with the decks I
ended up with. Yeah, fair enough.
Yeah. You know, we, we, we had the
same evaluation right when especially when looking at Drang
(48:36):
where it's there's a lot of threat pressure happening
simultaneously. There's a lot of this indirect
damage, so either wanting to flip down often or have ways to
heal and there's a lot of minionpressure.
So there's, there's quite a few different ways that you're
needing to figure out how to keep things under control,
(48:59):
which, which is pretty, I mean, it's definitely a lot of
different things happening. And then yeah, when we get up to
five and six, we have kind of full Infinity Gauntlet right on
4. There's a gauntlet without the
stones deck. Oh, he's just got a + 1 + 1.
(49:19):
Right, right. So that that leap from 3 to 4 is
not too bad, especially if you are doing a lot of chump
locking, which was essentially what I landed on because there
isn't really overkill in the scenario.
And I was trying, I started withdecks that were very tricksy
that we're trying to do things like energy Spears on guardians
and mutant protectors with magic, because you can kind of,
(49:40):
you know, use her extra, you know, hand size slot to get
mutant protectors in place. And they're all a little too
tricksy. But then I, I realized that,
gosh, given all the things you just said between threat and
attack and, and, and the indirect damage, having just a
ton of Trump blockers and peopleto absorb, absorb indirect
(50:01):
damage was the way to go. So that I, I read to my deck and
just sort of meat and potatoes, just like lots of two costs,
three costs, you know, blockers for me and just, you know, stay,
stay alive until you can get built up enough and then you
can, you can turn the corner. Cool.
And then you've you've also tried out the the Crossbone
(50:22):
scenario. I just tried it out yesterday,
yeah, for the first time so and I did it on level 1, so standard
essentially. So that was the thing I was
going to say. So you your approach so far has
been that you play through the difficulties starting on
difficulty 1 and kind of just ramp them up?
(50:43):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of fun that way because in, in
Louisiana, I like that friendly neighborhood, right?
You don't get penalized for losing and instead of practice
games, I thought, well, let's just find out what the scenario
is, you know, without the sort of expert piece you know yet and
just just play with it. And then, you know, like you
said, you just keep adding and adding and adding and either it
(51:06):
gets hard enough, but you can retinker for it, you can get past
it or, you know, like I said, I'm not super competitive, so I
can also just tap out whenever it gets not fun anymore.
But so far it's been it's been fun.
I think the drain scenario is really that sweet spot of a ton
of pressure and you're sweating it a lot, but it is winnable.
(51:29):
At least you know, at least through level 4, you know I
haven't. Like I said, I haven't tried 5
and 6 yet, but it's, it's, it's no picnic at all because you
know, you have, you know, potentially joystick coming out.
You have minions at every turn. So many minions come out from
boost icon, reflex, you know, soyou're not just getting them
from your counter cards. And so you really just have to,
(51:53):
you know, keep things under control enough while you get
built up. But that is hard to do.
And then even when you're built up, you have to do that
transition, you know, when you're playing expert to, to, to
go to, you know, the Level 3 of Drang and then you get 3 more
minions, you know, So it's, there's just a lot of ups and
(52:13):
downs in that scenario, but in, in a really satisfying way, I
think it is a very fun scenario.So hats off to the design team,
Joss. Well, this one, this one was an
Astrodar. An Astrodar suggestion that I
can't even remember where I heard him.
Yeah, he like pulling out a bunch of goblins out of mutagen
(52:38):
formula and and pulling them in into this one.
So that was kind of A cause 'cause those goblins are pretty
annoying, right? There's a bunch of guard,
there's a bunch of take extra damage, which is then piling on
to take the indirect damage from.
Right, right. From from that, from the ship
that drank has and all that stuff.
So yeah, it it it does synergizewell with the scenario.
(52:59):
Yeah, for sure, and it it it didafter I tried the little Mimi
Mimi net decks that were a little too cute to be, you know,
for their own good for this scenario when it went back to
there's just, you know, re looking at it from from a fresh
start and saying, OK, I have a lot of minions and what are my
tools? And so pin down obviously
(53:21):
relatively new card, which is sosatisfying to throw it on that
that goblin soldier. I forget the one that's five
health but only pings you one and one and gives you a bad
effect if you kill it. So nice just to throw a pin down
on that and go like we will dealwith you when we deal with you.
But. Right now, if ever, because
there's no right. Your SCL brain wants to get rid
of it eventually, but you don't have to.
(53:42):
Right, right. And the only reason I would get
rid of it is then I used Hall ofHeroes, which I hadn't used the
ton until now. And that was super satisfying to
be able to have Venom just, you know, accumulate things.
And then there's enough confuse in either of the kits that I was
able to occasionally get it confused so Venom can flip down
and get all those cards. So that that was super fun.
(54:06):
So yeah, when I when I retooled the DAC it, it became at least
viable to to win at levels 3 and4.
But again, a challenging but viable.
So what? What has been your strategy with
Protection Magic? It it's mostly been a
combination of lots of cheap X-Men minions especially like
(54:30):
armor is great, Polaris is great'cause they can give you toughs
and. Up against crossbones though,
'cause those toughs I. Realized that immediately and my
practice gave yesterday for crossbones.
Like Oh well, luckily I was ableto clear his his attachment
early, you know, 'cause then he loses piercing.
But yes, but but that there is definitely going to be heavy
(54:53):
moments when you can't do that. Yeah, so, so right.
It's it's been that it's been a lot and then it's been a lot of
readying and healing cards. So like what doesn't kill me
those kind of cards. And, and, and then mostly just
lots of lots of actual basic cards because that basic spell
(55:14):
is just a great card, you know, because it has such flexibility.
Like I said, threat's a problem and healing is a problem and
basic card does, you know, it's 2 cost card to three of those,
which is pretty good deal, I think.
And so yeah, that plus all the sort of basic Mystic card, like
source of Supreme and all the stuff you have and, and that
spiritual meditation, I think isthe one that kind of tutors your
(55:36):
deck. So she has a lot of tutoring of
her deck, so she can go through it pretty quickly.
I actually went with 50 card decks on both of these because
again, magic can tutor so she can get through her deck faster.
And then same with the the setupability of venom and and locked
and loaded still can get you your weapons pretty fast.
(55:57):
You know, and, and I but I went for a bigger deck because I
just, I just put so many chump lockers in there.
I do like in 9-9 to 12 allies, just, you know, keep throwing
bodies at people. Right.
And then you still want your ratios with some of your other
cards as kind of. In my.
Experience, yeah. Right, right.
(56:18):
So it was a way to get the ratioof allies above in an odd way, I
was, I was deluding the hero's kit a little bit because there
were a lot of, in this case, a lot of good cards for the
scenario that weren't, that weren't what they had, you know,
and, and plus, like I said, Magic has a lot, you know,
stepping disc and a lot of ways to pull those magic cards back
(56:39):
into play. So I never felt I was away from
her cards whenever I needed them.
And Venom's big, you know, the card you want is the running gun
once you once you built up. So, but, but at that point, I've
also built out the board enough.My deck has gotten thinned down
to, you know, maybe like 40 cards because I played a lot of
supports and upgrades. And you're still always trying
(57:03):
to pump out allies. Exactly.
Just constantly making sure I have two or three blockers out.
And again, that's the thing, my SCL brain or my solo brain can't
figure out anymore, which was atone point I was getting panicked
because, you know, Venom didn't have a blocker and Magic had two
or three. And then I'm like, well, Magic
blockers can block for Venom. It's like, oh, right, right,
(57:24):
right. Yeah, it's not solo.
It's not solo. It's yeah, the The funny thing
about playing two handed like you are as opposed to playing
with a partner is, I mean, obviously the mental load is
higher, but you, you never have to feel guilty about asking for
(57:44):
somebody to chat block for you or anything like that.
You kind of, you're not dealing with the loss of version that
the other person might experience, right.
So that's that's kind of a neat difference.
Yeah. Right, right.
Yeah, that's right. Avengers mentioned it's just
like, who needs the card this turn?
And right. And like, then there's no
narcissism in the same way that there is if it's actual two
(58:06):
people. Right now, if that starts to
creep up in my head, I want you to call an ambulance for me.
But so far, so far it's OK. You'll.
Be like, no, I don't. I don't think Magic wants to do
that right. Magic has been treated poorly
this whole game. Venom.
We need to have a talk after this.
Or boundaries. Cool.
(58:29):
Well, thank you, Greg for for sharing your, your experience in
the in this. And it's it's good to have you
joined and I feel like a nice early proponent of of the non
competitive side as well. So that's been awesome.
Yeah, thanks. I I, like I said, I I love the I
love the non competitive nature of it.
(58:52):
It also makes me feel less guilty for not sort of getting
the highest score in SCL. You sort of it trained that
five. It's it's it's five stars or
lose, you know, like, you know, if you ain't first or last.
So you always get a little disappointed if you get the
four-star here. You have pushed the difficulty
up so high for those higher levels that I feel like, OK,
I'll, you know, I'll find my, I'll find my, my frustration to
(59:15):
fun points and just, you know, deal with it that way.
So it's, it's, it's good to havethe challenge.
And it's also good to if you want to stretch yourself, you
can. And if you don't, you don't have
to. Yeah.
You have permission to let go. And I mean, part of the other
strategy with it was for people to not maybe feel quite as
guilty if they only played a little bit.
(59:35):
You know, they just tried each scenario a couple times and that
was all that they did or whatever it was as opposed to,
you know, definitely on the morein the Gauntlet division in
general, people are, you know, trying to tune their decks and
play lots of practice games before they actually kind of go
do their official attempt. So you just you just have
permission to just engage with the scenario, see what it was
(59:59):
like with the picks that you hadand move on.
And yeah, and I think that's worked.
I think that's I think that's actually worked well.
Yeah, yeah. I was surprised because I think
only a couple of us did friendlyneighborhood in 3.5.
But yeah, we got a full, full 12people in the in the in the
draft this year. So that that was great.
It was evenly split. So that was that was very cool
(01:00:19):
to see. And I will be curious as things
go on, you know, if that kind ofcontinues to be true or if
there's end up being migration in one of the directions or the
other? Right, right.
And it's interesting, you know, like TJJJ and Jarrett, I think
are really good players and you know, they they did friendly
neighborhood probably because they're they're playing remotely
and and, you know, didn't necessarily have the time to to,
(01:00:43):
you know, to give themselves the, you know, the pressure to
to make things as perfect as possible.
But you know, we have really good players in this, in this
draft division as well as as gauntlet.
So it's it's not a skill thing. It's more of a just, you know,
what kind of experience you want.
Yeah, well, and I mean, this kind of goes back to your SCL
piece, right, where it's also a mechanism to avoid burnout,
(01:01:05):
right, That I think for most of us, SCL was hard to not play it
from a competitive perspective and to just kind of go play your
games, you know, pick a deck, goplay your games and be done with
it. I mean, in the final season, I
think everybody's a lot more willing to let go because they
don't mind if their performancesdon't quite line up with how how
they were doing before. But yeah, so I think, you know,
(01:01:29):
for Jared and and TJ, for example, it it's just kind of a
mechanism to avoid burning out. Yeah, exactly.
That's why it's great. And so, yeah, I think, I think
this non competitive side that everybody can choose to
participate in, I think it's doing a lot of things in a way
that I feels really, really positive for kind of the long
(01:01:51):
term of of this league. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's great.
It's definitely super fun. Always a joy, always, always an
absolute joy to chat with you. Always a joy too.
And the last thing to call out is is the just posting the GIFs
during the draft is a is a highly underrated fun
(01:02:11):
experience. So if you ever are out there and
want to join, just having GIF fun or GIF fun, depending on
what you call it is worth it. I, I, I got in my head, I said,
oh, I'm going to post Olivia Newton John from Xanadu talking
about her song, her song magic to post magic.
(01:02:31):
And then I, I chickened out and posted that plus a superhero Jif
on top of it. But then that song was through
my head for three days and it probably will be now in my head
after. Again, because you brought it up
again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right. So that one is definitely what I
can't, I do not take credit for because that is, you know, the
big picture of the format of this is based on a leak that
(01:02:54):
Banana Cup shoot ran many, many moons ago called Scheme League.
And that was, you know, I joinedand that's how they did it.
And so that just kind of became the default.
And but yeah, it, you know, the,the overall draft experience
people really enjoy and that's certainly a part of it that just
kind of heightens the the joy. Yeah, for sure.
(01:03:17):
Especially when you get to get to the the aspects, because then
you have just so much leeway. I literally typed in protection
in the the the the GIF sorter indiscord and the first thing that
came up was Jackie Chan and animated condom like hugging
each other. Yes.
What do you type in protection? And I'm like, well, this, this
(01:03:40):
is clearly what the response should be.
So it is. It's hilarious what what pops
up. Beautiful.
Well, yes, thanks again for for joining and we will talk to you
soon all. Right.
Thanks Jazz.
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