December 6, 2024 • 61 mins
We're back with yet another bonus episode of the Road to Knowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast. Today we’re joined yet again by The Chase and sl0th to talk about their experience with MODOK League Season 02, Round 03. This matchup pits our kouples against Taskmaster (without the captured by Hydra side schemes), Hydra Patrol and the Spectrum + Valkyrie + Domino + Captain America nemesis sets using a hybrid Standard 1 + 2 and Expert 1 + 2 encounter set. MODOK League is a “Marvel-champions Organization Designed Only for Kouples” League, meaning it is a two-hero team league where people can play with a partner or 2-handed on their own. Each team drafts heroes and aspects from a pool against the other teams.
MODOK League Discord server: https://discord.gg/6b4zBfchhA
MODOK League website: https://modokleague.wordpress.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Hey hey friendos, welcome to yetanother special episode of The
Road to Nowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast.
Today we're recapping Modoc League Season 2 Round 3.
Modoc League is a two hero team league where each team drafts
heroes and aspects from a pool against the other teams, fantasy
(00:30):
sports style. I'm your host, Joshua Rue, and
with us this week are some returning guests.
We got Sloth. Sloth, how you doing?
Good, good, glad to be here again.
Glad to have you and Chase. How's it going?
Good. Do you 2 either of you play
fantasy sports at all? Yes.
(00:51):
I play fantasy football. I played fantasy football for
well over 10 years, right? Got a pretty serious work league
in a couple dynasty leagues. So OK, I always, I always think
I'm good, but. Somebody offers and you're
you're still ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(01:13):
I I started a dynasty league this year with some people and
play in a couple other leagues too so.
OK, so yeah, you, you 2 are bothin in dynasty leagues.
Not, I mean, not to get too far off track, but in dynasty
leagues, how, how does drafting work?
You you're just drafting like rookies and weirdo free agents
(01:34):
that come in from undrafted and stuff like that.
Yeah, so the first year of the league you have a full draft
usually. Yeah.
They call that the start up draft.
Yep. And then after that, draft picks
will typically be ordered based on placement in the league.
And then you draft through like rookies coming in.
Got it. Well, and that that's probably
(01:55):
pretty fun in NFL because NFL has, you know, hundreds of
players coming in every every season.
It's not, you know, the NBA has 60 players that come in through
the through the draft and even most of the second rounders
never even play. So probably a lot less
interesting there. But I mean, the NFL just has so
many players in their draft. Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny
(02:19):
because like a a dynasty draft versus like a redraft, it's just
like the value on players is so different.
Like if you have a young team, like your team might not be very
good, but in three years you might have the best team in the
league. Right, right.
Interesting, interesting. OK, anyway, back-to-back to
(02:39):
Marvel Champions. Yes, maybe.
Before we get on onto league stuff, what's been going on with
any of the new content of, you know, your, your Magneto, your
Nightcrawler, Have either of youhad a chance to play either of
those? I've played both, I got them
both pretty much right away on release.
I honestly haven't touched Magneto too much.
(03:02):
I don't know what it is with him.
He just doesn't terribly interest me too much.
And I'm I'm big on like I got tobe really interested in a hero
to really deep dive them. And I've played Nightcrawler in
every aspect. And I'm going to be honest, he
just, he just doesn't mesh with me.
Yeah, plus. Yeah, I actually don't think I
(03:24):
picked up Nightcrawler at all. I think every time we kind of
played around with him, it was either Chase or somebody else
grabbed him in in a like multiplayer game.
I did for the first time becauseI finally got into Tabletop
Simulator, play Magneto Tuesday night actually, and putting the
(03:45):
deck together. Completely forgot the card
Children of Adam. Yes.
Which made the Mutant Mayhem card a lot less good.
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a bit ofan odd duck.
He feels in many ways quite vanilla.
I don't know, kind of like like Cap.
(04:09):
Flavour wise that there's, there's four cards in this kit.
They're flavour wise. The cards are sweet wrapped, 2
copies are wrapped in metal and magnetic missile.
It's like flavour wise amazing but it's just like I see them in
the kit and it's just like I I hate them.
It's just like you potentially have just like 4 dead cards
depending on the situation. I I will say we I played them
(04:34):
into the the weekly Ultron challenge.
We we did that with four playersand I did get to rapid battle a
Sentinel drone and throw it intoanother Sentinel drone.
Perfect. So it was that was a lot of fun.
But other than that, I don't think I've actually played
either one of those two cards. And I kind of agree with chase
where especially clearing all the minions every turn.
(04:56):
It really felt, you know, given like the way Ultron works, it
really felt like that those two cards, unless you had them both
just weren't, weren't there for me.
Yeah, well, and it's, you reallyhave to contort yourself to make
it so it can line up. Yeah.
That's one of for for me, it's always been one of the what I
(05:19):
see as a bit of a design flaw inMarvel Champions is is actually
setting up combos with multiple cards is very tricky because so
few of so a few of the interesting combo cards are
upgrades or something that can sit on the table and wait for
the other card to show up. So you you have to actually get
both cards in your hand at the same time and it's just, it'd be
(05:40):
so hard to line up. Yeah, and compared to other kind
of card game, ask your deck builders, there's a lot less
tutors. I feel too that you can play to
kind of guarantee you have the ability to get what you need.
Or or even just because of the way it's a spend, spend your
cards economy. You don't, you don't sit on
cards, so you can't you can't also set up combos that way
(06:00):
either. Yep.
Yeah, that's always been one of the really the trickiest piece.
You see neat combos, but they'rejust especially if they're event
based, they're just usually unreasonable.
Yeah. I mean, maybe in the distant
future they'll be enough tutors that it's a little more
reasonable to do it or more thing more things to stash cards
under or any of that kind of stuff.
(06:21):
And like for the games that I play and like my group plays,
we're we're pretty much exclusively playing on expert.
And then of course in the leagues and stuff, they're, you
know, more challenging rounds. It's just like, it doesn't feel
worth trying to wait and set up these combos.
It's like we're losing, like just kill that guy.
Don't wrap him in metal. Yeah, if you if you didn't make
(06:45):
a tempo deck, I don't know why you showed up.
It's usually the story of the harder difficulty levels, right.
Yeah. Well, so the plan today is we're
going to check in with you on how the draft, what your
approach was, how it went, what you were thinking.
(07:06):
And the most recent round round 3, which was against Taskmaster
with with some fiddly details that we'll we'll talk about.
And then if either of you are able to search your your distant
memories for any of the round one or two things that you want
to chat about, we can we can loop back to those as well.
How's that work? Sounds good to me.
(07:27):
Brilliant. OK, well, so well, let's start
with the draft. So what was what was your team's
draft strategy for for this season?
Yeah. So when you announced kind of
the draft pool and everyone thatwas available, I went through
and made like a whole spreadsheet of everything.
Available. My favorite kind of person.
(07:50):
And then between the two of us, we kind of ranked everything
where we where we valued them because again, even I would say
like we are willing to pass overa little bit if we're not
feeling, you know who it is. Like I know he's one of the
(08:10):
strongest, but like neither Chase or I'd really enjoy
playing Doctor Strange. So it's just something where
like we're willing to pass over him to get someone else, even if
you know, the strength value is there.
And we, we really ended up with I think 4 three to four of the
heroes that we, if they fell to us in the first round, we were
(08:33):
100% taking them. And Scarlet Witch was the one
that fell to us of those four. And then after that, it was the
same strategy as take leadership, take the next best
hero we've that we kind of agreed on.
And then and then, you know, take what aspect we have left.
(08:55):
Yeah, and you, I think the leaderships were not in quite
enough danger. You're you were in the middle of
the pack, right? So 123456789 you were nine of of
18. So the biggest thing we were
scared of is that leadership wasgoing to go earlier well.
That's what I was wondering. So you have.
(09:17):
The second last one. Yes, exactly.
That's why we were like we were willing to take leadership in
the first round again if these 4heroes that we had did not make
it to us. So when Scarlet Witch made it to
us, we were ecstatic and then able to nab leadership in the
(09:37):
second round was like fell perfectly into like our
strategy. And you may not want to reveal
this, but if you weren't able toget leadership, what was your
priority for an aspect? I because of the 1st 2
scenarios, I was definitely pushing for protection.
(10:01):
I was talking up protection to begin with and Ryan wasn't quite
convinced that I was also talking up shadow Cap pretty
highly as well because I know TJJ and Jarrett also said that
they kind of drafted purely off the first round and that first
round definitely had me scared. Right, right.
(10:25):
So just for for listeners, just a quick bit of insight.
The first round was Magog and Magog had some scoring that was
based on how quickly he flipped.So you got one point if he never
flipped. So you had to get to your entire
(10:46):
team's counters on the Challenger side before he got in
his what? I can't remember what is it 10
in with two player? That's what I believe.
So, yeah. Yeah.
So before he got to 10, your team had to get to 20 and you
got one point if you flipped 4. He did.
So there was, it was pretty, I mean that was, I don't know how
(11:06):
you 2 felt, but I felt like thatwas definitely the hardest
challenge I've put in front of people in terms of those
scenario specific ones. I think that was kind of one
that we wrote. Off both of.
Those we. Once we did get protection, we
(11:27):
wrote on both of those and it was just like, listen, they're
not happening. OK, that's fair.
Well, once we got leadership as well, we knew that like our next
best aspect was going to be justice.
And there were so many justice out there that we knew we were
just going to get it so. Well, I mean, so Speaking of
(11:51):
that, you, you took Rogue in thethird round.
What was what was attracting youto Rogue?
Rogue is not, not a surprise, but not something that I, you
know, usually think of people prioritizing in any sort of way.
Well, for Rogue, Ryan had kind of just recently fallen in love
(12:15):
with her and like was playing her a lot and like he had her
really high on like his personalrankings.
So and you know, me thinking, Ohyeah, that's that's great.
You know, I get to play Scarlet Witch and he's going to play
Rogue. It's it's going to be sweet.
(12:35):
And you know how many times I'veplayed Scarlet Witch?
0. Which is fine.
I've also kind of fallen in Rogue, if fallen in love with
Rogue from playing her in this double S league and that SCL
round five also had Rogue so right?
(12:59):
Yeah, well, so heroes that went around what you picked to a
Gambit, Phoenix, Ant Man went before you and then Black
Panther, Gamora, Spectrum, our team got Star Lord, Miss Marvel.
So those were kind of the heroesthat people were evaluating, you
know, at A, at a similar level to what you were.
(13:21):
Yeah, I mean, I do feel like from a hero standpoint, Black
Panthers probably a little bit stronger than Rogue.
We just didn't want to play Black Panther again.
Thank you, because that's who you had last time, right?
Yeah, yeah. So that that kind of factored
into our decision a little bit there and then.
And this might come from playinga lot of four player outside of
(13:42):
this too, but splitting the trait felt really valuable where
you're not competing for kind ofthe same things that you want on
your board. So having a a Avenger and a a
X-Men felt really valuable in our pick as well.
Yeah, we we have that exact samecombo as well.
Well, and I mean, Rogue has bulletproof bell.
(14:04):
It's obviously not a thing that you can rely on, but it is.
That's two Magog attacks that you can avoid having to actually
take counters for. Yeah, and that definitely was
amazing. Bulletproof Bell is one of my
(14:24):
favorite cards in her kit. I've been playing her Injustice
and sometimes it's it feels likeyou really lose a lot of your
hand from playing those defense cards.
You. Know during the villain.
Phase. That's how I feel about
protection. What?
Yeah, I definitely like if I'm playing a protection protection
(14:48):
hero, like it's fine. But when you're also trying to
do other things, it's like, well, I survived, that's good.
Now I got to figure out, we got to figure out how to do the rest
of this. Round, Yeah, yeah, cool.
And then, yeah, there were, there were 14 justices, 8
(15:08):
leaderships, 8 protections. It was, it was random how, how
many there were of each. So like you said, it's
guaranteed you're getting justice no problem as, as the
final one, if that's what you wanted.
I I tend to draft Justice pretty, pretty high just because
I really like the main scheme protection that Justice offers.
(15:29):
Yep. And, and it's just also in two
players, an aspect I've just played an absolute ton of.
So I just feel really comfortable in that space.
But OK, cool. So comfortable with Rogue, got
Scarlet Witch, new to Scarlet Witch, got leadership,
comfortable with leadership. Love it.
(15:55):
OK, what was there? If Rogue had gotten snatched up,
was there anybody around there that you would have been excited
to get? I think it's actually if it was
like me drafting by myself, I probably would have picked Miss
Marvel. Instead of broke.
Just 'cause I really enjoy playing Miss Marvel, but then we
would have been in the same situation where I probably ended
(16:16):
up there with Scarlet Witch anyways and Chase was forced to
play Miss Marvel. So otherwise.
Miss Marvel's fine, I feel like.She's.
Definitely less versatile than what Rogue brings.
Rogue is just she can be so versatile with the cards that
(16:36):
she has if if you can get her set up, she can just do a little
bit of everything. Right.
Yeah, well, so she, she she's a bad economy, right?
That's the biggest gripe. She's a bit of an expensive
hero. And, and so, you know,
interestingly, you got Scarlet Witch, who is a great tempo
(16:57):
hero. And that's, so that's what we
had in season 1, Astrodar and I had had Scarlet Witch and we, we
kind of specifically went for a high tempo hero and for a bit of
a closer hero, which we took thespider as our, as our closer
hero. And but so Scarlet Witch being
able to support somebody who needs a little bit of build time
(17:18):
is, is awesome. And leadership too, right?
Yeah. I'm not sure we play that way to
be entirely honest. Well, but if there's if there's
trouble right off the bat, you Scarlet Witch has good capacity
(17:39):
to to help with it under control, right?
Like that's that's more that's more the point, right.
It doesn't have to be she's in pure tempo mode, but if if you
need that tempo, she's pretty good at it.
Yeah, no. And that's they're they're both
can just kind of handle everything, which I think we
like. I mean, the big thing in all of
(18:02):
our games that we did was like Scarlet Witchin leadership is
just like she's going to carry the game.
And Rogue is there to like cleanup or get things like in range,
you know, so we can finish things off.
Love it OK, so well let's check in on this round so this round
(18:26):
was taskmaster. I'll talk about some extra funny
things that were done, but the the entire season is using for
the optional modulars is only using Nemesis sets.
And here we have Hydro Patrol has to be in there with
(18:49):
Taskmaster. All of the captured by hydro
side schemes were taken out. The Spectrum, Valkyrie, Domino
and Captain America Nemesis, Nemesis sets were all added.
And then in terms of these hydrospecific minions that were in
there, Zemo from Captain Americais in there.
(19:09):
We've got one of the Hydro Soldiers and then I believe
there's three, no, sorry, 3 Hydra Soldiers and one Hydra
Hunter I think is how it works out, right?
So yeah, so you have a little bit of choice when some of those
cards are forcing you to pull out some of the things.
And there's some fun stuff you can do with, you know, avoiding
(19:29):
Zemo's quick strike because somebody's in an alter ego and
all those other things. But you're not just overwhelmed
constantly dealing with encounter cards from the Hydra
soldiers. So that that was the balance on
that one. And then we're using a custom
standard expert set that uses one of each copy from each of
(19:50):
the standard ones and twos and abit of a mix of what's coming
from expert one and two. How had, let's, let's start with
that one. How has that set been working
for you 2? Scarlet Witch loves it.
Yeah, I it's a. Good answer.
(20:11):
I molecular decayed for 15 one of the matches so it was a great
time. I mean, just like everyone else
has said, Total Annihilation andslug it out.
Like those are two cards. You always have to be aware of
where they're at. There's been times where we've
had to chump block and we know that Total Annihilation is in
(20:32):
the three cards left and then counter deck and it's like, just
got to chance it, yeah, just gotto chance it, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I, I have been pleasantly surprised.
I, I played around with it a little bit before I actually
made it kind of the official one, but I, I've been pleasantly
surprised at how well it's worked out.
(20:54):
It hasn't felt as overwhelming as kind of standard 2 and expert
2 can feel I took. The surge off of that is.
Huge took the Surge off Total Annihilation as the one
modification to it, and like yousaid, it means there's a small
handful of cards. Actually, there was one more
(21:15):
extra 1. You had to know where it was in
this one, because if you got it as a boost effect, it was
another rate. It was one of the ones from
Spectrums set. But there's this small handful
of cards, you just need to know where they are and you need to
make your decisions based on knowing where they are.
And I, I've, I've really felt like that's obviously it's
adding some variance, but it's actually adding some important
(21:35):
decision making, or at least challenging decision making.
So I I've found found found thatit worked pretty well.
I definitely like it better thanlike the losing.
The surge is so huge on total annihilation.
And we it's unreal that they putit on there.
(21:57):
Yeah, I can't believe that. So unnecessary.
The other card we probably dislike the most out of Expert 2
is Ruination. We definitely do not like seeing
that one. It I mean, yeah, yes, in the,
(22:18):
but in the era of player side schemes and all, I mean, it just
can be, it can be so tough. But I mean, as compared to the
expert one, which I'm, I'm completely blanking on master
plan. Thank you.
Master plan, because master planadds 4.
This one only adds 2. So if you have a bunch of side
(22:38):
schemes out already, this one isoften less painful than Master
plan would have been. Other.
I think the only thing I dislikeabout it is that you have to get
the side scheme in addition, yes, and then that it is
effectively put three on the main scheme as well.
Yes, because it's in type one, Yeah.
(22:59):
So it it does feel like unless you have a lot of player side
schemes and stuff out a bigger tempo hit than master plan to me
just with total number of threatplaced on the board.
Yeah. I mean, I might have a also have
a distorted view because we're our my team, I'm playing with my
(23:19):
son this season and our team is Star Lord and Storm.
And because I'm playing Star Lord, we probably have a higher
than average number of side schemes on the board compared to
the other teams, so that's why Igot to win.
Fast, right? That's.
Why I got to win fast. So I think I might have also a
(23:41):
slightly distorted view of of what Roux Nation's doing Yeah,
fortunately we're playing justice.
But interestingly though, we're actually we're not playing we're
almost no events other than a little bit of multitasking for
for justice. We're really relying on
(24:01):
activations for for most of our threat clearing, especially
because Star Lord can get leaderof the Guardians and I'm playing
leadership with with Star Lord and with leader of the
Guardians. And if you know fairly heavy
ally built, you can just absolutely annihilate the thread
on the board. It's amazing.
(24:22):
Yeah, I know Ryan commented on that when we were kind of
looking at your decks before we hopped in here and he is like,
wow, I'm really surprised they're they only took
multitasking in and it's like with Star Lord.
Yeah, well, it's a. Lot of, yeah.
Yeah, well, we, it's, it's not how we started, right?
(24:43):
Like this, is it? It took a while to kind of find
the sweet spot of, you know, just that little bit of extra
thwart when you when you really need it.
But in the, in the era of playerside schemes, being able to pull
out leader of the Guardians is just way more straightforward.
And and then of course, he can cheat it out if he, when he gets
in his hand. So that, but that's been really
(25:03):
neat because I've actually not really played justice like this
before. I I so I'm so used to event
based justice, especially in solo.
Agreed, I I'm a really big fan of heroes that can ready so I've
definitely done more than my fair share of activation
(25:25):
justice. Yeah, yeah.
Do you do you like repurpose? I love Repurpose.
I haven't tried Repurpose on everyone.
You know, Repurpose on Iron Man and Rocket are the two main ones
that I've really played. And yeah, those two just feel
(25:47):
wild. Yeah, I think pretty much
anybody I've ever played protection with on a hero, I've
I've played repurpose. That's kind of my default.
Yeah, we play a lot of four player games.
So when you go in there with like a repurpose protection
(26:08):
build and you kind of let the table know like, hey, this is
like a kind of selfish protection, like I'm not going
to be protecting you. Yeah, that's it.
Is you're looking for another green player to join as well?
Yeah. That's the leadership players
(26:29):
for it. I mean it, it has been and it's
chase. It's cool that you mentioned
kind of activation justice because you these days, for the
most part, there's actually highactivation builds available in
all the aspects pool as well. So you so those heroes that do
(26:50):
like that, there's a lot of things you can play into.
I've, I've been playing so much pool and I, I mean, I've, it's
just, I throw laser, I throw laser swords at everybody.
You're you're talking to the twowrong people about pool.
Yeah, well, you know, some people call it safe pool.
I I tend to play fairly safe pool because especially if
(27:13):
you're playing high player count, there's just icons on the
board. You don't even have to bring
any. Yeah, that's true.
It, it's a totally different game if you're playing one or
even two players, but if you're playing three or four players,
there's, there's usually just somany icons kicking around.
It's it's of no concern. Everybody does usually have to
deal with me having a symbiote suit, but other than that it's
(27:35):
it's pretty, pretty safe. You can't let me have anything
that lets me put bad things on the board in exchange for a
slight benefit. That's that's the problem.
Yes, I'm the problem. Yeah, that's good fun.
(27:55):
So I guess getting back into therest of this, this round the
scoring 20 points in total for turns.
You get a point if you get it done by turn 8 and then three
points if you get it done by turn 12.
So if you get it done by turn 8,it's it's four points total.
(28:15):
Hero health. There's a bunch of different
things, but there's up to eight points available based on hero
health and half of that is just having your heroes survive
threat inside schemes. There's three points there
minions in play, 2 points and then there's three scenario
specific ones. One, because I wanted to really
not incentivize people just bringing the Vivian ally to
(28:39):
counter the Hydra patrol side scheme.
There's a penalty for bringing the Vivian basic ally in into
the deck at all, and then one point for if you stun the
villain only zero to two times and one point if you confuse the
villain zero to two times. So just not overly penalizing
(29:00):
that, but not making that a primary strategy.
Yeah. And I really like that.
Just like a little like, you know, not bringing Vivian.
There was a point in our practice games where I was like,
do we just bring Vivian? Like just eat that point?
Because it's like it would definitely make dealing with
these Hydra soldiers a lot easier.
(29:20):
Right, 22 Vivian's in the in thedecks could really make a lot of
that. A lot.
Better. Yeah, that it.
That definitely added a discussion in our deck building
where it was like is because there was AI think it was after
the first or the second, was it after the first one chase where
we just were like do we just scrap it and put her in there?
(29:44):
Yeah, we, we just, it was after the first one because we were
just getting so many encounter cards.
We were getting super unlucky with our poles and we decided
just to keep her out, which I'm glad we did.
We, I think we kind of got luckyin our official round because we
just didn't pull the Hydra soldiers.
OK. Yeah, and every time we cleared
(30:07):
like Hydra Patrol or any of the things that gave you like 2
Hydra minions, one of us was always flipped down.
So we just took the Hydra Hunterand Zemo, and the one who was
flipped down took Zemo. Yeah.
So. And.
That was often our strategy too.Well, searches.
There was times where we had extra allies on the board too,
and we were both flipped up and it's just like, well, just take
(30:29):
Baron and just chump block his attack or someone had a tough.
Because that's the other thing with those scenarios, specific
ones is between Rogue and Scarlet Witch, like we have a
lot of status effects that we can put out there.
So you know, there was times where we were hex bolting and
it's like, do we use a stunner confuse here or do we put a
(30:54):
tough somewhere? Yeah, yeah, I know that because.
The other, the other thing with Taskmaster is, you know, when
you flip up, you get that boost card and take damage and it's
like, you know, do we want to eat those into toughs, save the
toughs for activations like how do we want to play around that?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
(31:14):
So how for you 2 how did ScarletWitch play into that 'cause you
you actually had the ability to manipulate some of those boost
icons? Yeah, we did use the like send
it back a few times on Taskmaster and pull the next one
(31:36):
I think. Was it your nation or was it a
three boost that we, I know for sure in the official one that we
threw back on a on Rogue, you know, going to hero form.
And then other than that, we we both included one of crew
quarters. Oh yeah.
(31:58):
In our deck, just as like a we'll get it down and then just
the one that you every time you go down to health really I think
offset most of that, that flipping damage on average.
And then, you know, additionally, if your timing's
good, you can even get both crewquarters triggered for yourself
(32:22):
if if the other player doesn't need theirs.
Yeah. So I think, I think that was
something that normally I wouldn't include in a deck
build, but was definitely put inthere specifically for this
scenario. It's funny in in solo Champions
League, right? I like, I would say I play
(32:43):
justice or leadership when I have a choice more often than
than anything else. And especially I, I play justice
and I usually play trying to flip down at least every, you
know, every other turn if I can.And so crew, crew quarters is
just invaluable because if you flip down a couple times, that's
(33:03):
you know, for for health, for for two just is great.
I will say I did consider takingCrew Quarters out of my deck
only because the way we're playing is Rogue doesn't get a
ton of benefit from going to Alter Ego unless she builds into
it. So it's just like, well, I'm
(33:23):
just going to stay up as much aspossible and avoid those, you
know, forced responses. Yeah, well, you know, the
somewhat maniacal thing about this is the encounter deck is
(33:45):
trying to make you flip down. Yep, and I think it, I think it
was said in the discord, you know, the nice thing about those
is they're just alter ego actions.
So as long as someone's down, they are able to handle them.
Which again in our official game, we dodged a lot of the bad
(34:07):
ones. I think the ones that kept
hitting us was Superpower Feedback, which is Domino
Nemesis after your resolvent ability or identity specific
card take one damage. So that was kind of the only one
that really kept landing on us. I if I'm remembering correctly,
that one does not actually target Star Lord's element guns,
(34:33):
so we I was sometimes able to actually sit on that for a turn
or two without it being too brutal.
That sounds right, because I hadlooked it up and it didn't hit
Scarlet Witch's Crest right. Yes, same thing.
So, yeah. Yeah, because we had that.
(34:54):
It's not on, it's not an abilityand it's not a card.
Yeah, we had that question when I had that on me and I was like
do I take a damage if I Crest here?
And when I had looked it up it it did not.
So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I mean it, it helped
with being able to control the board pretty well.
And the it's pretty sweet that Hydra hunter as a just perfect
(35:15):
three health to to take out overand over again.
Thank you element gun and and all the toughs and all that, all
those sorts of things. I mean, I mean, we when we talk,
we can talk about round two as well.
But you know, the those element guns are just beautiful for
being able to deal with the tough minions, which in in round
two there were certainly a ton. So your team scored 19 out of 20
(35:40):
in in this round. So what was the point that you
lost? We won on Turn 9.
We weren't we weren't close on Turn 8, so don't worry.
It it was, I think I ended up decking like turn 8 and putting
(36:08):
2 Molecular Decays back in and that's how we ended up winning
on turn 9. Right.
But it yeah, it we weren't we weren't close, but that was and
then you look at it and you you know, you lose the one point
burning a second official try orrun, right.
Yeah. So it's like, well, we might as
(36:29):
well not even try because we can't score better.
Yeah. We, we went in kind of knowing
we were going to lose that point'cause our practice games, like
our best practice game was ten turns.
So it's just like, OK, we just, there's something about the
scenario, we just don't have thedamage for it, which we were
seeing all the bad things like we, we could not dodge shadows
(36:56):
in our practice games. Right.
Shadows just kept coming out andin our official game we dodged
it. So it's just, it's just one of
those things that shadows reallydoes bring a huge difference to
the table. When you do.
Get shadows. Oh, sorry.
Go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, I was just saying I think
we we lost the first practice game like and almost considered
(37:23):
scrapping our entire strategy atthat point for it rebuilding
but. Evil laugh.
How often did you leave Scarlet Witch's nemesis side scheme out
for a while to take advantage of?
(37:45):
So I don't think hers, at least in this round specifically hers
never really came out. Like even in our practice games,
it was just Rogue. Rogue was a magnet for Mystique
to come out and that was the other thing is just like, you
know, I'm getting essentially 2 misleds into my deck which is
(38:06):
just adding threat to the main scheme and getting me or getting
rogue, you know, card disadvantage in the hand.
So it's just like really, reallybad tempo hit and killing.
Mystique is hard enough on its own, but in our previous rounds
when it came out, we definitely really considered how long to
(38:28):
leave it out. It could be so helpful.
Yeah, I, I will say that being out was how I was able to do 15
with a molecular decay in round two.
But yeah, it was, I mean, the only the great thing about
playing with Chase is he will pull shadows every time it's
pulled. Let's say you don't have to blow
(38:49):
that first time. Yeah.
So you know, I'm safe for at least the first time it's
pulled. I I don't know, I don't know
what it is. If it is in the deck, it finds
its way in front of chase. Some solo champions goes for me.
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, so solo Champions
(39:13):
League is a really interesting one in terms of it would be
amazing to figure out a way to make the difficulty spike of
pulling that card not so high. Yeah.
I will say, yeah, I mean I. Agree.
Three one's been the the standard three one's been much
(39:39):
more balanced than even if like the four player matches and
stuff we played even where it just like you're going to
someone's nemesis, but you're not, you know, usually getting
nemesis to turn one or two and just getting completely killed.
Yeah, seeing it coming is great.It it kind of leans into I don't
(40:02):
know if either of you have played Ian's and but it
something that I also liked about the Ebony Ma villain is
these things that have timers and you can see them, you can
see them coming and try to prepare a little bit for for
that thing that you can see coming.
I. I like, I like that as a, as a
(40:24):
design thing that they're using a little bit.
Yeah, I, I enjoy it as well. OK, so that was, that was round
3. Do either of your brains
remember anything about rounds one or two?
So round one. A dog.
(40:49):
Magog We knew going into Magog that we weren't going to have a
good time. One, we don't really love this
scenario to begin with. I love it so much.
I know, I know, we're in the minority there.
I know everyone swears by these.It's just.
Well, I don't, I don't try to impose that.
I don't try to impose my love onanybody.
But I mean, other than I'm making everybody play it but the
(41:11):
but that's too bad because I just think it's so great.
But yeah, carry on, carry on. The, the biggest thing that we
tested and ended up going with is Rogue, Alter Ego, Justice,
really leaning into the X-Men and the mission training and
yes, and you know, put two undersurveillances in the deck.
(41:33):
Like we're going to get under surveillance on that main
scheme. You know, if that main scheme
pops, we're adding four. Well, if we're both in hero form
and we're taking damage, well, we're putting 4 on there
anyways. So the biggest thing we were
doing was just avoid attacks andtry and keep the threat down
until we can push some big damage and really play around
(41:57):
when Bulletproof Bell was going to be in my hand, Rogue's hand.
So would would you, you know, draw into it in alter ego and
then hold it? There was many turns where I
held on to bulletproof bell. Yeah, cool.
(42:19):
That seems awesome. It's two activations.
I mean, it's so that it neutralizes.
It's so good. Plus I forget which of the
mutant education or X-Men instruction one it is, but that
you can cycle it back into right?
(42:42):
That's mutant education. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, X-Men, instructions the allyone.
Yeah, right. Ryan, do you remember anything
specific about round one? I know that was kind of like a
big like strategy shift that we did.
Like that's not something that we normally play.
That was we, I think we tried itonce with just like a standard
(43:06):
kind of going in with the feel of like we're going to flip
every turn kind of regardless, you know, and keep only one
person in hero form. And we just couldn't, couldn't
get up and, and running fast enough that way.
So we we did switch to the the alter ego justice and then have
Scarlet Witch help out when needed and then kind of move
(43:30):
back in, I will say. I think it.
Did it start in that round or was it the second round where
there was several times that I just left Quicksilver on the
board? Oh yeah, that's that's a big
thing we should talk about. Yeah.
(43:51):
It's this a new strategy? Yeah, so as Scarlet Witch, I
just left Quicksilver on the board and I would activate with
him once or twice when he came in and then leave him and kind
of figured worst Casey, it's a block or something if I need it.
But that way when I went down, I, I always, you know, discarded
2 to draw 3. Just kind of the whole, yeah,
(44:11):
the whole big thing of it was getting as many cards in my hand
when I come up as I can, you know, to dump like two or three
hex bolts or or two molecular decays a turn.
And having him just as like a free strength in numbers target
where you know you can then pullthem back up if you needed to do
(44:31):
something. A lot of our spittiest heroes.
You really wanted. Yeah.
Sorry, Chase. No worries.
A lot of our gameplay experienceis like in big multiplayer
games, and that's where we've seen a lot of Scarlet Witch.
And it's just like, I don't know, we'll probably go for just
more like standard. You know, I'm trying.
(44:55):
I haven't played a ton of scrub witch, but just like, you know,
I don't think quick server is a great ally.
He's he's kind of expensive and and he's just hard to get down
and do other things. But when we got him down, I know
especially in round two, he was kind of carrying us through
rapid responses. We're making the call for him
(45:18):
and just getting that that Scarlet Witch Alter Ego action
and just the four damage that hedoes when he comes out, you
know, with the two activations, like it went a long ways.
Well, I like that we never, whenlast season Astradar and I never
really took advantage of that. But I I definitely agree with
(45:40):
with that take. I mean, we probably did take
advantage of it, but not kind ofat the strategy level.
I will say the other one that I always kind of thought wasn't
the greatest was Agatha. And again, that probably comes
from, you know, mostly seeing her in in four player games
where you're just not in Alter Ego every other turn.
(46:02):
But I do think that is one of the strongest cards in her kit
in lower player count where you flip down every other turn, you
know, picking a card out of the top three or setting up your
later deck, you know, later is just super strong.
Right. And so if you're coupling that
with keeping Quicksilver on the board, that's two card
advantage. Do you do you have enough?
(46:26):
I I didn't look at what what decks you were playing in a way
that my brain remembers. But do you have enough allies?
I find, you know, Scarlet Witch is definitely one of those
heroes where you can flip down and then you just have nothing
in your hand that you can actually do.
You get all the card advantage, but whoop do you do.
(46:48):
Yeah, so I kept, I think most ofthe decks for all three rounds
of the league have sat around 7 to 8 allies.
Yeah. I guess round one was 9, but
kind of right in that in that number.
And then who the allies are havekind of changed a little bit
depending on on the round. Like this was the first one
(47:11):
where I included White Tiger again, you know, just with the
dog having stages. Yeah.
I know because the 1st 2 didn't,yes.
The big thing is when we flip down with Scarlet Witch, we
weren't always doing her action,but we were agathan every time.
Because it's like worst case scenario, you're setting up, you
know, the back half of your deckand whatever card you take, if
(47:35):
you can't use it that turn, well, you can discard it or
well, you're going to draw into it anyways, so just keep it in
your hand. Agreed.
Yeah, but you know, with three make the calls in there and
stuff like that, I felt like I pretty consistently had
something to do with the cards in Alter Ego that it, it wasn't
(47:56):
a huge problem if I did, you know, trade 2 cards for three
cards or 4 cards as it is in in Alter Ego.
Right. So you 2 finished kind of in the
middle of the pack on that round.
So you you had 14 points and youcould have spoke to it was a bit
of a challenge for for you. And we had some some teams that
(48:21):
it was just a brutally difficultchallenge because they're heroes
just lined up so poorly with theactual specific challenge.
But you know what this is? This is the first time we've had
a round where we had one Sui Jacinto and and Steven got 20
Caquita, Jamie and the ugly night got 19, a small handful of
(48:44):
eighteens and then 16 and and down.
It's you know, it was a pretty tough round overall.
So a lot of people took that onepretty hard overall.
And I don't know, was it, did you feel like the game that you
played was kind of what an average one of those games
against Magog was like, or it was, you know, one of the better
ones or one of the worst ones you had?
(49:07):
I think we went in saying that the best we can do is 16 points.
We went in knowing that. So, you know, we didn't get that
16, so we got 14 and we had already played a ton of practice
games into it and we're just like, we're not even going to
try another one. Right, 'cause the you know the
(49:31):
small. The small advantage when you
play subsequent games is you canget some key cards in your in
your starting hand. Yeah, maybe we should have
looked into that a bit more. I mean, so my, my son and I, you
know, we decided to play it kindof high risk, high reward,
knowing that we, it was feasibleto score 20, but not likely.
(49:59):
And so just because it's Star Lord, right?
And and so it was OK to lose thefirst one or two games because
we could probably still get a pretty good score even, you
know, as those cards are gettingadded, because Star Lord being
able to start the game with his helmet in his hand completely
changes how you're playing. Yeah.
(50:24):
And I mean similar similarly to a lesser extent.
Storm getting to have hurt crownin her hand or whatever you
decide is the high priority one is also pretty valuable.
So we we ended up kind of almostwelcoming having that first loss
and just then being able to havea much more direct strategy of
OK, then this is how we're playing this.
And so we we won on our second game, lost one point because we
(50:49):
we didn't manage to completely prevent the the flip from the
dog going on the the champion side on to the what it it goes
from booing to cheering, right? Yes, yeah.
Yeah, so, so we kind, we kind ofknew.
And so we, we did, we did what Ithink was our, our best as well.
(51:11):
I mean, you, you 2 missed what you felt like was your best was
60. I mean, like I said, we probably
could have gotten 20 if absolutely everything went
right. But we're we're pretty delighted
with how we performed actually. Yeah, I mean with how everyone
else did eighteens right up there.
Yeah, well, and you know, thankfully Jacinto and Steven
(51:33):
also lost a point in one of the rounds too.
So we actually have no perfect scores, which is honestly one of
my goals in the league for sure.Right.
It doesn't feel very satisfying if I mean, awesome if people are
able to do it, but it it's kind of nice where it feels like
everybody is dropping a point here or there.
(51:53):
It makes you feel like more of agame.
So yeah, you're in the thick of things.
You're an eighth at the moment. Or I guess the three-way tie for
6th really is actually. More.
There you go. That's that's a better way to
put it, yeah. Because that was just, that was
just alphabetical order. I guess that put you in an
(52:14):
eighth when I looked at it. But yeah, so you're a three-way
tie for 6th at 53 points out of a possible 60 and the highest
score is 59. So you're definitely in the
thick of it all. And, and I will say, like going
into this, like our biggest thing was one, you know, let's
play heroes that we like and cause neither one of us want to
(52:36):
take heroes that we don't like that are considered good into
like these difficult challenges 'cause you know, we're going to
play multiple games. Like, find someone that you
enjoy playing and our goal isn'tnecessarily like to end up with
a perfect score, but you know, just kind of find something that
works and have a good time, right?
(52:59):
But still be motivated by the incentives of the scoring
system. Of course, yes, yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean, as a person who took Star Lord, I fully
agree. That's not you have to be
willing to take it, take it on the nose a little bit if that's
if that's the choice you're going to make, right?
(53:22):
I will say when we got the perfect score in round two, I
mean we only played our games like 2 weeks apart from round
one to round two. And when we got that perfect
score, we were, we were jumping around and cheering.
We're so excited. High fives all around.
Yes. Excuse me, the even though you
(53:46):
don't really have piercing in your in your arsenals, hexbolts
are pretty good at dealing with Tufts.
Yeah. So is when they.
So is Squirrel Girl. Yeah, well, yes, of course.
And so is Squirrel Girl with Make the Call right?
Yes, yeah, yeah. Because I know in our in our
(54:08):
round that we got the perfect 20, we set up the the flip to
when we were either able, I don't remember if she was in
hand or was in the discard, whatever.
We knew that we were immediatelygoing to be able to play
Squirrel Girl right away. Right.
So I mean, for listeners, if youdon't know, it was on the run
with Blockbuster, who either takes either gets a bonus attack
(54:33):
with overkill or gets a tough status.
So there's a bunch of tough. Plus when you advance the
villain in on the run, you pull out a bunch of the Marauder
minions and they all get tough. So you're definitely dealing
with tough in that round. Yeah, but yeah, you just, you
(54:54):
just make the call for Squirrel Girl and all the toughs go away.
And all the toughs go away. Did you have Black Panther in
that one? In the in the deck first
leadership. No, I didn't.
Yeah. I mean, again, it's probably a
bit of a twisted version of it because I'm playing Star Lord
and so my, my view of how much things cost is, is very
(55:17):
distorted. But we also had Squirrel Girl,
but our, and it was right beforewhatever that new X-Men ally is
that came out that can do one damage to everything as well.
But you know, our, our strategy was, Oh yeah, thank you was, you
know, Black Panther grabs make the call, make the call grabs
(55:41):
Squirrel Girl. That was, that was kind of the
sequence of events. So we we could time, we could
time our flip up and have even alittle bit more control over
what was going on. Yeah, I guess I've been, and
maybe it's just with the flipping every turn and like I
said, prioritizing like Quicksilver on the board and
stuff like that. I've been seeing so much of the
deck every turn that it feels like I always had like, make the
(56:05):
call in my hand or, you know, some piece of what I wanted.
And you could, you could set up the bottom of the deck.
You could know I put a make the call in there.
Yeah. Oh, but of course, that doesn't
work very well 'cause you can't make the call once you get to
the bottom of the deck, 'cause you reshuffle.
But you know neither here nor there.
But it just, it feels like you see so many cards that you just
(56:28):
are going to get the, you know, pieces you need.
I did run Kalu specifically to go dig for any of these events
as well. Cool, well love it.
I don't know, have you 2 startedagainst Magneto yet?
We have not, all we've done is read the discord on how bad he
(56:52):
is and. I was going.
To say, I think it's the. Reports are not good.
They're doing a really good job now.
Yeah, we, we haven't practiced yet either.
My son has promised we're going to try tomorrow probably.
So we'll, we'll have a bit of a sense of what we're in for.
(57:14):
Yeah, I think our first games are happening next week, so
we're going to be probably pushing a little close on this
round. Well, so for interesting for
you, right, So this one is Magneto with the rogue and
Quicksilver nemesis sets. And so Shadows is if it hits
(57:34):
Rogue, Shadows is just going to pull Mystique and and have
Surge, of course, Quicksilver. I don't think it does right.
Because oh shadow shadow says search the side backwards yes, I
said that backward It's I think it'll just surge on me.
If you can't pull the minion, itsurges yeah right.
(58:00):
I think I have to double check anyway.
The Quicksilver Nemesis set is atop tier difficulty nemesis.
It's got lots of insight. It does just.
It hates everyone at the table. It likes to exhaust you.
Yeah, it it hits the table nice and wide.
That's an awesome, awesome Nemesis set.
(58:21):
You're kind of interested, you know that?
Yeah. Well, you know, honestly, it was
really fun to just kind of go through the Nemesis sets and
think of, you know, looking for synergies and thinking about
villains that yeah, this would make a lot of sense with with
that one. So it was really fun.
(58:43):
I think, you know, just because these are Brotherhood Nemesis
sets is why they're in the Magneto 1.
Not not for any other specific design reason that I can
remember, but I was also just excited to get Quicksilver into
there because I just or his nemesis set into there because I
just I think that one's so so awesome and difficult and mean
(59:05):
just love it. Love everything about it.
All right, well, thank you both.Absolute delight to have a chat
with you again. You know, I'm starting to plan
for for the next season and hope, hope that you 2 will
continue to participate. I think that's the plan.
(59:29):
We're really liking the the early outlines you got out
there, you know, minus the whole, you know, no leadership
thing. That's kind of our thing.
So. I, I mean, I also really love
leadership, but I think, I think, yeah.
So the, the, the quick preview is we're going to draft heroes
(59:49):
instead of heroes and aspects. So everybody gets 4 heroes and
then has to play Uchiro at leastonce.
And you can pick the aspects that you're playing, but you
can't play the same aspect of the same hero more than one
time. So to kind of make that all have
nice balance, I said no leadership and.
We'll, we'll see. I think that'll be kind of a
neat mix of of things. Listen, I love the idea.
(01:00:13):
Oh, go ahead, Ryan. I've been working on my non
leadership deck building skills so that I'm not a complete
deadweight in the next season. OK, that's fair.
That's fair. I really love the idea of being
able to pick your hero like you have four options or you know,
whatever the combo is of optionsare going into scenarios.
Because I know we mentioned round one against Magog, I think
(01:00:36):
it was Dresden's team where it'sjust like they want to take
damage and it's and it's just like, I don't know how you do
that in a Magog. You're just not playing the
heroes at that point. And you know, so it's nice if
there is a scenario that kind ofcounters someone, it's just
like, OK, we just don't bring that hero into the scenario.
(01:00:59):
Yeah. I mean, the plan is to lean a
little bit into scenarios that are actually some of them will
be a bit susceptible to certain strategies.
And so that will actually reallychange the valuation of some of
the heroes. Cool.
Which I think will be neat. Anyway, that does sound.
Really cool. Well, we'll we'll get there when
(01:01:20):
we get there probably draft in January.
I haven't, I haven't really started play testing any of the
ideas I have just kind of putting the ideas together.
So that's, that's what this one's going to be all about.
Plus planes and Magneto. Let's go.
Anyway, yeah, yeah, thank you both.
Thank you listeners. And we'll, we'll catch you next
(01:01:41):
time on the road to nowhere. Yeah.
Thanks for having us. Yeah.
Thanks for having us on. Always a pleasure.
Hey hey friendos, welcome to yetanother special episode of The
Road to Nowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast.
Today we're recapping Modoc League Season 2 Round 3.
Modoc League is a two hero team league where each team drafts
heroes and aspects from a pool against the other teams, fantasy
(00:30):
sports style. I'm your host, Joshua Rue, and
with us this week are some returning guests.
We got Sloth. Sloth, how you doing?
Good, good, glad to be here again.
Glad to have you and Chase. How's it going?
Good. Do you 2 either of you play
fantasy sports at all? Yes.
(00:51):
I play fantasy football. I played fantasy football for
well over 10 years, right? Got a pretty serious work league
in a couple dynasty leagues. So OK, I always, I always think
I'm good, but. Somebody offers and you're
you're still ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(01:13):
I I started a dynasty league this year with some people and
play in a couple other leagues too so.
OK, so yeah, you, you 2 are bothin in dynasty leagues.
Not, I mean, not to get too far off track, but in dynasty
leagues, how, how does drafting work?
You you're just drafting like rookies and weirdo free agents
(01:34):
that come in from undrafted and stuff like that.
Yeah, so the first year of the league you have a full draft
usually. Yeah.
They call that the start up draft.
Yep. And then after that, draft picks
will typically be ordered based on placement in the league.
And then you draft through like rookies coming in.
Got it. Well, and that that's probably
(01:55):
pretty fun in NFL because NFL has, you know, hundreds of
players coming in every every season.
It's not, you know, the NBA has 60 players that come in through
the through the draft and even most of the second rounders
never even play. So probably a lot less
interesting there. But I mean, the NFL just has so
many players in their draft. Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny
(02:19):
because like a a dynasty draft versus like a redraft, it's just
like the value on players is so different.
Like if you have a young team, like your team might not be very
good, but in three years you might have the best team in the
league. Right, right.
Interesting, interesting. OK, anyway, back-to-back to
(02:39):
Marvel Champions. Yes, maybe.
Before we get on onto league stuff, what's been going on with
any of the new content of, you know, your, your Magneto, your
Nightcrawler, Have either of youhad a chance to play either of
those? I've played both, I got them
both pretty much right away on release.
I honestly haven't touched Magneto too much.
(03:02):
I don't know what it is with him.
He just doesn't terribly interest me too much.
And I'm I'm big on like I got tobe really interested in a hero
to really deep dive them. And I've played Nightcrawler in
every aspect. And I'm going to be honest, he
just, he just doesn't mesh with me.
Yeah, plus. Yeah, I actually don't think I
(03:24):
picked up Nightcrawler at all. I think every time we kind of
played around with him, it was either Chase or somebody else
grabbed him in in a like multiplayer game.
I did for the first time becauseI finally got into Tabletop
Simulator, play Magneto Tuesday night actually, and putting the
(03:45):
deck together. Completely forgot the card
Children of Adam. Yes.
Which made the Mutant Mayhem card a lot less good.
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a bit ofan odd duck.
He feels in many ways quite vanilla.
I don't know, kind of like like Cap.
(04:09):
Flavour wise that there's, there's four cards in this kit.
They're flavour wise. The cards are sweet wrapped, 2
copies are wrapped in metal and magnetic missile.
It's like flavour wise amazing but it's just like I see them in
the kit and it's just like I I hate them.
It's just like you potentially have just like 4 dead cards
depending on the situation. I I will say we I played them
(04:34):
into the the weekly Ultron challenge.
We we did that with four playersand I did get to rapid battle a
Sentinel drone and throw it intoanother Sentinel drone.
Perfect. So it was that was a lot of fun.
But other than that, I don't think I've actually played
either one of those two cards. And I kind of agree with chase
where especially clearing all the minions every turn.
(04:56):
It really felt, you know, given like the way Ultron works, it
really felt like that those two cards, unless you had them both
just weren't, weren't there for me.
Yeah, well, and it's, you reallyhave to contort yourself to make
it so it can line up. Yeah.
That's one of for for me, it's always been one of the what I
(05:19):
see as a bit of a design flaw inMarvel Champions is is actually
setting up combos with multiple cards is very tricky because so
few of so a few of the interesting combo cards are
upgrades or something that can sit on the table and wait for
the other card to show up. So you you have to actually get
both cards in your hand at the same time and it's just, it'd be
(05:40):
so hard to line up. Yeah, and compared to other kind
of card game, ask your deck builders, there's a lot less
tutors. I feel too that you can play to
kind of guarantee you have the ability to get what you need.
Or or even just because of the way it's a spend, spend your
cards economy. You don't, you don't sit on
cards, so you can't you can't also set up combos that way
(06:00):
either. Yep.
Yeah, that's always been one of the really the trickiest piece.
You see neat combos, but they'rejust especially if they're event
based, they're just usually unreasonable.
Yeah. I mean, maybe in the distant
future they'll be enough tutors that it's a little more
reasonable to do it or more thing more things to stash cards
under or any of that kind of stuff.
(06:21):
And like for the games that I play and like my group plays,
we're we're pretty much exclusively playing on expert.
And then of course in the leagues and stuff, they're, you
know, more challenging rounds. It's just like, it doesn't feel
worth trying to wait and set up these combos.
It's like we're losing, like just kill that guy.
Don't wrap him in metal. Yeah, if you if you didn't make
(06:45):
a tempo deck, I don't know why you showed up.
It's usually the story of the harder difficulty levels, right.
Yeah. Well, so the plan today is we're
going to check in with you on how the draft, what your
approach was, how it went, what you were thinking.
(07:06):
And the most recent round round 3, which was against Taskmaster
with with some fiddly details that we'll we'll talk about.
And then if either of you are able to search your your distant
memories for any of the round one or two things that you want
to chat about, we can we can loop back to those as well.
How's that work? Sounds good to me.
(07:27):
Brilliant. OK, well, so well, let's start
with the draft. So what was what was your team's
draft strategy for for this season?
Yeah. So when you announced kind of
the draft pool and everyone thatwas available, I went through
and made like a whole spreadsheet of everything.
Available. My favorite kind of person.
(07:50):
And then between the two of us, we kind of ranked everything
where we where we valued them because again, even I would say
like we are willing to pass overa little bit if we're not
feeling, you know who it is. Like I know he's one of the
(08:10):
strongest, but like neither Chase or I'd really enjoy
playing Doctor Strange. So it's just something where
like we're willing to pass over him to get someone else, even if
you know, the strength value is there.
And we, we really ended up with I think 4 three to four of the
heroes that we, if they fell to us in the first round, we were
(08:33):
100% taking them. And Scarlet Witch was the one
that fell to us of those four. And then after that, it was the
same strategy as take leadership, take the next best
hero we've that we kind of agreed on.
And then and then, you know, take what aspect we have left.
(08:55):
Yeah, and you, I think the leaderships were not in quite
enough danger. You're you were in the middle of
the pack, right? So 123456789 you were nine of of
18. So the biggest thing we were
scared of is that leadership wasgoing to go earlier well.
That's what I was wondering. So you have.
(09:17):
The second last one. Yes, exactly.
That's why we were like we were willing to take leadership in
the first round again if these 4heroes that we had did not make
it to us. So when Scarlet Witch made it to
us, we were ecstatic and then able to nab leadership in the
(09:37):
second round was like fell perfectly into like our
strategy. And you may not want to reveal
this, but if you weren't able toget leadership, what was your
priority for an aspect? I because of the 1st 2
scenarios, I was definitely pushing for protection.
(10:01):
I was talking up protection to begin with and Ryan wasn't quite
convinced that I was also talking up shadow Cap pretty
highly as well because I know TJJ and Jarrett also said that
they kind of drafted purely off the first round and that first
round definitely had me scared. Right, right.
(10:25):
So just for for listeners, just a quick bit of insight.
The first round was Magog and Magog had some scoring that was
based on how quickly he flipped.So you got one point if he never
flipped. So you had to get to your entire
(10:46):
team's counters on the Challenger side before he got in
his what? I can't remember what is it 10
in with two player? That's what I believe.
So, yeah. Yeah.
So before he got to 10, your team had to get to 20 and you
got one point if you flipped 4. He did.
So there was, it was pretty, I mean that was, I don't know how
(11:06):
you 2 felt, but I felt like thatwas definitely the hardest
challenge I've put in front of people in terms of those
scenario specific ones. I think that was kind of one
that we wrote. Off both of.
Those we. Once we did get protection, we
(11:27):
wrote on both of those and it was just like, listen, they're
not happening. OK, that's fair.
Well, once we got leadership as well, we knew that like our next
best aspect was going to be justice.
And there were so many justice out there that we knew we were
just going to get it so. Well, I mean, so Speaking of
(11:51):
that, you, you took Rogue in thethird round.
What was what was attracting youto Rogue?
Rogue is not, not a surprise, but not something that I, you
know, usually think of people prioritizing in any sort of way.
Well, for Rogue, Ryan had kind of just recently fallen in love
(12:15):
with her and like was playing her a lot and like he had her
really high on like his personalrankings.
So and you know, me thinking, Ohyeah, that's that's great.
You know, I get to play Scarlet Witch and he's going to play
Rogue. It's it's going to be sweet.
(12:35):
And you know how many times I'veplayed Scarlet Witch?
0. Which is fine.
I've also kind of fallen in Rogue, if fallen in love with
Rogue from playing her in this double S league and that SCL
round five also had Rogue so right?
(12:59):
Yeah, well, so heroes that went around what you picked to a
Gambit, Phoenix, Ant Man went before you and then Black
Panther, Gamora, Spectrum, our team got Star Lord, Miss Marvel.
So those were kind of the heroesthat people were evaluating, you
know, at A, at a similar level to what you were.
(13:21):
Yeah, I mean, I do feel like from a hero standpoint, Black
Panthers probably a little bit stronger than Rogue.
We just didn't want to play Black Panther again.
Thank you, because that's who you had last time, right?
Yeah, yeah. So that that kind of factored
into our decision a little bit there and then.
And this might come from playinga lot of four player outside of
(13:42):
this too, but splitting the trait felt really valuable where
you're not competing for kind ofthe same things that you want on
your board. So having a a Avenger and a a
X-Men felt really valuable in our pick as well.
Yeah, we we have that exact samecombo as well.
Well, and I mean, Rogue has bulletproof bell.
(14:04):
It's obviously not a thing that you can rely on, but it is.
That's two Magog attacks that you can avoid having to actually
take counters for. Yeah, and that definitely was
amazing. Bulletproof Bell is one of my
(14:24):
favorite cards in her kit. I've been playing her Injustice
and sometimes it's it feels likeyou really lose a lot of your
hand from playing those defense cards.
You. Know during the villain.
Phase. That's how I feel about
protection. What?
Yeah, I definitely like if I'm playing a protection protection
(14:48):
hero, like it's fine. But when you're also trying to
do other things, it's like, well, I survived, that's good.
Now I got to figure out, we got to figure out how to do the rest
of this. Round, Yeah, yeah, cool.
And then, yeah, there were, there were 14 justices, 8
(15:08):
leaderships, 8 protections. It was, it was random how, how
many there were of each. So like you said, it's
guaranteed you're getting justice no problem as, as the
final one, if that's what you wanted.
I I tend to draft Justice pretty, pretty high just because
I really like the main scheme protection that Justice offers.
(15:29):
Yep. And, and it's just also in two
players, an aspect I've just played an absolute ton of.
So I just feel really comfortable in that space.
But OK, cool. So comfortable with Rogue, got
Scarlet Witch, new to Scarlet Witch, got leadership,
comfortable with leadership. Love it.
(15:55):
OK, what was there? If Rogue had gotten snatched up,
was there anybody around there that you would have been excited
to get? I think it's actually if it was
like me drafting by myself, I probably would have picked Miss
Marvel. Instead of broke.
Just 'cause I really enjoy playing Miss Marvel, but then we
would have been in the same situation where I probably ended
(16:16):
up there with Scarlet Witch anyways and Chase was forced to
play Miss Marvel. So otherwise.
Miss Marvel's fine, I feel like.She's.
Definitely less versatile than what Rogue brings.
Rogue is just she can be so versatile with the cards that
(16:36):
she has if if you can get her set up, she can just do a little
bit of everything. Right.
Yeah, well, so she, she she's a bad economy, right?
That's the biggest gripe. She's a bit of an expensive
hero. And, and so, you know,
interestingly, you got Scarlet Witch, who is a great tempo
(16:57):
hero. And that's, so that's what we
had in season 1, Astrodar and I had had Scarlet Witch and we, we
kind of specifically went for a high tempo hero and for a bit of
a closer hero, which we took thespider as our, as our closer
hero. And but so Scarlet Witch being
able to support somebody who needs a little bit of build time
(17:18):
is, is awesome. And leadership too, right?
Yeah. I'm not sure we play that way to
be entirely honest. Well, but if there's if there's
trouble right off the bat, you Scarlet Witch has good capacity
(17:39):
to to help with it under control, right?
Like that's that's more that's more the point, right.
It doesn't have to be she's in pure tempo mode, but if if you
need that tempo, she's pretty good at it.
Yeah, no. And that's they're they're both
can just kind of handle everything, which I think we
like. I mean, the big thing in all of
(18:02):
our games that we did was like Scarlet Witchin leadership is
just like she's going to carry the game.
And Rogue is there to like cleanup or get things like in range,
you know, so we can finish things off.
Love it OK, so well let's check in on this round so this round
(18:26):
was taskmaster. I'll talk about some extra funny
things that were done, but the the entire season is using for
the optional modulars is only using Nemesis sets.
And here we have Hydro Patrol has to be in there with
(18:49):
Taskmaster. All of the captured by hydro
side schemes were taken out. The Spectrum, Valkyrie, Domino
and Captain America Nemesis, Nemesis sets were all added.
And then in terms of these hydrospecific minions that were in
there, Zemo from Captain Americais in there.
(19:09):
We've got one of the Hydro Soldiers and then I believe
there's three, no, sorry, 3 Hydra Soldiers and one Hydra
Hunter I think is how it works out, right?
So yeah, so you have a little bit of choice when some of those
cards are forcing you to pull out some of the things.
And there's some fun stuff you can do with, you know, avoiding
(19:29):
Zemo's quick strike because somebody's in an alter ego and
all those other things. But you're not just overwhelmed
constantly dealing with encounter cards from the Hydra
soldiers. So that that was the balance on
that one. And then we're using a custom
standard expert set that uses one of each copy from each of
(19:50):
the standard ones and twos and abit of a mix of what's coming
from expert one and two. How had, let's, let's start with
that one. How has that set been working
for you 2? Scarlet Witch loves it.
Yeah, I it's a. Good answer.
(20:11):
I molecular decayed for 15 one of the matches so it was a great
time. I mean, just like everyone else
has said, Total Annihilation andslug it out.
Like those are two cards. You always have to be aware of
where they're at. There's been times where we've
had to chump block and we know that Total Annihilation is in
(20:32):
the three cards left and then counter deck and it's like, just
got to chance it, yeah, just gotto chance it, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I, I have been pleasantly surprised.
I, I played around with it a little bit before I actually
made it kind of the official one, but I, I've been pleasantly
surprised at how well it's worked out.
(20:54):
It hasn't felt as overwhelming as kind of standard 2 and expert
2 can feel I took. The surge off of that is.
Huge took the Surge off Total Annihilation as the one
modification to it, and like yousaid, it means there's a small
handful of cards. Actually, there was one more
(21:15):
extra 1. You had to know where it was in
this one, because if you got it as a boost effect, it was
another rate. It was one of the ones from
Spectrums set. But there's this small handful
of cards, you just need to know where they are and you need to
make your decisions based on knowing where they are.
And I, I've, I've really felt like that's obviously it's
adding some variance, but it's actually adding some important
(21:35):
decision making, or at least challenging decision making.
So I I've found found found thatit worked pretty well.
I definitely like it better thanlike the losing.
The surge is so huge on total annihilation.
And we it's unreal that they putit on there.
(21:57):
Yeah, I can't believe that. So unnecessary.
The other card we probably dislike the most out of Expert 2
is Ruination. We definitely do not like seeing
that one. It I mean, yeah, yes, in the,
(22:18):
but in the era of player side schemes and all, I mean, it just
can be, it can be so tough. But I mean, as compared to the
expert one, which I'm, I'm completely blanking on master
plan. Thank you.
Master plan, because master planadds 4.
This one only adds 2. So if you have a bunch of side
(22:38):
schemes out already, this one isoften less painful than Master
plan would have been. Other.
I think the only thing I dislikeabout it is that you have to get
the side scheme in addition, yes, and then that it is
effectively put three on the main scheme as well.
Yes, because it's in type one, Yeah.
(22:59):
So it it does feel like unless you have a lot of player side
schemes and stuff out a bigger tempo hit than master plan to me
just with total number of threatplaced on the board.
Yeah. I mean, I might have a also have
a distorted view because we're our my team, I'm playing with my
(23:19):
son this season and our team is Star Lord and Storm.
And because I'm playing Star Lord, we probably have a higher
than average number of side schemes on the board compared to
the other teams, so that's why Igot to win.
Fast, right? That's.
Why I got to win fast. So I think I might have also a
(23:41):
slightly distorted view of of what Roux Nation's doing Yeah,
fortunately we're playing justice.
But interestingly though, we're actually we're not playing we're
almost no events other than a little bit of multitasking for
for justice. We're really relying on
(24:01):
activations for for most of our threat clearing, especially
because Star Lord can get leaderof the Guardians and I'm playing
leadership with with Star Lord and with leader of the
Guardians. And if you know fairly heavy
ally built, you can just absolutely annihilate the thread
on the board. It's amazing.
(24:22):
Yeah, I know Ryan commented on that when we were kind of
looking at your decks before we hopped in here and he is like,
wow, I'm really surprised they're they only took
multitasking in and it's like with Star Lord.
Yeah, well, it's a. Lot of, yeah.
Yeah, well, we, it's, it's not how we started, right?
(24:43):
Like this, is it? It took a while to kind of find
the sweet spot of, you know, just that little bit of extra
thwart when you when you really need it.
But in the, in the era of playerside schemes, being able to pull
out leader of the Guardians is just way more straightforward.
And and then of course, he can cheat it out if he, when he gets
in his hand. So that, but that's been really
(25:03):
neat because I've actually not really played justice like this
before. I I so I'm so used to event
based justice, especially in solo.
Agreed, I I'm a really big fan of heroes that can ready so I've
definitely done more than my fair share of activation
(25:25):
justice. Yeah, yeah.
Do you do you like repurpose? I love Repurpose.
I haven't tried Repurpose on everyone.
You know, Repurpose on Iron Man and Rocket are the two main ones
that I've really played. And yeah, those two just feel
(25:47):
wild. Yeah, I think pretty much
anybody I've ever played protection with on a hero, I've
I've played repurpose. That's kind of my default.
Yeah, we play a lot of four player games.
So when you go in there with like a repurpose protection
(26:08):
build and you kind of let the table know like, hey, this is
like a kind of selfish protection, like I'm not going
to be protecting you. Yeah, that's it.
Is you're looking for another green player to join as well?
Yeah. That's the leadership players
(26:29):
for it. I mean it, it has been and it's
chase. It's cool that you mentioned
kind of activation justice because you these days, for the
most part, there's actually highactivation builds available in
all the aspects pool as well. So you so those heroes that do
(26:50):
like that, there's a lot of things you can play into.
I've, I've been playing so much pool and I, I mean, I've, it's
just, I throw laser, I throw laser swords at everybody.
You're you're talking to the twowrong people about pool.
Yeah, well, you know, some people call it safe pool.
I I tend to play fairly safe pool because especially if
(27:13):
you're playing high player count, there's just icons on the
board. You don't even have to bring
any. Yeah, that's true.
It, it's a totally different game if you're playing one or
even two players, but if you're playing three or four players,
there's, there's usually just somany icons kicking around.
It's it's of no concern. Everybody does usually have to
deal with me having a symbiote suit, but other than that it's
(27:35):
it's pretty, pretty safe. You can't let me have anything
that lets me put bad things on the board in exchange for a
slight benefit. That's that's the problem.
Yes, I'm the problem. Yeah, that's good fun.
(27:55):
So I guess getting back into therest of this, this round the
scoring 20 points in total for turns.
You get a point if you get it done by turn 8 and then three
points if you get it done by turn 12.
So if you get it done by turn 8,it's it's four points total.
(28:15):
Hero health. There's a bunch of different
things, but there's up to eight points available based on hero
health and half of that is just having your heroes survive
threat inside schemes. There's three points there
minions in play, 2 points and then there's three scenario
specific ones. One, because I wanted to really
not incentivize people just bringing the Vivian ally to
(28:39):
counter the Hydra patrol side scheme.
There's a penalty for bringing the Vivian basic ally in into
the deck at all, and then one point for if you stun the
villain only zero to two times and one point if you confuse the
villain zero to two times. So just not overly penalizing
(29:00):
that, but not making that a primary strategy.
Yeah. And I really like that.
Just like a little like, you know, not bringing Vivian.
There was a point in our practice games where I was like,
do we just bring Vivian? Like just eat that point?
Because it's like it would definitely make dealing with
these Hydra soldiers a lot easier.
(29:20):
Right, 22 Vivian's in the in thedecks could really make a lot of
that. A lot.
Better. Yeah, that it.
That definitely added a discussion in our deck building
where it was like is because there was AI think it was after
the first or the second, was it after the first one chase where
we just were like do we just scrap it and put her in there?
(29:44):
Yeah, we, we just, it was after the first one because we were
just getting so many encounter cards.
We were getting super unlucky with our poles and we decided
just to keep her out, which I'm glad we did.
We, I think we kind of got luckyin our official round because we
just didn't pull the Hydra soldiers.
OK. Yeah, and every time we cleared
(30:07):
like Hydra Patrol or any of the things that gave you like 2
Hydra minions, one of us was always flipped down.
So we just took the Hydra Hunterand Zemo, and the one who was
flipped down took Zemo. Yeah.
So. And.
That was often our strategy too.Well, searches.
There was times where we had extra allies on the board too,
and we were both flipped up and it's just like, well, just take
(30:29):
Baron and just chump block his attack or someone had a tough.
Because that's the other thing with those scenarios, specific
ones is between Rogue and Scarlet Witch, like we have a
lot of status effects that we can put out there.
So you know, there was times where we were hex bolting and
it's like, do we use a stunner confuse here or do we put a
(30:54):
tough somewhere? Yeah, yeah, I know that because.
The other, the other thing with Taskmaster is, you know, when
you flip up, you get that boost card and take damage and it's
like, you know, do we want to eat those into toughs, save the
toughs for activations like how do we want to play around that?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
(31:14):
So how for you 2 how did ScarletWitch play into that 'cause you
you actually had the ability to manipulate some of those boost
icons? Yeah, we did use the like send
it back a few times on Taskmaster and pull the next one
(31:36):
I think. Was it your nation or was it a
three boost that we, I know for sure in the official one that we
threw back on a on Rogue, you know, going to hero form.
And then other than that, we we both included one of crew
quarters. Oh yeah.
(31:58):
In our deck, just as like a we'll get it down and then just
the one that you every time you go down to health really I think
offset most of that, that flipping damage on average.
And then, you know, additionally, if your timing's
good, you can even get both crewquarters triggered for yourself
(32:22):
if if the other player doesn't need theirs.
Yeah. So I think, I think that was
something that normally I wouldn't include in a deck
build, but was definitely put inthere specifically for this
scenario. It's funny in in solo Champions
League, right? I like, I would say I play
(32:43):
justice or leadership when I have a choice more often than
than anything else. And especially I, I play justice
and I usually play trying to flip down at least every, you
know, every other turn if I can.And so crew, crew quarters is
just invaluable because if you flip down a couple times, that's
(33:03):
you know, for for health, for for two just is great.
I will say I did consider takingCrew Quarters out of my deck
only because the way we're playing is Rogue doesn't get a
ton of benefit from going to Alter Ego unless she builds into
it. So it's just like, well, I'm
(33:23):
just going to stay up as much aspossible and avoid those, you
know, forced responses. Yeah, well, you know, the
somewhat maniacal thing about this is the encounter deck is
(33:45):
trying to make you flip down. Yep, and I think it, I think it
was said in the discord, you know, the nice thing about those
is they're just alter ego actions.
So as long as someone's down, they are able to handle them.
Which again in our official game, we dodged a lot of the bad
(34:07):
ones. I think the ones that kept
hitting us was Superpower Feedback, which is Domino
Nemesis after your resolvent ability or identity specific
card take one damage. So that was kind of the only one
that really kept landing on us. I if I'm remembering correctly,
that one does not actually target Star Lord's element guns,
(34:33):
so we I was sometimes able to actually sit on that for a turn
or two without it being too brutal.
That sounds right, because I hadlooked it up and it didn't hit
Scarlet Witch's Crest right. Yes, same thing.
So, yeah. Yeah, because we had that.
(34:54):
It's not on, it's not an abilityand it's not a card.
Yeah, we had that question when I had that on me and I was like
do I take a damage if I Crest here?
And when I had looked it up it it did not.
So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I mean it, it helped
with being able to control the board pretty well.
And the it's pretty sweet that Hydra hunter as a just perfect
(35:15):
three health to to take out overand over again.
Thank you element gun and and all the toughs and all that, all
those sorts of things. I mean, I mean, we when we talk,
we can talk about round two as well.
But you know, the those element guns are just beautiful for
being able to deal with the tough minions, which in in round
two there were certainly a ton. So your team scored 19 out of 20
(35:40):
in in this round. So what was the point that you
lost? We won on Turn 9.
We weren't we weren't close on Turn 8, so don't worry.
It it was, I think I ended up decking like turn 8 and putting
(36:08):
2 Molecular Decays back in and that's how we ended up winning
on turn 9. Right.
But it yeah, it we weren't we weren't close, but that was and
then you look at it and you you know, you lose the one point
burning a second official try orrun, right.
Yeah. So it's like, well, we might as
(36:29):
well not even try because we can't score better.
Yeah. We, we went in kind of knowing
we were going to lose that point'cause our practice games, like
our best practice game was ten turns.
So it's just like, OK, we just, there's something about the
scenario, we just don't have thedamage for it, which we were
seeing all the bad things like we, we could not dodge shadows
(36:56):
in our practice games. Right.
Shadows just kept coming out andin our official game we dodged
it. So it's just, it's just one of
those things that shadows reallydoes bring a huge difference to
the table. When you do.
Get shadows. Oh, sorry.
Go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, I was just saying I think
we we lost the first practice game like and almost considered
(37:23):
scrapping our entire strategy atthat point for it rebuilding
but. Evil laugh.
How often did you leave Scarlet Witch's nemesis side scheme out
for a while to take advantage of?
(37:45):
So I don't think hers, at least in this round specifically hers
never really came out. Like even in our practice games,
it was just Rogue. Rogue was a magnet for Mystique
to come out and that was the other thing is just like, you
know, I'm getting essentially 2 misleds into my deck which is
(38:06):
just adding threat to the main scheme and getting me or getting
rogue, you know, card disadvantage in the hand.
So it's just like really, reallybad tempo hit and killing.
Mystique is hard enough on its own, but in our previous rounds
when it came out, we definitely really considered how long to
(38:28):
leave it out. It could be so helpful.
Yeah, I, I will say that being out was how I was able to do 15
with a molecular decay in round two.
But yeah, it was, I mean, the only the great thing about
playing with Chase is he will pull shadows every time it's
pulled. Let's say you don't have to blow
(38:49):
that first time. Yeah.
So you know, I'm safe for at least the first time it's
pulled. I I don't know, I don't know
what it is. If it is in the deck, it finds
its way in front of chase. Some solo champions goes for me.
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, so solo Champions
(39:13):
League is a really interesting one in terms of it would be
amazing to figure out a way to make the difficulty spike of
pulling that card not so high. Yeah.
I will say, yeah, I mean I. Agree.
Three one's been the the standard three one's been much
(39:39):
more balanced than even if like the four player matches and
stuff we played even where it just like you're going to
someone's nemesis, but you're not, you know, usually getting
nemesis to turn one or two and just getting completely killed.
Yeah, seeing it coming is great.It it kind of leans into I don't
(40:02):
know if either of you have played Ian's and but it
something that I also liked about the Ebony Ma villain is
these things that have timers and you can see them, you can
see them coming and try to prepare a little bit for for
that thing that you can see coming.
I. I like, I like that as a, as a
(40:24):
design thing that they're using a little bit.
Yeah, I, I enjoy it as well. OK, so that was, that was round
3. Do either of your brains
remember anything about rounds one or two?
So round one. A dog.
(40:49):
Magog We knew going into Magog that we weren't going to have a
good time. One, we don't really love this
scenario to begin with. I love it so much.
I know, I know, we're in the minority there.
I know everyone swears by these.It's just.
Well, I don't, I don't try to impose that.
I don't try to impose my love onanybody.
But I mean, other than I'm making everybody play it but the
(41:11):
but that's too bad because I just think it's so great.
But yeah, carry on, carry on. The, the biggest thing that we
tested and ended up going with is Rogue, Alter Ego, Justice,
really leaning into the X-Men and the mission training and
yes, and you know, put two undersurveillances in the deck.
(41:33):
Like we're going to get under surveillance on that main
scheme. You know, if that main scheme
pops, we're adding four. Well, if we're both in hero form
and we're taking damage, well, we're putting 4 on there
anyways. So the biggest thing we were
doing was just avoid attacks andtry and keep the threat down
until we can push some big damage and really play around
(41:57):
when Bulletproof Bell was going to be in my hand, Rogue's hand.
So would would you, you know, draw into it in alter ego and
then hold it? There was many turns where I
held on to bulletproof bell. Yeah, cool.
(42:19):
That seems awesome. It's two activations.
I mean, it's so that it neutralizes.
It's so good. Plus I forget which of the
mutant education or X-Men instruction one it is, but that
you can cycle it back into right?
(42:42):
That's mutant education. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, X-Men, instructions the allyone.
Yeah, right. Ryan, do you remember anything
specific about round one? I know that was kind of like a
big like strategy shift that we did.
Like that's not something that we normally play.
That was we, I think we tried itonce with just like a standard
(43:06):
kind of going in with the feel of like we're going to flip
every turn kind of regardless, you know, and keep only one
person in hero form. And we just couldn't, couldn't
get up and, and running fast enough that way.
So we we did switch to the the alter ego justice and then have
Scarlet Witch help out when needed and then kind of move
(43:30):
back in, I will say. I think it.
Did it start in that round or was it the second round where
there was several times that I just left Quicksilver on the
board? Oh yeah, that's that's a big
thing we should talk about. Yeah.
(43:51):
It's this a new strategy? Yeah, so as Scarlet Witch, I
just left Quicksilver on the board and I would activate with
him once or twice when he came in and then leave him and kind
of figured worst Casey, it's a block or something if I need it.
But that way when I went down, I, I always, you know, discarded
2 to draw 3. Just kind of the whole, yeah,
(44:11):
the whole big thing of it was getting as many cards in my hand
when I come up as I can, you know, to dump like two or three
hex bolts or or two molecular decays a turn.
And having him just as like a free strength in numbers target
where you know you can then pullthem back up if you needed to do
(44:31):
something. A lot of our spittiest heroes.
You really wanted. Yeah.
Sorry, Chase. No worries.
A lot of our gameplay experienceis like in big multiplayer
games, and that's where we've seen a lot of Scarlet Witch.
And it's just like, I don't know, we'll probably go for just
more like standard. You know, I'm trying.
(44:55):
I haven't played a ton of scrub witch, but just like, you know,
I don't think quick server is a great ally.
He's he's kind of expensive and and he's just hard to get down
and do other things. But when we got him down, I know
especially in round two, he was kind of carrying us through
rapid responses. We're making the call for him
(45:18):
and just getting that that Scarlet Witch Alter Ego action
and just the four damage that hedoes when he comes out, you
know, with the two activations, like it went a long ways.
Well, I like that we never, whenlast season Astradar and I never
really took advantage of that. But I I definitely agree with
(45:40):
with that take. I mean, we probably did take
advantage of it, but not kind ofat the strategy level.
I will say the other one that I always kind of thought wasn't
the greatest was Agatha. And again, that probably comes
from, you know, mostly seeing her in in four player games
where you're just not in Alter Ego every other turn.
(46:02):
But I do think that is one of the strongest cards in her kit
in lower player count where you flip down every other turn, you
know, picking a card out of the top three or setting up your
later deck, you know, later is just super strong.
Right. And so if you're coupling that
with keeping Quicksilver on the board, that's two card
advantage. Do you do you have enough?
(46:26):
I I didn't look at what what decks you were playing in a way
that my brain remembers. But do you have enough allies?
I find, you know, Scarlet Witch is definitely one of those
heroes where you can flip down and then you just have nothing
in your hand that you can actually do.
You get all the card advantage, but whoop do you do.
(46:48):
Yeah, so I kept, I think most ofthe decks for all three rounds
of the league have sat around 7 to 8 allies.
Yeah. I guess round one was 9, but
kind of right in that in that number.
And then who the allies are havekind of changed a little bit
depending on on the round. Like this was the first one
(47:11):
where I included White Tiger again, you know, just with the
dog having stages. Yeah.
I know because the 1st 2 didn't,yes.
The big thing is when we flip down with Scarlet Witch, we
weren't always doing her action,but we were agathan every time.
Because it's like worst case scenario, you're setting up, you
know, the back half of your deckand whatever card you take, if
(47:35):
you can't use it that turn, well, you can discard it or
well, you're going to draw into it anyways, so just keep it in
your hand. Agreed.
Yeah, but you know, with three make the calls in there and
stuff like that, I felt like I pretty consistently had
something to do with the cards in Alter Ego that it, it wasn't
(47:56):
a huge problem if I did, you know, trade 2 cards for three
cards or 4 cards as it is in in Alter Ego.
Right. So you 2 finished kind of in the
middle of the pack on that round.
So you you had 14 points and youcould have spoke to it was a bit
of a challenge for for you. And we had some some teams that
(48:21):
it was just a brutally difficultchallenge because they're heroes
just lined up so poorly with theactual specific challenge.
But you know what this is? This is the first time we've had
a round where we had one Sui Jacinto and and Steven got 20
Caquita, Jamie and the ugly night got 19, a small handful of
(48:44):
eighteens and then 16 and and down.
It's you know, it was a pretty tough round overall.
So a lot of people took that onepretty hard overall.
And I don't know, was it, did you feel like the game that you
played was kind of what an average one of those games
against Magog was like, or it was, you know, one of the better
ones or one of the worst ones you had?
(49:07):
I think we went in saying that the best we can do is 16 points.
We went in knowing that. So, you know, we didn't get that
16, so we got 14 and we had already played a ton of practice
games into it and we're just like, we're not even going to
try another one. Right, 'cause the you know the
(49:31):
small. The small advantage when you
play subsequent games is you canget some key cards in your in
your starting hand. Yeah, maybe we should have
looked into that a bit more. I mean, so my, my son and I, you
know, we decided to play it kindof high risk, high reward,
knowing that we, it was feasibleto score 20, but not likely.
(49:59):
And so just because it's Star Lord, right?
And and so it was OK to lose thefirst one or two games because
we could probably still get a pretty good score even, you
know, as those cards are gettingadded, because Star Lord being
able to start the game with his helmet in his hand completely
changes how you're playing. Yeah.
(50:24):
And I mean similar similarly to a lesser extent.
Storm getting to have hurt crownin her hand or whatever you
decide is the high priority one is also pretty valuable.
So we we ended up kind of almostwelcoming having that first loss
and just then being able to havea much more direct strategy of
OK, then this is how we're playing this.
And so we we won on our second game, lost one point because we
(50:49):
we didn't manage to completely prevent the the flip from the
dog going on the the champion side on to the what it it goes
from booing to cheering, right? Yes, yeah.
Yeah, so, so we kind, we kind ofknew.
And so we, we did, we did what Ithink was our, our best as well.
(51:11):
I mean, you, you 2 missed what you felt like was your best was
60. I mean, like I said, we probably
could have gotten 20 if absolutely everything went
right. But we're we're pretty delighted
with how we performed actually. Yeah, I mean with how everyone
else did eighteens right up there.
Yeah, well, and you know, thankfully Jacinto and Steven
(51:33):
also lost a point in one of the rounds too.
So we actually have no perfect scores, which is honestly one of
my goals in the league for sure.Right.
It doesn't feel very satisfying if I mean, awesome if people are
able to do it, but it it's kind of nice where it feels like
everybody is dropping a point here or there.
(51:53):
It makes you feel like more of agame.
So yeah, you're in the thick of things.
You're an eighth at the moment. Or I guess the three-way tie for
6th really is actually. More.
There you go. That's that's a better way to
put it, yeah. Because that was just, that was
just alphabetical order. I guess that put you in an
(52:14):
eighth when I looked at it. But yeah, so you're a three-way
tie for 6th at 53 points out of a possible 60 and the highest
score is 59. So you're definitely in the
thick of it all. And, and I will say, like going
into this, like our biggest thing was one, you know, let's
play heroes that we like and cause neither one of us want to
(52:36):
take heroes that we don't like that are considered good into
like these difficult challenges 'cause you know, we're going to
play multiple games. Like, find someone that you
enjoy playing and our goal isn'tnecessarily like to end up with
a perfect score, but you know, just kind of find something that
works and have a good time, right?
(52:59):
But still be motivated by the incentives of the scoring
system. Of course, yes, yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean, as a person who took Star Lord, I fully
agree. That's not you have to be
willing to take it, take it on the nose a little bit if that's
if that's the choice you're going to make, right?
(53:22):
I will say when we got the perfect score in round two, I
mean we only played our games like 2 weeks apart from round
one to round two. And when we got that perfect
score, we were, we were jumping around and cheering.
We're so excited. High fives all around.
Yes. Excuse me, the even though you
(53:46):
don't really have piercing in your in your arsenals, hexbolts
are pretty good at dealing with Tufts.
Yeah. So is when they.
So is Squirrel Girl. Yeah, well, yes, of course.
And so is Squirrel Girl with Make the Call right?
Yes, yeah, yeah. Because I know in our in our
(54:08):
round that we got the perfect 20, we set up the the flip to
when we were either able, I don't remember if she was in
hand or was in the discard, whatever.
We knew that we were immediatelygoing to be able to play
Squirrel Girl right away. Right.
So I mean, for listeners, if youdon't know, it was on the run
with Blockbuster, who either takes either gets a bonus attack
(54:33):
with overkill or gets a tough status.
So there's a bunch of tough. Plus when you advance the
villain in on the run, you pull out a bunch of the Marauder
minions and they all get tough. So you're definitely dealing
with tough in that round. Yeah, but yeah, you just, you
(54:54):
just make the call for Squirrel Girl and all the toughs go away.
And all the toughs go away. Did you have Black Panther in
that one? In the in the deck first
leadership. No, I didn't.
Yeah. I mean, again, it's probably a
bit of a twisted version of it because I'm playing Star Lord
and so my, my view of how much things cost is, is very
(55:17):
distorted. But we also had Squirrel Girl,
but our, and it was right beforewhatever that new X-Men ally is
that came out that can do one damage to everything as well.
But you know, our, our strategy was, Oh yeah, thank you was, you
know, Black Panther grabs make the call, make the call grabs
(55:41):
Squirrel Girl. That was, that was kind of the
sequence of events. So we we could time, we could
time our flip up and have even alittle bit more control over
what was going on. Yeah, I guess I've been, and
maybe it's just with the flipping every turn and like I
said, prioritizing like Quicksilver on the board and
stuff like that. I've been seeing so much of the
deck every turn that it feels like I always had like, make the
(56:05):
call in my hand or, you know, some piece of what I wanted.
And you could, you could set up the bottom of the deck.
You could know I put a make the call in there.
Yeah. Oh, but of course, that doesn't
work very well 'cause you can't make the call once you get to
the bottom of the deck, 'cause you reshuffle.
But you know neither here nor there.
But it just, it feels like you see so many cards that you just
(56:28):
are going to get the, you know, pieces you need.
I did run Kalu specifically to go dig for any of these events
as well. Cool, well love it.
I don't know, have you 2 startedagainst Magneto yet?
We have not, all we've done is read the discord on how bad he
(56:52):
is and. I was going.
To say, I think it's the. Reports are not good.
They're doing a really good job now.
Yeah, we, we haven't practiced yet either.
My son has promised we're going to try tomorrow probably.
So we'll, we'll have a bit of a sense of what we're in for.
(57:14):
Yeah, I think our first games are happening next week, so
we're going to be probably pushing a little close on this
round. Well, so for interesting for
you, right, So this one is Magneto with the rogue and
Quicksilver nemesis sets. And so Shadows is if it hits
(57:34):
Rogue, Shadows is just going to pull Mystique and and have
Surge, of course, Quicksilver. I don't think it does right.
Because oh shadow shadow says search the side backwards yes, I
said that backward It's I think it'll just surge on me.
If you can't pull the minion, itsurges yeah right.
(58:00):
I think I have to double check anyway.
The Quicksilver Nemesis set is atop tier difficulty nemesis.
It's got lots of insight. It does just.
It hates everyone at the table. It likes to exhaust you.
Yeah, it it hits the table nice and wide.
That's an awesome, awesome Nemesis set.
(58:21):
You're kind of interested, you know that?
Yeah. Well, you know, honestly, it was
really fun to just kind of go through the Nemesis sets and
think of, you know, looking for synergies and thinking about
villains that yeah, this would make a lot of sense with with
that one. So it was really fun.
(58:43):
I think, you know, just because these are Brotherhood Nemesis
sets is why they're in the Magneto 1.
Not not for any other specific design reason that I can
remember, but I was also just excited to get Quicksilver into
there because I just or his nemesis set into there because I
just I think that one's so so awesome and difficult and mean
(59:05):
just love it. Love everything about it.
All right, well, thank you both.Absolute delight to have a chat
with you again. You know, I'm starting to plan
for for the next season and hope, hope that you 2 will
continue to participate. I think that's the plan.
(59:29):
We're really liking the the early outlines you got out
there, you know, minus the whole, you know, no leadership
thing. That's kind of our thing.
So. I, I mean, I also really love
leadership, but I think, I think, yeah.
So the, the, the quick preview is we're going to draft heroes
(59:49):
instead of heroes and aspects. So everybody gets 4 heroes and
then has to play Uchiro at leastonce.
And you can pick the aspects that you're playing, but you
can't play the same aspect of the same hero more than one
time. So to kind of make that all have
nice balance, I said no leadership and.
We'll, we'll see. I think that'll be kind of a
neat mix of of things. Listen, I love the idea.
(01:00:13):
Oh, go ahead, Ryan. I've been working on my non
leadership deck building skills so that I'm not a complete
deadweight in the next season. OK, that's fair.
That's fair. I really love the idea of being
able to pick your hero like you have four options or you know,
whatever the combo is of optionsare going into scenarios.
Because I know we mentioned round one against Magog, I think
(01:00:36):
it was Dresden's team where it'sjust like they want to take
damage and it's and it's just like, I don't know how you do
that in a Magog. You're just not playing the
heroes at that point. And you know, so it's nice if
there is a scenario that kind ofcounters someone, it's just
like, OK, we just don't bring that hero into the scenario.
(01:00:59):
Yeah. I mean, the plan is to lean a
little bit into scenarios that are actually some of them will
be a bit susceptible to certain strategies.
And so that will actually reallychange the valuation of some of
the heroes. Cool.
Which I think will be neat. Anyway, that does sound.
Really cool. Well, we'll we'll get there when
(01:01:20):
we get there probably draft in January.
I haven't, I haven't really started play testing any of the
ideas I have just kind of putting the ideas together.
So that's, that's what this one's going to be all about.
Plus planes and Magneto. Let's go.
Anyway, yeah, yeah, thank you both.
Thank you listeners. And we'll, we'll catch you next
(01:01:41):
time on the road to nowhere. Yeah.
Thanks for having us. Yeah.
Thanks for having us on. Always a pleasure.
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