One a Penny, Two a Penny, Hot Cross Bones (SCL S19 R1)

Today we are reviewing Season 19, Round 1 of the Solo Champions League: Early Avengers heroes in Leadership vs Standard Crossbones + Weapon Master + Down to Earth + Legions of Hydra. Join josseroo and evergreen guests Grrreg and Babycorn for a discussion about strategies, spectacular combos, innovative decks and league highlights.

We have content for everyone, whether you choose to be a part of the Solo Champions League OR you're just a fan of the game.

Joss' YouTube Channel (Solo Champions League Gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8M_m6TeG3LAzrIZ4o1jkRQ

Solo Champions League Discord: https://discord.gg/dnq9gUPfGHOfficial website for SCL: https://www.bearoverinnsmouth.com/solo-champions-league

MODOK league website: https://modokleague.wordpress.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Hey friendos, welcome to The Road to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. We focus on recapping solo
Champions League, but if you enjoy breaking down the finer
details of a Marvel Champions match up, then we have something
for you. I'm your host Josh Rue, and with
us this episode recurring Greg. Greg.

(00:29):
It's great to be back in this, the, the new legacy era.
I'm, I'm always going to be yourlegacy guy.
Never your current, but always your legacy.
And and baby corn, you're back. Thank you very much for inviting
me. I feel very, very appreciative
of the fact that I'm here. Another season and yes, what

(00:53):
Greg said, another anchoring in the legacy era.
You're the ultimate legacy because you you're a Season 1
baby corn right under the solo. Champion.
No, I know. I think I was season 3.
Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't quite season 1, but it, it it was a long time ago.

(01:16):
And I think we're coming up to five years of the solo Champions
League, and I've been around fora lot of that.
So it's, yeah, it's it's, I've been around for some time.
You had a lot of discord, confidence and positivity.
I've, as I've always said in those early days.
So I just assumed you were therefrom the from the jump.
But yeah, so we're both, we're both old timers.

(01:39):
Yeah, I'm, I'm a season 3 joineras well I believe.
Nice. That's the best season then.
Absolutely. That's that's where I think a
lot of the folks that have been around for a long time joined.
Yeah, that was the pandemic season, maybe first pandemic
season. I think they were all pandemic.
I think it it started pandemic, but that's a have to go and

(02:01):
listen to the old tape to remindmyself what what ends with, Bear
said. Yeah.
All right, so who wants to, who wants to set the table for our
discussion of the recent FantasyFlight announcement?
I have a theory of the case but but maybe someone wants to just

(02:23):
explain what happened before I go into my my slightly autistic
explanation of what I think the reasons are.
Sure. I don't know baby corn.
Do you want to? Oh yeah, at the table for us.
Oh yeah. So I'm at the time recording.
There was the FFG fireside chat,which was what, three days ago?

(02:44):
And they were talking about their sort of plans for their
living card games, obviously sort of including off champions
and the, the the feeling that they would retire their older,
older expansions. So the idea was that they would

(03:05):
create sort of an accessible current environment which would
consist of the corset and the newer expansions.
And they mentioned some Evergreen expansions and all
those that were perpetually in print, which they didn't
specify. But essentially the the current,
the environment was going to be the course head and probably the
last two to three years of active expansions.

(03:27):
Of which their, their rationale was that this would be a little
bit more accessible to newer players who wouldn't necessarily
have a daunting wall of product to potentially sort of delve
into and then establishing the, the, the, the older content,

(03:48):
which would be the legacy environment and essentially
anything that has been printed in the past.
And they gave sort of a a numberof reasons why, but I think sort
of the the the main reason was that they wanted accessibility
for newer players, which is is an interesting thought and on a
secondary nature to make it easier for local board game

(04:13):
stores to sort of manage their product as well.
Yeah. So I think that's the sort of
the crux of it as far as I out of it, yeah.
And then, and then I'll just addbefore Greg, you, you get in
with your, your tale of the tape.
Just, you know, although this isnot ACCG, you know, but with
collectible card games, this is the very regular thing that

(04:37):
happens. A few years into it, they
realise that for a variety of reasons, they need to kind of
constrain the cards that are in the current competitive
environment to be a certain morerecent subset of them.
And you know, games like Magic now have, I don't even know how
many different environments based on eras and things like

(04:59):
that. So it is very common.
This is obviously a different type of game, but at the same
time, you know, there was a point in this game and we were
seeing a release per month on average.
So that, you know, over many, many years that really does add
up. So Greg, what?
What's your take? Right, right.
And I, I, I think, I think a lotof this is like in, in a, in a

(05:21):
competitive magic style LCG, it makes total sense, right?
Because collectibility is also apart of it, but also you want to
like not have things be too daunting.
This is such a different beast in the, in the competitive and
LCG idea, right? The LCG idea being that there's
nothing that's rare. Everything's accessible because
the rareness is kind of built into and you know, the chase

(05:42):
cars and the expense of cars is kind of built into the model of
a Magic the gathering environment.
This one didn't have it if they did it.
This is my sort of like structured theory is is
obviously the ROI of keeping oldstuff in print is low because
people buy it less and it's expensive to keep this stuff in
print. Totally understand that one is

(06:04):
you want to manage power creep right, so you potentially people
who have access to an overpowered doctors range.
You can't plan for them the sameway you can plan for someone,
you know, who's dealing with thesort of more balanced X-Men that
are coming out now. And then the third one is they
want an environment where someone who's like 131415

(06:26):
because like it's pretty easy toget into this game, right?
This sort of like accessibility piece of it.
It's like you get the core box and you can start playing,
right? So the, the sort of like getting
into the game piece is a little weird of an argument because
it's not like it's not like Arkham, right, where you have
like 8 chapters of a single story to collect, you know, and

(06:47):
FFG was sort of like managing that too.
But I think what they want is they want a 1314 year old to be
able to go into a game store andto have on the shelves like the
most recognizable IP, right? They want Cap and Doctor Strange
to be available, but they don't want the like game breaking
versions of them to be available.
So it's that balance that they're trying to figure out how

(07:07):
to do that. And you know, the, the, the
knock on effects that we've beentalking about on the server is
that the the big so, so I think the reason they did this is
because it's the easiest way to solve it, right?
All those three things get solved by just basically saying
like, if you want to say like what we think is the current
stuff, just collect this. It's all in print.
It's easy to get and we can balance it right.

(07:28):
So, so it solves all three of those things.
The knock on effect, of course is that now it's there's rare
cards in the game. You know, they didn't used to
have rare cards. And so now, you know, the cap
pack is, you know, we were, we were joking about someone listed
it for 250 bucks on eBay. We thought, well, no one's going
to buy that. And then of course they bought
that. So, so anyway, I, I'll stop
there, but like, I feel like that is what they're trying to

(07:51):
solve for and it's probably the easiest way to solve for that,
but it's probably not. But I I worry about this sort of
rare effect thing that is now infusing itself in the game.
Right. And then did you, did you have a
solution that you thought was better?
Well, so I look to Arkham as an example here because Arkham had

(08:14):
a similar problem in that they had a lot of these sort of old
like hero pack equivalent sets, but they were chapter, they had
a worse problem and there were chapters in a story, right.
So if you had a, you're buying the Dunwich Legacy and that was
an 8. And the way it worked is, is you
got two in the core box and thenyou had to buy 6 individual, you
know, chapter packs. And if you were missing chapter

(08:35):
5 in a, in an eighth after story, that's a, that's a bit of
a problem, right? You know, so they repackaged
everything. So you just bought Denwich like
all at once. You know, it was a lot more
expensive, obviously, but you know, so and, and we have these
examples of European packs whereyou can buy like 6 heroes in a
single pack. And I thought that was such a

(08:55):
smart model that it was sort of confused why they didn't bring
that to the states or just everywhere and, and, and saying,
OK, you're no longer being able to buy, you know, Cap and Doctor
Strange individually, but you can buy this pack.
It's a little more expensive. But if you're really into
champions, here's here's the oldstuff, it's easier to keep in
print. And then, you know, if you're

(09:16):
worried about power creep. And again, I feel like that's
such less of an issue in an LCG,right?
Because we, you know, Josh, you're a guy who loves like
cranking the power creep up and challenge, you know, and, and,
or the challenge up right. And so the fact that you can
adjust difficulty in this game pretty easily makes the soul
like power creep thing not as much of an issue to me.
You just don't include those cards or you don't play with

(09:37):
Doctor Strange if you if you want more of a challenge.
But some people like to just crush a scenario.
And so having Doctor Strange is fun to do that, you know, allows
you to beat Ronan with less of awar, you know, So I feel like
keeping it stuff like bundled inprint that way.
And then just using the other thing I looked to Arkham used to
do really well is put out this thing they call the taboo list,

(09:59):
which was basically saying acknowledging the cards that
were a little broken and saying like, yeah, if you want to play
in the quote balance game, either don't play this card or,
you know, make it too make it more expensive.
You know, like they would eitheradjust a card or just say, just
don't use it. And I think it's so much easier
way to do it. It's like a taboo list was
totally optional. You could play with it if you

(10:19):
wanted to. You didn't have to, but it was a
way to kind of keep balancing historical stuff without feeling
like you had to reprint something.
And and the last thing, I mean, one other thing to solve.
Go ahead, baby. Gordon, Go.
Ahead I I was, I was going to say sort of the, the Taboolyus.
I, I mean, I'm not into Arkham as much as I'm into champions

(10:40):
and I got into Arkham, the Arkham scene sort of when they
started releasing the new model and, and having just the
investigating the campaign expansions.
But I, I always found the To Do List interesting and I wondered
about how it would work for Marvel champions.
I guess my question to you is what would you put on the To Do
List? Would it be just Doctor Strange
full stop? Or would it be sort of, you

(11:01):
know? Yeah, I mean, I right that that
that's a clear one and there's obviously some underpowered
things. I think also you could, you
could taboo up, you know, you could taboo halt to be to be
better, you know, and maybe a card or two you could look at
and go like, oh, it seems like we use that a little too much.
Sometimes it's cards that are just used like all the time, you

(11:22):
know, like, and so sometimes they put things on the taboo
list just to kind of make make you, you know, like don't don't
use make the call in leadership,for example.
You know, it's not overpowered necessarily, but people use it
too much. So let's try to avoid it.
You know, sometimes you can use it a little bit just to kind of
flatten out the the meta a little bit.
And yeah, it's it's the so anyway, so yeah, I think I think

(11:46):
that is a pretty easy thing to do or, or you literally do
reprint a card. If it's like an old card, let's
say you think like, you know, def focus is too cheap.
You know, maybe you want it to be A2 cost or something.
Just release it as A2 cost and then go like there's an old one
cost out there. If you play with that one,
you're using the old version, but you know, like the official

(12:06):
one is 2 cost now, you know, so but you're not necessarily.
And you know, and and you can doalways do those tweaks.
If you put out like a box in print, you can go back and make
those tweaks if you want to. And I think that the the sort of
rareness of hey, A1 cost Def Focus is on eBay selling for 4
bucks. Like that's less game breaking,
right? That's less frustrating for a

(12:26):
person, you know, just who's trying to get everything in
champions right, to go back and go like, well, yeah, I have a
copy of def Focus. I have I have the corrected one
kind of idea. The other thing, though, I think
they're trying to solve for thiswill be this will be the last of
my points is, is they want the like they want a kid to be able
to go in right and buy Captain America and not have it to be

(12:47):
like an overpowered one or Doctor Strange and have to be,
you know, so like Marvel all thetime does this, you know, with
just saying, Hey, it's astonishing spider man or it's
you know, you know, it's ultimate Doctor Strange and just
put a new Doctor Strange out. Like no one's going to care.
You know, it's going to be kind of fun to have a different
variations like this is the thisis the mean Doctor Strange.
This is the, you know, this is the the alternate universe one

(13:10):
or even just literally, it's a different set of spells he has.
It's just same hero, but just like different cards, you know,
it's, it's that's not a problem that I think at all.
But I think that's another thingthey're trying to solve for is
they want current A list heroes to be what people see when they
go in the shops. Right.
Well, you know, as the other, some of the other discussions

(13:33):
we've seen, you know, the this is a very positive indicator of
the health of the game. As if if they're thinking about
this, it's because they plan to continue overwhelming the
shelves with content and are imagining in, you know, another
three to five years, you know, what game store could have 80

(13:55):
hero packs hanging. It's just not not even feasible.
So you know how this is the solution they chose.
But you you can see what the problem is they were trying to
solve as you as you already alluded to.
But yeah, so I take that as a very positive indicator of their
plan to continue investing in this game.

(14:15):
Totally right. You can see how they're thinking
about like 2028, you know, because you know sure, Fantastic
Four daredevil eventually is going to come out.
They're going to have some A list heroes that they haven't
done yet. But at some point the pickings
will get slim. You know, you'll, you'll be,
you'll be doing Young Avengers runs and stuff like that, which
will be fun, like for guys like me who love it, like all the
deep cuts. But for like, yeah, the guys who

(14:38):
just, you know, come out of an Avengers movie want to start
playing. You know, they're going to want
to see the, they're going to seeBlack Panther.
They're going to want to see like, you know, the, the, the,
the, the main heroes. That's a bad example because
that's in the corset. But you know what I'm saying?
They want to see the A list heroes on on the on the thread.
Yep, agreed. So I, you know, I think it's a,

(15:02):
it's ultimately a mixed bag. It makes a ton of sense that
they needed to do something. We're not necessarily feeling
like the solution is going to bea thing that works for
everybody. As people who've been involved
with the game for a long time, it's not doesn't have a
significant impact on us, but you you can imagine the
frustration of being a new player and hearing about all
these heroes you can no longer get.

(15:24):
Yeah, exactly. That's that's the main reason I
I had my monologue and thank youfor letting me have it.
But but, but yeah, it, it is just a slight bummer.
We've added that like rareness piece of it when maybe there's
another option. But I totally agree with you
that the ultimate reason they'redoing it is I think they see
this running for, you know, a decade more, which is great.

(15:46):
Yeah, you, I mean, you could, you could also imagine kind of
anniversary editions and then they just do an entire wave with
both the expansion box and all the heroes.
Yeah. As one.
As one thing. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to
think. It's like, I totally get not
having the sort of the the individual packs in print
anymore, if that makes a lot of sense.
But yeah, there's ways to kind of keep that stuff alive.

(16:09):
All right, so well, let's check in on this actual round.
So we were on a new season, season 19 in solo Champions
League as we were talking about season 3, so that we're we're
very deep into it. And the villain this time was
crossbones. We were playing against the down
to earth experimental weapons, weapon master and legions of
Hydra modulars. So this I don't think there's

(16:32):
any encounter or any villain in the game that comes with more
modulars than this one or even Tide.
I think this is probably I guessI guess.
Well no, Mojo only has three, right?
Oh, Mr. Sinister. Oh yeah, sure.

(16:52):
Anyway, difficulty with standard.
We got a bunch of Avengers for our heroes so Ant Man, Captain
Marvel, Hulk, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch and Wasp.
The aspect was leadership and there was a round challenge was
to start with the exosuit which is one of the experimental
weapons that gives him plus 1 + 1.
If you started that with that inplay you you get a bonus to your

(17:13):
score and so you start with thatin play and then you would draw
the regular one as well. So you would actually start with
two in play at that point. So, well, let's hear a little
bit about kind of some remindersof things that are really
relevant in terms of crossbones and experimental weapons.
Sure, Yeah, I'm, I'm sure we've covered this or you've covered

(17:35):
this before in the podcast before Joss.
So yeah, we're not going to hit everything, but it is one of the
more I think straightforward to win scenarios.
But the biggest issue for solo Champions League is you get
punished pretty heavily for having the main scheme advance.
And there's three main schemes here, the first of which only
has a threshold of three threat.So it is a challenge to to not

(18:00):
flip. I, you know, I, I had a decent
score this round, but my biggestAchilles heel was two of my
three games. It flipped to the second main
scheme because of that three threshold.
Not only it basically stops you from flipping just lest you, you
know, put anything on it or or confuse, but but there's a lot
of stuff in the encounter deck like raid raid.

(18:22):
The Armory has insight as a sight insight, insight that that
adds one threat, right, just by flipping it right.
So you can do nothing against that if that happens.
And that can often flip it for you.
And then you have hydro bomber, which you can either take damage
or add threat. And sometimes, you know, maybe
if you're low on health, you kind of have to.

(18:44):
So there's a lot of ways besidesthe normal, you know, advances
in there that are just going to make it really hard to keep it
on that first, first scheme. Just your your discussion of
insight the you know, with only three thread on that main first

(19:05):
one, it means if you just leave the one trickle threat that
shows up in a round go into the in one turn, in the next turn,
you let the one trickle show up,you're at 2, insight shows up
and you're you're at 3 and you know nothing, nothing else has
happened. You just decided to not fully
clear that scheme once. Yeah, exactly right.

(19:29):
And you know, and, and ideally you're trying to do this
quickly, so you're probably trying to attack more than and
again, if there's it's super inefficient if you have a
especially if you're a hero that's, you know, thwarts for
two to use that basic, you know,to thwart to clean the one off
right. So it's really inefficient to
try to keep that at 0 when you start the the villain phase.

(19:49):
But I, I, I think the, the only other thing that is like, I
think the the rest of the encounter deck is generally not
super difficult, more of the difficulties coming on to the
modulars that we'll talk about. But the, the one thing that I
think makes it a little other challenging besides that threat
threshold is because you're using echo suit, as you said,
you're starting essentially withtwo weapons.

(20:11):
Most people I think did that challenge because it was fairly
easy to get the bonus point to do it.
So you're starting with two and two of the other ones are, are,
are pretty hard. I mean, they're, they're just
very annoying. Like 1 is retaliate.
That's energy shield. And then power gloves force you
to discard a card if you get damaged in in an attack.
So those are worth. Clearing so that.

(20:32):
Right. If you get that, if you
retaliate early and that and, and so you have a two out of
three chance of getting two of those bad ones, right, or one of
those two bad ones. So, so yeah, so you're, you're,
you're also trying to commit resources to clear those in
addition to, you know, getting other stuff going in in the
round. So I think those are the two

(20:53):
biggest like SCL relevant thingsthat are just like particularly
annoying to try to have a good score.
Yeah. So I won't, I won't keep on
talking about different design decisions, but I've been, you
know, running partners league called Modoc League.
And so one of the things I've been doing is when this the

(21:15):
thresholds are really low for the main scheme, I've often kind
of only made the penalty to the score happen if you advance the
second stage because usually thefirst, the first stage advancing
has its own built in penalty forletting it happen anyway.
Right, right. So in this.
Case you get another weapon. Yeah, you get you.

(21:37):
Get another weapon so there's another thing you're having to
deal with anyway. So there's it's you're already
getting punished for it, even though, you know, when we play
kind of regular old games of Marvel Champions, we we often
use the main scheme as almost a pseudo thwart because you can,
you can let it pop instead of continuing to, to thwart it

(22:01):
down. And you know, you, you're reset
again through that process. So there can be advantages to
letting it pop as well, but usually there's penalties.
And so trying to balance those things, but not, it just always
feels bad when people get punished for the only thing that
happened was they drew an advance at an inopportune time

(22:23):
that they had no control over. Right, right.
It it is personally I find fun to try to build decks and play
around trying to avoid that. But then it still feels bad when
it happens. Right, right.
Because, yeah, unless you are playing because.
Because I played justice in Round 2 with the shield cards.

(22:47):
The shield cards is kind of one of your only ways you could kind
of like actively try to avoid those things, you know, like,
but but it's it's really going into the counter deck to like,
you know, manage it and tweak it.
Is is your kind of only hope to just not have it happen to you
yeah, or or or if you talk aboutoverly overly thwarting just to
make sure you're always startingthe the game with 0.

(23:07):
But even then in advance still pops you, yes.
In advance still pops you baby corn.
What do you what do you have to tell us about the other
modulars? So we had down to earth, which
is the modular set from, I thinksince the motives, which going
to be in the legacy era. So, so that's, that's an

(23:30):
interesting pairing with crossbones because there's a,
there's a lot of stuff in that modular set that makes you do
things while you're in alter ego.
And if you're trying to keep things on in scheme one, that's
really difficult to deal with. So you've got the common
criminals, which is straightforward enough, but it
has surged and you've, you've got that enticing or two giga

(23:53):
action to and the first resource, which is probably the
way I would try to, you know, handle it.
There's the volunteer work, which is super painful because
you can't thwart it. You can only remove the threat
via the autorego action. And there's, there's a few other
sort of, there's, there's an obligation which is annoying the

(24:15):
friends and family one, which isa bit annoying as well,
particularly if you're playing lots of events, which hopefully
in leadership you're not doing. So.
So it, it was a little bit interesting.
I thought it was interesting. I thought it was particularly
tricky. And I think, you know, a lot of
people hoped that volunteer workdidn't come out just because
it's sort of really, you know, you, you had to be a little bit

(24:35):
lucky if you, you could sort of flip down to it or you go, we
all know about litres of hydro from the course Said it's, it's
so punishing, can't it? And particularly with with
crossbones, because crossbones is.
Is. Hydrated as well.
So yeah, so you've got the your legion Hydra side schemes, which

(24:57):
essentially is going to bring upHydra and then you're going to
have at least seven threat there, if not more.
And then sort of Madame Hydra, who, you know, at six health.
That's that's, you know, not an easy one to deal with either.
And then your Hydra soldiers, which is going to give you an
extra countercard. So yeah, it's it makes an

(25:20):
interesting round one for the start of the season, right.
It's they're they're they can bea little bit punishing, even
though down to earth could be easy or class is easy, but I
think on that match up it made it made it interesting.
I enjoyed that. Yeah, the easy.
Go ahead, Greg. I was going to say, yeah, like

(25:43):
the, the the sort of meshing of the low threshold, the first
scheme with down to Earth was just that sort of very nice
little frustrating combo, right.Which is like, it really wants
you to go to alter alter ego. But you know, that's an awful
idea. So you have to kind of deal with
it in the less efficient way or,or just like, got it, you know,
just just keep the some of that stuff out.
And then, yeah, Madame Hydra wasjust like, you know, three ways

(26:05):
she can come out, right. So she can come out with two.
There's two of those legions of Hydra side schemes and she could
come out on her own. So you're almost always seeing
her at some point. Yeah.
Yeah, she's not very welcome to the party.
So, Greg, do you want to tell usabout how your round went?

(26:28):
Sure, I had to because I had a busy January coming up.
I kind of knocked mine off very early in the month.
So my memory is a little bit a little lazy, but I think what I
did is like kind of try to do some quick practicing on a few
different heroes. I tried Iron Man and and and Ant
man and they I I both wasn't again, the sort of combination

(26:50):
of threat issue and and Madame Hydra.
They were just a little too slow.
And because I was trying to justlike get my games done early.
I said, I know Captain Marvel can win this one.
And there's a really good popular that is about just card
draw. It just leans heavy into card

(27:10):
drawing Avengers, but then also does a lot of uses of strength
in numbers to let you draw cards.
And that also leverages band together that once you have a
lot of allies out, you have a lot more resources.
And she's pretty research rich in herself.
So the main idea of the deck andit's it's a really popular net

(27:30):
deck. I think I literally just played
it. It's called like Marvelous Ronan
Killer, massive card draw, but it essentially just puts all the
heroes in that draw cards like Iron Hearts and Nick Fury and
you know the sort of classic ones that let you draw cards and
it lets you activate just a lot of heroes at the same time.
So when you get them out, you'resupposed to not chump block if

(27:52):
you can't help it. So you can, you can draw lots of
cards, just strengthen numbers, you can get a lot of resources
and then eventually just like dump a lot of resources into her
energy channel. So you can, you know, hit for
big numbers. You know, often I would use an
energy channel just to knock Madame hydra right out when she
showed up, which was super fun. So I, I really pretty good

(28:15):
results. Again, I, I still flip that main
scheme twice in my three games, but the rest were sort of clean
wins, five to seven rounds ish. So not the fastest, but you
know, respectable. With the new scoring we'll talk
about. I ended up being in tier one for
some reason. I've no idea why, but I think
it's just because I have a lot of experience for playing for a

(28:36):
while. Welcome to the party.
Thank you. I will, I will.
I will wave to you all above me.But who knows how long this will
last after this, this next coming around.
But but yeah, it was it was fun.It was fun at least to see that
happen in the new scoring system, right?
Baby corn, how about you? Yeah, so I, I also had a super

(28:59):
busy month, but I, I, I kind of,I was busy at the beginning of
the month, so I left it to be pretty much the last day.
So, so I think with our alliance, I, I, I think what was
left, which I think was either Iron Man or it's Man, I think.
So I went for Iron Man just because I to the challenge and I
had nine man deck built already.So I think I I lead onto being

(29:19):
slightly lazy and and I kind of let went for the lazy build
option. I kind of wanted lots of energy
icons for repulsive blasts. So in leadership there's there's
lots of decent allies that sort of help with that as well.
So I think yeah, particularly with repulsive blast essentially

(29:40):
you can I think I was averaging at least seven if not sort of
you know up to like 9:00 and 11:00 sort of damage at too
effective course. So it's like it it's kind of
good for that. But I did bring Professor XI
kind of wanted, you know, especially with the Iron Man's

(30:01):
sort of poor hand size initiallyjust I kind of needed to, you
know, flip down South. Professor X sort of came for the
confuse. And I used, I used Pixie to try
to recur Professor X, which onlyworked once, but it was, it was
kind of nice to do like it. It sort of all aligned.
It all aligned very nicely. But I said I'm looking quite

(30:22):
hard for Professor X in two out of the three sort of initial
opening hands. So it it it kind of worked quite
nicely included Cyclops out of the of the Magneto pack, which
was I think for Iron Man. I think it it it was very funny

(30:43):
because there are so many, he has so many sort of like small
attacks and he's inputs already himself.
So, you know, you could, you could at least get, you know, an
extra 4 damage, if not sort of if you had some allies.
I think at one point I had like an extra 7 damage with the
varying sort of attacks there. So yeah, it was it, it, it was
kind of funny. I enjoyed, I enjoyed playing

(31:05):
Iron Man. Everybody just loves Iron Man.
It's great, great or hero. But for me, I did manage to keep
it on a scheme one, just, yeah, a few of the insights were
worrying. But yeah, Jim managed to keep on
main Scheme 1 and sort of, I think it took in four and seven

(31:26):
rounds. So yeah, it was, it was a good
round for me. And then just one incident of
Madame Hydra, but again, I thinkwas knocked out of the park with
Paul Stellar. So yeah, it was kind of nice for
me. Right.
Was it was it allegiance of Hydra Madame?
No, just Madame Hydra. So yeah, fortunately it wasn't

(31:47):
actually leads of Hydra. So that was nasty.
That would have been nasty. Gotcha, gotcha.
That's a big advantage of going fast is that you just have less
chances to blow around, Yeah. Yes, and then when legions of
hydra comes down, it slows it slows you down immensely Well I

(32:07):
I was more in the baby corn veinas I I left it until the last
day as well. You know, life, whatever it is I
played, I decided to really playthe conservative version by
playing suit up with Professor Xto try to make sure I got
Professor X out on the first turn in every game if I could.

(32:30):
And you know, quickly upon playing, I realized that it was
really annoying because Professor X has nothing to
thwart on the first turn becausethere's no threat anywhere.
So. So I ended up including three
player side schemes to give me areasonable chance of, of, of
having something to thwart. And if everything comes
together, if you get suit up anda player side scheme and a

(32:53):
double, I believe you can kind of get everything to work.
So it takes a little bit of handcoordination, but you have, you
know, you have a decent chance of being able to pull it off.
And I did manage to get Professor X and I never, I'd had
to use suit up to do it bizarrely.
So I was more more like baby corn where I just managed to
hard Mulligan into Professor X each of my first two games and

(33:17):
then got my helmet right away inone of those first two games and
didn't get my helmet at all. And both those games turned out
pretty similarly, just in in five turns.
And then I had a very challenging game three where I
got double legions of Hydrid andwas it was one of those very,
very fun games where you're justbarely holding on the entire

(33:38):
time and you managed to to get through.
So that was it was fun. Of course, not the best for my
score, but you know, it was very, very engaging.
I'm curious with you 2, did you find that staying on top of your
health was a lot more difficult than you would predict?
I guess Iron Man will get so many health boosts from his.

(33:58):
Yeah, I think not, not for me. Because again, by the time you
get the upgrade, you're you're, you're very positive, aren't
you? So you're it it not, not
particularly. But yeah, you were taking lots
of hits, particularly with the Exosuit and whatever else that
came out. And for me, like the weapon
attachments always seem to startcoming out.
So yeah, he was definitely attacking for like 4-4 plus

(34:21):
boosts. So yeah, the, the, the health,
like Iron Man's health was, you know, in, in the single digits.
But then everything else sort oflike helped anyway, so it wasn't
too bad. Great.
Yeah, it's kind of with me, right?
Because the way you build this deck up is to get the allies out
quickly. And so obviously you're trying
not to jump block with them. But after you take, you know, I

(34:44):
would let Carol take like a hit.And then after that I would
probably jump block. And occasionally Nick Fury or
Professor X were in my deck too.So occasionally I obviously just
should, you know, jump block with them.
So I think, I think I usually would be kind of in middle
health range, but then I had enough allies on the board that,
you know, my hero scores talkingabout him.

(35:04):
Right, right, yeah, I was usually relying on the the
allies to prevent me from takingtoo much more damage.
And you know, once you get the helmet out with Ant Man, you you
do get the healing as you're doing your form switching.
So you're healing, you're healing at about the same rate
that that Carol is healing because she gets to heal 1A
turn. Right.

(35:25):
Exactly. Yeah, now we're using that too.
Yeah. Yeah, so I was just, I was
really surprised because I just,you know, playing it, man, I
just assumed health wasn't goingto be an issue because he he has
a way to be generating health the whole game, just like like
Captain Marvel does. But I was just surprised that
the the game actually felt like it was.
It was pretty hard to stay on top of health.

(35:48):
Yeah, You know, back to the legacy current thing, it is
interesting how like they some things that they've they've sort
of like stopped doing in hero builds. 1 is car draw, you know,
and one is and one is healing right outside of Wolverine,
which sort of the whole mechanicis kind of based on like using
health and spending health. You know, unless it's like built

(36:09):
into the mechanic like that, they they kind of are shying
away from just like passive healing abilities that are kind
of easy to use. Right, they crank up the
recoveries, but not a lot of passive healing.
Yeah, exactly right. They have to like make you
actively go to alter ego to takeadvantage of that right and.
Like Cap has, yeah, Cap has healing on his other side.

(36:32):
And you're right, lots of passive healing.
OK, so before we get into the actual results, we do have a new
scoring system, which we were alluding to.
Greg, was this you that was grabbing some notes for us?
Oh, I think I was well, I just, I'm trying to get my yeah, I was
trying to get my hand on it. So, so, so new scoring system is

(36:55):
kind of exciting actually, it's it it I think even some of the
bumps that we've seen over the years, particularly with, you
know, particularly with sort of match ups like this with, with
like a low main scheme threshold.
So got 5 scoring categories, a win percentage, your terms, you
put in a score scheme to score and your hero score and they,

(37:18):
they the other sort of rating out of five stars for each of
them. And they contribute to a single
star on your approval rating. So you've got those five scoring
categories plus the challenge bonus and then the XP bonus,
which could contribute star each.
I think your overall approval rating is out of five stars.

(37:42):
Yeah. So what's that?
You need to get top 10% in 3 categories plus bonuses to get a
top score I. Think so.
There's there's effectively seven, Yeah, yeah, effectively 7
stars are available to you. So if you if you get the bonus
through the challenge, if you get a full bonus star through
the challenge and through the XPbonus, which is based on the

(38:08):
hero choice, really like the difficulty choice, then you then
you need to get in the other categories just three five star
ones, right? Yeah.
And I think it's, yeah, I think we sort of said it's the top 10%
that will give you the the, the highest scoring.

(38:30):
So yeah, it's, it's an interesting system.
I like it. It's, it's, you know, we'll,
we'll see how a leaderboard sortof shakes up.
Right. And you know, the number of
people that got absolutely perfect scores is relatively low
in this new system. So you, you did baby corn UNC

(38:57):
Dave. Oh no, you didn't even actually
technically get a perfect score because you lost .1 of a star on
the the XP bonus. Like in terms of the actual Max
out of anything you could get, yeah, it was a very small
handful of people that got that.But but you still, the whole
point is, is there's, you know, a threshold that as long as you

(39:17):
get over it, you have maxed it out.
So lots of us got five stars. You know, more than half the
league got five stars and including half the people in the
training grounds got five stars.And it is round one, which in

(39:37):
theory is supposed to be an easier one to do well in because
it looks like they also translate that into the season
stars. You know, as you said, like 5
stars equals one season *. And if you had four stars,
that's .8 season stars. It looks like that's just
getting, you know, managed down.And what we haven't seen yet is
if round two that sort of like will be two stars, you know, if

(39:59):
two stars will get translated from your round score.
So. I'm guessing that's going to
happen because he kind of did, he's done that in the past where
each round is worth more towardsyour season because they're, you
know, the difficulty ramps up. But yeah, not sure if that's how
it's going to play out. Right.
Yeah, I think if my, my biggest complaint, and it's only because

(40:20):
of the way my brain likes to engage with information is it's
not very transparent in terms ofhow people have done.
So. You know, we, because we're all
talking about it. We know how fast we actually
went. But it, it's really difficult

(40:40):
for a person who maybe isn't on the Discord and talking to
people to know what, what was a fast round or what was a slow
round or anything like that. So there's, there's a bunch of
information that's not availablethat I personally would would
like to see. It's not about the scoring is
it's more about the presentationof the of the information I

(41:03):
guess. Right.
It's like we don't need the formula of how the different
categories get combined. But the fact that like turns is
an interesting one, right? You can either get 5 stars in
turns or two or one. Like there's some kind of
threshold we could probably go back and map and figure out what
that is. But like there wasn't a four or
three star version of the turn score, right?

(41:23):
You just dropped from 5:00 to 2:00.
So I'm just curious of like why that was tweaked that way.
There's also the the the XP bonus thing, I think is also a
little head scratching. And I think it is based on sort
of past performance. But obviously that's very
contingent on how the old scenarios were set up.
Because Captain Marvel, I think is one of the easiest, most

(41:46):
powerful heroes to play that we had.
But you got the full XP bonus for her.
Whereas, you know, Iron Man I think is a little trickier,
right? It just takes Iron Man a little
longer. He's powerful once you get him
going. But for SCL that usually don't
have that kind of time, you know, but you, you know, baby
Courtney, you got a slight penalty for playing Iron Man.
But I think I'd be easier here rather than you.
Did you know? Yes, there's certainly this

(42:06):
scenario. It's always been interesting
because it's always been based on the XP isn't based on past
performances. And I think this is where we had
that discrepancy with basic because I think we had a a very
early basic round with lots of strange and Captain America.
And I think, yeah, I think that's skewed the.
I figured somewhat. So yeah, it's, it's always

(42:27):
interesting. I mean, I, I kind of take a
little notice in in the XP because I'm, I'm just happy to
play. So I don't really mind which one
I play with. But yeah, there are those out
there who really want to know the the numbers.
And I think yeah, this definitely, yeah, yeah.
It puts a lot of question marks on sort of what actually gives

(42:48):
you 5 stars versus. Yeah, I, I just, I, I think
especially for people who might be new, just having a little
more information might be helpful for them to understand
what they should be trying to doto do better or kind of what,
what things they're shooting forto, to do better.
But overall, this seems like a neat scoring system.

(43:08):
And I, you know, I want to see, see how it evolves.
And as Greg said, you know, is this going to be more stars for
some of the later rounds and howhow all that's going to pan out.
So let's have let's have a look at our overall results.
So by popularity, Captain Marvelwas 28% Ant Man, oh, which was

(43:30):
22, Ant Man was 19, and then therest were around 10.
And I just noticed just now thatInnsmith Bear has been making
the background and font colors match the color schemes of each
of the heroes. You're right.
I never noticed that before. I was just wondering why do all

(43:50):
these things have these awkward red backgrounds?
But now, now I see. So that's very clever of you and
Smith Bair. I just want to call him on that
front. He has a purple.
The Hulk is in purple forms to match his pants because all the
other ones are are two-tone costumes.
Hulk is just the color of his purple pants that he's always
seems to want to wear. Right.

(44:11):
Well, I think is it, is it actually matching what the
background color scheme is, right.
The kind of stripy thing that lives on all the hero cards.
Oh I see, they all have their own.
Right. But I think those colors are
also their uniform colors in a way, you know.
Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They all make sense with respect
to the hero. Yeah, there is.
I'm just looking at the whole cars.
There is a tiny purple stripe there.

(44:32):
So yeah, that's what he's come for.
I love it, love it. Yeah, I just, I don't know, I've
never noticed that before. Or maybe it's new that it's all
all that brilliant. I don't think so, because I
remember the colors have always seemed like not wonky, but you
know, like you've, you've noticed that there's different
colors for the different heroes.I just never actually made the
association before. Yep.
Slow old brain. In terms of the ability to keep

(44:56):
it on stage 1, only 48% of the games managed to keep it on
stage. 137 went to stage 2 and then 15 went to stage 3.
And in terms of actual approval ratings, which is a thing that I
guess will be going away. So we'll see how this thing
actually evolves. But the top performing hero was

(45:17):
Scarlet Witch, then Wasp, Captain Marvel, Ant Man, Hulk
and Iron Man. And the approval rating takes
all those pieces that we were talking about before baby corn
was talking about the new scoring system and, you know,
assembles them into some sort ofan overall score.
And and we saw that the fastest hero was Captain Marvel at 5.5

(45:39):
and the slowest was Scarlet Witch at 6.4.
So there really wasn't a ton of difference by by all the heroes.
And you know, as expected, Hulk had the worst scheme score
overall. But the the folks who decided to
play Hulk, there was 100% win rate for people who decided to
play Hulk, right. So you always get the nice, you
always get the selection bias ofthe people who are willing to

(46:01):
take on a more challenging heroes.
And they, they actually tend to do better than you expect just
because of that selection bias, right?
And so the, the stronger heroes tend to do a little, maybe a
little worse than you expect. And this weaker ones do better
just because of the selection bias.
Anything that jumps out to either of you on on any of those

(46:25):
results. No, as as as you pointed out on
the discord, Joss, I somehow was.
I had the best Captain Marvel deck on the old system, but not
the new system. So I'm still not eligible for an
award. One of these days I will.
Right. Well, so that's interesting.
Well, sorry baby Corn, did you have anything before I jump

(46:47):
into? I mean, it's interesting.
It was all so tight, wasn't it? It's all literally sort of like
very, very tight. Yeah, even Hulk.
I mean, I would have thought Hulk would be super fast with,
you know, with that high attack.But yeah, it's all it's all
pretty, pretty tight, which is which is interesting.
Yeah, it's great. I think the Iron Man selections

(47:07):
are, you know, probably a lot ofpeople that might have picked
Iron Man before they really realized how dicey it was to try
to get Iron Man up and running when you had a three threat main
scheme, you know, looking over your shoulder the whole time.
Yeah. So the way, the way I determined

(47:28):
who the top performing decks were and then, you know, I think
I might, I'll fine tune this because I don't have all the
insider information or anything like that.
So this is just from the scoringsheet, but I literally just
added up the number of stars that people had.
And so I took the, the people who got the five approval rating
stars and I just added up their,their total stars.

(47:48):
And then I I just took top threefrom there.
So this is still kind of representative of the best
performing decks and players. But maybe it, you know, it's not
crediting people exactly correctly.
But you know, I think it's closeenough and we see all the names
that we that we're used to seeing.

(48:08):
So the we're talking about Scarlet Witch.
So the top performers were UNC Dave, Lexicon, T Everly, who
came up a little bit earlier andV Jackson Brian.
And so the two decks that we gotwhere we got one from Tiberly,
which was called drawing with luminous.
And it was, you know, all the card draw allies. 3 rapid

(48:28):
responses to, you know, turn Nick Fury into even more card
draw of did include face the past.
I tracked who had face the past and who didn't.
Out of all the decks that got submitted, it was about 5050 and
and seven allies, which was on the the lowest end of the number
of allies we saw. People were really relying on
allies to help help them either generate card draw like you

(48:51):
Greg, or to to protect them fromfrom the the big bad villain.
And then V Jackson, Brian did a mighty Avengers with Triskelion
and strength in numbers, Earth'sMightiest Heroes, 9 Avengers
allies or yeah, 9 Avengers allies, but no face in the past
because this was all old stuff. So those were those were the two

(49:16):
Scarlet Witch ones that that we saw any anything you notice in
either of these folks. I'm just there to see Jason,
Brian. Oh, sorry, go.
Ahead, go ahead. Oh, I know B Jackson, Brian,
like to get Hope Summers out just to get two parts, which,
yeah, OK, got magic. It's always fun.

(49:38):
But yeah, no, it's that on a deck.
And do you have? Indeed, there's lots of.
Yeah. Sorry, sorry, no, I was just
going to say about TM release isthat he has basic spell in
there, which is like it it maybethis is back to our classic
versus legacy discussion. But you know, if if Mystic

(50:00):
people weren't weren't powerful enough, this is a pretty handy
spell. You know, to be able to do
anything you want it to do. We know whenever you draw it,
you know you can heal for it or deal damage for, you know, not
too terrible cause. All right, so then we got Wasp
and we actually managed to hear from all the top finishers from

(50:22):
wasp in terms of their decks. So we got Darcy, White Chapel,
Jack Chaldeas and Astridar. So Darcy went with the deck that
recycled, you know, a bunch of good allies like professor Axe
and moon girl. You know, as as as wasp is able
to do where you can recycle the ones that have the mental
resource when you go to alter ego, even though that is a bit

(50:43):
of a prohibitive strategy in this one, our Darcy included go
down swinging, which is a for those who don't remember, it's a
0 cost event. Discard an ally you control,
deal damage to an enemy equal tothat ally's printed cost.
So there's a lot of higher cost allies in here that you do some
stuff with and then you go down swinging.
And so this is kind of very, very aggressively pushing toward

(51:09):
toward the end goal and and no face the past on this one White
Chapel Jack, I was very delighted to see this was an 8
an 8 month old deck of theirs. So this was a deck that they had
published previously and just decided to use it had suit up
three times. Clarity of purpose.
That was not something I forgot to mention.

(51:29):
So the awesome thing you could do in this one is if you grabbed
something with suit up, you could grab clarity of purpose as
the upgrade, get your clarity ofpurpose down and then use it to,
you know, bring out help you bring out professor X.
So you had this nice cycle of being able to use suit up to get
yourself a resource generator right off the at the start of
the game as well, which is pretty cool.

(51:52):
And this deck had no professor X.
So you know, like congratulations to Whitechapel
Jack for having a very successful round with no
professor X at all. And then Chaldeas, another
person who included hope Summers.
But this was to grab rapid growth, which is Wasps switch to

(52:13):
giant form when you go into a basic activation and you get +2
to that that power 9 allies we saw.
I don't know, in looking throughthe decks, I saw quite a few
people decided to include the the gambit ally, so that that
showed up quite a few times, three times Moxie.
Not a lot of moxie, despite the all the Ant man and and Wasps we

(52:36):
saw around and and no face the past here.
And then Astrodar had a shockingly high number of aspect
cards, 12 and did include Face the Past and kind of just had
all the, you know, make the callsome suit up from to grab Moon
Girl right off the start to rapid response.
And then to my very, very great delight, the Adam Warlock ally,

(53:00):
one of my very favorite cards inthe game.
I love that guy so much. I don't know that I play him in
a tempo game like this. But yeah, go ahead, Greg.
I was just going to mention, so you call it face to pass a
handful and it's just a card to have because it's new.
Haven't really thought about a ton.
Is the idea bought why it would potentially be so good is that

(53:22):
I, and I forget what the crossbones nemesis minion is,
but is it pretty easy to clear? Not the crossbones, sorry.
The, I guess everyone's individual nemesis, you know,
but you know, 3 cards is good, but also you're trying to do
this fairly quickly. So is that, do you think that's
worth it? You know, do you think trying
to, you know, have a chunky minion to, to handle in addition

(53:45):
to everything is, is worth 3 cards?
I I just haven't thought about it.
Yeah, it is a little bit dependent on the specific
Nemesis minion. Obviously Beetle, who you know,
we're talking about Wasp right now is arguably the weakest
Nemesis minion in the game. So she's four health guard, 1

(54:07):
scheme, one attack, and then when you defeat her, you can
spend a physical resource or else you have to shuffle her
back into the deck and she's got2 boost icons.
So shuffling her back into the deck is, you know, on average
probably actually going to help you because she's just, if
that's the encounter card you draw, it's just not that tough

(54:29):
of an encounter card. Yeah, right.
So so especially if you're playing a hero where where that
isn't as daunting, then then maybe it may be worth the
calculus. Right, so there's the past is
costing you a card. So you get a net of two cards.
And so it's you know, what does that let you do?

(54:50):
What does that set up does that,you know, can you just deal with
Beetle for a round in exchange for being able to afford to play
your Quinn carrier and do some other stuff that kind of that
kind of stuff because it becauseit is all snowballing, right?
It's engine building. So if you if you can get that
advantage through those early cards, that can be really
helpful. Yep.

(55:12):
But yeah, I think overall Beatles kind of considered the
weakest of all. Yeah, I don't know anything that
either you wants to point out spotlight with the WASP ones.
No, I mean, there's a lot of Moon Girl, isn't there?

(55:34):
I mean, she's. Yeah.
Makes she goes great for wasp isn't.
It Yeah. Yeah, I mean they will, they
will Solid decks. But tricky in this matchup
because you're often not going to be going back to alter ego,
right? So, you know, getting your
ingenuity or your moon girl or whatever requires actually being

(55:55):
able to do it on on that one turn that you're starting on
alter ego. Right.
Captain Marvel so we got Doctor Zuko Yoda man 1970 first of
their name and Raphael N are were the three folks that did

(56:18):
the best with Captain Marvel. Doctor Zuko had a what looks
like a modification of the otherBrian VS further faster baby
Captain Marvel deck. And you know, just Avengers
Assemble and mighty Avengers. And there's a bunch of Avengers
allies and a whopping 22 aspect cards, including three

(56:41):
reinforced suits. So that really lets you know
that the plan was to keep those allies out as long as you can.
So kind of like like you, Greg, try to take advantage of having
your allies out and use them to to pump for cards or whatever it
is that you're going to do. And then Yoda man had a square
off deck. So we saw a few square off decks

(57:02):
all together. So for folks are squared.
Sorry for folks who might not remember squared off is a a
newer card that is a 0 cost event.
Discard cards from the encounterdeck until you discard a minion.
Put that minion into play, engage with you play an ally
from your hand, reducing its cost by three.
So now we have in every aspect some sort of variant of this

(57:27):
type of card where you're going to grab something from the
encounter deck in exchange for drawing some cards or getting
cost reduction or whatever. The really tricky thing with
Squared Off, and I don't know how much either of you have
played, so I'll, I'll be curiousto hear about that.
But the tricky thing with Squared off is kind of the
tricky thing with Marvel Champions in general is having
any sort of event based card that relies on some other card

(57:50):
to be in your hand at the same time is just very hard to line
up in this game. Yep, I, I've only played it with
Thor. It it, it is one of those cards
that makes Thor actually a lot more fun than I I used to think
he was because obviously Thor gets gets cards for getting
engaged minions. And so with Thor it was great
because you, you generally, you know, I just loaded up a lot of

(58:13):
allies, played a lot of those cards and I generally had a good
time. But yeah, in in normal
situations, I haven't tried it. But to your point, you you it is
that you know the cost. It's just like we talked about
about about that, you know, the other card.
It's like cost benefit of like, you know, is it enough to do
another thing you're trying to do?
Not necessarily play the ally, but you know.

(58:37):
I don't know, Baby Court, have you have you played it much?
Oh not at all. I love it though.
I think it'll be great for like that Hulk leadership deck.
Well, and then so interestingly,sorry, I'll just say like
interestingly, the the example that Greg brought up is with
Thor, who's a smaller hand sizedhero.
So you're, you know, some of theheroes that you're looking at

(59:00):
like your Hulk or your Thor, you're like, well, this would be
really nice. It's even harder to line up
having the ally in your hand, right?
Yeah, it's interesting that I, Ilike it and, and I think
particularly in Thor, I think itworks very, very well.
But it's got a, it's got a line,right?
It probably doesn't work with mymy tech building style right?

(59:22):
Yeah, well, we'll talk about that in a bit.
The the anything that allows Thor to get more minions into
play is good, right? Like that's when when it's on
your turn, because it's that's you can trigger it once in each
of the villain in hero phases. So his ability to draw 2 cards
for bringing in a villain really, really incentivizes

(59:44):
things that can do that on the hero turn, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. And then we also saw some, you
got this, which will come up in,in a little bit in one of these
types of decks. So when we see, we'll talk about
that in Hulk. So Ant man.
We had TJJJ Kamehameha and humble Hobbit and TJJJ had a

(01:00:12):
just five aspect cards leaned really like make the call call
for backup and clarity purpose leaned really hard into the
basic allies instead and used power in all of us included the
Deadpool and gambit. So lots of kind of high value
allies, whether they're you know, your iron hearts, where

(01:00:35):
the value is is how cheap they are or value in terms of once
they're in play, you can use them and they're they really
impact the board. And that to JJJ did did include
face the past Ant man's yellow yellow jackets.
Not too too tough. Kamehameha 13 allies make the

(01:00:55):
call. It's not quite a few people have
the enhanced resource generators.
I think maybe to focus on some of the resources that they might
have had trouble with in terms of clearing some of the
experimental weapons used. Face the past as well.
And then Humble Hobbit had 14 cheapo allies and a bunch of get
ready's for, you know, your unicfuries and your professor XS to

(01:01:19):
get some extra activations out of them before blocking with
them. And and then they said in their
in their recounting of their their rounds, that they they had
the rare for damage use out of Nick Fury to help them finish a
game, which, you know, I think most of us admit we forget is
even a thing that's written on the card.

(01:01:41):
You know, the enhanced resource generator idea is such a good
one, especially for rounds that you know, you're expecting to do
5-6, You know, rounds maybe Max because you know, the, you're,
you're paying less for it. The chance of you needing 4
activations from a research generator is probably pretty
low. So yeah, it's a smart way to get

(01:02:02):
that stuff out there more quickly and not do your, you
know, I, I think I played Helicarrier and Quinn Carrier
and I I could have swapped thosetwo out for, you know, all those
other cards, Especially if for like a Carol who wants a, you
know, who wants a specific type of resource, those kind of
heroes, you could put a few different, you know, copies of
it in. Yeah, in in shorter games
they're, they're pretty awesome.And I mean, because they

(01:02:24):
actually give out the name, samenumber of resources that they
cost to actually play, you can kind of just think of them as
banking for the future. So they're not entirely like
what's not called enhanced awareness.
What's the What's that one called?
Is that vision card where you can kind of bank a wild?
Yeah, yeah. What?

(01:02:45):
No, no, the the the event that just gives you one hand size the
next turn. Boy brain.
Oh Oh yes, assess the situation.Right, thank you.
Assess the situation. Yeah.
So they're it's kind of they're kind of like assess the
situation in that way, right. Like you're banking a resource
for the future. And in terms of especially if
you're playing something that often has awkward hands where
you feel like you can't quite spend all your resources, these

(01:03:08):
enhanced resource generators area way you could think of
smoothing it out. Oh, I can not deal with this
awkward hand in the worst way. I'll just, you know, bank some
of this into one of these enhanced resource generators and
push it forward and actually getextra resources later.
So those are yeah, those are pretty cool.

(01:03:29):
Yeah. Anything, I don't know, baby
corn, anything jump out at you for any of these Ant man decks.
No, I mean, I like, I like Kamira has enhanced resource
generation. I like that idea.
It's yeah, it's just, it's just great that it does work for
these quick rounds. They're all again, all solid

(01:03:51):
decks. I like the 14 allies.
Yeah, I love it. I was shocked how many times I
didn't have an ally to play in this, in this round.
And I, I can't remember how manyI had, but it was enough that I
would usually expect to have them.
Stats, man, it's tough. So then we got Hulk.

(01:04:16):
We had Jacinto, so amazingly bad, and Moogy.
Jacinto was another one of the players who played squared off
deck and which also included three copies of You Got This,
which is after you A1 cost event.
After you exhaust your hero to make a basic thwart or attack,
discard an ally you control. Add that ally's matching power

(01:04:36):
to your hero's power. For this use Ready your hero.
So it's kind of like go down swinging with an extra, you
know, ready for your hero, not exactly, but you know, for if

(01:04:57):
you have cheaper allies that have good stats, it's kind of
doing a similar to job what as go down swinging does.
So it's kind of neat. Makes sense with your squared
off and being able to get lots of allies coming into play and
stuff like that. But.
But it turns out Jacinto said that they never actually played

(01:05:18):
squared off in any of the actualgames.
And then Moogie had the the winner of the Astrodar pre
Memorial award for fewest aspectcards in an aspect deck with
four whopping leadership cards. So love it, love it.
And they had really leading intothe Hulk of it all.

(01:05:41):
They had five resource generators.
SO3 the main 3 supports, you know, Avengers mansion,
helicarrier and Queen carrier clarity, purpose enhanced
physique, one copy of and yeah, very cool.
I like Congratulations to all Hulk players.
Right. Perfect, perfect win rate.

(01:06:04):
Hulk doesn't see that happen. Yeah, pretty, pretty awesome.
And then onto onto your team. Iron Man.
They're Iron Man Baby corn. There was only two of you that
got five stars. So we just included two decks
here. So it was you and Mr. Wooby, and
you had what I will affectionately refer to as a

(01:06:27):
classic baby corn deck. You couldn't have baby corn this
more if you wanted to. Thank you.
Very much, I appreciate that. So the classic baby corn deck is
lots of one UPS because you know, in our, you know, I've
spoken with you lots now. And but you know, in the past
and just looking at your decks that observed that it just

(01:06:48):
looked like they were lots of good utility cards that you're
kind of hoping that situations come up and you have cards,
cards to deal with them and not over emphasizing any specific
aspect of the deck. And so this is there's 11 allies
in the deck and then you added four events, but they're all one

(01:07:11):
ofs. You added a support, but it's a
one of you added a bunch of upgrades, but they're all one
ofs. So this is just like the most
classic, you know, never have two things in your hand that you
can't use both of. Yeah, thanks.
I'm blushing now. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, as I

(01:07:32):
said, I, I, I got quite lazy with, with Iron Man and I'm
particularly Captain Marvel as well because I like putting, I
like stuffing, lots of energy resources and, and then
multiplayer games. That's kind of what I've been
doing just to say, right, let's get a let's get a classic or a
corset hero and, and just, you know, mash something up
together. So, yeah, so this was this was

(01:07:56):
something very similar that I'd had in my go bag and that we've
been playing locally. But I thought, OK, fine, let's
let's bring someone a little bitmore recent and Chuck in Cyclops
because that's just so much fun.It's interesting that you
mentioned Face the past and I hadn't really considered it, but
I looked, I've been looking at the cars, as you mentioned, and

(01:08:16):
I thought I I, I like to do a lot of attacking, particularly
attacking the villains. So I'm not sure how well face
the past would have done in my deck.
Yeah. So that, that's kind of
interesting, but yeah, the the Imean, there were there were odds
that I would never play. So I mean, I'm taking the tech

(01:08:38):
now, joining forces for one. Yeah, I can't, I, I can't
honestly say that I I have ever played that card, but I was one.
I was asked about joining forces, right?
Because Yandi is your own guardian, I think, right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean that that's a that's
probably a remnant of playing with I think it was Rocket or
something like that in the multiplayer game.

(01:09:00):
And I'd probably just well, I know, I know I'd forgotten to
take it out because I know what I'm trying to show my clips in
here. But surely it was it was
definitely being discarded for the the pulsar blast.
So it had its uses. Yeah, how?
How big was your biggest repulsor blast?

(01:09:21):
Yeah, I think I got, I got 11. I didn't quite get 30, but yeah,
it was, it was, it was, yeah, brilliant.
And the worst was 7. So it it it definitely worked
very, very well. Yeah, I love Iron Man.
It's still so much fun to play. And White Fox does double duty,
right? It's a it's a energy resource.

(01:09:42):
I wish. I wish I could say White Fox
came out and sort of came out being discarded, but no,
unfortunately. They did.
Just a bit of a shame. Oh well, never mind.
Beautiful. Well, great to see you, you

(01:10:02):
know, bringing your your style of decks and your style of play
and and being so successful. Yeah, the, I think the overall
rankings are a little, a little different now.
We're everything looks like it'ssorted by XP at the moment.

(01:10:23):
So it's, it's, it's based on legacy at the moment, I think.
Right. This is why.
You actually have the most you have you have the second most XP
in here. In flight 1, yes.
I think there's a couple. T Eberly has more than.
Oh yeah. Yes, I think he started earlier,
but yes, it's I think that helpsme get into the higher tiers.

(01:10:46):
Just my longevity like it is about Bear has over 1000 but
everyone else is. Yeah, the only person with over
1000. Yeah, which makes sense.
He was there from the job. Played every every single round,
every single season. Yeah, I've I've, you know,
definitely taken some rounds off.
Cool. Well, I'll just, I'll just

(01:11:07):
mention a couple awards and I don't know if anybody has any
kind of most clever tech they want to draw attention to.
I'll loop back to that in a SEC.But so we saw we already talked
about Moogie having the fewest aspect cards.
The party at the Triskelion award for most allies went to
Doctor Zuko with, oh, I said 22.That's not right now.

(01:11:32):
Now my, my tallies are all out of out of whack here.
So Doctor Zuko had 22 aspect cards.
So that's a different thing. The humble Hobbit had 14 cheapo
allies, so the Baronzemo dancingon his own award for fewest
allies. T Abberly and Whitechapel both
only had 7. And I often like to highlight

(01:11:56):
the person who did the best in the training grounds.
The new scoring system, it's a little, little less obvious
what's going on there, but we did have seven out of the 14
people successfully get 5 stars.So lots of people in the
training grounds that did fantastic.
And then there's Rainbow. Oh yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, No, congratulations to youguys in the training grounds.

(01:12:17):
That's amazing. That's awesome.
And the Rainbow Bridge award formost non basic aspect cards.
That was the one that went to Doctor Zuko with with 22 as a
Captain Marvel deck. So very cool.
Yeah. I don't know any any especially
clever tech cards that you saw in any of the decks that you all
want to shout out. I like Squared Off.

(01:12:40):
I think that's a really cool card and I think who used it
really effectively. Well, so Jacinto has it, had it,
but never used it. Yeah, I think it was Yoda, man,
because they managed to pull offa 2 tone win and that's OK.
That's yeah, really cool. We're back, I think 15 half and

(01:13:02):
I, I, I I read that notes. I'm not, I'm not sure it was.
It could use a ^2 off or or whatever what the combination
was, but yeah. No face in the past.
Yeah, no face in the past. So that's, you know, that's
coming. That's coming from squared off.
And you know what your your NickFuries or what other things are
allowing you to draw cards to really kind of crank that up.

(01:13:26):
Looking looking at Yoda man as well, like I think it's the only
appearance of the M yeah, the M Monet St.
Croix ally who can kill a minion, defeat a minion with
fewer remaining hit points, but she has four.
So most of those not not Madame Hydra, but most of the other I
think are all below that. I think that would be not the.

(01:13:49):
Not the. Hydra soldier, not the Soldier.
That's right. That's right, but but still like
super fun, especially you could also, if you know, you could
weaken Madame Hydra on a prior turn, have her out there 1, you
know, one time and then, you know, finish her off with Monet.
So so it's still kind of a fun. I just hadn't seen that Ally
being used. It's a cool idea.
Yeah, I have. I have every intention of trying

(01:14:12):
to build a deck that really kindof tries to pump her up, not as
its only thing it does, but as one of the things it does.
But I haven't quite gotten off my butt to do that.
But so you know, there's some fun new allies.
Kit Omega is also in there. So those are both ones that came
out with the Magneto pack. Kit Omega is a squirrel girl
like character only you can. After Kit Omega comes into play.

(01:14:34):
You can spend an energy resourceto do 1 damage to each enemy, or
a mental resource to remove one threat from each scheme and to
attack 2 thwarts. So pretty pretty awesome to
reason. Sorry.
Yeah, 2 cost for because, you know, 2 cost 22 is, is quite

(01:14:55):
powerful. And then you have this extra
ability on top of that to to impact the board in a way that
can be very helpful. Right, right.
See now my head was back to whatyou said about trying to pump up
and before you should I I guess the the team training the card
that adds more hit. Points.
I guess you want to have like a.Yeah, yeah.
Right. I can't think of another way to

(01:15:16):
do it but that that could be a way at least to get her to.
Then she could knock off a Hydrasoldier at 4:00 if she comes in
with five the. X-Men support that also gives
you. Yeah, the X-Men.
The X-Men team card also gives. Yes, right.
It gives them an extra health and one fewer cost.

(01:15:36):
Yeah, yeah. Wow.
So there's definitely some room to do it.
And it's one of those ones whereyou can, you know, as Greg was
trying to, you know, analyze this a little bit before, right?
You can really look at the scenario you're playing and
seeing if an M deck seems like one that would really make
sense, which is, you know, that's prime solo Champions

(01:15:58):
League fodder right there. Right, really right.
Right, right. Look through, look through the
encounter and really think aboutthe cards that are going to be
as impactful as possible. That's that's half the fun of
solo Champions League. Right, a bandoon may have a lot
of three health minions and likeI'm.
Trying to think. Of sort of swarmy, swarmy

(01:16:18):
countersets, right, That have a lot of the chunky minions, small
minions. Yeah, yeah, the this one did
have some smaller ones, but it was just the the most annoying
ones were not ones of them couldbe.
I wonder, just looking at Yoda man of deck again, just how much

(01:16:38):
they got X23. Yeah.
Like going again and again and just reading sort of the notes
with inspiring presence. Just what they did with that,
That would be brilliant. Very, very fun.
Yeah, I do. I do like any of these effects

(01:17:00):
that are, you know, when you defeat an enemy because you
know, usually we just have in our brain that that's going to
get triggered off of defeating aminion.
But you know, often you can trigger it off of defeating the
the main villain when you're advancing them from one stage to
the next as well. So there's there's extra
opportunities to do things like trigger X-23's ability three

(01:17:25):
attacks, nothing to sniff at. You don't, there's not a lot of
three attack available in in leadership.
So that's pretty awesome. For free cost is not bad, yeah.
Not bad, it's a lot of damage ifyou know it's, especially if you
have other ways to boost up the health in any way.
Right. Yeah, 9 damage without without

(01:17:47):
boosting health at all, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Thank you. Thank you both.
Thank you, baby Corn, for joining.
Oh. You're welcome.
Thanks for inviting me. Always a pleasure, Greg.
Also always a pleasure. Thank you for having me as well,
super fun. We have it all chatted since
last season so it was awesome tohave you both And listeners,

(01:18:09):
thank you for tuning into the Road to Nowhere.