July 25, 2025 • 52 mins
At the start of Season 20, league commissioner Innsmouth Bear shared the disappointing, but understandable news that this would be the final season of Solo Champions League. To help say a proper goodbye to the league, we're welcoming previous guests back, across multiple episodes, to share memories and what made the league special to them.
Up first we are visited by my fellow Gamorons: Kakita Jamie and Astrodar
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/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Hey hey friendos, welcome to theRoad to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. Today we are going to celebrate
solo Champions League. Recently, the league
commissioner, Innsmith Baer, announced that this season,
season 20, would be the final season of league.
You know, knowing how much joy and meaning the league has
(00:30):
brought to the friends that I'vemade through doing this podcast,
I invited many of them back to share with me in a celebration
of solo Champions League. These conversations have tended
to range from about 30 minutes to an hour, so I'm releasing
each conversation as its own episode.
Our second of these episodes. I'm joined again by familiar
(00:52):
voices, my alliance mates, Kakita, Jamie and Astridar.
And joining us, we have Kakita, Jamie, Brad, how are you?
Hey Joss, doing great. Doing great, love to have you
join us and Astradar, how are you doing?
Doing well, thanks for having meon again.
(01:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How have both of you been?
Haven't it's been, you know, a couple months since we've
actually all had a chance to seeeach other in person?
I am still riding the kind of heroes high.
Actually, it might it might be finally starting to downtrend a
little bit, but following kind of heroes when we saw each other
last, I really just like got this huge spike of champions
(01:35):
fever and I've been just plain like crazy.
Yeah, very same. Yeah, yeah.
Sorry. Go ahead, Brad.
No very same. Just enjoying enjoying Marvel
champions. Realizing how much I like
playing with people way more than I like playing by myself.
(01:58):
Yeah, that's kind of the that's kind of the Astrodar story.
And so I was going to say Astrodar, you kind of launched a
little project where you've beentrying to get people playing
online with real cards. Yeah, it's just like Brad said,
we just it's so much more fun playing with people and like
(02:19):
having that shared experience inthe game as well as the
conversation out of it. And I just process the game
totally different with physical cards.
And so I've been doing some workto get webcam came games going,
whether that be games that I'm hosting and bring people on to
play or if it's just encouragingpeople to play webcam games on
(02:42):
their own and the voice channelsand stuff on community server or
wherever else. But it's been a lot of fun
feeling a little more engaged with that side of online play
where you get the physical stuffbut also get to have the
convenience of connecting with people online.
Yeah, I love this. So we, we've played a game with
(03:05):
some other folks from from our alliance in fact.
And Astra, you were running generously, running the game for
us at you know what is an ungodly hour in the Eastern Time
zone, and we all managed to lose.
I didn't. I won, I think.
That's right. That's right.
(03:25):
But no, it was, it was a lot of fun doing that and did stay up a
little bit to do that one because our alliance manages to
span the globe and when it comesto time zones.
But, and, but no, it's, it's funeven in the games where I'm not
playing or I'm just hosting and running the game.
It's just a lot of fun to have that engagement and that chatter
(03:48):
between players, and that game in particular was hilarious
because we could all kind of ribon each other along the way
since we knew each other pretty well from Champions.
What and you you've been engaging in the, you know, the
little side extra fun stuff of, you know, getting an overlay and
a bunch of other stuff so that the the experience for the
(04:11):
players is, is really is really wonderful experience, honestly.
I'm glad to hear that because my, my biggest thing is just
making it so that you have something that's easily readable
and you can see the cards. And I found the best way for a
lot of that is to do an overlay for, you know, health or
whatever else so I don't have tohave extra health dials or
(04:31):
whatever else. And see how much we can put on
the digital side that still has us interacting with our cards
just to make a clean viewing experience.
But it's been fun. It's been weird because it's not
something I've done before. So that was all new stuff that I
was having to learn and it took a while and it's still not still
a little janky. Well, I popped in toward the end
(04:54):
of one of the other games that you were running that was more
recent. And did I notice that you have
kind of one of the like zoomed cams for displaying cards now?
Yes, and that's what the new thing that I'm adding in is to
have a close up Cam so that you can see the main board with
everything on stuff. But then you can flip over a
(05:14):
treachery or something and get aclose up view so everyone can
read it. And it's been a nice addition,
but I have a few kinks to work out with the green screen part
where half the card disappears. But but it's been nice.
Right now imagine it's taking a decent bit of research.
I just even trying to play the one game we had and I was trying
(05:35):
to work on lighting just so the reflective glare off of my
sleeves made them actually visible.
Lighting is the like bane of allstreaming stuff and it's been
one of the nice parts about doing this with play.
Or like, supporting this as a host is like, if I can figure
(05:56):
out my lighting realistically, players don't need to have great
lighting because so many people narrate their turns and things
like that, which I've joked witha few people of.
Really this was just a whole ploy to get people to narrate
their turns because I prefer doing that myself.
Brilliant, Yeah. Do you?
(06:18):
Do either of you play with mattesleeves?
No, I don't mind. I use Paladin Percivals which
are glossy as glossy can be. I use Gamegenic Matte Prime and
so that has been a little helpful with the glares.
Yeah, it's just a little a little helpful piece, right?
(06:39):
Mm hmm, Yep, I have a few non matte cards that I use for like,
so when I was playing a lot of Star Wars Unlimited and those
ones you toss on that same spaceand it's like suddenly, oh, you
can't read a thing. But yeah, it's one of the joys
of figuring out doing a webcam. Yeah, that's good.
(07:01):
I like, I appreciate the project.
I hope to engage a little more. Yeah, it's been fun to do.
So Brad, I'm going to, I'm goingto jump into some solo Champions
League questions for you. And I'm, I'm wondering kind of,
you know, do you remember your first season in the league?
What stood out to you? So my first season would have
(07:24):
been 14 if I remember correctly but technically played around
with season 13 round 5. Nope that is not correct.
It was season 12 round 5. So I started in 13 and that that
(07:45):
round was Thanos doomsday chair with the Infinity gauntlet,
children of Thanos using a Nebula.
And so I'm like, OK, I'm interested in this, you know,
having these solo leagues and they're quasi competitive, but
(08:09):
friendly competitive. Let me try this round.
And that's where I love learned to love Nebula and I had a
lovely. Story.
Yeah, I built. I built Shield Nebula, so right
in your right in your zones, Jaws and took on Thanos with the
(08:31):
Doomsday chair. I don't know how I would have
done in the rounds, but but enjoyed the heck out of it.
So then I decided this season 13, that's the way I'm going to
start. And it was, it was amazingly fun
because it's where I learned to love iron heart.
(08:53):
It's where I learned to love ghost spider.
Like that was all in that round.And you know, the, the, the
first time you know, you, you dowell and you pop at the end of
the round and you know, Bear puts up, Hey, you're the, you
(09:14):
know, leadership, the champion of leadership or champion of
iron heart or insert champion thing here.
And you're like, oh, that feels really good, 'cause I'm, I'm new
to this game and apparently I played well.
So I, I really enjoyed my first season just 'cause it was just
(09:37):
an adventure in really tough fights because he I just
realizing round 13 had Ronan in it as well.
So I went from round. 3. Yeah, so I went Thanos Claw,
Sinister 6 Ronan as the first, you know, 4 rounds I played and
(09:58):
I stuck around, so I must have liked it.
Brilliant. Those were great seasons to be
coming into things because that's when in Miss Bear, Bear
was doing some of the experimenting with like the
campaign elements and stuff, right?
Where you have a few extra like,you know, shawarma or something,
(10:19):
or some of the shield tech. I think it's one of the other
seasons, but I really enjoyed that where you got a little
something to give you a bump against these like really
challenging scenarios. Yeah, the sinister 6/1, I did
ghost spider and protection and I pulled the shield tech that
(10:40):
gives you the defense and I I put 3 toe to toes in the deck is
the aspect card he let you choose.
And I really just, I always thought, you know, new players,
toe to toe is a terrible card. It's not it's, it's, it's a good
card. It's just situationally good.
(11:02):
And I love, that's one of the things that I love about solo
Champions League, having having the challenge that is set like
this particular scenario, this set up and really tacking
against it. Because I don't generally tech
in my general deck builds. But when I am working against
this one scenario to get as goodof a score as possible, you end
(11:24):
up starting to experiment with cards that you don't use nearly
as much. And so like when you suddenly
find like, oh, you know, what this deck was missing to make my
score better was, you know, whatever toe to toe or, you
know, recuperation. I had around where recuperation
was my saving grace. And it was like, I don't use
(11:45):
that card ever anywhere. But here I found a space for it
because it was such a niche and situational thing that it
actually like met the conditionsto like, hey, this is actually a
really good ability in this case.
The Do you Astro? Do you remember your first
(12:06):
season? They do.
I came in on Season 6 right at the start of the season, so that
was Thor was the hero and that was against Absorbing Man.
And then I'm trying to remember,I don't remember what aspect I
pick, but I do remember it was Thor.
And I thought that I did amazingbecause I just, you know, 4
(12:29):
rounds I was done, won all threegames and that four rounds.
And then I got the scores and I was like, Oh, you're not
supposed to leave thread out andyou should be healthy at the
end. And then you're like, Oh, I'm
never going to recover from thisin the rankings.
So it was a, it was a ton of fun.
But then that like really fired up my like, OK, I'm going to do
(12:53):
good now and now I'm going to get the best possible score I
can. That had to be a tough round, No
more than one copy of any given card in your deck.
Oh yeah, that was one of my favorite seasons and like
partially because it was my first season, but the deck
construction constraints in thatround were so much fun because
(13:16):
they're based on the number of the round.
If so, in the first one you could, it was Singleton, only
one of each card. Round 2 you were limited to like
only two upgrades. Round 3 was like you had to take
the full set of cards and so youhad to have three of each card.
And you were, I think you couldn't take uniques or
(13:37):
something anyway. But it was really fun because it
warped deck building so much that you really engaged with all
the scenarios totally differently.
I don't know if I somehow didn'tnotice that the constraints were
tied to the round Number. Yeah, I think.
(13:57):
I think they were at least. Let's see.
Yeah, all but the fifth round. Yeah, which had but no Wilds.
It was just old man brain is theissue I guess.
But it was it was a fun twist onwhat what the rounds were, which
is always fun because he in Smith, Bear always finds some
(14:19):
fun little way to twist the season to kind of let you
approach things differently. Right.
It really leads to some creativedeck building.
As a result of that, you can come up with an you.
You can make somebody work in a different way than you ever
would because of the constraint,and it really makes you
(14:39):
appreciate the hero more. That is the truth.
So, Astridar, you know, tell tell us about what makes SCL
special for you. I think one of the things that
was biggest for me is that like early on, a lot of my plays were
(15:02):
solo, right? It was just an easy game to get
to the table, play on my own andwhatever else.
And so even going into the wideronline community, you still have
a lot of variability of, you know, who's doing this,
someone's doing some other scenario and you're trying to
like, share and converse on that.
And it's fun and you can. But one of the things that made
(15:24):
SCLS so special to me was that you could come on, you had this
group of people that all had thesame goal and you had that
shared experience across the solo games.
So it felt so much more engagingto like chat and converse and
strategize. And that really led to the
(15:45):
Discord server for solo Champions League becoming just a
third space for me to just chat and share and meet people.
And because it was a much smaller Discord server than like
the community one, it just felt a little easier to be seen and
to be like part of the community.
And so having that shared experience to discuss and to
(16:06):
like kind of make friends along the way through that, that's
what really just like sold me onsolo Champions League.
Right. So lots of community stuff.
Yes, but the community is amazing in solo Champions
League, especially in for something that is competitive.
And anytime I think of like competitive spaces elsewhere,
(16:30):
like there's a tendency for sometoxicity to to rise up or
whatever else. But I've never felt that in solo
Champions League. Right.
How about you, Brad? Yeah, I mean, a lot of what
Astrid are said and I think the the thing that really caught me
(16:52):
was how many people wanted to doto participate in the in the
conversations, right. Josh, you're a great example of
this. We're literally doing a podcast
about yeah, about the very league that we're talking about
right here. You know, we had the, oh, I'm
(17:16):
having a, I'm having a senior moment, guys.
You know the was it Greg that was doing the the Grandmaster?
Challenges. Poles, the grandmaster
challenges yes, you know that all of these things take time
and effort and that's how much we enjoyed the league in
(17:39):
addition to playing the game that it's it's tough to it's
tough to communicate how that how that brought everybody to
kind of together. As you know at the end of the
season, you do your your round recaps and people would be
posting all their decks and we'dbe going I'd be excited I'd be
(18:03):
like going through everybody's desk.
How did they handle this? Oh, they didn't care about that
at all. Did I?
Did I overanalyze this? I mean, they did better than me,
so clearly they they're the oneswho were correct.
But or you look at the infamous baby corn decks, right?
(18:25):
The one off challenge wouldn't have been a problem for him.
Not at all. Yeah, he would laugh that one
off. So, and it's just there, there's
this, you want to participate because other people want to
participate. And you look at the scores and
you're like, yeah, I did really well.
(18:46):
So did this other person. Wow, that's really neat.
They did that. And I'm happy for them because I
wouldn't have thought of it thatway.
I, I kind of especially appreciate decks that look much
more janky than mine, that actually do better than mine,
(19:07):
right? Like that, that the, the person
had some insight into the game or the scenario or whatever it
was. I mean, that's kind of how I
felt about Baby Corn's decks at first, right?
That had some sort of insight orhas some approach to play style
that I don't have that was actually yielding better results
than what I was doing, despite the fact that I thought my deck
(19:29):
was better. You know, I, I actually really
appreciated that. Yeah, it always felt interesting
to to iterate a deck so many times and run yourself into a
scenario so many times to where you like get just like, I am so
satisfied with how this went andthen seeing someone else that
(19:49):
was like, oh, that makes so muchsense and I never even
considered it or whatever else. And it really does.
Twist how you approach deck building after a long time of
playing Champions League. You go into it and then you have
those moments of like, something's not clicking, I need
(20:11):
to do something weird. And, and a lot of that was like
intuition that for me that's come from digging through other
people's decks after seeing all the different results and things
like that. Yeah, Brad.
(20:33):
Caught me for his loss of words.I was just enjoying what
Astridhar was saying No no yeah,the the shared decks at the end
are are like the icing on the cake.
Yeah, I, I don't they, they've inspired multiple little little
deck builds here and there that just get to play in casual games
(20:55):
where it's like, man, that's really cool to do.
I wish I could have done that. Or like watching, watching some
of the people do like some of the Nova kills, right?
Because this league's notorious for seeing crazy Nova rounds and
you know, I'll try out some Novadecks and I'll, and I'll get it
(21:18):
like 4 turns right. Something, something what I
would consider reasonable. And it's like, Nope, top player
got that. Like all two round games.
You scratch your head and like, huh, I really appreciate that.
Yeah, very much so. So, Brad, well, I have you on
(21:44):
the mic at the moment. What do you think that the
league has or the league's community has brought to the
wider Marvel Champions team? It it's, it's funny, I listen to
and consume a decent bit of content related to the league.
(22:05):
I'm not all the time, but I remember when I first got into
it, I was watching a decent bit of Nelson stuff and trying to
help learn it, help learn the rules and, and I've listened to
but multiple podcasts trying to just, you know, find ones that
fit my style. And it's interesting how many
(22:28):
times SCL just pops into a conversation right on a podcast
on a video stream. And often, admittedly, it's a
bit extra like it's, you know, if, if you're competitive, like
you play in SCL, which you know,we had just had the whole
(22:52):
conversation, yes, we're competitive, but it's very, very
friendly and non, non abrasive type of competitive.
And you know, you, you look at it across the whole spectrum of
this, it's like people talk about this league and it's not
like Insworth bears going out toall these podcasts and like
(23:15):
guest being a guest star or guest host or anything like
that. It's just it's reached that far
because it's known as being the competitive solo league.
And I look at some of the names and like the results and see
(23:36):
them on other places spreading, spreading out, talking about,
you know, this and that and how,you know, oh, if you do this in
your deck, man, that really helped this because they've
picked up from so many plays. Hey, this is this is how how you
can be a bit more effective withthat character.
(23:58):
Right. But still have fun with it and
it it's amazing the reach that this thing this league's had and
given a source for people like me that I don't have an active
play group that I can go play. But with this, even in solo, it
(24:21):
feels very much like I'm playingwith you guys, right?
Right, right. And I, I just love that fact
about it. And I think that that just, it
spreads throughout the communitybecause now maybe we've
inspired, maybe this league's inspired other people to, you
know, hey, I just played this cool scenario.
(24:42):
Let's all play it together. Yeah, well, it's funny, right?
Astridar and I have done a couple episodes of the winning
hand together and we really bring solo Champions League lens
to part of what we appreciate about some of the cards, You
know, like cards that a lot of people maybe outside of solo
(25:07):
Champions League kind of just look as as cards that are just
math. You know, it's just a game math
card. But in in solo Champions League,
it's such a critical cog into how you solve the puzzle.
So you just, it's such a different card in that
situation. Right.
It becomes a card that's not just this is Omega Toss and
it'll probably be fine, whatever.
(25:28):
But like something like Star Hawk, which is like one of my
all time favourites, is driven so hard by solo Champions League
where it's like, no, I need a sustained source of thwart and I
can guarantee that he is going to stay in this space and
provide me options. And it's always fun to kind of
see how those cards are getting influenced by your solo
(25:52):
champions experience and then see how that meets the wider
space when you take that into the community, just because it
is a different experience where you are, You know, actually it
does change the game in a bit with the scoring rules, but
being able to just like view that game in a different lens, I
(26:14):
think it's hard not to have liketo share that portion of the
experience of like, oh, I actually thought this card was
really good, which feels like a hot take or something.
But I do think that's why Civil Champions League shows up a lot
on these podcasts and media because it gives you that
different lens. And so and then, you know,
everyone has fun with this. Why not share?
(26:36):
Yep, Yep. Do you have other thoughts,
Estradar and kind of where the SCL community has contributed to
the larger World of Champions one?
I think that the, one of the bigger things that it
contributes is just having a space to be a little competitive
and like actually have some, some line to judge your decks
(27:02):
against. Like it's a, it's a great outlet
for deck builders to test their mettle.
And it's funny to me to kind of see names that I recognize for
or that I, I recognize from soloChampions League now in bigger
competitive games like Star WarsUnlimited and things like that,
where you have one of the big names there, Woo.
(27:22):
He played in a lot of the early solo Champions League's seasons
and D house. Would be.
Podcast with yeah, yeah, the West and a whole bunch of OS or
zeros. But yeah, so he, he's a big name
in Star Wars now and D House, who started the podcast with he
(27:44):
does Star Wars Unlimited and oneof the names over there that's
pretty easily recognized from his podcast over there now.
But it's always it's, it's fun seeing those like a lot of
people have a competitive side and they want to see like, you
know, here's the deck I'm building.
It's good. How good is it?
Or, you know, like, how good canI approach this scenario and
(28:08):
what, how good of the deck can Ibuild?
And I think having that outlet is actually a really nice thing
other than just having a binary win loss type situation to, to
test against. But also it's a borderline kind
of necessary thing in a community this large is to have
an outlet to let people who are wanting to have that higher
(28:32):
challenge or to have, you know, those puzzles to figure out.
I think it's provided a really great space for that, which
along with that Modoc, the otherleague you're running right now,
provides another outlet for that.
And that's been great to see as well.
What and thank you for saying that I I mean, I think you even
just see it in the challenges right.
(28:54):
So you know there was official FFG challenges last summer
critical encounters maybe two orthree summers ago did kind of
weekly or close to weekly challenges from a decent chunk
of the summer. Kennedy Hawk has also run a
bunch of challenges. And you see there's a lot of
engagement. Like people, as you're saying,
they, they want to engage with kind of some new interesting
(29:17):
take. But I think there is that piece
of being a little bit competitive and there's a
challenge, oh, here's a puzzle for me to solve.
And, you know, can I solve it ina more clever way than other
people? But I also kind of want to talk
to people about it and see what they did so that I can maybe do
even better myself. So it's kind of like the solo
Champions League piece where you're competing to do your
best, learn from others, but youalso like to pit yourself
(29:41):
against others a little too. Exactly.
It's also like such a common question I see come across the
Reddit forums is, you know, oh, what are your tests?
What, what villains do you test your decks against?
And I, I don't respond to them because it's repetitive and I
(30:05):
would be given the same answer every time.
I don't I play, I play this and I test my decks against that
against solo Champions League Browns and see how I do.
Now, granted I'm, you know, a that's very solo specific, but
and B, you know, I'm not just building any deck, but it's a
(30:26):
great it's a great measure of how you are as a deck builder
for solo play. If you want to know how you are,
come play our rounds. They're going to be tough.
They're going to, they're going to make you think about your
deck and the deck that you thinkis correct.
It may be correct. I've, I'm practicing for the
(30:49):
current round, which with Black Widow, it's, I thought I had a
really good idea and then I played it the first time and
then I was and then I said to myself, this doesn't work, but I
only need to change like 4 cardsand I think it'll work.
(31:10):
Yeah. And sure enough I did.
And it, it works so much smoother.
And it's, it, it shows me that AI had a good idea, but I just
need to tune it and just throwing it out there may not
always be the correct, correct thing.
You need to kind of give it somemetal.
And that's that's what this has really taught me.
(31:33):
Well, you, you just leads into the next question.
So, you know, is there a particular moment where you felt
especially grateful to be involved in the league?
You know, I think I may have mayor may not have told you this,
Joss. The first time, the first year I
(31:56):
went to the kind of heroes. Generally speaking, I'm I'm when
I'm not in a comfortable situation, I'm pretty socially
awkward. So trying to approach people
that I don't know is, is tough. And the league, you and and baby
corn and Ashdar and others. You know, we had the group chat
(32:20):
going in the SCL league. Hey, we're all going to dinner
and y'all invited me in and I came, had broke bread with y'all
before I played with y'all, before I had met any of y'all,
and y'all just welcomed me in. It made me feel welcomed and
part of the group very almost immediately and helped me get
(32:43):
over that initial discomfort almost right away.
And that's what the league is ina big way for me.
It's a community that helps you,that welcomes you in and brings
you with them in the as we ascend.
(33:08):
I love that sentiment and thank you for sharing that.
Astra, How about you? Anything where you felt
especially grateful. Is it cheating to just say
Ditto? For real.
Though like Con of Heroes was the big one for me where it like
really hit because I, you know, I was going to this con alone
(33:31):
literally had not seen a single of the single person there in
person before. And so the difference between
feeling what would have been like walking into a room of
strangers was instead like, OK, so I see people I don't know.
Oh no, but I do know them. I've just never seen face
before. And like, being able to be
comfortable and chat and have those experiences and like, kind
(33:56):
of being able to reminisce aboutthings already.
And it was just really fun and felt really special to be able
to show up to a space and have those friends and be able to sit
down and then share an aspect ofthe game that we never engage
with together where we're now playing multiplayer instead of
just chatting about what we did by ourselves.
(34:17):
And so it was, no, it was reallyfun.
And getting in those early games, that first kind of heroes
I went to with solo champions players, was a lot of fun.
Yeah, you did you have any gameswhere everybody showed at the
table with event based justice decks and we're trying to play
one way or another and to clear the area?
(34:38):
Yeah, yeah, That was, that's where I found out like, Oh no, I
do need to change how I do things.
I need to scale up for a threat in particular.
It looks it just feels way different.
Hey, it. Does it's it's a totally
different game and it it's it's fun.
(34:58):
Both sides of it are a lot of fun, but that crossover I I
think that having known each other before and chatted before
so much helped smooth some of those things out where we could
kind of laugh at things like that together of like, Oh yeah,
nevermind my neck sucks or whatever, but and everyone be
pretty chill and just make jokesabout.
(35:19):
Well, at least you know you did find in Solo Champions this
month. What what about you, Brad?
Did you kind of get any sort of sticker shock playing
multiplayer early on whenever you started playing, you know,
larger games as compared to playing with lower player
counts? I think the first one that
(35:40):
really caught me was I was playing a game with with
Journeyman 2 and not that he's out, I don't know if he's ever
been part of the league, but I'msitting down.
I built a cable deck on the spotbecause that was the year I
brought my whole collection likea like a crazy person and and I
(36:05):
built that this this just this cable deck so I could do even
the odds. And the first side scheme I go
search for is technovirus purge,because you know, I want to get
cable up to, you know, as high athwart thwart as possible.
Journeyman says, well, you know,if you want to do, you know, you
(36:28):
should go get this other, you should go get like build support
and we'll try and help you get technovirus, get to technovirus
purge first because that's goingto help the bigger group and
then we can start clearing stufffaster.
And it was one of those real ahamoments of, oh, I'm a solo
player trying to play multiplayer.
(36:55):
But no, it was, it was, it was that was a that was a really fun
time and I learned a lot from from those type of games just
cause of it. It just makes sense to not
sometimes it just makes sense tonot.
You got to go big in some cases.And then this year made me
(37:16):
realize that maybe player side schemes aren't all that cause a
lot of I saw very few of them this year, right.
But anyway, yeah, the the jump from one, the one the four is a
significantly different game. That and a lot better, a lot of
(37:37):
different card variety than thansolo league.
Like I can't just play, as you said, just as good stuff.
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the I definitely have had
tons of those, those experiences.
And I I I noticed as well that the kind of the multiplayer meta
(37:59):
seems to be much less into the player side schemes than than
initially. I, I noticed the same thing
where a part of it is me from like just the lens I'm viewing
it through of I have a number oftimes that I'm like, someone's
going to bring that. I'm just not bringing the player
(38:20):
side schemes. And then it's like, oh, everyone
at the table thought that and sonow nobody has played the side
schemes. Right.
Yeah, that's why the meta was that, right?
That's the whole reason that meta was like that.
Yeah. But that was, it's been
interesting to see just the difference of like, oh, I can
rely on other players to do something versus solo league
(38:40):
where it's like, OK, I guess I'min charge of this.
I've got to bring everything. All the solutions.
Yeah. Brad I so I'm, I'm curious, you
know, are there any standout games or kind of other things
that have happened in the leaguethat have kind of happened that
you'll never forget? Man, there's a lot of great
(39:10):
games, and I know I intentionally put this question
as something I could answer quickly and did not think nearly
enough about it, but there's a lot of like little interesting
niche games like playing Wrecking Crew.
I think we had like access to Nova that round.
(39:34):
That's a lot of schemes. Yeah, and right.
And you know, getting to wait, what's, what's the right word,
getting to destroy them with dive bomb.
Right it. Was a ton of fun, you know,
(39:58):
getting getting to play Gambit. For the first, like the first
real, the first time I played Gambit, and heck, the first time
I've played a lot of heroes in this game 'cause I I didn't
start till sinister motives waves wave was basically done.
Right. A lot of my first plays of
(40:21):
heroes were in this league. My first play of Gambit, who's
probably my favorite. He's my favorite X-Men.
I'm from New Orleans. Yes, all the stereotypes.
All the stereotypes fit except the ones that are portrayed on
TV of Gambit. Those make no sense.
(40:44):
But I still love the character. And you know, I went in, I'm
like, I'm going to play Gambit. Gambit's going to be great.
And I went in and it was againstTaskmaster and I got stalked.
Right. And that's when I realized, Oh
my, I can play alter Ego gambit entirely.
(41:07):
Alter ego gambit just never flipfor taskmaster.
He can't do me damage if I neverflip and I think I still flip
once. But anyway, the and really got
to play and tweak that now that's probably one of my
favorite decks to play. Oh, that's awesome.
(41:30):
And you know, the beautiful partabout that particular deck is I
could play it in almost any aspect because it was very much
a, a, a basic, a basic special where it had maybe 5 aspect
cards at best, maybe less, you know?
Astrodar special, if you would. You beat me to it and like
(41:58):
genuinely, that's actually probably my favorite round is is
getting to learn the character that I truly love in the game
because that's I think the firstround X-Men.
Nope. Pardon me, second round that
X-Men came into the league. But.
(42:21):
The astronaut Did you? Did you have anything that stood
out? For better or worse, the one
that stands out the most for me was a.
What season was that 11? In season 11, the final round
was Nebula and it was infamous. Yes, there's Nebula with Master
(42:47):
of Time and I was on Vision for the round so it was Expert.
I was running a Standard 2 and Expert 2 with Vision and all
basic because this this was after Alliance stuff had started
and so we were limited on what we could actually select.
And so it was all basic vision. And I think that's just the the
(43:11):
first. I think it was the first time I
lost a game during solo Champions League, like during my
official games, but it was the first time where I remember
feeling unsatisfied with my deckbuilding and being like, oh,
look, there it is. Like that is the breaking point.
(43:33):
Like right, this is where there was a challenge that wasn't
ridiculous. Like it wasn't like, oh, this is
Heroic 5 or whatever. It's just like, no, this is a
set up official rules, just limitation on who you can take
and being so frustrated and unsatisfied with that round.
But then in hindsight, being like, oh, that was actually
(43:56):
really neat to be able to find that line because in it's, it's
kind of hard to do that with thebaseline setups on things like
it's easy enough to build a super strong deck, do expert
stuff and the scenarios like after you're pretty experienced
with the game or playing in multiplayer, it can be pretty
(44:18):
straightforward to, you know, lose a game, run it again, you
win it or whatever else. And here was the first time
where it was like I iterated that deck so many times.
I played that scenario so many times and be like, Yep, that's
it. This was the limit for my deck
building skill at this point. And so that was in hindsight,
fun at the time, just like like frustrating trying to work
(44:41):
through. So I think that round was one of
my favourites in hindsight because it brought what I was
looking for in the league, like let's test this, let's find that
limit for me, and that was the round that did it.
I, yes, I the kind of really pushing yourself to spend a ton
(45:02):
of time with the deck and reallyget to know the scenario and
know what's in the counter deck and all those other pieces so
that you feel like you've got everything under control.
That's such a satisfying part ofsolo Champions League.
It really is. Yeah, one of the things I was
thinking about when when you twowere talking about yours was not
necessarily a specific game, butkind of a type of thing that
(45:26):
solo Champions League help me appreciate.
And I'll use Risky Business as an example is, you know,
scenarios that are widely seen as flawed, flawed or gameable or
anything like that, that on my own, I just had no particular
reason to go and visit in the league.
You know, some of those things are features of how you actually
(45:49):
do the thing more efficiently or, or whatever it is.
And because there is a timer that contributes to your score,
it's not, you know, on your own,if you went to play Risky
Business, you can kind of take advantage of it and barely
really even have to interact with it.
But in solo Champions League, where you're still trying to do
(46:10):
it as fast as you can and as cleanly as you can, that there's
an interesting puzzle to try to solve and try to figure out how
long do you, you know, stay and alter ego or whatever the case
is to, to actually make the whole thing work.
So I I really appreciated that Igot I have had some fun times
with risky business in this league as a result.
(46:33):
Remembering the flip when you'rein alter ego so you don't take
the damage. Surprisingly a lot more
important in SCL than outside ofthe league.
Yeah, yeah, all those things. And so, yeah, that's kind of I,
I have, I just have memories of engaging with content in that I
own in a way that actually brought me, you know, back back
(46:59):
to that content and enjoying it and really engaging with it and
having, having some fun. So that's, that's kind of how
I'll bring it. Yeah.
That's the, the, the gameable portion of that being like a
feature is number one round withKang where you know, you can
push into King too. And then you can just kind of
(47:21):
sit and build a little bit. Who cares if the thing goes.
But I remember rounds where I was testing decks and I'd be
like, you didn't scheme enough. I needed you to pop the scheme
this turn, not next turn, so my score would be better.
You're wasting my time paying. Exactly.
And so it was fun having those moments of like finding the way
to both take advantage of those gameable things for your score,
(47:44):
but also like have to push yourself to handle things a
little differently or or to not take advantage of them too much
to where you fall behind in the race against everyone else to in
your round count. Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
So maybe before we say goodbye to both of you and, you know,
(48:05):
huge thank you, of course, you know, Astrid.
Or do you have any parting thoughts for the lovely
listeners? Yes, namely you are allowed to
use aspect cards in your deck. That is my, that is.
My contribution is you can go above 5 aspect cards even if
(48:26):
you're not doing all basic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Love it, love it. How about you, Brad?
Any any parting thoughts? Hyper efficiency.
I I only want the good cards, soI put I put three, I put 3 of
everything and I dropped my deckto 40.
(48:49):
That's that's that's my general strategy and I have learned I am
wrong. Thank you.
Thank you to Baby Corn and Jarrett and Ashadar Jos on y'all
all showing me that that's not the correct way to play.
Or there's no, there's no correct way.
(49:12):
That's the beauty of it, yeah. That that I don't have to have
an exactly 40 card deck and I don't have to have three of the
best card. You know, I can have some
variety, I can have some tech and you can play however you
want. That's right.
And that that's my real message and find success.
(49:35):
There's not a there's no one right answer.
In the beginning, I thought there was.
And thank you to solo Champions League and all my friends for
telling me Nah, we can do it other ways.
For sure. And before we run off,
definitely we also want to say thanks to you Joss, for running
(49:56):
this podcast this whole time andproviding all the extra insight
and organization of all the fun parts that we get to engage with
with champions. And so I I know the road to
nowhere has been a constant source of joy for me across all
the different seasons. So appreciate all the work you
put into that. Absolutely just.
(50:18):
Oh, yeah. Thank you.
My absolute pleasure. Yeah.
Go ahead, you're the road to nowhere helped inspire me to to
get into SEO and the the discussions after just as much
as watching the everyone post their decks after the
(50:40):
discussions and things that roadto nowhere provided made the end
like the end of the round feel even better an event.
So thank you. Yes.
Well, thank you both for your very, very, very generous words.
It is, you know, been my pleasure to, to run the podcast
(51:03):
and to really get to engage withall these conversations and get
to know lots of people in the community better.
That's been so valuable to me. And, and just, it has given me
'cause to kind of really look atwhat people are other other
people are doing in a way that Imight not otherwise have done.
So. So it was, you know, in the way
this whole Champions League is forcing me to do interact with
(51:26):
the game in different ways. I feel like the podcast was
forcing me to interact with the community in a way that I really
appreciated and benefited from. So thank you both.
We will continue to engage with each other.
We'll see what the future holds for something like solo
(51:49):
Champions League and really lookforward to continue to being
your online and in person buddies.
For sure we'll get some more can't.
Wait for next year. Can't wait for next year.
And yes, more online games. I got some 4 player ideas.
Love it. I'm excited.
(52:12):
All right. Thanks, Bulls.
Bye. Thanks.
Hey hey friendos, welcome to theRoad to Nowhere, a Marvel
Champions LCG podcast. Today we are going to celebrate
solo Champions League. Recently, the league
commissioner, Innsmith Baer, announced that this season,
season 20, would be the final season of league.
You know, knowing how much joy and meaning the league has
(00:30):
brought to the friends that I'vemade through doing this podcast,
I invited many of them back to share with me in a celebration
of solo Champions League. These conversations have tended
to range from about 30 minutes to an hour, so I'm releasing
each conversation as its own episode.
Our second of these episodes. I'm joined again by familiar
(00:52):
voices, my alliance mates, Kakita, Jamie and Astridar.
And joining us, we have Kakita, Jamie, Brad, how are you?
Hey Joss, doing great. Doing great, love to have you
join us and Astradar, how are you doing?
Doing well, thanks for having meon again.
(01:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How have both of you been?
Haven't it's been, you know, a couple months since we've
actually all had a chance to seeeach other in person?
I am still riding the kind of heroes high.
Actually, it might it might be finally starting to downtrend a
little bit, but following kind of heroes when we saw each other
last, I really just like got this huge spike of champions
(01:35):
fever and I've been just plain like crazy.
Yeah, very same. Yeah, yeah.
Sorry. Go ahead, Brad.
No very same. Just enjoying enjoying Marvel
champions. Realizing how much I like
playing with people way more than I like playing by myself.
(01:58):
Yeah, that's kind of the that's kind of the Astrodar story.
And so I was going to say Astrodar, you kind of launched a
little project where you've beentrying to get people playing
online with real cards. Yeah, it's just like Brad said,
we just it's so much more fun playing with people and like
(02:19):
having that shared experience inthe game as well as the
conversation out of it. And I just process the game
totally different with physical cards.
And so I've been doing some workto get webcam came games going,
whether that be games that I'm hosting and bring people on to
play or if it's just encouragingpeople to play webcam games on
(02:42):
their own and the voice channelsand stuff on community server or
wherever else. But it's been a lot of fun
feeling a little more engaged with that side of online play
where you get the physical stuffbut also get to have the
convenience of connecting with people online.
Yeah, I love this. So we, we've played a game with
(03:05):
some other folks from from our alliance in fact.
And Astra, you were running generously, running the game for
us at you know what is an ungodly hour in the Eastern Time
zone, and we all managed to lose.
I didn't. I won, I think.
That's right. That's right.
(03:25):
But no, it was, it was a lot of fun doing that and did stay up a
little bit to do that one because our alliance manages to
span the globe and when it comesto time zones.
But, and, but no, it's, it's funeven in the games where I'm not
playing or I'm just hosting and running the game.
It's just a lot of fun to have that engagement and that chatter
(03:48):
between players, and that game in particular was hilarious
because we could all kind of ribon each other along the way
since we knew each other pretty well from Champions.
What and you you've been engaging in the, you know, the
little side extra fun stuff of, you know, getting an overlay and
a bunch of other stuff so that the the experience for the
(04:11):
players is, is really is really wonderful experience, honestly.
I'm glad to hear that because my, my biggest thing is just
making it so that you have something that's easily readable
and you can see the cards. And I found the best way for a
lot of that is to do an overlay for, you know, health or
whatever else so I don't have tohave extra health dials or
(04:31):
whatever else. And see how much we can put on
the digital side that still has us interacting with our cards
just to make a clean viewing experience.
But it's been fun. It's been weird because it's not
something I've done before. So that was all new stuff that I
was having to learn and it took a while and it's still not still
a little janky. Well, I popped in toward the end
(04:54):
of one of the other games that you were running that was more
recent. And did I notice that you have
kind of one of the like zoomed cams for displaying cards now?
Yes, and that's what the new thing that I'm adding in is to
have a close up Cam so that you can see the main board with
everything on stuff. But then you can flip over a
(05:14):
treachery or something and get aclose up view so everyone can
read it. And it's been a nice addition,
but I have a few kinks to work out with the green screen part
where half the card disappears. But but it's been nice.
Right now imagine it's taking a decent bit of research.
I just even trying to play the one game we had and I was trying
(05:35):
to work on lighting just so the reflective glare off of my
sleeves made them actually visible.
Lighting is the like bane of allstreaming stuff and it's been
one of the nice parts about doing this with play.
Or like, supporting this as a host is like, if I can figure
(05:56):
out my lighting realistically, players don't need to have great
lighting because so many people narrate their turns and things
like that, which I've joked witha few people of.
Really this was just a whole ploy to get people to narrate
their turns because I prefer doing that myself.
Brilliant, Yeah. Do you?
(06:18):
Do either of you play with mattesleeves?
No, I don't mind. I use Paladin Percivals which
are glossy as glossy can be. I use Gamegenic Matte Prime and
so that has been a little helpful with the glares.
Yeah, it's just a little a little helpful piece, right?
(06:39):
Mm hmm, Yep, I have a few non matte cards that I use for like,
so when I was playing a lot of Star Wars Unlimited and those
ones you toss on that same spaceand it's like suddenly, oh, you
can't read a thing. But yeah, it's one of the joys
of figuring out doing a webcam. Yeah, that's good.
(07:01):
I like, I appreciate the project.
I hope to engage a little more. Yeah, it's been fun to do.
So Brad, I'm going to, I'm goingto jump into some solo Champions
League questions for you. And I'm, I'm wondering kind of,
you know, do you remember your first season in the league?
What stood out to you? So my first season would have
(07:24):
been 14 if I remember correctly but technically played around
with season 13 round 5. Nope that is not correct.
It was season 12 round 5. So I started in 13 and that that
(07:45):
round was Thanos doomsday chair with the Infinity gauntlet,
children of Thanos using a Nebula.
And so I'm like, OK, I'm interested in this, you know,
having these solo leagues and they're quasi competitive, but
(08:09):
friendly competitive. Let me try this round.
And that's where I love learned to love Nebula and I had a
lovely. Story.
Yeah, I built. I built Shield Nebula, so right
in your right in your zones, Jaws and took on Thanos with the
(08:31):
Doomsday chair. I don't know how I would have
done in the rounds, but but enjoyed the heck out of it.
So then I decided this season 13, that's the way I'm going to
start. And it was, it was amazingly fun
because it's where I learned to love iron heart.
(08:53):
It's where I learned to love ghost spider.
Like that was all in that round.And you know, the, the, the
first time you know, you, you dowell and you pop at the end of
the round and you know, Bear puts up, Hey, you're the, you
(09:14):
know, leadership, the champion of leadership or champion of
iron heart or insert champion thing here.
And you're like, oh, that feels really good, 'cause I'm, I'm new
to this game and apparently I played well.
So I, I really enjoyed my first season just 'cause it was just
(09:37):
an adventure in really tough fights because he I just
realizing round 13 had Ronan in it as well.
So I went from round. 3. Yeah, so I went Thanos Claw,
Sinister 6 Ronan as the first, you know, 4 rounds I played and
(09:58):
I stuck around, so I must have liked it.
Brilliant. Those were great seasons to be
coming into things because that's when in Miss Bear, Bear
was doing some of the experimenting with like the
campaign elements and stuff, right?
Where you have a few extra like,you know, shawarma or something,
(10:19):
or some of the shield tech. I think it's one of the other
seasons, but I really enjoyed that where you got a little
something to give you a bump against these like really
challenging scenarios. Yeah, the sinister 6/1, I did
ghost spider and protection and I pulled the shield tech that
(10:40):
gives you the defense and I I put 3 toe to toes in the deck is
the aspect card he let you choose.
And I really just, I always thought, you know, new players,
toe to toe is a terrible card. It's not it's, it's, it's a good
card. It's just situationally good.
(11:02):
And I love, that's one of the things that I love about solo
Champions League, having having the challenge that is set like
this particular scenario, this set up and really tacking
against it. Because I don't generally tech
in my general deck builds. But when I am working against
this one scenario to get as goodof a score as possible, you end
(11:24):
up starting to experiment with cards that you don't use nearly
as much. And so like when you suddenly
find like, oh, you know, what this deck was missing to make my
score better was, you know, whatever toe to toe or, you
know, recuperation. I had around where recuperation
was my saving grace. And it was like, I don't use
(11:45):
that card ever anywhere. But here I found a space for it
because it was such a niche and situational thing that it
actually like met the conditionsto like, hey, this is actually a
really good ability in this case.
The Do you Astro? Do you remember your first
(12:06):
season? They do.
I came in on Season 6 right at the start of the season, so that
was Thor was the hero and that was against Absorbing Man.
And then I'm trying to remember,I don't remember what aspect I
pick, but I do remember it was Thor.
And I thought that I did amazingbecause I just, you know, 4
(12:29):
rounds I was done, won all threegames and that four rounds.
And then I got the scores and I was like, Oh, you're not
supposed to leave thread out andyou should be healthy at the
end. And then you're like, Oh, I'm
never going to recover from thisin the rankings.
So it was a, it was a ton of fun.
But then that like really fired up my like, OK, I'm going to do
(12:53):
good now and now I'm going to get the best possible score I
can. That had to be a tough round, No
more than one copy of any given card in your deck.
Oh yeah, that was one of my favorite seasons and like
partially because it was my first season, but the deck
construction constraints in thatround were so much fun because
(13:16):
they're based on the number of the round.
If so, in the first one you could, it was Singleton, only
one of each card. Round 2 you were limited to like
only two upgrades. Round 3 was like you had to take
the full set of cards and so youhad to have three of each card.
And you were, I think you couldn't take uniques or
(13:37):
something anyway. But it was really fun because it
warped deck building so much that you really engaged with all
the scenarios totally differently.
I don't know if I somehow didn'tnotice that the constraints were
tied to the round Number. Yeah, I think.
(13:57):
I think they were at least. Let's see.
Yeah, all but the fifth round. Yeah, which had but no Wilds.
It was just old man brain is theissue I guess.
But it was it was a fun twist onwhat what the rounds were, which
is always fun because he in Smith, Bear always finds some
(14:19):
fun little way to twist the season to kind of let you
approach things differently. Right.
It really leads to some creativedeck building.
As a result of that, you can come up with an you.
You can make somebody work in a different way than you ever
would because of the constraint,and it really makes you
(14:39):
appreciate the hero more. That is the truth.
So, Astridar, you know, tell tell us about what makes SCL
special for you. I think one of the things that
was biggest for me is that like early on, a lot of my plays were
(15:02):
solo, right? It was just an easy game to get
to the table, play on my own andwhatever else.
And so even going into the wideronline community, you still have
a lot of variability of, you know, who's doing this,
someone's doing some other scenario and you're trying to
like, share and converse on that.
And it's fun and you can. But one of the things that made
(15:24):
SCLS so special to me was that you could come on, you had this
group of people that all had thesame goal and you had that
shared experience across the solo games.
So it felt so much more engagingto like chat and converse and
strategize. And that really led to the
(15:45):
Discord server for solo Champions League becoming just a
third space for me to just chat and share and meet people.
And because it was a much smaller Discord server than like
the community one, it just felt a little easier to be seen and
to be like part of the community.
And so having that shared experience to discuss and to
(16:06):
like kind of make friends along the way through that, that's
what really just like sold me onsolo Champions League.
Right. So lots of community stuff.
Yes, but the community is amazing in solo Champions
League, especially in for something that is competitive.
And anytime I think of like competitive spaces elsewhere,
(16:30):
like there's a tendency for sometoxicity to to rise up or
whatever else. But I've never felt that in solo
Champions League. Right.
How about you, Brad? Yeah, I mean, a lot of what
Astrid are said and I think the the thing that really caught me
(16:52):
was how many people wanted to doto participate in the in the
conversations, right. Josh, you're a great example of
this. We're literally doing a podcast
about yeah, about the very league that we're talking about
right here. You know, we had the, oh, I'm
(17:16):
having a, I'm having a senior moment, guys.
You know the was it Greg that was doing the the Grandmaster?
Challenges. Poles, the grandmaster
challenges yes, you know that all of these things take time
and effort and that's how much we enjoyed the league in
(17:39):
addition to playing the game that it's it's tough to it's
tough to communicate how that how that brought everybody to
kind of together. As you know at the end of the
season, you do your your round recaps and people would be
posting all their decks and we'dbe going I'd be excited I'd be
(18:03):
like going through everybody's desk.
How did they handle this? Oh, they didn't care about that
at all. Did I?
Did I overanalyze this? I mean, they did better than me,
so clearly they they're the oneswho were correct.
But or you look at the infamous baby corn decks, right?
(18:25):
The one off challenge wouldn't have been a problem for him.
Not at all. Yeah, he would laugh that one
off. So, and it's just there, there's
this, you want to participate because other people want to
participate. And you look at the scores and
you're like, yeah, I did really well.
(18:46):
So did this other person. Wow, that's really neat.
They did that. And I'm happy for them because I
wouldn't have thought of it thatway.
I, I kind of especially appreciate decks that look much
more janky than mine, that actually do better than mine,
(19:07):
right? Like that, that the, the person
had some insight into the game or the scenario or whatever it
was. I mean, that's kind of how I
felt about Baby Corn's decks at first, right?
That had some sort of insight orhas some approach to play style
that I don't have that was actually yielding better results
than what I was doing, despite the fact that I thought my deck
(19:29):
was better. You know, I, I actually really
appreciated that. Yeah, it always felt interesting
to to iterate a deck so many times and run yourself into a
scenario so many times to where you like get just like, I am so
satisfied with how this went andthen seeing someone else that
(19:49):
was like, oh, that makes so muchsense and I never even
considered it or whatever else. And it really does.
Twist how you approach deck building after a long time of
playing Champions League. You go into it and then you have
those moments of like, something's not clicking, I need
(20:11):
to do something weird. And, and a lot of that was like
intuition that for me that's come from digging through other
people's decks after seeing all the different results and things
like that. Yeah, Brad.
(20:33):
Caught me for his loss of words.I was just enjoying what
Astridhar was saying No no yeah,the the shared decks at the end
are are like the icing on the cake.
Yeah, I, I don't they, they've inspired multiple little little
deck builds here and there that just get to play in casual games
(20:55):
where it's like, man, that's really cool to do.
I wish I could have done that. Or like watching, watching some
of the people do like some of the Nova kills, right?
Because this league's notorious for seeing crazy Nova rounds and
you know, I'll try out some Novadecks and I'll, and I'll get it
(21:18):
like 4 turns right. Something, something what I
would consider reasonable. And it's like, Nope, top player
got that. Like all two round games.
You scratch your head and like, huh, I really appreciate that.
Yeah, very much so. So, Brad, well, I have you on
(21:44):
the mic at the moment. What do you think that the
league has or the league's community has brought to the
wider Marvel Champions team? It it's, it's funny, I listen to
and consume a decent bit of content related to the league.
(22:05):
I'm not all the time, but I remember when I first got into
it, I was watching a decent bit of Nelson stuff and trying to
help learn it, help learn the rules and, and I've listened to
but multiple podcasts trying to just, you know, find ones that
fit my style. And it's interesting how many
(22:28):
times SCL just pops into a conversation right on a podcast
on a video stream. And often, admittedly, it's a
bit extra like it's, you know, if, if you're competitive, like
you play in SCL, which you know,we had just had the whole
(22:52):
conversation, yes, we're competitive, but it's very, very
friendly and non, non abrasive type of competitive.
And you know, you, you look at it across the whole spectrum of
this, it's like people talk about this league and it's not
like Insworth bears going out toall these podcasts and like
(23:15):
guest being a guest star or guest host or anything like
that. It's just it's reached that far
because it's known as being the competitive solo league.
And I look at some of the names and like the results and see
(23:36):
them on other places spreading, spreading out, talking about,
you know, this and that and how,you know, oh, if you do this in
your deck, man, that really helped this because they've
picked up from so many plays. Hey, this is this is how how you
can be a bit more effective withthat character.
(23:58):
Right. But still have fun with it and
it it's amazing the reach that this thing this league's had and
given a source for people like me that I don't have an active
play group that I can go play. But with this, even in solo, it
(24:21):
feels very much like I'm playingwith you guys, right?
Right, right. And I, I just love that fact
about it. And I think that that just, it
spreads throughout the communitybecause now maybe we've
inspired, maybe this league's inspired other people to, you
know, hey, I just played this cool scenario.
(24:42):
Let's all play it together. Yeah, well, it's funny, right?
Astridar and I have done a couple episodes of the winning
hand together and we really bring solo Champions League lens
to part of what we appreciate about some of the cards, You
know, like cards that a lot of people maybe outside of solo
(25:07):
Champions League kind of just look as as cards that are just
math. You know, it's just a game math
card. But in in solo Champions League,
it's such a critical cog into how you solve the puzzle.
So you just, it's such a different card in that
situation. Right.
It becomes a card that's not just this is Omega Toss and
it'll probably be fine, whatever.
(25:28):
But like something like Star Hawk, which is like one of my
all time favourites, is driven so hard by solo Champions League
where it's like, no, I need a sustained source of thwart and I
can guarantee that he is going to stay in this space and
provide me options. And it's always fun to kind of
see how those cards are getting influenced by your solo
(25:52):
champions experience and then see how that meets the wider
space when you take that into the community, just because it
is a different experience where you are, You know, actually it
does change the game in a bit with the scoring rules, but
being able to just like view that game in a different lens, I
(26:14):
think it's hard not to have liketo share that portion of the
experience of like, oh, I actually thought this card was
really good, which feels like a hot take or something.
But I do think that's why Civil Champions League shows up a lot
on these podcasts and media because it gives you that
different lens. And so and then, you know,
everyone has fun with this. Why not share?
(26:36):
Yep, Yep. Do you have other thoughts,
Estradar and kind of where the SCL community has contributed to
the larger World of Champions one?
I think that the, one of the bigger things that it
contributes is just having a space to be a little competitive
and like actually have some, some line to judge your decks
(27:02):
against. Like it's a, it's a great outlet
for deck builders to test their mettle.
And it's funny to me to kind of see names that I recognize for
or that I, I recognize from soloChampions League now in bigger
competitive games like Star WarsUnlimited and things like that,
where you have one of the big names there, Woo.
(27:22):
He played in a lot of the early solo Champions League's seasons
and D house. Would be.
Podcast with yeah, yeah, the West and a whole bunch of OS or
zeros. But yeah, so he, he's a big name
in Star Wars now and D House, who started the podcast with he
(27:44):
does Star Wars Unlimited and oneof the names over there that's
pretty easily recognized from his podcast over there now.
But it's always it's, it's fun seeing those like a lot of
people have a competitive side and they want to see like, you
know, here's the deck I'm building.
It's good. How good is it?
Or, you know, like, how good canI approach this scenario and
(28:08):
what, how good of the deck can Ibuild?
And I think having that outlet is actually a really nice thing
other than just having a binary win loss type situation to, to
test against. But also it's a borderline kind
of necessary thing in a community this large is to have
an outlet to let people who are wanting to have that higher
(28:32):
challenge or to have, you know, those puzzles to figure out.
I think it's provided a really great space for that, which
along with that Modoc, the otherleague you're running right now,
provides another outlet for that.
And that's been great to see as well.
What and thank you for saying that I I mean, I think you even
just see it in the challenges right.
(28:54):
So you know there was official FFG challenges last summer
critical encounters maybe two orthree summers ago did kind of
weekly or close to weekly challenges from a decent chunk
of the summer. Kennedy Hawk has also run a
bunch of challenges. And you see there's a lot of
engagement. Like people, as you're saying,
they, they want to engage with kind of some new interesting
(29:17):
take. But I think there is that piece
of being a little bit competitive and there's a
challenge, oh, here's a puzzle for me to solve.
And, you know, can I solve it ina more clever way than other
people? But I also kind of want to talk
to people about it and see what they did so that I can maybe do
even better myself. So it's kind of like the solo
Champions League piece where you're competing to do your
best, learn from others, but youalso like to pit yourself
(29:41):
against others a little too. Exactly.
It's also like such a common question I see come across the
Reddit forums is, you know, oh, what are your tests?
What, what villains do you test your decks against?
And I, I don't respond to them because it's repetitive and I
(30:05):
would be given the same answer every time.
I don't I play, I play this and I test my decks against that
against solo Champions League Browns and see how I do.
Now, granted I'm, you know, a that's very solo specific, but
and B, you know, I'm not just building any deck, but it's a
(30:26):
great it's a great measure of how you are as a deck builder
for solo play. If you want to know how you are,
come play our rounds. They're going to be tough.
They're going to, they're going to make you think about your
deck and the deck that you thinkis correct.
It may be correct. I've, I'm practicing for the
(30:49):
current round, which with Black Widow, it's, I thought I had a
really good idea and then I played it the first time and
then I was and then I said to myself, this doesn't work, but I
only need to change like 4 cardsand I think it'll work.
(31:10):
Yeah. And sure enough I did.
And it, it works so much smoother.
And it's, it, it shows me that AI had a good idea, but I just
need to tune it and just throwing it out there may not
always be the correct, correct thing.
You need to kind of give it somemetal.
And that's that's what this has really taught me.
(31:33):
Well, you, you just leads into the next question.
So, you know, is there a particular moment where you felt
especially grateful to be involved in the league?
You know, I think I may have mayor may not have told you this,
Joss. The first time, the first year I
(31:56):
went to the kind of heroes. Generally speaking, I'm I'm when
I'm not in a comfortable situation, I'm pretty socially
awkward. So trying to approach people
that I don't know is, is tough. And the league, you and and baby
corn and Ashdar and others. You know, we had the group chat
(32:20):
going in the SCL league. Hey, we're all going to dinner
and y'all invited me in and I came, had broke bread with y'all
before I played with y'all, before I had met any of y'all,
and y'all just welcomed me in. It made me feel welcomed and
part of the group very almost immediately and helped me get
(32:43):
over that initial discomfort almost right away.
And that's what the league is ina big way for me.
It's a community that helps you,that welcomes you in and brings
you with them in the as we ascend.
(33:08):
I love that sentiment and thank you for sharing that.
Astra, How about you? Anything where you felt
especially grateful. Is it cheating to just say
Ditto? For real.
Though like Con of Heroes was the big one for me where it like
really hit because I, you know, I was going to this con alone
(33:31):
literally had not seen a single of the single person there in
person before. And so the difference between
feeling what would have been like walking into a room of
strangers was instead like, OK, so I see people I don't know.
Oh no, but I do know them. I've just never seen face
before. And like, being able to be
comfortable and chat and have those experiences and like, kind
(33:56):
of being able to reminisce aboutthings already.
And it was just really fun and felt really special to be able
to show up to a space and have those friends and be able to sit
down and then share an aspect ofthe game that we never engage
with together where we're now playing multiplayer instead of
just chatting about what we did by ourselves.
(34:17):
And so it was, no, it was reallyfun.
And getting in those early games, that first kind of heroes
I went to with solo champions players, was a lot of fun.
Yeah, you did you have any gameswhere everybody showed at the
table with event based justice decks and we're trying to play
one way or another and to clear the area?
(34:38):
Yeah, yeah, That was, that's where I found out like, Oh no, I
do need to change how I do things.
I need to scale up for a threat in particular.
It looks it just feels way different.
Hey, it. Does it's it's a totally
different game and it it's it's fun.
(34:58):
Both sides of it are a lot of fun, but that crossover I I
think that having known each other before and chatted before
so much helped smooth some of those things out where we could
kind of laugh at things like that together of like, Oh yeah,
nevermind my neck sucks or whatever, but and everyone be
pretty chill and just make jokesabout.
(35:19):
Well, at least you know you did find in Solo Champions this
month. What what about you, Brad?
Did you kind of get any sort of sticker shock playing
multiplayer early on whenever you started playing, you know,
larger games as compared to playing with lower player
counts? I think the first one that
(35:40):
really caught me was I was playing a game with with
Journeyman 2 and not that he's out, I don't know if he's ever
been part of the league, but I'msitting down.
I built a cable deck on the spotbecause that was the year I
brought my whole collection likea like a crazy person and and I
(36:05):
built that this this just this cable deck so I could do even
the odds. And the first side scheme I go
search for is technovirus purge,because you know, I want to get
cable up to, you know, as high athwart thwart as possible.
Journeyman says, well, you know,if you want to do, you know, you
(36:28):
should go get this other, you should go get like build support
and we'll try and help you get technovirus, get to technovirus
purge first because that's goingto help the bigger group and
then we can start clearing stufffaster.
And it was one of those real ahamoments of, oh, I'm a solo
player trying to play multiplayer.
(36:55):
But no, it was, it was, it was that was a that was a really fun
time and I learned a lot from from those type of games just
cause of it. It just makes sense to not
sometimes it just makes sense tonot.
You got to go big in some cases.And then this year made me
(37:16):
realize that maybe player side schemes aren't all that cause a
lot of I saw very few of them this year, right.
But anyway, yeah, the the jump from one, the one the four is a
significantly different game. That and a lot better, a lot of
(37:37):
different card variety than thansolo league.
Like I can't just play, as you said, just as good stuff.
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the I definitely have had
tons of those, those experiences.
And I I I noticed as well that the kind of the multiplayer meta
(37:59):
seems to be much less into the player side schemes than than
initially. I, I noticed the same thing
where a part of it is me from like just the lens I'm viewing
it through of I have a number oftimes that I'm like, someone's
going to bring that. I'm just not bringing the player
(38:20):
side schemes. And then it's like, oh, everyone
at the table thought that and sonow nobody has played the side
schemes. Right.
Yeah, that's why the meta was that, right?
That's the whole reason that meta was like that.
Yeah. But that was, it's been
interesting to see just the difference of like, oh, I can
rely on other players to do something versus solo league
(38:40):
where it's like, OK, I guess I'min charge of this.
I've got to bring everything. All the solutions.
Yeah. Brad I so I'm, I'm curious, you
know, are there any standout games or kind of other things
that have happened in the leaguethat have kind of happened that
you'll never forget? Man, there's a lot of great
(39:10):
games, and I know I intentionally put this question
as something I could answer quickly and did not think nearly
enough about it, but there's a lot of like little interesting
niche games like playing Wrecking Crew.
I think we had like access to Nova that round.
(39:34):
That's a lot of schemes. Yeah, and right.
And you know, getting to wait, what's, what's the right word,
getting to destroy them with dive bomb.
Right it. Was a ton of fun, you know,
(39:58):
getting getting to play Gambit. For the first, like the first
real, the first time I played Gambit, and heck, the first time
I've played a lot of heroes in this game 'cause I I didn't
start till sinister motives waves wave was basically done.
Right. A lot of my first plays of
(40:21):
heroes were in this league. My first play of Gambit, who's
probably my favorite. He's my favorite X-Men.
I'm from New Orleans. Yes, all the stereotypes.
All the stereotypes fit except the ones that are portrayed on
TV of Gambit. Those make no sense.
(40:44):
But I still love the character. And you know, I went in, I'm
like, I'm going to play Gambit. Gambit's going to be great.
And I went in and it was againstTaskmaster and I got stalked.
Right. And that's when I realized, Oh
my, I can play alter Ego gambit entirely.
(41:07):
Alter ego gambit just never flipfor taskmaster.
He can't do me damage if I neverflip and I think I still flip
once. But anyway, the and really got
to play and tweak that now that's probably one of my
favorite decks to play. Oh, that's awesome.
(41:30):
And you know, the beautiful partabout that particular deck is I
could play it in almost any aspect because it was very much
a, a, a basic, a basic special where it had maybe 5 aspect
cards at best, maybe less, you know?
Astrodar special, if you would. You beat me to it and like
(41:58):
genuinely, that's actually probably my favorite round is is
getting to learn the character that I truly love in the game
because that's I think the firstround X-Men.
Nope. Pardon me, second round that
X-Men came into the league. But.
(42:21):
The astronaut Did you? Did you have anything that stood
out? For better or worse, the one
that stands out the most for me was a.
What season was that 11? In season 11, the final round
was Nebula and it was infamous. Yes, there's Nebula with Master
(42:47):
of Time and I was on Vision for the round so it was Expert.
I was running a Standard 2 and Expert 2 with Vision and all
basic because this this was after Alliance stuff had started
and so we were limited on what we could actually select.
And so it was all basic vision. And I think that's just the the
(43:11):
first. I think it was the first time I
lost a game during solo Champions League, like during my
official games, but it was the first time where I remember
feeling unsatisfied with my deckbuilding and being like, oh,
look, there it is. Like that is the breaking point.
(43:33):
Like right, this is where there was a challenge that wasn't
ridiculous. Like it wasn't like, oh, this is
Heroic 5 or whatever. It's just like, no, this is a
set up official rules, just limitation on who you can take
and being so frustrated and unsatisfied with that round.
But then in hindsight, being like, oh, that was actually
(43:56):
really neat to be able to find that line because in it's, it's
kind of hard to do that with thebaseline setups on things like
it's easy enough to build a super strong deck, do expert
stuff and the scenarios like after you're pretty experienced
with the game or playing in multiplayer, it can be pretty
(44:18):
straightforward to, you know, lose a game, run it again, you
win it or whatever else. And here was the first time
where it was like I iterated that deck so many times.
I played that scenario so many times and be like, Yep, that's
it. This was the limit for my deck
building skill at this point. And so that was in hindsight,
fun at the time, just like like frustrating trying to work
(44:41):
through. So I think that round was one of
my favourites in hindsight because it brought what I was
looking for in the league, like let's test this, let's find that
limit for me, and that was the round that did it.
I, yes, I the kind of really pushing yourself to spend a ton
(45:02):
of time with the deck and reallyget to know the scenario and
know what's in the counter deck and all those other pieces so
that you feel like you've got everything under control.
That's such a satisfying part ofsolo Champions League.
It really is. Yeah, one of the things I was
thinking about when when you twowere talking about yours was not
necessarily a specific game, butkind of a type of thing that
(45:26):
solo Champions League help me appreciate.
And I'll use Risky Business as an example is, you know,
scenarios that are widely seen as flawed, flawed or gameable or
anything like that, that on my own, I just had no particular
reason to go and visit in the league.
You know, some of those things are features of how you actually
(45:49):
do the thing more efficiently or, or whatever it is.
And because there is a timer that contributes to your score,
it's not, you know, on your own,if you went to play Risky
Business, you can kind of take advantage of it and barely
really even have to interact with it.
But in solo Champions League, where you're still trying to do
(46:10):
it as fast as you can and as cleanly as you can, that there's
an interesting puzzle to try to solve and try to figure out how
long do you, you know, stay and alter ego or whatever the case
is to, to actually make the whole thing work.
So I I really appreciated that Igot I have had some fun times
with risky business in this league as a result.
(46:33):
Remembering the flip when you'rein alter ego so you don't take
the damage. Surprisingly a lot more
important in SCL than outside ofthe league.
Yeah, yeah, all those things. And so, yeah, that's kind of I,
I have, I just have memories of engaging with content in that I
own in a way that actually brought me, you know, back back
(46:59):
to that content and enjoying it and really engaging with it and
having, having some fun. So that's, that's kind of how
I'll bring it. Yeah.
That's the, the, the gameable portion of that being like a
feature is number one round withKang where you know, you can
push into King too. And then you can just kind of
(47:21):
sit and build a little bit. Who cares if the thing goes.
But I remember rounds where I was testing decks and I'd be
like, you didn't scheme enough. I needed you to pop the scheme
this turn, not next turn, so my score would be better.
You're wasting my time paying. Exactly.
And so it was fun having those moments of like finding the way
to both take advantage of those gameable things for your score,
(47:44):
but also like have to push yourself to handle things a
little differently or or to not take advantage of them too much
to where you fall behind in the race against everyone else to in
your round count. Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
So maybe before we say goodbye to both of you and, you know,
(48:05):
huge thank you, of course, you know, Astrid.
Or do you have any parting thoughts for the lovely
listeners? Yes, namely you are allowed to
use aspect cards in your deck. That is my, that is.
My contribution is you can go above 5 aspect cards even if
(48:26):
you're not doing all basic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Love it, love it. How about you, Brad?
Any any parting thoughts? Hyper efficiency.
I I only want the good cards, soI put I put three, I put 3 of
everything and I dropped my deckto 40.
(48:49):
That's that's that's my general strategy and I have learned I am
wrong. Thank you.
Thank you to Baby Corn and Jarrett and Ashadar Jos on y'all
all showing me that that's not the correct way to play.
Or there's no, there's no correct way.
(49:12):
That's the beauty of it, yeah. That that I don't have to have
an exactly 40 card deck and I don't have to have three of the
best card. You know, I can have some
variety, I can have some tech and you can play however you
want. That's right.
And that that's my real message and find success.
(49:35):
There's not a there's no one right answer.
In the beginning, I thought there was.
And thank you to solo Champions League and all my friends for
telling me Nah, we can do it other ways.
For sure. And before we run off,
definitely we also want to say thanks to you Joss, for running
(49:56):
this podcast this whole time andproviding all the extra insight
and organization of all the fun parts that we get to engage with
with champions. And so I I know the road to
nowhere has been a constant source of joy for me across all
the different seasons. So appreciate all the work you
put into that. Absolutely just.
(50:18):
Oh, yeah. Thank you.
My absolute pleasure. Yeah.
Go ahead, you're the road to nowhere helped inspire me to to
get into SEO and the the discussions after just as much
as watching the everyone post their decks after the
(50:40):
discussions and things that roadto nowhere provided made the end
like the end of the round feel even better an event.
So thank you. Yes.
Well, thank you both for your very, very, very generous words.
It is, you know, been my pleasure to, to run the podcast
(51:03):
and to really get to engage withall these conversations and get
to know lots of people in the community better.
That's been so valuable to me. And, and just, it has given me
'cause to kind of really look atwhat people are other other
people are doing in a way that Imight not otherwise have done.
So. So it was, you know, in the way
this whole Champions League is forcing me to do interact with
(51:26):
the game in different ways. I feel like the podcast was
forcing me to interact with the community in a way that I really
appreciated and benefited from. So thank you both.
We will continue to engage with each other.
We'll see what the future holds for something like solo
(51:49):
Champions League and really lookforward to continue to being
your online and in person buddies.
For sure we'll get some more can't.
Wait for next year. Can't wait for next year.
And yes, more online games. I got some 4 player ideas.
Love it. I'm excited.
(52:12):
All right. Thanks, Bulls.
Bye. Thanks.
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Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com