August 21, 2025 • 63 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.
For the fifth episode in the series, we are joined by my alliance-mates and regular guests, tjjj and jarratt.
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.github.io/
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.
And joining us, we have TJJJ. How are you doing today?
(00:53):
I'm great Joss, thanks for having me on again.
It's a pleasure to be here. Always, always a pleasure.
And of course, your faithful companion, Jared, How are you
doing? I'm.
Feeling good. I feel like a little Droid right
now. Faithful companion, yeah.
Gonna make some beeps and some boops.
I can beep, I can boop, I can translate those beeps and boops.
(01:18):
And and and insist on protocol. Yeah, I mean, protocol's pretty
important in in Marvel Championsor Nah, wait, that's a different
game. Crisis Protocol.
We have we have you on for chatting about sole Champions
League and and how much we're all going to miss it.
(01:44):
Yeah, I'm pretty sad about it, honestly.
Is that a moment of silence? Yeah, that was that was a moment
of silence. Rest in peace, SCL.
So I have, I have a handful of questions that I have kind of
been giving different combinations of to different
(02:04):
folks and I got you 2 to tell mewhich ones you were most
interested in talking about. So and delightfully, your lists
did not have good overlap. They did.
Not we picked very different questions.
So we'll we'll see how this goes.
It'll be fun though, but I thinkI think a good, I think a good
(02:25):
starter question honestly is like kind of do you remember
your first season in the league?What stood out to you?
So let let's start with that oneAnd and Jared, since you voted
for that one, why don't you start us off?
I do remember my first season inthe league and what stood out to
me was the final round Nebula and the interest.
(02:47):
The interesting thing with this,this late this season, I feel
like it was the last time we didthis too, was beer.
Let us choose where we whether we were doing 2 or 1.
So standard 2 expert St. standard expert one or standard
expert 2. So early on it's obviously it's
(03:10):
standard and then later on it's expert, but you could choose
which type you were you were going for and like standard 2
expert two against Nebula is like complete nonsense.
Nebula is complete nonsense. The the people that we had to
pick from were like Spider Womanand Vision, who are both
(03:31):
fantastic, but sorry, you've gotto do them in protection and
something else aggression, I think, which is like what, what
are we even trying to do here? So it was it was really
interesting. It was the, the 1st probably the
only round I ever had a loss. And I've been doing re OK in
(03:53):
the, the, you know, I was getting my, my feet under me and
the like, trying to understand how the scoring was and stuff
like that. But I was struggling so much
with this match 'cause I just was couldn't quite figure out
how to control it. And every time I tried it was
just, it was too difficult. So in the end I just tried to
rush and I managed to get two wins on the rush and one loss.
(04:14):
And it wasn't the best result, but it was kind of fun.
And then like I saw like, I don't know who, but the people
who are doing well in the the top flight had had managed to
control and I was like, yeah, OK, It was there like either I
needed patience or bit of Dicks or like learning more about like
(04:37):
the scenario, but I kind of justran out of steam on it because
it's NIBIA. That's tough.
But it was cool to see that people could come up with these
ways to to overcome these reallydifficult challenges.
And I, and I kind of used that for momentum kind of for the
rest of the seasons I played, never really tried to bother
(05:00):
with the Expert 2 again because we never had to do that again,
Correct? But I love Expert 2, don't get
me wrong, a standard 2 that I don't like.
But yeah, so that that was that was the thing that stood out to
me. I started in the second round.
I missed the first round and I can't really remember the other,
(05:24):
the other rounds. That was the one that kind of
like stood out to me. But I just like, you know,
getting into it and kind of likelearning how to play and like
seeing the results come up and getting to understand like what
was going on without even reallybeing understand what was going
on under the hood was all prettyfun.
And yeah, just slowly getting toknow people as well.
(05:47):
That so that was the only seasonthat we actually saw Standard 2
or Expert 2 if if I remember correctly.
Oh, OK, so it was the only one, right?
Yeah, and I think that might have been the first time that
Vision was even available as a hero.
So his staff were absolutely terrible for a really long time
(06:09):
because of that. Yeah, and and that Spider Woman
was the same as well. So she got like bumped down.
So I remember doing Spider Womanin a later round and even though
Spider Woman was fantastic because she had such a bad
round, that round, she was really valuable because her like
(06:30):
she was treated as a loyalty hero when really she's not.
That was, that was funny. Yeah.
That I think I did play Vision in the end, which is weird
because I don't love Vision, butI kind of felt like there was AI
was trying to do a loop from Vision to kind of get those
extra cards as you go through his forms to be in a position to
(06:51):
kind of do the damage quickly tokind of get out of the game.
And Spider Woman didn't. She probably would have been
both of them probably had a control option, but I wasn't
finding it. So yeah.
Terry, how about you? So I actually looked fine up.
(07:13):
God my deck building was horrible and I'm kind of
grappling with as I'm looking tostuff through Marvel CDB.
Am I going to hold on to all thedecks that I've saved SCL or am
I going to go through and, and, and grief the loss of SCL by
deleting each of them individually?
(07:34):
Anyways, so my first match was season 15 Round 2, which was, I
believe against Master Mold. OK.
And we had we had Magneto and mywhole thought was, well, I'm
just going to Voltron Magneto and that's how I'm going to win.
(07:59):
So I played Colossus and Aggression, and I played
Honorary X Men's and Attack Training and Enraged and
desperately tried to Voltron himto victory.
I mean, if I'm looking at the cards in this deck, and this
makes absolutely no sense at all, like what I was trying to
(08:20):
do here, I don't have no idea. And I think that's kind of one
of my observations from SCL, is it?
It forced me to think differently about deck building
than I had before I'd gotten into the league, to really be
more critical of card choices and thinking about keeping decks
to a minimum size so that my chances of drawing certain cards
(08:40):
went up and thinking about the risk of advanced loss.
Those types of things hadn't really crossed my mind in the
game before, and it it pushed meto to think differently.
Yeah. So my deck building has just
gotten so much better since since starting the league.
(09:00):
And I didn't know anybody in theleague.
You know, I, I think my first round I got three wins, but they
were all filthy. Like none of them had any sort
of high points associated with them.
And so I quickly realized it's like, oh, I got to like, pay
attention to a threat and minions and all this other stuff
(09:24):
if I really want to compete. And tails all this time?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I, I, I really liked
the game for a long time, but I was missing, played a lot of
more competitive board games before getting into Marvel
Champions and I was missing thatcompetitive aspect of games.
(09:45):
And I think that's what drew me to it initially was that it was
at least a little competitive outlet without being too
cutthroat about it. Yeah, that's what I remember
about getting into the league. Love this.
So you know, I'm not sure if theanswer to this question just
(10:06):
kind of maps already on to something that either of you has
already spoken about. But you know, is there a
particular moment? Oh, no, that wasn't the right
one. That wasn't the one I meant to
ask about. Actually was was there a
standout game round or result inyour time in the league that
you'll ever forget? Maybe TJ, while you're still on
the mic. Yeah, so I definitely have one
(10:27):
for this. And it was the Taskmaster and it
was I found a deck, it was a Nova deck Justice and I found a
loop with his cards that could let me beat Taskmaster in one
turn. Oh yes.
And I and I remember putting this together and it all like
(10:47):
finally working and then gettingtwo out of the three in one
round. And then in my third round, I
like screwed up and got it in two rounds.
And then I posted the deck and everybody was like, Oh yeah,
this is great. And then everybody ran it and
then a whole bunch of other people got one turn kills.
And I was like, that made me feel really good.
I was like, yes, this is what this is all about is trying to
(11:10):
find that that fun combination that meets this very specific
villain that gets you to the most efficient and quick win as
possible. So that's it.
That's a game I'll a series of games I'll never forget.
That yeah, that is an infamous round and I was definitely one
of the people that went for the one turn Nova wins.
(11:34):
I don't know that I remember that it was it was you that got
us all kicked off, so I love that.
I mean, it may not have been me,I just remember posting the deck
and others were like, Oh yeah this is great.
I'm sure somebody thought of it before me, but I just remember
posting it and getting positive feedback about it.
Oh, that was definitely you. Yeah, it was definitely you.
(11:55):
I changed the deck a little bit,like I changed it to suit my own
taste 'cause I thought I saw better ways to get the one turn,
but it was, I wouldn't have probably tried it if I hadn't
seen yours. And I wasn't in a alliance at
the time, so I wasn't like forced to to choose someone
other than Nova. And I wasn't sure necessarily
(12:18):
whether we'd get good scores from it, other than the fact
that obviously we're getting clean wins in one round.
But Nova's so strong that maybe we'd get bounced down a bit for
it. But it was just too much fun to
do. I honestly had forgotten that
round, though. That was not one of my rounds
that I will forever remember. But it was actually super epic.
(12:41):
Like it was really cool to like take someone's idea and be like,
yeah, OK, sorry, I'm going to dothis too.
But but it was so like so fun todo it.
I actually have three that kind of stand out to me that I won't
forget. Sorry.
Yeah, just just quickly like again, it's the it's the Super
(13:05):
fast round. So I remember doing it.
It was Taskmaster again, but we had like a a tool from one of
the tech upgrades from yes, Redskull and I managed to do she
Hulk and use the tick upgrade tokind of pull Nick Fury to
improve her card hand, but have that extra resource from Nick
(13:30):
Fury. And one like there were two
round games and it was in protection.
So it was like a, a repurpose type of deck, but you were you
were getting out early on the force field so that you could
(13:50):
take the damage that when you turn flipped on the force field
and then you'd be able to use that against taskmaster.
So that was really, really fun. And, and Nova is going to crop
up again because baby corn and Iboth like had slightly different
justice sticks for this, but we,I'm pretty sure we both had a
(14:10):
lot of fun against the Vietnam Goblin.
Baby corn got all of the games in three rounds.
I got one of them in five, but two of them in three, I think.
And it was like, because then inGoblin you've just got like 1/3
on every scheme. And so like I built a deck which
just would unleash the Nova Force every turn and that was
(14:34):
just like super insane. And the last one was I can't, I
think it was around 3:00 where we got to play against Ronan and
Nebula was one of the options. And I adore Nebula as a hero,
but we had to play an aggressionand I was like, this is
(14:55):
interesting. But I managed to get like a
really great kind of like Dick together for her to just like
use her ability to control the top of the deck so I could flip
back to Alter Ego and really just she controlled Ronan so
well that I think they were like6-5 or six round games, which is
(15:20):
pretty good for Ronan's. And yeah, it was just like
playing Nebula against Ronan andlike having that level of
control and being really successful with it and kind of
people seeing that result and being like, oh, Nebula, wow.
I think that was that was super cool for me because that's a
hero who is near and dear to my heart.
But a lot of people don't see the potential in.
(15:45):
I love it. I I.
Go ahead. I thought of I thought of
another one and I think that this is probably a memorable
ground for you too. But it was as recent, it was
season 18. Valkyrie was one of the options
I think for like extra bonus points or something.
And I remember I think I had like a 25 round win, but then
(16:09):
you had a, you had like 27 or 30or something.
I forget what the crazy number was.
Yeah. Anyways, that one, that one
really stands out in my mind too.
Right. I really wanted to tough that
one out, yeah. This was the challenge season
and I like gave Valkyrie a go and then I was just like, Nah.
(16:29):
And so I didn't do that. And that was the one challenge
that season I didn't do. And it didn't matter because I
still managed to sneak through in the end on the other
challenges. So it was the right challenge to
give up, go go against Magneto with Spider ham.
But yeah, those games were just too long.
I was like, Oh no, I can't do it.
(16:52):
I gave it a college try, but then I just put it down and and
actually had a lot of fun with Spider Ham because I don't play
Spider Ham that much. I probably played Valkyrie more
than Spider Ham, to be honest. So yeah.
But like, kudos to you guys for like going for it.
Like, yeah. Yeah, good, good shout out, TJ.
I also remembered Jared, the oneTaskmaster one that you were
(17:17):
talking about, because that was the first.
That was the first time I remembered really the community
all building super heavily on each other's decks because
people would say, oh, you know, I used this combination and I
managed to get a three turn win,you know, and then other people
would kind of come in and tweak the formula and keep on going.
(17:40):
So that was one of the first ones, and then the Nova ones,
kind of the next one. I really remember people
building on the ideas of each other's ideas in a really strong
way. I think that's what I like if
about the community, right? Like it wasn't, yes, it's
competitive, but we're happy to like share decks and kind of
build off ideas and it's and kind of like lifting each other
(18:01):
up through these ideas. And and you know, as TJJ pointed
out earlier, it's like like learning to get better at deck
building and learning the tools which are good for deck building
and solo, because some of these cards, some cards that you use
in solo, especially in a justicestick, and I will forever
maintain that in solo, especially in ACL Justice is the
(18:23):
rush stick. Like nothing beats justice like
in terms of rushing, though, youknow, you can play really slow
justice sticks. And I know you just often do
Joss, but like the tools that you have for justice to like
speed through a villain. Like when you clear a scheme,
you get like this extra damage or you play down the the the
(18:44):
player's side scheme with like afollowed and it's like, well,
that's just nine damage right there and all you need to do is
sort three. Like just stuff like that is
things that you just don't really use in like a two player
plus game. But in solo, and it's certainly
solo Champions League, they're really fun.
(19:06):
Yeah, agreed. What?
What's the player's side scheme that does damage to the villain
when you clear it? Lay the trap.
Yeah, lay the trap. Right, So lay the trap and then
Bishop kind of they came out at a the Bishop ally also came out
around at a similar time. And so that was even more tools
in the toolkit for justice to beable to just push a ton of
(19:28):
damage quickly. Yeah, I think it was Kakita that
had that idea that was like followed plus lay down the law
or sorry followed plus lay the trap plus Bishop.
It was like a huge first damage turn to to finish off.
Yeah, because I think it was for, you know, it's people like
(19:49):
Mutagen or Venom Goblin to a degree where if you're playing
on expert or even if you're not playing on expert because the
the stage 2 like deals you a bunch of encounter cards too.
But I think it was often weird playing them on expert.
So stage 3 is like real brutal because you're going to get like
3 plus encounter cards. So you want to get there and
(20:11):
then just finish them off straight away.
And so you can kind of save all of that there.
And then it's like, OK, I've pushed you to stage 3 now I'm
going to trigger everything I'veset up and I'm going to knock
down most of your health and finish you off.
That's the magic fun of of Mutagen is trying to set
yourself up so you don't have todeal with whatever the second
(20:34):
stage is of the difficulty. You're playing half the fun.
OK, so let me let me check in with both of you on on another
question. So, so Jarrett, was there a
particular moment where you feltespecially grateful to be
(20:54):
involved in the league? Yeah, I think it was at the Con
of Heroes. Like, I'd made, I'd, you know,
I'd made friends with a few people, but you don't really
know how many friends you've made because, like, I play games
with TJJ pretty regularly. And I've, like, chatted with you
(21:17):
like, quite a bit as well. But other people, you know, you
kind of communicate on the forumbut not necessarily play a game
with or something like that. And then you go, I went to the
con, you know, I flew halfway across the world to get there.
And suddenly it's like, all right, yeah, Greg.
And like Lexicon and Babycorn and like all of these people.
(21:43):
And, you know, the list goes on.Like, there was like, I played
games with heaps of SCO people and I just had a blast, like
getting to know people even better in person.
But like, yeah, we already had this common ground.
And so it was like it was great to be able to go there and not
(22:04):
feel like alone because, you know, I.
Obviously. Yeah, like there's people that I
already know and it was the community that kind of like like
from ACL that was there. So getting to kind of meet them
and just like have that there and be like cool.
(22:24):
Like I actually have a safety net here.
I'm not like, I'm not like, oh, hey, do you want to play a game
like like I don't know who you are?
Like I've, I've, I had people that were like, we were, we were
good to go and playing games andgetting to know each other
better. And, and I think that's what
that was probably the one of thetimes where I really like, Yeah,
this being involved in this community has been awesome.
(22:49):
I love it, TJ. The anything where you've felt
especially grateful. I mean, Jared took my answer.
Oh, Jared. Well, I mean, I think it's so.
I think it's that. But I, you know, and Jared and I
having the opportunity to connect through SCL and being
(23:10):
able to because we have similar time zone, not, we don't have
similar time zone, opposite timezones almost.
But it's where our schedules actually sync up where we can
log on and play at the same time.
You know, my, my kids are going to the bed about the time he's
getting home from work sometime in the future.
Makes it such that we can actually sit down and play some
games together and developing a friendship through the game has
(23:35):
made me really appreciate havingSCL.
You know, moving moving up to the Pacific Northwest, we didn't
really know anybody and didn't have a ton of friends and still
kind of figuring out our community and stuff like that.
And so I kind of leaned on like online gaming communities and
(23:57):
Marvel champions and stuff like that to kind of fill that gap
and making friends with, you know, people like Joss and
Astrodar and Akita and others. That first round con of heroes
and coming back from that kind of flying high and like, oh,
gosh, this is great. You know, I'm I'm able to like
connect with these folks after the con and get more games in
with them and talking to Jared about it.
(24:18):
And then kind of pumping him up to make the big trip and spend
the money to come out. And and it's great to hear that
Jarrett was like, yeah, that wasawesome.
It's because, you know, I would love for us to all be able to go
out and do that again next year.It's like it's one of those
things I look forward to every year now is being able to go out
and, you know, fiddle with some cardboard for three or four days
with some some friends. So yeah, that's that's similar
(24:41):
to Jarrett, but maybe slightly different spin.
Right. I mean, I, I just stomp around
my house cursing as much as I can so I can fill up that swear
jar to to make my savings for the trip.
Brilliant. OK, well, So what, TJ?
(25:03):
What? What do you think you'll miss
most about the league? It's nice to have a scenario
that's different from the normalones that I play.
You know, often, like I have my go to scenarios I like to play
in Saba and Dark Beast and On the run.
(25:24):
And you know, if I can't decide what to play, those are the ones
I'm going to play. But SCL was always a great
outlet for some villain modular combination that I hadn't really
thought of before. And I didn't have to put in any
work to come up with that. It was just an idea that was
handed. And then I just have to go and
figure out how to solve that puzzle, which is is really nice.
(25:48):
That's something I think I'll really miss the most.
And I hope that the community can figure out how to kind of
stay together in some meaningfulway.
I know that it's the games that brought us together, but I I
hope we can figure out how to migrate it over to a different
platform. Or maybe we keep this discord
live or I don't know, something like that, that would be great.
(26:14):
Agreed, I got a quick sidebar for you.
I I still haven't decided how I feel about dark beast.
Tell me on Dark Beast. OK, I'll tell you on Dark Beast.
So each of the three modulars can create a unique experience
with Dark Beast depending on what you're up against.
I like to, you know, depending on who I'm playing, throw the
(26:37):
hardest one against, you know, pick the one that I think is the
hardest or the most challenging against the particular hero that
I'm playing. I also like because it has a lot
of activation threats, right? He's got 2 assaults, 2 advance,
and then three of his Arc Beast activation cards.
(26:59):
I figure out what they're calledand that just I think creates a
lot of pressure on the scenario in addition to Genosha being a
really difficult modular in general, just because of the
amount of threat that it puts onthe main scheme.
So I just, I tend to play it just because it's a really high,
high threat scenario that has decent number of minions in it
(27:24):
and it has side schemes. So it's kind of like claw, but
like claw plus to me it just does more than claw and and
forces you to to make some some critical decisions in the game.
Right. OK, yeah, because like in my
brain, it's kind of a bit of a vanilla scenario.
It totally is. I mean, I think that's why I
like to play it, because it gives me that vanilla
(27:45):
experience, but just maybe a little bit harder than like Claw
is at this point. That can be a selling point,
yeah. Yeah.
OK. Yeah.
OK, As a scenario, it kind of disappoints me a little because
like I don't feel the theme of it.
Yeah, like I kind of feel the theme of the the modulars more
(28:06):
than the theme of Dark Beast. But I did take it along to games
night last night because I'm like, this isn't hard.
It's fine. Like we'll just like, I'll just
play this because it's like easy.
And it's, I'm trying to find something that's like is
vanilla, you know, like you wantlike that like Dark Beast would
(28:28):
in most campaign boxes probably be around 1:00.
It just wasn't in that campaign.Like the campaign boxes have
kind of changed a little bit now, but that beast is pretty
like like not, it's not super difficult.
It's certainly not difficult with four people.
I can tell you that right now like 43 is like.
And I think that's the big shift.
(28:49):
Like I think in a multiplayer game I tend to not play Dark
Beast because I think it's not very challenging because his
main scheme threshold is so high.
But in solo, you know, because of his multiple activations, the
flip down is a really risky proposition.
Pressure. Yeah.
OK. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It's it is interesting because
Genosha we got second. We started with Savage Land and
(29:13):
Genosha and four players is likewhatever, he's just when he
attacks you, he's going to put athreat on the main scheme like
who cares? But Savage Land, every time he
attach you, you're discarding 3 cards at the top of your deck.
Oh, you're getting more encounter cards.
Yeah and he's got retaliate. So W our game was kind of slow
because like I built LIDX for everyone and you know the deck I
(29:35):
was playing head range because Iwas playing a firepower silot
deck. But like we kind of had to
slowly chip through the first phase and then we just like
blitz through the second phase because the retaliate was kind
of a little bit annoying for people.
Yeah, but I think it's fine. I I think the theme is the only
thing that kind of is missing for me.
Like like that. It doesn't feel really like that
(29:59):
Beast is going through these times because it just doesn't
happen enough. Whereas like you really feel
Kang's story as you progress through and you go into these
other alternate times or Spiral,who like you constantly have to
find in a new world. But Dark Beast is kind of like,
well, he's in one world and onceyou've dealt with him in one
(30:21):
world, you go to another world and deal with him there.
And so it's not a big shift and it doesn't kind of change up the
game that much. So you kind of lose a little bit
of his theme, I think. But I do like the theme.
I think the each of the modulus is quite a strong theme by
itself. Agreed.
Joss, I just had an idea for a future round scene.
(30:44):
All right, hear me out. I'm writing it down.
What if you shuffle all three modulars in at the beginning and
and the other the 4th 1? I forget what it is.
And then you reveal off the top until you reveal a card from one
of those modulars, and then that's the one that starts in
play. And then as you reveal encounter
(31:05):
cards and a new one comes out that's for that module, you just
reveal that modular. So the modular is constantly
flipping, the environment's constantly flipping to whatever
the card is that's coming out, which would give you a sense of
that sort of time travelling, you know, jumping from one time
to the next, right, Jared? If it's just constantly changing
on you, then you don't know whatenvironmental boost is going to
happen. You know the next round because
(31:28):
it could change already, right? Yeah, I think another, another
idea how you could do that couldbe because you you start with,
you start with one in and two out, but you could start with
two in and the two, the two environments and leave the other
(31:48):
one out. So when you do go to stage 2 or
stage 3, depending on where the place is, you add the other one
in. But then what you do is every
time he schemes, you switch or you like shuffle and get a new
random 1. So like so and and you do you do
that before he does the ability,before he does his special.
(32:09):
So when he attacks, he's just doing his normal thing because
there's a the special happens when he attacks.
I think maybe on the later stages that might happen when he
schemes to. I have, I can't really remember
because we played, we played standard yesterday.
So and I haven't played him a lot, but it's only when he
attacks on stage one. But yeah, you could do it every
(32:30):
time he schemes and you switch it.
So it's like when he's scheming.So when you're like not there,
he like swaps into a new world and you have to chase him there.
And I think that could be a fun way of doing it.
So it's not as like constantly switching, but it is kind of
pretty regularly switching. Yeah.
All right, some, some good ideasto play around with.
(32:51):
I mean, I like, I also like the idea thematically that his
scheme is to be doing all this time travel so that it makes a
lot of sense that it would be when he schemes that that
happens. All right, I forget what we were
(33:15):
talking about before. Well, we're going.
We're going. We're going to Jarrett.
Because, Jarrett, what will you miss the most about the league?
Oh yeah. All right.
Definitely the community and, and I don't know how we
(33:36):
replicate that because, yeah, ifthe, if the league goes away,
then maybe the discord goes away.
And then it's like, well, how doyou reconnect with all the
people that you've kind of connected through the Discord?
And I, and I expect that if someone wanted to like do
(33:59):
another version, we're probably make a new Discord.
Maybe we could use this one. I don't know.
We'd have to talk to Bear about it, but obviously he's kind of
managed all of the various things.
So yeah, I think that would be the main thing.
I had considered chatting with some people about doing like a,
(34:25):
having like a, a council or likeinstead of just having one
Commission, they're having kind of like a bunch of people that
like just work together to kind of come up with some of the
ideas. And maybe it doesn't need to be
as complex and in depth as the, the spreadsheet in terms of like
what how you score it. Maybe you don't need to score
(34:46):
it. Maybe maybe just having that
challenge, that consistent challenge is, is what you need.
But yeah, I was wondering if like there might be a few people
that would be interested in doing something not obviously
the same. I think be a kind of stated head
rather people like tried something new, but you keep the
kind of idea. So instead of like having a a
(35:07):
solo Champions League, we could have like a like a solo, you
know, champions council or something like that and and just
have like these like these games.
And yeah, but I think it's like whatever happened?
Like I would love to see like a continuation of the community
that, that's kind of what, what,what appealed to me, I guess in
(35:31):
the 1st place. I, I was on some of the Facebook
groups and I kind of was in likeloosely in some of the other
groups, but I haven't really, I've never really connected with
them in the same way. I, I like, I have some of them
on my Discord, but I don't look at them.
And it was actually Road to Nowhere where I kind of like
(35:53):
someone had suggested it in another podcast and I was like,
I'll listen to that. And you were talking about, you
were talking about the games. And I was like, oh, OK, yeah,
that sounds really interesting. I don't play a lot of solo, but
maybe I'd like enjoy that. So I'd like haunted it down.
And yeah, I just, it gave, it gave not just the the sense of
(36:14):
community of people like, oh, trying out these things, but it
was also like, well, it gave a purpose too.
Yeah. And usually in like previous
kind of communities that I've been involved in, with like
living card games, the purpose was the fact that they're
(36:35):
competitive. So you're playing against each
other. So you're kind of like talking
to people about decks and deck ideas and how you'd defeat this
sort of thing. And maybe you'd set up like
some, some online tournaments and those sorts of things.
And you get to know people is ina different way and the
community works a bit different.And I, I hadn't really found
(36:59):
with Marvel Champions, like mostof the community things that I'd
found certainly on Facebook was like answering rules questions
or like like, hey, is this card good?
Or like talking about like new articles that come out.
And that's kind of about it. Whereas solo Champions League
added in like a little bit of competitiveness.
So it helped elevate the conversation and build the
(37:23):
community that way, which I really liked.
And also along those same lines,and I risk being critical here,
but sometimes, sometimes the people on the other Discord can
be kind of grumpy. I will say yes, yeah.
And SCL was always a place that had like none of that.
Like no one was grumpy. Everyone was super nice,
(37:47):
answered questions, and that wasgreat.
Actually. I came to the SCL discord when I
was trying to get some rules questions answered because I
wasn't feeling like super welcome the other one, and then
eventually went to it and postedmore.
But yeah, it was a safe place for me earlier in the game
(38:07):
whenever I was a bit of a noob. Yeah, that's cool.
I mean, there's certainly like Imet some people from the other
discord, like on the at kind of heroes and there's obviously
great people there that, you know, should go and hang out
there and get to know more people because it's cool.
Like, like, I enjoy the people that love this game because, you
(38:27):
know, we all love the same game,right?
But yeah, I, I, I can see that like people aren't really very
grumpy here. They're pretty helpful.
And even when they are grumpy, like, oh man, we just played
Kalita. We're playing Kalita again, like
the but like you sort of say, hey, you know, like you call
them out a bit and they're like,yeah, OK, I'm not that grumpy
(38:49):
about it. I don't have to do it.
It's fine. Like, you know, they just want
it to vent, but not it wasn't that bad.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I, I, I do maintain that I
kind of to what you were speaking to Jarrett, that I
think, you know, a way to do something similar to this
(39:10):
community or to kind of carry this community forward is around
some regular challenges. You know, every two weeks or
every month or whatever it is, there could be some light
scoring in it that's, you know, transparent and a person can
just say I, you know, I scored eight points according to the
scoring rubric. And, you know, you put out the
(39:33):
challenges, but there's not the all the maintenance of somebody
keeping track of overall scores and performance and all those
other pieces that it's, you know, just kind of the the
community coming together arounda challenge.
You know, we saw that with the monthly or the weekly challenges
that FFG has done in the past and critical encounters has done
and all those other things that,you know, lots of people have
(39:54):
fun engaging with those for sure.
And then, you know, if I if I was to think about how I might
even just try to get more conversation happening within
the community. You know, the alliances were a
thing that took a lot of the conversation away from the main
(40:15):
channels and I think even expanding so that we were seeing
5 or 6 heroes, you know, took away because a lot of people
were kind of playing different games then.
So you know, I might be inclinedto make the challenges only have
a couple of choices you could make.
Is this something that is this something that you've thought
(40:36):
you want to do with us? Well, I mean I already have
enough overhead in my other I was.
Going to say you're kind of running something right.
So is there any, have you heard from anybody else that they're
interested in doing something like that?
Nothing, nothing to come at all,but AI think kind of like saying
(40:58):
like if you had a council, so itwasn't all the burden on
somebody and you just had a small handful of people that
were we're interested in carrying that forward.
And, you know, putting challenges.
And maybe even they'll try to match some of the things that
were kind of neat about SCL where you start with an easier
one and you kind of progressively get to harder one
and then reset back to the easy one again and kind of go through
(41:21):
those cycles. So that there's still some of
those trappings of SCL that I think are part of what made it
really fun, right, where we had these efficiency challenges
early in the season and then actually just being successful
became more of the challenge later in the season.
Like a lot of those things, I think people would probably
(41:43):
really appreciate that same sortof ebb and flow.
Yeah. So something that I've thought
about because I do like kind of the five rounds element.
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think there's already
(42:07):
like FFT has kind of already done half the work for us and
that we have these campaigns. And I thought like it could be
fun to just be like, actually we're going to do like this
campaign, redscale campaign and maybe just change it up.
It's like, OK, we're not like the things that you get, it'll
be a bit different. We're playing these villains.
We're doing it like this and youknow, these are the heroes that
(42:30):
you'll have like from round to round or like there, there's
limitations on each round, but basically the season is like the
Red Skull campaign. And then later on, like once
you've done like each of them, you could be like, OK, cool.
Well, well what a what's the wayof doing like a campaign?
It's still a campaign, but it's like we're doing a slightly
different mix of heroes or sorry, villains, but we're doing
(42:54):
like a campaign through it. Maybe there's a bit of story
because that was some of the best seasons that we had was
like the the No More Avengers, right?
Like. The yeah, the narrative ones.
The narrative ones were really fun and maybe they forced people
into too many like options, as you say, but but creating those
sort of things where it's like, well, you who you picked in the
(43:16):
first round kind of makes a difference to who you end up
with in the second and third round.
And maybe even like you can havelike the, the encounter could
actually end up being different based on which direction you
went. There's some some of the early
fan made FFG campaigns are actually like that one.
(43:41):
There's a couple that like you, if you do this, you go fight
these villains instead of these villains.
And then the final scenario willhave might have the other
villains as encounter sets in the the final scenario, because
that's the way that those those villains are set.
Like there is a rhino, there is a sinister 6, those sorts of
(44:02):
things. And that that was those were
quite fun to do where it's like,oh, actually I'm going this path
instead of like a linear path. So I think like there's a
opportunity to do something simple like that.
And yeah, you don't need to givetoo many heroes to people.
I do wonder if with the current environment that we might need,
(44:26):
you might need to always, alwayshave a core hero as an option
because more people come in and they're gonna not have the
ability to get some of those other heroes.
And unfortunately probably not get the ability to get some of
the the encounter sets either, which is probably the worst
(44:47):
part. Like I don't mind that heroes
get like circled out, but it's abit annoying that some of the
campaign boxes would for some people.
But yeah. Right.
Well, and there's also, you know, the whole campaign
contest, that villain theory anda bunch of other content
creators just recently ran in terms of other things that you
(45:09):
could do, right? Like other things that people
have put in a bunch of time to think through these nice
relatives. That doesn't really put the
burden on people that are tryingto put up the challenges.
It's more about, you know, what's the extra stuff that
lives around it. Yeah.
And I think the important thing is like, well, here's like
here's your time frame and this is what we're doing and those
(45:33):
are your limitations and let's chat about it.
But that that's the, I mean, to me, that was the core of SCO.
Like scoring is fine and I thinkthat people want to do well.
I mean, you could have that kindof like, hey, achieving these
goals is like bonus points, but it's not super relevant.
(45:56):
But it it it evokes the conversation, right?
Like, hey, even if you didn't say, hey, you've got to do this.
Like if the thing was like get athree round game, like, you
know, like then it's like, well,who can I do it?
Who can I get a three round gamewith Nova?
But you know, it's like that that sort of thing is fun.
(46:17):
Like, you know, how fast can yoube is sometimes fun.
Can you remove all the threat like all the time?
Maybe not, but in some games it's like Mojo.
Can you actually get rid of all the threat And Mojo might be a
fun little challenge, right? Yeah.
So I don't know that you need the the Super in depth scoring,
(46:39):
but I definitely think you need some kind of like clever little
thing that you're maybe extra trying to do in the game to to
kind of push Dicks in different ways.
And the the VFG little challenges like, oh, I only use
aerial heroes or like just stufflike that helps as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tji gotta I gotta hit another
(47:07):
question for you. So this is one of the ones that
you voted for. So what do you think the STL
community bought brought to the wider Marvel Champions scene?
I. Think that goes back to what I
(47:29):
was talking about earlier about this awareness of how to play
the solo game. And I, I've talked about this
with other folks too, and I, andI think people who play
exclusively multiplayer kind of don't, don't see some of these
things in the way that the solo game is played.
But it's very much this calculation of if and when you
(47:55):
could ever flip down without risking loss, right?
The fact that two advance cards exist within every single game
means that you're essentially always at that risk of until
they've passed, right until you see them pass in the deck.
You need some back up plan, either a confused or an under
surveillance or, you know, some ready for a fight, some way to
(48:18):
stop that from happening. And I think that that's
something that's pretty unique to SCL in particular, because
that was the death knell, right?That was the thing we were all
trying to avoid happening. Is that loot that loss to, to an
advance or the main scheme popping from an advance and then
triggering a loss of points? And so, you know, I think it's
(48:41):
that one of the things the SCL community brings is that hyper
focus on how to efficiently playa solo game and, and, and, you
know, have a really high win percentage of, of those games.
I like that Jared, how about you?
(49:01):
Any thoughts on, you know, things that SCL has brought to
the wider community? I mean, I, I don't know that
much about the wider community necessarily, because my being so
far away, my like connection to the wider community really is
(49:26):
just through like I went to kindof heroes and and so kind of
I've been a little bit more focused on like I guess the SCL
community or just like like I'llplay games with people from SCL
or I'll like play games like just two handed like I normally
would at home. So I did feel like from con of
(49:50):
heroes, the decks that I saw were really, really interesting
from like SCL folk. But I think that it it you do
like start thinking about the game in a different way, so that
that might be one of them. But I have certainly played with
(50:12):
people who are not SCO Folk and they have like really
fascinating decks as well. And it's kind of like what when
you understand the cards in a solo sense, how can you bring
them to multiplayer games? And do the you know, you, you
get to know value of cards in the, I guess, a different way,
(50:32):
right. And I think that's, that's
probably more interesting. There's a lot of people that
play solo anyway, but they don'tplay solo in the way that SCL
plays solo. And, and like I, I've said this
like many times, like even with the Modoc league as well, which
(50:54):
is 2 PLA 2 handed, but with two players, whichever you're
choosing as I still enjoy the game most when I'm not caring
about defeating the minions, clearing the main scheme.
Like I, I want the game to feel like I was under pressure and
like we got to the end and it was like a knife fight and we
(51:15):
kind of barely scraped past the finish line, right.
So when you're playing someone like like Ronan or venom goblin
or like Magneto, like I hate those minions in SCLI have
encounters in SCL. They're just not fun because
yes, they're long and they're challenging and like you get to
the end and you felt like you were put through the wringer,
(51:37):
but you like have this great victory.
But they're like really fantastic encounter sets.
But in SCL, it's kind of like actually the puzzle is almost
more interesting and being able to solve that puzzle is kind of
like a little bit more fun because I don't want to spend 2
hours. This is the going back to the
Valkyrie versus Magneto. I don't want to spend 2 hours
(51:58):
playing a game solo that I'm going to have to play a lot.
I want to spend like 10 to 20 minutes playing that game solo
if I'm going to have to play it a lot of times.
But if I'm going to play it one time, yeah, give me a 2 hour
game. It's fantastic.
So yeah, I, I don't know, I think that I would probably say
(52:19):
that if SCL brought anything to the wider community, it's really
just like the way to look at thevalue of cards in a different
kind of light. The other thing that came to
mind that I think SCL does that's unique is the collection
of some kind of data and statistics around hero
(52:41):
performance against like that's that's not something that I've
seen exist anywhere else in Marvel champions.
I mean I think people keep theirboard game geek their their log
of of games played and wins and losses, but to have it
aggregated in some way amongst the larger community of players
(53:02):
is pretty cool. Agreed.
Agreed. So I'm going to jump over to the
last question I had on my list, not the last question we talked
about this, sorry, but my last question we had on the list.
So TJ, any special inside jokes or memes from the league that
still make you laugh? I did not understand the baby
(53:30):
corn joke for the longest time of what a baby corn deck was.
And so I would see people saying, oh, that's a baby corn.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
What what is a baby corn? And then I finally realized that
it was a one of style deck. So that still kind of makes me
chuckle. And then also, just because
(53:52):
Jared and I still play a lot, the one that still makes me
laugh is when peril comes up in our games and there's a real
like pause amongst us as we likemake sure that there is no
assistance in TTS as the other person tries to like do what the
card says. And and Jared is a little
(54:15):
infamous for having TTS not respond exactly how it intended,
so there's extra fun to be had there.
Jared's pretty sharp now. He's he's sharpened his skills
he's sharpened. His skills.
Jared, how about you? Is there any any special inside
jokes or memes from the league that that tickle your fancy?
(54:42):
I I mean the baby corn thing is like hilarious because we in
fact are doing a campaign right now the sinister motives and we
specifically were like only madedecks with one offs.
Yeah. And it didn't start.
It's been. Super fun.
It's been super fun. I.
(55:02):
Did it because I was like, I really want to try it.
This card and this card I make. I've got a silk deck and we were
doing like the spiders. So silk and and spider man and I
ended up being like, you know what, I'm actually just gonna go
one of us for all of these things and Teddy, I thought I'll
do that too. So we've got like this instead
(55:23):
of it being like I've got three of the best protection cards for
spider man multiple times. It's like one of one of one of
and it just really changes the way that you think about your
hand every turn. It's so much fun.
And so you're learning and, and the fact that like he does so
(55:44):
well with those Dicks and learning how to to do, to to
play them is really, really interesting.
And the other thing that kind ofit went away, but I loved Greg's
little. Those challenges his his.
Contest. Yeah, yeah, his little contest.
I think they were really fun. You know, I didn't necessarily
(56:06):
agree with all the results, but I just.
They were so fun, and that was areally cool way of getting the
community engaged and involved in these little votes.
And then you're finally meeting him.
I'm like, I totally see where itall comes from, right?
So yeah, that that was a cool thing that kind of happened.
(56:27):
Then it was like on the SCL server.
So it was like, yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, that that that was definitely a a time in the
league where he was just really trying to keep Greg was just
doing things that were keeping the engagement on the server
high, right. Yeah.
(56:48):
OK, so let let's let's go with our final question, which is I
think a very suiting suiting is that no anyway suitable fitting.
That's the word I was looking for fitting question.
So, Jared, you know, what do youthink you're going to miss most
about the leak? I mean, we've said it already.
(57:09):
Really. It's just going to be the
community. I think I sort of missed it a
little. Yeah.
I mean, I did miss it a little when like I took last season off
and I didn't really interact with the community that much.
And it was sort of like, oh, I'mnot playing these games and I
(57:32):
don't have that much to offer. And you know, I was pretty busy
anyway. So like, that was fine.
But having, having that and justhaving that kind of cool little
outlet and chatting with people,I think I'll miss that.
I going back to something you said earlier about the, the
alliances. When I did join an alliance, I
(57:56):
think I found myself engaging more with the alliance chat than
the, the general chat. Yes.
And I and I used to chat quite alot in the general and kind of
try and make sure I'd post decksand stuff like that.
And I, I still was trying to post the decks, but sometimes
it'd be like quite late. Because by the time you've gone
(58:18):
through and picked to what hero you're going to be in an
alliance, you you're kind of nearing the end of the, the time
and you haven't really tried necessarily all of the different
options. So yeah, I did kind of, I missed
that a little bit that I was like a little less engaged.
So if if it did move forward, like if we redid it with
(58:42):
something, I kind of agree that alliances might not be the, the
best idea. And maybe just having more kind
of like open group chats about different things could be a way
to kind of keep the the conversation going.
Because that the thing I'll missis definitely like that
community and getting to know people and like, like supporting
each other and these challenges.I think just like something else
(59:04):
that I remember, like listening to the road to Nowhere and and
and or and or being on it and just hearing people break down
like the best performing decks and like.
Yes. I thought that was a really
like, I know it's kind of adjacent in a lot of ways to
(59:25):
SCL, but Road to Nowhere was kind of based on SCL.
And so it really that helped me get a really cool sense of like,
that's a cool idea for a Dick orI love that combo.
Oh, I didn't think of that. And having having that and then,
you know, know that sometimes you've gotten busy or haven't
(59:47):
been able to always do it. But like when it was there, like
it was, it was a really cool wayof like getting to understand
like all of these cool little decks that people have put
together. And I loved some of the really
awesome ideas that people had. And sometimes you don't get that
just from the forum because you can't like not everyone posts
(01:00:11):
all their decks, but when you collect them and then you chat
about them and you try and see like what they try to put in the
deck. Yeah.
I thought that was a really, I guess something that I'll miss.
Something that is really relevant to like what the league
offered as well. It offered that opportunity to
break down decks that you you don't really get anywhere else.
(01:00:36):
And yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
Yeah, I remember the first time you invited us on and you sent
out the Word document with all the decks and fill it in with
your thoughts. And I just remember going
through each individual deck andlike researching them and
understanding what they were trying to do and, and really
(01:00:56):
thinking critically about the decks that people would put
together and seeing how they hadteched for certain scenarios.
Like that's a pretty unique thing about this league that I
mean, honestly, the road to nowhere kind of brought out the
essence of what SCL was all about, which was is it's really
all about like information sharing, collectively trying to
(01:01:19):
do our best to defeat these scenarios.
Yeah, it was great. Refinement.
Refinement. Calling a help person who's the
agent of SHIELD like it's the best.
OK. Well, you know, thank you both.
(01:01:42):
That's very, very nice of you tosay.
And you know, I've said it before, but I think the one of
the things that I've really valued from doing the podcast is
having that excuse to go pay waymore attention to the decks on a
regular basis in a way that I would just never do on my own.
(01:02:02):
So yeah, I guess I repeated my question because I already did
ask this one, but I'm going to ask you again, DJ, is there
anything else you want to add that you might miss about?
How's that? I mean, it's been said it's it's
the people, the community, you know, I think having it set of
(01:02:23):
scenarios that are pre built, I don't have to think about it.
I just sit down and play, come up with strategy, try and solve
the puzzle that that I really enjoyed that and being able to
just like not think too hard about it and just pick a hero
and go for it. But meeting people has been
great. You know, there's a long list of
(01:02:44):
people that I've met through this league that I now get to
hang out with once a year and yeah, that's what I'll miss
about. Beautiful, beautiful.
Let's end on that note. That's lovely.
Thank you both for for joining. Thank you, TJ.
(01:03:06):
Thank you. Thank you, Jared.
Yeah, and thank you listeners for for tuning in.
And we'll catch you next time onthe road to Nowhere.
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.
And joining us, we have TJJJ. How are you doing today?
(00:53):
I'm great Joss, thanks for having me on again.
It's a pleasure to be here. Always, always a pleasure.
And of course, your faithful companion, Jared, How are you
doing? I'm.
Feeling good. I feel like a little Droid right
now. Faithful companion, yeah.
Gonna make some beeps and some boops.
I can beep, I can boop, I can translate those beeps and boops.
(01:18):
And and and insist on protocol. Yeah, I mean, protocol's pretty
important in in Marvel Championsor Nah, wait, that's a different
game. Crisis Protocol.
We have we have you on for chatting about sole Champions
League and and how much we're all going to miss it.
(01:44):
Yeah, I'm pretty sad about it, honestly.
Is that a moment of silence? Yeah, that was that was a moment
of silence. Rest in peace, SCL.
So I have, I have a handful of questions that I have kind of
been giving different combinations of to different
(02:04):
folks and I got you 2 to tell mewhich ones you were most
interested in talking about. So and delightfully, your lists
did not have good overlap. They did.
Not we picked very different questions.
So we'll we'll see how this goes.
It'll be fun though, but I thinkI think a good, I think a good
(02:25):
starter question honestly is like kind of do you remember
your first season in the league?What stood out to you?
So let let's start with that oneAnd and Jared, since you voted
for that one, why don't you start us off?
I do remember my first season inthe league and what stood out to
me was the final round Nebula and the interest.
(02:47):
The interesting thing with this,this late this season, I feel
like it was the last time we didthis too, was beer.
Let us choose where we whether we were doing 2 or 1.
So standard 2 expert St. standard expert one or standard
expert 2. So early on it's obviously it's
(03:10):
standard and then later on it's expert, but you could choose
which type you were you were going for and like standard 2
expert two against Nebula is like complete nonsense.
Nebula is complete nonsense. The the people that we had to
pick from were like Spider Womanand Vision, who are both
(03:31):
fantastic, but sorry, you've gotto do them in protection and
something else aggression, I think, which is like what, what
are we even trying to do here? So it was it was really
interesting. It was the, the 1st probably the
only round I ever had a loss. And I've been doing re OK in
(03:53):
the, the, you know, I was getting my, my feet under me and
the like, trying to understand how the scoring was and stuff
like that. But I was struggling so much
with this match 'cause I just was couldn't quite figure out
how to control it. And every time I tried it was
just, it was too difficult. So in the end I just tried to
rush and I managed to get two wins on the rush and one loss.
(04:14):
And it wasn't the best result, but it was kind of fun.
And then like I saw like, I don't know who, but the people
who are doing well in the the top flight had had managed to
control and I was like, yeah, OK, It was there like either I
needed patience or bit of Dicks or like learning more about like
(04:37):
the scenario, but I kind of justran out of steam on it because
it's NIBIA. That's tough.
But it was cool to see that people could come up with these
ways to to overcome these reallydifficult challenges.
And I, and I kind of used that for momentum kind of for the
rest of the seasons I played, never really tried to bother
(05:00):
with the Expert 2 again because we never had to do that again,
Correct? But I love Expert 2, don't get
me wrong, a standard 2 that I don't like.
But yeah, so that that was that was the thing that stood out to
me. I started in the second round.
I missed the first round and I can't really remember the other,
(05:24):
the other rounds. That was the one that kind of
like stood out to me. But I just like, you know,
getting into it and kind of likelearning how to play and like
seeing the results come up and getting to understand like what
was going on without even reallybeing understand what was going
on under the hood was all prettyfun.
And yeah, just slowly getting toknow people as well.
(05:47):
That so that was the only seasonthat we actually saw Standard 2
or Expert 2 if if I remember correctly.
Oh, OK, so it was the only one, right?
Yeah, and I think that might have been the first time that
Vision was even available as a hero.
So his staff were absolutely terrible for a really long time
(06:09):
because of that. Yeah, and and that Spider Woman
was the same as well. So she got like bumped down.
So I remember doing Spider Womanin a later round and even though
Spider Woman was fantastic because she had such a bad
round, that round, she was really valuable because her like
(06:30):
she was treated as a loyalty hero when really she's not.
That was, that was funny. Yeah.
That I think I did play Vision in the end, which is weird
because I don't love Vision, butI kind of felt like there was AI
was trying to do a loop from Vision to kind of get those
extra cards as you go through his forms to be in a position to
(06:51):
kind of do the damage quickly tokind of get out of the game.
And Spider Woman didn't. She probably would have been
both of them probably had a control option, but I wasn't
finding it. So yeah.
Terry, how about you? So I actually looked fine up.
(07:13):
God my deck building was horrible and I'm kind of
grappling with as I'm looking tostuff through Marvel CDB.
Am I going to hold on to all thedecks that I've saved SCL or am
I going to go through and, and, and grief the loss of SCL by
deleting each of them individually?
(07:34):
Anyways, so my first match was season 15 Round 2, which was, I
believe against Master Mold. OK.
And we had we had Magneto and mywhole thought was, well, I'm
just going to Voltron Magneto and that's how I'm going to win.
(07:59):
So I played Colossus and Aggression, and I played
Honorary X Men's and Attack Training and Enraged and
desperately tried to Voltron himto victory.
I mean, if I'm looking at the cards in this deck, and this
makes absolutely no sense at all, like what I was trying to
(08:20):
do here, I don't have no idea. And I think that's kind of one
of my observations from SCL, is it?
It forced me to think differently about deck building
than I had before I'd gotten into the league, to really be
more critical of card choices and thinking about keeping decks
to a minimum size so that my chances of drawing certain cards
(08:40):
went up and thinking about the risk of advanced loss.
Those types of things hadn't really crossed my mind in the
game before, and it it pushed meto to think differently.
Yeah. So my deck building has just
gotten so much better since since starting the league.
(09:00):
And I didn't know anybody in theleague.
You know, I, I think my first round I got three wins, but they
were all filthy. Like none of them had any sort
of high points associated with them.
And so I quickly realized it's like, oh, I got to like, pay
attention to a threat and minions and all this other stuff
(09:24):
if I really want to compete. And tails all this time?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I, I, I really liked
the game for a long time, but I was missing, played a lot of
more competitive board games before getting into Marvel
Champions and I was missing thatcompetitive aspect of games.
(09:45):
And I think that's what drew me to it initially was that it was
at least a little competitive outlet without being too
cutthroat about it. Yeah, that's what I remember
about getting into the league. Love this.
So you know, I'm not sure if theanswer to this question just
(10:06):
kind of maps already on to something that either of you has
already spoken about. But you know, is there a
particular moment? Oh, no, that wasn't the right
one. That wasn't the one I meant to
ask about. Actually was was there a
standout game round or result inyour time in the league that
you'll ever forget? Maybe TJ, while you're still on
the mic. Yeah, so I definitely have one
(10:27):
for this. And it was the Taskmaster and it
was I found a deck, it was a Nova deck Justice and I found a
loop with his cards that could let me beat Taskmaster in one
turn. Oh yes.
And I and I remember putting this together and it all like
(10:47):
finally working and then gettingtwo out of the three in one
round. And then in my third round, I
like screwed up and got it in two rounds.
And then I posted the deck and everybody was like, Oh yeah,
this is great. And then everybody ran it and
then a whole bunch of other people got one turn kills.
And I was like, that made me feel really good.
I was like, yes, this is what this is all about is trying to
(11:10):
find that that fun combination that meets this very specific
villain that gets you to the most efficient and quick win as
possible. So that's it.
That's a game I'll a series of games I'll never forget.
That yeah, that is an infamous round and I was definitely one
of the people that went for the one turn Nova wins.
(11:34):
I don't know that I remember that it was it was you that got
us all kicked off, so I love that.
I mean, it may not have been me,I just remember posting the deck
and others were like, Oh yeah this is great.
I'm sure somebody thought of it before me, but I just remember
posting it and getting positive feedback about it.
Oh, that was definitely you. Yeah, it was definitely you.
(11:55):
I changed the deck a little bit,like I changed it to suit my own
taste 'cause I thought I saw better ways to get the one turn,
but it was, I wouldn't have probably tried it if I hadn't
seen yours. And I wasn't in a alliance at
the time, so I wasn't like forced to to choose someone
other than Nova. And I wasn't sure necessarily
(12:18):
whether we'd get good scores from it, other than the fact
that obviously we're getting clean wins in one round.
But Nova's so strong that maybe we'd get bounced down a bit for
it. But it was just too much fun to
do. I honestly had forgotten that
round, though. That was not one of my rounds
that I will forever remember. But it was actually super epic.
(12:41):
Like it was really cool to like take someone's idea and be like,
yeah, OK, sorry, I'm going to dothis too.
But but it was so like so fun todo it.
I actually have three that kind of stand out to me that I won't
forget. Sorry.
Yeah, just just quickly like again, it's the it's the Super
(13:05):
fast round. So I remember doing it.
It was Taskmaster again, but we had like a a tool from one of
the tech upgrades from yes, Redskull and I managed to do she
Hulk and use the tick upgrade tokind of pull Nick Fury to
improve her card hand, but have that extra resource from Nick
(13:30):
Fury. And one like there were two
round games and it was in protection.
So it was like a, a repurpose type of deck, but you were you
were getting out early on the force field so that you could
(13:50):
take the damage that when you turn flipped on the force field
and then you'd be able to use that against taskmaster.
So that was really, really fun. And, and Nova is going to crop
up again because baby corn and Iboth like had slightly different
justice sticks for this, but we,I'm pretty sure we both had a
(14:10):
lot of fun against the Vietnam Goblin.
Baby corn got all of the games in three rounds.
I got one of them in five, but two of them in three, I think.
And it was like, because then inGoblin you've just got like 1/3
on every scheme. And so like I built a deck which
just would unleash the Nova Force every turn and that was
(14:34):
just like super insane. And the last one was I can't, I
think it was around 3:00 where we got to play against Ronan and
Nebula was one of the options. And I adore Nebula as a hero,
but we had to play an aggressionand I was like, this is
(14:55):
interesting. But I managed to get like a
really great kind of like Dick together for her to just like
use her ability to control the top of the deck so I could flip
back to Alter Ego and really just she controlled Ronan so
well that I think they were like6-5 or six round games, which is
(15:20):
pretty good for Ronan's. And yeah, it was just like
playing Nebula against Ronan andlike having that level of
control and being really successful with it and kind of
people seeing that result and being like, oh, Nebula, wow.
I think that was that was super cool for me because that's a
hero who is near and dear to my heart.
But a lot of people don't see the potential in.
(15:45):
I love it. I I.
Go ahead. I thought of I thought of
another one and I think that this is probably a memorable
ground for you too. But it was as recent, it was
season 18. Valkyrie was one of the options
I think for like extra bonus points or something.
And I remember I think I had like a 25 round win, but then
(16:09):
you had a, you had like 27 or 30or something.
I forget what the crazy number was.
Yeah. Anyways, that one, that one
really stands out in my mind too.
Right. I really wanted to tough that
one out, yeah. This was the challenge season
and I like gave Valkyrie a go and then I was just like, Nah.
(16:29):
And so I didn't do that. And that was the one challenge
that season I didn't do. And it didn't matter because I
still managed to sneak through in the end on the other
challenges. So it was the right challenge to
give up, go go against Magneto with Spider ham.
But yeah, those games were just too long.
I was like, Oh no, I can't do it.
(16:52):
I gave it a college try, but then I just put it down and and
actually had a lot of fun with Spider Ham because I don't play
Spider Ham that much. I probably played Valkyrie more
than Spider Ham, to be honest. So yeah.
But like, kudos to you guys for like going for it.
Like, yeah. Yeah, good, good shout out, TJ.
I also remembered Jared, the oneTaskmaster one that you were
(17:17):
talking about, because that was the first.
That was the first time I remembered really the community
all building super heavily on each other's decks because
people would say, oh, you know, I used this combination and I
managed to get a three turn win,you know, and then other people
would kind of come in and tweak the formula and keep on going.
(17:40):
So that was one of the first ones, and then the Nova ones,
kind of the next one. I really remember people
building on the ideas of each other's ideas in a really strong
way. I think that's what I like if
about the community, right? Like it wasn't, yes, it's
competitive, but we're happy to like share decks and kind of
build off ideas and it's and kind of like lifting each other
(18:01):
up through these ideas. And and you know, as TJJ pointed
out earlier, it's like like learning to get better at deck
building and learning the tools which are good for deck building
and solo, because some of these cards, some cards that you use
in solo, especially in a justicestick, and I will forever
maintain that in solo, especially in ACL Justice is the
(18:23):
rush stick. Like nothing beats justice like
in terms of rushing, though, youknow, you can play really slow
justice sticks. And I know you just often do
Joss, but like the tools that you have for justice to like
speed through a villain. Like when you clear a scheme,
you get like this extra damage or you play down the the the
(18:44):
player's side scheme with like afollowed and it's like, well,
that's just nine damage right there and all you need to do is
sort three. Like just stuff like that is
things that you just don't really use in like a two player
plus game. But in solo, and it's certainly
solo Champions League, they're really fun.
(19:06):
Yeah, agreed. What?
What's the player's side scheme that does damage to the villain
when you clear it? Lay the trap.
Yeah, lay the trap. Right, So lay the trap and then
Bishop kind of they came out at a the Bishop ally also came out
around at a similar time. And so that was even more tools
in the toolkit for justice to beable to just push a ton of
(19:28):
damage quickly. Yeah, I think it was Kakita that
had that idea that was like followed plus lay down the law
or sorry followed plus lay the trap plus Bishop.
It was like a huge first damage turn to to finish off.
Yeah, because I think it was for, you know, it's people like
(19:49):
Mutagen or Venom Goblin to a degree where if you're playing
on expert or even if you're not playing on expert because the
the stage 2 like deals you a bunch of encounter cards too.
But I think it was often weird playing them on expert.
So stage 3 is like real brutal because you're going to get like
3 plus encounter cards. So you want to get there and
(20:11):
then just finish them off straight away.
And so you can kind of save all of that there.
And then it's like, OK, I've pushed you to stage 3 now I'm
going to trigger everything I'veset up and I'm going to knock
down most of your health and finish you off.
That's the magic fun of of Mutagen is trying to set
yourself up so you don't have todeal with whatever the second
(20:34):
stage is of the difficulty. You're playing half the fun.
OK, so let me let me check in with both of you on on another
question. So, so Jarrett, was there a
particular moment where you feltespecially grateful to be
(20:54):
involved in the league? Yeah, I think it was at the Con
of Heroes. Like, I'd made, I'd, you know,
I'd made friends with a few people, but you don't really
know how many friends you've made because, like, I play games
with TJJ pretty regularly. And I've, like, chatted with you
(21:17):
like, quite a bit as well. But other people, you know, you
kind of communicate on the forumbut not necessarily play a game
with or something like that. And then you go, I went to the
con, you know, I flew halfway across the world to get there.
And suddenly it's like, all right, yeah, Greg.
And like Lexicon and Babycorn and like all of these people.
(21:43):
And, you know, the list goes on.Like, there was like, I played
games with heaps of SCO people and I just had a blast, like
getting to know people even better in person.
But like, yeah, we already had this common ground.
And so it was like it was great to be able to go there and not
(22:04):
feel like alone because, you know, I.
Obviously. Yeah, like there's people that I
already know and it was the community that kind of like like
from ACL that was there. So getting to kind of meet them
and just like have that there and be like cool.
(22:24):
Like I actually have a safety net here.
I'm not like, I'm not like, oh, hey, do you want to play a game
like like I don't know who you are?
Like I've, I've, I had people that were like, we were, we were
good to go and playing games andgetting to know each other
better. And, and I think that's what
that was probably the one of thetimes where I really like, Yeah,
this being involved in this community has been awesome.
(22:49):
I love it, TJ. The anything where you've felt
especially grateful. I mean, Jared took my answer.
Oh, Jared. Well, I mean, I think it's so.
I think it's that. But I, you know, and Jared and I
having the opportunity to connect through SCL and being
(23:10):
able to because we have similar time zone, not, we don't have
similar time zone, opposite timezones almost.
But it's where our schedules actually sync up where we can
log on and play at the same time.
You know, my, my kids are going to the bed about the time he's
getting home from work sometime in the future.
Makes it such that we can actually sit down and play some
games together and developing a friendship through the game has
(23:35):
made me really appreciate havingSCL.
You know, moving moving up to the Pacific Northwest, we didn't
really know anybody and didn't have a ton of friends and still
kind of figuring out our community and stuff like that.
And so I kind of leaned on like online gaming communities and
(23:57):
Marvel champions and stuff like that to kind of fill that gap
and making friends with, you know, people like Joss and
Astrodar and Akita and others. That first round con of heroes
and coming back from that kind of flying high and like, oh,
gosh, this is great. You know, I'm I'm able to like
connect with these folks after the con and get more games in
with them and talking to Jared about it.
(24:18):
And then kind of pumping him up to make the big trip and spend
the money to come out. And and it's great to hear that
Jarrett was like, yeah, that wasawesome.
It's because, you know, I would love for us to all be able to go
out and do that again next year.It's like it's one of those
things I look forward to every year now is being able to go out
and, you know, fiddle with some cardboard for three or four days
with some some friends. So yeah, that's that's similar
(24:41):
to Jarrett, but maybe slightly different spin.
Right. I mean, I, I just stomp around
my house cursing as much as I can so I can fill up that swear
jar to to make my savings for the trip.
Brilliant. OK, well, So what, TJ?
(25:03):
What? What do you think you'll miss
most about the league? It's nice to have a scenario
that's different from the normalones that I play.
You know, often, like I have my go to scenarios I like to play
in Saba and Dark Beast and On the run.
(25:24):
And you know, if I can't decide what to play, those are the ones
I'm going to play. But SCL was always a great
outlet for some villain modular combination that I hadn't really
thought of before. And I didn't have to put in any
work to come up with that. It was just an idea that was
handed. And then I just have to go and
figure out how to solve that puzzle, which is is really nice.
(25:48):
That's something I think I'll really miss the most.
And I hope that the community can figure out how to kind of
stay together in some meaningfulway.
I know that it's the games that brought us together, but I I
hope we can figure out how to migrate it over to a different
platform. Or maybe we keep this discord
live or I don't know, something like that, that would be great.
(26:14):
Agreed, I got a quick sidebar for you.
I I still haven't decided how I feel about dark beast.
Tell me on Dark Beast. OK, I'll tell you on Dark Beast.
So each of the three modulars can create a unique experience
with Dark Beast depending on what you're up against.
I like to, you know, depending on who I'm playing, throw the
(26:37):
hardest one against, you know, pick the one that I think is the
hardest or the most challenging against the particular hero that
I'm playing. I also like because it has a lot
of activation threats, right? He's got 2 assaults, 2 advance,
and then three of his Arc Beast activation cards.
(26:59):
I figure out what they're calledand that just I think creates a
lot of pressure on the scenario in addition to Genosha being a
really difficult modular in general, just because of the
amount of threat that it puts onthe main scheme.
So I just, I tend to play it just because it's a really high,
high threat scenario that has decent number of minions in it
(27:24):
and it has side schemes. So it's kind of like claw, but
like claw plus to me it just does more than claw and and
forces you to to make some some critical decisions in the game.
Right. OK, yeah, because like in my
brain, it's kind of a bit of a vanilla scenario.
It totally is. I mean, I think that's why I
like to play it, because it gives me that vanilla
(27:45):
experience, but just maybe a little bit harder than like Claw
is at this point. That can be a selling point,
yeah. Yeah.
OK. Yeah.
OK, As a scenario, it kind of disappoints me a little because
like I don't feel the theme of it.
Yeah, like I kind of feel the theme of the the modulars more
(28:06):
than the theme of Dark Beast. But I did take it along to games
night last night because I'm like, this isn't hard.
It's fine. Like we'll just like, I'll just
play this because it's like easy.
And it's, I'm trying to find something that's like is
vanilla, you know, like you wantlike that like Dark Beast would
(28:28):
in most campaign boxes probably be around 1:00.
It just wasn't in that campaign.Like the campaign boxes have
kind of changed a little bit now, but that beast is pretty
like like not, it's not super difficult.
It's certainly not difficult with four people.
I can tell you that right now like 43 is like.
And I think that's the big shift.
(28:49):
Like I think in a multiplayer game I tend to not play Dark
Beast because I think it's not very challenging because his
main scheme threshold is so high.
But in solo, you know, because of his multiple activations, the
flip down is a really risky proposition.
Pressure. Yeah.
OK. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It's it is interesting because
Genosha we got second. We started with Savage Land and
(29:13):
Genosha and four players is likewhatever, he's just when he
attacks you, he's going to put athreat on the main scheme like
who cares? But Savage Land, every time he
attach you, you're discarding 3 cards at the top of your deck.
Oh, you're getting more encounter cards.
Yeah and he's got retaliate. So W our game was kind of slow
because like I built LIDX for everyone and you know the deck I
(29:35):
was playing head range because Iwas playing a firepower silot
deck. But like we kind of had to
slowly chip through the first phase and then we just like
blitz through the second phase because the retaliate was kind
of a little bit annoying for people.
Yeah, but I think it's fine. I I think the theme is the only
thing that kind of is missing for me.
Like like that. It doesn't feel really like that
(29:59):
Beast is going through these times because it just doesn't
happen enough. Whereas like you really feel
Kang's story as you progress through and you go into these
other alternate times or Spiral,who like you constantly have to
find in a new world. But Dark Beast is kind of like,
well, he's in one world and onceyou've dealt with him in one
(30:21):
world, you go to another world and deal with him there.
And so it's not a big shift and it doesn't kind of change up the
game that much. So you kind of lose a little bit
of his theme, I think. But I do like the theme.
I think the each of the modulus is quite a strong theme by
itself. Agreed.
Joss, I just had an idea for a future round scene.
(30:44):
All right, hear me out. I'm writing it down.
What if you shuffle all three modulars in at the beginning and
and the other the 4th 1? I forget what it is.
And then you reveal off the top until you reveal a card from one
of those modulars, and then that's the one that starts in
play. And then as you reveal encounter
(31:05):
cards and a new one comes out that's for that module, you just
reveal that modular. So the modular is constantly
flipping, the environment's constantly flipping to whatever
the card is that's coming out, which would give you a sense of
that sort of time travelling, you know, jumping from one time
to the next, right, Jared? If it's just constantly changing
on you, then you don't know whatenvironmental boost is going to
happen. You know the next round because
(31:28):
it could change already, right? Yeah, I think another, another
idea how you could do that couldbe because you you start with,
you start with one in and two out, but you could start with
two in and the two, the two environments and leave the other
(31:48):
one out. So when you do go to stage 2 or
stage 3, depending on where the place is, you add the other one
in. But then what you do is every
time he schemes, you switch or you like shuffle and get a new
random 1. So like so and and you do you do
that before he does the ability,before he does his special.
(32:09):
So when he attacks, he's just doing his normal thing because
there's a the special happens when he attacks.
I think maybe on the later stages that might happen when he
schemes to. I have, I can't really remember
because we played, we played standard yesterday.
So and I haven't played him a lot, but it's only when he
attacks on stage one. But yeah, you could do it every
(32:30):
time he schemes and you switch it.
So it's like when he's scheming.So when you're like not there,
he like swaps into a new world and you have to chase him there.
And I think that could be a fun way of doing it.
So it's not as like constantly switching, but it is kind of
pretty regularly switching. Yeah.
All right, some, some good ideasto play around with.
(32:51):
I mean, I like, I also like the idea thematically that his
scheme is to be doing all this time travel so that it makes a
lot of sense that it would be when he schemes that that
happens. All right, I forget what we were
(33:15):
talking about before. Well, we're going.
We're going. We're going to Jarrett.
Because, Jarrett, what will you miss the most about the league?
Oh yeah. All right.
Definitely the community and, and I don't know how we
(33:36):
replicate that because, yeah, ifthe, if the league goes away,
then maybe the discord goes away.
And then it's like, well, how doyou reconnect with all the
people that you've kind of connected through the Discord?
And I, and I expect that if someone wanted to like do
(33:59):
another version, we're probably make a new Discord.
Maybe we could use this one. I don't know.
We'd have to talk to Bear about it, but obviously he's kind of
managed all of the various things.
So yeah, I think that would be the main thing.
I had considered chatting with some people about doing like a,
(34:25):
having like a, a council or likeinstead of just having one
Commission, they're having kind of like a bunch of people that
like just work together to kind of come up with some of the
ideas. And maybe it doesn't need to be
as complex and in depth as the, the spreadsheet in terms of like
what how you score it. Maybe you don't need to score
(34:46):
it. Maybe maybe just having that
challenge, that consistent challenge is, is what you need.
But yeah, I was wondering if like there might be a few people
that would be interested in doing something not obviously
the same. I think be a kind of stated head
rather people like tried something new, but you keep the
kind of idea. So instead of like having a a
(35:07):
solo Champions League, we could have like a like a solo, you
know, champions council or something like that and and just
have like these like these games.
And yeah, but I think it's like whatever happened?
Like I would love to see like a continuation of the community
that, that's kind of what, what,what appealed to me, I guess in
(35:31):
the 1st place. I, I was on some of the Facebook
groups and I kind of was in likeloosely in some of the other
groups, but I haven't really, I've never really connected with
them in the same way. I, I like, I have some of them
on my Discord, but I don't look at them.
And it was actually Road to Nowhere where I kind of like
(35:53):
someone had suggested it in another podcast and I was like,
I'll listen to that. And you were talking about, you
were talking about the games. And I was like, oh, OK, yeah,
that sounds really interesting. I don't play a lot of solo, but
maybe I'd like enjoy that. So I'd like haunted it down.
And yeah, I just, it gave, it gave not just the the sense of
(36:14):
community of people like, oh, trying out these things, but it
was also like, well, it gave a purpose too.
Yeah. And usually in like previous
kind of communities that I've been involved in, with like
living card games, the purpose was the fact that they're
(36:35):
competitive. So you're playing against each
other. So you're kind of like talking
to people about decks and deck ideas and how you'd defeat this
sort of thing. And maybe you'd set up like
some, some online tournaments and those sorts of things.
And you get to know people is ina different way and the
community works a bit different.And I, I hadn't really found
(36:59):
with Marvel Champions, like mostof the community things that I'd
found certainly on Facebook was like answering rules questions
or like like, hey, is this card good?
Or like talking about like new articles that come out.
And that's kind of about it. Whereas solo Champions League
added in like a little bit of competitiveness.
So it helped elevate the conversation and build the
(37:23):
community that way, which I really liked.
And also along those same lines,and I risk being critical here,
but sometimes, sometimes the people on the other Discord can
be kind of grumpy. I will say yes, yeah.
And SCL was always a place that had like none of that.
Like no one was grumpy. Everyone was super nice,
(37:47):
answered questions, and that wasgreat.
Actually. I came to the SCL discord when I
was trying to get some rules questions answered because I
wasn't feeling like super welcome the other one, and then
eventually went to it and postedmore.
But yeah, it was a safe place for me earlier in the game
(38:07):
whenever I was a bit of a noob. Yeah, that's cool.
I mean, there's certainly like Imet some people from the other
discord, like on the at kind of heroes and there's obviously
great people there that, you know, should go and hang out
there and get to know more people because it's cool.
Like, like, I enjoy the people that love this game because, you
(38:27):
know, we all love the same game,right?
But yeah, I, I, I can see that like people aren't really very
grumpy here. They're pretty helpful.
And even when they are grumpy, like, oh man, we just played
Kalita. We're playing Kalita again, like
the but like you sort of say, hey, you know, like you call
them out a bit and they're like,yeah, OK, I'm not that grumpy
(38:49):
about it. I don't have to do it.
It's fine. Like, you know, they just want
it to vent, but not it wasn't that bad.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I, I, I do maintain that I
kind of to what you were speaking to Jarrett, that I
think, you know, a way to do something similar to this
(39:10):
community or to kind of carry this community forward is around
some regular challenges. You know, every two weeks or
every month or whatever it is, there could be some light
scoring in it that's, you know, transparent and a person can
just say I, you know, I scored eight points according to the
scoring rubric. And, you know, you put out the
(39:33):
challenges, but there's not the all the maintenance of somebody
keeping track of overall scores and performance and all those
other pieces that it's, you know, just kind of the the
community coming together arounda challenge.
You know, we saw that with the monthly or the weekly challenges
that FFG has done in the past and critical encounters has done
and all those other things that,you know, lots of people have
(39:54):
fun engaging with those for sure.
And then, you know, if I if I was to think about how I might
even just try to get more conversation happening within
the community. You know, the alliances were a
thing that took a lot of the conversation away from the main
(40:15):
channels and I think even expanding so that we were seeing
5 or 6 heroes, you know, took away because a lot of people
were kind of playing different games then.
So you know, I might be inclinedto make the challenges only have
a couple of choices you could make.
Is this something that is this something that you've thought
(40:36):
you want to do with us? Well, I mean I already have
enough overhead in my other I was.
Going to say you're kind of running something right.
So is there any, have you heard from anybody else that they're
interested in doing something like that?
Nothing, nothing to come at all,but AI think kind of like saying
(40:58):
like if you had a council, so itwasn't all the burden on
somebody and you just had a small handful of people that
were we're interested in carrying that forward.
And, you know, putting challenges.
And maybe even they'll try to match some of the things that
were kind of neat about SCL where you start with an easier
one and you kind of progressively get to harder one
and then reset back to the easy one again and kind of go through
(41:21):
those cycles. So that there's still some of
those trappings of SCL that I think are part of what made it
really fun, right, where we had these efficiency challenges
early in the season and then actually just being successful
became more of the challenge later in the season.
Like a lot of those things, I think people would probably
(41:43):
really appreciate that same sortof ebb and flow.
Yeah. So something that I've thought
about because I do like kind of the five rounds element.
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think there's already
(42:07):
like FFT has kind of already done half the work for us and
that we have these campaigns. And I thought like it could be
fun to just be like, actually we're going to do like this
campaign, redscale campaign and maybe just change it up.
It's like, OK, we're not like the things that you get, it'll
be a bit different. We're playing these villains.
We're doing it like this and youknow, these are the heroes that
(42:30):
you'll have like from round to round or like there, there's
limitations on each round, but basically the season is like the
Red Skull campaign. And then later on, like once
you've done like each of them, you could be like, OK, cool.
Well, well what a what's the wayof doing like a campaign?
It's still a campaign, but it's like we're doing a slightly
different mix of heroes or sorry, villains, but we're doing
(42:54):
like a campaign through it. Maybe there's a bit of story
because that was some of the best seasons that we had was
like the the No More Avengers, right?
Like. The yeah, the narrative ones.
The narrative ones were really fun and maybe they forced people
into too many like options, as you say, but but creating those
sort of things where it's like, well, you who you picked in the
(43:16):
first round kind of makes a difference to who you end up
with in the second and third round.
And maybe even like you can havelike the, the encounter could
actually end up being different based on which direction you
went. There's some some of the early
fan made FFG campaigns are actually like that one.
(43:41):
There's a couple that like you, if you do this, you go fight
these villains instead of these villains.
And then the final scenario willhave might have the other
villains as encounter sets in the the final scenario, because
that's the way that those those villains are set.
Like there is a rhino, there is a sinister 6, those sorts of
(44:02):
things. And that that was those were
quite fun to do where it's like,oh, actually I'm going this path
instead of like a linear path. So I think like there's a
opportunity to do something simple like that.
And yeah, you don't need to givetoo many heroes to people.
I do wonder if with the current environment that we might need,
(44:26):
you might need to always, alwayshave a core hero as an option
because more people come in and they're gonna not have the
ability to get some of those other heroes.
And unfortunately probably not get the ability to get some of
the the encounter sets either, which is probably the worst
(44:47):
part. Like I don't mind that heroes
get like circled out, but it's abit annoying that some of the
campaign boxes would for some people.
But yeah. Right.
Well, and there's also, you know, the whole campaign
contest, that villain theory anda bunch of other content
creators just recently ran in terms of other things that you
(45:09):
could do, right? Like other things that people
have put in a bunch of time to think through these nice
relatives. That doesn't really put the
burden on people that are tryingto put up the challenges.
It's more about, you know, what's the extra stuff that
lives around it. Yeah.
And I think the important thing is like, well, here's like
here's your time frame and this is what we're doing and those
(45:33):
are your limitations and let's chat about it.
But that that's the, I mean, to me, that was the core of SCO.
Like scoring is fine and I thinkthat people want to do well.
I mean, you could have that kindof like, hey, achieving these
goals is like bonus points, but it's not super relevant.
(45:56):
But it it it evokes the conversation, right?
Like, hey, even if you didn't say, hey, you've got to do this.
Like if the thing was like get athree round game, like, you
know, like then it's like, well,who can I do it?
Who can I get a three round gamewith Nova?
But you know, it's like that that sort of thing is fun.
(46:17):
Like, you know, how fast can yoube is sometimes fun.
Can you remove all the threat like all the time?
Maybe not, but in some games it's like Mojo.
Can you actually get rid of all the threat And Mojo might be a
fun little challenge, right? Yeah.
So I don't know that you need the the Super in depth scoring,
(46:39):
but I definitely think you need some kind of like clever little
thing that you're maybe extra trying to do in the game to to
kind of push Dicks in different ways.
And the the VFG little challenges like, oh, I only use
aerial heroes or like just stufflike that helps as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tji gotta I gotta hit another
(47:07):
question for you. So this is one of the ones that
you voted for. So what do you think the STL
community bought brought to the wider Marvel Champions scene?
I. Think that goes back to what I
(47:29):
was talking about earlier about this awareness of how to play
the solo game. And I, I've talked about this
with other folks too, and I, andI think people who play
exclusively multiplayer kind of don't, don't see some of these
things in the way that the solo game is played.
But it's very much this calculation of if and when you
(47:55):
could ever flip down without risking loss, right?
The fact that two advance cards exist within every single game
means that you're essentially always at that risk of until
they've passed, right until you see them pass in the deck.
You need some back up plan, either a confused or an under
surveillance or, you know, some ready for a fight, some way to
(48:18):
stop that from happening. And I think that that's
something that's pretty unique to SCL in particular, because
that was the death knell, right?That was the thing we were all
trying to avoid happening. Is that loot that loss to, to an
advance or the main scheme popping from an advance and then
triggering a loss of points? And so, you know, I think it's
(48:41):
that one of the things the SCL community brings is that hyper
focus on how to efficiently playa solo game and, and, and, you
know, have a really high win percentage of, of those games.
I like that Jared, how about you?
(49:01):
Any thoughts on, you know, things that SCL has brought to
the wider community? I mean, I, I don't know that
much about the wider community necessarily, because my being so
far away, my like connection to the wider community really is
(49:26):
just through like I went to kindof heroes and and so kind of
I've been a little bit more focused on like I guess the SCL
community or just like like I'llplay games with people from SCL
or I'll like play games like just two handed like I normally
would at home. So I did feel like from con of
(49:50):
heroes, the decks that I saw were really, really interesting
from like SCL folk. But I think that it it you do
like start thinking about the game in a different way, so that
that might be one of them. But I have certainly played with
(50:12):
people who are not SCO Folk and they have like really
fascinating decks as well. And it's kind of like what when
you understand the cards in a solo sense, how can you bring
them to multiplayer games? And do the you know, you, you
get to know value of cards in the, I guess, a different way,
(50:32):
right. And I think that's, that's
probably more interesting. There's a lot of people that
play solo anyway, but they don'tplay solo in the way that SCL
plays solo. And, and like I, I've said this
like many times, like even with the Modoc league as well, which
(50:54):
is 2 PLA 2 handed, but with two players, whichever you're
choosing as I still enjoy the game most when I'm not caring
about defeating the minions, clearing the main scheme.
Like I, I want the game to feel like I was under pressure and
like we got to the end and it was like a knife fight and we
(51:15):
kind of barely scraped past the finish line, right.
So when you're playing someone like like Ronan or venom goblin
or like Magneto, like I hate those minions in SCLI have
encounters in SCL. They're just not fun because
yes, they're long and they're challenging and like you get to
the end and you felt like you were put through the wringer,
(51:37):
but you like have this great victory.
But they're like really fantastic encounter sets.
But in SCL, it's kind of like actually the puzzle is almost
more interesting and being able to solve that puzzle is kind of
like a little bit more fun because I don't want to spend 2
hours. This is the going back to the
Valkyrie versus Magneto. I don't want to spend 2 hours
(51:58):
playing a game solo that I'm going to have to play a lot.
I want to spend like 10 to 20 minutes playing that game solo
if I'm going to have to play it a lot of times.
But if I'm going to play it one time, yeah, give me a 2 hour
game. It's fantastic.
So yeah, I, I don't know, I think that I would probably say
(52:19):
that if SCL brought anything to the wider community, it's really
just like the way to look at thevalue of cards in a different
kind of light. The other thing that came to
mind that I think SCL does that's unique is the collection
of some kind of data and statistics around hero
(52:41):
performance against like that's that's not something that I've
seen exist anywhere else in Marvel champions.
I mean I think people keep theirboard game geek their their log
of of games played and wins and losses, but to have it
aggregated in some way amongst the larger community of players
(53:02):
is pretty cool. Agreed.
Agreed. So I'm going to jump over to the
last question I had on my list, not the last question we talked
about this, sorry, but my last question we had on the list.
So TJ, any special inside jokes or memes from the league that
still make you laugh? I did not understand the baby
(53:30):
corn joke for the longest time of what a baby corn deck was.
And so I would see people saying, oh, that's a baby corn.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
What what is a baby corn? And then I finally realized that
it was a one of style deck. So that still kind of makes me
chuckle. And then also, just because
(53:52):
Jared and I still play a lot, the one that still makes me
laugh is when peril comes up in our games and there's a real
like pause amongst us as we likemake sure that there is no
assistance in TTS as the other person tries to like do what the
card says. And and Jared is a little
(54:15):
infamous for having TTS not respond exactly how it intended,
so there's extra fun to be had there.
Jared's pretty sharp now. He's he's sharpened his skills
he's sharpened. His skills.
Jared, how about you? Is there any any special inside
jokes or memes from the league that that tickle your fancy?
(54:42):
I I mean the baby corn thing is like hilarious because we in
fact are doing a campaign right now the sinister motives and we
specifically were like only madedecks with one offs.
Yeah. And it didn't start.
It's been. Super fun.
It's been super fun. I.
(55:02):
Did it because I was like, I really want to try it.
This card and this card I make. I've got a silk deck and we were
doing like the spiders. So silk and and spider man and I
ended up being like, you know what, I'm actually just gonna go
one of us for all of these things and Teddy, I thought I'll
do that too. So we've got like this instead
(55:23):
of it being like I've got three of the best protection cards for
spider man multiple times. It's like one of one of one of
and it just really changes the way that you think about your
hand every turn. It's so much fun.
And so you're learning and, and the fact that like he does so
(55:44):
well with those Dicks and learning how to to do, to to
play them is really, really interesting.
And the other thing that kind ofit went away, but I loved Greg's
little. Those challenges his his.
Contest. Yeah, yeah, his little contest.
I think they were really fun. You know, I didn't necessarily
(56:06):
agree with all the results, but I just.
They were so fun, and that was areally cool way of getting the
community engaged and involved in these little votes.
And then you're finally meeting him.
I'm like, I totally see where itall comes from, right?
So yeah, that that was a cool thing that kind of happened.
(56:27):
Then it was like on the SCL server.
So it was like, yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, that that that was definitely a a time in the
league where he was just really trying to keep Greg was just
doing things that were keeping the engagement on the server
high, right. Yeah.
(56:48):
OK, so let let's let's go with our final question, which is I
think a very suiting suiting is that no anyway suitable fitting.
That's the word I was looking for fitting question.
So, Jared, you know, what do youthink you're going to miss most
about the leak? I mean, we've said it already.
(57:09):
Really. It's just going to be the
community. I think I sort of missed it a
little. Yeah.
I mean, I did miss it a little when like I took last season off
and I didn't really interact with the community that much.
And it was sort of like, oh, I'mnot playing these games and I
(57:32):
don't have that much to offer. And you know, I was pretty busy
anyway. So like, that was fine.
But having, having that and justhaving that kind of cool little
outlet and chatting with people,I think I'll miss that.
I going back to something you said earlier about the, the
alliances. When I did join an alliance, I
(57:56):
think I found myself engaging more with the alliance chat than
the, the general chat. Yes.
And I and I used to chat quite alot in the general and kind of
try and make sure I'd post decksand stuff like that.
And I, I still was trying to post the decks, but sometimes
it'd be like quite late. Because by the time you've gone
(58:18):
through and picked to what hero you're going to be in an
alliance, you you're kind of nearing the end of the, the time
and you haven't really tried necessarily all of the different
options. So yeah, I did kind of, I missed
that a little bit that I was like a little less engaged.
So if if it did move forward, like if we redid it with
(58:42):
something, I kind of agree that alliances might not be the, the
best idea. And maybe just having more kind
of like open group chats about different things could be a way
to kind of keep the the conversation going.
Because that the thing I'll missis definitely like that
community and getting to know people and like, like supporting
each other and these challenges.I think just like something else
(59:04):
that I remember, like listening to the road to Nowhere and and
and or and or being on it and just hearing people break down
like the best performing decks and like.
Yes. I thought that was a really
like, I know it's kind of adjacent in a lot of ways to
(59:25):
SCL, but Road to Nowhere was kind of based on SCL.
And so it really that helped me get a really cool sense of like,
that's a cool idea for a Dick orI love that combo.
Oh, I didn't think of that. And having having that and then,
you know, know that sometimes you've gotten busy or haven't
(59:47):
been able to always do it. But like when it was there, like
it was, it was a really cool wayof like getting to understand
like all of these cool little decks that people have put
together. And I loved some of the really
awesome ideas that people had. And sometimes you don't get that
just from the forum because you can't like not everyone posts
(01:00:11):
all their decks, but when you collect them and then you chat
about them and you try and see like what they try to put in the
deck. Yeah.
I thought that was a really, I guess something that I'll miss.
Something that is really relevant to like what the league
offered as well. It offered that opportunity to
break down decks that you you don't really get anywhere else.
(01:00:36):
And yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
Yeah, I remember the first time you invited us on and you sent
out the Word document with all the decks and fill it in with
your thoughts. And I just remember going
through each individual deck andlike researching them and
understanding what they were trying to do and, and really
(01:00:56):
thinking critically about the decks that people would put
together and seeing how they hadteched for certain scenarios.
Like that's a pretty unique thing about this league that I
mean, honestly, the road to nowhere kind of brought out the
essence of what SCL was all about, which was is it's really
all about like information sharing, collectively trying to
(01:01:19):
do our best to defeat these scenarios.
Yeah, it was great. Refinement.
Refinement. Calling a help person who's the
agent of SHIELD like it's the best.
OK. Well, you know, thank you both.
(01:01:42):
That's very, very nice of you tosay.
And you know, I've said it before, but I think the one of
the things that I've really valued from doing the podcast is
having that excuse to go pay waymore attention to the decks on a
regular basis in a way that I would just never do on my own.
(01:02:02):
So yeah, I guess I repeated my question because I already did
ask this one, but I'm going to ask you again, DJ, is there
anything else you want to add that you might miss about?
How's that? I mean, it's been said it's it's
the people, the community, you know, I think having it set of
(01:02:23):
scenarios that are pre built, I don't have to think about it.
I just sit down and play, come up with strategy, try and solve
the puzzle that that I really enjoyed that and being able to
just like not think too hard about it and just pick a hero
and go for it. But meeting people has been
great. You know, there's a long list of
(01:02:44):
people that I've met through this league that I now get to
hang out with once a year and yeah, that's what I'll miss
about. Beautiful, beautiful.
Let's end on that note. That's lovely.
Thank you both for for joining. Thank you, TJ.
(01:03:06):
Thank you. Thank you, Jared.
Yeah, and thank you listeners for for tuning in.
And we'll catch you next time onthe road to Nowhere.
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