Somebody needs to stay down (MODOK League S2 R2)

We're back with yet another bonus episode of the Road to Knowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast. Today we’re joined yet again by Kakita Jamie and The Ugly Knight to talk about their experience with MODOK League Season 02, Round 02. This matchup pits our kouples against MaGog + Formidable Foe Environment (Expert side) + Colossus + Rocket nemesis sets using a hybrid Standard 1 + 2 and Expert 1 + 2 encounter set.

MODOK League is a “Marvel-champions Organization Designed Only for Kouples” League, meaning it is a two-hero team league where people can play with a partner or 2-handed on their own. Each team drafts heroes and aspects from a pool against the other teams.

MODOK League Discord server: https://discord.gg/6b4zBfchhA

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

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hey hey friendos, welcome to yetanother special episode of The
Road to Nowhere, a Marvel Champions LCG podcast.
Today we are continuing with ourrecapping of Modoc League.
Today we're doing Season 2, Round 2.
Modoc League is a Marvel Champions organization designed

(00:30):
only for couples league. It's a two hero team league
where people can play with a partner or two handed on their
own. Each team drafts heroes and
aspects from a pool against other teams, fantasy sports
style. So today we're going to be
discussing, I have first round, but it's the second round of the
season and I'm your host, Josh Rue.

(00:51):
And with us, we have some returning guests.
We have my delightful solo Champions League alliance mate,
Kakita, Jamie, Brad, how are you?
Good Joss, happy to be here. It's been a bit.
Yeah, think almost the whole season.
This whole your your season 1 Round 2 I think.

(01:14):
Oh, this is sounding like a tradition.
Uh huh. We'll get you in for the second
one and and your Modoc League partner the ugly night.
Bruce, how are you doing? I'm having a great day.
Yeah, that's beautiful. I love it.
Did anybody get their magnetos yet?

(01:35):
No. No, our LGS is.
Notoriously. Late try back next week.
Yeah, try back next week. Aw, that's frustrating.
Yeah, but you know, I'd rather support in a local gaming store
than Amazon. Oh yeah absolutely it's our the.

(01:58):
My local 1 sent me a message last week saying it's in.
You can't pick it up till this time.
Oh, man, that's that sounds glorious.
I'm very jealous, Josh. Yeah, well, I mean it, it's
certainly nice. It's I haven't picked mine up
yet because we actually play at the store on Sundays so I

(02:18):
usually just go grab it and sleeve it to play that day.
You know, just play. Precon, Yeah, maybe actually
that might be fun. I was going to, I had a couple
decks kind of ready to roll, butmaybe just playing the Pecan
precon because there's lots of new cards in there and that's
always a fun way to have an excuse to play them that you
might not, you might not build them in later, right?

(02:41):
I don't think I've ever played aprecon.
Oh really? Oh.
Yeah, yeah, you didn't. I made you deck build on your
very first night, huh? A deck built Quicksilver without
knowing anything about the game?Brilliant.
You just play leadership with a bunch of reddies and some stat
boosts. It's everything's going to be

(03:02):
just fine until Rhino smashes you in the face.
Right, I think. I think the place where I play
something preconnished the most is when a new box comes out.
I will usually kind of play the pre cons as is for the first
scenario and then cut down cardsthat seem a bit useless from

(03:25):
three copies to one copy and then kind of supplement them a
little bit. And so just kind of slowly
improve on it. But just play through the box on
Standard with they'll kind of getting a a chance to play some
of those new cards in a way thatthere's almost no chance we'll
do it in the future. Yeah, that makes sense.

(03:47):
I can I can see like getting theuse out of your cards right?
But also, you know, go ahead, Brad.
No, I noticed a couple of cards,Future Talk, but a couple of
cards from the that people are running that I've never run
before. And I had to really think about
it for a moment and we'll get toit later, But I had to think

(04:09):
about it for a moment. I'm like, oh, I've never would
have played that card. It's actually decent.
Right, or I mean, as you know, you get more heroes, there's
more niche uses for for things. And when you make a very
narrowly focused deck, all thosethings right can can contribute

(04:29):
to pulling out cards you haven'tit.
It is interesting in, you know, a more competitive environment
like this where people are stillfinding uses for niche cards as
opposed to just kind of trying to deck build around a crap
card, which is, you know, a totally different game that you
play. My favorite thing to do.
Yeah. I in what is it a living card

(04:51):
games group, Nelson does a deck factory section that he hasn't
done in a while, but they would post cards that were kind of
obscure and ask people to build a deck around it.
And it's one of my favorite little just I'm probably not
going to play the deck, but morethan once things to do.

(05:14):
Yeah, it's definitely fun. I don't know, Bruce.
Bruce, do you ever engage in that?
Sure. Yeah, no, my again, like I
either play with Brad, in which case we're playing like pretty
like as you said, like seriouslycompetitively we're trying to

(05:35):
make efficient and good choices.My the other group I play with
is very casual so I will see a lot of casual cards in there as
three of us that are not cards that I see when I'm playing a
more efficient play style. So like not on purpose, but I

(05:59):
played beside some choices that are not what I would make.
Sure. Love it.
That's the fun. Yeah.
Cool. Well, let's let's talk about
what we're going to talk about. So we're talking about Season 2,
Round 2 of Modoc League. And this is we're taking on the

(06:22):
on the run scenario with Blockbuster as the villain.
We have the mutant slit, Mutant Slayers modular set, plus the
Angel, Cyclops and Styloc Nemesis sets.
And so this season, all the modulars are just Nemesis sets
and we're playing on kind of Standard one star, Expert one

(06:47):
Star, I guess, which is we're doing one copy of each of the
two copy cards that are in both Standard One and X and Standard
2. And then a bit of a mishmash of
the cards coming from Expert Oneand Expert 2.
And then there are some redundant minions in there,

(07:08):
Harpoon and Chimera. So we remove the Nemesis set
versions because the one in Mutant Slayers are actually a
little more powerful. And we start with the Mutant
Slayer side scheme and play. And we also make it so that we
have to start with Mr. Sinister as one of the Marauder minions

(07:29):
that you pull out at the start of the game.
And then finally, Mutant Slayersis actually turned into a
permanent side scheme where the this one is one that gives the
marauder minions quick strike. But every time you clear all the
threat, they they lose quick strike.

(07:50):
And then at the end of the villain phase, the threat goes
back up to three. So you you can play around with
the threat to remove the quick strike.
And you know, have some observations on on your decks
that I'm I'm very curious to chat about with with all y'all.
And then scoring just really quick won't go through the fine

(08:12):
level details, but there's four points associated with how fast
you go with eight turns kind of being the maximum points
threshold hero health. There's eight points associated
with that threatened size schemes.
So main, main scheme and side scheme threat 4 points Max, But
you don't get punished for having any threat on the mutant
side, the mutant Slayer side scheme, or the player side
schemes. 2 points for minions and two points for scenario

(08:35):
specific. And these are probably worth
discussing real quick because they actually really do dictate
some things with strategy. So the first point is a tough
status card was removed from blockbuster due to retaliate X
or fewer times where X is half the number of turns of the game.
So if you take eight turns to win the game, you a maximum

(08:56):
number of times can you have used retaliate to get rid of a
tough on blockbuster 4 times Andthen similar you can use stun
and confuse to combine maximum number of half of the number of
turns so that that's the all thescoring stuff.
So you 2, we want to get into all the fun stuff.

(09:18):
Both of our teams managed to getmaximum points and about half
the teams all together got maximum points.
But we want to talk about you heroes that you drafted, you
know, the experience of the draft, talking about your actual
deck building and experience of playing this round.
And if we have time, we'll be able to get into the first round
as well. So what feels like a good entry
point for for you too? I mean, it seems like to me the
thing to talk about first is howwe got to where we were like

(09:43):
with the draft, the draft leads us into our all of our deck
building choices. Brilliant.
Tell us about your draft. Brad brought it.
Brad, we decided to have a strategy meeting.
Brad came over and Brad had ahead of time gone through all

(10:03):
of the all of the encounters forthe league and kind of listed
things that would be good, retaliates bad.
The ability to deal with like Pierce is good, and he listed
kind of all of the stuff that could matter and then graded
heroes based on their access to that.

(10:26):
Love it. And we had some like just some
raw data numbers, but they weren't really like quite yet
reflecting how we felt about things.
So we had to like work a little bit more with that data.
Do you remember that, Brad? Oh, absolutely.
I've got the spreadsheet open. So I took each scenario, kind of

(10:48):
broke it down into some the the main pain points and then did a
sum product across. What heroes would do that?
We did some basic ranking of economy, support and
versatility, and then we just straight up added ten points to
Cable and Spider Woman because they were heroes we would pick

(11:10):
over leadership. Right.
Which, Speaking of which, cable got to spot 54?
55 Hold on, I have the. Whichever spot we're in.
Yeah. But you had you had obviously
ranked, which I mean spoiler where you had ranked cable ahead
of Spider Woman then. Yes, yes, yeah, cable.

(11:35):
Cable was our number one. Yeah, the it's it's funny, in
terms of the things he meant to the scenarios is very little,
but he's deceptively powerful. And not only is he the build
hero of the two, but he's still helping the hero that's trying

(11:56):
to keep up with stuff also build.
And at the end of the game, his attacks, his thwarts, his, he
just has insane output once he'sbuilt up, that makes up for all
that build time that you spend in the early game.
Yeah, I was genuinely surprised he made it to 4th and we were we

(12:22):
were on the phone during our first pick and Bruce's sister
was happened to be near him and made fun of us for being so
excited for getting cable first pick We.
Were pumped. I'm I'm excited for you.
She was, she was very confused. What?

(12:46):
So yeah, we had a ranking. The kind of the key, the key
thing I recognize in this round it or in the whole season is you
and I think it played out in thedraft really well, is that a
protection, perfect defense heroreally gets a lot of advantage,

(13:10):
especially in the 1st 2 rounds between Magog and on the run.
And I think it got heavily reflected in the picks.
Yeah, yeah. People were very into heroes
that were good at that. Yep.
And, and we had the opportunity to pick protection I.

(13:31):
Was going to ask, Yeah. But Brad, who was on the front,
I was, I was kind of the, the keyboard man and Brad was I
think out and about on the phonewith me and I was like, I think
I'm going green. And Brad was like, no, no, no,
grab the red because it won't bethere.
And like really the red needs tobe there.

(13:54):
There's some serious debt DPR checks in this league.
You know, you got to get that 8 eighth turn right.
So you want to be able to hit that, and Brad was wise and seen
that. Piercing being the main, Oh
yeah, main main thing cable and we didn't know who we were

(14:16):
getting at that time. We picked aggression but
piercing was was valuable especially with call for backup
always being guaranteed and cables deck and us being able to
go grab like Wolverine. Yeah, a house.
Wolverine is a house. So far, yeah.

(14:36):
But that's a. That's a neat one.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, ranking wise, like it was
Cable. So Speaking of the next pick,
followed by Gambit, followed by Shadowcat and then a mix of
other heroes. But you had also said you you

(14:57):
ranked Spider Woman very high. Yeah, she was tied with Angel,
Cyclops and Spectrum. Got it.
Which most of those heroes, well, Cyclops went really early,
which also surprised me, but I haven't really played him much
outside of solo, so I don't havea very high opinion of him.

(15:20):
And yeah, if Spider Woman had been there, we we would have had
it. We would have had a debate over
leadership, Shadow Cat and Spider Woman.
Fortunately, he didn't have to make that choice.
No, no, because Cable was still there.

(15:40):
But when we we saw Shadow Catch pass shortly after to Jarrett
and TJJJ and I was very disappointed that we couldn't
stagger for the second pick. I think she was really powerful
this round. Yeah, I especially this this
most recent one, there was just a lot of garden patrol.

(16:03):
Yeah, yeah. So you, you were the 4th pick
out of 18 teams, which meant in the first round you picked 4th
and you got Cable. The second round you picked 4th
last and you got aggression, as you mentioned.
Third round you got Gambit whichwas your second rated hero, so
you must have been thrilled. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. We thought that was a coup.

(16:25):
And then in the final round, basically everybody was getting
justice. Yeah, like I think there was
like a million, billion justice left.
There were a ton of we the the the aspects are randomized in
terms of I fill up to a certain threshold, but which ones are

(16:46):
going in is just randomized. So you can get some pretty
uneven ones. And so we had way more justice
than than anything else, right? I thought, I thought.
It was pretty interesting still.Yeah.
I actually really enjoyed the the mix that some are really
going to be tight, like aggression being tight changes
its value significantly versus Justice being tight because just

(17:09):
like last round, Justice went fast right after leadership.
Right. Yeah, aggression there was 5,
and justice there was 14. Wow.
That is a spread. So, so almost everybody was
guaranteed to get, well, actually, I think the way that

(17:30):
because of the way pool works, I, I made it so nobody is ever
forced to take pool. So basically everybody was able
to get justice with their final pick if they wanted to.
And one brave soul actually did pick pool which.
Yeah, I. I can't wait to put on that one
too. I love it.

(17:50):
I love it, I love it. Cool.
So you, your overall things wentwell.
You you wanted aggression, you got aggression.
Sounds like you would have takenleadership if that was there.
But as your second one, you tookaggression and then you got 2
heroes you're really happy with.So things are things are going
great. OK, so and again, we might loop
back to round one depending on how long our conversations go.

(18:13):
But let's let's talk about your,your deck building for for round
two all. Right.
So originally Brad had, Brad andI were we had gone alter ego
Gambit in the first round briefly, just like you know, we

(18:33):
can circle back to the first round as he said, but like
briefly we'd gone alter ego gambit in the first round,
decided that we weren't going todo that in the second round.
And then like after a sit down and talk, we decided that we
actually were going to do alter Ego Gambit again.
I think we actually we played half a round.

(18:54):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had.
We'd gotten some. We had our understanding wasn't
where it needed to be of the encounter.
So yeah, we played like, I don'tknow, 3 or 4 round 3 or 4, yeah.
And then decided to go back to go back to the drawing board, so
to speak. So initially what I wanted to do

(19:15):
with Gambit was take advantage of his defense event that I'm
blanking on its name. Staff Oh no to the event, but
you. Also staff because the staff is
not retaliate. Right, but still.
Knocks off. And it doesn't have to be when
Gambit defends or gets attacked,right?

(19:36):
It just needs to be this. Is part of why you value Gambit
highly. Yes, yeah, when an it just when
an enemy attacks. So we figured, hey, if he ends
with a tough, we can always use the staff to clear off the tough
at the end of it. What I initially failed to
remember, because you know, until you start playing it, you

(20:00):
forget rules. And the rule I forgot was if you
can't change state, you can't choose the option.
So you can't choose two Tufts ona blockbuster, right?
Yes. So we audibled to Gambit alter

(20:24):
ego so that way he wouldn't be attacking Gambit and then we
didn't have to make that choice.In fact, this was an example of
one of those build around a bad cards Brad decided to build
around Meditate it. That's a joke.
That's OK. Yeah.

(20:47):
So just just a quick for those whose brains don't remember this
thing, the way the way all of those on the run villains work
is every single one of them has a choice that you make when they
attack. And Blockbuster specifically is
either you give him a tough status card or he gets +2 for

(21:10):
for that attack. And overrun or over.
And over and overkill. Overkill.
Yeah, go ahead. About overkill, is is is really
rough this round? Because he had a decent attack.
Yeah, I think it's 5 without any, any alteration and there
were a few alterations that could go on him throughout the

(21:32):
round. So the you're you're wanting to
be thoughtful about when you choose to put that tough because
if you get a second attack and you're not in a good position to
deal with it with the overkill that can be, that can be very
tricky, obviously. And then, you know, you were

(21:53):
talking about the alter ego piece.
He has only one sport in his in his base level.
So having 1 and I mean, you know, we did something similar,
right? Having one of your one of your
heroes being down most turns really makes things a lot
easier. Plus all the minions that come

(22:14):
out that are marauders have quick strike, and so having
somebody be down means that halfof the time the quick strike
doesn't matter. Yes, yes, same, same thought
choices. Yeah.
But you, you went with a much more like we were.
Our team was more taking turns swapping down.
You went with a bill that was actually intended to stay down a

(22:35):
lot. Yeah, so Gambit, my favorite way
to play Gambit is Alter Ego. I think the the possibilities of
the fact that he can thwart, thefact that he can use meditate,
the fact that there's the Utopiacombo in there.
Hang up and get that honorary X-Men on him.

(22:58):
So he's an X-Men when he's alterego is just it's worth spending
the turn up. Yeah, doing a meditation turn
when you play an X-Men ally and then reading with Utopia just
feels really good. And he rigs the scheme, or at
least the if you'd solo, he rigsthe scheme, but he can rig the

(23:20):
top card of the deck. So, you know, if Gambit's first
player, you kind of have an ideaof what it's going to take.
And you can also plan for boost on the first turn, which is
maybe not as big this round as it was the previous round, but
it's still very helpful to know when some of the nastier boosts

(23:41):
are coming. Yeah, the the encounter set the
the expert one star has a few things you really need to know
where they are. Yes.
Yeah, also like as far as the Gambit ability, it did let us
try to decide to do like a a Cosmo build out of the out of

(24:03):
the other out of the other deck because we ended up going
justice with Gambit. But that would still allow me to
know what was on top of Cosmo. It just ended up even though it
was in the deck, it ended up never coming up.
Right. Yeah.
It's just like this round. We really valued piercing

(24:27):
because we knew that Blockbusterwas always going to end with a
tough on and we always wanted tomake sure we cleared that tough
for the next round so we could put another tough on them and
make sure that the at least we could ally block once per once
per villain phase. Maybe not always, but at least
once per villain phase. And so go ahead.

(24:51):
Well, I'm just looking so you know, in your Cable aggression
deck, you've got Wolverine Ally,you've got Marvel Boy, who you
can spend a resource to give piercing to Cosmo that has just
one. I mean as you said, you didn't
actually use it but has just oneattack and you can make it so
he's not taking consequential and then Bug who is just one

(25:14):
attack and you know if you are going to be doing basic attacks
with your hero can stay around for absolutely forever.
Also got the was it a laser spear?
And energy. Spears, So there's a bunch of
yeah, so there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of guardians
allies with, with energy Spears.So yeah, decent, decent access
to piercing for sure. And really it ended up being

(25:37):
Wolverine that carried most of that, even though we, we built a
couple, we we built a couple options in, but it ended up
being Wolverine off of a call for backup that really kind of
held that position. That's such a nice combo.
And I, I like, I like this notion of, you know, with having
cable, you can have them in any aspect.

(25:59):
You can use call for backup to then bring in a key ally.
That's it. So you can really tech for a
scenario if you want to and makesure that that ally can do the
thing. Yeah, I mean Wolverine Ally is
my one of my very favourites. Yeah, like it's been out of both
decks. The call for backup is might be

(26:26):
one of the strongest things in our combined decks because it
just really sets up a board state for us.
Also the one of audacity in in the regretched deck.
Right. It actually actually got used
once and I think our final game to clear tough.

(26:49):
Just one more way to clear tough.
Yeah, yeah, I. Forgot that I had that in there.
I meant to take it out and it did not get cut.
That's that's pretty friend and I I noticed you have generation
X, which is a newer, you know, newer as in it's from Jubilee.
Oh man, another house. Which so this is kind of a nice

(27:13):
late game thing. So you can put it out whenever,
but I mean obviously not exactlywhenever because you have a
limit on number of player side schemes you can have out.
But this is the one that gives each X-Men character gets plus
one thwart while making a basic thwart against this scheme.
That's a little bit of a who cares ability, but it's when
defeated, each player may searchtheir deck and discard for an

(27:33):
identity specific event. So when you're actually going
for the finish, it's a way to get some.
Being able to pull that like thecable cables attack is, it's a
lot of damage by the end of the game and just be able to pull
that when you need it is giant. And, and honestly, that plus one

(27:56):
thwart for the X-Men, because wehave so many X-Men, it really
did just make it an easy side scheme to clear.
Yeah, it's, it's funny. That's a.
Like it changed the math on it acouple times in our favor.
For sure I can. We didn't really look at

(28:16):
including Generation X, but you know, both we're, we're playing
Star War, Star Wars, we're playing Star Lord and and Storm,
both of whom have very high impact events for for damage at
which this scenario required quite a bit of damage to
actually get through, especially'cause when you advance him to

(28:39):
his next stage, he gets an extra12 health.
Like 40 health, like Brad and I,almost every time he flipped in
our practices to the second form, it's like God that's so
much. Yeah, and then he's also pulling
out some other minions at the same time.
So, so I know, I don't know how many teams were able to

(29:00):
successfully do this, but initially we were trying to set
ourselves up to be able to blow through the 1st and then, you
know, get, get all the way through the second in one turn.
We. We're pretty close to that, I
think. Yeah, I don't know.
That was part of our plan, but it was definitely like rush,
rush down on the end. Right.

(29:22):
Well, yeah, we we played it a few times and then kind of
figured out the the tempo of thematch a little bit better and
kind of how you, because there'snot a lot that's terrible about
him going to the second side anyway, since you have to defeat
the minions. There's not, there's not a it's
not like something like mutagen formula where there's a bunch of

(29:44):
face down cards that you would like to avoid having to even
flip up you you have to bring those minions in.
So burning through that second, it's not that big of a deal.
On the on the subject of those minions, did you get to Nova
Prime? You know, we played a decent

(30:05):
number of practice games and I think we probably did at some
point there, but not in the, notin our official one.
Oh, that's sad. Nova Prime's such a an annoying
an annoying ally for a signatureally because he's so expensive.

(30:26):
Yeah. But I feel like when he hits it
feels really good. Yes, 100%.
The I, I was playing leadership star Lord with make the call and
other things. So, you know, I, there was
opportunities to do some of those sorts of things, but you
know, usually you're, you're really, it's kind of like your

(30:51):
call for backup, right, Where you're really able to think of
what's, what's the right tool for the job right now.
Right. I didn't even think about call
up for backup for him, that would have been really good too.
Yeah, but so, yeah, I love, I love, I love this approach and I

(31:13):
love, you know, that you were able to playing the play the
game of letting blockbuster scheme a lot, but by doing it by
focusing on one of the heroes instead of just flipping lots,
That's that's really fun. And you're right, Brad, like
those it, it's always very fun to play alter Ego only decks or

(31:34):
ones that are primarily Alter ego.
I'm, I'm curious at this point with the Children of the Atom
card that is now released with Magneto.
So this is the one that gives all The X Factor X Force X those
traits. You know, did you find that you

(31:57):
there was urgency on getting that honorary X-Men out or was
it kind of it came out when in time without too much?
Concern. It's it.
It's it is the priority. Yeah, it it when it hits the
hand, he's got a flip up, I think.
Oh, go to hero. He's got to be a, you know, he's
got to go to hero to play it. Because there's not.
There's an opportunity to use Children of the Atom.

(32:19):
Now if you were trying to do this again with Cable and have
an honorary X-Men and be able tohave Cable be able to do this
without Gambit ever having to flip up.
I don't know it was it. I know in the first round we
played two honorary X-Men so that we could give X-Men to
Cable. I don't know that we did that in
this round, Brad. Do we not do it in the second

(32:40):
round? It says you have two.
We ran 2, but this round didn't come up as much.
The first round we heavily focused on getting Cable the
honorary X-Men and I'm blanking on why.
It'll come back to me if we get to the X round.
But but this round it was more about getting Gambit honorary

(33:02):
X-Men than it was about getting because because it's just the
Utopia ready in combo. We were getting that on a lot
online a lot faster this round than we did last round.
And I'm not sure why that was. But generally speaking, just
getting the Utopia combo active is a pretty big deal.
And I think last round it was the X Jet.

(33:25):
We we had X Jet as a we wanted to give cable more resources
last round because of how much threat was being tossed on the
board actively. So in your in your gambit deck
won't go through the whole thing, but you you know, you've
got a handful of allies, including Dazzler and professor

(33:46):
X to get the odd confused down right?
We've you have an upper limit onthe number of times you want to
confuse them, but you've you know you can certainly.
Especially with steady like. Yeah.
Going over that would take some like getting enough on there to
for to lose points would take some work I think.
Right. But well, but I mean, it is the

(34:09):
combined of stunned and confusedso that, you know, there's
there's an opportunity for for somebody like Miles to actually
have to be a little bit thoughtful about about that.
And then, you know, as you mentioned, you have Utopia and
then mutant education and X-Men instruction that feed into or

(34:30):
sorry, I meant X mansion that yeah, mutant education and X-Men
instruction feed into 3 copies of meditation.
Some first aid to is that was that mostly for for heroes or to
keep? Did you have key allies that you
were trying to maybe get Wolverine without having to wait
for him to heal up? What?
What was the first aid for? It was a mix of both.

(34:51):
I mean, yeah. I think we scored, we scored
points because of it, right? But the, it, it can be for a key
ally. It's it hit Wolverines and
doesn't hit my allies because with Gambit being staying in
alter ego, finding attack to be supportive has to come out of
your ally kit and first aid is at least going to keep Dazzler

(35:17):
or Rogue kind of sitting on the board doing their thing.
But we, we, we, it's, it's got spread all over the board.
Well, my experience in playing the Stay and Alter Ego decks is,
you know, there's a bunch of cards that become effectively
useless if you actually are really, you know, never too

(35:39):
rarely flipping up. So having some cheaper cards
like First Aid that almost always will have something that
you want to hit with it is just really nice in terms of feeling
like you can actually do something productive with your
hand. Absolutely.
And the rest of the deck honestly was just support like.

(36:00):
But there's only four justice cards in the deck.
Dazzler to get me an extra confused.
Heroic Intuition for Cable, Skilled Investigator for Cable
under surveillance. I don't think it was as
important this round, but it made me feel warm and fuzzy.

(36:22):
Yeah, I mean, frankly in in these things, I tend to want to
pick justice just so I have access to under surveillance,
because not letting the main scheme flip over is such an
important piece to getting your points right.
So that that Peace of Mind is always really important to me.

(36:43):
Yeah. Cool.
And then I'm, I'm curious with Mutant Education.
So that's the one that lets you get the identity specific cards
from your discard pile and shuffle them into your neck and
then you get an extra card. What were the cards that you
were trying to actually cycle back in there?
Molecular acceleration and Creole charmer and rogue.

(37:08):
Right. So your, your charge counters in
part were being used to make Rogue nice and cheap, which is
that's awesome. And then and then were you
occasionally flipping up and just doing a bunch of damage and
then flipping back down? Flip up when necessary.
So the first honorary X-Men is our first flip.

(37:30):
Whenever we get the first one, that's the first flip up the
second flip up or I guess 3 phases of fist flip up.
The 1st is always honorary X-Men, the third is always we
need to finish the villain middle.
It's more of an how bad off are we?
Do I need to flip up? Is there a reason for me to flip

(37:51):
up? Do we need to handle out some
damage that we didn't expect before?
But primary goal is 1st and 1st and last pick up, flip up and
hopefully line up some molecularaccelerations when you flip up
so you can build up cheap chargecounters for rogue goal.

(38:14):
Goal usually to have, if possible, have 6 by the end of
the game. Right, right.
My some of my favorite signatureallies in the game are the ones
that you have the ability to make cheaper through whatever
you're doing. So, you know, whether it's
Winter Soldier or Rogue, I can'tremember if there's others, but
you know, I really like, I really like.

(38:39):
Well, I especially like The Winter Soldier one because you
you can play a bit of a mostly stay down sort of Black Widow
belt that you're you got lots ofpreps out and you can really get
lots of fun stuff going on with Bucky.
But just it just feels so good to be able to play them for free
And you know, if you have any sort of ability to recur them
and get them back, it's even feels even better.

(39:03):
Make the call. Best card in the game.
Right, Well, you can't make the,you can't make the call in the
them. In that case the you have to be
able to get them back into your hand somehow.
But yes, you're right, you're right.
I'm it, it's still just an immense amount of immense amount
of fun. Cool, Well, let well, maybe
let's check in with some of the other decks and maybe I'll I'll

(39:25):
just real quickly talk about. So I'm playing with my, my son
and he's playing, he's been playing justice storm and for
the 1st 2 rounds and I've been playing star Lord leadership.
I don't think I ever would have imagined that I would draft star
Lord for one of these things, but we're just having so much

(39:46):
fun with with this. So this is, this has been, you
know, I, I've just absolutely loved this.
And his ability to pump out ridiculous amounts of damage is,
is also just very, very rewarding.
We brought Squirrel Girl this round to do some of the.
The work of just pinging off those Tufts, because the other
thing we didn't mention is that when that second stage of

(40:10):
Minions comes out, when you advance blockbuster, they all
come out with tough. So for you, you know, you really
prioritized having piercing to be able to get rid of that
actually. I think you also as far as
getting rid of those like the the last wave of minions with
the flip. That side scheme was enormous.

(40:31):
Ford because the tough. Got the guards.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The tough didn't matter.
Right, right. Yeah.
So I would, I would get well setup to be able to bring out
Squirrel Girl as part of the turn that we advanced those and
then could easily get rid of those toughs.
And so that was really fun to toactually do a little bit of

(40:53):
teching and having enough flexibility in your ability to
pull out allies that you need tobe able to actually just get
Squirrel Girl when you need her.And you know, other than that,
it's kind of a somewhat typical sort of star Lord leadership
deck where you're you have lots of really good allies and take
advantage of the fact they're all guardians with blaze of
glory. And every once in a while forget

(41:15):
that blaze of glory is going to kill your guardian, your legit
guardian minions or allies. Even when you flip down like
like Rocket or Gamora and then you have a shed a small tear
that that you wasted wasted themthat way.
But you know, it's good and and storm has, you know, good thwart

(41:35):
events and awesome damage in ourkit and stuff like that.
So we, you know, just kind of played pretty pretty straight up
beyond the all the Star Wars star Lord shenanigans and had
had lots of fun in it. I don't know.
We were talking about the damage.
We, we were still actually, despite the amount of damage

(41:56):
that we had in our both our kits, we were often like right
up against the line going into turn 8 being like, OK, I think
we've got enough damage to do this.
I was going to ask that. I know last round you were
talking about that y'all were getting it done well below the
turn 8 marker. Yeah, yeah.
This round's a lot tougher. It was a lot tougher to hit that

(42:18):
Turn 8 marker. That blockbuster has a lot of
help, yeah. Yeah, so we were, I think we
probably in our practice games went over once, went over turn
8. And so we, it was normally turn
7 or turn 8 that we were, that we were able to do it.
And it was part of it was because we kind of really
figured out the tempo to be ableto ensure that we were able to

(42:39):
get all the other points we wanted to get and, and those
other pieces right. So what once we had the timing
figured out, we, we then had a good, a good path to getting
there. But yeah, it was really kind of
getting all the pieces assembledfor Turn 7 or Turn 8 when and
and when you look at the folks who lost points, it was pretty
common that they lost points because they were weren't able

(43:01):
to get it done by Turn 8. Yeah, I called.
I called your son Storm Deck Santa by one way or another.
I I enjoyed the the amount of upgrades in the deck and the
high count of them, especially the three skilled investigators.

(43:21):
Y'all clearly wanted to get thatdown fast.
Well, it's, it's such a nice, you know, like the thing I I
personally, you can tell that somebody's been playing way too
much with me, right, because he has, he has a lot of the same
values I do in marvelous champions.
I I just love that skilled investigator almost always pays

(43:43):
for itself immediately thins your deck a bit, gives you a
target for things that get rid of upgrades.
It does just does a whole bunch of work for you and there's
enough side schemes, especially if you're playing with one way
or another obviously, but there's enough side schemes
kicking around in this that you were going to make use of it.
Almost immediately. So I got 2 questions about his

(44:04):
deck and I know he's not here toanswer them, but oh sure.
The Olson counterintelligence. Not one.
Not not a combo I expected to see in Storm.
How useful was the the counterintelligence?
Or was that just a resource? No, no, counterintelligence is
is is always is very useful for for how we were playing it.

(44:27):
And again, you know, the poor kid is, is a victim of playing
way too much Marvel champions with me.
But yeah, the one of the underrated things about
counterintelligence, and this isactually I was thinking about
this because TJJJ put out a a deck recently that was a
Deadpool deck that was making use of and I always forget what

(44:52):
the card is called serve and protect.
Yes. Serve, serve and protect is.
I'll just read it real quick here.
So it's A2 cost protection eventwhen an amount of threat will be
placed on the main scheme. Exhausted X Force character and
X-Men character prevent that threat.
Give each of those characters a tough status card and with with

(45:15):
Deadpool, obviously, you know, you're you're putting a lot of
extra acceleration counters on. So your ability to avoid that
extra threat at the start of theturn is is pretty powerful.
So he's he's typically got a really good use for serve and
protect. And so it just kind of reminded
me of, you know, in these pointsbased competitive things.
So whether it's Modoc League or solo Champions League, going

(45:39):
into especially the final turn, if you have a way to be able to
prevent some threat of going on to any of the schemes, that's a
bunch of less stuff you have to do in that turn to get your
maximum points. So counterintelligence more
often than not is a thing that'sthere if you desperately need

(46:00):
it, but it's also just sitting there for the end of the game
when you're going into that final turn and just not having
to deal with. Yeah, 11.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a way of banking
of banking resources. So yeah.
And we also I think found between the two of us that there

(46:23):
was just, I mean, especially because of our one way or
another's, we kind of needed every last work that we had
access to. And so Coulson is just a another
nice way to get some some some thwarting.
No regrets. None.
None. Other one is how much did Wiffin

(46:44):
actually hit? I mean Wiccan.
Yeah, I don't, I don't remember.It's, it's always such a it
works well. It when when somebody's already
playing Star Lord, playing Wiccan just makes it, you know,
make the variance even higher. Yes, that.

(47:05):
Sort of thing, yeah. I don't know, I he's so high
value and when he does hit it really feels good and when he
doesn't doesn't, it's so terrible.
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I didn't look at the counts for this round on
boost icons, but I, I, I like Wiccan.
I think having three health as A2 cost Ally that's even if it's

(47:30):
a 11 is really good. I mean, look at daredevil and
protection. But he he it's so it frustrates
me when he whiffs because you'relike, you know, it would be
really cool if I hit this and I get the exact 1 so I could ping
the tough. Well, and often you're actually

(47:52):
making choices where maybe the thwarting is more incidental and
you're actually doing what you're doing with him to get the
damage. But you're kind of saying, well,
we'll go through the thwart route because that's the more
efficient thing to do. If it works right.
And then when it actually whiffs, then you really are
filled with regret. Anyway, we were successful just

(48:16):
like you. We managed to get our maximum
points. So.
So it worked out. It worked.
Yeah. And I don't think the fact that
there's only four allies in, in that storm deck is shocking to
me. I, I don't, I usually don't play
with so few allies. But you know, as as you noted,
the deck was pretty focused on getting a lot of upgrades out,

(48:37):
So you kind of can't do both and.
That also really thins the deck.Yeah, which gets you those
attack events recycled for the immense health health of
Blockbuster. Yeah, and, and torrential rain.
I mean the that's her thwart event, you know, just being able
to see all those things because her events are all pretty.

(48:59):
Pretty strong events. Cool.
And I, I know Brad, you spent a little bit of time looking at
some of the other decks. Any any highlights you wanted to
bring up from some of the other teams?
Yeah, so, so some interesting notes just kind of going down my
list. I'm going to.

(49:22):
I do not know how to pronounce his name, but I'll go with
Chaldeus. Sure.
He had Colossus protection X-Menand Angel Justice Ariel and what
really stood out to me is this is this is the exact this is one
of the examples of the nemesis rounds right where you have your

(49:44):
nemesis set in the. Kit, right?
And he really, he or she, I apologize.
They they, they went, they went heavily into Ariel and with
Angel's nemesis set in there, which really punishes you.

(50:05):
Yeah. For having a ton of aerial
events, so and and managed to get a perfect score, so
obviously it worked out. The other interesting thing
about their decks is the honorary X-Men and the X Force
recruits. I couldn't find the synergy and

(50:26):
I feel like I'm missing something but overall they got a
20 so good on them. What do we know, Brad?
It's, it's interesting because you know, I was, for example,
reluctant to put on Star Lord's boots because I didn't, I didn't

(50:47):
want Ariel because, because one of our strategies was actually
that we pulled out Harpoon as sothe the 1st 2 minions that you
pull out when you have to start the game is Mr. Sinister.
We got Storm to be a first player, despite the fact that I
was the one playing leadership with Storm was the first player.
Mr. Sinister went to Storm, I took Harpoon and I just let

(51:12):
Harpoon. I just sat on Harpoon just
taking the one damage a turn andlike just kind of slowly letting
that happen because if you have a minion out, blockbuster
schemes instead of attacking, ifyou have a Marauder minion out.

(51:38):
So we were we, we were able to minimize the number of attacks
we had to take by just by leaving, leaving him out.
But of course, if you have harpoon out, you don't want to
have Ariel. So I was, that's why I was, you
know, always really reluctant togo into Ariel because it would
mean that that that part of the strategy was, was doomed.
So I did want to ask about that because we, we had a, we had the

(51:59):
exact same set up. Cable always went first and took
took Mr. Sinister and Gambit always took Harpoon, but for
slightly different reasons. Because Harpoon having zero
scheme, yes, I could just sit there and I didn't care about
his guard in the early turns because I was more worried about

(52:22):
mitigating the threat. Yeah, it gave us time to remove
him once we needed the guard gone like we were.
That was leisurely. Yeah.
Yeah, and the other thing I likeabout having Harpoon out is I
don't know how much just came upfor you, but I know it came up

(52:43):
for us at least once, is that Harpoon's Harpoon wouldn't come
out and bring him out. It would just attach to him.
But since we didn't care about getting attacked, it wasn't as
big of a deal. Right.

(53:07):
Yeah, other things of note. I really enjoyed the synergy
that Lexicon built into his decks.
He built a Rocket aggression minion Slayer deck and then Adam
Warlock stuff deck. Sure.

(53:28):
I don't know how I never know how to describe Adam Warlock
because it's really hard to finda direct synergy.
But of note, not only did the Rocket deck carry looking for
trouble, the Adam Warlock deck carried looking for trouble.
And come get me, Bob. Oh awesome.
So. Really, really minion hunting.

(53:49):
That's very fun. Yes, yes, I was.
I was. I I enjoyed that.
The other thing I liked about their decks is they carried
X-Men and X Force allies, and Adam ran Gunboat, Diplomacy and
Serve and Protect. I'm still hoping that we have a

(54:10):
chance to get a gunboat gunboat diplomacy round in.
Maybe next round and I really like serve and protect as you
talked about earlier. I just wish it wasn't a hero
only thing. But but then I think it'd

(54:30):
probably be way too powerful if it wasn't hero only.
Right. What you know, interestingly,
they're in the Magneto pack. We're getting a couple more
minion summoning cards as well. So there's even more ways that
somebody could build into the synergy if they wanted to.
So there's a leadership one that's coming out and then

(54:50):
there's the face the past, whichis a a basic one that pulls out
your nemesis minion, which depending on your character can
be who cares or or terrible I. I have opinions on Face the
Past. Sure, I.
Think I think it's too good in adeck that has a bad nemesis

(55:18):
minion. It's it's one of those cards
that become like an auto includeand as much as I play in
competitive things and utilize numerous auto include cards, I I
just don't care for seeing them printed.
You were also saying that you thought that the new ally might

(55:39):
be too. Strong kid Omega, yes, yes not a
that is way too powerful for a too cost ally.
Yeah, the kid Omega would have been a delightful minion to have
around for this past round that we just had because one of, you

(56:00):
know, it's A2 cost 222 minion that can optionally after
playing him, spend an energy resource to deal one damage to
each enemy or mental to remove one threat from each scheme.
And the deal one damage to each enemy is, you know, doing the
the same sort of job that Squirrel Girl is doing.
Yeah. Yeah, 222 on top of that.

(56:23):
Yeah, and it's just kind of whenyou don't need that specific
thing, the the threat is, you know, obviously a nice thing to
do. So that that would be that would
be obviously very nice. And then additionally has the
X-Men and scionic traits. So it has like a whole bunch of
bunch of stuff going on. Yeah, the this is this is a very

(56:45):
funny set of deck building cardsthat came out with Magneto
because it feels like, you know,we learned that Caleb is kind of
on his way out of of the game. I don't know if he has a whole,
I think he has one more box, full box that he is doing.
But this kind of felt like a swan song of like, all the

(57:08):
things he wanted to do maybe as the last mutant part of the
cycle or whatever it was. But, you know, some things that
definitely feel very powerful, like Children of the Atom as
well, Yeah. Children of the When I saw it, I
got excited, right? It's cool.

(57:28):
I didn't see it at first and then I got a lot of Children of
the Atom is a really good. Card.
Yeah, well, and I'm, you know, in all honesty, I'm obviously
going to kind of monitor overallsuccess and cards that are
showing up. And if things feel like they're
kind of distorting things and making, making it so that

(57:49):
decision making is almost not inthe player's hands anymore and
that just there's decisions thatyou just have to make without
even really thinking about them.We'll have to, you know, make
some choices about if cards are included or whatever.
Yeah. At this point, whatever.

(58:11):
Moving on, Oh, Dristan. So we talked earlier about the
one pool player, or at least, yeah, the one pool player I saw
and. Wow.
I, I, I played Wolverine pool and I'm I was very happy when I

(58:33):
was reading it because I saw there's live dangerously
someone's actually playing with this in a league or in a in a
league round. And then I saw the use of the
bomb, which with Wolverine, oh, I just take 6 damage and and
toss the bomb at you wouldn't live dangerously out.

(58:55):
But we're really what what caught me off guard was no
lightsaber. I'm sure that I'm sure Justin
had reasons. And once again, another high
scoring another 20. So I'm sure there was a good
reason for it, but I, I was really, I was really caught off
by no, no lightsaber in the deck.

(59:16):
Right, Yeah, I I played a decentamount of pool actually, and
even, you know, had pool in in the league last, last time.
And I love laser swords decks. It's kind of my favorite way to
play pool. Obviously only some heroes work
well with it and others don't. But yeah, I certainly would not

(59:41):
have let the laser swords go in this in this case.
But you know, that's just how I again, that's my my play style.
Yeah, yeah, especially because some of the there are a decent
number of icons in the side schemes this round and Bishop
was running one way or another. So there could have been like

(01:00:01):
inter minute, Hey, we hit, oh, what's the one in the actual,
the actual round that if you gotthe your force, your force,
which you automatically get the crisis icon because
Blockbuster's out. And if Chimera's out, you get

(01:00:23):
the amplify icon and has a builtin acceleration icon, so you can
kind of pull, pull, force, get athree, get a three-point bonus
and then get rid of it. And last thing I wanted to, I
really wanted to talk about was so amazingly bad, which I just

(01:00:48):
realized how that said this cameout because the player's name is
so amazingly bad, so amazing. Dad was playing Phoenix
protection and Magic justice. Yeah.
And in the Magic deck, it lookedlike their goal was to honorary

(01:01:12):
X-Men up Wolfsbane and Cosmo andput mission trainings on them.
But I love a good Voltron deck, so I'm always going to shout
out, shout out a good Voltron deck.
Sure, yes, absolutely. Which reminds me real quick,
shout out to Jacinto and Steven for playing Spider Woman.
Captain Marvel Voltron. Yes.

(01:01:37):
But the the neat deck that I really liked was Phoenix and
they were running Phoenix Protection, Psychic and Psychic
Misdirection. Yes, in this round is so fun to
me. I'm going to choose that you get
+2 attack and overkill. Oh, by the way, go attack this

(01:02:01):
other thing instead. It that brings great joy to my
heart just to see somebody do that, especially with Phoenix
probably not being one of my more favorite heroes.
But I really, I really enjoy that.
Yeah, that's that that is reallyfun.
It's you can manipulate the gameso that you kind of always have

(01:02:27):
a target for that, right? Because that's what we were, we
were talking about that there's,you know, you can just sit on
minions if you want in this one.So you can kind of make sure
that that's always available if you want it.
Yeah, yeah. Only other thing I'll mention is
I didn't see a lot of Vivian across the decks and that I saw

(01:02:51):
some, but not, not a lot. And I feel like between
bushwhacked and hidden in the clutter.
Right, she. She had a lot of Oh yeah.
So did you ended up using your Vivian?
You had one, one Vivian between the two of you.
Yes, yeah. Hidden in the clutter was that

(01:03:16):
that card, really. It messed with our math.
A lot of times. So this is this is an on the run
attachment that you attach to the enemy with the fewest
remaining hit points. You know, this is again another
one of those reasons why it's nice to have a minion out so
that some of these things show up and hit it and then you can

(01:03:37):
just defeat the minion instead of these things going on to the
villain. But when any amount of damage
would be dealt to an attached tothe attached enemy, you place it
here instead. If there is at least three
damage here, attached enemy attacks the player who dealt the
damage just placed here, then discard this card.
So yeah, it it definitely could be very tedious.

(01:03:58):
Yes, it was. We're very happy to blanket when
we could, but I don't think we actually successfully did that
more than once. Right.
Well, this is the kind of card that when you're going through
those final encounter cards going into the turn you're
planning to defeat the villain can really mess with all your
math because your health might already be kind of precarious

(01:04:21):
and all those other pieces. And so having to deal with that
extra attack could be kind of gnarly.
Yeah, like I if like I think theone right before our official
game, like it really complicatedour last turn.
Right. Well, just imagine if you were
playing Star Lord and maybe had a whole bunch of extra encounter

(01:04:42):
cards every single round. I don't know what that feels
like. How about you, Joss?
It yeah, it was always, it was always good, good fun.
It is. It's like you really, you're
just turning those cards over and regretting your decisions.
It's it's pretty fun. I have.
I have no regrets. I'm so happy that I was just

(01:05:06):
able to. You know, when I think I
mentioned when we did the last episode when we were planning
for the draft and we hadn't already decided we wanted Star
Lord when we were doing our planning.
But you know, once we kind of realized that we were going to
get leadership for sure, and then kind of a hero that my son
was going to want and probably justice based on the fact that

(01:05:30):
there was 14 of them. We kind of realized like, oh,
you know, I think I think Star Lord might be the sweet spot of
something that would just be really fun to engage with
somebody that would be, you know, fun.
But it just just kind of fell inline in terms of I think there's
a almost 100% chance we can get Star Lord after doing all the

(01:05:52):
other stuff we want to do. So that, you know, unlike you,
where you're like, you were delighted and surprised that
Gambit fell to you. I was kind of fully expecting
that Star Lord was going to be available when we wanted them.
So we we actually more or less plan to get Star Lord going in.
Yeah, no, I can't overstate how like lucky we felt for every

(01:06:14):
pick that everything kind of came.
We were not expecting to be ableto get what we got and we were
just shocked. No, I'm very proud of you Josh,
for going just super into Star Lord.
Yeah, well, it, it, it felt likea good, a good excuse to
actually do that. And I've, I've actually really

(01:06:36):
been enjoying it. And we're probably.
The best face down you've had infront of you.
Oh I I don't play star Lord thatrisky.
Right. I like.
I assume you probably don't wantto push it too hard, especially.
No. But what have you?
Like what 2 Did you end up with two?

(01:06:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, in the final turn you
always end up with a crap ton. But you know, the, the nice
thing about Star Lord is he has solutions to problems available
if you need it, right? So if you're, if you're staring
down things you don't like, it'slike, well, I could take this
extra encounter. So you can play super greedy and

(01:07:17):
always be doing it and kind of being the victim of your own bad
choices. But you can also play it where
it's more opportunistic. And you, you see a thing that we
really need to deal with this. And you know, using some of Star
Lord's resources can do this. So, you know, there's there's
definitely turns where I took atleast a couple extra cards in
the middle of the round, probably not more than two

(01:07:40):
intentionally, you know, like you might deck out and have have
hit a third. But yeah, so, so fun.
So well, let me let me check in with you 2 on the first round
because you're you're like us. You didn't manage to get a
perfect score on on the first round, which was a real toughie

(01:08:08):
to say the least. So that was a a Magog one where
I put a whole bunch of limitations on what was going on
with Magog or Magog. Some of your points were tied to
your ability to not have Magog'schampion or two of your points
were tied to Magog not flipping over his his champion

(01:08:30):
environment. So you really had to avoid
taking those those counters, which is another one of those
reasons that protection, especially perfect defense
protection was, was valued pretty highly in this.
But yeah, I don't know if you want to because you, you ended
up playing the opposite aspects compared to what you did in
Round 2 based on the the decks that you submitted.

(01:08:53):
What maybe share a few thoughts on on that round?
Go ahead, Bruce. No, you probably, you're
probably going to leave that off, bud.
So similar principle of Gambit Alter Ego except in just swapped

(01:09:14):
aspects. The core of the the gambit
decks. Pretty much a basic deck with
with tech slots for whatever aspect you choose to put them
in. So not much different.
But the base principle is we didn't get, I audibled away from

(01:09:35):
protection. I made that decision or I made
that call and we agreed. And in doing that I made it
harder to handle Magog as a doing damage to us.
This was probably the one round that that would punish us the
most for that decision. I remember regretting not having

(01:09:59):
what's that team up card that we've been talking about this
whole podcast with the that gives you the toughs.
Oh, serve and protect. Yes.
It's not really a team up, but like, serve and protect, yeah.
Alliance No. Yeah, yes, Alliance, alliance,
yeah. But no, I like the whole time we

(01:10:20):
were doing, I was like, we couldhave had this, We could have had
serve and protect for this. But the the ability to have
access to the justice card that I am blanking, not chance
encounter the other one that cascades thwarting.

(01:10:47):
What do you mean Overwatch? Yes, Overwatch, thank you
because I failed. Yeah, I could.
I could see the picture but Brain was not mouthing.
Really paid off with cable just to be able to bounce off stuff.
It's kind of why we kind of joint agreed.
We had a discussion about one way or another in cable and we

(01:11:10):
felt like we were getting so many player side schemes that we
didn't really have time to thwart anything else.
Yes. I I know that feeling.
I'm sure you do. Yeah, but the round generally
speaking was trying to get, you know, a little bit of confuse on

(01:11:38):
the villain. Not too much, but it was hard
because he had steady due to theway the the scenario was set up
and stick Gambit and Alter Ego with Juggernaut on him.
And I think I'll mention this, Ithink this seems to have been
the common strategy was whoever took Juggernaut just stayed down
the first round. Right.

(01:11:58):
We didn't do that, believe it ornot, but people.
And hope to get a Sunfire early to get rid of the bazooka and
try and handle the boosts. One of the the other big
advantages of Gambit, as I kind of mentioned before, is just

(01:12:19):
using his thwart to see what's on top of the deck and what bad
boost may be coming. Yeah.
Really, really paid off in this round.
Like if you didn't want him to have Stalwart and retaliate yet,
OK, cool, we'll just get rid of that boost.
We'll we'll sacrifice that. We don't thwart any, but that's
probably the bigger play and it also made it better for ally

(01:12:43):
defense so you had less chance of the the random overkill
overkill. Yep.
From the top of the deck. Being out, yeah, having some
again, I was like my other game group that I play champions
with. We play three players, sometimes
4, and that top of deck manipulation is not nearly as

(01:13:08):
strong as like in a single player or two player game.
Yes. Like it's, it's shockingly
powerful to me. Yeah, it's it's very cool.
And hey, Speaking of Wiccan, Wiccan becomes Wiki becomes more

(01:13:29):
valuable because the the beautiful.
The other beautiful part about Gambit's ability is you could do
it out of turn because it's an action, rather than having to
like a regular thwart. Yes.
So I can set up the deck he can hit with Wiccan, or in our case
of this round, Cosmo, and get the full advantage of.

(01:13:54):
No one what's there? No one what's there?
Well, I, I have to say, I reallylove that you decided to do a
stay in alter ego aggression build.
That's not something that would have, would have occurred to me.
But, you know, based on the small splash of aspect cards

(01:14:17):
that you had in, in both cases, it was, you know, it makes
perfect sense because you were really playing around with the
meditation and mutant education and X-Men instruction pieces to
be able to do everything. But yeah, that that wouldn't
have occurred to me. So that's pretty.
That's pretty fun. I'm glad it worked out well.
Yeah, it it's actually relevant to the next round with

(01:14:41):
Crossbones. So the initial premise for this
deck actually came out of solo Champions League.
Oh, OK. The round had protection, it was
crossbones and I believe it was a protection a protection round
and I hero picked gambit specifically to stay in alter
ego but actually did it in protection.

(01:15:04):
And the base premise it isn't any different except you get Med
team which is really good when you're trying to heal a rogue.
Or, well, I guess Shadowcat didn't exist at that time, but
like an Angel to get that extra attack thwart tossed in there.

(01:15:29):
So guess what, more to come nextround.
More to come next round. Well, so you ended up getting 19
of 20 points. Where?
Where did your team lose your point?
The champion. Yeah, the champion flipped.
Eventually flipped. Yeah.
We beat, we managed to beat the the contenders flipping by by

(01:15:57):
like a turn and then as the at right after flipping the
contenders, just a wall of points came on to the champion.
I think in one round we got 7 oreight points on the champion

(01:16:17):
with everything that between thethe Magogs attack, what's the
what's the minion after the minion that comes out the
surprise contender, Yeah. Which I always think of
Mysterious Challenger because I played Hearthstone.

(01:16:38):
Yes, Surprise contender, Yeah. Yes, and then a number of
encounter cards that just almostactually lost this the game we I
think we ended with one or two points left, but in in a threat
of actually losing the game. Right, right.

(01:16:59):
Yeah. So your your strategy.
So I mean, this first round was you really had to figure out how
to not take too many attacks from Magog because the attacks,
well, sorry, attacks that resulted in damage because those
would give, give him his champions counters.

(01:17:22):
And so your, your strategy was, well, 50% of your characters
weren't going to take attacks because because the gambit was
going to be flipped down. Was there anything else that you
built in to to avoid that? Established perimeter.
Yeah, established a perimeter again.

(01:17:44):
Surprised me it wasn't in. Our yeah, yeah, yeah.
It wasn't in our initial build and I, I think we really just
like, we need some more ways to prevent damage.
And I ran Colossus, which I think initially I did not added
him in just kind of onesie twosie.

(01:18:07):
We we I think we could seed it early.
The contend that the Champions going to flip like we, we we had
no, we just we, we gave up that point.
We just didn't want to lose. Yeah, we we had a very similar

(01:18:28):
thing. We actually lost our first game
and then got 19 points in the second.
But that because it was our second game, it cost us a a
point as well. What did y'all Mulligan?
What did y'all a tutor do you? Remember.
Yes. So I got my helmet, yeah, which

(01:18:49):
is, which is obviously really valuable.
I do not remember what my son grabbed with Storm, honestly,
because I was so focused on how happy I was that I got to start
with the helmet. I didn't.
I don't think I cared about anything else that was going on
at that point. I was just like, oh, I got to
start with my helmet. My life is really good.
Yeah, no, like that's part of the upside of playing cable is

(01:19:10):
like with a little effort, we'rereally tutoring something first
turn if we build support or likeit's, it's like it's like
starting, it's like starting with a tutor with an extra step
or two. Agreed.
Agreed. Yeah, I think that's, I think
that's really neat the how how cable does that.
And again that there's an extra layer that through call for

(01:19:33):
backup you can you can be tacking through allies too even.
Yeah, neither of us have run Nick Fury so far.
Right. So that's a big thumbs up for
me. Uh huh.
Well, this These have not been great Nick Fury matchups either,
no. Not really.
The the there's, there's overkill and other things that

(01:19:55):
are, are a bit gnarly going backto the Juggernaut thing.
So the reason we didn't do Juggernaut is or we didn't leave
somebody down for Juggernaut is because Star Lord can get his
element gun on turn one with minimal concern That's
Juggernaut has. The way the game was set up,

(01:20:17):
Juggernaut came out on the firstturn and has tough and aid
health so so element gun takes it takes Juggernaut down to five
and then with Storm having her and I always forget what each of
the weather events is called butone of them gives everybody plus
one attack. So it's Thunderstorm.

(01:20:39):
Right. It just means from there Star
Lord needs to just attack and then you just need one ally
attack or or Storm to attack, which was that one was trickier
because because of the timing ofhow we did it, Storm was first.
No, no, I guess I would Storm. Yeah, Storm is usually first
player, but that's probably not right.

(01:21:00):
We probably had, I was first player, but anyway, it was not
trivial, but it was very straightforward for us to clear
Juggernaut on the first turn andwe could both flip up.
That's huge. Yeah, I don't think we ever
cleared him on 1st turn. Right.
Well-being able to pull out the element gun to get him down to
being just A5, basically a 5 health minion that you have to

(01:21:22):
deal with is obviously really, really helpful.
Yeah, Element Gun is a really good card.
Yes, agreed. So does that mean you ate an
encounter card almost every first turn?
Yeah, yeah. OK.
I was curious because it's it's not cheap.

(01:21:43):
You got to pay the three, and then you still got to pay a
resource to activate it. Yeah, I mean, this is another
reason why it was, it was trickyto get maximum points as well,
right, Because he was going to be taking extra encounter cards
means there's going to be extra tax that we actually had to deal
with and and Magog has two extratax cards in his deck.

(01:22:09):
And a tiny deck. Yeah, it's so small.
And, and, and a tiny deck. Exactly.
Yeah. So that was we, I mean we ended
up having to adopt A strategy of, you know, like I said, we
lost the first game, but we actually had to play it kind of
risky and assume that, you know,within our first three games,
one of them was going to go really well by playing it risky.

(01:22:32):
OK, that sounds so fun. It it was it was pretty fun.
So play the odds. Do you, I think that I asked
this last time we I was on the podcast, but do you do you and
son use tabletop or do y'all useor do y'all play with physical

(01:22:53):
cards? Oh.
No, we, we, we, we've been playing with physical cards.
And I know you 2 had been playing with physical cards, but
I don't know if you did this. Yeah, no, we're still, we're
still on physical cards. Yeah, yeah.
Which which I mean I, I enjoy, but for us scheduling is always
like a sometimes down to the wire.
I think round one, Brad and I, Was it the day of Brad?

(01:23:16):
Absolutely. Could not, could not get it done
ahead of time. Yeah, well, doing it with
somebody in your house is is nice because you can start
playing practice games pretty early and really, you know,
thinking in your downtime about how things went and how you
might like to change things and and that sort of thing.

(01:23:37):
Instead of where I know you 2, like you're just saying, have
had to kind of get together and really rush through the plays,
that you don't have that reflection built into it as
much. Yeah, and certainly the amount
of reflection we have had has helped.
But like, yeah, doing it like with someone in the same house,
I bet you that is a fun experience.

(01:23:59):
Also your kid really cool. Yes, that.
Well, that's also really fun andand having to let go and not try
to impose my own, all my own choices into into everything as
well. How old is Josh Junior?
19. OK, yeah, I, I the so kind of

(01:24:21):
heroes was like my first, I guess, big experience playing a
lot of multiplayer. Right.
And I, I admittedly struggled a good bit at the COD because I'm
so used to playing right. I'm so used to just playing solo
or two handed. And I, I play with Bruce's

(01:24:43):
playgroup occasionally, but it's, it's very slim and far few
between, I guess the right words.
So when people are doing stuff, it's like, OK, I can't no, just
hey, this is what's important tome right now, guys, let's see
who who can help. It's so hard that it's it's hard

(01:25:04):
to to adjust from that. But I really enjoy kind of
heroes that I'm super excited for next year.
Yes, announcement very forthcoming.
Yes, it should be. They normally announce right
around now I believe. Yes, on one of the servers in

(01:25:25):
one of the kind of Heroes channels, I can't remember who
which of the organizers said, but that about a week ago said
it was going to be coming in twoweeks, so.
Oh, excellent news. Before, certainly before the end
of the year. Excellent.
I'm going to try to make it thistime.
Or even before Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, that'll be awesome.

(01:25:46):
I was I was supposed to do it last time but had a had a bit of
a health scare. Right.
But that, that's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very fun.
Well, I'm going to, I'm going tosay thank you to both of you,
Brad and Bruce. And I love your alliterative
names for for joining again. And yeah, it's really, really

(01:26:11):
fun to hear about. Like I love the very gory
details of the deck building andall that stuff as as you know
Brad. So yes, very, very fun to talk
that. Yeah, and maybe so when we see
you at Kind of Heroes, you can join Brad and you can join Brad
and Bruce for Brenner. Oh yes?
Well, branch probably. That works too, yeah.

(01:26:37):
That works too. Yeah, I'm trying to decide what
my every Aspect hero is going tobe this year.
Oh nice, I have been strongly contemplating every aspect.
Spider Woman. What is, excuse me, what's in
every aspect, hero? Like bringing a deck in every
aspect of that hero. Yeah, the Spider woman's

(01:26:58):
interesting 'cause you could do actually every possible
combination. Oh yeah, you could build like 16
decks. And do nothing other than that.
Yeah, yes, yes, actually, man, that sounded pretty good.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's high on my list of things that I wanna
do. It's just gonna take a lot of
deck building, you know? How about Iceman?

(01:27:21):
How about Iceman? I really want Iceman to be more
exciting than I've so far seen him be.
Right? Right.
So all. Right.
Thank you for having us, Josh. That was a ton of fun.
An absolute pleasure. And listeners, thank you for
remaining tuned in to the point that we get to say goodbye to
you. And we'll, we'll catch you on
the next episode.