Deck of the Week is a miniseries from KennedyHawk on the MCM team. After a break we are back with Deck of the Week for the next four weeks covering core set heroes with the new expanded cardpool! This week Black Panther / Protection!
Welcome to Marvel Champions Monthly: a fan podcast about the game Marvel Champions! Join Kennedy, Attercop, Crimson and Amerikano as we talk about the latest hero pack release – Agent Venom!
Welcome to Marvel Champions Monthly: a fan podcast about the game Marvel Champions! Join Kennedy, Attercop, and Amerikano on this experimental episode as we theory craft hypothetical variants for future Champions expansions. This episodes topic: Legacy Games.
Courtesy of our friends at FFG we have been provided with a spoiler card or actually two to show for the upcoming Mad Titan’s Shadow release. We are very appreciative of the chance to play these spoilers so we were determined to find a fun way to present them to you all. I hope this isn’t trolling the audience too much but we’ve come up with a Top 5 list. The Top 5 ways a Determined player can Troll their teammates.
Yes, Marvel Champions is a co-op game but a lot of use like to clown each other especially against villains who allow it. Both of our spoiler cards have some great meme potential. Let’s look at some of the best ways to troll your fellow players.
5. Ignore optional triggers – regardless of common sense – but always for your own cool combo.
5. Ignore optional triggers – regardless of common sense – but always for your own cool combo.
Let’s get right to the spoilers. One of the cards we have to present is Determination. a new Justice resource. I hope we get one of these for each aspect!
This card contains an optional effect. I love getting my combos to work sometimes at the determent to the team. We had a particularly troll-full on theme Guardians game a few weeks back where Rocket kept killing minions in front of Venom (who was running a ton of aggression/minion tech) which led to a ton of dead cards in his hand. But oh so much card draw for the trash panda. This card is very strong and is sure to help a ton of Justice decks. You’ll be spending this prior to an effect going off so you can use it to help set up Clear the Area and other shenanigans. This threat removal gets around Patrol but not Crisis icons!
4. Steal allies from each other’s discard
4. Steal allies from each other’s discard
There’s nothing quite like some good old core-set grief. One of my favorite moves as Leadership Iron Man is to steal Shuri from Black Panthers discard to get my tech upgrades going. Bonus points if this is just before T’Challa shuffles as you can now use Shuri over and over while they wait to shuffle her back in. No doubt – Make the Call can be super mean! There are some pro allies to steal: Shuri, Captain Marvel, Nick Fury all come to mind. It can be incredibly frustrating when this happens but often it’s for the greater good.
3. lol Hulk
3. Grief players with an energy-Hulk ally deck
Speaking of the core set. Let’s not forgot the first grief ally in the game. Hulk! I remember the first time I thought it was cute to run Hulk with a ton of energy resources to wipe out fields of Ultron Drones. I also remember killing many other heroes and allies along the way. You can make a totally silly Hulk deck focused on Hulk AOE. Just don’t bring it to my table at Gencon!
2. Heal the villain with First Aid
2. Heal the villain with First Aid
Fun fact – First aid allows players to heal the villain or minions in play. Why would you want to? Good question? Maybe someones about the eliminate a minion but you want them to top. Request and action and heal that Sandman to full health! Maybe you want to grind it out against Taskmaster to get all those kidnapped allies – but you can’t apply your status conditions without dealing some damage (e.g. Sonic Arrow). No problem, heal that villain and bring out your inner Punisher! Especially fun when players are low on health and could use the aid better!
1. Troll with the Troll
Troll with a real troll!
Finally our other spoiler card. Pip the Troll.
While Adam’s signature ally doesn’t support an amazing body (1/1/2 stat line). He has an amazing cost and some out of this world abilities! First Pip comes in with a tough status card. He also comes in during the villain phase. So you can not only draw into him but throw him on the table to block with his tough card without fear of something else removing it. You can troll your fellow heroes so hard with this card. AND YOU SHOULD – he’s a troll after all. Scenario: Thanos attacks a hero with a base 4-7 ATK (we assume) you have the option to play Pip but no one needs to know. Then – you realize a lone Hydra Bomber could defeat your Protection Player friend, simply throw Pip down to block that Hydra bomber and see their reaction (it’s sure to be pleasant). Pip is one of the strongest signature allies in the game and is good news for design going forward. Powerful allies with unique abilities are some of my favorite parts of Marvel Champions and I hope we continue to see allies made with neat unique abilities. We wanted to get these spoilers out to the community ASAP but you can bet we will discuss them both in our next MCM episode!
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Sadly – Red Skull himself – hacked into our e-mail servers and was releasing puzzle pieces for this spoiler all day on discord. A dedicated crew on the discord today was able to decipher Pip’s ability and identity even with Determination puzzle pieces thrown in the mix. Special shout-out to Snuggles who was piecing it all together. You can see the gears turning in the image below!
Deck of the Week is a miniseries from KennedyHawk on the MCM team. Each week I’ll overview a deck, do a write-up on marvelcdb and hopefully record some gameplay videos for the future. This issue we will talk all about a revisit to my Black Widow Protection heroic clearing deck. It’s a very fun deck where you try to soak multiple attacks per villain phase!
Welcome to Marvel Champions Monthly: a fan podcast about the game Marvel Champions! Join Kennedy, Attercop, Amerikano and Crimson on a 2-part adventure. We’ll be revealing and over viewing this year’s “Smash-Up” decks. Like last year these decks are meant to be played with any hero for a fun, thematic battle in a game of Marvel Champions. This week we go over 2 protection and 2 justice decks – as a bonus you can build all 8 of these decks with one collection!
KennedyHawk here! I wanted to provide a brief update on the next Volume of Villainous Returns! You may recall the first volume focused on injecting some new life into the Marvel Champions coreset. The strive in this series is to provide campaigns with monthly content (about 4-5 months on and 2-3 months off) that enhances the awesome cards that FFG puts out. Remember – this is complete custom and fan-made but integrates in a fun way with official Marvel Champions content. The content provided via Villainous Returns is always freely available as print and play either here or on the MCM Discord!
As we prepare to launch Villainous Returns Volume 2 I was encouraged to provide some designer insights – so I’ll be doing 1-2 articles a month to preview the content and let you know what’s coming up. I couldn’t complete This first article without giving people something to print and play – so I’m also previewing and releasing a stand-alone mode set at the bottom of the article. For this Volume of our custom campaign I’m teaming up with infamous fan/custom developer Designhacker. So expect to see his beautiful aesthetics along with his truly ingenious design all throughout the campaign!
Villainous Returns Volume 2 intends to add content that intermingles with the first two scenario packs and the first campaign box. You’ll find yourself fighting against both Green Goblin Scenarios, the Wrecking Crew, and a few villains from the Red Skull box. Just like Volume 1 heroes will move onto the next scenario win or lose, so you won’t be stuck fighting the same villain over and over. Today’s article focuses on the villains in the first mission – the Wrecking Crew. As always the card you see here may not be the final version we are still testing the scenario out and going through an internal and external wording audit!
One common complaint about the Wrecking Crew is that the players have TOO much control. They can almost decide who the active villain is and belittle the scenario. The first scenario Wrecking Crew Redux intends to fix that. Setup begins like normal but the crew is trying out some new tactics as they are Breakin’ & Escapin’.
The threat threshold is lowered to a reasonable number for player counts 1-4. In addition there is a new mechanic the Redux deck. This is created by the environment Wrecking Havoc which is placed at setup. This environment creates a deck of 4 cards – one associated with each Wrecking Crew member. Each card provides a different static buff to the active villain and these cards act as a randomizer to determine the active villain each round. You’ll never quite know which crew member is coming at you each round. Each villain has 3 different passive buffs (one for each villain is shuffled into the Redux deck). This allows players to customize their experience with the easier or harder buffs or fully randomize it by selecting one random environment for each villains.
What happens to these environments when a crew member suffers an inevitable defeat? Why they stay out the whole game. Players will now need to think carefully about which crew member they take out first. This is something that SHOULD be in the player’s control. Not who is punching at them when.
As if that wasn’t enough – each crew member has a new modular set that is mixed into their villain deck. For this first scenario you’ll only be shuffling in cards 2-5 but fear not each crew member headlines their own modular set like Wrecker and these modular sets can be used with other villains like those we covered in Villainous Returns Volume 1. I hope you are excited to see the Wrecking Crew throughout the campaign because after the first scenario each player will randomly select a crew member modular to become their Nemesis minion set for the rest of the campaign! Prepare to Eat Crowbar. The goal here was to capture an aspect of each Wrecking Crew member and have them haunt you throughout your games as in the comics these goons just keep popping back up!
So this seems like things could get out of control pretty quickly. Next Sunday I’ll have another article highlighting the campaign reward system and what new toys our heroes will get to fight these pumped up villains. In the meantime be sure to play and complete Villainous Returns Volume 1 as each player will earn their team a bonus just for having played the last campaign (win or lose)! Expect Volume 2 to kick off in full in mid-to-late August!
Alright – that’s enough about the upcoming campaign. I wanted to offer players something to sink their teeth into. Unrelated to Volume 2 of the campaign I’ve been working on some “helper” modular sets and this first one focuses on how to help players out during Galaxy’s Most Wanted. It’s a seven card modular set that is ready to print and play and allows any character to team-up with Captain Marvel on a Cosmic Adventure! This set is available for print and play right now in this PDF.
The goal here is to give player’s a fighting chance against some of the tougher villains. You’ll start with an ally in play Captain Marvel (Cosmic Force). She will move around the table with the first player token much like she’s flying outside the Milano but can also aide players in the Collector’s museum! Carol is a powerful ally with 2 ATK and 2 THW. She can even block in a pinch but be careful; if she takes too much damage you’ll be forced to flip her to a weaker state and deal yourself an encounter card (this card goes to Captain Marvel’s controller the first player).
In addition to this ally you’ll shuffle 6 cards into the encounter deck. These cards all offer a bonus to the player controlling Captain Marvel and sometimes offer a double-edged sword (such as stunning both the revealing player and the villain. Carol is there to help the heroes and give them a better Warning. just before a villain attack or surge occurs. Be careful though Doctor Minn-Erva is here and prepared to stop Carol but she will provide a burst of power to the first player when this minion is defeated.
Wait! What is a player going to do if they want to play as Captain Marvel from the core [email protected] Well, luckily the amazing writers at Marvel have created a whole multiverse of sorts and the Captain Marvel in this modular set can just come from a different multiverse. Dang variants! This modular set will hopefully breathe some new life into your Galaxy’s Most Wanted campaign as you await both the official Mad Titan’s Shadow release and the release of Volume 2 of our custom campaign! I hope you enjoyed this look into my brain as I cook up fun custom/fan sets to enhance my Marvel Champions experience!
Deck of the Week is a miniseries from KennedyHawk on the MCM team. Each week I’ll overview a deck, do a write-up on marvelcdb and hopefully record some gameplay videos for the future. This issue we will talk all about Wasp / Aggression and overkill multipliers! Let’s Math it Up!
