Hey everybody,
It’s been another week of Marvel Champions, and I’m once more giving some garbled thoughts on my various plays! I’ve had some more card sleeves delivered this week, so have been able to sleeve up some more heroes, which is always a great way to reinvigorate the game. I’ve now got Ms Marvel and Hulk sleeved, the latter is the original precon whereas Ms Marvel has a more varied build. I’ve also been re-thinking Spectrum, as she is a hero I’ve tried a couple of times but never seem to get much out of her.
Ms Marvel was one of the first decks that I bought after the core set, as I had heard how important her Protection cards are for the game, particularly for the Protection aspect in the immediate aftermath of the core set. Well, I had no interest in her as a character, but with the recent hubbub around the new The Marvels movie, I thought I would try her out. It’s not a strict rebuild of her deck, as I said before. However, she has the Champion keyword, which is interesting, so I was able to use some of those cards for a bit of synergy.
On the whole, I don’t dislike the deck, but I don’t think I’ve found the best build for her yet. There are a couple of cards in here that I can see would be very good and useful, but I just haven’t seen them come into their own yet. I have thrown a lot of neutral allies in the deck, which I think could be pared-back a bit more. The trouble is, I have so many decks permanently set-up now that my card pool for building new ones is quite sparse! I might have another fiddle around with it and try it out again, of course, but so far, she’s merely fine.
I’ve continued to play Spider-Woman, who most players seem to agree is one of the most powerful heroes in the game, and I can kinda see why! Her ability to build a deck with two aspects is very good, of course, and the bonuses she can get from playing each colour only serve to make her stronger. I think I’ve played 3 or 4 games with her now, and I have had some explosive turns with her in each game. In fact, I think in each game she’s been pretty pivotal to the overall victory.
The biggest news, though, is my game with the Hulk pre-con. Hulk has been decried as one of the worst preconstructed decks in the entire game, principally due to his hand size of 4, and most of his cards either being too expensive, or overly-relying on the red physical resource. While I did buy the deck in the summer and have kept it without stripping it for parts, I hadn’t really been thinking much about it until the last few days.
Now, let’s not beat around the bush here. Hulk is a beast. Even with a hand size of 4, I was able to do something like 18 points of damage to Crossbones in a single turn, which was amazing, but as the game went on, I could definitely see how he doesn’t really work very well with doing anything else. There are some amazing cards in the deck, of course, and any card that lets you do +10 damage needs to be taken notice of! However, it’s the hand size that is a constant disappointment, I feel!
There is a lot of negativity around his deck though, and from what I have been able to glean, it comes from the fact he was altered after the playtesting period had closed, with some pretty big nerfs being applied. As such, he does feel quite difficult to play – in comparison to other heroes, where you might be doing two or three things on your turn, Hulk seems pretty much only able to do one thing on his turn. Now, dealing 18 points of damage to a villain is a big deal, don’t get me wrong, and it seems like FFG wanted him to be about one huge turn. But if you draw poorly, you’re kinda stuck with mostly having a mediocre turn. Especially because of his hero ability which forces you to discard your hand. I get that they were going for a “no forward planning” feel to him with this, but later heroes have implemented bonuses for similar effects, such as dealing damage for cards discarded, or whatever.
Playing Hulk can be weird. The combination of expensive cards, small hand size, and forced discard of hand all mounts up to what can sometimes be a disappointing experience. If you draw well, you can actually win in two turns when playing solo – Limitless Strength & Hulk Smash for 13 damage, (anything) and Toe to Toe for an additional 5 damage, rinse and repeat. If you don’t draw those things, of course, that’s where it can become an uphill struggle. There are some interesting cards in his deck, I particularly like “You’ll Pay For That!” for allowing you to thwart equal to the damage you have taken from an attack, because otherwise Hulk is not removing any threat thanks to his 0 THW value.
I still like his deck, of course, and I’ve made a couple of swaps, putting in Brute Force and Combat Training to increase his base attack stat, so even without the trick cards like Hulk Smash, I should still be making a significant impact each game. So I’m definitely going to look at playing him some more, I don’t think he deserves all of the hate, but I don’t know how long I’m willing to play without house rules – a lot of people seem to agree the easiest to implement is to give him a hand size of 5 rather than 4, or even have Bruce with a hand of 6 rather than 5, which is definitely the easiest to do. There are some interviews out there that suggest Michael Boggs, the lead designer, has said some of his cards are overcosted, but I don’t really want to play with a list next to me of all the changes I’d need to make.
I’ve also been re-discovering Ghost Spider, who I’d only played with once previously. She’s a really powerful hero, as well – she has some strong attack and defense cards, but I think what makes her strong as a hero is the ability to ready whenever a response or interrupt effect triggers on an event. She also has tech to allow her to draw cards off these triggers, but all in all, she’s a surprisingly strong hero that I hadn’t really considered very much.
However, this should probably be no real surprise, as I have so many heroes for this game now. Even after rotating a few for some variety, there are still 20+ heroes sleeved up and ready to go. I’ve come to realise, though, that forcing myself to play with under-played heroes and/or villains isn’t necessarily the way to go, as it’s meant to be a game that is played to be enjoyed. If I’m not enjoying it, then why bother? I can sit through a game with Adam Warlock or Valkyrie, just because I haven’t played those heroes very often, or I can be actively engaged in a game with Spider-Man or Captain America. So I’m trying to focus less on playing those forgotten heroes simply to get their numbers up, and instead I’m looking for interesting match-ups and stuff. So far, it’s definitely working to reinvigorate my interest in the game, as I have been playing it almost to the exclusion of everything else this month!
spalanz.com