Aspect Expressions (Junkerman's Marvel Champions Blog)

Discarding Upgrades / Supports Don't you hate when you have to discard your hero upgrades, supports, or personas?  That feels game breaking.   Allies?  Meh, allies can get discarded, they're not really unique.    Problem:  hero upgrades, supports, and personas are really part of playing your hero.  They're flavorful and mostly functional.   Often, you might not get the good ones til the end of your deck.  Even that can have a bad feel -- like you didn't really get to play your hero.  Home rule proposal: If an encounter card, scheme, boost, minion, or villain effect makes you discard upgrades, supports, or personas in play, tuck that card under your hero upside down.  Then when you do the Recovery action in Alter Ego, put that card back in play.    This causes a strategic delay rather than breaking the game.  If your hero was already exhausted, or if the main scheme was closer to completing, this could be a ...

This spring I will be playing the Retcon home rule cards to test them out. Rocket / Aggression + Groot / Protection vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula  Pairing:  It's a classic pair.  I ran them for their Team-up cards.  I forgot how difficult Green Goblin can be.  I think he hit us with all his minions. Rocket got stunned at a bad time, we were on the ropes for a while.  At one point we had 5 minions facing us.  We were able to clear side schemes and attachments.  I deliberately passed up some opportunities for Groot to hit the villain for 10, in favor of building and controlling the board to get more play with the Retcon cards.  Last round, they were able to combine for 40 damage to flip GG and take him (and his minions) out.   Rocket:  He did most of the early thwarting.  Firepower works great with Rocket, as he can sometimes ready all his tech upgrades.  That's a plus.  On the downside, his Retcon card was on...

This came from a Reddit post by werdunloaded here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelchampionslcg/comments/1pfsijv/onecard_hero_fixes_retcons/ Of the ten presented, I really like these seven, and they don't change any of the original hero cards.  You keep everything original, and just add a card.  Note that the colors seem more washed out after printing than my custom cards.  Not sure why. Let's take a look at these. Hulk is an easy pick.  This is the original Hulk idea which got ported to Drax, due to FFG politics.  It fixes the alter ego hand size, about which the original creator commented.  This is definitely a more viable Hulk --might do better in a Flow Like Water Protection deck with more readies to defend and get hit. Rocket has a rather unremarkable retcon, it's mostly useful in solo play, but it clearly has multiplayer potential, especially with Groot to build up counters.  This might need a fix. Spectrum is moderately useful.  I ...

Wasp is one of my favorites, but some of her cards never sat right with me.   Giant Help  was the trigger for all this.  It just doesn't make sense the way  Wasp Sting  does.  Why would you ever play it in Tiny form?   The more I looked at it, her stats in each form are weird: way too low in Tiny form, way too high in Giant form.  And I figured out why.  I think they wanted Giant form to be 1 THW, 2 ATK, 3 DEF, but her Giant hero power doesn't make sense if her THW or ATK is only 1.  So they were cornered.  Unfortunately, my home rules ran into the same problem.  I wanted her to have 3 THW in tiny form, but then I had to change the helmet and the red room. Home Rules: Tiny form hero stats:   THW is now 3.   Wasp's Helmet:   Giant form: +1 ATK, Tiny form: ignore Guard and Patrol. Bio-Synthetic Wings:   Cost 1 Red Room Training:   Giant form: Gain retaliate 1, Tiny form: Gain +1 ATK and bas...

Just for Fun! Iron Man's Rocket Boots are an interesting part of his puzzle, but they're also redundant.  If you have both, you get an extra hit point, and it helps with your hand size, but otherwise the extra boot doesn't do anything.  This now adds: You get +1 hit point. Hero Action: Exhaust Rocket Boots and spend a (mental) resource ==> gain the Aerial trait until the end of the phase. Set Bonus: if you have both Rocket Boots in play, spend any resource ==> gain Aerial until the end of the round. This is totally just for fun to add a set bonus to the boots as a kicker (get it)...  This would help Iron Man if he's in Protection (playing aerial cards on the villain phase), but mainly, it just helps him gain aerial easier.  Also, this might make cards like Honed Technique, which require a mental resource, easier to use.  Another option here might be to have an extra effect happen if you spend 2 mental resources (one for each boot).

Black Widow - Justice  +  Rocket - Aggression  vs Crossbones Just for fun!  I just wanted a fun playthrough with some older heroes to start the break.  I might play a few more RoRS villains with similar hero combinations.  Plus I want to test Adam Warlock with the flippy Counter Earth.   Pairing:   Black Widow almost feels like a protection deck.  She blocks so much damage and bad stuff.  Rocket was a slow build, but things happened in order.  Lots of control until they got built out, that's always a nice feel.  I like Crossbones.  He's easy-ish for my decks, but he has those nice weapons which mess with you, and lots of minions with special abilities.  Natasha and Rocket were able to prevent the main scheme from advancing for a while, but it's so short with 3 per player, that eventually, the encounter deck advanced it.  Rocket handled almost all of the minions.  I held back on Rocket's Pistol , but tha...

Angel / Protection + Psylocke / Justice vs Ebony Maw Ebony Maw:   I like how the spells give you time to plan.  They're powerful, but they don't fire off immediately.  We exploited his weakness --stuns and confuses.  This mostly prevents him from activating his spells.  Only one spell triggered (Fireball on Psylock), and they were able to slow down the rest.  At the end, there were 7 untriggered spells on the board, although 5 only had one more counter on them.  That would have been ugly: stunned, confused, take damage, discard from your hand...  Whew!  The main scheme puts spells into play immediately.   Protection and Justice are usually a weak pairing, but they handled the main scheme + one side scheme easily.  Only one minion came out.  Neither hero made it through their decks, or got fully built out.  This was a strong win. Angel:   I mean he's so good in Protection.  He flipped between Ange...

Mental Paralysis is widely thought to be a dead card.  It's hard to find anyone who has ever used it.  This is the essence of bad hero design.  Useless cards.  Looking at Marvel CDB, one reviewer had 40 playthroughs with Phoenix, and zero uses of Mental Paralysis.  We need another home rule.    Restrained needs some love, but I like how Unleashed affects her cards, so I'm doing that with the home rule. Attach to an enemy, treat an enemy's attachment as blank. If you have the Unleashed trait, discard Mental Paralysis ==> discard an enemy attachment / weapon, and confuse that enemy. Is this too powerful?  Well, it depends on the villain.  Ronan's weapon comes to mind, but it d epends on the attachment.  The key here is that attachments are hard to get rid of.  They often require you to spend 2-3 specific resources (this is also 3 total resources, but you can spend any 3).  This can blank an attachment which can't be discarded ...