MC Spring Break Playthroughs

Spring Break 2024

Black Widow - Justice + Valkyrie - Aggression vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula

Pairing:  What a team!  Wow!  All Natasha has to do is thwart, and make sure Val doesn’t get stunned.  Natasha has so many prep cards (I added a few extra in her deck).  For slamming on Green Goblin (GG) it was a slow build.  But in terms of controlling the board, right out of the gate, Val killed both minions (they’re out in setup), and Black Widow cleared all the threat.  The whole game was like that.  GG would throw a ton of crap at us, BW would discard half of it with preps, then clear threat, and Val would kill all the minions –all while building up for the big battle. Maybe it was just BW and Val, but they didn’t need any Protection or Leadership.  These two just owned the board.  GG Mutagen Formula brings out lots of minions, so that’s what drove my pick for Val.  BW reminds me of how Captain America doesn’t need the Protection aspect in order to do good protection.  BW’s prep cards do a lot to shut down the villain.  I probably should have flipped BW to Alter Ego more often, but she did great...

Valkyrie:  I’m in the Valkyrie fan club!  She is a minion cruncher!  All those forums which rate her as the LOWEST of all heroes, they’re smoking crack.  I agree with D20 Woodworking, I’m rating her as a TOP tier hero out of the box.  Save those cards for Death Glow!  Remember, it’s normally out of play, but it still costs one to bring into play --which means she has one hand size larger for playing Death Glow.  Pretty early on, Val was hitting for 5 (with Death Glow).  She cleared four minions and hit the villain, all in one round.  She didn’t have too many big rounds against GG, but if you’re worried about minions, she’s your hero…  Wow.  Did I mention the cheap allies for blocking?  Wow.

Black Widow:  Great board control with those prep cards.  Allies were fun –they do a little, then block.  BW saved Val from several bad treachery cards, and blocked three horrible boosts (one triple threat, and two double attack).  She also stunned two minions, which actually helps with GG, because the minions often come out during boost rounds, then activate that same round (but they got auto-stunned by Widow’s Bite). ⇒ So even the stuff you can’t normally block, BW can block it…  She can also defend, then ready after using a prep card (with the Synth Suit).  

Venom-Justice + Hawkeye-Leadership vs The Klaw

Pairing: These two were great. Both of these heroes have aggressive abilities with damage, stun, and confuse. Hawkeye only flipped once, and Venom flipped almost every round. Hawkeye used allies with toughness to block. This worked for most of the game. Venom had a lot of confuse powers, and was able to thwart the main scheme. The schemes never had a chance.

Confusion: totally worth the expense. It encourages your hero to flip to Alter Ego –because you prevent the villain from attacking and scheming… Wait, that’s not all! You get a larger hand next turn, you can heal, you can activate Alter Ego powers, and it’s team friendly: it doesn’t matter who flips.

Venom:  Venom flipped a lot to use Project Rebirth 2.0.  That’s a nice card.  Venom never defended, he just took hits, thwarted, dealt out damage, confused the villain, and flipped to heal.  His Multigun reminds me of Wakanda Forever –it’s very versatile.

Hawkeye: Only flipped once at the end.  His allies mostly blocked for him; he definitely benefits from Leadership.  In fact, I would only play him in Aggression if you had another hero in Protection; he’s too squishy.  Hawkeye’s Quiver was sooo nice.  Pick whatever arrow you want: you end up with a whole selection.  And you can shoot twice thanks to Hawkeye’s hero power.  They were able to bypass retaliate damage with his bow. 

Spider Man - Protection + Gamora - Aggression vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula

Pairing:

The main scheme advanced too quickly, and went to stage two before they could get it under control.  GGMF has a lot of minions --gave Spidey a real run for his money trying to handle defense. They got hit early, but in general, Protection + Aggression is a great combo.

Spidey

Didn’t need to defend as much as I thought –it seems to come in waves, as allies block and go back to the discard pile.  One round, Spidey’s defense really saved the game because he double-defended (with a ready card), then the villain got a minion and two extra attacks from the encounter deck. That hurt, but would have been really bad without the double-defend that turn.  Protection feels a lot like leadership with team upgrades, and allies, but having Spidey block for 4 when you need it, is really nice.  Protection also has that nice Med-Team card (healing) which is super helpful.  With the 1.5 rules, Protection got a little better, because you can just declare that you’re defending, and play defense cards all day to help a team-member. 

Gamora 
Did most of the damage, and easily handled all the side schemes. She has more of a hybrid feel than I thought. I added several odd cards into her deck, including some ordinarily bad cards, like Hit and Run. I love that her hero power activates once per phase, consequently, I added the ordinarily lame card Emergency, which triggers on the villain phase --0 cost for 1 Thwart, and 1 Damage. I just love maximizing her hero powers.

Vision - Justice + Hawkeye - Leadership vs Klaw (Doomsday Chair) Difficulty 1.x

Pairing

Great combo.  Hawkeye did most of the damage, and Vision really controlled the threat, while handling minions.  The Doomsday minions have retaliate 2.  That’s why Hawkeye’s bow is so nice –ranged attacks avoid retaliate.  Vision had a lot of indirect damage to avoid it as well.  Vision’s Phase Disruption got played twice to discard some nasty upgrades on Klaw (which would have cost 3 resources to discard).  This kept Hawkeye free to build up more.  

Vision

I flipped Vision & Form (Dense / Intangible) a lot to see how it played.  There were several times Klaw was confused, so there were plenty of opportunities to flip to Alter Ego.  Timing Vision’s Intangible to work with Alter Ego for the extra card added to the puzzle nature of the game.  It seems you want to mix it up. Intangible in hero form gets you a damage reduction of 2.  That’s nice as well, because you just don’t defend, maybe take a little damage, and stay ready for the next round.  Intangible also lets you ignore most minion attacks, as well as retaliate damage.  For my money, you want to switch form every round, but switch to Alter Ego less often.

Hawkeye

Once he has his quiver and resource generators out, he’s an arrow-shooting machine.  His Leadership deck is mostly a voltron build (upgrading allies).  This adds plenty of damage + blocks so he doesn’t have to defend.  Avoiding retaliate was super-helpful as well.  For multiplayer, it would be fun to switch him to Aggression (glass cannon), but I'm leaving him in Leadership, to make sure that when someone grabs him out of the box on Game night, he's playable no matter what other heroes get played on the team.

Note on difficulty levels:  technically there are 4.x levels of difficulty.

1. Villain I-II, standard deck.

2. Villain II-III, standard deck.

3. Villain I-II, expert deck.

4. Villain II-III, expert deck.

      0.x.  Switching in different themed encounter decks.

I’m starting to work through these, along with the X factor.  I discovered that many players add in extra themed encounter decks to upscale the deck size for higher player counts.  This seems to work without changing the difficulty level too much (adding that fractional .x difficulty into the mix)...

Black Panther - Protection + Iron Man - Aggression vs Rhino (Legions of Hydra) Difficulty 1.x

Pairing

Great team.  Legions of Hydra is definitely harder.  The heroes got hit with some early minions which they couldn’t clear til next round.  Black Panther’s defending + retaliate really helped there.  Black Panther hit Wakanda Forever at least four times to keep things under control.  Of course with Iron Man, we know he’s a slow starter.  That's scary, because Rhino’s scheme doesn’t flip --you just lose. 

Black Panther

Black Panther kept defending, thwarting, and playing allies; he really held the early game, and only flipped once the whole game. After a rough start, they both worked Rhino I down to 1hp (but he had two ugly schemes, two nasty upgrades, and a tough status).  Mockingbird broke the tough status.  Wakanda Forever flipped him, and did four more -taking Rhino II to 26. 

Iron Man

Iron Man was in Tony Stark mode for the first three rounds, as he slowly built up. Once Rhino flipped, Iron Man completely cleaned up.  Two (aerial) Supersonic Punches for 16.  Repulsor Beam for 7 (kinda lucky there).  Iron Man attacked twice for 4.  That’s 27 damage in one round. Ka-smacka!  And he still had a ready ally.  Iron Man is just so powerful, once he gets going.  Rhino didn’t even get to use his snazzy upgrades.  I almost never use Iron Man’s Repulsor Beams, but since it was a fun gamble, near the end, I just went for it.

Captain America - Leadership + Spider Woman - Justice Aggression vs Rhino Difficulty 2 (expert villain, standard deck, standard module).

 

Pairing:

What a team.  I was worried about the main scheme initially.  These two had it more than covered.  I forgot that Rhino has fewer side schemes and minions.  I just wanted to try the tougher Rhino.  The early game, they were doing consistent damage every turn.  When you flip to Rhino III, he stuns all heroes, and his attack goes to four plus a boost.  No problem.  Cap was just boosting allies.  Cap got one big Avengers Assemble in after using the Quinjet to help get two more allies out.  They did 2+2+1+1 (AA) +3+3+2+2 for 16 damage.  Next round we tried to finish him off; Spider Woman got him down to 1hp.  This was a hilarious ending –villain phase, Rhino attacked Cap… …and died from the retaliate damage.  Yeah baby.  Cap’s shield took him down!  There’s some kind of epic “IN YOUR FACE” about winning on the villain phase.  Might be my favorite win so far.

 

Captain America:

A solid choice.  I thought I might have to defend against some big hits, Cap did great.  The allies came out late, but -eh- it worked.  I used Cap’s hero power twice when Rhino came out with more attacks after Cap had already blocked.  His hero power is great in the early game.  Captain America’s Shield must have done at least 12 damage over the game with retaliate.

 

Spider Woman:

Great stuns and confuses, great thwart, consistent damage.  She flipped twice to take advantage of the confused Rhino.  She got stunned twice, and her obligation came out, so she didn’t have quite as aggressive a game.  She was 3, 3, 3 almost every round from playing two different aspect cards.