Summer Playthroughs
Phoenix - Justice + Cyclops - Leadership vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula
Leadership and Justice usually pair well together. X-men tend to pair well with other X-men. And of course, Jean Gray pairs with Scott Summers. Tons of thwart early on. The board state was well handled - schemes were absolutely no problem. This was definitely a big ally game. Utopia was used to ready Phoenix every time. Scott’s nemesis came out and caused some problems, but Scott flipped, and Jean confused him. After Green Goblin flipped, Cyclops dropped Exploit Weakness on him and with all the readies and allies, it did an additional 10 damage. That’s amazing. They knocked GG down to 4, then they did 2 retaliate –so close… After drawing seven encounter cards, they finished him off. GG didn’t make it through his deck, though, so that’s always a good test.
Phoenix
Jean never flipped. Early on she is great with 3 THW, then she becomes unleashed to get 3 ATK. The pacing on this is great. You need early thwart, and you need late damage. Team Building Exercise came out late, but otherwise Jean was able to use Scott’s Danger Room to add her own training upgrades. Once Phoenix becomes unleashed, it’s relatively easy to keep her unleashed with her hero and teamwork cards.
Cyclops
Scott flipped every round to get a bigger hand, and to activate his upgrades. The Ricochet Beam was nice for this scenario. There was so much damage flying around, he didn’t really need to place many tactics. I think my favorite was Priority Target –it got Jean a few extra cards at the right time... Danger Room and Xmansion are ridiculous, as long as you’re flipping to use them. I actually think I overbuilt Cyclops. He has a lot of upgrades, I lost track a few times. I’m moving a few upgrades out of his deck to other heroes who might need it.
Psylocke - Justice + Cable Leadership vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula
Leadership and Justice usually pair well together. X-Force tend to pair well with other X-men. And of course, Psionic pair together. No shortage of thwart here. Both flipped almost every round to take advantage of supports and higher hand sizes. They started strong, then Cable got double attacked and had to flip. Once they had some confuses, toughs, and allies out, things went smoothly. Cable ended up with 8 side schemes in the victory display. Last round, they flipped GG, and the race was on. Cable did 14 damage with Telekinetic Blast + 2 with the Psimitar. Then added three allies into the fight for another 6. GG had 14hp left for Psylocke to finish. Float Like a Butterfly came in handy. She got a confuse out, and hit for 6 with Directed Force and both Katanas, Angel hit for 3, then she used the Xbunker to search (the top 8 cards of her deck) and pulled out her teamwork card to ready her and Angel. Psylocke hit for another 4 and Angel hit for another 3 ⇒ Boom! They didn’t have to draw 6 encounter cards… I didn’t think they could make it, but this was even more a group effort than Jean and Scott. Cable’s Mission Leader brought so many cards onto the table.
Psylocke
So many confuses! This led to her flipping almost every round (plus her hero hand size is 4 while her alter ego is 6). They both had the schemes so under control, that they just ran out of things to do, and started damaging Green Goblin. Psylocke did damage almost every round. She’s definitely a versatile puzzle, maybe more than Domino. She can confuse almost every attack, but she doesn’t have any big hits like other heroes.
Cable
Cable flipped often to use Professor. Once he had Uncanny X-Force up, schemes were easy. Cable readied almost every round with his power. I started with the Build for Support side scheme, then I got lucky that his obligation came out to put Technovirus Purge on the board. Fantomex was interesting, as he could heal consequential damage with EVA. This worked well when I added a Sidearm. I had never played him before.
Nova - Aggression + Ironheart - Leadership vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula
This was on par with X-23 and Storm. Dominating is the word. Green Goblin barely got through half his deck. Heck, Nova and Ironheart didn’t even get through their decks, and didn’t get built all the way out. We did the home rule for Caught Off Guard, which showed up early on Ironheart. The option wasn’t worth it, so she discarded Tony Stark AI. I may make the option one cheaper because you still have to draw an encounter card. Not sure.
Nova
Holy Cow! This is the best opening I’ve ever seen from a hero. Thanks to Unleash Nova Force, he drew 14 cards, cleared the board. Killed both minions, cleared the threat, hit the villain for 2, and played three upgrades. Honed Technique came out right before the last round. He played Locust to block and grab Dive Bomb for the final round.
Ironheart
She did great. I forgot her hand size is only 4 on version 1. She added progress tokens every round thanks to Ingenuity and Brawn. Go For Champions came out mid game, and they took full advantage. She barely made it to version 3 when we flipped Green Goblin and she threw Go All Out for 10 damage along with a Photon Beam and a few ally attacks.
Hulk - Aggression + Black Widow - Justice vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula
Oh boy Natasha! Now ve go to find Moose and Squirrel! Oh sorry, that was Boris and Natasha, not Bruce and Natasha. Wrong team. This was absolutely thematic. Hulk did no thwart for the whole game, and Black Widow fought no minions. Early, the main scheme almost advanced, as both Bruce and Natasha were flipping a lot. Justice and Aggression are usually a volatile mix, but if there's one hero who doesn't need protection, it's Hulk. Mid game, Hulk had no other plays, so when Hulk doesn’t know what to do –Hulk Smash! He hit for 13 –overkill on a tough minion. End game was weird. Green Goblin flipped and gave them each 3 encounter cards. Black Widow used her preparations like crazy, blocking almost all of them and doing an extra 7 damage. Then she threw Dance of Death. Hulk had flipped to set up. Hulk drew both Crushing Blows, both Unstoppable Force cards, and he had a ready from Black Widow. His ATK was 4, so he did 24 damage from 6 attacks. That’s crazy.
Hulk
I love the house rules for Bruce Banner. That worked great, and felt great. Banner’s Lab came into play, but never got used, except for one recovery (for 8hp total). It might work if it comes out early, but mid-late game Hulk just wants to be Hulk. I want this to work in hero form, but thematically it doesn’t make sense. I might just leave it, as part of the broken old Hulk’s nostalgia. Hulk’s Wreckless home rule worked fine; he only did 2 damage with it, but it felt so much better to do SOMETHING. Unstoppable Force is much better drawing two cards instead of one. Hulk maxed out at 25 hp. That’s insane. I just let him get hit. I’m still not happy with Thunderclap; he did use it (with no minions) just to stun the villain. I want it to be a multi-target stun. No hero has that, and it fits Hulk, but I don’t want it to be OP. I’m thinking that it could be “stun 3 enemies and deal 1 damage to them.” That would plink toughness. She Hulk’s Ground Stomp is 2 cost to do 1 damage to each enemy.
Black Widow
Playing Natasha in Justice is kind of like playing hybrid Protection. She protects the team from a lot of bad stuff. Hulk didn't need much defending, but if a 5hp goblin soldier came out, Widow's bite would knock it down to 3hp and stun it. Hulk would finish it off with an easy attack. Dance of Death is a sub-optimal card, but I agree with the reviews, in the end game, it just gets thrown because you need to do damage. Black Widow just has so much control. She got a few confuses out –confusion is much better than stun. She had like eight preparation cards out at the end. Mid game, she stopped Shadows of the Past from coming out, she stopped two minions from coming out on boost, she stopped a few attack encounters, and she stopped Caught Off Guard. Twice she played a buff card on Hulk. That felt nice as well.
Deadpool - Pool + Domino - Justice vs Green Goblin Mutagen Formula
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Pairing:
This is my final “new hero review” pairing for a while. Deadpool is the last hero in my box who I haven’t played. Eventually, I'll pick up Nightcrawler. Going in, I had no idea about his deck. There is a “no-risk” pool deck out there, but I’m playing moderately crazy to see what happens. Right off the bat, this was not a strong pair. Deadpool is more about control and versatility. On the last round, he was able to use two Maximum Efforts plus This Card Is Fire to do 7+9+11 = 27 damage. This set up Cable to do 6 damage. It’s a weird combination with his hero power and his alter ego power working together. Domino is more about consistent damage and thwart throughout the game.
Domino
She’s great as ever. I like her kit, the way luck works. She was not a good pair for Deadpool, but early on, she was doing most of the damage, and she blocked several nasty encounter cards from coming out. She has lots of encounter and boost control (which is nice when Deadpool keeps adding boost).
Deadpool
An interesting thing about building pool decks, is that you have all the pool cards. There’s not some out-of-print expansion for Pool that costs $300 on ebay. I’m going to say this is a high-risk, medium reward with versatility sort of deck. Deadpool’s not going to do 60 damage in one round, like Star Lord, but he can thwart a big chunk like Groot. Most of his powers do damage to himself. His 8 REC (highest in the game) is what powers this. Also, he cannot be killed on hero side, instead he flips and adds an acceleration token. There’s an interesting ally for him which I will probably add ⇒ Shadowcat from Iceman’s pack. She eliminates all icons on a side scheme on the round she enters play. So she can give Deadpool a big boost. Initially, I didn’t like his allies, but then I realized they don’t take consequential damage. So you have options: leave them out and deal with the consequences, or just play them, use them, and have them block before their bad effects really get triggered. So Deadpool can combo off them, but then they can go away. No problem. Like Deadpool, his allies get thrashed. He can combo for big damage, but it's a real end-game thingy. Conclusion: Deadpool is a novelty deck, good for a laugh, but not one I will reach for except on those odd nights when we just want to play goofy chaotic decks and watch the mayhem.
Iron Man - Aggression + Venom - Justice vs Spiral + Western + Fantasy + Horror
Justice and Aggression go great together –though we felt the lack of protection. Venom is a great compliment to Iron Man, as he can carry the early game to let Iron Man stay in Alter Ego to suit up. Iron Man took the first three rounds to suit up. Meditation was a great card for this. Once Tony had four tech upgrades, he flipped and we started rolling. Venom’s nemesis came out at the end, and that really made it a do or die situation.
Schemes: Oh boy did they get lucky. They top-decked Cornered twice. Venom got Spiral cornered early, so the confuses really helped. We both had to flip down at one point (no protection), and Spiral got big boosts, so the main scheme advanced.
Spiral (Mojo Mania): More luck. We got her cornered early, and Venom was able to keep her cornered with stuns and confuses. That really tipped the game. We flipped her early, but then she put us on our heels with those swords. Mid-game, we avoided The Kraken and The Dragon came out at the very end. Spiral’s Swords came out twice, however. Dang those are nasty! The first one, we cleared. The second one smashed us for 8 each before we got the resources to clear it.
Iron Man
Tony stayed down for the first three rounds, then BOOM. Mr Stark sacrificed a lot of cards to handle Spiral’s Swords. I was impressed at the end, because Tony SLAYED The Dragon in one round, thanks to his energy attacks. Wow. Go Iron Man! That gave us an extra four cards each, and we were able to build enough damage to take out Spiral.
Venom
Venom opened up with two confuses in a row, and then a stun to follow. This really helped the early game. I only used his hero ability a few times. This helped me stay at high hp for when we started taking the big hits. He had the side holster, but only used it for one round, where he had the Multigun, both pistols, and the Sonic Rifle. At the end, Venom drew two Run and Gun cards. Hitting for 4 with his pistols, and another 2 with the Multigun ⇒ 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 18 damage. That combined with Iron Man’s damage to make the final push.
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