Silk / Protection + Magneto / Leadership vs Sabretooth
Sabretooth: You definitely want Protection for this villain. I like the early pressure to save the senator. We handled that in two rounds. Then he just attacks like crazy. Silk handled the senator (easy to defend). Lots of control in this game, but some bad draws almost threated out the main scheme. There's a lot going on for the villain -constantly healing. Hard to keep track of everything. Mystique is a pain. Her theme is really cool --how she adds her own cards to your deck and messes with you. Great design. Silk: Had a terrible opening draw + hard mulligan, all defense events and resources. I just restarted. Second go, she was a slow build. She has hero 4 upgrades and 3 hero supports which help, but that's a lot to build out -not to mention the protection upgrades. She really doesn't need the Defense Conditioning, I'm removing it. She can have 8 Def with 4 cards under her. That's plenty. She finally used Ready for a Fight --late game. It was worth it. Mostly, they just controlled the schemes. She used Get the Scoop several times to get cards tucked under her. She swapped the treachery card twice. It was mostly helpful.
Magneto: Mystique left him alone --go figure, accidentally thematic. Once he got built out, he was power. He's very versatile. He discarded two attachments from Sabretooth, very helpful. He used one really good Wrapped in Metal --I wish he could have used it with Mystique, that would've been awesome. Magneto used one Mutant Mayhem to recur a stun and a tough. Eric never took damage. Overall, he was a heavy hitter every round.
Shadowcat / Protection + Magic / Aggression vs Sabretooth
Sabretooth: As usual, we hurried to save the senator. We were more careful with keeping track of his healing every round. It's hard. He usually heals for 2-4 every round (2-player). More minions came out this time. This was definitely a longer game running through our decks twice, handling tough minions, and trying to keep the main scheme from threating out. This scenario was super-thematic. We had a great time!
Shadowcat: She did a fine job of protecting the senator. Her Phased Strike discarded two of Sabretooth's attachments. Very helpful! Sabretooth had Stalwart when Prof X got played --but Mystique was also sitting in front of her with a tough status, so a nice minion stun was great. She defended almost every round (to protect the Senator). Her Nemesis came out near the end, but Magik was ready that round. Kitty got to do a teamwork card with Magik's Colossus on the board. That helped a bunch.
Magik: She handled Mystique's infiltration cards better than anyone. She discarded them with her own powers, and she had Goldballs discard at least three of them while dealing damage. We got a big kick out of how well she dodged the infiltration cards. Magik definitely did most of the damage. This is Bootcamp ally boosting deck, which handled damage and thwarting. Very nice!
Psylocke / Justice + Cable / Leadership vs Project Wideawake
Project Wideawake: I saw the four opening schemes, and I thought Cable would love this, but I also thought I would need more thwart --so I grabbed Psylocke. Great pair! Leadership and Justice often pair well. Lots of confuses on the Sentinels. Both heroes took turns flipping every round. The main scheme got pretty close to activating, but these two were in control. The sentinels all have something special to hit you with. This game was amazing with the player side schemes. The opening round was amazing --they completed Build Support to get some early setup stuff which really added to their pace.
Psylocke: Blocked Shadows of the Past to really save the day. She's so versatile. She had the villain confused almost every round. That took a lot of pressure off and really helped with cards. She was thwarting for 4 early on. Her 4-card hand size is moderately limiting, but her resources are amazing. Team Building Exercise got used almost every round with her Psionic cards. She never reshuffled. Her Power of the Mind cards were also useful.
Cable: is a thwart machine! Uncanny X-Force is amazing! He was slow to build out though, and didn't even get the Technovirus Purge until the end. After they flipped the Sentinel to version II, there were 9 side schemes in the victory display. Cable hit twice with Telekinetic Blast for 30 damage, and the rest was just mopping up. Absolutely amazing! He was mostly unlucky with his Power of the Mind cards until the end. I tweaked his deck a little, moving a Power of the Mind to Phoenix.
Hulk / Aggression + Falcon / Leadership + Dr Strange / Protection vs Master Mold
Master Mold: Another Stalwart villain, he punishes heroes who like to flip to Alter Ego. Same modulars as the Project Wide Awake scenario, except the Operation Zero Tolerance side scheme isn't permanent (but it comes out a lot). Once again, lots of Sentinels. This scenario comes with the Magneto ally, but unfortunately, he doesn't have the X-men trait, and he has a victory number, so he get's thrown into the victory display once he's knocked out... We did the Stalwart home rule, but we didn't play many stuns or confuses. This was a slower playthrough, as I was teaching new players. We needed better coordination. We had a lot of defense, but resources were poorly optimized. Once again, it's hard to teach the value of protection. Dr Strange never defended for anyone, despite having having free readies and defense cards. Falcon ended up handling all the protection. I'm better able to tutor this in two-handed.Hulk: Handled most of the damage for the team, and did some good thwarting. This deck used the Retcon home rule, so Hulk actually wanted to take damage. Once built out, Hulk was drawing one card and getting an extra three resources per round. Hulk is an ideal hero for sharing resources, as leftover cards convert to damage (reckless home rule), but we never coordinated this. Unfortunately, this blocked several other good cards from other heroes, which had to be discarded for no benefit. We also missed one really good chance to play Hulk Smash, but couldn't because Hulk exhausted to defend. No one knew that Hulk had that card and needed to stay ready. Hulk didn't ask for help. Falcon or Dr Strange could have easily defended, at least with an ally.
Dr Strange: Did a ton of thwarting. This shows how versatile Dr Strange can be. Oddly he didn't play the invocation deck very much. The Med Lab got played (just for Hulk). This is why I usually play protection, because the other players don't usually think to play a response or interrupt on the villain turn, and they really haven't figured out the value of defending for the team when they have extra readies. Post game, Vic didn't like the Dauntless card, so I took it out. This is one of the fun factors I encourage in my deck building, I like taking suggestions from players to get a feel of how they like the decks. I may put it back in though, because if Stephen would have defended for others, he could have been doing 2-4 retaliate damage per round (with Dauntless and Energy Barrier).
Falcon: I definitely need to retool Falcon's deck. Cards like Teamwork never get played, because Falcon is always exhausted from defending. I added more readies into his deck along with First Aid. I forgot how the Captain America card works. Linked cards are always problematic with new players, or just because it's easy to miss them, I need to put a different back on those cards or something. He has the Resource Reserve, which is a great support card, but other than having three Power of Flight resources, he has poor resource generation. I thought about playing it, but the other two heroes were already over-resourced, and Falcon was often only able to play one card. My other Falcon playthroughs were much stronger. Air Supremacy was almost a useless card in this game, as there were never any minions left when his turn came up (again, poor coordination). I've got half a mind to swap him to protection -but he has that dang Captain America card. I guess Bucky could do it.
Mansion Attack: OUCH! Super hard. We missed that we needed to add Mystique's deck, so we're going to need to play this again. This was BRUTAL. Maybe her cards will dilute the speed of the Mansion Attack. Once again, it felt very thematic. We had Pyro for the first villain --twice as tough on a protection deck, because it's very hard to stop the indirect damage. At one point, we had four side schemes and three minions on the table. Man, we were really close to losing. We definitely didn't have enough thwart options. We barely won. Silk had 1 hp left, and the 2nd main scheme was about to threat out.
Silk: I don't like her in protection --her precon is another solo protection deck. Those solo protection precons (Vision, Ms Marvel, Colossus) make no sense to me. She flipped way too much. She needs to be in Justice. She did save the game twice: once defending for Wolverine, and once she swapped out a difficult side scheme for Shadows of the Past. That had a cool feel, but we had so little board control, that she never got to play any of her upgrades. Very bad feel for Silk. I'm calling this deck a failure.
Wolverine: Vic completely missed Wolverine's piercing attacks. This made it way harder to deal with the environment where allies and minions gain tough. That should have worked for us. I have him with Honed Technique which he used for a few 12 damage Melee cards. Then he can take damage to play another attack. He can really throw the damage when he needs to. Vic was able to keep healing him and dealing damage.
Hulkling / Protection + Nova / Aggression vs Magneto
Magneto: Again, very thematic. We liked the Schemes. He throws Sentinels at you when you beat them. He shields himself, he rips through the encounter deck looking for magnetic cards. Hulkling and Nova thwarted the side schemes down really fast, while maintaining control of the main scheme. They handled the Sentinels and other minions just fine. This was much easier than Mansion Attack.
Hulkling: started in Winged Shape to stay versatile and thwart extra. He did much better than Silk. He switched form several times. I was worried that he was going to be another dumb solo protection deck, but he did just fine. I'm going to leave him in Protection; he feels like Spectrum. He can defend just fine, but he can also thwart or attack. I like his 13 starting HP. He could clearly run in any aspect.
Nova: Is the Aerial Aggression deck. So good. He did throw one Dive Bomb to clear the board, but we really didn't need it. He got super unlucky that both Unleash the Nova Force cards ended up in the same hand. Also, the scenario had lots of stuns and exhausts, so Nova never had a big round. Vic was piloting again, and he missed some options --like I pointed out halfway through that wilds can be used for the Honed Technique requirements.
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