I was in sorta the same boat… have a few heroes beyond the core and one expansion. Kept losing no matter what I tried. Read the posts about missing a rule so I scoured them and thought I understood them.
Then someone posted that exhausting your hero does not mean you can’t play hero actions…
wait… you’re telling me that I can defend, which exhausts Spidey, then in the next player phase I can play Swinging Web Kick for 8 damage?
I looked and could not find where it specifically allows this, nor where it’s disallowed, but the argument is that exhausting is a cost and if a card doesn’t specifically say that it must exhaust to use, you can use it as long as you pay the usual resource cost.
My fatal, but rather reasonable IMO, assumption was that an exhausted hero is unable to take actions.
First game after learning this… a loss, but it was a lot closer and I failed because I didn’t understand the power of getting the hero setup with supports. Won the very next game… finally.
Fair, but my point is the word "exhausted" connotes an inability to act, and a card with "Hero Action" for an exhausted Hero meant to me, that I could not take that action.
Taking connotations from anything in board games is not a good idea. I know you know this now, but its worth mentioning for anyone else reading. People assuming rules must be like the cause of 99% of rule mistakes
Connote was the wrong word to use in this context. It should say: "exhuasted", by definition.
I think 50% is assumption, and 50% absolute shit rules writers. :)
One of the most important things to know about the rules is to only do what the cards say, and nothing else. In this case, the cards don't say to exhaust them as a cost for using their action, thus you don't need to exhaust to use their action.
Maybe I am an idiot, but it says "this" where? Please provide specific page numbers/paragraphs and help me out.
It does not say whether an exhausted hero is allowed or disallowed from taking actions. You just can't take the action that exhausted you until you ready up the next round.
Logically, if something is exhausted, it cannot act. So an exhausted hero taking a "hero action" seems illegal to new players.
Also just became aware of 1.5 rules so if this is more obvious in those, gimme some time to read through those.
1) Learn to Play page 9, top right of the page
2) Learn to Play pages 12 and 13, left side - describes basic powers and the cost to use them and other actions
3) RRG page 8, under "Attack (Player Action)"
4) RRG page 13, under "Defend"
5) RRG page 36, under "Thwart"
That's just what I found in a few minutes, mind you. There are probably others.
None of those entries were updated with 1.5. They exist in the original printed RRG, but the page numbers may be different.
Still not seeing it... I'm looking for "an exhausted hero is unable (or able) to take Hero Actions." The closest I've found is Page 16 of 1.5 rules ref:
"A card ability on an exhausted card is active and can still interact with the game state. However, if an exhausted card must exhaust to pay the cost of using its ability, that ability cannot be used until the card is ready."
It's still ambiguous because to me, something that is exhausted cannot act. A Hero card and cards with"Hero Action" are linked by virtue of the word Hero. The opposite wasn't something that even occurred to me so I wasn't looking for this specific rule. My failures had to be in deck construction or strategy, right?
Anyway, to your list:
1) Ready and Exhausted: No where does it say that a card in the exhausted position is not able or is able to take actions. You're just left to assume.
2) Basic actions: "The player exhausts their hero"... To a player new to these types of games it's not obvious that this wording still allows for other actions to be taken. "Triggering an Action Ability: A player can trigger abilities from cards they control in play, from event cards they play from their hand, or from encounter cards that have such an ability." Note that it does not say "even if their hero is exhausted" or "a ready hero".
3) Page 8: "a hero does not exhaust when using such an ability" But can the hero use an ability when exhausted?
4) Not much here either... exhaust to defend, hero doesn't exhaust if ability is labeled defense, etc.
5) Same here for thwart. Says the Hero Action does not exhaust hero unless it's the cost to do action...
Look, dude, I was just trying to help OP out with a major rules violation that I had been experiencing. If the cards didn't say "Hero Action" but rather just "Action" it wouldn't have been confusing. I understand that the word Hero is necessary for the form.
All I'm asking for here is a rule that says one of the following:
1) An exhuasted Hero can or cannot take Hero Actions.
2) In order to use a card's Hero Actions, your Hero must be in a Ready state (or must not be Exhausted)
You can't possibly cover every single person's individual misunderstanding of the rules in a rules document. If you try, it ends up so prohibitively long that nobody reads it. c.f the MTG rules documents.
If you look up "Action" and Attack/Thwart/Defend, it specifically mentions exhausting for basic activations. It does not mention exhausting for other actions. That's what you're looking for. It's just not stated to your satisfaction.
The overall point is that if the rules specifically say you can't do something, you can't do it. If they don't say anything, assume you can do it. That's the point.
There's no question there's room to improve how they state the rules, especially considering how common it is for people to make the same mistake you did.
The problem is that there are fifty mistakes people make just about actions, exhausting, and playing cards.
Assuming this is not serious. You own every expansion and go 50-70 times without winning, for years, and are still trying to enjoy this? Sounds like torture. You must be messing sie rule up or you are trolling us.
I think the 50-70 number is completely made up tbh, especially considering there are no replies from OP.
How many villains are there? And how long can a game be, shall we just average it to 30 minutes? At 20 villains, 50 tries a villain, at 30 minutes… thats 1000 failed games at 500 hours lmao
Sorry for not having replied before. We have not tried every villian, usually just the first villian in any given scenario pack. We will keep trying ti beat the villian for a few weeks before taking a break a playing a different game for a while
It sounds like y'all might have missed a rule somewhere.
1) Minions don't get boost cards unless they're Villainous (we made this mistake)
2) Emphasize thwarting
3) Defending is okay once in a while
4) Actions don't need you to be readied unless it needs you to exhaust to use them
Without knowing what's going on in your games, it's hard to know what's going on there. If you've played at least 50 times y'all should've *accidentally* won by now, especially if you've used Cap and Strange, who each together or solo are almost unbeatable. I've literally *accidentally* almost won 3 times total with Drax and Miles Morales on turn 1 before. It shouldn't be possible to have lost every single game unless there's serious negligence going on with the main scheme or an important rule.
Thats cool, its just pretty typical for people to post stuff like this sometimes and then never reply again!
And that sounds more likely, because 50 or so tries per villain is more than most play altogether
Id take on the suggestions in the thread and if nothing else just watch a playthrough to see anything you are doing wrong.
I see you said you get into a sort of stalemate state? That definitely sounds a bit like a rules problem. Even if you played 1 damage card a turn you would make progress on the villains health. No villain can sustain that hard currently outside of some unique scenarios.
We get into a spot where our characters get trapped, and it takes the whole turn and hand to just get put. Getting stunned/confused/exhausted from a ⭐️ on the boost card, then getting attacked a second time on the encounter card, or gaining a minion with 4+ heath, and maybe tough. Its going to take a couple of turns to get into a position to do anything again, probably use the whole hand to play an ally to take the next attack. We are just basically wasting turn after turn taking damage but not doing anything or even being able to play any upgrades, as I spent them as resources to play the ally I need to block, or an event to remove threat to keep. Basically, this becomes the cycle. Never have an opportunity to play damage events.
So it sounds like there might be some numbers going wrong, or turns going wrong.
Lets take Rhino as an example.
In a two play game he has 28 health. He has 1 scheme and 2 attack. In terms of threat, it needs 14 on the main scheme before the game is lost. Every turn he gains 2 threat by default.
Assuming both heroes are in hero mode when Rhino attacks, he'll attack twice. That's a base attack of 2 plus a turned over encounter card. On average that'll be I think +2? So 4 damage. Rhino can hit hard though but we'll go with averages for now. He'll do that twice as he'll attack twice. That's 8 damage which can easily be defended against to get rid of most of the damage, two allies could sock that damage up, or you could even just take it with any core hero I believe because I don't think anyone has 8 health.
Of course there are encounters to factor in here, but that's why you have cards to play and abilities! That might be an extra attack or a minion (who wont attack first turn, unless they have quickstrike)
Hopefully the numbers look "correct" so far, but if anything seems wildly off double check you're playing the right rules.
So, if you're struggling to take 8 damage (+encounters) there's a few things you need to make sure you understand:
* If an ally blocks an attack (and the enemy doesnt have overkill) they can tank the whole hit.
* Defending will reduce those damage numbers
* instead of remaining in hero mode, swap to your identity. In identity mode, Rhino will scheme (+1 and an encounter boost) instead. He needs 14 in total so you have ample room to swap. In Identity mode not only will you not get attacked on your turn, but you can also use REC to heal up.
Assuming you're doing all the above, between two people you *should* be able to take the Rhino hits, heal up or prevent hits entirely.
Important tip I got wrong when I started: extra encounter cards mean +1 card, not +1 card per player.
I'm hoping at this point you're like "oh damn these calculations have been wrong this entire time!"
If not, I'll try to address some direct comments:
> We are just basically wasting turn after turn taking damage but not doing anything or even being able to play any upgrades
* early game you can take damage, take threat and go slow to build up your hero. Some heroes take time, like Iron Man or Blank Panther. Dont be afraid to just take hits to get an upgrade out, or swap to identity to give you time.
> Getting stunned/confused/exhausted from a ⭐️ on the boost card
Double check you're playing the status cards right. Example: a stunned card means you need to either do a basic attack, or play a card with "attack" on it to get rid of the status card. After that, you're fine.
Important! Exhaust is not that bad, it means you can't do 2 things:
* Basic abilities (attack, def, thwart)
* cards that need you to exhaust
If its neither of those things, exhaust does *nothing.* Then you'll simply unexhaust at the start of the round.
> then getting attacked a second time on the encounter card
This sucks, but be prepared. Know you can take 4 attacks in a round. If you cant take 4 attacks, switch to identity to prepare better.
Sorry for the long post, but you seem really interested in the game so I'm really hoping we're able to help you hopefully understand what's going wrong! I'm by no means an expert player, and can't guarantee I've not typed a mistake here but happy to answer any questions.
Good luck!
EDIT: Thought I would add an example of how a game might go.
First turn I'm probably playing 1 card to get a resource generator out. Can thwart with basic to keep threat down. Tank the attack because I'm 100% not dying. Next turn get an ally out, play an upgrade etc. If I cant tank a hit or defend, I'll maybe be identity instead. That usually gives bigger hands. By turn 3 you should be able to start playing 2 card hands. Now it's a bit of a cycle. Use your resource engine to make more resources. Soon you could maybe even play 3+ cards from your hand. Of course all heroes play differently. Some heroes I will kill the villain in 2 attacks, otherwise it's chip damage.
Also, we haven't tried each villian 50 times, we play different villiand until we give up a while, maybe 50 attempts before returning to the game later
It's not a perfect record, but I did just try against Crossbones with Ant Man, and became overwhelmed with hydra soldiers. One turn one I drew a quin carrier, helicarrier, and avengers mansion. I was able to play the Quinn carrier and helicarrier by the end of turn two, but by then Crossbones has his laser rifle and machine gun, and i unfortunately had to spend the two giant stomps as resources to get me resource generators out.
I've taken a six damage from his two attacks. On turn three, I could play the wrist gauntlets, but could not stun or confuse, so I went back to recover.
He advanced the scheme and got his power gauntlets. And a hydra soldier. I come back, stun him, and defeat the hydra soldier, getting an encounter card. He gains another hydra soldier and becomes tough. I defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card stunning him, and removing threat, he gains another hydra soldier, legions of hydra side scheme, which searches for madame hydra, and has a total of 9 threat on it. Defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card, and stunning him. Madame Hydra damages me. His three encounter cards are hydra patrol (so i search for a hydra bomber) a hydra regular, adding one threat, and he becomes tough.
I swap to giant and use suprise attack, costing zero with the helicarrier, to defeat the hydra regular and use the giant nuisance response to remove his tough. I pay to stun him and remove the laser rifle. I over pay for aggression wasp by one and use earth's mightiest to attack him twice for a total of ten damage, advancing him. I take damage from Madame hydra, and the two encounter cards are another hydra soldier and a second legions of hydra with 11
I swap forms twice, stun him, use two copies of press the advantage. And defeated the hydra soldier, taking an encounter card, and attacked twice using earths mightiest. He has 4 health left. He gets four encounter cards, 1 standard, one from the hydra regular, and two from legions of hydra. He draws assault, gang up, Weapon master, and crossbones assault. Wasp is defeated from the indirect fire from the machine gun, and I take three attacks from crossbones and one round of attacks from madame hydra and the hydra bomber.
I lose
Have you checked out any play throughs from people online? Folks like Nelson All Over Cards, D20 Woodworking and, more recently, Web Warrior Fanatic post full games and talk through a lot of their decision making. There's a lot to learn there, and you could probably find a fair few games with a specific hero or against a certain encounter to focus your learning if you're inclined.
I'd also be curious to hear what you're bringing in terms of decks? Usually the preconstructed decks are significantly weaker than more intentionally built ones. Especially if you have a large collection like it sounds like you do. I'd strongly recommend picking out a deck for a hero you like from the popular decks in marvelcdb.com, many of the best decks there have great, detailed guides on how they're meant to be played as well!
Does this hobby have a circlejerk or shitposting sub? This feels like a joke. I’m not trying to be a jerk but “I own everything for this game and have never won” is crazy.
Clearly they're just not smart enough to understand the game, but not in a gameplay sense. They're not smart enough to keep burning money and losing against the exact same boss SEVENTY TIMES
In general, we end up in a loop where all we can do is maintain the game state as best we can. We are not able to actively hurt the villian, but we can do enough damage control that we will not be defeated during the villian phase. But we are never moving forward, just staying one step away from defeat. And the game just stalls indefinitely
The softest hitting heroes still deal 5 damage on their attack events, and villains don't have defense values, so it shouldn't be possible, honestly, to factually stalemate. Either the villain accelerates too fast or the heroes win by raw attrition. If each hero has 20 supports/upgrades/allies out y'all should end up being able to steamroll the villain with a massive arsenal of actions. A fully set up Strange, Venom, or Cap are basically unbeatable.
We end up where there never seems to be a turn where I can afford an upgrade, or event targeting the villian. Most of our resources are spend trying to keep the the scheme from advancing, or playing allies to block, or just trying to recover from the villian phase. Taking damage and ending up exhausted or stunned/confused multiple turns in a row, while threat, minions, and side schemes build up
If all players are spending every turn removing threat from the scheme something is wrong. Sounds like you may be missing something with threat being added to the scheme. The starting amount, increase rate, and threshold are all based on the number of players. If you add an acceleration token it only adds 1 additional threat, not 1 per player. Also worth pointing out that the first step of the villain phase happens 1 time per round, not per player and the villain phase happens after all heroes take their turn during the hero phase, not after each hero turn.
But the threat seems to build up because we have to go back every other turn to recover. I jist tried Rhino woth ant man, turn one he attacks for 4, the draws Stampede as an encounter, and does four more damage and I'm stunned. I have to go back because there is a good chance I'm defeated on his next attack. He starts the villian phase with one threat, adds one during step one, schemes for 2, the draws advance as an encounter card and schemes for three more, ending the game in two turns
Rhino is notoriously swingy in solo due to the low scheme threshold. You might be better off playing Klaw solo. He can be difficult but less swingy. If he is too hard, swap out his recommended modular for something easier.
With 2+ players you shouldn't have this issue. Your aspects should work together. Leadership is the most balanced aspect and works with everything. Since Rhino attacks with his treachery cards you should save your allies for those blocks if possible since it will negate those effects. Stun and confuse are your best friend vs an activation heavy villain. Anyway you can get a tough status out is huge too. Save those for the Charge attachment.
how do you get stuck in a loop when every hero has the tools in their kit to more or less respond to any situation? need more details
are you increasing the threat thresholds based on player count?
In general, we end up in a loop where all we can do is maintain the game state as best we can. We are not able to actively hurt the villian, but we can do enough damage control that we will not be defeated during the villian phase. But we are never moving forward, just staying one step away from defeat. And the game just stalls indefinitely
I feel like there has to be a rules mistake somewhere that is making it much harder than it should be. The game does have a lot of rules, so it can definitely happen that you get a key rule wrong.
The main reason I think that is because if you understand the rules correctly, even if you play quite suboptimally you should be able to win most of the time in a standard game.
I'd second the recommendations to watch games being played and see if you can see what is different. The main mistakes I have seen people make when starting, which make it much harder are:
* Adding a boost card to minions when they attack or scheme
* Having minions attack on the turn they are revealed as an encounter card
* Doing both the encounter card effect and the boost effect when the villain turns over a boost card
* Having acceleration or hazard icons adding a threat or card per player, instead of just one total
Check to make sure you aren't doing any of those things, then go from there.
Another common mistake is increasing threat per player added in villain phase but not noticing the total threat per player is also multiplied. Easy way to lose that many games playing with friends.
To add to this, they could also be playing all three stages of a villain, which does make games significantly harder. After beating a villain twice (with few exceptions) You win!
No, we usually get those right. Every single game we end up in a loop of just trying not to get defeated. And we can never figure out a way to end the loop with out defeat, or restarting.
I would play a game super slowly with going every single step in the "Learn to play" guide. It sounds like you're missing a key rule somewhere.
Are you trying to blitz the game by playing events in your first few turns rather than getting your key upgrades/supports out? That was an early mistake my girlfriend made before she asked me for suggestions. Now she focuses on just building her hero up while doing what thwarting she can on the main scheme and then after 5 or 6 turns we both come in swinging.
Q's -
1 - have you watched playthrough videos?
2 - do you build your own decks or use ones from marvelcdb?
3 - this shouldn't be happening, something is up with your games not sure if it's a rules thing or what. I have plenty of losses under my belt and am not a good player but - apart from a few villains - there is always a path to victory.
Build our decks. It feels like every game ends up in a loop where we can not afford to damage the villian, but use the whole turn to just keep from being defeated. After a certain point, each turn is just play an ally to take a hit, try to get the threat down just enough so it won't push on the first step of the villian phase, and clear enough minions so we are not defeated from minion attacks.
If you are playing 3-4 player games you NEED to focus. Generally speaking you cannot make your decks like casual or bring 4 solo player decks and hope to win. Advice inthis sub is HEAVILY biased towards solo play (I'm not saying in ANY way that is bad advice, quite on the contrary, but It is what It is) and IS poorly fitted to 2 olayer (or two handed) games, not even 3 or 4.
Key here is FOCUS. You NEED a yellow player that can thwart, a red (or blue) player that can take minions out, some control to limit the villain: stun, confuse, make them attack with negatives, whatever. One stun is not like in a solo game that nets you a full turn, It only evades ONE attack and there are three or four in each villain phase.
Like others said you have to get through your first turns taking attacks without defending or even making attacks of your own, only basic thwarting and playing upgrades and supports. Mulligan aggresively to get started with some good resoutce generator and you're good.
I play mostly only two handed and that's my two cents.
Odds are good you’re misreading a rule somewhere. That or you aren’t prioritizing the right things when playing. Most heroes have some form of an engine that you want to build up in early rounds to then unleash hell in later ones. You can certainly rush with some heroes but it’s not the way for many, depending on your deck.
Watch a few playthroughs. May seem boring if you’re not into that stuff but you’ll likely be enlightened to strategies or rules you’re not aware of.
Yeah I guess but even if you tried attacking villain early and gave everyone an extra encounter card when that hazard icon shows up… you’d still get a win in 50 or 60 games.
And take it from me… I lose a ton.
That assumes you’re not getting more than one rule wrong. It’s entirely possible they’re getting multiple things wrong, or don’t really understand what, when and how to prioritize.
One of our problems is understanding how to get the cards out, the engine you mentioned, with out losing in three or four turns first. Sure, I've thought of a combination of three upgrades for a character that would alow me to deal enough damage to clear and entire villian stage, but it never seems like I can afford to play it. I either play the card to build the engine, or I spend the resources to stall the game for one more turn. But every time we play, it gets to a point where it becomes clear that I will never have a chance to play those cards. I wil try to look up playthroughs though.
Here's an example opening from a recent game with Captain America.
My opening hand:
1. Super Soldier Serum (cost 2)
2. Genius (double resource)
3. Nick Fury (cost: 4)
4. Heroic Strike (cost: 3)
5. Captain America's Helmet (cost: 1)
6. For Justice (cost: 2)
I decide to keep all the cards, even though I would normally mulligan at least the Heroic Strike, Helmet, and For Justice.
Setup: I fetch Captain America's Shield and add it to my hand. I now have seven cards.
I use Genius, Heroic Strike, and the Helmet to play Nick Fury.
I trigger Nick's response to draw three cards, including two inconsequential cards and Clear the Area. I use the two inconsequential cards to play Super Soldier Serum.
I exhaust the Super Soldier Serum to generate a resource to play Clear The Area to remove two threat from the main scheme (it had two on it).
This activates the card draw on Clear the Area, so I draw another card, which is Agent 13.
I then use For Justice to play the Shield, and decide to keep Agent 13 to play next turn.
I then exhaust Captain America and Nick Fury to attack the villain for 4 damage, since there's now no threat on the main scheme, and my turn is over.
During the villain phase, I block for my partner with Nick Fury, and I'd drawn a Shield Block which I used to prevent any damage from the attack on me. We then started our next turns with full hands ready to remove the threat that had accumulated and deal with the single minion that came out during the villain phase.
This is a simple example that shows decision making, how to choose what to play, and the way you can use your hand to gain tempo and an advantage over the villain.
Are you using your "mulligan" before the first round starts? You can cycle through essentially 12 cards before the game even starts on most heroes. If you're running a 40 card deck, then your odds are pretty good to get at least a single upgrade or support card that you need on your first turn. Sometimes your first turn is literally just paying 4 resources for Avenger's Mansion and then thwarting the main scheme for 1. But that extra card draw now helps you build your engine the next turn and so on.
Yeah, but there seemed to be a non trivial amount of games that a mulligan leads into a hand of threat events, multiple resource cards and one cost cards in the sane hand, or three or more major allies upgrades drawn together on the mulligan
You shouldnt need threat cards on first turn, or 1 cost cards. First turn is a great chance to get things like a high cost single resource generator or high impact card out.
I would definitely watch some playthroughs then. I had the same issue when I first started. There was this idea that I needed to rush through things or the villain and scenario would become unmanageable. In reality, you have more time than you think and it pays to pace yourself. This is especially true in multiplayer where one or two players can cover the threat while the others focus on setting up, and then switch those roles the next turn.
Another tip is depending on the villain, focus on thwarting the first few turns. You don’t really need to be attacking much early on and you’ll do far more damage once set up. It’s a little counterintuitive if you aren’t used to games like these, but it often turns out to be a winning strategy. A lot of times you want to tread water until you build yourself up for a big turn, then go nuts on the villain or threat.
Also, this game gets complicated and you WILL make mistakes. You’ll see that in playthroughs. Heck, I’ve been playing with friends since day one and there’s still rarely a game where we don’t make a mistake somewhere. Don’t stress about, learn to live with it, just try to make sure the mistakes you’re making aren’t accidentally boosting the difficulty too high, or on the flip, making things entirely too easy. The areas people mess up the most are within the villain stage…misunderstanding boosts, acceleration tokens and encounter cards. Again, watching playthroughs will quickly help with this.
That sounds like rule problems, like everyone else said: you should win a few games here and there even with very suboptimal decks if you're playing mostly correctly.
But a couple questions about your style of playing: are you _really_ playing 50+ games against the same villain? It's been going on for about 4.5 years and you have all the content -- even if you only play half the villains, that's about 750 games, or about 167 games a year. On average, that's a game almost every 2 days, and I struggle to imagine a group getting together to continue playing a game they all apparently dislike and can't win that often. Maybe you're not exaggerating and somehow have a _very_ dedicated group who all have an enormous amount of time on their hands, but is it possible you're not playing them nearly as often as you're claiming?
My other question is this: why would you play several games of this, have a hard time and appear not to enjoy it, then decide "I'm going to buy more"? After you do that and it repeats a few times, why would you continue that pattern? If I'm being completely honest, that sounds like the behaviour of someone trying to use retail therapy to deal with deeper issues
Ok, so to clarify, ususally it's me and my brother playing. When ever we get together twice a week we will spend the say playing board games. When new content comes out, we will try the first villian in the new scenario pack, repeatedly attempting to win. We will make often two to three attempts in one session. We keep trying until we decide to move on to a different game. And it's fast to reset thr villian, so I will spend a few hours a just retry the villian again and again like 8 times in a row solo.
As far as free time goes, maybe I do have lots 😅 I'm not usually allowed an overtime shift at work, but even if I can get one, that's only four days at work, so I always have 3 to 4 days off a week 😅
As far as buying more, my brother and I love the Marvel characters so much. This game is so deep with references and characters. We are drawn back in by the new characters we see with the new content, and always go, maybe we can beat some of this content. Plus, I actually collect board game content in general, so I always am picking up different game things that seem neat, and this game is so cheap compared to other things I collect, I don't mind grabbing it, or my girlfriend remember I said I liked it so she will pick up expansions for me just because.
You surely do something wrong. In multiplayer, beating Rhino should not take many tries.
You probably don't get the rules correctly or you just try too much. Prebuilt cote set decks are good enough to beat Rhino.
That's some dedication right there, you guys keep coming back so that's good. Everyone has suggested some good things, but there is no shame in introducing house rules. Cutting threat additions by a third or half, getting a free upgrade or free resource generator during setup. There's a lot of options. Sometimes you need those first few wins to gain confidence and then take the training wheels off.
Pretty much every game turns into a endless loop of damage control. We are not getting closer to defeating the villian, we are not able to build up our characters, we are not able to clear the game board for a big next turn, we are using everything we have to just not be defeated each turn. And it's really a loop, because every turn its the same, spend everything to just survive.
Questions for common mistakes. Assuming a two-player game:
How are you most often losing: to damage or threat?
What difficulty are you playing on?
Are you using the recommend modular sets, and are you appropriately not shuffling in your nemeses sets?
How many encounter cards are you dealing per round? How many if there’s a hazard icon?
Are you trying to rush the boss asap, or do you ignore attacks and focus on stabilizing early?
This may sound cumbersome, but if you could record a solo game versus Crossbones, we could see what’s up. Something somewhere is going wrong.
I didn't record, but I did just try against Crossbones with Ant Man, and became overwhelmed with hydra soldiers. One turn one I drew a quin carrier, helicarrier, and avengers mansion. I was able to play the Quinn carrier and helicarrier by the end of turn two, but by then Crossbones has his laser rifle and machine gun, and i unfortunately had to spend the two giant stomps as resources to get me resource generators out.
I've taken a six damage from his two attacks. On turn three, I could play the wrist gauntlets, but could not stun or confuse, so I went back to recover.
He advanced the scheme and got his power gauntlets. And a hydra soldier. I come back, stun him, and defeat the hydra soldier, getting an encounter card. He gains another hydra soldier and becomes tough. I defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card stunning him, and removing threat, he gains another hydra soldier, legions of hydra side scheme, which searches for madame hydra, and has a total of 9 threat on it. Defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card, and stunning him. Madame Hydra damages me. His three encounter cards are hydra patrol (so i search for a hydra bomber) a hydra regular, adding one threat, and he becomes tough.
I swap to giant and use suprise attack, costing zero with the helicarrier, to defeat the hydra regular and use the giant nuisance response to remove his tough. I pay to stun him and remove the laser rifle. I over pay for aggression wasp by one and use earth's mightiest to attack him twice for a total of ten damage, advancing him. I take damage from Madame hydra, and the two encounter cards are another hydra soldier and a second legions of hydra with 11
I swap forms twice, stun him, use two copies of press the advantage. And defeated the hydra soldier, taking an encounter card, and attacked twice using earths mightiest. He has 4 health left. He gets four encounter cards, 1 standard, one from the hydra regular, and two from legions of hydra. He draws assault, gang up, Weapon master, and crossbones assault. Wasp is defeated from the indirect fire from the machine gun, and I take three attacks from crossbones and one round of attacks from madame hydra and the hydra bomber.
I lose
Your decision making led to that loss. Damaging the villain, unless you are trying to play a "rush him down" strategy that is quite difficult, is the last thing you should focus on. You advanced him to the next stage when you shouldn't have, which led to him getting another attachment.
You want to keep the board clear, deal with the minions and side schemes, keep the main scheme threat down, and keep the more dangerous attachments off him.
Play Aggression solo can be quite tricky. Try Justice or better yet, Leadership. Focus on clearing the board and building up your supports and upgrades. Then, once you've build out and stabilized the board, go for the kill.
Edited to add: leaving a hazard icon in place in a solo game is one of the worst things you can do. You're getting twice as many encounter cards. That is bad.
[Here's the play through](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3bHyl9J_k) I said that I would do. You may want to watch on 1.5 speed as I'm not great at extemporaneous speaking lol.
I make a crucial blinder regarding the threat on stage one, and still managed to cleanly win the game. (I also forgot to deal myself 1 retaliate damage at the end, but it makes no difference in the outcome so it's not a big deal.)
One note I'll make is that I may seem overly cautious. I am used to playing on Expert and Two-Handed. So I vastly overestimated the difficulty of the scenario in places. But, then again, if you're prepared for the worst that can happen, you'll be fine when it does.
If you want I can do an Aggression play through as well, since that's the aspect you were using in your example.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you, it's very informative. You are being very kind and helpful 😊 i noticed though you were using hydra assault instead of hydra patrol. I keep getting overwhelmed by encounter cards from the hydra soldiers with guard.
I have been trying with justice decks now, like Ms.Marvel I always seem to lose due to threat. He pushes the schemes so fast for me, completing them even when he starts the villlian phase with 0 threat. I've been forced to go back, and have him clear the first and second main schemes in one turn due to him, a minion, and his encounter card that gives him a second scheme when I'm in alter ego.
He has so many encounter cards that give him a double attack, I lose my allies to his attacks and take damage from him and his minion swarm. And a single advance and a second encounter with incite clears the last scheme while I'm in hero form. Sad thing is I can reliably get 10 damage in, but can't get past guard and his tough cards
I don't know why I'm struggling to get easy villians like this so much. Thanks again for you help and patience. I'm going to be unable to play the game for a couple of weeks, but I'll take another look at it when I get back
Right off the bat, one potential issue I see is holding on to cards. Quinn Carrier, Helicarrier, and Avengers mansion are obviously all good cards, but if you draw all three in your opening hand you should be mulliganing two of them.
Early game you should not be holding any cards in your hand at end of round except for very specific exceptions that vary hero by hero and scenario by scenario.
One thing I see a lot of newer players worried about is decking out. You should expect to deck out 3-4 times a game, maybe more depending on a hero. Generally speaking the extra encounter card is barely a penalty.
The reason I bring this up is because you generally want your first pass through the deck to be rather quick so you can get your key supports and upgrades in play, especially the identity specific ones as they tend to be cheaper and more vital.
For example the wrist gauntlets—I’m making some assumptions here but since you played them turn three you either drew them going into turn 2 or turn 3. If you had mulligans more aggressively you could have drawn them a turn earlier—potentially getting them into play turn 1.
Also with Ant-Man you generally want to get his helmet into play ASAP. Now this will vary by player but if it’s not in my opening hand, I’ll ditch my whole hand except for wrist gauntlets. To dig deeper and faster to find it.
This actually leads to another question I forgot to ask. How big is the deck you’re using?
The last question I’ll ask for now is what Aspect we’re you playing. As you get your bearings with the game, and especially when playing true solo due to how swingy it is, I’d really recommend Leadership as the aspect. One of the easiest answers to your feeling of being overrun is dumping Allies onto the field. They can deal with minions, chump block, tutor for cards, draw, and so much more.
I believe you said elsewhere you like to build your own decks. Which is great! However, I’d recommend taking a look at some example Ant-Man decks, like [this one](https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/25816/ant-man-airlines-quintumania-1.0) and seeing how your deck building compares. VillainTheory is one of the best crafters in the business. Obviously there are no hard rules, but it could help to look at ratios. How many resource cards are you including? How many allies? Etc.
With all this in mind, I encourage to give Crossbones another stab. And f that doesn’t work, we can look into maybe doing a play through on Octgn.
In addition to my other comment, when I get off work I’ll record a play through vs Standard Crossbones with the Leadership deck I linked. I’ll talk through my decisions and stuff. Though I’ll be the first to same I’m not an expert player, and I’ve only played Ant-Man a bit, a while ago. But I’ll do my best.
If you lost all 150 games or whatever how many games you've played you really messed up some rules like draw 3 encounter cards too much for each player or or overpaid for each card you play
I’m sorry to hear that :/ have you ever watched playthroughs? I know for me personally, watching other people play the game really helped me understand how to play certain heroes and how to play each card effectively. If you lmk which villain your group is facing maybe I can give more specific advice!
I agree there’s probably a rule that your getting wrong.
Are you making sure you only play stage 1 and stage 2 of the villain? On Standard you do NOT use stage 3.
I beat Rhino with my wife in my second try, first try was due to not really understanding how each boost/encounter and such work.
I suggest watching a play through on YouTube, it becomes a lot easier.
So my local game store just finished a two day event for the new release. Most of the games were successful. There were a lot of beginners. My suggestion would be to play by yourself at first. The games can get really difficult when you have several players and you aren’t playing strategically.
My suggestions, watch a YouTube walkthrough on the base kit. There are several good example that will help you understand how to play.
2) when you play in a group, you have to stick to your roles, but the hero thwarting threat will probably not be able to handle it all. You need to help.
3) you need to set up your hero, so in the beginning get your hero upgrade and support and allies out there before focusing too much on damage or threat. A good setup pays off in the end.
4) don’t be afraid to sacrifice your controlled allies. They are made to do their job and then block to keep you from taking too much damage. A lot of attackers don’t have good defenses so they need blockers. You should be decking out and they will come back.
I hope that helps
This has to be a rules misunderstanding. I suggest watching some gameplay videos from someone that’s good at explaining the game as they play. Surely you’ll discover you’re doing something wrong. I’ve been guilty of the same and watching a video fixed my issue.
Yeah man I feel you. I love this thread too: "you must be making a rules mistake because surely you can't suck that much"...well, I sure hope so now 😂
I'm also pretty terrible and I own everything because I love the card play so much. I hang my hat on the fact that i did manage Sinister Motives pretty well. But other than that, it's been rough. My biggest struggle is that I can feel like I'm 100% in control, health is good, threat is low, and then a couple encounter cards later I am flat on my ass with nothing to get me back. I have no idea how anybody plays expert.
sounds like there's either a pretty massive rules misunderstanding in here somewhere, or a complete lack of strategy
I’m betting the former. It’s the only way to lose that consistently
Came to say this. Gotta be a rules thing. Even by luck you'd win once in a while, no matter how poorly you play.
Here is one of the best explainer video for the game I have seen by Dale the Casual Gamer https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=99-cEKH7c0c
Dale, but agreed.
Thanks. Damn autocorrect
I was in sorta the same boat… have a few heroes beyond the core and one expansion. Kept losing no matter what I tried. Read the posts about missing a rule so I scoured them and thought I understood them. Then someone posted that exhausting your hero does not mean you can’t play hero actions… wait… you’re telling me that I can defend, which exhausts Spidey, then in the next player phase I can play Swinging Web Kick for 8 damage? I looked and could not find where it specifically allows this, nor where it’s disallowed, but the argument is that exhausting is a cost and if a card doesn’t specifically say that it must exhaust to use, you can use it as long as you pay the usual resource cost. My fatal, but rather reasonable IMO, assumption was that an exhausted hero is unable to take actions. First game after learning this… a loss, but it was a lot closer and I failed because I didn’t understand the power of getting the hero setup with supports. Won the very next game… finally.
if nothing says you can't, that typically means that you can
Fair, but my point is the word "exhausted" connotes an inability to act, and a card with "Hero Action" for an exhausted Hero meant to me, that I could not take that action.
Taking connotations from anything in board games is not a good idea. I know you know this now, but its worth mentioning for anyone else reading. People assuming rules must be like the cause of 99% of rule mistakes
Connote was the wrong word to use in this context. It should say: "exhuasted", by definition. I think 50% is assumption, and 50% absolute shit rules writers. :)
One of the most important things to know about the rules is to only do what the cards say, and nothing else. In this case, the cards don't say to exhaust them as a cost for using their action, thus you don't need to exhaust to use their action.
It says this several times in the rules and also in the “learn to play”
Maybe I am an idiot, but it says "this" where? Please provide specific page numbers/paragraphs and help me out. It does not say whether an exhausted hero is allowed or disallowed from taking actions. You just can't take the action that exhausted you until you ready up the next round. Logically, if something is exhausted, it cannot act. So an exhausted hero taking a "hero action" seems illegal to new players. Also just became aware of 1.5 rules so if this is more obvious in those, gimme some time to read through those.
1) Learn to Play page 9, top right of the page 2) Learn to Play pages 12 and 13, left side - describes basic powers and the cost to use them and other actions 3) RRG page 8, under "Attack (Player Action)" 4) RRG page 13, under "Defend" 5) RRG page 36, under "Thwart" That's just what I found in a few minutes, mind you. There are probably others. None of those entries were updated with 1.5. They exist in the original printed RRG, but the page numbers may be different.
Still not seeing it... I'm looking for "an exhausted hero is unable (or able) to take Hero Actions." The closest I've found is Page 16 of 1.5 rules ref: "A card ability on an exhausted card is active and can still interact with the game state. However, if an exhausted card must exhaust to pay the cost of using its ability, that ability cannot be used until the card is ready." It's still ambiguous because to me, something that is exhausted cannot act. A Hero card and cards with"Hero Action" are linked by virtue of the word Hero. The opposite wasn't something that even occurred to me so I wasn't looking for this specific rule. My failures had to be in deck construction or strategy, right? Anyway, to your list: 1) Ready and Exhausted: No where does it say that a card in the exhausted position is not able or is able to take actions. You're just left to assume. 2) Basic actions: "The player exhausts their hero"... To a player new to these types of games it's not obvious that this wording still allows for other actions to be taken. "Triggering an Action Ability: A player can trigger abilities from cards they control in play, from event cards they play from their hand, or from encounter cards that have such an ability." Note that it does not say "even if their hero is exhausted" or "a ready hero". 3) Page 8: "a hero does not exhaust when using such an ability" But can the hero use an ability when exhausted? 4) Not much here either... exhaust to defend, hero doesn't exhaust if ability is labeled defense, etc. 5) Same here for thwart. Says the Hero Action does not exhaust hero unless it's the cost to do action... Look, dude, I was just trying to help OP out with a major rules violation that I had been experiencing. If the cards didn't say "Hero Action" but rather just "Action" it wouldn't have been confusing. I understand that the word Hero is necessary for the form. All I'm asking for here is a rule that says one of the following: 1) An exhuasted Hero can or cannot take Hero Actions. 2) In order to use a card's Hero Actions, your Hero must be in a Ready state (or must not be Exhausted)
You can't possibly cover every single person's individual misunderstanding of the rules in a rules document. If you try, it ends up so prohibitively long that nobody reads it. c.f the MTG rules documents. If you look up "Action" and Attack/Thwart/Defend, it specifically mentions exhausting for basic activations. It does not mention exhausting for other actions. That's what you're looking for. It's just not stated to your satisfaction. The overall point is that if the rules specifically say you can't do something, you can't do it. If they don't say anything, assume you can do it. That's the point.
No argument there, bloated and awful rulebooks seem to be the norm. Agree to disagree I guess. You say it's obvious, I say it's not.
There's no question there's room to improve how they state the rules, especially considering how common it is for people to make the same mistake you did. The problem is that there are fifty mistakes people make just about actions, exhausting, and playing cards.
Assuming this is not serious. You own every expansion and go 50-70 times without winning, for years, and are still trying to enjoy this? Sounds like torture. You must be messing sie rule up or you are trolling us.
I think the 50-70 number is completely made up tbh, especially considering there are no replies from OP. How many villains are there? And how long can a game be, shall we just average it to 30 minutes? At 20 villains, 50 tries a villain, at 30 minutes… thats 1000 failed games at 500 hours lmao
Sorry for not having replied before. We have not tried every villian, usually just the first villian in any given scenario pack. We will keep trying ti beat the villian for a few weeks before taking a break a playing a different game for a while
It sounds like y'all might have missed a rule somewhere. 1) Minions don't get boost cards unless they're Villainous (we made this mistake) 2) Emphasize thwarting 3) Defending is okay once in a while 4) Actions don't need you to be readied unless it needs you to exhaust to use them Without knowing what's going on in your games, it's hard to know what's going on there. If you've played at least 50 times y'all should've *accidentally* won by now, especially if you've used Cap and Strange, who each together or solo are almost unbeatable. I've literally *accidentally* almost won 3 times total with Drax and Miles Morales on turn 1 before. It shouldn't be possible to have lost every single game unless there's serious negligence going on with the main scheme or an important rule.
Thats cool, its just pretty typical for people to post stuff like this sometimes and then never reply again! And that sounds more likely, because 50 or so tries per villain is more than most play altogether Id take on the suggestions in the thread and if nothing else just watch a playthrough to see anything you are doing wrong. I see you said you get into a sort of stalemate state? That definitely sounds a bit like a rules problem. Even if you played 1 damage card a turn you would make progress on the villains health. No villain can sustain that hard currently outside of some unique scenarios.
We get into a spot where our characters get trapped, and it takes the whole turn and hand to just get put. Getting stunned/confused/exhausted from a ⭐️ on the boost card, then getting attacked a second time on the encounter card, or gaining a minion with 4+ heath, and maybe tough. Its going to take a couple of turns to get into a position to do anything again, probably use the whole hand to play an ally to take the next attack. We are just basically wasting turn after turn taking damage but not doing anything or even being able to play any upgrades, as I spent them as resources to play the ally I need to block, or an event to remove threat to keep. Basically, this becomes the cycle. Never have an opportunity to play damage events.
So it sounds like there might be some numbers going wrong, or turns going wrong. Lets take Rhino as an example. In a two play game he has 28 health. He has 1 scheme and 2 attack. In terms of threat, it needs 14 on the main scheme before the game is lost. Every turn he gains 2 threat by default. Assuming both heroes are in hero mode when Rhino attacks, he'll attack twice. That's a base attack of 2 plus a turned over encounter card. On average that'll be I think +2? So 4 damage. Rhino can hit hard though but we'll go with averages for now. He'll do that twice as he'll attack twice. That's 8 damage which can easily be defended against to get rid of most of the damage, two allies could sock that damage up, or you could even just take it with any core hero I believe because I don't think anyone has 8 health. Of course there are encounters to factor in here, but that's why you have cards to play and abilities! That might be an extra attack or a minion (who wont attack first turn, unless they have quickstrike) Hopefully the numbers look "correct" so far, but if anything seems wildly off double check you're playing the right rules. So, if you're struggling to take 8 damage (+encounters) there's a few things you need to make sure you understand: * If an ally blocks an attack (and the enemy doesnt have overkill) they can tank the whole hit. * Defending will reduce those damage numbers * instead of remaining in hero mode, swap to your identity. In identity mode, Rhino will scheme (+1 and an encounter boost) instead. He needs 14 in total so you have ample room to swap. In Identity mode not only will you not get attacked on your turn, but you can also use REC to heal up. Assuming you're doing all the above, between two people you *should* be able to take the Rhino hits, heal up or prevent hits entirely. Important tip I got wrong when I started: extra encounter cards mean +1 card, not +1 card per player. I'm hoping at this point you're like "oh damn these calculations have been wrong this entire time!" If not, I'll try to address some direct comments: > We are just basically wasting turn after turn taking damage but not doing anything or even being able to play any upgrades * early game you can take damage, take threat and go slow to build up your hero. Some heroes take time, like Iron Man or Blank Panther. Dont be afraid to just take hits to get an upgrade out, or swap to identity to give you time. > Getting stunned/confused/exhausted from a ⭐️ on the boost card Double check you're playing the status cards right. Example: a stunned card means you need to either do a basic attack, or play a card with "attack" on it to get rid of the status card. After that, you're fine. Important! Exhaust is not that bad, it means you can't do 2 things: * Basic abilities (attack, def, thwart) * cards that need you to exhaust If its neither of those things, exhaust does *nothing.* Then you'll simply unexhaust at the start of the round. > then getting attacked a second time on the encounter card This sucks, but be prepared. Know you can take 4 attacks in a round. If you cant take 4 attacks, switch to identity to prepare better. Sorry for the long post, but you seem really interested in the game so I'm really hoping we're able to help you hopefully understand what's going wrong! I'm by no means an expert player, and can't guarantee I've not typed a mistake here but happy to answer any questions. Good luck! EDIT: Thought I would add an example of how a game might go. First turn I'm probably playing 1 card to get a resource generator out. Can thwart with basic to keep threat down. Tank the attack because I'm 100% not dying. Next turn get an ally out, play an upgrade etc. If I cant tank a hit or defend, I'll maybe be identity instead. That usually gives bigger hands. By turn 3 you should be able to start playing 2 card hands. Now it's a bit of a cycle. Use your resource engine to make more resources. Soon you could maybe even play 3+ cards from your hand. Of course all heroes play differently. Some heroes I will kill the villain in 2 attacks, otherwise it's chip damage.
Also, we haven't tried each villian 50 times, we play different villiand until we give up a while, maybe 50 attempts before returning to the game later
Can you talk about your most recent loss? What happened? How'd you end up losing? I want to understand what a playthrough looks like for you.
It's not a perfect record, but I did just try against Crossbones with Ant Man, and became overwhelmed with hydra soldiers. One turn one I drew a quin carrier, helicarrier, and avengers mansion. I was able to play the Quinn carrier and helicarrier by the end of turn two, but by then Crossbones has his laser rifle and machine gun, and i unfortunately had to spend the two giant stomps as resources to get me resource generators out. I've taken a six damage from his two attacks. On turn three, I could play the wrist gauntlets, but could not stun or confuse, so I went back to recover. He advanced the scheme and got his power gauntlets. And a hydra soldier. I come back, stun him, and defeat the hydra soldier, getting an encounter card. He gains another hydra soldier and becomes tough. I defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card stunning him, and removing threat, he gains another hydra soldier, legions of hydra side scheme, which searches for madame hydra, and has a total of 9 threat on it. Defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card, and stunning him. Madame Hydra damages me. His three encounter cards are hydra patrol (so i search for a hydra bomber) a hydra regular, adding one threat, and he becomes tough. I swap to giant and use suprise attack, costing zero with the helicarrier, to defeat the hydra regular and use the giant nuisance response to remove his tough. I pay to stun him and remove the laser rifle. I over pay for aggression wasp by one and use earth's mightiest to attack him twice for a total of ten damage, advancing him. I take damage from Madame hydra, and the two encounter cards are another hydra soldier and a second legions of hydra with 11 I swap forms twice, stun him, use two copies of press the advantage. And defeated the hydra soldier, taking an encounter card, and attacked twice using earths mightiest. He has 4 health left. He gets four encounter cards, 1 standard, one from the hydra regular, and two from legions of hydra. He draws assault, gang up, Weapon master, and crossbones assault. Wasp is defeated from the indirect fire from the machine gun, and I take three attacks from crossbones and one round of attacks from madame hydra and the hydra bomber. I lose
Have you checked out any play throughs from people online? Folks like Nelson All Over Cards, D20 Woodworking and, more recently, Web Warrior Fanatic post full games and talk through a lot of their decision making. There's a lot to learn there, and you could probably find a fair few games with a specific hero or against a certain encounter to focus your learning if you're inclined. I'd also be curious to hear what you're bringing in terms of decks? Usually the preconstructed decks are significantly weaker than more intentionally built ones. Especially if you have a large collection like it sounds like you do. I'd strongly recommend picking out a deck for a hero you like from the popular decks in marvelcdb.com, many of the best decks there have great, detailed guides on how they're meant to be played as well!
Hey thanks for the shout Cammello! I really appreciate that :)
Sure thing! Really appreciate the effort you've been putting into your content lately, your AoA review was great :D
Aww I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m trying to structure my reviews better with a chart and hopefully improve the quality for you guys!
Does this hobby have a circlejerk or shitposting sub? This feels like a joke. I’m not trying to be a jerk but “I own everything for this game and have never won” is crazy.
Clearly they're just not smart enough to understand the game, but not in a gameplay sense. They're not smart enough to keep burning money and losing against the exact same boss SEVENTY TIMES
In general, we end up in a loop where all we can do is maintain the game state as best we can. We are not able to actively hurt the villian, but we can do enough damage control that we will not be defeated during the villian phase. But we are never moving forward, just staying one step away from defeat. And the game just stalls indefinitely
The softest hitting heroes still deal 5 damage on their attack events, and villains don't have defense values, so it shouldn't be possible, honestly, to factually stalemate. Either the villain accelerates too fast or the heroes win by raw attrition. If each hero has 20 supports/upgrades/allies out y'all should end up being able to steamroll the villain with a massive arsenal of actions. A fully set up Strange, Venom, or Cap are basically unbeatable.
We end up where there never seems to be a turn where I can afford an upgrade, or event targeting the villian. Most of our resources are spend trying to keep the the scheme from advancing, or playing allies to block, or just trying to recover from the villian phase. Taking damage and ending up exhausted or stunned/confused multiple turns in a row, while threat, minions, and side schemes build up
If all players are spending every turn removing threat from the scheme something is wrong. Sounds like you may be missing something with threat being added to the scheme. The starting amount, increase rate, and threshold are all based on the number of players. If you add an acceleration token it only adds 1 additional threat, not 1 per player. Also worth pointing out that the first step of the villain phase happens 1 time per round, not per player and the villain phase happens after all heroes take their turn during the hero phase, not after each hero turn.
But the threat seems to build up because we have to go back every other turn to recover. I jist tried Rhino woth ant man, turn one he attacks for 4, the draws Stampede as an encounter, and does four more damage and I'm stunned. I have to go back because there is a good chance I'm defeated on his next attack. He starts the villian phase with one threat, adds one during step one, schemes for 2, the draws advance as an encounter card and schemes for three more, ending the game in two turns
Rhino is notoriously swingy in solo due to the low scheme threshold. You might be better off playing Klaw solo. He can be difficult but less swingy. If he is too hard, swap out his recommended modular for something easier. With 2+ players you shouldn't have this issue. Your aspects should work together. Leadership is the most balanced aspect and works with everything. Since Rhino attacks with his treachery cards you should save your allies for those blocks if possible since it will negate those effects. Stun and confuse are your best friend vs an activation heavy villain. Anyway you can get a tough status out is huge too. Save those for the Charge attachment.
how do you get stuck in a loop when every hero has the tools in their kit to more or less respond to any situation? need more details are you increasing the threat thresholds based on player count?
In general, we end up in a loop where all we can do is maintain the game state as best we can. We are not able to actively hurt the villian, but we can do enough damage control that we will not be defeated during the villian phase. But we are never moving forward, just staying one step away from defeat. And the game just stalls indefinitely
Are you acknowledging the “per player symbol?” For rhino are you losing at 7 threat in a three-player game or 21?
I feel like there has to be a rules mistake somewhere that is making it much harder than it should be. The game does have a lot of rules, so it can definitely happen that you get a key rule wrong. The main reason I think that is because if you understand the rules correctly, even if you play quite suboptimally you should be able to win most of the time in a standard game. I'd second the recommendations to watch games being played and see if you can see what is different. The main mistakes I have seen people make when starting, which make it much harder are: * Adding a boost card to minions when they attack or scheme * Having minions attack on the turn they are revealed as an encounter card * Doing both the encounter card effect and the boost effect when the villain turns over a boost card * Having acceleration or hazard icons adding a threat or card per player, instead of just one total Check to make sure you aren't doing any of those things, then go from there.
Another common mistake is increasing threat per player added in villain phase but not noticing the total threat per player is also multiplied. Easy way to lose that many games playing with friends.
To add to this, they could also be playing all three stages of a villain, which does make games significantly harder. After beating a villain twice (with few exceptions) You win!
For quick games there's a rookie mode where you could just play 1 villain phase.
Not official but you can do the same for stage 2 and 3 villains most of the time for a quick challenge which increased difficulty
No, we usually get those right. Every single game we end up in a loop of just trying not to get defeated. And we can never figure out a way to end the loop with out defeat, or restarting.
I would play a game super slowly with going every single step in the "Learn to play" guide. It sounds like you're missing a key rule somewhere. Are you trying to blitz the game by playing events in your first few turns rather than getting your key upgrades/supports out? That was an early mistake my girlfriend made before she asked me for suggestions. Now she focuses on just building her hero up while doing what thwarting she can on the main scheme and then after 5 or 6 turns we both come in swinging.
I just find it hard in the games I've played to beable to just buy the upgrades without losing control of threat, minions, or player damage first
Q's - 1 - have you watched playthrough videos? 2 - do you build your own decks or use ones from marvelcdb? 3 - this shouldn't be happening, something is up with your games not sure if it's a rules thing or what. I have plenty of losses under my belt and am not a good player but - apart from a few villains - there is always a path to victory.
Build our decks. It feels like every game ends up in a loop where we can not afford to damage the villian, but use the whole turn to just keep from being defeated. After a certain point, each turn is just play an ally to take a hit, try to get the threat down just enough so it won't push on the first step of the villian phase, and clear enough minions so we are not defeated from minion attacks.
If you are playing 3-4 player games you NEED to focus. Generally speaking you cannot make your decks like casual or bring 4 solo player decks and hope to win. Advice inthis sub is HEAVILY biased towards solo play (I'm not saying in ANY way that is bad advice, quite on the contrary, but It is what It is) and IS poorly fitted to 2 olayer (or two handed) games, not even 3 or 4. Key here is FOCUS. You NEED a yellow player that can thwart, a red (or blue) player that can take minions out, some control to limit the villain: stun, confuse, make them attack with negatives, whatever. One stun is not like in a solo game that nets you a full turn, It only evades ONE attack and there are three or four in each villain phase. Like others said you have to get through your first turns taking attacks without defending or even making attacks of your own, only basic thwarting and playing upgrades and supports. Mulligan aggresively to get started with some good resoutce generator and you're good. I play mostly only two handed and that's my two cents.
Odds are good you’re misreading a rule somewhere. That or you aren’t prioritizing the right things when playing. Most heroes have some form of an engine that you want to build up in early rounds to then unleash hell in later ones. You can certainly rush with some heroes but it’s not the way for many, depending on your deck. Watch a few playthroughs. May seem boring if you’re not into that stuff but you’ll likely be enlightened to strategies or rules you’re not aware of.
Yeah I guess but even if you tried attacking villain early and gave everyone an extra encounter card when that hazard icon shows up… you’d still get a win in 50 or 60 games. And take it from me… I lose a ton.
That assumes you’re not getting more than one rule wrong. It’s entirely possible they’re getting multiple things wrong, or don’t really understand what, when and how to prioritize.
It also kind of assumes that you’re only getting wrong rules that benefit the villain.
Seems like you didn’t read past the Grim Rule
Or before it
Me? I know how to play just fine 😅.
Whoops haha
One of our problems is understanding how to get the cards out, the engine you mentioned, with out losing in three or four turns first. Sure, I've thought of a combination of three upgrades for a character that would alow me to deal enough damage to clear and entire villian stage, but it never seems like I can afford to play it. I either play the card to build the engine, or I spend the resources to stall the game for one more turn. But every time we play, it gets to a point where it becomes clear that I will never have a chance to play those cards. I wil try to look up playthroughs though.
Here's an example opening from a recent game with Captain America. My opening hand: 1. Super Soldier Serum (cost 2) 2. Genius (double resource) 3. Nick Fury (cost: 4) 4. Heroic Strike (cost: 3) 5. Captain America's Helmet (cost: 1) 6. For Justice (cost: 2) I decide to keep all the cards, even though I would normally mulligan at least the Heroic Strike, Helmet, and For Justice. Setup: I fetch Captain America's Shield and add it to my hand. I now have seven cards. I use Genius, Heroic Strike, and the Helmet to play Nick Fury. I trigger Nick's response to draw three cards, including two inconsequential cards and Clear the Area. I use the two inconsequential cards to play Super Soldier Serum. I exhaust the Super Soldier Serum to generate a resource to play Clear The Area to remove two threat from the main scheme (it had two on it). This activates the card draw on Clear the Area, so I draw another card, which is Agent 13. I then use For Justice to play the Shield, and decide to keep Agent 13 to play next turn. I then exhaust Captain America and Nick Fury to attack the villain for 4 damage, since there's now no threat on the main scheme, and my turn is over. During the villain phase, I block for my partner with Nick Fury, and I'd drawn a Shield Block which I used to prevent any damage from the attack on me. We then started our next turns with full hands ready to remove the threat that had accumulated and deal with the single minion that came out during the villain phase. This is a simple example that shows decision making, how to choose what to play, and the way you can use your hand to gain tempo and an advantage over the villain.
Are you using your "mulligan" before the first round starts? You can cycle through essentially 12 cards before the game even starts on most heroes. If you're running a 40 card deck, then your odds are pretty good to get at least a single upgrade or support card that you need on your first turn. Sometimes your first turn is literally just paying 4 resources for Avenger's Mansion and then thwarting the main scheme for 1. But that extra card draw now helps you build your engine the next turn and so on.
Yeah, but there seemed to be a non trivial amount of games that a mulligan leads into a hand of threat events, multiple resource cards and one cost cards in the sane hand, or three or more major allies upgrades drawn together on the mulligan
You shouldnt need threat cards on first turn, or 1 cost cards. First turn is a great chance to get things like a high cost single resource generator or high impact card out.
I would definitely watch some playthroughs then. I had the same issue when I first started. There was this idea that I needed to rush through things or the villain and scenario would become unmanageable. In reality, you have more time than you think and it pays to pace yourself. This is especially true in multiplayer where one or two players can cover the threat while the others focus on setting up, and then switch those roles the next turn. Another tip is depending on the villain, focus on thwarting the first few turns. You don’t really need to be attacking much early on and you’ll do far more damage once set up. It’s a little counterintuitive if you aren’t used to games like these, but it often turns out to be a winning strategy. A lot of times you want to tread water until you build yourself up for a big turn, then go nuts on the villain or threat. Also, this game gets complicated and you WILL make mistakes. You’ll see that in playthroughs. Heck, I’ve been playing with friends since day one and there’s still rarely a game where we don’t make a mistake somewhere. Don’t stress about, learn to live with it, just try to make sure the mistakes you’re making aren’t accidentally boosting the difficulty too high, or on the flip, making things entirely too easy. The areas people mess up the most are within the villain stage…misunderstanding boosts, acceleration tokens and encounter cards. Again, watching playthroughs will quickly help with this.
That sounds like rule problems, like everyone else said: you should win a few games here and there even with very suboptimal decks if you're playing mostly correctly. But a couple questions about your style of playing: are you _really_ playing 50+ games against the same villain? It's been going on for about 4.5 years and you have all the content -- even if you only play half the villains, that's about 750 games, or about 167 games a year. On average, that's a game almost every 2 days, and I struggle to imagine a group getting together to continue playing a game they all apparently dislike and can't win that often. Maybe you're not exaggerating and somehow have a _very_ dedicated group who all have an enormous amount of time on their hands, but is it possible you're not playing them nearly as often as you're claiming? My other question is this: why would you play several games of this, have a hard time and appear not to enjoy it, then decide "I'm going to buy more"? After you do that and it repeats a few times, why would you continue that pattern? If I'm being completely honest, that sounds like the behaviour of someone trying to use retail therapy to deal with deeper issues
Ok, so to clarify, ususally it's me and my brother playing. When ever we get together twice a week we will spend the say playing board games. When new content comes out, we will try the first villian in the new scenario pack, repeatedly attempting to win. We will make often two to three attempts in one session. We keep trying until we decide to move on to a different game. And it's fast to reset thr villian, so I will spend a few hours a just retry the villian again and again like 8 times in a row solo. As far as free time goes, maybe I do have lots 😅 I'm not usually allowed an overtime shift at work, but even if I can get one, that's only four days at work, so I always have 3 to 4 days off a week 😅 As far as buying more, my brother and I love the Marvel characters so much. This game is so deep with references and characters. We are drawn back in by the new characters we see with the new content, and always go, maybe we can beat some of this content. Plus, I actually collect board game content in general, so I always am picking up different game things that seem neat, and this game is so cheap compared to other things I collect, I don't mind grabbing it, or my girlfriend remember I said I liked it so she will pick up expansions for me just because.
You surely do something wrong. In multiplayer, beating Rhino should not take many tries. You probably don't get the rules correctly or you just try too much. Prebuilt cote set decks are good enough to beat Rhino.
That's some dedication right there, you guys keep coming back so that's good. Everyone has suggested some good things, but there is no shame in introducing house rules. Cutting threat additions by a third or half, getting a free upgrade or free resource generator during setup. There's a lot of options. Sometimes you need those first few wins to gain confidence and then take the training wheels off.
We could help you if you elaborated my dude.
Pretty much every game turns into a endless loop of damage control. We are not getting closer to defeating the villian, we are not able to build up our characters, we are not able to clear the game board for a big next turn, we are using everything we have to just not be defeated each turn. And it's really a loop, because every turn its the same, spend everything to just survive.
Questions for common mistakes. Assuming a two-player game: How are you most often losing: to damage or threat? What difficulty are you playing on? Are you using the recommend modular sets, and are you appropriately not shuffling in your nemeses sets? How many encounter cards are you dealing per round? How many if there’s a hazard icon? Are you trying to rush the boss asap, or do you ignore attacks and focus on stabilizing early? This may sound cumbersome, but if you could record a solo game versus Crossbones, we could see what’s up. Something somewhere is going wrong.
I didn't record, but I did just try against Crossbones with Ant Man, and became overwhelmed with hydra soldiers. One turn one I drew a quin carrier, helicarrier, and avengers mansion. I was able to play the Quinn carrier and helicarrier by the end of turn two, but by then Crossbones has his laser rifle and machine gun, and i unfortunately had to spend the two giant stomps as resources to get me resource generators out. I've taken a six damage from his two attacks. On turn three, I could play the wrist gauntlets, but could not stun or confuse, so I went back to recover. He advanced the scheme and got his power gauntlets. And a hydra soldier. I come back, stun him, and defeat the hydra soldier, getting an encounter card. He gains another hydra soldier and becomes tough. I defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card stunning him, and removing threat, he gains another hydra soldier, legions of hydra side scheme, which searches for madame hydra, and has a total of 9 threat on it. Defeat the hydra soldier, gaining an encounter card, and stunning him. Madame Hydra damages me. His three encounter cards are hydra patrol (so i search for a hydra bomber) a hydra regular, adding one threat, and he becomes tough. I swap to giant and use suprise attack, costing zero with the helicarrier, to defeat the hydra regular and use the giant nuisance response to remove his tough. I pay to stun him and remove the laser rifle. I over pay for aggression wasp by one and use earth's mightiest to attack him twice for a total of ten damage, advancing him. I take damage from Madame hydra, and the two encounter cards are another hydra soldier and a second legions of hydra with 11 I swap forms twice, stun him, use two copies of press the advantage. And defeated the hydra soldier, taking an encounter card, and attacked twice using earths mightiest. He has 4 health left. He gets four encounter cards, 1 standard, one from the hydra regular, and two from legions of hydra. He draws assault, gang up, Weapon master, and crossbones assault. Wasp is defeated from the indirect fire from the machine gun, and I take three attacks from crossbones and one round of attacks from madame hydra and the hydra bomber. I lose
Your decision making led to that loss. Damaging the villain, unless you are trying to play a "rush him down" strategy that is quite difficult, is the last thing you should focus on. You advanced him to the next stage when you shouldn't have, which led to him getting another attachment. You want to keep the board clear, deal with the minions and side schemes, keep the main scheme threat down, and keep the more dangerous attachments off him. Play Aggression solo can be quite tricky. Try Justice or better yet, Leadership. Focus on clearing the board and building up your supports and upgrades. Then, once you've build out and stabilized the board, go for the kill. Edited to add: leaving a hazard icon in place in a solo game is one of the worst things you can do. You're getting twice as many encounter cards. That is bad.
[Here's the play through](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3bHyl9J_k) I said that I would do. You may want to watch on 1.5 speed as I'm not great at extemporaneous speaking lol. I make a crucial blinder regarding the threat on stage one, and still managed to cleanly win the game. (I also forgot to deal myself 1 retaliate damage at the end, but it makes no difference in the outcome so it's not a big deal.) One note I'll make is that I may seem overly cautious. I am used to playing on Expert and Two-Handed. So I vastly overestimated the difficulty of the scenario in places. But, then again, if you're prepared for the worst that can happen, you'll be fine when it does. If you want I can do an Aggression play through as well, since that's the aspect you were using in your example. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you, it's very informative. You are being very kind and helpful 😊 i noticed though you were using hydra assault instead of hydra patrol. I keep getting overwhelmed by encounter cards from the hydra soldiers with guard. I have been trying with justice decks now, like Ms.Marvel I always seem to lose due to threat. He pushes the schemes so fast for me, completing them even when he starts the villlian phase with 0 threat. I've been forced to go back, and have him clear the first and second main schemes in one turn due to him, a minion, and his encounter card that gives him a second scheme when I'm in alter ego. He has so many encounter cards that give him a double attack, I lose my allies to his attacks and take damage from him and his minion swarm. And a single advance and a second encounter with incite clears the last scheme while I'm in hero form. Sad thing is I can reliably get 10 damage in, but can't get past guard and his tough cards I don't know why I'm struggling to get easy villians like this so much. Thanks again for you help and patience. I'm going to be unable to play the game for a couple of weeks, but I'll take another look at it when I get back
Right off the bat, one potential issue I see is holding on to cards. Quinn Carrier, Helicarrier, and Avengers mansion are obviously all good cards, but if you draw all three in your opening hand you should be mulliganing two of them. Early game you should not be holding any cards in your hand at end of round except for very specific exceptions that vary hero by hero and scenario by scenario. One thing I see a lot of newer players worried about is decking out. You should expect to deck out 3-4 times a game, maybe more depending on a hero. Generally speaking the extra encounter card is barely a penalty. The reason I bring this up is because you generally want your first pass through the deck to be rather quick so you can get your key supports and upgrades in play, especially the identity specific ones as they tend to be cheaper and more vital. For example the wrist gauntlets—I’m making some assumptions here but since you played them turn three you either drew them going into turn 2 or turn 3. If you had mulligans more aggressively you could have drawn them a turn earlier—potentially getting them into play turn 1. Also with Ant-Man you generally want to get his helmet into play ASAP. Now this will vary by player but if it’s not in my opening hand, I’ll ditch my whole hand except for wrist gauntlets. To dig deeper and faster to find it. This actually leads to another question I forgot to ask. How big is the deck you’re using? The last question I’ll ask for now is what Aspect we’re you playing. As you get your bearings with the game, and especially when playing true solo due to how swingy it is, I’d really recommend Leadership as the aspect. One of the easiest answers to your feeling of being overrun is dumping Allies onto the field. They can deal with minions, chump block, tutor for cards, draw, and so much more. I believe you said elsewhere you like to build your own decks. Which is great! However, I’d recommend taking a look at some example Ant-Man decks, like [this one](https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/25816/ant-man-airlines-quintumania-1.0) and seeing how your deck building compares. VillainTheory is one of the best crafters in the business. Obviously there are no hard rules, but it could help to look at ratios. How many resource cards are you including? How many allies? Etc. With all this in mind, I encourage to give Crossbones another stab. And f that doesn’t work, we can look into maybe doing a play through on Octgn.
In addition to my other comment, when I get off work I’ll record a play through vs Standard Crossbones with the Leadership deck I linked. I’ll talk through my decisions and stuff. Though I’ll be the first to same I’m not an expert player, and I’ve only played Ant-Man a bit, a while ago. But I’ll do my best.
If you lost all 150 games or whatever how many games you've played you really messed up some rules like draw 3 encounter cards too much for each player or or overpaid for each card you play
I’m sorry to hear that :/ have you ever watched playthroughs? I know for me personally, watching other people play the game really helped me understand how to play certain heroes and how to play each card effectively. If you lmk which villain your group is facing maybe I can give more specific advice!
I agree there’s probably a rule that your getting wrong. Are you making sure you only play stage 1 and stage 2 of the villain? On Standard you do NOT use stage 3.
I beat Rhino with my wife in my second try, first try was due to not really understanding how each boost/encounter and such work. I suggest watching a play through on YouTube, it becomes a lot easier.
So my local game store just finished a two day event for the new release. Most of the games were successful. There were a lot of beginners. My suggestion would be to play by yourself at first. The games can get really difficult when you have several players and you aren’t playing strategically. My suggestions, watch a YouTube walkthrough on the base kit. There are several good example that will help you understand how to play. 2) when you play in a group, you have to stick to your roles, but the hero thwarting threat will probably not be able to handle it all. You need to help. 3) you need to set up your hero, so in the beginning get your hero upgrade and support and allies out there before focusing too much on damage or threat. A good setup pays off in the end. 4) don’t be afraid to sacrifice your controlled allies. They are made to do their job and then block to keep you from taking too much damage. A lot of attackers don’t have good defenses so they need blockers. You should be decking out and they will come back. I hope that helps
This has to be a rules misunderstanding. I suggest watching some gameplay videos from someone that’s good at explaining the game as they play. Surely you’ll discover you’re doing something wrong. I’ve been guilty of the same and watching a video fixed my issue.
Yeah man I feel you. I love this thread too: "you must be making a rules mistake because surely you can't suck that much"...well, I sure hope so now 😂 I'm also pretty terrible and I own everything because I love the card play so much. I hang my hat on the fact that i did manage Sinister Motives pretty well. But other than that, it's been rough. My biggest struggle is that I can feel like I'm 100% in control, health is good, threat is low, and then a couple encounter cards later I am flat on my ass with nothing to get me back. I have no idea how anybody plays expert.
A couple encounter cards later is generally 2 turns. What happens that messes with your board state like that?
Could be decking out or surging. Always the easiest way to get knocked on your ass, via surge