Let’s discuss the hardest villains! Who are they? What do we consider difficult? And how can we adjust difficulty?

    Join me, Web-Warrior Fanatic and Nelson in this episode of Shadow of the Cast: A Marvel Champions Podcast!

    Web-Warrior Fanatic: https://www.youtube.com/@webwarriorfanatic
    VillainTheory: https://www.youtube.com/@VillainTheory
    Nelson All Over: https://www.youtube.com/@NelsonAllOverCards

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    (Card images in the video are courtesy of Cerebro developer UnicornSnuggler. Huge thanks!)

    00:00 Intro music wow
    00:15 Introducing Web-Warrior Fanatic!
    08:17 Top 4 most difficult villains
    15:30 High variance scenarios
    19:01 Deck-building to counter a scenario difficulty
    25:10 Do we need more Ronans?
    36:50 Multi-villain scenarios?
    41:03 Standard vs. Expert
    48:36 Changing up modulars
    58:51 What are we doing next + thrilling conclusion
    01:04:00 Outro music wow

    [Music] welcome to sh the cast a Marvel Champions podcast I’m your friendly neighborhood web War fanatic woo oh my goodness we are back I’m excited to have you on web Warrior yeah it’s going to be good I’m villain Fury that’s Nelson and we have a very special episode yeah we should we should introduce ourselves right yes yes yes so the three of us what are we going to be talking about today villain Theory So today we’re talking about difficult villains and exactly what we mean by difficult villains I think we’re going to go into pretty shortly but I’m pretty excited to talk about that and I think it’s fair to say hopefully you agree Webb fanatic you are quite known for playing difficult villains I’ve seen maybe one or two games of Venom Goblin on your Channel yeah I play a lot of the uh the difficult villains yes so I just want to say for people as well the podcast comes out on the third Monday of every month but if there are delays such as Age of Apocalypse not arriving in the UK that kind of thing or illness it might just roll over to the next month will be a couple of weeks uh delayed but otherwise third Monday of every month but we do have a guest today that is web Warrior fanatic let’s get to know web Warrior fanatic a little bit before we dive into some of these challenging villains now web Warrior I know because we’ve talked about this before but can you tell everybody what what’s with your name how did you come to be known as the web Warrior fanatic um I mean I’m I’m a fanatic I love uh Spider-Man I love the web warriors um originally I actually um had my name as just like Franklin on on YouTube and I posted like a couple videos and then uh like I was thinking like of deck because you know everyone has a really cool deck name for like decks and I was like what’s cool deck Dam and then uh whenever I made the um like a Peter Parker Spider-Man deck I was like I want to call it the Webb fanatic and I was like let’s change my channel to that too so if there’s anyone that’s watching this from like way before they would have saw that it wasn’t webw fanatic it was like just Franklin so and so Franklin is your Alter Ego at that point I I would assume excellent nice so so about how long ago was that when when were you when did you make those first videos and why why start making videos um I started actually I’m almost in a year in playing um I started playing in July last year and then I just um like posted my first video like on August of like uh Spider-Man versus uh Green Goblin musician formula and um yeah I mean me and my wife play a lot of uh I don’t know you guys play or yeah I know Nelson plays um but like Katon uh Splender like a lot of those type of games but we never got into like something like this but those games are a little bit competitive um so we wanted something or I wanted something a little bit more peaceful in the household so I was like and then shout outs to um my friend Keegan and Kobe they introduced me to Marvel Champions and I was like oh my goodness this is like a friendly game like we’ll both win or both lose like we don’t have to worry about like you know any sort of competition nice that’s awesome yeah I love Cooperative games and Marvel Champions just well I mean we are here talking doing a podcast on the game so I think that’s pretty relevant do you have before we kind of trans ition a little bit more we have uh some fan questions but I want to know do you have a favorite memory of playing Marvel Champions or I guess like adjacent to Marvel Champions like what’s your what makes this game so special for you um man I I would say um well my wife uh got me like mad time shot that was my second box and uh immediately we like opened it and we played Thanos um like like Co-op and then that was a lot of fun she was playing ghost spot I was playing Peter Barker and I mean that was that was just a really fun like nice moment that I I enjoyed um for solo moments um so I I originally uh got miles to play um to play Ronin and I got miles through like um so I call like crazy Jackalope cuz I wasn’t playing I’m getting any content like I I was just like you know I’ll be good with ghost spider miles and Peter and like I feel like you know we’re just like playing like together it’s not going to be like hardcore or anything you know we’re good we’re not going um yeah so I got the Galaxy Most Wanted as like my first box I wanted to beat Ronin so I play a lot of Milos and then um and then uh I saw like a video online of death cry gaming he’s another like content creator and then he beat Ronan um with Iron Man and I was like oh I didn’t know that was possible so then I like I like tried it with Peter Parker um and then like that first game where like I fought Rome with Peter Parker I was like holy cow like cuz you had to do all this like build out and all this stuff that was like a really fun moment too like I was just like this game is like the coolest game and the feeling that you get whenever you’re fighting like someone’s super difficult like it’s stressful but at the end it’s like super duper fun that’s awesome that’s that’s a really fun story yeah that’s really cool I like how that kind of the difficult villains like Ronin already tied into kind of that memory so it’s very fitting for this episode as well just more satisfying I would say so I want to ask you a question that was sent in from David Jacobson but I kind of want to corrupt and twist this question for my own purposes but I will say to David your question will be like normally answered throughout this episode I have no doubts of that so thank you for sending that in so they say I see you mostly play Ronin Venom Goblin or Magneto on Expert for a good challenge but do you ever try using other mod sets to crank up the difficulty if so have you ever created a villain with the other mod sets that was actually more difficult than those three villains and the way I want to corrupt this is is something that happened when we had D20 as a guest I laid down the challenge to nelon and D20 did they want to play a difficult villain so I’m going to say this to you too now and this is mainly on you web where no pressure do you want to fight in a free playay mplay a game with us on probably on Nelson stream a villain that has been made more difficult very difficult by changing up the mod sets yeah I would love to that sounds super fun I saw this question in advance and I schemed something up I don’t oh no yeah do you guys want to hear villain’s not nice when he when he gives suggestions to play again so I’m a little scared what is it yeah I’ve ruined a lot of Nelson’s games on stream and he’s like give me a nice mods set and I’m like ah yes this is my time it’s never bomb scare it is never bomb scare I just want to throw that out so I’m really actually glad that web Warrior brought up Thanos in his story there because I would like us to play Thanos with his two normal mod sets removed and replaced with three small innocent mod sets called super strength flight and telepathy oh gross oh all three attachments like oh yeah and the oh my goodness okay okay yeah you know that actually sounds like Thanos I feel like he should have like Overkill like you know on his text box he should have the uh yeah I mean d is super duper powerful I think that’s very damatic as well I’m thinking maybe the Infinity Stones are giving him this kind of power and things I’m sure they can do everything and this will really be a showdown between Thanos and us because those mod sets and this is intentional don’t have any minions in them so when the space Zone comes up it’s an instant acceleration oh oh my goodness well now now I’m gonna have nightmares tonight thanks villain you’re welcome my job here is done no that sounds incredibly challenging and fun I think we can do it but I’ve not tried it so it’s going to it’s going to be interesting he’s going to have like P attack and Overkill or something crazy yeah yeah I feel like that’s definitely like Ron in like Venom go level like I feel like that’s a good yeah just giving Dan all those Buffs awesome well I’m really looking forward to that maybe a bit too much so as we move on into the podcast we had a lot of questions for this episode you guys had a lot of questions about the villains and for web Warrior fanatic and because we had quite a few almost adjacent or questions that lined up I’ve kind of condensed crunched a few questions together so your question will probably be answered but it might be sort of Amalgamated into a bigger talking point is what I’m calling it and our first big talking point I’m calling the challenge and fun of difficult villains so some of these questions are from me some of them are from rfac cool Caleb gito and Dustin among others so thank you so much for sending those in and Nelson do you want to jump in with one of these I absolutely do we have to start it out with I think the question that everyone’s kind of expecting who as the collective do we consider to be the most difficult villains and can we agree on a top four I’m gonna I’m going to let web warriors start us out because I think that they have a lot of experience in this realm but who who would you say maybe maybe like your your top two I think are pretty obvious right yeah yeah I I feel like we probably all agree um I would have Ronin the accuser and Venom Goblin as like the top two guys no way that’s so easy yeah I I want to and maybe this is a talking point for somewhere else in the podcast but I feel like a villain that we don’t talk about too much and I do think that the difficulty is scaled pretty significantly for solo plays collector one where it’s just like nobody ever plays collector one but I think he is probably one of the most difficult villains in the game but it’s never talked about because everyone just like he’s no fun to play like no no one actually plays him now that difficulty does change a little bit when you add more players but in Solo play it’s just it’s too it’s so difficult to the point where no one plays them yeah collector one is I think I’ve said this before in a previous episode of the podcast my least favorite villain you wants to take all my toys away where are they going stop stop collecting them you got you’ve got your own encounter deck um yeah Ive not played it in Solo in a long time because I don’t typically play that scenario very much and when I do it it’s definitely not you know solo expert specifically is the the real nightmare fuel one I think that one’s definitely very difficult uh maybe for solo it’s definitely in the conversation but I’m curious to know what web Warrior thinks do you think collector one is in the top four most difficult or do you have any different opinions oh man um I you know I think it’s all just subjective at the end of the day oh yeah I I personally uh I I think that he he can definitely have tough games um and it could also just be my experience I personally don’t find them to be actually that difficult and I I feel like but I feel like I do have to change into how the way that I play when I’m facing him so for sure um yeah like I remember um yeah so I I feel like all you got to do like whenever I play him I just play my attack event whenever I draw it so like I remember whenever I I was first playing him with Spider-Man on Peter Parker um every single time I would draw a swing web kick I would just play it and then by the time that I played the third one like he’s dead and it it would be like 10minute games and I I mean I think that if you do it that specific way he’s not as difficult but definitely if you’re trying to build out like how I do against Ru or something like that he’s like impossible defeat like for sure so I I feel like that there’s there’s a balance I think that definitely some Heroes make him like impossible like um you know if you’re playing like black widow he’s probably like harder than than Ronin or like you know so I think definitely um there there’s some variant there and and I feel like more event heavy Heroes like maybe Gamora I haven’t played her but I’ve seen like um a lot player and I feel like she might just like cruise through but I’m not exactly sure cuz I I haven’t I haven’t personally tried that match up yeah I think Gora does well there I think you’re right I actually think quite a few kind of difficult villains in general if you have quite a fast paced play style like a high Tempo kind of damage thing especially also for some of them if you include like stuns and things you can kind of just power through them before that awfulness really spirals out of control so I think collector is definitely in that boat I’m going to throw out the other two that I think are kind of in especially like in a general sense so all player counts pretty much and I’m going to throw out Magneto and Loki some other end of the Box villains into the mix yeah no both of those are are very challenging I’m I’m I’m a little surprised with Loki I guess I never really thought of Loki as one of the more challenging villains and in in my mind he’s associated with Annoying which means I don’t play him as much which may just mean that you know that’s why I don’t think that he is one of the more challenging villains but that’s interesting I I never didn’t think that Loki would be in the discussion of the top four but looking back on I mean like you have 60 Health per player that you have to go through in expert mode that’s a lot of health so yeah because you have you have to beat him three times he can be very frustrating he does have the Infinity Stones yeah no that that’s uh’s my my logic kind of is yeah he’s got that big Health po his side schemes are quite chunky and there’s just a lot of time for things to go wrong because he takes so long you do have to deal with things I think he’ll kind of defeat you out of nowhere maybe a little bit less than let’s say Ronin or Magneto although he can still do a lot especially if you decided to go oh Trier and the time Stone just randomly comes up and he gets a baned and time going you know things can go a little bit wrong but it’s just the length of time and kind of attrition aspect I would say yeah I mean I I feel like I have like the exact same um like perspective as as Nelson cuz whenever I was like first you know thinking about like tough villains I would always think it’s like Ronin Venom gin and Magneto and then a lot of people like commented they’re like where’s Loki Loki should be up there like where’s Loki and I I was like what is Loki like one of the harder ones and I I mean I think I would agree too that he is definitely like like up there like definitely like the fourth one too um I don’t know why like the first two times I play him I didn’t find him as difficult and you know for for the same reason that you guys are saying I do think that he has like a higher like main schem thre threshold but then at the same time he can he can just switch to like his like scheme one where he has like three scheme and then like scheme right away um but yeah I mean I think that Loki I saw this is actually one of the other questions too but I think Loki in standard is like harder than Mano on standard because Loki on standard is like the exact same as Loki on Expert except it’s just one less so I was like what the heck like he’s yeah I think that might be why I feel he might be a little bit easier on Expert because all the other villains like ramp up a little bit and he just adds like 20 more hit points which is still bad you know it’s it’s harder for rushing but um I think that usually when you get the first Loki down like that game’s going to be a win it’s just that if we can’t get um built up against the first Loki then uh then it might take me down yeah I’m glad you mentioned how he’s basically the same on standard they don’t give him a different villain cards or or anything which is pretty pretty crazy to me uh I think he’s quite a high variance kind of scenario because if you get the non starart versions of Loki and just you know status the heck out of him the infinity stone stops going off it makes things a lot more uh manageable speaking of high variants one of the names that I want to throw out there is nebula especially in expert mode yeah because like I’ve played games of nebula where I was like okay did I just play Marvel Champions and then I played games where I have gotten absolutely Barrel rolled over just just three rounds because everything surges and so do you do you equate I guess this is I don’t think this is one of our questions so it’s a question I’m going to pose how much weight do you give to high variant scenarios in terms of difficulty but me personally I I don’t I kind of like balance it out so I just kind of like take the average nebula like I feel like nebula is similar to um what you guys talking about the collector one I feel like they’re similar in their variance in that I but I think she’s like like a level above that in terms of like it be games where I feel like in true soul on expert mode like specifically that it’s impossible to win when like literally impossible no matter if you’re rushing or building like if she like enters that surge stuff on like turn one and gets those like I don’t know if she gets like five attachments in like two turns like there’s no way to get him down fast enough because on exper mode and in Solo you can only get rid of one attachment Max per turn so then she’s building those attachments fast you can get rid of them and they’re capping like Dam she can take by five they’re like retali there caring cards from your hand like all that stuff so I think that if she gets that I honestly don’t think like there’s any way for me to like try to beat her like with any type of deck but then there is like a rare chance of that like that’s never actually personally happened to me like where it’s like impossible but it it’s gotten close like the longer the game goes um but then like the variance if like and I’m sure you guys have had this too where you guys like play and it’s like you know eight minute games and you’re like oh like she’s not that even on exp it’s like it’s like eight minutes I’m like man uh she’s kind of easy so then I just take the balance of that I’m like okay she’s like a middle ground villain because she can be like harder than Ronin um and it’s not satisfying because I play games that she’s easier than Rhino so like I just don’t feel any type of um enjoyment in beating her either yeah I don’t know if I would say I found her easier than Rhino personally but I definitely agree with all the the high variant stuff it’s you know when when you set her up I don’t know if this is exclusive to expert because I basically just play expert I don’t remember but you know you discard at the start and you can get techniques and if you have no techniques it’s fine if everything’s a technique especially like I play quite a bit of multiplayer and if there’s like four or five techniques just before the games even started I’m like what has happened here why has this happened to us I don’t deserve this especially because expert when she activates you only her getting rid of one of those that’s something yeah that’s something really interesting I did want to quickly mention I actually played her in the semi recent uh time span at least with taor and I was able to Taun her to kind of rip off some more of her things before the next uh villain turn which was quite useful so might have even been with par he’s one of my favorite taunt Heroes yeah so that that was a little something but yeah I I personally probably put her probably put her in my top eight or something villains you know but there are times where like you say you can just destroy her sometimes there’s three turns with no surge sometimes there one turn with like six surge I’m like okay she played more cards than I did like wait a second so so we’ve kind of narrowed down to Ronin Venom Goblin some of the other names that we’ve thrown out NE um we’ve thrown out Loki we’ve thrown out collector one there any others that I’m missing I want to put another one out there and this is going to TI into kind of another question here I’m going to throw out Ultron out there and say how much do we factor in teching or building against specific scenarios in terms of difficulty because I feel like if you have a deck badly suited to Ultron you are probably going to get flooded by drones if they come in sort faster then you can take them out and it’s very inefficient to put like a big chunk of damage on a tiny drone but on the other hand if you build for him he is basically a pushover I’d say these days so I I’ve never actually teched personally against Ultron like I played games in multiplayer where like people in the group Tech and then just like you’re saying like it’s just super D easy like if you have like some with retaliate or you have um like a lot of ways just do some AOE damage i i find otron I don’t know so I so I never teched against him but what I like to do against him a lot is flipping down to ultra eego and I think that’s just kind of my play style um so I I find that if you’re playing Justice and you can under surveillance that first main scheme and then get flips there um I I feel like that he’s not as difficult and um yeah and even if it pops to the second main scheme like he doesn’t have that much other threat adding stuff other than the adding the initial threat every single turn or taking that droan right you I think you can choose between adding three threats to the main scheme or a drone minion and usually I think I just take the extra threat cuz he’s usually not that much anyways so I personally never teched against him and I I think that some Heroes like again like Deadpool I mean Deadpool was like the roughest thing against oan because I mean I’m scared to use my uh regenerating regenerating degenerate because if I flip down the arra like I could just die in a thing so I to try to play the game without dying as Deadpool until you get rid of all those concussive blasts so yeah I mean I he can definitely be like a counter for I think um some Heroes but personally I I’ve never felt that I I think he’s definitely like a top tier villain I I I just I wouldn’t say that he was up there with man or Loki personally but I I could definitely see him being hard to counter yeah I would say he’s like a step down from the bigger ones but he’s still quite challenging I actually think un Venus is very good if you can keep him on that first main scheme I actually don’t think he’s too difficult at all uh and he’s actually really interesting villain in that I think his third stage is easier than his second stage when played on xert because he doesn’t keep you know spewing out all those drones which is pretty nice yeah and I I I think it’s brings up an interesting question because I play a lot of Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings the game is how do we build a deck to beat this scenario which is kind of antithesis to that of Marvel Champions where it’s like I built this cool deck let’s go beat up some villains where Ultron kind of shows you know the the the the history of where where Marvel Champions came from and like from Lord of the Rings because it feels very much like a scenario that deck a is going to do significantly better than deck B about how you build that out and so I think that I think that’s interesting and how how do you weigh that in terms of difficulty because I think that there are some other villains that are like that collector one being an example right if you build for collector one if you rush collector one he’s not that difficult but if you’re playing nebula against collector one I don’t know what you do right and so I think I’m kind of curious to hear also what the listeners think and how they weigh scenarios that you can deck build against to make them easier do you consider that a harder scenario than normal or do you consider that a easier scenario because you can in fact solve it from the player deck building side because I I think I land on I think it makes it an easy scenario I do a lot of deck building and maybe that’s just my bias coming in at that point but I think that if you can deck build for a scenario it makes it little bit easier in my mind whereas like Ronin is just like okay well here we go you can obviously build Decks that are going to be better against Ronin but it’s still going to be very challenging there’s not too many builds out there that just completely negate Ronin yeah I think it’s really interesting as well because I’ve got a play in my Discord server and they uh come from a fighting game background video game background and I talked a little bit about that myself myself my own interest uh on the podcast before and they’ve said they consider villains that you build to counter that have effectively counter picks whether it’s heroes or deck building cards to be weaker because you can find ways to beat them easier and I mean that makes sense but I have also seen people you know just Germany in the community and things say you know oh of course you won there because you did it this way but most do that and I almost feel like you need two separate lists a sort of build against difficulty or an average deck taken against difficulty I almost feel like they’re hard to combine and I feel like they both have valid arguments and perspective persective that’s that’s really interesting I so I’ve never actually thought too much about that I feel like in the back of my mind I I did not take in like deck teching so like I thought oan was like right after like Magneto and Loki and I think that he’s one of the more difficult villains and I never counted um being able to Deck Tech against him like against him like making him like an easy villain but I think that’s definitely something that I might need to revaluate because I think that’s a really interesting point like if you can add in a few cards that would make the villain like way easier maybe it is an easier B like not like super duper easy but like they should drop a few points or something um yeah that’s that’s super interesting I think it I think it is kind of we’re we’re dividing up into two groups and it’s basically how do you approach the game do you approach the game from I want to build this deck and then try it out I would say that’s like you know a hero sided like view of the game or I’m gonna play Ultron let’s build a deck to beat Ultron and or let’s build a deck to beat Ronin rather than I’m going to build a Spider-Man deck and I’m going to go play the deck and so I think I I think both sides are very very valid but it does change kind of the conversation of what creates a difficult villain based on what side or how you approach the game yeah for sure I want to jump to a specific question we received for this episode and I’m going to mess up the pronunciation here so I don’t know if it’s from Tako Tac fro um but the question says in web War Fanatics villain tier list there are just two stier villains Ronin and Venom Goblin do you think that we need more s villains at this stage of game development or do you prefer to just have those two St villains as an ultimate Challenge in the game so I’m going to throw that one to web Warrior first as his tier list is named in it but do you think we need more villains kind of at the Ronin and Venom Goblin level or are you happy with what we have uh I just want to say shout outs to uh takio um I always pronounce it Taco talk I think I just yeah so um but yeah is Island um so for the question I I actually um I talked about it um before uh the Age of Apocalypse I actually really wanted another s tier villain and I actually want a villain that’s like I wanted apocalypse to like usurp Ronin and Venom G I wanted like someone to like take that spot like and maybe he wouldn’t be as replayable but I think that it’s really cool for the game to expand like the difficulty and the like easiness and not just always be um so streamline in the middle I do feel like the last few boxes all the villains have kind of been like in the middle of the pack and you know definitely some of the ones were like um I think that apocalypse one is definitely like near the higher end of that but I I do like it whenever um you know the toughest thing is kind of pushed a little bit uh so I I really want like one more Villain at least like come on give us three I don’t know how do you feel about that now so I think it’s interesting I I like Venom Goblin more than I like Ronin I think Venom go Goblin and Ronin are about the same level of difficulty but I think the way that Venom Goblin is created difficult I the the reason that he is difficult is interesting and fun whereas ronin’s difficult because he surges and because he’s annoying and all of this and so I think if we can strike a balance where we get more things on the level of Magneto where it doesn’t feel like it’s crazy difficult just because they overrun you with encounter cards and I feel like like you know that’s an S tier villain and since we have Ronin Ry in the game being that villain in order to make it as difficult as Ronin I almost think that it gets to be more unfair and so I’m okay with having Ronin at the top and I would prefer more villains alongside the difficulty level of like Magneto which feel very challenging very fair but I don’t necessarily ever want something to usurp Ronin that being said if they can do that with still making it feel Fair and not just like I surged four times and that’s why I lost I’m here for it but I I’m I’m kind of thinking that we’re at a point in the game’s development where I don’t think Ronin is going to ever be usurped as the most challenging villain it’s interesting I’m probably more even on the extreme if I have like web fanatic at the top wanting apocalypse to be this monster and like like maybe we could have another Magneto instead or something I I kind of like them a little bit lower but I like modular ways to make them more difficult so I’ve really been liking these setup modular that add on like Plus stats and retaliate and things that way I also think I typically prefer what I call attrition villains so villains which are going to put a lot out but I can deal with it as opposed to ones that are going to blow me away because this one encounter card came up and now I’ve lost but some people like kind of the the thrill of that and the randomness and the kind of danger so you know there there’s a lot of interesting arguments uh so I guess we all have slightly different opinion maybe yeah I I think um one like solution that I forgot who but someone was um commenting on it um someone said that and maybe it can be like the apocalypse one um like in the Age of Apocalypse where there can be like you know the regular like you know standard and then maybe something from the jump standards expert makes a villain a lot more difficult and even potentially having like an extreme mode like like apocalypse having a stage four like maybe having another stage for people that want to uh have like a more difficult than Ru and Johan but then still have like that regular expert mode like stage three or something for um you know for everyone else that you know doesn’t want to like kill themselves but yeah I feel like there could be things to do that um personally so personally I I still haven’t fiddled with uh ma sets yet uh I haven’t gone through all the heroes so because of that I haven’t really fit around with um other stuff I think that definitely it adds so much variability like if you take out mod your sets um to make them easier and add them in and just like what you’re saying with that Thanos challenge like I really like that like that Thanos challenge because it actually feels like I feel like Daniel should have retaliate like innate and then possibly retaliate too when he has his helmet and he should have like Overkill permanently like it just fuse like right for Thanos and I was thinking that Ronan I I don’t know too much about um like him in the comics but like in the MCU like he’s not you know he’s not like that guy and it feels weird that he’s that guy in this game so like apocy could be that guy or like you know someone else should be that guy than R but from this game I associate Ronin as like this like super tough guy and I’m like man but it’s it’s just Row the accuser he’s not supposed to be that level he’s a minion come on that’s really good point honestly I really like that and I’m starting to wonder if this Thanos challenge I’ve concocted was not hard enough for web a fanatic no no I think it’s oh man I don’t think I I have some doubts whether or not we’ll be able to take it on we we can absolutely set up the game um yeah we can do that so so I guess like it kind of boils down to like are there is there such thing as too difficult in your mind because like we we were kind of differing on our opinions of if we want more difficult villains and so I’m going to pose it to web Warrior first is is there a villain that you would consider too difficult in this game like I I don’t think that there’s any villain that’s too difficult just because I feel like it’s good to have like that that range of villains right I think that if this game was missing like a ronin I I don’t know if I would enjoy it as much I would be like ah like you know Venom Goblin’s Fair there’s no unfair villain like where’s like that super annoying like unfair villain or something um I I will say that like the stuff with nebula where it’s like with her um where where she’s surging and everything I never thought about what vinder was talking about with taunt and making her attack you so you can get rid of more attachments and that’s stuff like that is what makes me like really love this game like I’m not sure how how if that strategy like worked but if that’s like the way to beat nebula if she like gets like on on a surge Fest like that means that nebula isn’t should not even be that hard like you just said figured that out like with the talk to villain Theory figure out that you need to put in like something to make her attack you and you can get rid of more attachments like during the player or something and I I like stuff like that’s what’s what makes me really enjoy the game so personally the way it is right now I think that Ronan you know you got you have to like think about stuff like that and a lot of stuff is like from other content creers on YouTube that I’ve seen I’m like okay like that’s a really cool like you know way or strategy to um go against Ronin so I do feel like that every villain in the game right now has a formula to them or they like have some sort of way where they are defeatable so I personally don’t think that any current villains are are um like you know that level I would have said nebula like if you get unlucky but now I’m thinking about with the Taun thing like maybe you can actually there’s always a way so you’re telling me there’s a chance what about you villain are is ronin Venom Goblin are they too difficult I would say I don’t like that their base difficulty is so high but I think being able to make use mod sets to make them that difficult or even go beyond is a good thing to have cuz I agree with web Royal fanatic it’s really good to have like those levels of difficulty available in the game so I’m kind of on the fence I kind of wish they were Baseline a little bit lower know what if ronan’s cre command ship was an optional kind of thing that was his special hard mode and you didn’t have to always have that kind of thing something like that so I think I kind of agree but I’m kind of in the middle as well on that front yeah I think I think I would agree a little bit more with villain I love the fact that we can modulate this game and we can make it as difficult or maybe not as easy but easier based on what we put into the villain deck and I like the base level villain difficulty being a little bit lower than Ronin however that being said I do like the fact that we have Ronin in in this game because if we didn’t have Ronin it would be another it would be another villain that that the designer team had concocted and we were like oh shoot like now we have this thing to deal with and so like I feel like we’ve seen it throughout the game’s history where the design team learns from you know their previous designs and tweaks and modifies and changes and all of that and so I think you know having that Capstone that like oh my gosh this is brutal is great for you know the players like web war or fanatic who want to you know just take them down and all of that but I also like the fact that you know we’ve seen apocalypse to or whatever some of these more difficult villains are they’re not as difficult but you can modulate them now with like flight and all of these other modular sets to make them even more challenging and so I like the fact that we have Ronin um but I don’t I don’t I don’t necessarily think that he is too yeah he’s too difficult I think in my opinion yeah that all boils down to yeah he’s he’s too difficult yeah it’s really interesting topic and I actually want to bounce back to something that web War fanatic said before because he says you know he’s not changed up the mod sets very much you know this Heroes he hasn’t played yet and I’m kind of jealous there’s that level of Discovery left for him because I would love to know Replay that experience because I hope one day you do mess around a bit more those modular sets because I absolutely love what you can do with those I think that’s really exciting yeah I mean I mean I’m sorry uh that you know like I I I I feel so happy about the game that there’s like so many Heroes I haven’t played and I I’m taking it pretty slow with it too I played all the villains at at this point and a lot of people you know want me to play you know certain Heroes and I I’m I’m getting there but I I I like that I’m still exploring to this game and it’s so much fun um sorry to like you know really rub it in but but and I definitely want to experience um experiment with the maer sets after I get through other Heroes and I kind of have like a baseline of what I feel about each hero um but yeah I definitely want to get through maer sets and I think playing stuff like with Thanos with that thing you’re talking about and that that’s going to be a good experience um my my my play group uh they’re more into um filling with maer sets and and they watch both of y’all stuff and they’ve often like filled around so like I would just like show up and they how like some villain would like random laer set stuff and we face that multiplayer and it’s it’s it’s been fun and I don’t even know or remember like the name of those sets but they specifically pick stuff that’s like you know like if it’s like something like the space Zone with Dan like something like super annoying or like something that like synergizes with that thing so I think it definitely enhances the game a lot for sure awesome very cool we’ve talked quite a bit about individual villains but we’ve got a question here from the amazingly named nocturnal duck and they specifically ask this question at Nelson but they say what’s the most difficult multiv villm scenario to play against and I think we can all chip in onest you know maybe afterwards okay um most difficult multiv villain scenario to play against I’m going to interrupt this actually what do you guys consider a multi villain scenario because you’ve got scenarios like wrecking crew and four horsemen and tiwer defense whether there are multiple villains on the board at once but then you’ve got scenarios like Morlock Siege and man attack where there are multiple villains but they’re in a stack together so there AR multiple out on the table at once CU I think there quite distinction there mhm I consider multiv villain scenario any scenario where you can have two or more villains on the table at the same time so like Sinister assault or the Sinister Six or whichever one that is you can you you can have one villain on the table but there is the option of having more than one so I would consider that a multiv villain scenario but I’m curious what web Warrior says yeah I think personally I would have considered it um like what you’re saying with a Morlock Siege or or on the run or even um Mansion attack yeah like I I would have considered all those also multi scenarios but um maybe it need to reevaluate that cuz I I don’t think I thought that because I guess there’s technically only one villain out so it would actually be the same thing it could just be like the stage two or stage three um of that villain but like with a different you know like unique name or whatever um but yeah actually yeah I’m not sure yeah I think I think if we are considering those multiv villain scenarios I don’t know if they usurp any of the where you can have multiple villains on the table in terms of difficulty I don’t necessarily think Mansion Attack On The Run uh more like Siege are more difficult I think honestly I may go four horsemen here I think four Horsemen’s pretty mean in terms of multiv villain scenarios but I will say I think multiv villain scenarios are easier to solve than a lot of the single version scenarios and maybe that’s just because we haven’t seen as many of them what we have like six seven of them but I think four horsemen you can have some brutal brutal uh encounter cards there cool yeah I think I would go with four horsemen as well I think most of the other ones fall into the sort of lower sort of couple of you know if we have a tier list and maybe in the lower tiers down overall I do think the kind of conversation was interesting with the what is a multivalent and what isn’t I almost feel like we maybe need to use as a Community I’m just going out there multiv villain is kind of an umbrella term and then the ones where multiple villains are on the table at once and then the ones where they kind of just change in cycle maybe they need like a different name or they’re kind of like subcategories of the bigger category because they all do ask you to deal with different villains but some ask you to deal with multiple vs at once which is kind of an important distinction I would say yeah um to the to the question of uh the most difficult multiv villain um I’m not sure I think that four horsemen probably is the most difficult I think base villain um I I I but like Nelson was saying and uh and you too uh about Sinister Six on Expert I do I don’t know I would have said before I heard you guys you know say everything I was going to say I think Sinister 6 is the hardest on expert but definitely nonstandard and just because like you know a lot of those cards are just so weird it’s just like okay it’s like the life siiz Eco is just regular and it’s like by the way an exper mod this card has toughness yeah that’s really interesting I’ve not personally found the s 6 too difficult but they do have their moments I think some of those cards you referen are from the gorilla Warfare modular set and there’s this little special side scheme in there which is every enemy out on the board gets a hazard icon and exam counter card you take so they have the potential for things to go very very wrong and I’ve had that happen at least once before which was uh not a fun experience so it’s interesting how there’s all these different levels and experiences people can have which is another thing about this game I love that it’s a little bit different for everyone so that’s really cool actually really enjoyed talking about those different multiple villains no and I think that this uh Bridges to the next couple of questions and we’re going to kind of combine a couple of questions here from Step ball Anthony and whiz Rad but basically the next talking point is the difficulty jump between standard and expert and so we kind of talked about it but what villains increase the most in difficulty when going from standard to expert mode web Warrior was talking about some of the cards in the Sinister 6 uh encounter where in expert mode it gains toughness in expert mode this card can’t be canceled that kind of stuff but I think that there are you know the fact that you go from stage two to three as your final stage in some of those villains that can be pretty brutal in some of these but what uh let’s go to villain what would you think is the the biggest jump in difficulty from standard 2 expert the biggest jump I wasn’t prepared for the one biggest jump but I was just thinking about the Mojo Mania scenarios with like MOG Mojo I think MOG is a huge huge jump between standard and expert I almost feel like because he wins through getting a certain amount of counters on the environment uh I almost feel like his counter generation is doubled on Expert instead of getting one when someone’s damaged it’s two and that is a huge huge jump so of the top of my head that is the one I’m going to throw out there what about you web Warrior uh for me I would definitely say Venom Goblin I think that you know Venom Goblin you know we all agree that he’s like an S tier villain um and then you start the game with the Two Face Down counter cards but if you’re playing him on standard you can just start off with nothing and then you can you just build your board that’s interesting my I kind of feel like he is kind of hard on standard but I say this having basically only played him on standard once or twice across a long long time uh so I’m not 100% sure on that but that’s a really good point I think a lot of listeners will like of that those encounter card to start with are devastating Nelson might remember this is a little anecdote I’m going to throw out there we were we were testing Deadpool like individually but we were talking about it this wasn’t on stream or content or anything and Nelson’s like oh I just destroyed Venom Goblin with like an all basic Deadpool deck do you remember that anoun yeah yeah yeah I I was like oh I’m I’m going to try that immediately yeah that sounds fun the setup of encounter cards I got I don’t remember the exact order but it was something like Advanced glider Under Fire like villain activate villain activate I just walked away from the table I didn’t try it and we’re gonna put away Marvel champions for a week and I don’t even know like how that would have gone with Deadpool surviving and flipping and if I I just I just like nope I’m done with this I walk away so that initial opening can yeah it’s a huge huge huge huge jump yeah just getting three encounter cards in turn one it it kind of goes back to higher variance and the other name that I would throw out here is nebulo right because nebula standard is not as hard as not nearly as hard as nebula expert because you’re starting with some of those techniques you’re not being able to get rid of them standard you can get rid of all of them you’re like okay cool and then so and then I think it’s on the printed nebula card where you know they start gaining surge everyone gains surge in like stage three and stuff like that and so I think nebula gets a little crazy mutagen formula also kind of with that dealing out in counter carts although I think that the encounter guards in mutagen formula are as uh detrimental as that in venom Goblin but yeah there there are some there are some steps up in difficulty and we have kind of a question that I want to bridge over to uh from this conversation and so it’s from daring lime I want to hear your thoughts on Mysterio and so they they were saying that they didn’t really like them but they repl him on Expert and they’ve become his favorite villain um he just kind of is a impressive but I also want to kind of talk about this because I think Mysterio is one of the interesting ones in expert because he’s the only one that has a future stage with lower hit points than that of the previous stage so I think in sta in stage two he has like 16 hit points in stage three is 15 hit points per player but what what do you think about Mysterio because I do think that he has a pretty significant ramp from sandard to expert yeah Mysterio is a really really interesting villain and shout outs to daring I think he’s an upcoming content creator I think webro fanatic you played with him recently is that correct yeah yeah um shout out to Daren lime Mysterio is a weird villain because sometimes I feel like on Expert still I absolutely annihilate him maybe it’s a bit of the nebula effect right sometimes yeah he’ll shuffle a couple of cards in my deck but it’ll be like oh add one threat to the main scheme take one damage and I’m like okay whatever leave me alone and then other times he might have somehow through encounter cards things snuck shadow of the pass into your deck or something like that or there are ways for normal encounter cards not just the kind of slightly weaker illusion cards to get into your deck and that’s where things can go kind of crazy so I think he’s quite High variant and I don’t quite remember quite how he plays out on standard I could definitely see that jumping up although again a great Point his final stage is weaker I bit like Ultron maybe those are the Annie to I don’t know if that’s true but he has lower Health in his final stage so I don’t really know how to place him web fanatic do you have any thoughts about uh Mysterio uh I I don’t remember his final stage effect I remember the effect um ramps up a little bit like I think it’s instead of like maybe shuffling deck maybe you put on top of your deck like his encounter cards I’m not exactly sure do you guys remember his uh his stage three effect yeah those illusion cards go to the top of your deck on stage three okay yes so I feel like it’s a little bit worse but then I’m not sure why his hit points dropped do do you guys know like what the uh the concept for that was supposed to be theyve said I believe on a podcast somewhere or something I’m not entirely sure but I know I’ve heard it was intentional and they just decided that was how they were gonna do it okay I like it I I honestly thought you were about to say they said that it was a mistake and they meant to put like a little bit more I think that’s what people ask like is he meant to have less Health was this a misprint and like oh this intentional yeah um okay yeah so I think for Mysterio um yeah I I mean I play games against him where like I have like seven encounter cards on table and like I think I was like recording it too so so I was like oh this looks really bad like I wonder what’s going to happen then like I flip all them and it’s like oh wait I I’m fine um I just feel like a lot of his counter cards like like what you were saying V there is that they just some of them aren’t as um as impactful right like it’s just like a little bit here and there yeah the variance is interesting and I hope in the future we get some different mod sets because you know I’d have to change them up with the illusion keyword trait in it and then we can put those into Mysterio and get some different effects in so that’ be really fun that would be cool something else I really want to mention about Mysterio actually because I actually really like Mysterio uh at one point on Nel’s Discord server there was a challenge involving Mysterio and I do not remember the entire details of the challenge but I remember I wanted to break it so I went for starlord so I ended up with a million encounter cards in front of me and I was just sliding shots for like a bazillion damage and glorious amazing I love that so speaking of the you know a new modular set that would include illusion cards something like that I guess web Warrior you have stated that you don’t like to mess with the modular sets villain you’ve stated that you do like to mess with the modular sets um I guess like I we had a question from Juan do you prefer to play with the recommended modular sets or others and so what I want to do here is I want to change this because we’ve kind of already talked about this villain what would you say to convince web Warrior or the listeners to try and switch up some of these mod sets and some of these villains I have the perfect answer because it’s something I wanted to mention before and I just completely forgot perfect so a lot of villains if I had to rank them in difficulty order and then like take out the mod sets not a lot of them would change but some of them would and one that I think gets significantly harder is mutagen formula so it’s Green Goblin it’s spider themed I’m appealing to web Warrior Fanatics web Warrior side here uh if you like difficult villains the recommended modset in muten Formula is Goblin gimmicks which is actually in my opinion an incredibly easy modular it’s very easy I think most of those encounter cards when I see one come up I’m like oh I’ve got a breev here it’s not too bad it’s you know maybe half an encounter card compared to some of the more difficult sets so if you change up his modulus set for something more difficult he jumps significantly in difficult because he goes from having maybe like I don’t know let’s just say average encounter cards and then a bunch of easy ones two average encounter cards and a bunch of difficult ones and I think it’s sways his difficulty so much especially that turn one on xer or when you flip him on you know standard or X and you get a lot of those encounter cards in now all of them are kind of Heavy Hitters and if you like challenge I think that’s one where you can really feel the difference and because he has those big burst of encounter cards you almost guaranteed to have something come up and make a difference in the game yeah that’s super interesting I actually really really like the green Goin like that’s that’s the first video that I posted on YouTube cuz I was like this is so cool expir versus Green Goblin so you definitely got me with that with that appeal and I I think I might have to try him out cuz I’ve never tried him other than with Goblin gimmicks and uh like you said that is one of the easier Maj sets especially when you get like a pumpkin bomb it’s just like okay he gets attachment and my my encounter is done I can just do whatever I want um that’s super interesting yeah I never thought about um him with other ma yeah he could definitely ramp up I’m gonna put villain oh yeah no I was gonna say so villain what would you recommend web war or fanatic take on I think one of the classic ones is to put in Goblin gear from Venom Goblin because it’s got the exact theme but I might change it up slightly I might say let’s go for a spidey villain Showdown and put in the Sinister assault modulus out which has the dark arcan all sorts of things it’s not recommended in any sets it’s from the campaign but you can use it as a regular modular set so now in addition to all the Goblins you’re going to get these big sort of bigname villains coming out and jumping out at you as well for a super minion Showdown and might I add 18 more boost icons but anyways yeah that that is fun I think anything that you can modulate that scenario specifically with more challenging minions same thing with claw with like the setup discard cards until you get a minion you can you can ramp some of those difficulties up and we’ve gotten you know five six seven years of content geez I don’t oh my gosh this game’s been out for a while now um and and we I have you know those levers to pull at this point but I think you know Sinister assult I I love that suggestion for for muty formula that’s fun yeah that’s awesome I might to try that out or maybe we can try I don’t know yeah that sounds really fun and it’s like really thematic too with all the uh and the advanced glider I mean that is terrible but I think the other ones in that set aren’t the worst thing it’s really just that advanced glider and then if he gets activation afterwards um which does com really well with his uh with musion form because he’s doing emotional encounter cards so yeah that that could be nasty yeah well I’m really excited for you to try that I love changing modular sets I do actually really like some of the original modular sets because they’re quite fmatic normally and they’re usually quite well balanced and chosen for those scenarios but I played them a lot so yeah that’s going to that’s going to be fun to see if you uh change that up so so another question that we got about these modular sets is from cardboard Ken and villan when you are choosing modular sets to shake up the game right are you looking to change the difficulty of villains are you looking to kind of change up the experience of that scenario and if it is changing the scenario are you trying to or if you are trying to change the difficulty are you trying to make it diff more difficult or make it easier that’s a great question this is like perfect I just love the mod sets um I I would say sometimes it’s just one sometimes it’s both probably mostly it’s both because we have so many mod sets now I’m actually working on a video but I think there’s like 96 different mod sets now if you have all the content and there’s usually something in the difficulty you want that can change up the experience as well so I would say normally for me I want to increase the difficulty there are so many super fun scenarios in Marvel Champions but the state of the deck building pool and my experience in a game I go into most scenarios kind of knowing I’ve won unless I try to spice it up somehow there are exceptions Ron and Venom Goblin maybe a little bit bit more take a bit more care shall we say but a lot of villains I like to make them more difficult but I do like to change experience as well one my favorite is Taskmaster because he punishes you for changing forms so I like to put in the modular stats that forc you to go Ultra ego because it’s kind of more difficult in general but now you’ve got to flip back down and Taskmaster is going to punish you again for flipping down that’s awesome okay so to kind of finish up the conversation around villains as well as around kind of increasing or changing the difficulty via mod sets we have a question from Dan The Crow which mod sets increase the difficulty the most for some of your favorite villains and we talked about this a little bit with mutagen or web Warrior fonetic but D20 do you have an answer for this one I don’t know if D20 is here jeez but villain do you have a answer for this one this is what happens when you make me record at 9:00 a.m. I didn’t make you I put two times out let it be known audience I might leave this in I don’t know if there’s a specific mod set I have in mind but I’ve sort of said this a little bit before my favorite mod sets are the ones with the setup and permanent keywords or even just a setup keyword to change things from turn one I consider fight super strength and telepathy almost expert and a half in a way you know if you give your villain a bigger stats and a nasty keyword for the entire fight it’s not like you’re getting a dramatic amount more Tempo from them but there is a bit more to doal the numbers are just against you slightly more so I absolutely love throwing those in my partner hates it but I’ll be like maybe Ultron needs the flight modular or something like that and my favorite thing is though if they can fly just throw that in there I’ve done uh both flight and super strength separately I will add actually for mutagen formula web War ftic because they think they both make sense for Green Goblin so that’s another suggestions out there so I would say those ones um yeah for um I was going to say yeah I feel like vinther really likes those um the setup ones that come like straight in because you know he he recommended the the Danos ones but I think that those probably do have the most impact because you can add in Mar if it’s like five or six cards you may not ever see them but if you like add in like flight like particular like with Overkill like you really feel that impact of that Ma set impacting uh that scenario and I actually forget everything that I just said I actually did play a game with the ma set and I I completely forgot about it it’s venom Goblin with The Infinity Gauntlet and I have that like Channel I I completely forgot that I did that because I wanted to uh uh test like a deck that I thought was like really powerful against it um I think I I just got really lucky because I don’t think the gaunlet impacted that much on the board and and I think that that’s a pretty fun modu set too that comes up like right away like what V was talking about the uh because you have the infin on that on that enemy yeah I actually remember seeing the video you did now you were playing Spider-Man Peter Parker right the goat Valkyrie wait no wrong wrong person Nelson do you have is here Nelson did you have any mod sets that like you have like as a favorite to increas EV vains or do you just like just change it up or ask chat I I do really like asking chat I really like you know changing it up uh in increasing but if I had to pick one I I I always gravitate back to the Mojo Mania uh mod sets everything that comes out of there and I don’t know if it makes it more challenging but I do love the fantasy modular set I like you know the game of Mojo getting that plus one hand size adding an amplify I like Dragon I like fetch Quest I just think that that’s a fun one so I typically throw that in it doesn’t really I think it’s a relatively easy modular set but it’s just a fun modular set I think and maybe this is a discussion for another time but just modular sets in general and how you can shake them up I know villan you’re working on the video I have not seen that yet but I’m looking forward to it but anything that like leans into a strength so like think Zola who really really likes minions and stuff if you throw a minion heavy modular set into those then you’re going to like increase the difficulty throw Wrecking Crew or uh Sinister assault into Zola you’re going to have a tough time and you can very much modulate the difficulty with um strategic choices in modular set especially if you lean into what that villain is trying to do or lean away from what the villain is trying to do in terms of taking out all the Minions when you have the infinity stone sounds fun yeah there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with the modulus I’ve really enjoyed this villain discussion I feel like VMS don’t get discussed enough I know in the previous episode we discussed the new ones because we’re discussing the new box but just in general and like in a general sense think this has been really really fun I’ve really enjoyed it now this is the part of the podcast where we say what’s coming up next and you know what I don’t even know if we shouted out web Warrior uh YouTube channel but we all have YouTube channels I think now since streams on Twitch I don’t think you regularly do web Warrior fanatic but feel free to correct me so what are you guys doing next either on your channels or playing at home in general let’s start with Nelson yeah so I am playing just kind of the normal stuff going through and playing Arkham Marvel and Lord of the Rings I just got Sky tier horde which is kind of a card tower defense battling system type thing so I’m really excited I’m learning the rules and I should have that video up or that stream coming up on the channel pretty soon so I’m pretty excited about that awesome um yeah I uh I’m just on YouTube I don’t I don’t do any streams or anything but I started playing some live games like through collabs uh like with D20 Woodworking and daring lime and that’s been a lot of fun um this past week I’ve been getting into lurana I don’t know if you guys uh know about that game so the TCG bug is uh kind of getting me right now and I mean I think so Mario champ is still like my favorite game and and the best game but we don’t have foil cards and we don’t have and I I I oh man and uh one of my friends got a booster box so it’s like a bunch of like I think it’s like 24 or something like that Booster Box in it and then we open all of them and there’s like no Enchanted cards and I’m like I cannot buy booster pass because I’m gonna get nut like I I don’t want to but open them like it’s like the funnest thing so um but yeah that’s the only thing that Mario Champions which I think is a good thing because I think it’s it’s pretty pretty addictive and uh bad for your wallet but um yeah that’s what I’m kind of getting into oh man boosters you guys can’t see it but now’s just got like almost like a kind of a a fan of dollar notes but instead it’s booster packs he’s got booster packs everywhere he’s just like uh I’m fortunate enough to say no TCG has quite got their claws in me yet but they’re so tempting it looks so fun dude unlimited is amazing you should try it I know I kind of regret not getting in like at the beginning I don’t know it’s set two is coming it’s a great time to jump in stop speaking about my channel what’s coming up and stuff uh I’m just playing away with Marvel Champions I really love the latest expansion I’m still playing a lot of stuff and villains from that I actually played a ton of the harder villains like Ronin and Venom Goblin for this podcast and I’m quite glad to take a bit of a break from them and go back to the other stuff for a little bit but they were fun honestly it’s amazing how with the new you know expanded card Bard they’re definitely not as bad as I remember you know having played them a lot now uh again but coming up on my channel let’s see I’m starting something what I’m calling villain season so this video is kind of coincidentally landed there maybe even inspired it subconsciously but I want to talk about villains and mod sets and analy them a lot more so this kind of worked out quite well uh I’d love to have maybe Nelson and web War talk maybe a little bit more about maybe their favorite villain on some of that so we’ll see what comes up and I think my next video probably after this if nothing goes wrong is I want to do a video about pairing up the heroes in multiplayer I think that would be cool nice nice I I have I have a whiteboard with all my ideas on uh on different videos that I want to do and one of them is a my top five like two-handed pair UPS so let’s uh let’s let me know when that’s coming out because I want to time it because I think that would be kind of fun to shout each other out at that point yeah that sounds really good and I think that about does it for this episode so I want to say a huge huge thank you to webro fanatic for joining us here thank you guys so much for having me I really appreciate it this was super fun and uh yeah the conversation just really flowed I really enjoyed it it was great to have you on come in up on the next episode we are probably talking about the aggression aspect and I say probably because we’ve got some special kind of stuff cooking maybe they’ll come up instead maybe not but it’s probably the aggression aspect as we start to talk about all the different aspects in detail across the next few months which I think could be really fun if you have questions you want to hear about the aggression aspect let us know you can email us at shadowof theeast gmail.com but most of the questions I think all of the questions today come from our YouTube Community post that I put up from my channel you can comment there put your question we will 100% read it and there’s a very very high chance we will ask it so thank you to everyone who submitted this time and please keep an eye out for that excellent so again thank you web Warrior fanatic for joining all of your information is going to be in the show description or the video description if you’re watching on YouTube but until next time I guess uh we may have a draft coming up we’ll see oh the draft will be fun that’ll be on n’s Channel yeah but thanks for coming on appreciate it and we’ll see you next time bye thank you guys so much [Music]

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    1. HYPE!!!!! Thanks so much for having me. That was some of fun the most fun I’ve ever had talking about this game. I’m excited to try that Green Goblin matchup you suggested 🤮🤞🏻

    2. Thanks for answering my question! Brilliant episode with best Champions podcasters together! (ok guys, it can be TACO 🤣)

    3. I think Standard Ronan and VG are too hard, but super hard villains in expert is fine.

      Ultron is really interesting. Even if you tech vs the drones, he still hits hard and stage 2 scheme piles threat fast. He also gets quite a bit harder at higher counts because many of his cards hit all players and he is vulnerable to statuses which is less effective in high counts.

      Opposite that is I actually find Loki to be most dangerous at solo and gets easier with higher counts as bursts of threat is way less of an issue.

      A couple others not mentioned is Hood, which similar to Nebula, is super high variance to the point where I don't blame you for blocking him out of mind.

      And Red Skull isn't thought of as hard, because his default sets are easy, but with hard mod sets particularly ones with hazard side schemes his difficulty shoots up a lot.

    4. 7:10 😱I definitly will be watching that.
      Just thinking outloud here, the solution I can think for this in 3 players would be:
      Iceman Protection, to lower those stats and defend.
      Cyclops or Cable leadership or Justice, to keep those schemes under control, Cyclops can maximize the damage, or Cable can hit hard later.
      A big hitter, Wolverne or Hulk. 🤔

    5. I'm gonna throw this out there and it's reallyyyy controversial. I'm not some mega pro player anything but I think certain heroes outright stomp Ronan and that's not true for Venom Goblin. So everything is always subjective and your mileage may vary but I think stun and cards like Frozen Solid shut down Ronan hard. I would put him at an A overall and S to impossible against other heroes.

    6. Green Goblin is a good villain to add Flight to. It really changes up the encounter, since his ability triggers off of damaging the player.

    7. Thanks for reading my question! The Thanos match was an excellent idea, and it made me think of a possible series you could do. You should do a “What If…?” Series in which you combine other modular sets and create a narrative for the specific scenario. In this case Thanos and Mister Sinister’s modular set. Maybe we se Ultron with the Infinity Stones? The possibilities are endless. It is important to include a narrative though since there is kind of a disconnect when breaking theme. Maybe after 20 episodes you create a Tier list crowning the new Big Bad in the What If…? Universe! Sorry for rambling, but I think VillainTheory is on to something!

    8. Oh, yes! LOVED the idea of going through all aspects for the next few episodes! That’ll be absolutely amazing!

      By the way, another great episode, guys!! Congrats!

    9. Hello for me one of the most difficult scenario when you change mod set is Zola, each time a new box is coming I try to fight Zola with the new heroes and the most difficult heavy minion mod set. For instance Zola with Sentinels is very hard.

    10. I like to grab a hero deck (complete with aspect/basic cards etc) before pulling a random villain.
      IMO, if you get your villain 1st and then "specifically" build against them, then that kinda neuters "at least" half their' difficulty. Send you straight to Std2/Exp2 if you wanna do that! And even then…
      Villain decks are designed/set to take "any random comers", so make your hero deck to "bring on any comers"! 😃

    11. I loved this, fun podcast per usual. I actually really love the conversations about villains, difficulty levels etc. Excited you all cracked into Modulars abit too. Very curious to see your video on Modulars, as we have so many that we haven't even tried yet, so would love to see a ranking and little brief on all of them! Thanks again!

    12. Great podcast as always. Hopefully more advice on changing up modulars is coming.

      @VillainTheory @webwarriorfanatic give Unlimited a go. If you like Lorcana and love Marvel Champions, there’s a good chance you’ll LOVE Unlimited. It is so much fun. Set 1 reprint is coming in a couple of months and set 2 looks bonkers. It’s not too late to get involved!

    13. So I’ve only played Venom Goblin once, on normal difficulty, standard set, in campaign mode. He was difficult, but not too difficult. I was able to beat him first try with Justice Venom. Now I’m aware that I had some power ups from the campaign, like shield tech and the symbiote suit. I’m going to fight him next with a different hero outside of the campaign (no buffs) and see how it goes.

    14. Just a note on difficult villains, and how certain variables can make them more challenging. We had a 3 player game vs Red Skull last night: when picking heroes, we had enough foresight to dissuade a player from trying Cable vs Red Skull, as it would be side scheme bonanza, but we forgot that Phoenix (who ended up with Dark Phoenix of course via standard three count down) included a permanent side scheme, giving Red Skull a permanent +1 attack. We did beat him in the end, but there was a point where he was swinging for 10 and things got pretty bleak.

    15. i might be late to give my opinion on this, but i myself lost a lot of interest in true solo after i beat expert-magneto with a leadership hulk deck that only used cards from cycles 1 and 2. And even when i tried playing him with the NIMROD modular, both big bads were discarded so they might as well have been bomb scare

      i think the biggest problem people have with difficult villains like ronan and VG is being unable to finish their campaign – a problem which can be solved by giving powerful campaign upgrades like they did in RORS (although they went a bit too far with those)

    16. Random rulings question with ronan. Cos the vaild target rule, their has to be a valid target to do some right. So in solo his first scheme only starts with 2 threat. It says exhaust the milano to remove 3 threat, is that legal to if it only has 2 threat

    17. Great podcast. As for difficulty, there are a few ways I like to increase it. For one, to prevent a specific tech-based counter build against a specific villain, I often take a given deck through a campaign. Recently, for efficiency, I have been doing what I call 'soft' campaigns, where I do each scenario in succession, without the added logistics of campaign-specific content. This can give a pretty good overview of a deck's capabilities and weaknesses. Secondly, I like to look at building a deck from the other way around, in that after building a hero deck, I will put them up against a villain and 'tech' in a modular set specifically to hurt the hero. And this, in my opinion, is where some modular sets truly shine, especially those bonus ones that came in hero packs. 

      Some examples:
      – Your hero relying on attacking a lot (a la Iceman)? Throw in A Mess of Things, where stunning you is the name of Scorpion's game
      – Your hero lack piercing? Slot in Armadillo and suffer as your throw yourself against tough after tough statuses.
      – Chump blocking a lot? Print out the excellent Kree Fanatic set where Ronan aims to punish such strategies.

      This type of building I find tremendously enjoyable, and adds some real spice to the game. I also will try to limit a hero to an 'appropriately thematic' aspect (subjective generally, I know) and do my best to make them effective within that constraint. As for using S2 + Expert 2 to increase difficulty, although it certainly does that, I find the standard cards then entirely eclipse the villain's unique cards, and that feels not great, to me. As for villain I have the highest loss rate against, I think I found Mysterio to be brutal, bizarrely. 5+ encounter cards were common with him. I also detest the logistics of shuffling in encounter cards, especially as I tend to use different sleeves for encounter cards than for heroes. Anyway, great show, keep it up!

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