Episode 01: Marvel Champions - We Have a Hulk (But He's a Bit Rubbish)

On this episode of Board With Each Other we talk about Marvel Champions, a Living Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games.

We talk about co-op gaming, some of our favourite (and least favourite) content and Al's significant cardboard addiction before going on to rate it with our usual criteria. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Hello everybody and welcome to Board with Each Other, the board gaming podcast where we talk about games through the lens of playing them as a pair, whether that's uh with your partner, with a friend, or the person that you just pitch up behind the counter the cob and force to play with you. Whatever you've set up, this is the podcast for you. Uh today is episode one, and we are going to be talking about Marvel Champions. My name's Al Simpson, and I'm joined as ever by my co-host, uh lovely wife, and player two, Hannah Kelly.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hi guys.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

So, Marvel Champions. Marvel Champions is a LCG, which stands for Living Card Game, produced by Fantasy Flight Games. Um, I guess first and foremost, what is a living card game? So, a living card game is a little bit like a collectible card game in the realm of sort of Magic the Gathering. However, when you buy cards, you know exactly what it is that you're buying, and new content is released for it uh endlessly in a lot of cases. Um this is the fourth one of these I think I've encountered. Uh the first one we ever played was Android Netrunner.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Oh yeah, I remember Android Netrunner, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yep, back when that was still a thing and still imprint. Um we've also played the Game of Thrones game that came out many years ago. And we did have a crack at uh the Arkham Horror LCG, but neither of us really responded very well to that. So this is all sort of fourth, fourth stab at the genre or the subgenre, if you will. And basically, it's a cooperative game where each of you choose a hero from the Marvel universe and build a deck uh around one of four aspects, which is sort of based around different different aspects of how the hero behaves. So you've got uh aggression, which is all about punching a villain in the face, you've got leadership, which is around building a team of other heroes as allies, you have protection, which is all around defense and keeping everybody uh alive, and you have justice, which is around thwarting the villain's schemes. You also pick a villain and comprise their deck of uh some some sort of required cards, but also you have these modules which you can add to the villain's deck and basically customize it. And that that in essence is your scenario. The object of the game is to defeat the villain before they either reduce both heroes to zero tip points, or what's the more likely lose condition, they complete their their scheme, their evil plot. And how gameplay works is both heroes basically get a turn to do to play cards. You play cards using other cards, so each card has a resource value, and you use those cards to bring out either uh events which are sort of instant cards that have an immediate effect, or to build your board state. And then you can actually uh activate your hero to either do damage to the villain or to reduce the amount of threat on this scheme. Uh the villain has threat counters on this scheme that go up every turn, and actions the villain takes increases that threat, and if it gets to a certain number, you lose the game. Uh, each hero has two side, uh two-sided card, which is their ultra-ego form. So, for example, Peter Parker, and then you can f once per turn you can flip, and you would then have your hero form, so in this case, Spider-Man. And each uh either ultra ego or hero form allow you to do different things in the game. There's some cards that can only be played when you're in in either form, for example. Um, and that is basically how gameplay goes. Both both heroes have a turn, and then the you have a villain phase where the villain basically activates against both players. So depending on what form you're in, that'll either take the form of them attacking you, or if you're in alter ego form, they they scheme, so they increase the threat on their on their um on their scheme. The villain also has an encounter phase where you draw cards from the villain deck and uh basically carry out what it says on the card, which is yeah. That's usually where the nasty stuff really happens. And yeah, you continue back and forth until you you win or lose. Games tend to run anywhere from half an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, depending on the complexity of the scenario. So, let's get into it. Um talk a little bit about your experiences with Marvel Champions.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Um so we started, we picked this up what, maybe a year ago, I guess. Just over a year ago. Yeah, just over a year ago. And I would say it's rapidly shot its way into probably one of my favourite um games that that we have. We've plugged an awful lot of hours into it. Um and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

We've got over 50 plays.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah, I reckon so. Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that we've expanded our collections, I should say it's a living card game, which means you get an option to buy packs, so that might just be a character, so either a hero or a villain, or you can do sort of like bigger box expansions, which might be like a whole series of scenarios, so you might have like five different villains you have to work work through.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yeah, I think that's worth explaining. So obviously, you can play all of the scenarios of one-offs, but there are big box expansions where you basically play through a game of five interconnected scenarios, and usually your performance in each of those scenarios has a uh an impact on the the rest of the campaign.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

They fuck it up basically.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah, basically. Um, we have ended up in um some quite nasty scenarios because we have performed quite badly on a particular scenario, and then we have to carry that through for the rest of the campaign. Um, just so the the listeners kind of know where we're at with what where we've got to. I've I've we've been getting everything in order, so we're basically up to the end of the cycle where the um I think it was the I can't remember what it was called. No, the one after the Infinity War Thanos box. So we have three of the big box expansions, the core set, and I haven't actually counted them, but I'd say about 20, 25 euros. And a few, you could also get scenario packs, which are just sort of a standalone villain pack. We've got three or four of those now, I think. So about about two-thirds, I think, of the total collection at the time of recording, anyway. Uh, the next purchase is the uh Spider-Verse big box for us, I think.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

So I've never really read the comics. Obviously, I've watched the movies, I'm not sure that anyone possibly living under a rock hasn't seen them. Um, but I've never really read the comics. However, there is obviously a huge massive appeal to getting your favourite um your favourite hero and also being able to fight like your favourite nemesis. Um and that's really quite cool. Um I think you've said before, maybe you want to talk about each of the characters are quite different in their play style.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah, there is uh while there's not a huge difference in the number of sort of core cards, I I guess, well, there's there's hundreds of cards, but their their functions tend to be along the same lines. Where you get the real fun stuff is how differently the heroes play and how different the scenarios are.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

So let's take Tony Stark, for example, so Iron Man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

The whole deal around Iron Man is that you have to build up a suit, and once you build up a suit, he becomes this nigh-on unstoppable force, but you're really vulnerable for a big chunk of the stars of the game where you're trying to get all of that together. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's uh the the Iron Man's a really good example.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Yeah, Miss Marvel is really reliant on all her allies and her friends, a bit like any teenage school girl probably is. Um, and I think that's what kind of um is really appealing about it. You can play with different aspects, but also each of your heroes are quite different. Yeah. And then also you get to geek out when you Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

I mean just uh my sort of relationship with Marvel is I was massively into the comics growing up as a teenager. Um I didn't have access to that many of them, but the ones I did I sort of read religiously, and I was a big sort of Spider-Man nut uh in the 90s. Um so I've got a bit of background around the characters from the comics, but then a lot of gaps filled in from the MCU, The Stake of the World by Storm over the last sort of decade or decade plus.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

I'm not sure there are any shit characters really, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Well, shall we talk about Hulk?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Oh, okay, alright, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Um it's important to say right off the bat, if you're a Hulk fan, they massively drop the ball on this one. Hulk is bad.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

He's just a bit broken. In the in a bad way.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

In a bad way. They didn't they didn't think him through, and he definitely underperforms quite significantly um with regards to other heroes.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Maybe he's in that era, you know, the end of Thanos.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yes, maybe, where he just, you know, doesn't want to uh doesn't want to fight. Um but yeah, I mean it is fair to say that the characters aren't perfectly balanced as such, so again, this is a cooperative game, so it's not it's not the end of the world, but they are definitely characters that are more powerful and less powerful. Um, but again, if you like a challenge of playing with somebody perhaps who's a bit less powerful.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

And also they're sometimes really scenario specific. So we've had some not so great characters fight more difficult bad guys, but because of the the way that their hero powers work, yeah, absolutely more effective. So, in some ways, having that random element is actually quite good. So it's also worth noting that we do we have played on random, you've got a randomizer thing on your app.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

So that we can't decide what to play. If we just want to play if we play a campaign, I think we'd carefully sort of construct our decks and think about who we wanted to play as. Right, I think carefully. Probably not all that carefully. Not all that carefully. Um but if we're just playing a one-off on an evening, there's some really good random generators online that will just generate your hero, your aspects, you your your villain, what um modules to include. It just makes the whole thing a bit a little bit easier for us anyway, and I quite like that. It also sort of maybe forces you to play with some of the heroes that you wouldn't normally go near, or look at combinations between heroes and aspects that you wouldn't normally go for. So I get quite a lot of value out of them. I found quite a few good combinations I wouldn't really thought of otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Um it's also worth noting about the trip the you know, the obligation, and suddenly your bad nemesis can come out.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Oh, yeah, I haven't mentioned that. That's quite an important game. So each hero comes with a uh a nemesis, so it is a villain that's obviously thematic to the hero, and that nemesis comes with his own scheme and a couple of encounter cards. And basically how it works is there's a particular card in the villain's deck that when it comes out during the encounter phase, uh makes your nemesis engage with you, and you add all of those cards to either the play area or the villain deck for them to come out later.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Which is also quite cool because again you get to see like another villain, and again it draws from the MCU universe, it's it's good.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah, and it can it can make a significant difference to the game when they do come out. So uh we've been completely scuppered a few times by that happening, but it is it is a cool moment when it does happen, because one of those things doesn't happen every game.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Okay, so who's your who's your favourite to play with?

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Ooh, um difficult to go down to just one. I do like uh Iron Man, I like his mechanic.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Um just like punching things in the face.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

I do, yes. I do I do enjoy that. Um I really enjoy Venom, and I played him in multiple aspects, although I'm still a little bit hurt so that it wasn't Eddie Brock, it was a different version of Venom that belongs in the Guardians of the Galaxy universe. And um I actually really like Scarlet Witch. She's got a very, very cool mechanic where it's almost a risk of all thing where you burn the villain's deck down. But the quicker you burn the villain's deck down, the quicker their schemes advance, so it's a bit of a push and pull. How about you?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Um, so Miss Marvel, which kind of took me by surprise. I like the fact that she punches like a freight train.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Yeah, she's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, quite like that. I like um uh Doctor Strange again because I feel like he's got quite a lot of core mechanics and he's really versatile. So in his basic form, you can take him with anything.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Um I've also realised that I quite like justice.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

As an aspect, as well. As an aspect, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

I quite like being able to control the ball state and let you punch things in the base, which is probably if I like and then villains. So I really like that the scenario is kind of like a Royal Rum Rumble.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Wrecking Crew.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Wrecking crew, that's it. So you've got like four big bags and you have to take them all down. I quite like that. It's fast, it's quick, it's fun, lots of violence.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

It's definitely quite different to the others because you're actually fighting multiple villains instead of just one. Um and they all have their own mechanics and and all play fairly differently. Um I really like Kang, which we we we yet to beat. Uh, it's got some very, very cool mechanics in there where you basically fight different versions of him from different time periods, and at some point Tyrannosaurus Rex pitches that. Yeah, you'll actually separate, you'll he'll separate you, so you have to fight a version of him alone, which is quite a cool mechanic, and it's it it's sort of if you're very heavily reliant on each other, it can really derail things. Um in terms of campaigns, I really liked the Infinity War campaign. I thought that was really well done. It's the third one they they've done. Like out of the three I played, I thought that was the most accomplished. Um there is a moment in that where spoiler alert, if you don't want a hero, perhaps skip forward 30 seconds. But if you don't play very well, a Thanos essentially gets the Infinity Gauntlet and snaps, which causes you to permanently lose half your deck for the rest of the campaign.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Oh, that was awful! Oh that was awful. I think we gave up at that point.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

All my best cards were gone, and I think I possibly fit my choice out for hour.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

But still, one of the coolest things I've seen in a ball game. It was just such a great implementation of the theme and the universe.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

And I think that's that's the thing we keep going back to every time we play it, that it really is kind of true to the source material in some ways that they try and bring that into the gameplay, which I've not really seen done before.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Not to this level, no, no, not to this level. Um, I can't let things go by without a chance to slag off Ronan. Ronan is the final encounter from the Guardians of the Galaxy box, and he is unbelievably unbalanced in the game's favour. He is incredibly difficult to beat. Uh, we've never beaten him. Um and it just seems a bit out of whack because yeah, Ronan's scary and all, but he he he he makes Thanos look like a puppy dog, which is a bit of a bit of a misstep, and I think they've admitted it's a bit of a misstep on their part. Um but yeah, shall we perhaps get into some scoring?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Uh so our first one is components.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Yep. Components, board space, setup, stripped down.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Um so it all comes in a quite neat, nice, tidy box. All your individual expansion packs come in um like plastic blister pack kind of.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Um, and each of the packs come with like a pre-built deck, which is really helpful when you're first starting out. And we often play with the pre-built deck first, yeah. But then afterwards you can strip out your aspects and then start to mix and match as you you see fit.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Um I would say, although it's a bit of a squeeze, we still manage to fit all our cards into the original three boxes. Four boxes, four boxes.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Four boxes, yeah, with some room. I mean, uh it's one of those games that if you get serious about it, is crying out for proper storage solutions or some kind of thing. And there are solutions online. Um, I know you can get them through Etsy, etc. And um, I think we will have we will do that at some point. Mostly because just so many of the boxes you have so many boxes that take ends up taking so much of your your shelf space up.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah. There are quite a lot of duplicate cards though. So in addition to your aspects, you have a basic deck, um, so like your mana pool or your resource pool or whatever you want to call it, um, and quite a lot of those are duplicates. I understand why they do that because actually you might not pick up half of the expansions and just go for for a later one.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Um but if you go all in like we did, it's it's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

It's it's an awful lot. Um, and there are a lot of cards in there, but then I'm never really going to complain about more content, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

No, no, and I mean it's all it's all sort of uh we've we've chosen this, we've chosen to go all in, yeah. It's uh it's definitely a first world problem kind of thing. Um in terms of you get some hit point dials, which are fine. It's it's if you've ever played a fancy fly game, you know the sort of quality of their tokens, which are they're fine, they're nothing too exciting, but they they do the job.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Strip down and set up. I mean, strip down is quick, it's takes no time at all. Set up, it depends how long you want to spend building your decks for. Yeah, I think it's a good thing. And obviously, yeah, and obviously the more familiar you are with cards and how characters work, the quicker that is. I mean, when the box set is the size that ours is, it can take quite a while to go filtering through and you have to kind of organise, definitely have to organise them.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've used so many plastic baggies, haven't we, to separate all the decks and what I do. Um, and I think if you're looking at playing it on an evening, if you haven't built your decks or have decks ready to go, you can add a good half hour onto the playtime, yeah. Which sometimes can be a little bit off-putting. Or perhaps it's more in our case, off-putting, playing multiple games. If we're building decks, we'll probably build a deck, play a game, but then the concept of having to build another deck and play another game, if you don't want to use the same gyro and same deck, is can be a little bit, you know, oh don't really fancy it. Yeah. Um in terms of board space, uh, you don't need a huge amount of room to play it. It's it's fairly compact. You know, uh it's easier if you spread it out a little bit, but you can play in a fairly compact space.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Um so what would you score at?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Seven.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Yeah, I also have seven for that.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Oh good. Unanimous agreement.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yes. Good. Not perfect, but good.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

So then the next one is complexity. So, how complex a game do you think it is?

SPEAKER_02 18:17

This is a this is a funny one. It's usually this way I find with collectible card games or living card games. The complexity doesn't come from the game itself, it comes from the cards and the interactions with the cards and building good decks and what have you. The the core precepts of the game as in playing it are very, very simple. Like it's it's really quick and easy to teach, really quick and easy to pick up. But if you're teaching a new player, they're going to have 300 questions based on the cards and what they're reading and how they interact and all that kind of thing. Um, compared to something like the Arkham Horror card game and particularly Android and Necron are those isn't absolute uh it's absolutely easy to to pick up.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah, absolutely, completely agree. Um, what I would say though is that obviously with each expansion they've introduced new rules. So you have to get your head around that. And what I would also say is despite the fact that I think we're quite good with rules, we have made several mistakes consistently all the way through that we've later retconned and realised we were doing wrong. And I do think we have to refer to them manual or at least look up online, like how do certain things work?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Yeah, there's a lot of keywords. Sometimes it's easy to just sort of Google what the keyword means. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of keywords and interactions between keywords that that can be a little bit confusing at times. But in general, I'd say it's it's a fairly easy game to play. Um what about in terms of like analysis paralysis and and whatnot?

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah, I don't find that an issue at all. So again, I mean, I think the way that you have your hand is that a lot of those cards are used as resources rather than necessarily to to put a card out on the board or to do an event. Um and it means that you can kind of react to the table and what's happening. Um I mean there are times, perhaps maybe when I think it, but the idea behind this is because it's cooperative, unlike other cooperative games, like for example, Gloomhaven, where you're not really allowed to share what you're planning on doing.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, you can absolutely can. So I do.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

I quite often say, Well, what is it you're gonna do? Like, have you got this ad? Can you can you get him so that I can do this?

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

And I think that makes it a lot easier. You can talk it out basically.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah, and you also have the ability to basically look at your hand and figure out what you're going to do while the other person's having their turn. So there's that as well. Which and then they suck it all up for you by doing something you're like, oh well, suck that up then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

I've got a really good card and I want to use it. Don't do that. Even if it wins the game for it.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

No, I'm gonna do it anyway. Okay, um what about you score it? Oh, how do I score it? I scored that a eight.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Yeah, so why do you actually score it lower than that? I scored it five, mainly because I think we made consistent errors, but I think maybe that's a user error rather than necessarily.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

That's an us problem. Yeah. As far as game rules go, I don't think they're that complicated. I just think that we got got some got a couple of things in our heads that were wrong, we just went with that for a fair while and then realised we were doing them wrong.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Fair enough. So maybe I'll up my score to seven.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Okay, alright. Uh shelf life.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah, that's a funny one for me. Um, so I thought about quite this, I thought about this quite hard. So there's obviously a huge amount of repayability. You can take the same hero, you can use different aspects, even within those aspects, you can take a whole bunch of different cards, you can fight different villains. So there's a huge amount of replayability. However, there's also a value for money aspect to that as well. I mean, I don't know how much we've spent, and that's not a total of the money.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

I've got a total of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

But that replayability does come as a cost, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

To a certain extent, I mean, I think part part of it is just my completionist streak where I just want everything connected with the game because I love it. But I think even if we were to like stop where we are now, the number of Combinations are endless.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Um I I think it's infinitely replayable, even with a small amount of the content.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Um, because you can shuffle the the villains around in terms of what modules go into their their their decks, you can play the heroes with different aspects. I mean, even if you just sort of have ten heroes at your disposal, the amount of combinations that you get from that is is staggering. So it can be a huge money sink, yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, I do think what perhaps maybe changed my perspective a little bit, because up until then I couldn't uh recently I I fairly pretty much agree with you, it was more the Gardens, the Galaxy. I think because there were certain cards that were missing that you had to buy through expansions to almost link it and buy it all together, and I think that's where I was a bit like Fantasy Fly often do that, it's often a trick that they pull where they will produce a cave.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

They do two things, they produce a campaign box, which in the case of this, you get two, each of the campaign boxes, you get two heroes in.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

It was Groot and Rock.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

It was Groot and Rocket, yeah. They always choose good heroes, but not the ones that people are really going to want. So Star Lord and Gomorrah, for instance, were were were separate. And they do that intentionally, and that's fine. That that's that's good business to me. That that's you know, they they want to make they want to make people uh buy as much of the product as they can. So I I understand it completely. But I think what Panna's alluding to, and I think is perhaps the more cynical side, is you there will be cards knocking about in some of the other hero packs, which you probably really need to finish the campaign to get through some of the challenges they put down, which is a sneaky way of saying if you want to if you want to pass this with ease or play this with ease, you need to get all of the cards. Which again I understand from a business perspective, but it's probably a little bit more cynical, not something that's very, very obvious. However, I would say that's only from my experience there's only been a problem with the Guardians of the Galaxy campaign. I wouldn't say that's the same for the Infinity War and the Rise of the Red Skull campaign. No, agreed.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Great. Um so I scored it six based on based on the Guardians, but I mean absolutely I think that's hundreds of hours of content.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah. I I gave it a nine. The only reason I didn't give it a ten was because of the potential money sink, and you know, I mean, value for money is a malleable thing, but in terms of replayability, I just think this is endlessly replayable.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Um so fun.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I mean, I love it. Yeah. But I think the amount of hours that we've sunk into this game probably speaks volumes as to uh how much fun it is. Um it's still regular on our rotation.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Um, yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

So much so that we have to basically consciously decide to play other things at one point because we're just playing nothing but this for a long time, months actually. And again, it's got that emergent storytelling. Things happen within the game, and because these are familiar characters in a familiar world to us anyway, you you can see a lot of it, you know, the you it it fires with your imagination with what's happening, and so many of the heroes feel like they should that you you can very easily get swept up in the story that the game's telling in that particular session. Um I've given a nine.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

I gave it an eight.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Okay. Right, so let's move on then to the the the pair ratings. Um so just in case of those of you who haven't listened to our session zero, this is where we look at the game again, but through the lens of playing a two-player, playing as a couple or with a friend. Um so the first category is table talk. How do you think it functions in that?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Oh, fantastic. I think it's absolutely brilliant. I think if you um I think a lot of the conversation is about necessarily is about what you're doing in-game. I think there's the option to talk about your actions. We often have conversations about well, you do this and I'll do that, and we're gonna plan out our turns. I think um it's relatively quick as well, so that there's lots happening on each turn, and you're not left with a huge amount of of uh dead time or that that kind of silence.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Yeah, it's very, very sort of little silence in our games anyway, and you have to work together. You can't just go off half-cacks to do your own thing. If you do, it's likely that you'll lose. You need you need to sort of join up your strategy. So I think it's fantastic for that.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Yeah. And I think, you know, I again, we talk about getting to know you. Well, I definitely think I've learned more about my playstyle and and perhaps how we work together. So the fact that I quite like justice and I quite like the fact that I control the board state. Didn't necessarily know that until we started playing this.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah, it just kind of revealed things around how our playstyle and how we tend to approach and play games, isn't it? Okay, so what would you score it?

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Uh eight.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

I do have scored at an eight.

unknown 26:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Uh okay, on to our next category, which is uh a co-op racing.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah, so I think sometimes when you end up playing co-op games, what can happen is if you've got one person who's more experienced than you, or perhaps who just is that that personality type, they'll quarterback quite a bit. Um, and so they'll say, Well, no, you need to do this and you need to do that. I don't find that there is the potential, the capacity for that, because you play your cards close to your hand. Yeah. So you only reveal what you want to reveal.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Um, so sometimes I might ask you for advice.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

But that's because you're asking for advice and you're being given given it unsolicited. I think in terms of this this is my on impossible to quarterback, which I like.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Well, you say that though, and I was thinking about this today. So we recently played this with a third person, so a friend came and said, and actually you quarterbacked quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

It was his first game though.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Yeah, no, I know, but also overly critical, no, I do appreciate that. But I think there is that potential for that to happen. I think the only reason I was thinking of asking for it a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Yeah, he was, and I think the only reason that happened is it was he's playing his his hand open.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Oh, was he?

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Yeah, he's playing his cards open.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Oh, I thought I might have been quite drunk.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Possibly.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I remember talking a lot about his shearing.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Yeah, well, yeah, that's usually a calling card. Um yeah, that it one of the reasons it's so difficult to quarterback is as you say, it's it's hidden information. And obviously you can you can you can show your hand to your your partner if you want to, but if you don't, it it's sort of it puts a barrier up with that, which makes a line impossible to do. So if you do have an issue where somebody isn't likely to quarterback, this is probably a really good choice because you you it it it makes it very hard to do so. Um and like I said in the last category, you have to work together. Yeah, absolutely. You can't you you can't just decide you're gonna do your own thing because you you you'll end up losing. Um you need to help each other, you need to essentially fill in the gaps for each other a lot in this game where no no no character is good at everything except for Doctor Strange, maybe. Um so you usually have to find uh an equilibrium to succeed. So on that basis, I'm going to give it my first ten.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Really? Oh wow! No, so I gave it an eight.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Okay. I mean You're always harsher than me, aren't you? Much more discerning.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, much more discerning, yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

But uh, as far as the co-op games I've played, it's it's it maybe doesn't reach the the heights of strategy that others do, but I just think it works so well as a co-op.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Um I don't think you need that same I don't just jump in. I don't think you necessarily need that same level of strategy because actually the board state changes so quickly.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

You can just have one sentence of actually all your strategy can go right out the window because suddenly you've got five ads on the table and you need to get rid of it.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yeah, and and uh a lot of co-op games essentially can be solved, so you find an optimum strategy with it and it becomes almost rote so you know exactly what you need to do at the right time. There's the the the amount of randomness and customizability in this means that is unlikely, you're unlikely to solve it. You might find a a hero and aspect works really well for a particular villain, and the temptation always to go to that, but uh you know there's always a question do you just want an easy win, or do you actually want to explore the options that are the various strategies the game has to offer? Uh so final one is scalability.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

So, what we mean by scale scalability is um can you play it with more players? Um, but also do we feel like adding a third or a fourth would actually add to the game?

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Yeah. Um so you absolutely can add more players, uh players up to four, or you could play it solo if you wish. Um we have noticed about this is it doesn't play as well with more people, which is really unusual, I think.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

I've got to be honest, like most of the games that we have, they're they're not optimised for two, whereas this I think absolutely is.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah, this is this absolutely plays it at its best with two players. And if you were playing solo, I'd recommend playing two-handed.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Um adding a third player, it's it's difficult to pin down. I think it messes with the balance a little bit because you can either on the side of the heroes, you can kind of just if you get your board stay into the right uh conditions, you could just railroad the villain really quickly. But on the flip side, you're also drawing more encounter cards per turn. And some encounter cards are so destructive that it doesn't matter if you've got an extra person uh taking the burden, three bad encounter cards could just literally end the game quite easily. And we played the easiest villain, which is Rhino, um, and we found it a lot more difficult than we found it with two. Um it it was uh it was a much longer game and it was much more sort of it it was it was more difficult and a lot more swingy things changed a lot more drastically than with two players.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

What I will say though is I do think that for it to work on two player, you don't necessarily need to have aggression and justice. So justice is the one that thought so reduces the size game. You don't need to have both of them necessarily, but you need to have one or the other between the two of you, really, I think for most of them.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Yeah, I'd like you to say that, but we got quite far on the the Guardians campaign using uh justice and protection, I suppose. Yeah, you just you need I take your point, you need to find the other one. Yeah, you do need one or the other.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

So you either need to burn down your villain quite quickly, or you definitely need to be able to control the number of the amount of threat on the board. And so I think having that third person means that I was able to play defence, and so I have groups who I also quite love, meaning because most of his cards just say I am. But I actually got to play that and see how his mechanics worked. Whereas when we played with groups, I still had to focus on doing damage and doing threats, so I couldn't just do defence. Yeah. Which is kind of where group leads to. I think that's kind of you know what you should take in this.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah, I guess yeah, I think the the protection aspect, so the defence aspect does feel like it might work a little bit better with more players.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Um I don't know, I think that's the first time that we we played the same. Again, I think that leads into the the whole thing, well, actually, if you've got three players, you can have more support classes. I mean it's not a support class, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Well, I mean, I guess it's taking a different a different route with it because I tend to find you do play green quite a lot, protection, sorry, and you play that quite a lot, but I tend to find that you don't you you you defend yourself and that makes you more powerful, but you very rarely sort of defend me.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

But that's because I don't have the space, the door space to be able to do it because I'm not gonna necessarily be able to do either two damage or work on threat.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

That's not a criticism, it's just it it's just the way the game sort of plays. Yeah, that's my main job, right? Um but my score for that, so we agreed that we were gonna score it um low if it was crying out for more people or not not scalable really at all.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Um so I scored it a seven.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

I gave it a nine because I think it plays very, very well with two people. I don't think it desperately cries out for more people.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah, I would like to play more three-player plus games.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

It's unusual for me, I'm more sociable.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Okay. So that gives us final a final general game score of seven, which feels really harsh. It's one of our favourite games, but I think it's your your shelf life score that that pulled that down a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Yeah, I think so, and I think maybe I'm just a bit bitter and jaded, perhaps. The amount of money you're spending on it, and not necessarily me knowing about it.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

You might want to get out now, love. So seven it is then. Um and then our couple slash pair rating, what have we got for that overall?

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Eight.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Great, okay. So good game. Very, very good to play as a two-player game, is the the general consensus here, I think.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, and I think that's an absolute testament to the amount of hours that we've plugged away into it and the fact that I think we're still looking to get new expansions. Oh, yeah. This is gonna sit on our rotation for a very long time, I think.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

I I don't think I'm gonna be done with it anytime soon.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

No.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Um, great. Well, thank you all very much for listening and for joining us today. It's been a blast talking about one of our favourite games. Um, obviously, if you want to uh engage with us, we've got all of our social media, so feel free to pop on there and have a further conversation. I'd I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts, what their favourite Kieras and experiences, etc., would be with the game. Uh, and if you listen to us on your podcast platform of choice, a review would be very, very much appreciated. But until next time, have fun, be good to each other, and play loads of games.