I've been so impressed with how easily I've been able to take down so many expert villains with ease playing Bishop. He has caused me to reevaluate what it takes to be S-Tier. Definitely top 10 for me!
Nice! I have actually been reevaluating my own tiers and things as you probably heard in the video. Wouldn't surprise me if I do move Bishop up when the dust has settled. He is so good. Do you have a favourite aspect or deck for him at all?
@@VillainTheory Probably protection but not for perfect defense builds of course :) I'm liking the style of aggressive protection decks like Drax, Wolverine, and now Bishop.
I've loved Bishop so far. Good call on Starhawk and Hope, somehow I had overlooked those two. I thought he'd be B-tier, but settled on A-tier after playing him. Thanks for the great content again!
Bishop was definitely the surprise of the box for me. He is so much fun. I find him most fun in Aggression and Protection. The "punching bag" Aggression deck is a lot of fun and an excuse to use Aggressive Energy and the one that does 1 damage to the villain. I feel like 9 is the sweet spot for resources in a deck. This is a question that I would love for yalls podcast to address. Do yall think that Basic is becoming too dominant in the card pool? I find that it is and I agree with a comment from the winning hand podcast, where one of the host said Power in Us All was a mistake to print. With too many good basics, it's homogenizing good decks. It's particularly noticeable with newer heroes imo.
Great question! I've heard that opinion elsewhere a few times over the years and definitely have some thoughts on the topic as a whole. We'll try to answer it in the next episode!
Here is my thought about Power in All of Us. I think the most recent basic support/upgrade/ally cards have been "balanced out" around the Fact that they are UNIQUE traited. This does not amper them in the slightest in Solo Play because there is only one player at the table. But the more players at the table, the more conflict it generates. So yeah, Power in All of US homogenized solo deck quite a lot, even though no one is forced to play overoptimized, this is not needed* for winning consistently against most villains. On the otherhand Multiplayer decks become more puzzly to build, because X Jet is unique, X Mansion unique, Utopia is unique etc etc And I think this is overlooked. I also heard WinningHandPodcast have house ruled unique traits in MP so that everybody can play their QuinnCarrier. And that is an undertalked topic...
I think this is more around there being so many good Basic X-Men and Mutant cards and all the new heroes being Mutants and many being X-Men. When I build a deck for an X-Man who can lean into the Basic cards, especially one who likes flipping, I often find myself with just a smattering of aspect cards or in some cases none at all. That's not the case for non X-Men. I rarely find it worth adding The Power in All of Us to non X-Men decks, except maybe for a SHIELD deck or an Avenger who makes use of more than the standard Avengers cards, but for the most part it just becomes a single wild resource. However, I do think they should have spread the X-Men/Mutant cards out a bit. Maybe made Cerebro a Leadership card and so on.
Love your content! Awesome review. I watched this before and after playing Bishop, i agree with your thoughts. When you say 10 resource cards, does that include the 3 in his hero kit?
One thing to consider for him is deck thinning. The resource sinks and any other upgrades or supports will increase the percentage of resources in your deck allowing you to run 10 rather than 15 resource cards.
I agree with you about how his reliability is his biggest issue. I mostly used him in Leadership (Uncanny X-Men is very powerful in general) and he felt very powerful the vast majority of the time. My friend used a Taunt build when we played the newest campaign on expert with the same cards you just recommended. There were several turns where he felt stronger than Doctor Strange. When my friend used a Taunt, then drew another Taunt, activated that, healed back pretty much to full health, then used the third Taunt, literally going through his whole deck... that was nuts. It was anything but unreliable. He still had a few iffy turns of course. Sure, you made the argument that it won't work against the hardest hitting villains, but Miles barely works at all against Stalwart villains and he's your top 4. At least to me he feels stronger than Captain Marvel, even with his reliability issues. With that said, I don't know if I'd put him in S tier for the exact same reason you didn't. There are too many amazing heroes up there and I think he might just barely not make the cut. I'll have to play him more, especially in solo. Great overall analysis, as always!
A triple Taunt turn sounds legendary! The thing is even that is unreliable. I haven't managed to pull that off with him, they're either too deep into his deck to find or they get discarded from his hero ability. But that does sound awesome. I think the fact there were still a few iffy turns is the big problem for me. I've had it too. And if those iffy turns end up in a row it can lose games, something Captain Marvel never ever has to worry about. But Bishop is still an absolute powerhouse however you cut it. I'm in the process of reevaluating my tier list but I wanted to say I think Miles is so good still, I don't think the Stalwart villains are a big deal for him at all. I would say he's still a top 15 hero against them (out of 51 heroes), and even then the villains who are permanently stalwart are very few. His cards and the Web-Warrior trait are just so powerful he still tends to just overpower them anyway. I'm curious to see where I end up putting him in my next list regardless, just finished some games with Spider-Woman, Venom and Captain Marvel who all feel a lot less powerful than they used to now there are so many very strong Web-Warriors, X-Men and X-Force around. Miles and Scott are up next. The competition to be S-tier is so fierce
@@VillainTheory Re-evaluating your list would be awesome to see! I completely agree about Spider-Woman. She is the single most overrated hero I feel like. Yes, she has Spider in her name, can use 2 aspects and has Pheromones. Early she always feels exceptionally weak. I might've sounded like I don't find Miles strong, but I do. The only card in his kit that becomes almost completely useless is Arachnobatics. His trait and raw card value will carry him, I agree. He can be squishy with 9 health until he starts spamming his amazing allies. Venom always suffered from exhausts in my plays. His weapons except for the Multi-gun become useless unless he can ready, and for that he has to use protection to do consistently. He relies heavily on his basic activation. Captain Marvel always seemed like a high A tier to me. She can draw in Alter-ego, but she always has to flip and she has no confuse in her kit outright. She's very strong, but she's only somewhat better than let's say Cap. As far as Bishop goes, iffy turns were few and far between for the both of us. Let's say we defeat a villain in 10 turns. He had around 1.8 on average. Even then, sometimes he could do enough with just his one useful card he had in hand, or the fact that he had more health than before the villain phase because he had 6 resource cards in hand. If you think about it, pretty much every hero has iffy turns, admittedly Bishop has more. But I find that Bishop can do enough even with those sometimes, while some others can't. Getting iffy turns in a row is rough, dang. I was fortunate enough so far, never had it back to back, nor did my friend. That's just lucky I guess. In any case I certainly see your point and it makes perfect sense. X-Men might be the strongest new trait alongside Web-warriors!
Haha, I generally think Spider-Woman is underrated, my games with her still went very well. She just doesn't feel so superior now we have all those strong new heroes. The big problem with placing her too is testing her with all her many, many combinations... Definitely need to get more games in with her and the current card pool. I'll keep playing Bishop too. I suspect he'll be even better by the end of the wave with new X-Men allies and maybe supports etc.
Bishop is solid S Tier. I used to play only in solo and after the release of Age of Apocalypse I started to play in Heroic mode lev. 1: the 90% of Heroes in MC win easily VS the 90% of Villains in expert mode, so I find playing in Heroic mode a little bit more challenging. Bishop went undefeated for over 30 matches in Heroic mode lev. 1, including Ronan and Venom Goblin (the most challenging of all). I love to play him in autority, best allies and draw recursion. Sorry for my english...
Bishop don’t fear damage and that is an amazing starting for deckbuilding. I publish my autority decklist on Marvelcdb under username Mustaine few days ago.
Another new Hero I played a lot in Heroic mode is Magik and actually she’s 8 W and 7 L. Cable seems also solid in Heroic mode, 8 W and 0 L. A lot of Heroes are on 3-1 waiting for other games.
I've played another 10+ games with Bishop now, and I think I have a more clear view of his strengths and weaknesses. He excels against villains who don't have a lot of minions and who may hit hard but rarely activate multiple times. Once he has his uniform in play, Bishop can take one strong hit pretty much every turn and just keep going. With his rifle he can usually clear a weak-to-moderate minion each turn, either thwarting a bit himself or using his allies for that, and once he's charged up he can take a big chunk of health from the villain. However, if the villain tends to activate multiple times (like Venom Goblin) or if they have a lot minions (again, like Venom Goblin), Bishop will have a bad time. He doesn't have anything in his kit that helps him deal with this very well without stalling out his ability to thwart or do damage to the villain, and since he doesn't want to defend he doesn't have access to most of the usual Protection suite of defense shenanigans - no Hard to Ignore, no Unflappable, no Flow Like Water etc. And without any innate access to confuse he's pretty vulnerable if he needs to flip down to heal. But in those stand-up slugfests he's an absolute monster. In scenarios with relatively few minions where the villain doesn't pummel him over and over again, he can just keep going. However, I also think his ceiling is lower than I had thought. His Energy Absorption, Rifle, and Uniform are an incredibly strong combo, but they don't synergize very well with anything else. You can use some side schemes to get him set up faster, but beyond Sharpshooter there isn't a lot that helps him increase his effect much over that (admittedly high) level. Being rich is always good, but if you have to rely on resource sinks to make full use of your wealth it's not nearly as much fun. Being so rich in resource cards also means he has little help from resource generators, which is another way heroes can increase their power level. So I'm going to revise my opinion a bit. At first I thought Bishop was a sure-fire S-tier hero, probably top 5. Now I think he's definitely lower than that, but his power level will vary a lot depending on who he's up against. Maybe he's solidly A-tier, maybe he slips down to high B. Still strong, but not the powerhouse I first thought.
Great thoughts, thanks for sharing them here! I largely agree, though I do think aspect cards can do a lot of the lifting. Thanks to all his money, he can flood the board with 3-4 allies which means he's ready for almost anything. Justice can provide plenty of confuses + Under Surveillance if you want to flip, and so on. But again I still largely agree. Me and Nelson just finished recording the next episode of the podcast and we talk about Bishop's power level there and what affects it - and we touch on a couple of points you mention here. I won't spoil our conclusions but I think you'd find it very interesting!
Wow…. I think I’d want to play him with a 50 card deck, but sounds like the game would be over before you even get through the deck! I think I’ll pick up AoA next month!
Haha! Well... The thing is, he really needs his Uniform. And following that his Rifle is a huge boost. So if they're at the bottom of your deck, you're very likely to get through your deck before the game is over. With that said? Once both are in play, the villain is effectively on a timer. It's so good! Absolutely love AoA overall and do recommend it. Should be sharing more thoughts in the upcoming podcast with Nelson!
Bishop was very cool and thematically enjoyable for the first few games, but once he gets going, he seems to play himself, and it feels a little boring. Great video, dude!
I do fear that, over time, the fun will diminish. But I'm also hopeful we'll get new cards that change him up. New resource cards and resource sinks especially. Very excited to try him with the Husk ally from Jubilee's pack! And thanks!
I always thought bishop was gonna be a sleeper hit and I was right. It seems people think bishop is stronger magik and overall prefer to play him now days while before release magik was way more hyped.
It's funny, I think everyone who was most looking forward to Magik prefers Bishop, and everyone who was favouring Bishop prefers Magik. At least that's how it is for me and a lot of comments I've seen haha
Great question! I think it's fun and easily affordable, much easier to play on him thanks to his money compared to the average hero, but I'm not a huge fan of it on him still. The hand size and stat boost is nice but not nice enough to justify the risk in my opinion, and I haven't felt like he needs more hp than one Endurance and/or Front Line Specialist can provide.
Quite the surprise this Bishop! I played him in justice along with Cyclops vs Dark Beast, and ooooh boy, I really like how he plays
I always learn some new ideas while watching your videos. Now I have some new decks to go try. Thanks.
I've been so impressed with how easily I've been able to take down so many expert villains with ease playing Bishop. He has caused me to reevaluate what it takes to be S-Tier. Definitely top 10 for me!
Nice! I have actually been reevaluating my own tiers and things as you probably heard in the video. Wouldn't surprise me if I do move Bishop up when the dust has settled. He is so good. Do you have a favourite aspect or deck for him at all?
@@VillainTheory Probably protection but not for perfect defense builds of course :) I'm liking the style of aggressive protection decks like Drax, Wolverine, and now Bishop.
I've loved Bishop so far. Good call on Starhawk and Hope, somehow I had overlooked those two.
I thought he'd be B-tier, but settled on A-tier after playing him.
Thanks for the great content again!
We both fell for the B-tier trap haha! Thanks for the kind words
Bishop was definitely the surprise of the box for me. He is so much fun. I find him most fun in Aggression and Protection. The "punching bag" Aggression deck is a lot of fun and an excuse to use Aggressive Energy and the one that does 1 damage to the villain. I feel like 9 is the sweet spot for resources in a deck.
This is a question that I would love for yalls podcast to address. Do yall think that Basic is becoming too dominant in the card pool? I find that it is and I agree with a comment from the winning hand podcast, where one of the host said Power in Us All was a mistake to print. With too many good basics, it's homogenizing good decks. It's particularly noticeable with newer heroes imo.
Great question! I've heard that opinion elsewhere a few times over the years and definitely have some thoughts on the topic as a whole. We'll try to answer it in the next episode!
Here is my thought about Power in All of Us. I think the most recent basic support/upgrade/ally cards have been "balanced out" around the Fact that they are UNIQUE traited. This does not amper them in the slightest in Solo Play because there is only one player at the table. But the more players at the table, the more conflict it generates. So yeah, Power in All of US homogenized solo deck quite a lot, even though no one is forced to play overoptimized, this is not needed* for winning consistently against most villains.
On the otherhand Multiplayer decks become more puzzly to build, because X Jet is unique, X Mansion unique, Utopia is unique etc etc And I think this is overlooked. I also heard WinningHandPodcast have house ruled unique traits in MP so that everybody can play their QuinnCarrier. And that is an undertalked topic...
I think this is more around there being so many good Basic X-Men and Mutant cards and all the new heroes being Mutants and many being X-Men.
When I build a deck for an X-Man who can lean into the Basic cards, especially one who likes flipping, I often find myself with just a smattering of aspect cards or in some cases none at all. That's not the case for non X-Men. I rarely find it worth adding The Power in All of Us to non X-Men decks, except maybe for a SHIELD deck or an Avenger who makes use of more than the standard Avengers cards, but for the most part it just becomes a single wild resource.
However, I do think they should have spread the X-Men/Mutant cards out a bit. Maybe made Cerebro a Leadership card and so on.
Love your content! Awesome review. I watched this before and after playing Bishop, i agree with your thoughts. When you say 10 resource cards, does that include the 3 in his hero kit?
Thanks! And yes including his kit!
One thing to consider for him is deck thinning. The resource sinks and any other upgrades or supports will increase the percentage of resources in your deck allowing you to run 10 rather than 15 resource cards.
10 does feel like a great amount and deck thinning is definitely interesting for him!
I agree with you about how his reliability is his biggest issue. I mostly used him in Leadership (Uncanny X-Men is very powerful in general) and he felt very powerful the vast majority of the time. My friend used a Taunt build when we played the newest campaign on expert with the same cards you just recommended. There were several turns where he felt stronger than Doctor Strange. When my friend used a Taunt, then drew another Taunt, activated that, healed back pretty much to full health, then used the third Taunt, literally going through his whole deck... that was nuts. It was anything but unreliable. He still had a few iffy turns of course. Sure, you made the argument that it won't work against the hardest hitting villains, but Miles barely works at all against Stalwart villains and he's your top 4. At least to me he feels stronger than Captain Marvel, even with his reliability issues.
With that said, I don't know if I'd put him in S tier for the exact same reason you didn't. There are too many amazing heroes up there and I think he might just barely not make the cut. I'll have to play him more, especially in solo. Great overall analysis, as always!
A triple Taunt turn sounds legendary! The thing is even that is unreliable. I haven't managed to pull that off with him, they're either too deep into his deck to find or they get discarded from his hero ability. But that does sound awesome. I think the fact there were still a few iffy turns is the big problem for me. I've had it too. And if those iffy turns end up in a row it can lose games, something Captain Marvel never ever has to worry about. But Bishop is still an absolute powerhouse however you cut it.
I'm in the process of reevaluating my tier list but I wanted to say I think Miles is so good still, I don't think the Stalwart villains are a big deal for him at all. I would say he's still a top 15 hero against them (out of 51 heroes), and even then the villains who are permanently stalwart are very few. His cards and the Web-Warrior trait are just so powerful he still tends to just overpower them anyway. I'm curious to see where I end up putting him in my next list regardless, just finished some games with Spider-Woman, Venom and Captain Marvel who all feel a lot less powerful than they used to now there are so many very strong Web-Warriors, X-Men and X-Force around. Miles and Scott are up next.
The competition to be S-tier is so fierce
@@VillainTheory Re-evaluating your list would be awesome to see! I completely agree about Spider-Woman. She is the single most overrated hero I feel like. Yes, she has Spider in her name, can use 2 aspects and has Pheromones. Early she always feels exceptionally weak.
I might've sounded like I don't find Miles strong, but I do. The only card in his kit that becomes almost completely useless is Arachnobatics. His trait and raw card value will carry him, I agree. He can be squishy with 9 health until he starts spamming his amazing allies.
Venom always suffered from exhausts in my plays. His weapons except for the Multi-gun become useless unless he can ready, and for that he has to use protection to do consistently. He relies heavily on his basic activation.
Captain Marvel always seemed like a high A tier to me. She can draw in Alter-ego, but she always has to flip and she has no confuse in her kit outright. She's very strong, but she's only somewhat better than let's say Cap.
As far as Bishop goes, iffy turns were few and far between for the both of us. Let's say we defeat a villain in 10 turns. He had around 1.8 on average. Even then, sometimes he could do enough with just his one useful card he had in hand, or the fact that he had more health than before the villain phase because he had 6 resource cards in hand. If you think about it, pretty much every hero has iffy turns, admittedly Bishop has more. But I find that Bishop can do enough even with those sometimes, while some others can't. Getting iffy turns in a row is rough, dang. I was fortunate enough so far, never had it back to back, nor did my friend. That's just lucky I guess. In any case I certainly see your point and it makes perfect sense.
X-Men might be the strongest new trait alongside Web-warriors!
Haha, I generally think Spider-Woman is underrated, my games with her still went very well. She just doesn't feel so superior now we have all those strong new heroes.
The big problem with placing her too is testing her with all her many, many combinations... Definitely need to get more games in with her and the current card pool.
I'll keep playing Bishop too. I suspect he'll be even better by the end of the wave with new X-Men allies and maybe supports etc.
Bishop is solid S Tier. I used to play only in solo and after the release of Age of Apocalypse I started to play in Heroic mode lev. 1: the 90% of Heroes in MC win easily VS the 90% of Villains in expert mode, so I find playing in Heroic mode a little bit more challenging. Bishop went undefeated for over 30 matches in Heroic mode lev. 1, including Ronan and Venom Goblin (the most challenging of all). I love to play him in autority, best allies and draw recursion. Sorry for my english...
That kind of consistency on heroic mode seems crazy!
Bishop don’t fear damage and that is an amazing starting for deckbuilding. I publish my autority decklist on Marvelcdb under username Mustaine few days ago.
Another new Hero I played a lot in Heroic mode is Magik and actually she’s 8 W and 7 L. Cable seems also solid in Heroic mode, 8 W and 0 L. A lot of Heroes are on 3-1 waiting for other games.
I've played another 10+ games with Bishop now, and I think I have a more clear view of his strengths and weaknesses.
He excels against villains who don't have a lot of minions and who may hit hard but rarely activate multiple times. Once he has his uniform in play, Bishop can take one strong hit pretty much every turn and just keep going. With his rifle he can usually clear a weak-to-moderate minion each turn, either thwarting a bit himself or using his allies for that, and once he's charged up he can take a big chunk of health from the villain.
However, if the villain tends to activate multiple times (like Venom Goblin) or if they have a lot minions (again, like Venom Goblin), Bishop will have a bad time. He doesn't have anything in his kit that helps him deal with this very well without stalling out his ability to thwart or do damage to the villain, and since he doesn't want to defend he doesn't have access to most of the usual Protection suite of defense shenanigans - no Hard to Ignore, no Unflappable, no Flow Like Water etc. And without any innate access to confuse he's pretty vulnerable if he needs to flip down to heal.
But in those stand-up slugfests he's an absolute monster. In scenarios with relatively few minions where the villain doesn't pummel him over and over again, he can just keep going.
However, I also think his ceiling is lower than I had thought. His Energy Absorption, Rifle, and Uniform are an incredibly strong combo, but they don't synergize very well with anything else. You can use some side schemes to get him set up faster, but beyond Sharpshooter there isn't a lot that helps him increase his effect much over that (admittedly high) level. Being rich is always good, but if you have to rely on resource sinks to make full use of your wealth it's not nearly as much fun. Being so rich in resource cards also means he has little help from resource generators, which is another way heroes can increase their power level.
So I'm going to revise my opinion a bit. At first I thought Bishop was a sure-fire S-tier hero, probably top 5. Now I think he's definitely lower than that, but his power level will vary a lot depending on who he's up against. Maybe he's solidly A-tier, maybe he slips down to high B. Still strong, but not the powerhouse I first thought.
Great thoughts, thanks for sharing them here! I largely agree, though I do think aspect cards can do a lot of the lifting. Thanks to all his money, he can flood the board with 3-4 allies which means he's ready for almost anything. Justice can provide plenty of confuses + Under Surveillance if you want to flip, and so on. But again I still largely agree.
Me and Nelson just finished recording the next episode of the podcast and we talk about Bishop's power level there and what affects it - and we touch on a couple of points you mention here. I won't spoil our conclusions but I think you'd find it very interesting!
@@VillainTheory I look forward to it!
Wow…. I think I’d want to play him with a 50 card deck, but sounds like the game would be over before you even get through the deck! I think I’ll pick up AoA next month!
Haha! Well... The thing is, he really needs his Uniform. And following that his Rifle is a huge boost. So if they're at the bottom of your deck, you're very likely to get through your deck before the game is over. With that said? Once both are in play, the villain is effectively on a timer. It's so good!
Absolutely love AoA overall and do recommend it. Should be sharing more thoughts in the upcoming podcast with Nelson!
Bishop was very cool and thematically enjoyable for the first few games, but once he gets going, he seems to play himself, and it feels a little boring.
Great video, dude!
I do fear that, over time, the fun will diminish. But I'm also hopeful we'll get new cards that change him up. New resource cards and resource sinks especially. Very excited to try him with the Husk ally from Jubilee's pack!
And thanks!
I always thought bishop was gonna be a sleeper hit and I was right. It seems people think bishop is stronger magik and overall prefer to play him now days while before release magik was way more hyped.
It's funny, I think everyone who was most looking forward to Magik prefers Bishop, and everyone who was favouring Bishop prefers Magik. At least that's how it is for me and a lot of comments I've seen haha
How do you feel about Symbiote Suit with him?
Great question! I think it's fun and easily affordable, much easier to play on him thanks to his money compared to the average hero, but I'm not a huge fan of it on him still. The hand size and stat boost is nice but not nice enough to justify the risk in my opinion, and I haven't felt like he needs more hp than one Endurance and/or Front Line Specialist can provide.
You got Bobby yet?
Sadly after recording this I found out Iceman is delayed in the UK as well