I'm sure I read something from Boggs somewhere where he said sometimes they used surge to try and make the game simpler. If a card seemed too complex because it did too much they would simplify the card and add surge. Individual cards could have fewer effects to make it simpler for players but they could still chain multiple effects together. On the other hand if something was too easy they would just put surge on it without fully realising how that made the game harder. It also seemed that designers were making alterations fairly late in the process without a lot of time to test them.
Found the quote from Boggs on hall of heroes, pretty sure I read it on Facebook when he first posted it "In all seriousness, I do agree that surge has maybe been overused, and some of those instances were definitely my decision. That said, surge is an important keyword for the game for one key reason: simplicity. The target audience of Champions is one where people who haven’t played a ton of card games in the past can sit down and still have a fun time with the game pretty much off the bat. With that in mind, there have been many times when we’ve gotten to the end of development and realized that some of our cards were too wordy, or some of the concepts were higher in complexity than we wanted. One of the largest hurdles for many casual players to overcome is wordiness-not even being able to process a card because there’s too much information presented at once-and in those instances, surge was considered a good replacement as it let us break things into more digestible chunks. Instead of a card with a lot of words and two tiny paragraphs, it became two cards that a player could look at and process independently, maybe even with fewer words overall. However, surge has definitely made its way onto cards that absolutely should not have it (Fanaticism is the best example). In those cases, surge was often added at the end in the hopes of reducing complexity (replacing whatever text with surge), but sometimes also to add challenge or to make a card spicier. While the former has merit, I don’t personally believe surge should ever really be used to increase difficulty. If players want that experience, there’s already an entire mode that exists. As the game continues, though, I think we’ll see this issue corrected. I believe it made its way onto more of my products overall not because I love surge, but because I would often push the game into more complex areas. That sometimes meant big changes at the end, and surge was often favored for its simplicity. But both Tony and Caleb are aware of the community’s feelings toward surge at this point, and I’d wager they’ll find other solutions. - Boggs [Facebook]" hallofheroeslcg.com/2020/07/08/marvel-champions-lcg-interview-resources/ He did have some interesting insights to share when he left FFG. I think we've now seen everything he worked on. During the last livestream they mentioned that Bogg's did the initial design on Iceman before he left. So the current wave must have been in development in early 2022.
I'm familiar with some of that but I don't know if I've ever seen the entire quote. That's extremely interesting. My only question is that it implies that Surge was added onto Standard II and Expert II to reduce their complexity which doesn't seem to be true as far as I can see here. The effects seem intended to mimic Standard 1 and Expert 1 through and through? Perhaps there's more to it but thanks for sharing this. I'll pin it!
I don't know if it would mess up the balance of anything, but I feel like with Surge the effect shouldn't have been able to chain or there should've been a limit that it only triggers once per Step of Phase. If you reveal a card with Surge, then Surge happens. If the next card has Surge, then ignore the word. Surge tends to be at it's worst when you just keep revealing card after card. Similarly, they should've had a keyword for adding another boost card with that same limitation. Surge, since it's a keyword, could be fixed similar to how they fixed Teamwork. Extra boost cast though can't without errata for these cards.
Surge is a very tricky thing in a game like this. I think it's fine as something that shows up on a card here and there, but if you use it too much you vastly increase the risk of having a run of cards that make you lose from what feels like purely bad luck. (And that feeling wouldn't be entirely wrong.) IMO cards that already have strong negative effects should never have surge.
Our group has basically only used S2 since it came out. Reducing status spam on bosses has made things more interesting for us. Agreed that so much surge is not ideal though.
Standard & Expert 2 make Cable's precondition and the Blindfold Ally highly valuable. Also - they make the game more like Arkham Horror at high difficulty where even with good play decisions you will still lose.
I wish we have more Standard/Expert sets with difficulty somewhere between Expert 1 and Standard 2. I feel like there is a big gap which could be filled.
I like to say Standard 2 comes from Ronan's school of card design. I love difficulty in any game, and I definitely felt like Standard/Expert 1 were too easy, but Standard/Expert 2 were just way too punishing. I remember being so excited for GMW because I heard it was hard, but it was hard for the wrong reasons, and I feel like Standard/Expert 2 are the same. Surge just isn't fun, and the set overall is just too punishing and oppressive and I rarely have a fun time playing with it (and I enjoy playing on Heroic). Like you said though, Seek and Destroy is actually kinda fun. I wouldn't even be upset if it revealed your nemesis set, I just love seeing the nemesis minions (but now we have Standard 3 which is just better imo).
What do you think about the idea of creating a standard 1.5 set by mixing some standard 1 and 2 cards together? The equivalent cards you show in your video could easily be swapped. Furthermore, I think that "Seek and Destroy" could also work as a single-card modular set, which you can add as an extra modular to any scenario to spice up the difficulty a little bit.
The idea of mixing sets is fun. I'm not crazy about it here though with S1 and S2 since I don't particularly like any of the S2 designs being honest. I think the Expert 2 designs are really interesting though and could see myself swapping some of those in with Expert 1.
Great analysis as always. Surge for sure is not the solution to increase difficulty in enjoyable mode. I think that the developers didn’t find a better solution to balance the game (and obviously the villains strenght): heroic mode itself practically give “surge” to the first encounter card revelead. I understand that they cannot create new espansions totally different from the standard archetype…maybe they could do as for Arkham Horror lcg for the series of “Return to…”, revisiting the scenarios modifiing and increasing the difficulty of the encounter sets.
Since Standar III came out, I usually play Stage II and III (known as expert) but with only standar III. I'll call it hybrid mode and, for solo at least, it becomes more manageable than old expert. About Standar II and Expert II I find it too much difficult from nowhere and really frustrating.
I've been playing since day 1, and I agree that the complaints about how 'easy' the game was really reached a crescendo, one FFG must have heard, which I think resulted in Galaxy's Most Wanted, and this. I believe part of the problem was marketing; there is nothing 'Standard' about this. Perhaps it could have been branded clearly as some type of 'challenge pack' or what not. Similarly, I hope content is released in the future that is designed to be brutally difficult (or at the least, an expectation that you have access to most/all of the card pool to have a reasonable chance). For the most part however, I think most heroes should be strong and should win. Many enjoy winning, in my opinion. As for surge, I wish there was a hard encounter card limit. For example, with Mysterio (oddly, my the villain against whom I have the highest loss rate..really bizarre), I often run into surge runs of 5-8 cards, which is often crippling if not outright fatal. S2 is particularly unmerciful against solo players. It's simply too likely that even with main scheme clear of threat, that the villain can scheme out. I wish a future Standard set scales with players. One acceleration token/icon, painful in solo, seems mostly trivial in 4 player. An acceleration icon per player (or, number of players less one), might be an example. I also really enjoy inflicting status effects on villains, it feels fun (to me). Perhaps some environment card could prevent consecutive status effects, for example, or accrue counters for each status, where something very bad happens after reaching a certain amount. Overall, I'm glad it's an option in the game. I believe the more the merrier. But do I use it much? No. My main use for it is adding it to villains like Rhino that otherwise aren't too tough. Great video Villain, keep up the awesome work!
You're welcome, I think that video is super important for the game. We shouted you out a few times on the earlier episodes of the podcast too, notably when talking about the harder difficulties/villains of the game!
It is certainly an experience playing Standard II and in some ways its harder than Expert (it makes the stun lock strategy harder) ..I regularly do Standard II playthroughs because I'm either a sucker for punishment or a completionist (i.e cant just let it lie in the box)....I'm probably both! Hahahaha I've found cards like Predictable Ploy, Get Behind Me or Spycraft tend to be more important to include...
Before I could play The Hood, I had to move across the country, and I lost my whole collection. I’m buying a new copy at Gen Con, and I am excited to try out the game after all this time.
Yeah I do enjoy the idea of using S2/E2 to beef up weaker villains along with modulars. I also like how they make protection more valuable in multiplayer with cards like Black Widow and Target Acquired. I could see steady being fine in multiplayer so that there's less competition to status the villain but i'd have to play with it to know for sure. Haven't gotten my hands on Hood yet but I feel i'd agree that it'd be preferable to explore difficulty in other ways than surge.
Standard 2 is interesting. I actually think it's pretty good except in solo play. I'm thinking about why it is frustrating to play against, and I think the only real problem I have is that it increases the difficulty in large part by exacerbating the most unfair part of solo. Formidable Foe is technically more "balanced" because Confuse and Stun are overpowered. But it creates a big balance issue in solo play because it disables the only really reliable way to safely flip down to Alter Ego found in the Aggression/Protection aspects. And Dark Dealings just pushes this issue even harder, shrinking the tiny "safe threat zone" even smaller. I wonder, it might be pretty interesting to play with Standard 2, but add something like this effect to Formidable Foe: "The Main Scheme will only advance if it has threat equal or greater than its target threat value at the start of the Villain Phase."
Great insights! I have yet to try anything beyond Standard. I don’t see myself ever regularly playing Standard/Expert II; however, I think they add value to the game overall. It gives that hard mode for those who want it and force alternative strategies. I agree that setup/permanent cards are excellent additions to shake things up in meaningfully different ways. Hope to see more than that. Honestly I’d still like to see the other infinity stones get their own single cards like the Power Stone.
I like the idea of just doing it differently. I think something a little more nasty but with rewards could be interesting. Imagine Standard 4 has villain side schemes but if you defeat it, all players get to reduce the next card they play by 2. Something like that could be fun.
I too use S2 a lot, it literally spices things up for any villain; recently used with Mr. Sinister and came to hate him a lot, since a win for me is winning 2 games in a row
I for one would be very interested in seeing you go through some custom content! The custom content discord has tons of great stuff, and they’ve currently been going through waves of “community approvals” where they showcase the best stuff. I think it would be great to see you pick a couple heroes from those community approvals and just flip through the cards and react to them like you would a new hero article!
Would a good "fix" for Standard 2 just be to remove Surge on all of the cards? That way you still have a feel for the original design and upgraded versions of 1, but without the brutal extra cards?
I remember one game, after some deliberation, I spent my whole first hand getting an Avenger's Mansion on the board. Then I got dealt Overwhelming Force in the first villain phase. Needless to say, I was not pleased.
I like playing Standard 3, Expert 2. It makes it a challenge when one of those cards comes up. But standard 2 isn't fun somehow. Maybe the steady, but I do not know.
Now that you explained the problem, what are the strategies to play against S2 and E2? What player cards become more relevant? What new strategies does it create?
I agre that standard 2 servers a purpurs. I relly like that it's there not that i play it that often but like you said i like that there are a standard set for some of the easier villains that makes it more dificult (Kinda how i like that the infinity gauntlet can be added to all villains even though i don't offen do so)
When you are playing a match and the card you fear the most are the standard cards and not the villains. Feels like a design fail. That’s my opinion. I think if S4 exists, I want the S2 Mob Mentality effect to find minion or side scheme. This is a better design.
I agree Standard II isn't the best, but design wise the Standard cards facilitate the villains' effects so in that regard I still think it's valid to have some Standard cards as being potent..
Standard II, expert II saved Next Evolution for me. Villains in that Box felt very easy. I wouldn't be playing against those villains If it weren't for the inclusion of expert and standard II.
@@monoludico6166 I just took out Hope. For Mr. sinister, I put hope back on the last main scheme by putting the side scheme out. For Stryfe, I also put the side scheme in play. That really just make it more challenging and didn’t break the game
I play almost exclusively Standard 2. The game is way too easy without it. Specifically, chump blocking with allies is too good and overkill also helps with that. Hell, I have to use community fixes to limit numbers of allies in deckbuilding on top of that. I acknowledge I'm an Arkham Horror boy that only plays Champions because I don't have time for campaigns anymore, but I hope we get Standard 4.
@bradymccann Personally I'd like to see something with the difficulty of Standard 2, but more creativity. I'm not a huge fan of surge and I feel steady cuts out too many heroes that rely on statuses in their main kit.
I dislike Surge. I think it should have been split into 2 pieces: a rule and a keyword. The rule would be if you reveal an encounter card and it has no impact on the board state (other than putting the card itself into the discard pile), you reveal another encounter card. That saves text on a bunch of encounter cards, and makes it so that villains more consistently do things. The keyword should have either been something that goes on minor effects like incite 1 or take 2 indirect damage, or something that can only trigger once per hero per villain phase, but goes on full fledged encounter cards. Either of those options would reduce the risk of surge getting out of control. I dislike having Overkill on a boost effect. It feels like a cheap way to lose the game if you were relying on blocking with an ally. I think enemies making Overkill attacks should be part of the game, but it should be signposted to the player before they make their defensive decisions. I also have some issues with the way that conditions were implemented in the game. I agree that a better way to add difficulty would be to add optional modular sets that give Permanent Setup cards to the villain that give them an extra Acceleration Icon per player or build up counters every turn and do something every 3 turns or something like that.
Two very bad game design mechanics are present here. First with many LCG's you're building up (ie. upgrades and supports), to get a sort of engine going. Anything that discards those just breaks the fun of the game, giving it a two steps forward and two steps back sort of feel on the player state (vice general board state which is always in flux). The puzzle here is a mix of building up while maintaining the board state. If you work hard to figure a way to handle everything while playing that expensive upgrade, and then it gets discarded --then it was all a waste. Wasted turns are just no fun at all. Second, speaking of wasted turns: stuns, exhausts, or skip your turn mechanics are bad for any game. Are we there to play, or to just sit and watch? If the players aren't playing, that's a bad game. There are notable exceptions in fast-paced games like UNO where the fun is trying to minimize what happens on your turn, and if you do get skipped, it'll be your turn again in five seconds, but in general --terrible game design.
I'm sure I read something from Boggs somewhere where he said sometimes they used surge to try and make the game simpler. If a card seemed too complex because it did too much they would simplify the card and add surge. Individual cards could have fewer effects to make it simpler for players but they could still chain multiple effects together. On the other hand if something was too easy they would just put surge on it without fully realising how that made the game harder. It also seemed that designers were making alterations fairly late in the process without a lot of time to test them.
Found the quote from Boggs on hall of heroes, pretty sure I read it on Facebook when he first posted it "In all seriousness, I do agree that surge has maybe been overused, and some of those instances were definitely my decision. That said, surge is an important keyword for the game for one key reason: simplicity.
The target audience of Champions is one where people who haven’t played a ton of card games in the past can sit down and still have a fun time with the game pretty much off the bat. With that in mind, there have been many times when we’ve gotten to the end of development and realized that some of our cards were too wordy, or some of the concepts were higher in complexity than we wanted. One of the largest hurdles for many casual players to overcome is wordiness-not even being able to process a card because there’s too much information presented at once-and in those instances, surge was considered a good replacement as it let us break things into more digestible chunks. Instead of a card with a lot of words and two tiny paragraphs, it became two cards that a player could look at and process independently, maybe even with fewer words overall.
However, surge has definitely made its way onto cards that absolutely should not have it (Fanaticism is the best example). In those cases, surge was often added at the end in the hopes of reducing complexity (replacing whatever text with surge), but sometimes also to add challenge or to make a card spicier. While the former has merit, I don’t personally believe surge should ever really be used to increase difficulty. If players want that experience, there’s already an entire mode that exists.
As the game continues, though, I think we’ll see this issue corrected. I believe it made its way onto more of my products overall not because I love surge, but because I would often push the game into more complex areas. That sometimes meant big changes at the end, and surge was often favored for its simplicity. But both Tony and Caleb are aware of the community’s feelings toward surge at this point, and I’d wager they’ll find other solutions. - Boggs [Facebook]"
hallofheroeslcg.com/2020/07/08/marvel-champions-lcg-interview-resources/
He did have some interesting insights to share when he left FFG. I think we've now seen everything he worked on. During the last livestream they mentioned that Bogg's did the initial design on Iceman before he left. So the current wave must have been in development in early 2022.
I'm familiar with some of that but I don't know if I've ever seen the entire quote. That's extremely interesting. My only question is that it implies that Surge was added onto Standard II and Expert II to reduce their complexity which doesn't seem to be true as far as I can see here. The effects seem intended to mimic Standard 1 and Expert 1 through and through?
Perhaps there's more to it but thanks for sharing this. I'll pin it!
@@VillainTheory it's more simple to bump up the card a bit and add surge than add a bigger effect without surge.
I don't know if it would mess up the balance of anything, but I feel like with Surge the effect shouldn't have been able to chain or there should've been a limit that it only triggers once per Step of Phase. If you reveal a card with Surge, then Surge happens. If the next card has Surge, then ignore the word.
Surge tends to be at it's worst when you just keep revealing card after card. Similarly, they should've had a keyword for adding another boost card with that same limitation.
Surge, since it's a keyword, could be fixed similar to how they fixed Teamwork. Extra boost cast though can't without errata for these cards.
The error was calling it "Standard 2" instead of something like "Brutal"
Surge is a very tricky thing in a game like this. I think it's fine as something that shows up on a card here and there, but if you use it too much you vastly increase the risk of having a run of cards that make you lose from what feels like purely bad luck. (And that feeling wouldn't be entirely wrong.) IMO cards that already have strong negative effects should never have surge.
Totally agree!
Ya and somehow, Surge just FEELS bad. Other bad stuff happens, threat, damage, etc, but seeing Surge it just feels like Monday.
@@dlm9090 For me, it would be less of an issue if the surge cards were otherwise weak, I think, but in general I agree.
@@dlm9090 just choked back a laugh … 100% feel this after playing Ronan this Sunday evening
Our group has basically only used S2 since it came out. Reducing status spam on bosses has made things more interesting for us. Agreed that so much surge is not ideal though.
Status spam is pretty insane, glad you've enjoyed S2!
Standard & Expert 2 make Cable's precondition and the Blindfold Ally highly valuable. Also - they make the game more like Arkham Horror at high difficulty where even with good play decisions you will still lose.
I wish we have more Standard/Expert sets with difficulty somewhere between Expert 1 and Standard 2. I feel like there is a big gap which could be filled.
I like to say Standard 2 comes from Ronan's school of card design. I love difficulty in any game, and I definitely felt like Standard/Expert 1 were too easy, but Standard/Expert 2 were just way too punishing. I remember being so excited for GMW because I heard it was hard, but it was hard for the wrong reasons, and I feel like Standard/Expert 2 are the same. Surge just isn't fun, and the set overall is just too punishing and oppressive and I rarely have a fun time playing with it (and I enjoy playing on Heroic).
Like you said though, Seek and Destroy is actually kinda fun. I wouldn't even be upset if it revealed your nemesis set, I just love seeing the nemesis minions (but now we have Standard 3 which is just better imo).
What do you think about the idea of creating a standard 1.5 set by mixing some standard 1 and 2 cards together? The equivalent cards you show in your video could easily be swapped.
Furthermore, I think that "Seek and Destroy" could also work as a single-card modular set, which you can add as an extra modular to any scenario to spice up the difficulty a little bit.
The idea of mixing sets is fun. I'm not crazy about it here though with S1 and S2 since I don't particularly like any of the S2 designs being honest. I think the Expert 2 designs are really interesting though and could see myself swapping some of those in with Expert 1.
Great analysis as always. Surge for sure is not the solution to increase difficulty in enjoyable mode. I think that the developers didn’t find a better solution to balance the game (and obviously the villains strenght): heroic mode itself practically give “surge” to the first encounter card revelead. I understand that they cannot create new espansions totally different from the standard archetype…maybe they could do as for Arkham Horror lcg for the series of “Return to…”, revisiting the scenarios modifiing and increasing the difficulty of the encounter sets.
22:25 I'd love to see some of your design's Villain!! "Standard V" and "Expert V"
Good job! Definitly interested in custom content Review to seperate what is worth using from what's not
Since Standar III came out, I usually play Stage II and III (known as expert) but with only standar III. I'll call it hybrid mode and, for solo at least, it becomes more manageable than old expert. About Standar II and Expert II I find it too much difficult from nowhere and really frustrating.
That's fun! Makes sense, do what you want with your cards and have fun.
I've been playing since day 1, and I agree that the complaints about how 'easy' the game was really reached a crescendo, one FFG must have heard, which I think resulted in Galaxy's Most Wanted, and this. I believe part of the problem was marketing; there is nothing 'Standard' about this. Perhaps it could have been branded clearly as some type of 'challenge pack' or what not. Similarly, I hope content is released in the future that is designed to be brutally difficult (or at the least, an expectation that you have access to most/all of the card pool to have a reasonable chance). For the most part however, I think most heroes should be strong and should win. Many enjoy winning, in my opinion. As for surge, I wish there was a hard encounter card limit. For example, with Mysterio (oddly, my the villain against whom I have the highest loss rate..really bizarre), I often run into surge runs of 5-8 cards, which is often crippling if not outright fatal.
S2 is particularly unmerciful against solo players. It's simply too likely that even with main scheme clear of threat, that the villain can scheme out. I wish a future Standard set scales with players. One acceleration token/icon, painful in solo, seems mostly trivial in 4 player. An acceleration icon per player (or, number of players less one), might be an example. I also really enjoy inflicting status effects on villains, it feels fun (to me). Perhaps some environment card could prevent consecutive status effects, for example, or accrue counters for each status, where something very bad happens after reaching a certain amount.
Overall, I'm glad it's an option in the game. I believe the more the merrier. But do I use it much? No. My main use for it is adding it to villains like Rhino that otherwise aren't too tough. Great video Villain, keep up the awesome work!
Wow, thanks for the shout out.
You're welcome, I think that video is super important for the game. We shouted you out a few times on the earlier episodes of the podcast too, notably when talking about the harder difficulties/villains of the game!
I'm rewatching this in September for some reason and no one called me out for calling Night Nurse an upgrade when it's support. Do better guys!
It is certainly an experience playing Standard II and in some ways its harder than Expert (it makes the stun lock strategy harder)
..I regularly do Standard II playthroughs because I'm either a sucker for punishment or a completionist (i.e cant just let it lie in the box)....I'm probably both! Hahahaha
I've found cards like Predictable Ploy, Get Behind Me or Spycraft tend to be more important to include...
I would also say Target Acquired. I run it a lot, even in expert I, but I know must people don't. This is very solid anti boost.
Before I could play The Hood, I had to move across the country, and I lost my whole collection. I’m buying a new copy at Gen Con, and I am excited to try out the game after all this time.
Sorry you lost your collection but, on the flip side, welcome back! The game is the best it's ever been in my opinion
Having a difficulty rating would be amazing! I can’t wait to see your finished product
Yeah I do enjoy the idea of using S2/E2 to beef up weaker villains along with modulars. I also like how they make protection more valuable in multiplayer with cards like Black Widow and Target Acquired. I could see steady being fine in multiplayer so that there's less competition to status the villain but i'd have to play with it to know for sure. Haven't gotten my hands on Hood yet but I feel i'd agree that it'd be preferable to explore difficulty in other ways than surge.
Great video! Interesting discussion!
Standard 2 is interesting. I actually think it's pretty good except in solo play. I'm thinking about why it is frustrating to play against, and I think the only real problem I have is that it increases the difficulty in large part by exacerbating the most unfair part of solo. Formidable Foe is technically more "balanced" because Confuse and Stun are overpowered. But it creates a big balance issue in solo play because it disables the only really reliable way to safely flip down to Alter Ego found in the Aggression/Protection aspects. And Dark Dealings just pushes this issue even harder, shrinking the tiny "safe threat zone" even smaller.
I wonder, it might be pretty interesting to play with Standard 2, but add something like this effect to Formidable Foe: "The Main Scheme will only advance if it has threat equal or greater than its target threat value at the start of the Villain Phase."
Great insights! I have yet to try anything beyond Standard. I don’t see myself ever regularly playing Standard/Expert II; however, I think they add value to the game overall. It gives that hard mode for those who want it and force alternative strategies.
I agree that setup/permanent cards are excellent additions to shake things up in meaningfully different ways. Hope to see more than that. Honestly I’d still like to see the other infinity stones get their own single cards like the Power Stone.
I like the idea of just doing it differently. I think something a little more nasty but with rewards could be interesting. Imagine Standard 4 has villain side schemes but if you defeat it, all players get to reduce the next card they play by 2. Something like that could be fun.
I use Standard 2 in every game. Because I put that extra SOTP card in my Standard 1 deck. 😇
The last time I played a surge heavy encounter deck I limited surge to a maximum of once for each player in each round .
I too use S2 a lot, it literally spices things up for any villain; recently used with Mr. Sinister and came to hate him a lot, since a win for me is winning 2 games in a row
I for one would be very interested in seeing you go through some custom content! The custom content discord has tons of great stuff, and they’ve currently been going through waves of “community approvals” where they showcase the best stuff. I think it would be great to see you pick a couple heroes from those community approvals and just flip through the cards and react to them like you would a new hero article!
I need to find my way into that Discord, sounds fun!
Maybe now top 10 most devastating encounter cards? I wonder if you will place anything higher than Cruel Intentions
Would a good "fix" for Standard 2 just be to remove Surge on all of the cards? That way you still have a feel for the original design and upgraded versions of 1, but without the brutal extra cards?
You could change Surge to mean something like discard a card from your hand.
😅standard II is the definition of not play testing a release enough lol
I remember one game, after some deliberation, I spent my whole first hand getting an Avenger's Mansion on the board. Then I got dealt Overwhelming Force in the first villain phase. Needless to say, I was not pleased.
I like playing Standard 3, Expert 2. It makes it a challenge when one of those cards comes up. But standard 2 isn't fun somehow. Maybe the steady, but I do not know.
Now that you explained the problem, what are the strategies to play against S2 and E2?
What player cards become more relevant?
What new strategies does it create?
Those are great questions. I'll try and do a video on that in the future while I'm doing all this villain-related stuff!
I agre that standard 2 servers a purpurs. I relly like that it's there not that i play it that often but like you said i like that there are a standard set for some of the easier villains that makes it more dificult (Kinda how i like that the infinity gauntlet can be added to all villains even though i don't offen do so)
When you are playing a match and the card you fear the most are the standard cards and not the villains. Feels like a design fail. That’s my opinion. I think if S4 exists, I want the S2 Mob Mentality effect to find minion or side scheme. This is a better design.
I agree Standard II isn't the best, but design wise the Standard cards facilitate the villains' effects so in that regard I still think it's valid to have some Standard cards as being potent..
Standard II, expert II saved Next Evolution for me. Villains in that Box felt very easy. I wouldn't be playing against those villains If it weren't for the inclusion of expert and standard II.
@@monoludico6166 I just took out Hope. For Mr. sinister, I put hope back on the last main scheme by putting the side scheme out. For Stryfe, I also put the side scheme in play. That really just make it more challenging and didn’t break the game
@@Champion_Leon Good ideas, but still I find that S II & E II make some scenarios more challenging again (not just Next Evolution ones).
I play almost exclusively Standard 2. The game is way too easy without it. Specifically, chump blocking with allies is too good and overkill also helps with that.
Hell, I have to use community fixes to limit numbers of allies in deckbuilding on top of that. I acknowledge I'm an Arkham Horror boy that only plays Champions because I don't have time for campaigns anymore, but I hope we get Standard 4.
Yes, I want to try it more. Expert is too easy. We have tried half Heroic - pretty good.
What are you looking for out of standard 4?
@bradymccann Personally I'd like to see something with the difficulty of Standard 2, but more creativity.
I'm not a huge fan of surge and I feel steady cuts out too many heroes that rely on statuses in their main kit.
surge is annoying, that's about it
I dislike Surge. I think it should have been split into 2 pieces: a rule and a keyword. The rule would be if you reveal an encounter card and it has no impact on the board state (other than putting the card itself into the discard pile), you reveal another encounter card. That saves text on a bunch of encounter cards, and makes it so that villains more consistently do things. The keyword should have either been something that goes on minor effects like incite 1 or take 2 indirect damage, or something that can only trigger once per hero per villain phase, but goes on full fledged encounter cards. Either of those options would reduce the risk of surge getting out of control.
I dislike having Overkill on a boost effect. It feels like a cheap way to lose the game if you were relying on blocking with an ally. I think enemies making Overkill attacks should be part of the game, but it should be signposted to the player before they make their defensive decisions.
I also have some issues with the way that conditions were implemented in the game.
I agree that a better way to add difficulty would be to add optional modular sets that give Permanent Setup cards to the villain that give them an extra Acceleration Icon per player or build up counters every turn and do something every 3 turns or something like that.
I hate lazy design. This standard II. set seem like a pretty lazy design. Standard 3 is better in all the ways.
Two very bad game design mechanics are present here. First with many LCG's you're building up (ie. upgrades and supports), to get a sort of engine going. Anything that discards those just breaks the fun of the game, giving it a two steps forward and two steps back sort of feel on the player state (vice general board state which is always in flux). The puzzle here is a mix of building up while maintaining the board state. If you work hard to figure a way to handle everything while playing that expensive upgrade, and then it gets discarded --then it was all a waste. Wasted turns are just no fun at all. Second, speaking of wasted turns: stuns, exhausts, or skip your turn mechanics are bad for any game. Are we there to play, or to just sit and watch? If the players aren't playing, that's a bad game. There are notable exceptions in fast-paced games like UNO where the fun is trying to minimize what happens on your turn, and if you do get skipped, it'll be your turn again in five seconds, but in general --terrible game design.