Thanks! I actually expected a ton of people to tell me how stupid my opinion is, so I appreciate that you acknowledge that it's an opinion :). I expect there may be only one or - at most - two other people on the planet who share my opinion about Collector 1 LOL
Great to see you post this! I like your argument. Collector 1 is legitimately difficult. And as much as we like challenges, sometimes it can be frustrating. Props for you really enjoying an actual challenge. I need to practice a lot more.
It's definitely challenging AND frustrating. I love the challenge of this but REALLY dislike the challenge presented by Ronan. Maybe I need to practice that one more!
You make some great points!! I think the biggest obstacle is what you like so much about him: people really don’t like building decks for one scenario. I do, but I know from chatting that most people want to be able to use one deck against any scenario without having to change anything
@@GetUpandGame you're not wrong! I know there are a lot of people who only play precons too and want nothing to do with deck building. But coming from LotR and MtG (where you're always building to the Meta), building to beat a scenario (or decklist) is half the fun for me lol. But I completely understand and respect those who don't want to do that!
Great video! I also don’t think Collector I deserves most of the hate it gets. I used to not mind it when i only played stronger heroes but as I’ve played weaker less versatile heroes i personally have been enjoying it less lol. Really appreciate you sharing your honest opinions on it even if most people disagree
@@webwarriorfanatic thanks! I probably love C1 more than I should, but I love the "Thunderbolt/Apache Leader" feel in a package that doesn't take up the entire table and 8 hours to play lol.
We already talked about this subject in your previous videos, but I don't think you are wrong at all, and if the community says so: who cares? :p Thanos require specific build, but you don't see people complain that much about him compare to Collector I, why that so? Let's analyze. Thanos has huge HP, and he can't be gun down quickly. The players have to include lots of resource generators to do huge turns, and cheap support to protect the expensive one. Thanos hit for massive damage, so perfect defense is out of the way, he's stalwart, so can't be stunlocked, so your defense is either tough and/or chump blocking. Conclusion: the deckbuilding that Thanos is forcing on you is a caricature/extreme version of a popular build. Perfect defense is not that efficient overall, stun lock is considered boring to some, and spaming helicarier, mansion and the like is very cool to some player. So Thanos force the player into something they for the most part already like, because this is how they play the game usually, even if they are not forced to... Collector I does the opposite. He forces you to not chump block, and to keep your allies alive, but as long as you play Standard, you can go Perfect Defense or Stun lock no problem. He also punish you for killing his minions, and killing minions is more often than not, a satisfying part of the game. He put pressure on your economy, forcing you to exhaust or spend resource every other turn, which push the player into playing cheaper card, which are more often than not events. And events are not very reliable, and more situational, which bring a bit more chaos into the game, while players look for consistency and order to stabilize. Conclusion: I played him in Standard multiple times, and I like the challenge he propose, even though he has too much minions, and too much powerful minions I think. Swapping that mod set for a easier one like Temporal or Hydra Assault makes him more interesting IMO. The real problem is Expert mode. Like Nebula, Collector I in expert mode is just overtune. HE has inflated stats, very powerful stage II card text, and Expert cards will ruin your day. And that is why I think Collector I is hated. Playing standard is shameful to some people, but to me, it just make Collector I interseting, and different. Batrock in Wave 8 is the fusion of Collector I and Collector II, and I know Tony Fanchi, the FFG designer like Collector I and think the player base misunterdood the scenario. And I agree with him.
I agree, loads of pressure from all angles in Collector, and that makes the game less boring. And yeah, Collector on Expert is a BEAST. He Thwarts and Attacks for way too much! People always say "Thanos is difficult but fair" but I don't think he's fair at all! I'd call him fair if he was Steady rather than Stalwart! Stalwart shuts down some heroes completely and that's not fair lol. And those Infinity Stones are a constant pressure too! I think you hit the nail on the head when talking about consistency. You're forced out of a consistent playstyle with Collector, and that's a very concise way of saying "I approach deckbuilding and play differently". I wish I'd thought to say that LOL
@@jonathanpickles2946 I'm very humbled by your support, because I know very well your viewpoint on Collector I. It is not common to witness that level of "open mindness", when it comes to that kind of "granular take" that I, and SoloMarvelChampion made.
@@solomarvelchampion I think Thanos only really shutdown extreme character, like Drax, who can't gun down fast enough, Hawkeye who is too squishy without stun and confuse, and maybe Spider woman, because pheromone is her key card IMO. Other than that, even Venom, Rogue or Miles Morales can do stuff against stalwart. Their events lose a bit of efficiency for sure, but they are not really shut down as long as they conform to the deck building is forcing on you: use lots of ramping tool, and chump block like you have no empathy for you allies lol. But yeah, I do think there is a massive bias for Thanos, and against Collector I, which is essentially the same bias : "I want to play mid range value pile, not event heavy deck, no matter the villain!" :p
I like playing this game because it lets me do certain things. Collector one does not let me do those things, and makes me do other things and QED I do not like it. I don't like puzzles much or designing decks for particular scenarios which was a major complaint against LotR which is a way to address the collector. I also have little interest in the campaigns where I feel the extra guff I have to do is in no way rewarded with more fun, or the challenge of the week stuff, or much homebrew .
You and your Collector 1 HAHA. I understand what you mean about having some extra challenge but I'm still not sold. I really dislike "managing the collection" as you put it. Definitely not MY jam haha.
This is one of my least favorite scenarios because it seems like lazy design which breaks the best thing about MC. I argue the best things about MC are Hero design, Cooperative play, Team Roles, and playability. Any scenario which discards your cards prevents you from having fun with your deck. And especially any attachments which uses the lazy "spend x resources to discard" mechanic is just turning your hero into a widget generator. Your heroes need to do thematically heroic things --not just spend resources to solve the problem. Pretty soon, the scenario win condition becomes "exhaust 10 times and spend 10 resources to win." The closer we get to that, the less fun it is.
Thanks for the comment! I understand your thinking and agree with most of what you're saying (and acknowledge that MOST of the community dislikes this one as much as you do), but I'd argue that the entire game is "spend [limited and sometimes specific] resources to solve the problem". Problem: Armored Guard is in the way. I'll attack with an ally (which is spending a "health resource" via Consequential Damage) or exhaust to make the attack myself (which is a different cost) to knock off the tough, then spend something plus a physical to play Relentless Assault which defeats the guard and overkills to deal 2 to the villain - problem solved. Certain villains - definitely Collector 1 but not limited to him - make you do it THEIR way rather than YOUR way. Ultron is a great example: He eats your deck and maybe that single copy of a key card becomes a drone, spits out a minion every turn which you have to spend resources to deal with (even ally Hawkeye's arrow counters are a limited resource), plus his attachments make you exhaust AND spend specific resources to discard them. But beating Expert Ultron is SUPER satisfying because you did it despite the roadblocks he threw in the way. I feel the same about Collector 1, it's satisfying (for me anyway LOL) to beat him when there are so many obstacles in the way and my deck is less efficient than it would be if I were playing some other villain. I think the laziest design is Surge, and the only Surge in Collector 1 comes on Caught off Guard, but only if you didn't have something to discard. "Do a bad thing but Surge if you can't" is Surge I don't mind but "Do a bad thing AND Surge" is terrible and lazy IMO.
@@solomarvelchampion Thanks for the reply! Great comments. On a technical level, I think you're dead right. What's difference? Spending resources to attack vs spending resources to discard that attachment --looks exactly the same if we eliminate the whole themed Superhero skin over this game system. I would contend that the Superhero theme is important, but MC could be a spy themed game or a space themed game, and I'd probably still play it. But what if we eliminate the theme altogether, and it's just a card game with random symbols? I might try it once, but I don't think I'd be into it ==> if play becomes less thematic and more literally just spending cards, then that breaks most of the fun for me. Part of the hero deck success that this game has enjoyed is how we often feel that the decks capture some sense of the hero's power and personality. FF have mostly done a good job with this. I even like She Hulk. When people talk about fun MC stuff, we mostly talk about our Hero decks and how they played. The fun stuff is mostly about the deck in my hands. If I don't get to play that cool deck which I made, because I'm just unthematically spending resources to disarm the villain's attachment, then the fun deck is mostly useless ==> anybody could spend a deck full of terrible cards to do the same thing. It also breaks the fun of combos. I actually put Emergency in Gamora's deck. Terrible card, but it combos with her powers. Spending resources to discard attachments doesn't combo with anything. Finally, I have a hard time recruiting friends to play MC on game night. The complaint I hear from friends when they discard 3 resources, and exhaust is, "I never get to do anything." I think we want to say that they contributed to the team's success, and my group would get that idea, but they look at all those cool hero cards, and they're going to say that it's not fun if they don't get to play them. I've played enough to see both sides, and I come down agreeing with them. We even house rule for stuns: you can clear a stun by taking 1 damage and 1 encounter card. It came from when one guy got stunned three times in a row. Now, we would have done fine with him being exhausted again, but he was pissed. He was not having fun because he felt like he wasn't playing --he was just sitting around. He went into the kitchen to get a beer, "let me know when I'm not stunned anymore." And we were like, "oh, but you've got cards to play." And he replied, "just spend them on villain attachments." That's how checked out of the game he was able to get in a short time.
@@josephgerman2674 fair points! I think it just comes down to playstyle. I enjoy the process of playing the game, even when my awesome deck can't perform the way it was designed to, and that goes all the way back to the beginning of Magic the Gathering when your best deck still couldn't beat "THAT guy" lol. You could always choose to just NOT play "THAT guy", as many choose not to play Collector 1. I definitely get frustrated some times (you can hear it in many of my videos LOL), but it's the playing of the game and engaging with its mechanics which is fun for me. "How do the mechanics of this hero deal with the mechanics of that villain?" I finally got the win against C1 with Black Widow. It was tough and took MANY tries, but it was satisfying :)
@@solomarvelchampion Great points again! Wow, you tried beating C1 with Black Widow. I mean that's an accomplishment. I kinda can't do that. I wonder if some of the difference here is multiplayer. I only play multiplayer, and I build out my whole box for game night, so we grab a hero, grab a villain, and play. As such, these are all economy decks. No hero has 8 allies. My Leadership decks have 6, Protection have 4-5, Aggression and Justice have 2-4. I could never show up on game night and ask people to build decks on-the-fly... Most of my group eschew Magic the Gathering and similar CCGs. Oddly, they got really big into Sentinels of the Multiverse. I think that's why I'm getting away with bringing MC to the table every now and then. All that to say that it would be pretty messy to disassemble all the decks to try to make a scenario-specific deck. We like to tweak the decks when we get a new pack, and we've done three or four affordable builds inspired by Marvel CDB, but we often struggle against normal difficulty villains. It's funny, we never thought Ultron 1 was very tough, but Klaw 1 really smacked us around, and Red Skull 1 was a battle royale...
@@josephgerman2674 multi is definitely different, especially when you're building multiple decks with one collection, so I can see why C1 would be so unliked in that environment! I sometimes build "limited" decks (right now I'm on a huge core-only kick) and it does make it more difficult when you can't take the best cards for a deck. Black Widow took me like 12 or 13 tries. I know how I WANT to play her, and I know how C1 works, but finding the correct play line for her was a lot of fun. The "remove from collection" action is a Hero action, so deciding when to flip up and which preps to trigger took some time to "figure out".
This gets a little ramble-y...
What an amazing opinion and perspective. Appreciate you sharing 😂😂😂
Thanks! I actually expected a ton of people to tell me how stupid my opinion is, so I appreciate that you acknowledge that it's an opinion :). I expect there may be only one or - at most - two other people on the planet who share my opinion about Collector 1 LOL
Great to see you post this! I like your argument. Collector 1 is legitimately difficult. And as much as we like challenges, sometimes it can be frustrating. Props for you really enjoying an actual challenge. I need to practice a lot more.
It's definitely challenging AND frustrating. I love the challenge of this but REALLY dislike the challenge presented by Ronan. Maybe I need to practice that one more!
You make some great points!! I think the biggest obstacle is what you like so much about him: people really don’t like building decks for one scenario. I do, but I know from chatting that most people want to be able to use one deck against any scenario without having to change anything
@@GetUpandGame you're not wrong! I know there are a lot of people who only play precons too and want nothing to do with deck building. But coming from LotR and MtG (where you're always building to the Meta), building to beat a scenario (or decklist) is half the fun for me lol. But I completely understand and respect those who don't want to do that!
@ yep I liked it in LotR as well!
Great video! I also don’t think Collector I deserves most of the hate it gets. I used to not mind it when i only played stronger heroes but as I’ve played weaker less versatile heroes i personally have been enjoying it less lol. Really appreciate you sharing your honest opinions on it even if most people disagree
@@webwarriorfanatic thanks! I probably love C1 more than I should, but I love the "Thunderbolt/Apache Leader" feel in a package that doesn't take up the entire table and 8 hours to play lol.
We already talked about this subject in your previous videos, but I don't think you are wrong at all, and if the community says so: who cares? :p
Thanos require specific build, but you don't see people complain that much about him compare to Collector I, why that so? Let's analyze.
Thanos has huge HP, and he can't be gun down quickly. The players have to include lots of resource generators to do huge turns, and cheap support to protect the expensive one.
Thanos hit for massive damage, so perfect defense is out of the way, he's stalwart, so can't be stunlocked, so your defense is either tough and/or chump blocking.
Conclusion: the deckbuilding that Thanos is forcing on you is a caricature/extreme version of a popular build. Perfect defense is not that efficient overall, stun lock is considered boring to some, and spaming helicarier, mansion and the like is very cool to some player. So Thanos force the player into something they for the most part already like, because this is how they play the game usually, even if they are not forced to...
Collector I does the opposite.
He forces you to not chump block, and to keep your allies alive, but as long as you play Standard, you can go Perfect Defense or Stun lock no problem.
He also punish you for killing his minions, and killing minions is more often than not, a satisfying part of the game.
He put pressure on your economy, forcing you to exhaust or spend resource every other turn, which push the player into playing cheaper card, which are more often than not events. And events are not very reliable, and more situational, which bring a bit more chaos into the game, while players look for consistency and order to stabilize.
Conclusion: I played him in Standard multiple times, and I like the challenge he propose, even though he has too much minions, and too much powerful minions I think. Swapping that mod set for a easier one like Temporal or Hydra Assault makes him more interesting IMO. The real problem is Expert mode. Like Nebula, Collector I in expert mode is just overtune. HE has inflated stats, very powerful stage II card text, and Expert cards will ruin your day.
And that is why I think Collector I is hated. Playing standard is shameful to some people, but to me, it just make Collector I interseting, and different. Batrock in Wave 8 is the fusion of Collector I and Collector II, and I know Tony Fanchi, the FFG designer like Collector I and think the player base misunterdood the scenario. And I agree with him.
I agree, loads of pressure from all angles in Collector, and that makes the game less boring. And yeah, Collector on Expert is a BEAST. He Thwarts and Attacks for way too much!
People always say "Thanos is difficult but fair" but I don't think he's fair at all! I'd call him fair if he was Steady rather than Stalwart! Stalwart shuts down some heroes completely and that's not fair lol. And those Infinity Stones are a constant pressure too!
I think you hit the nail on the head when talking about consistency. You're forced out of a consistent playstyle with Collector, and that's a very concise way of saying "I approach deckbuilding and play differently". I wish I'd thought to say that LOL
Great post!
@@jonathanpickles2946 I'm very humbled by your support, because I know very well your viewpoint on Collector I.
It is not common to witness that level of "open mindness", when it comes to that kind of "granular take" that I, and SoloMarvelChampion made.
@@solomarvelchampion I think Thanos only really shutdown extreme character, like Drax, who can't gun down fast enough, Hawkeye who is too squishy without stun and confuse, and maybe Spider woman, because pheromone is her key card IMO.
Other than that, even Venom, Rogue or Miles Morales can do stuff against stalwart. Their events lose a bit of efficiency for sure, but they are not really shut down as long as they conform to the deck building is forcing on you: use lots of ramping tool, and chump block like you have no empathy for you allies lol.
But yeah, I do think there is a massive bias for Thanos, and against Collector I, which is essentially the same bias : "I want to play mid range value pile, not event heavy deck, no matter the villain!" :p
I like playing this game because it lets me do certain things. Collector one does not let me do those things, and makes me do other things and QED I do not like it. I don't like puzzles much or designing decks for particular scenarios which was a major complaint against LotR which is a way to address the collector. I also have little interest in the campaigns where I feel the extra guff I have to do is in no way rewarded with more fun, or the challenge of the week stuff, or much homebrew .
You and your Collector 1 HAHA. I understand what you mean about having some extra challenge but I'm still not sold. I really dislike "managing the collection" as you put it. Definitely not MY jam haha.
@@chadhostetter1632 not for everyone for sure LOL. Thanks for watching!
This is one of my least favorite scenarios because it seems like lazy design which breaks the best thing about MC. I argue the best things about MC are Hero design, Cooperative play, Team Roles, and playability. Any scenario which discards your cards prevents you from having fun with your deck. And especially any attachments which uses the lazy "spend x resources to discard" mechanic is just turning your hero into a widget generator. Your heroes need to do thematically heroic things --not just spend resources to solve the problem. Pretty soon, the scenario win condition becomes "exhaust 10 times and spend 10 resources to win." The closer we get to that, the less fun it is.
Thanks for the comment!
I understand your thinking and agree with most of what you're saying (and acknowledge that MOST of the community dislikes this one as much as you do), but I'd argue that the entire game is "spend [limited and sometimes specific] resources to solve the problem". Problem: Armored Guard is in the way. I'll attack with an ally (which is spending a "health resource" via Consequential Damage) or exhaust to make the attack myself (which is a different cost) to knock off the tough, then spend something plus a physical to play Relentless Assault which defeats the guard and overkills to deal 2 to the villain - problem solved.
Certain villains - definitely Collector 1 but not limited to him - make you do it THEIR way rather than YOUR way. Ultron is a great example: He eats your deck and maybe that single copy of a key card becomes a drone, spits out a minion every turn which you have to spend resources to deal with (even ally Hawkeye's arrow counters are a limited resource), plus his attachments make you exhaust AND spend specific resources to discard them. But beating Expert Ultron is SUPER satisfying because you did it despite the roadblocks he threw in the way. I feel the same about Collector 1, it's satisfying (for me anyway LOL) to beat him when there are so many obstacles in the way and my deck is less efficient than it would be if I were playing some other villain.
I think the laziest design is Surge, and the only Surge in Collector 1 comes on Caught off Guard, but only if you didn't have something to discard. "Do a bad thing but Surge if you can't" is Surge I don't mind but "Do a bad thing AND Surge" is terrible and lazy IMO.
@@solomarvelchampion Thanks for the reply! Great comments. On a technical level, I think you're dead right. What's difference? Spending resources to attack vs spending resources to discard that attachment --looks exactly the same if we eliminate the whole themed Superhero skin over this game system. I would contend that the Superhero theme is important, but MC could be a spy themed game or a space themed game, and I'd probably still play it. But what if we eliminate the theme altogether, and it's just a card game with random symbols? I might try it once, but I don't think I'd be into it ==> if play becomes less thematic and more literally just spending cards, then that breaks most of the fun for me.
Part of the hero deck success that this game has enjoyed is how we often feel that the decks capture some sense of the hero's power and personality. FF have mostly done a good job with this. I even like She Hulk. When people talk about fun MC stuff, we mostly talk about our Hero decks and how they played. The fun stuff is mostly about the deck in my hands. If I don't get to play that cool deck which I made, because I'm just unthematically spending resources to disarm the villain's attachment, then the fun deck is mostly useless ==> anybody could spend a deck full of terrible cards to do the same thing. It also breaks the fun of combos. I actually put Emergency in Gamora's deck. Terrible card, but it combos with her powers. Spending resources to discard attachments doesn't combo with anything.
Finally, I have a hard time recruiting friends to play MC on game night. The complaint I hear from friends when they discard 3 resources, and exhaust is, "I never get to do anything." I think we want to say that they contributed to the team's success, and my group would get that idea, but they look at all those cool hero cards, and they're going to say that it's not fun if they don't get to play them. I've played enough to see both sides, and I come down agreeing with them. We even house rule for stuns: you can clear a stun by taking 1 damage and 1 encounter card. It came from when one guy got stunned three times in a row. Now, we would have done fine with him being exhausted again, but he was pissed. He was not having fun because he felt like he wasn't playing --he was just sitting around. He went into the kitchen to get a beer, "let me know when I'm not stunned anymore." And we were like, "oh, but you've got cards to play." And he replied, "just spend them on villain attachments." That's how checked out of the game he was able to get in a short time.
@@josephgerman2674 fair points!
I think it just comes down to playstyle. I enjoy the process of playing the game, even when my awesome deck can't perform the way it was designed to, and that goes all the way back to the beginning of Magic the Gathering when your best deck still couldn't beat "THAT guy" lol. You could always choose to just NOT play "THAT guy", as many choose not to play Collector 1.
I definitely get frustrated some times (you can hear it in many of my videos LOL), but it's the playing of the game and engaging with its mechanics which is fun for me. "How do the mechanics of this hero deal with the mechanics of that villain?" I finally got the win against C1 with Black Widow. It was tough and took MANY tries, but it was satisfying :)
@@solomarvelchampion Great points again! Wow, you tried beating C1 with Black Widow. I mean that's an accomplishment. I kinda can't do that.
I wonder if some of the difference here is multiplayer. I only play multiplayer, and I build out my whole box for game night, so we grab a hero, grab a villain, and play. As such, these are all economy decks. No hero has 8 allies. My Leadership decks have 6, Protection have 4-5, Aggression and Justice have 2-4. I could never show up on game night and ask people to build decks on-the-fly... Most of my group eschew Magic the Gathering and similar CCGs. Oddly, they got really big into Sentinels of the Multiverse. I think that's why I'm getting away with bringing MC to the table every now and then. All that to say that it would be pretty messy to disassemble all the decks to try to make a scenario-specific deck. We like to tweak the decks when we get a new pack, and we've done three or four affordable builds inspired by Marvel CDB, but we often struggle against normal difficulty villains. It's funny, we never thought Ultron 1 was very tough, but Klaw 1 really smacked us around, and Red Skull 1 was a battle royale...
@@josephgerman2674 multi is definitely different, especially when you're building multiple decks with one collection, so I can see why C1 would be so unliked in that environment! I sometimes build "limited" decks (right now I'm on a huge core-only kick) and it does make it more difficult when you can't take the best cards for a deck.
Black Widow took me like 12 or 13 tries. I know how I WANT to play her, and I know how C1 works, but finding the correct play line for her was a lot of fun. The "remove from collection" action is a Hero action, so deciding when to flip up and which preps to trigger took some time to "figure out".
This is a WILD take, I’m afraid. I’m glad you enjoy it, but it’s not fun at all.
Thanks for watching! I'm 99.9999% sure I'm the only player who actually likes this one. Still waiting for that one other person on the planet LOL
@@solomarvelchampion it’s all good, I’m glad someone likes it! That’s the great thing about the game, there’s someone for everyone!!
@@WinningHandPodcast I'm playing every hero against C1 right now. Black Widow was rough but I got through it LOL