Amazing video. I've been meaning to check out your channel for ages since I heard about it a few months ago but so little time, so much to do, etc. I gave this video a try and made the time to watch it all. Unfortunately for you, you invited comments - when I do really get into a video, well, let's say I am well-known for my essays. But I loved this. "The optimal difficulty should reward strategy with a credible threat of defeat" is such a good line. For me, part of what I enjoy is the variety and creativity in deckbuilding, so when I think about difficulty I'm trying to leave a little extra room for expression - but part of that too is I often avoid what I perceive as the most powerful cards, to find more variety in my decks and thus in the gameplay. As you say later in the video, weaker decks. But sometimes it's just fun to optimize the heck out of something. I love all the numbers stuff too, it's exactly what I like to do even if we use slightly different ways to measure each value. I did a large project myself earlier this year trying to rate the difficulty of every mod set in the game and every villain in the game, which meant going through every encounter card in the game multiple times. Which was a nightmare. But ultimately I came to conclude the average encounter card is around 2.7 resources worth of value to deal with it right now in my system including everything from core to Age of Apocalypse and excluding campaign cards. And if you exclude the few hardest scenarios and mod sets, that can drop pretty hard. Most scenarios I think it's more like 2.5 on average which honestly makes a significant difference compared to the traditional Star-Lordesque "encounter card = 3 resources" argument I see around the place and have even said myself some time ago. Great points about Heroic letting the scenario shine vs. Standard 2. My big problem with Standard 2 is how swingy it is. Aside from Formidable Foe, you're just playing on expert mode until suddenly a huge attack with overkill and surge blindsides you out of nowhere. From doing the numbers (and eating a lot of Total Annihilation pulls in the encounter phase), I think Standard 2 ranks among the very hardest mod sets in the game, especially for solo play where you just have less options and flexibility. Standard 3 I've played a lot and it makes some situations harder and some situations easier, but is really relatively close to Standard 1 on a turn-by-turn basis. It doesn't outshine the encounter's own cards like Standard 2's difficulty does but it isn't providing much more challenge than Standard 1 either. Great rebuttal against Heroic being "Fake surge". I am or at least was kind of on that train? But I think your point about the expected amount of encounter cards (heroic) and a surprise bonus amount of encounter cards (surge) is spot on and really makes Heroic seem a lot more appealing. It's a difficulty I've been wanting to find time to explore more but again, so much to do and so little time. I 100% agree that heroic is achievable. I also especially love the point that it can breathe new life into scenarios you have written off as too easy. Right now, if Risky Business is a 1 and Ronan is a 10 on the difficulty scale, I personally aim to play scenarios at 6 to 9 out of 10 on that same scale most of the time. And that excludes an absolute ton of scenarios which I do sometimes revisit with harder mod sets but, as you noted, can lead to the mods overshadowing the scenario. More than that, an experienced player with precise play and careful deckbuilding can take down Expert Ronan and Venom Goblin etc with relative ease. I recently did a few games to the point of this. One card collection, two player. We used Leadership Cyclops and Leadership Spider-Man Miles Morales and destroyed Expert Ronan as if he was just a regular old villain. Then we took Leadership Bishop and Justice Cable up against Expert Venom Goblin and bullied him so thoroughly he felt like Standard Mutagen Formula. Naturally I didn't pull any punches in the deckbuilding there either. Something I'd be interested in, if you haven't covered it before, is a guide to get people into Heroic mode. For me, one of the big differences I notice from my comments and Discord is the difference in tempo between difficulties. When I'm playing harder scenarios on expert with harder mod sets, you really need good tempo and versatility to navigate the obstacles stacked up agaisnt you - this is where I play. In standard mode, you just have time to do whatever you want most of the time - and this is where I think a lot of arguments come from when people claim cards I'm less keen on can be really good. And they're correct, of course, albeit at their difficulty. And that's the thing. Standard strategies don't always cut it against Expert. While I haven't played Heroic mode anywhere near as much as you, I am sure the tempo likewise needs to be cranked up another gear. If you fall behind early, you're either getting overrun with no way back or just villain-activated out of existence. So maybe an emphasis on that would be useful? In fact, if you ever wanted to come on my channel and talk about it I'd be happy to shout you out and try and send some eyes your way. This video for example deserves way more views. Thanks for reading the essay! P.S. You didn't come off as elitist at all to me. Everything was both respectful and thoughtful.
Hello sir! Quite the bit of reading indeed but thank you for filling it with nice things :) . I would definitely appreciate the opportunity to collab some time! I think the strategy discussion is interesting because I'm honestly not sure the strategy is any different for Heroic than it is Standard or Expert, there's just a higher bar of card quality and deck efficiency you need to clear to win...less margin for error. Would be interesting to discuss (among the many other points you raise)!
Great video, you have a good speaking voice and presented your points in a manner that was easily digestible. This video reminds me of my first and only foray into heroic: Black Widow Justice vs Klaw. The game took over an hour but eventually I did it. After that game I was put off off heroic mode because it was just pretty exhausting. That's been a couple of years ago. With the powerful cards we have these days I'll definitely consider trying it again. I'll also check out the rest of your channel.
Great video, it describes exactly why I started playing Heroic! You're by far me favorite MC content creator, I love watching your gameplay videos :) You're the one who gave me the inspiration to even try Heroic in the first place, so thank you
Interesting video. I'm continuously fascinated by how different brains see the same thing... I'm a story guy, through and through. Reading and writing are my jam, and I don't math good. I actually got a bit discouraged early on in the MC life cycle because I was watching Team Covenant streams exclusively, and they often went deep on the card math, and it went over ny head Just like when your video went in expert vs heroic by the numbers, it turned into the teacher from Charlie Brown 😎 What I've come to love about this game, and what eventually pulled me back in, is that we can approach it in so many different ways. I've really leaned into the nostalgic Marvel card collection aspect of the game(even getting into binders for some cards, and the art sheets) I've also made my peace with being a card game "rookie". I basically play exclusively on Standard, and have occasionally just done a skirmish when I'm pressed for time. And I'm enjoying the game more now that I'm not getting my ass kicked. Much respect to the Math Men, I stand in awe of your power of analysis 🖖🏾
Thank you for sharing! It's very cool to hear how different people enjoy the game. I'm similar to you when I play Arkham Horror. The story is so immersive, and I love just playing on the easiest difficulty to experience it, like reading a book
This was such a well constructed, detailed deep dive from someone who obviously cares a ton for Heroic. I loved seeing your passion and totally understand your arguments from that "numbers" perspective. I planned on uploading a more chill video in the coming days broadly speaking about difficultly in the game and had a brief mention Heroic mode in the recording. At my current skill level and where I find enjoyment in the game, it is absolutely a no-go, but I echo a similar sentiment that it's completely fine to play and engage with the game in the way you find the most fun. Maybe after playing through Expert a handful more times I'll give it a fair shot, but I feel like that'll be a long way off for me. Once again, I loved the viewpoint and I'll probably link your video to get another viewpoint on difficulty from someone who (at least to me) operates on the extreme end versus me where my current goal is defeating the villains handedly in Expert.
Really nicely done video and I would be curious on the project you have been working on. I think your premise is bang on, when you and the villain each have relatively equivalent effective resources the strategy that the player/villain employs becomes consequential because there is a credible threat of defeat both on the hero and villain side. An easy example would be Rhino where he is deploying his effective resources to damage you. As the player you now have to decide how you address his utilization of effective resources (e.g. damage race, healing/defense, etc.). What I think you also tee up in your video is that different heroes/modular/villains have different level of effective resources per turn. It might mean that heroes that are less powerful may consider Expert with a more difficult modular on par with their effective resource they can generate
Thanks! I might still get around to it, but VillainTheory mentioned in his comment that he's done a similar thing for both scenarios and mod sets, so I need to check out what he did there. My idea was mostly just to rank scenarios by difficulty, but it could actually be really interesting to dig further into what percentages of resource burden come from the different effects: damage, threat, minions, etc. For Rhino I believe it would show a large percentage in the damage category which would advise how you counter with your own deck.
This is a really compelling argument for heroic. I’ve shied away from heroic for a while, but expert is getting easier and easier so you may have convinced me. :) I’ll have to watch a few of your playthroughs to see how it’s done!
Very persuasive argument! I absolutely loved hearing you math out the hero turn and the villains turn. Very fascinating to see it laid out like that. I didn’t know you were out here before but new subscriber here!
Great video and you’ve another subscriber. I love the idea of more encounter cards (the reality not so much sometimes) 😂 and it is the reason why I put StarLord in my top 5 hero’s to play. I feel like you get “more” game. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how this works in multiplayer. I’ve not tried this so I’m speaking completely hypothetically, but I would think a 4 player game would fly through the encounter deck in under 3 turns (min 36 cards). Oof! I suppose adding an extra modular or two might help this or when inevitably the various nemesis’ (nemisises,…. Nemisi….🤷♂️) bolster the encounter deck. I play expert two handed most of the time. My tactics/ deck building focus on theme first strength second, but loved the video and will certainly give Heroic a whirl the next time a take down a villain a little too easily. Thanks
"More game" is absolutely true...I've had that thought before but totally forgot to mention it here! I have to admit I've never played a multiplayer Heroic game...running out the deck is certainly a thing, but remember that while main scheme threshold always scales with player count, acceleration tokens do not. So it might not be as bad as you'd think. In a 2p game, you have to go through the encounter deck twice to have the same relative impact of one acceleration token in solo. But still it's like you half an acceleration icon for the second half of the deck, so it's definitely still harder. Appreciate the comment!
A good pitch for the format! I do know it's not really for me. I do not like tailoring my decks. I do like building them just not that often. I am also not really into puzzles which I feel the game becomes (It's a fine line between tactics and puzzle I know) As I said on another video it can feel like I am just hoping to get a favourable flip of the cards rather than depending much on what I do. If I have a 10% win chance then I will eventually get the win. There's no sense of accomplishment, just lasting it out. I do remember hammering some set pieces in CRPGs over& over again to finally beat them but that was 20+years ago - they don't seem so tough nowadays & I don't play Dark Souls. I also seem to remember a feeling of relief rather than accomplishment but it's been a while. I also feel much higher difficulty squeezes the available strategies & heroes. I do think you are doing a good job of fighting against that but at the cost of tailoring your decks which I CBA to do. There are more heroes than scenarios so you are probably spared Valkyrie and Hulk :) I think there was another one but can't remember. Anyhow I hope you find your audience, I will certainly watch some more.
I listened to your video yesterday. Then I took time to digest and formulate my comment/thought/feedback, and I was logging, I read the VillainTheory message which already convey pretty much everything I have in mind and even more lol. So I gave him a thumb up, and I will try to not repeat him too much lol. First, I've watched all your gameplay videos, as you might know, and I also like your spirit. You're not elitist, you just tune the game to your taste/goal/sight, and I even tried heroic mode a couple of time since I know your channel, with my girl Cap Marvel. As you state in the video, Heroic Mode is all about tempo and having big hand and/or play fast, and Carol is pretty good at drawing/cycling lol. Most of the time, I play expert mode, and I always try to find the right level of difficulty for a given deck. If the deck/hero is very powerful, then i play harder villain and/or mod set, if I'm playing weaker hero, then I play expert villain they can handle. 4 Hand size hero become more and more detrimental as you increase difficulty. IronHeart is good example: extremly strong in Expert, not that much in Heroic, and that is because you have less time to setup/build. Another villain I came to like is Collector I. First step was trying to build to defeat him standard mode, and I was surprised how well and consistent it works with the right strategy: never chump block, always heal/bounce your ally, clean the collection, use efficient defense/attack events. And now I'm going Expert mode with him, and I'm on the track of finding another reliable strategy with the right heroes. Expert II is a set of cards I use more and more. Not standard II which I think is just very swingy. But Expert II with standard I, that just make the expert card more vicious, and it is just extra spice into the dish. So yeah, in the end, what matter is that the game challenge us, in an interesting way , from a mechanical standpoint: the right difficulty for the right deck. And ofc there is the narrative/thematic side of things, but that is another topic/discussion, because the experience is not about losing/winning anymore, it is about reenacting, and that is another way to play the game.
Love seeing Heroic being played. Its the best way to really learn how to fine tune my own gameplay. I play a lot of 2 handed in Heroic mode, and I "think" its even harder than solo.
This was surprisingly convincing. Are you sure you are math guy and not a marketing guy ? 😅 Jokes aside, I will try it with my favorite duo. And thanks for the video!
I've had this thought sometimes after taking 5-10 attempts to beat a villain in Expert: how do i know that my win was actually a result of optimal play and deck construction and not random chance. Did I materially improve my deck and/or play from my first attempt to when I won, or did I just get lucky once and called it a victory? Your description of heroic and the very slight edges involved makes me think you're even more likely to run into this situation. Any thoughts on that?
It's a good point. It's impossible to conclude that you've improved your win rate (with deck or play) by 10%, for example, without playing an unreasonable amount of games at each variable change. You can have some intuition based on heuristics like how often are you able to use all your resources every turn? Or how often can you clean the board up going into each villain phase? Are there cards you find yourself never playing from hand, indicating they're not serving much purpose in the current iteration of your deck? Ultimately it takes a combination of skill and luck to win a game at a hard enough difficulty. As I mention in the video, the ideal difficulty would actually necessitate excellent play and deckbuilding to result in a win, then winning alone is enough to know you've done well and not just gotten lucky. But there is too much luck in this game for it to be as clean as that. My personal philosophy in how I approach my Heroic challenges is to take the win and run! You just need a pretty large sample size or drastic improvement in win rate to draw any real conclusions that you've improved your game outside of some of the game sense I mentioned.
@@Stretch22_MarvelChampions I was going to make this point. At some point it just feels like I am rolling a die hoping to get a 6, I know if I do it long enough I will get the 6 but there is no feeling of accomplishment. Obviously there are differences in deck quality & play but the samples you need to get a good feel will be huge. It's almost like that on "expert vs the moderately tough scenarios" where I live. The win rates there are so high it's hard to tell between decks & even if I get a streak of losses it's hard to know if that is a bad match or just Poisson distribution. I did lose on turn one this week for the first time I remember in hundreds of games -Advance Under Fire into Advance & I will chalk that one up to bad luck, though I could have played for it better.
Thanks for the response! I only just realized I'm not getting notifications on this app, so I went back to check. Fair answer; I agree. It doesn't bother me. In the end it's about fun and I don't track my games or win rates. It's just a bias against the villain I guess. They can beat us 10 times but if we best them once, we say we've beat them and move on😂
That can definitely be a fun way to play! I think the difficulty is somewhere between standard and expert because of getting to stall on stage 1, but I like the idea of getting to play more turns by chewing through another villain stage once all your key pieces are already in play
It’s Skirmish mode, not “rookie” mode. It was a bit insulting to hear you call it that way. And Actually, you can play Heroic Skirmish mode against any level of villain.
@ maybe you could record a Heroic Skirmish as a stepping stone for those who are tempted by still nervous about trying Heroic Expert. Because Skirmish only needs one level of villain, you could do level three, showing the audience how if they can beat that level, then Heroic Expert is just as achievable. Plus it would remove some of the stigma “Rookie” mode creates.
@@prufrock1977 Standard is the "rookie" imho. its very easy and beatable with preconstructed decks. The easier version , so called Skirmish, is meant for showing the game to family or kid I think.
@ (1) check out the rules, Skirmish is an official play mode, (2) stop pretending that you never lose a game on standard 🙄 [I’ve seen every honest content creator lose on Standard], (3) actually try Skirmish Heroic and the report back. It is a fun challenge that doesn’t take an hour to play, 4) learn how to NOT sound like a teenage edgelord poser baby… 😂
Amazing video. I've been meaning to check out your channel for ages since I heard about it a few months ago but so little time, so much to do, etc. I gave this video a try and made the time to watch it all. Unfortunately for you, you invited comments - when I do really get into a video, well, let's say I am well-known for my essays. But I loved this.
"The optimal difficulty should reward strategy with a credible threat of defeat" is such a good line. For me, part of what I enjoy is the variety and creativity in deckbuilding, so when I think about difficulty I'm trying to leave a little extra room for expression - but part of that too is I often avoid what I perceive as the most powerful cards, to find more variety in my decks and thus in the gameplay. As you say later in the video, weaker decks.
But sometimes it's just fun to optimize the heck out of something.
I love all the numbers stuff too, it's exactly what I like to do even if we use slightly different ways to measure each value. I did a large project myself earlier this year trying to rate the difficulty of every mod set in the game and every villain in the game, which meant going through every encounter card in the game multiple times. Which was a nightmare. But ultimately I came to conclude the average encounter card is around 2.7 resources worth of value to deal with it right now in my system including everything from core to Age of Apocalypse and excluding campaign cards. And if you exclude the few hardest scenarios and mod sets, that can drop pretty hard. Most scenarios I think it's more like 2.5 on average which honestly makes a significant difference compared to the traditional Star-Lordesque "encounter card = 3 resources" argument I see around the place and have even said myself some time ago.
Great points about Heroic letting the scenario shine vs. Standard 2. My big problem with Standard 2 is how swingy it is. Aside from Formidable Foe, you're just playing on expert mode until suddenly a huge attack with overkill and surge blindsides you out of nowhere. From doing the numbers (and eating a lot of Total Annihilation pulls in the encounter phase), I think Standard 2 ranks among the very hardest mod sets in the game, especially for solo play where you just have less options and flexibility.
Standard 3 I've played a lot and it makes some situations harder and some situations easier, but is really relatively close to Standard 1 on a turn-by-turn basis. It doesn't outshine the encounter's own cards like Standard 2's difficulty does but it isn't providing much more challenge than Standard 1 either.
Great rebuttal against Heroic being "Fake surge". I am or at least was kind of on that train? But I think your point about the expected amount of encounter cards (heroic) and a surprise bonus amount of encounter cards (surge) is spot on and really makes Heroic seem a lot more appealing. It's a difficulty I've been wanting to find time to explore more but again, so much to do and so little time.
I 100% agree that heroic is achievable. I also especially love the point that it can breathe new life into scenarios you have written off as too easy. Right now, if Risky Business is a 1 and Ronan is a 10 on the difficulty scale, I personally aim to play scenarios at 6 to 9 out of 10 on that same scale most of the time. And that excludes an absolute ton of scenarios which I do sometimes revisit with harder mod sets but, as you noted, can lead to the mods overshadowing the scenario. More than that, an experienced player with precise play and careful deckbuilding can take down Expert Ronan and Venom Goblin etc with relative ease. I recently did a few games to the point of this. One card collection, two player. We used Leadership Cyclops and Leadership Spider-Man Miles Morales and destroyed Expert Ronan as if he was just a regular old villain. Then we took Leadership Bishop and Justice Cable up against Expert Venom Goblin and bullied him so thoroughly he felt like Standard Mutagen Formula. Naturally I didn't pull any punches in the deckbuilding there either.
Something I'd be interested in, if you haven't covered it before, is a guide to get people into Heroic mode. For me, one of the big differences I notice from my comments and Discord is the difference in tempo between difficulties. When I'm playing harder scenarios on expert with harder mod sets, you really need good tempo and versatility to navigate the obstacles stacked up agaisnt you - this is where I play. In standard mode, you just have time to do whatever you want most of the time - and this is where I think a lot of arguments come from when people claim cards I'm less keen on can be really good. And they're correct, of course, albeit at their difficulty. And that's the thing. Standard strategies don't always cut it against Expert. While I haven't played Heroic mode anywhere near as much as you, I am sure the tempo likewise needs to be cranked up another gear. If you fall behind early, you're either getting overrun with no way back or just villain-activated out of existence. So maybe an emphasis on that would be useful? In fact, if you ever wanted to come on my channel and talk about it I'd be happy to shout you out and try and send some eyes your way. This video for example deserves way more views.
Thanks for reading the essay! P.S. You didn't come off as elitist at all to me. Everything was both respectful and thoughtful.
Hello sir! Quite the bit of reading indeed but thank you for filling it with nice things :) . I would definitely appreciate the opportunity to collab some time! I think the strategy discussion is interesting because I'm honestly not sure the strategy is any different for Heroic than it is Standard or Expert, there's just a higher bar of card quality and deck efficiency you need to clear to win...less margin for error. Would be interesting to discuss (among the many other points you raise)!
Hey VT, love your videos
Great video, you have a good speaking voice and presented your points in a manner that was easily digestible. This video reminds me of my first and only foray into heroic: Black Widow Justice vs Klaw. The game took over an hour but eventually I did it. After that game I was put off off heroic mode because it was just pretty exhausting.
That's been a couple of years ago. With the powerful cards we have these days I'll definitely consider trying it again. I'll also check out the rest of your channel.
@@svendejong8110 thank you for the kind words! I won’t deny the games can be marathons haha, but very satisfying to win
Great video, it describes exactly why I started playing Heroic! You're by far me favorite MC content creator, I love watching your gameplay videos :) You're the one who gave me the inspiration to even try Heroic in the first place, so thank you
Thank you so much!
Interesting video. I'm continuously fascinated by how different brains see the same thing...
I'm a story guy, through and through. Reading and writing are my jam, and I don't math good.
I actually got a bit discouraged early on in the MC life cycle because I was watching Team Covenant streams exclusively, and they often went deep on the card math, and it went over ny head
Just like when your video went in expert vs heroic by the numbers, it turned into the teacher from Charlie Brown 😎
What I've come to love about this game, and what eventually pulled me back in, is that we can approach it in so many different ways. I've really leaned into the nostalgic Marvel card collection aspect of the game(even getting into binders for some cards, and the art sheets)
I've also made my peace with being a card game "rookie". I basically play exclusively on Standard, and have occasionally just done a skirmish when I'm pressed for time. And I'm enjoying the game more now that I'm not getting my ass kicked.
Much respect to the Math Men, I stand in awe of your power of analysis 🖖🏾
Thank you for sharing! It's very cool to hear how different people enjoy the game. I'm similar to you when I play Arkham Horror. The story is so immersive, and I love just playing on the easiest difficulty to experience it, like reading a book
This was such a well constructed, detailed deep dive from someone who obviously cares a ton for Heroic. I loved seeing your passion and totally understand your arguments from that "numbers" perspective.
I planned on uploading a more chill video in the coming days broadly speaking about difficultly in the game and had a brief mention Heroic mode in the recording. At my current skill level and where I find enjoyment in the game, it is absolutely a no-go, but I echo a similar sentiment that it's completely fine to play and engage with the game in the way you find the most fun. Maybe after playing through Expert a handful more times I'll give it a fair shot, but I feel like that'll be a long way off for me.
Once again, I loved the viewpoint and I'll probably link your video to get another viewpoint on difficulty from someone who (at least to me) operates on the extreme end versus me where my current goal is defeating the villains handedly in Expert.
Thank you! Absolutely feel free to link or summarize anything you want
Really nicely done video and I would be curious on the project you have been working on.
I think your premise is bang on, when you and the villain each have relatively equivalent effective resources the strategy that the player/villain employs becomes consequential because there is a credible threat of defeat both on the hero and villain side. An easy example would be Rhino where he is deploying his effective resources to damage you. As the player you now have to decide how you address his utilization of effective resources (e.g. damage race, healing/defense, etc.).
What I think you also tee up in your video is that different heroes/modular/villains have different level of effective resources per turn. It might mean that heroes that are less powerful may consider Expert with a more difficult modular on par with their effective resource they can generate
Thanks! I might still get around to it, but VillainTheory mentioned in his comment that he's done a similar thing for both scenarios and mod sets, so I need to check out what he did there. My idea was mostly just to rank scenarios by difficulty, but it could actually be really interesting to dig further into what percentages of resource burden come from the different effects: damage, threat, minions, etc. For Rhino I believe it would show a large percentage in the damage category which would advise how you counter with your own deck.
This is a really compelling argument for heroic. I’ve shied away from heroic for a while, but expert is getting easier and easier so you may have convinced me. :)
I’ll have to watch a few of your playthroughs to see how it’s done!
Very persuasive argument! I absolutely loved hearing you math out the hero turn and the villains turn. Very fascinating to see it laid out like that. I didn’t know you were out here before but new subscriber here!
Thank you!
Great video! You've convinced me enough to give Heroic a try. Thanks!
Great video and you’ve another subscriber.
I love the idea of more encounter cards (the reality not so much sometimes) 😂 and it is the reason why I put StarLord in my top 5 hero’s to play.
I feel like you get “more” game.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how this works in multiplayer. I’ve not tried this so I’m speaking completely hypothetically, but I would think a 4 player game would fly through the encounter deck in under 3 turns (min 36 cards). Oof!
I suppose adding an extra modular or two might help this or when inevitably the various nemesis’ (nemisises,…. Nemisi….🤷♂️) bolster the encounter deck.
I play expert two handed most of the time. My tactics/ deck building focus on theme first strength second, but loved the video and will certainly give Heroic a whirl the next time a take down a villain a little too easily.
Thanks
"More game" is absolutely true...I've had that thought before but totally forgot to mention it here! I have to admit I've never played a multiplayer Heroic game...running out the deck is certainly a thing, but remember that while main scheme threshold always scales with player count, acceleration tokens do not. So it might not be as bad as you'd think. In a 2p game, you have to go through the encounter deck twice to have the same relative impact of one acceleration token in solo. But still it's like you half an acceleration icon for the second half of the deck, so it's definitely still harder. Appreciate the comment!
A good pitch for the format! I do know it's not really for me. I do not like tailoring my decks. I do like building them just not that often. I am also not really into puzzles which I feel the game becomes (It's a fine line between tactics and puzzle I know)
As I said on another video it can feel like I am just hoping to get a favourable flip of the cards rather than depending much on what I do. If I have a 10% win chance then I will eventually get the win. There's no sense of accomplishment, just lasting it out. I do remember hammering some set pieces in CRPGs over& over again to finally beat them but that was 20+years ago - they don't seem so tough nowadays & I don't play Dark Souls. I also seem to remember a feeling of relief rather than accomplishment but it's been a while.
I also feel much higher difficulty squeezes the available strategies & heroes. I do think you are doing a good job of fighting against that but at the cost of tailoring your decks which I CBA to do. There are more heroes than scenarios so you are probably spared Valkyrie and Hulk :)
I think there was another one but can't remember.
Anyhow I hope you find your audience, I will certainly watch some more.
All fair points! I am playing the game in the way I enjoy most, but that doesn't have to be the same for everyone
I listened to your video yesterday. Then I took time to digest and formulate my comment/thought/feedback, and I was logging, I read the VillainTheory message which already convey pretty much everything I have in mind and even more lol. So I gave him a thumb up, and I will try to not repeat him too much lol.
First, I've watched all your gameplay videos, as you might know, and I also like your spirit. You're not elitist, you just tune the game to your taste/goal/sight, and I even tried heroic mode a couple of time since I know your channel, with my girl Cap Marvel. As you state in the video, Heroic Mode is all about tempo and having big hand and/or play fast, and Carol is pretty good at drawing/cycling lol.
Most of the time, I play expert mode, and I always try to find the right level of difficulty for a given deck. If the deck/hero is very powerful, then i play harder villain and/or mod set, if I'm playing weaker hero, then I play expert villain they can handle. 4 Hand size hero become more and more detrimental as you increase difficulty. IronHeart is good example: extremly strong in Expert, not that much in Heroic, and that is because you have less time to setup/build.
Another villain I came to like is Collector I. First step was trying to build to defeat him standard mode, and I was surprised how well and consistent it works with the right strategy: never chump block, always heal/bounce your ally, clean the collection, use efficient defense/attack events. And now I'm going Expert mode with him, and I'm on the track of finding another reliable strategy with the right heroes.
Expert II is a set of cards I use more and more. Not standard II which I think is just very swingy. But Expert II with standard I, that just make the expert card more vicious, and it is just extra spice into the dish.
So yeah, in the end, what matter is that the game challenge us, in an interesting way , from a mechanical standpoint: the right difficulty for the right deck.
And ofc there is the narrative/thematic side of things, but that is another topic/discussion, because the experience is not about losing/winning anymore, it is about reenacting, and that is another way to play the game.
Love seeing Heroic being played. Its the best way to really learn how to fine tune my own gameplay. I play a lot of 2 handed in Heroic mode, and I "think" its even harder than solo.
Do you deal one extra per player or just one extra total? I would think it's harder indeed! Mainly due to side schemes scaling with player count
Love content like this. Keep it up.
This was surprisingly convincing.
Are you sure you are math guy and not a marketing guy ? 😅
Jokes aside, I will try it with my favorite duo. And thanks for the video!
I've had this thought sometimes after taking 5-10 attempts to beat a villain in Expert: how do i know that my win was actually a result of optimal play and deck construction and not random chance. Did I materially improve my deck and/or play from my first attempt to when I won, or did I just get lucky once and called it a victory?
Your description of heroic and the very slight edges involved makes me think you're even more likely to run into this situation. Any thoughts on that?
It's a good point. It's impossible to conclude that you've improved your win rate (with deck or play) by 10%, for example, without playing an unreasonable amount of games at each variable change. You can have some intuition based on heuristics like how often are you able to use all your resources every turn? Or how often can you clean the board up going into each villain phase? Are there cards you find yourself never playing from hand, indicating they're not serving much purpose in the current iteration of your deck? Ultimately it takes a combination of skill and luck to win a game at a hard enough difficulty. As I mention in the video, the ideal difficulty would actually necessitate excellent play and deckbuilding to result in a win, then winning alone is enough to know you've done well and not just gotten lucky. But there is too much luck in this game for it to be as clean as that. My personal philosophy in how I approach my Heroic challenges is to take the win and run! You just need a pretty large sample size or drastic improvement in win rate to draw any real conclusions that you've improved your game outside of some of the game sense I mentioned.
@@Stretch22_MarvelChampions I was going to make this point. At some point it just feels like I am rolling a die hoping to get a 6, I know if I do it long enough I will get the 6 but there is no feeling of accomplishment. Obviously there are differences in deck quality & play but the samples you need to get a good feel will be huge. It's almost like that on "expert vs the moderately tough scenarios" where I live. The win rates there are so high it's hard to tell between decks & even if I get a streak of losses it's hard to know if that is a bad match or just Poisson distribution. I did lose on turn one this week for the first time I remember in hundreds of games -Advance Under Fire into Advance & I will chalk that one up to bad luck, though I could have played for it better.
Thanks for the response! I only just realized I'm not getting notifications on this app, so I went back to check. Fair answer; I agree. It doesn't bother me. In the end it's about fun and I don't track my games or win rates. It's just a bias against the villain I guess. They can beat us 10 times but if we best them once, we say we've beat them and move on😂
I always felt that heroic should have been to face all 3 lvs of the villain. Or that could just be called Epic then.
That can definitely be a fun way to play! I think the difficulty is somewhere between standard and expert because of getting to stall on stage 1, but I like the idea of getting to play more turns by chewing through another villain stage once all your key pieces are already in play
all 3 villains is easier than just II and III
It’s Skirmish mode, not “rookie” mode. It was a bit insulting to hear you call it that way.
And Actually, you can play Heroic Skirmish mode against any level of villain.
Ah, I see it's now called that in the Rules Reference. I only looked at the original article from 2020, where it is called Rookie Mode
@ maybe you could record a Heroic Skirmish as a stepping stone for those who are tempted by still nervous about trying Heroic Expert. Because Skirmish only needs one level of villain, you could do level three, showing the audience how if they can beat that level, then Heroic Expert is just as achievable. Plus it would remove some of the stigma “Rookie” mode creates.
@@prufrock1977 Standard is the "rookie" imho. its very easy and beatable with preconstructed decks. The easier version , so called Skirmish, is meant for showing the game to family or kid I think.
@ (1) check out the rules, Skirmish is an official play mode, (2) stop pretending that you never lose a game on standard 🙄 [I’ve seen every honest content creator lose on Standard], (3) actually try Skirmish Heroic and the report back. It is a fun challenge that doesn’t take an hour to play, 4) learn how to NOT sound like a teenage edgelord poser baby… 😂
where did I say Easy = 100% winrate.