Great ranking. I think the reputation mechanic in Sinister Motives is an underrated part of the box as well. Informative and entertaining content as always!
Great video as always! Took me about 8 replays to finish the whole video lol i couldn’t find time to watch it! I’m glad to see sinmo number 1 such a great box! We need another spidey box!
I think I understand - but don't agree with - your ranking of NeXt Evolution: Villains: I think you're right that Sinister is fun, Stryfe is bad (he doesn't get enough criticism), and Morlock Siege and Juggernaut are both too easy (or at least Juggernaut is too one-note with the remove-the-helmet routine). Since you don't like On The Run, then I can see how this is a bust for you. I and many other just really enjoy On the Run: it's got variability, challenge, and just a lot of fun dynamics. But if you don't like it, you don't like it, can't argue with that. Difficulty Leap: I find the "standard to expert difficulty leap" a weird criticism; I agree it's a big leap, but I really enjoy that in scenarios and would think you would, too. Like you said, it aims to please both newbies and veterans... doesn't it succeed? And since you can always make scenarios harder or easier with the dozens and dozens of different modular sets, it really allows you a very large difficulty range for each scenario. Campaign: I don't think you mentioned the campaign, but if you don't care about the campaign, that again makes sense why you would rank this box lower - the campaign is really fun, really easy to set up, and since it's player-friendly, it really encourages players to actually play campaign mode because they get rewarded for the extra hassle. Such a big win. Heroes: Agree on Domino, so great! I was surprised that you find Cable only "ok," I adore him; however, it makes sense based on the other huge thing you missed from your ranking of NeXt Evolution, which is... Player Side Schemes: I don't believe you mentioned these at all, and they are absolutely hands down the single best thing about the box. I know you said you were ranking these first by scenario, second by hero, and you didn't mention aspect cards, but if you really meant to exclude them entirely, that's not a great way to rank the boxes; at least when it comes to NXE, where the aspect cards are so game-changing, and can't be separated from one of the heroes. The player side schemes are so fun to use, as well as powerful, and if you look at almost any top deck on marvelcdb it will have between 1 and 5 player side schemes in it (which is how I build my decks, too - virtually never leave home without at least one). However... I looked back at a few of your recent decks you played on stream, and noticed you seem to tend to run 0-1 player side schemes, and if you do include them, it's only the absolute best value ones (Call for Backup, Lay the Trap). So again, I guess it makes sense that you don't give the box a leg up due to player side schemes, but wow, as an overall product, it's absolute a top 3 box for me just on player side schemes alone.
I didn’t get into player side schemes because honestly. I don’t rate them that high. I know some people love them. I personally don’t. They are fine. They have their place. They can have some interesting design choices but it doesn’t (for me) move the needle as much as I would like. But like I said. I rates it primarily on villains and frankly they almost all are extremely disappointing to me. But to each their own on these things.
Also. To expand on the difficulty leap. Yes. Mod sets can adjust them a bit. But the gap is so large I personally don’t think mod sets can adjust it that much. We are talking about roughly 5 percent of the deck that generally doesn’t do a ton of synergy with the worse cards in that deck (the villain cards) so yes. A bit of difficulty can be added or removed. But imo not the amount that is between that gap of standard and expert. It’s just that wide. And if you are a person trying to make that jump for the first time. It’s going to be hard to make it and potentially be off putting.
Thanks for the great content. My ranking would be Red Skull, Mutant genesis, Sinister motives, Mad Titans, Next Evo, Apocalypse, and Guardians. My question to you is did you factor in the campaigns in your rankings? I think the campaign is why next evo is highly ranked. That and the player side schemes.
#1 Rise of Red Skull,#2 Sinister Motives....#7 AoA( needle didn't move for heroes or villians for me) The rest of the ranking? Spot On. Great analysis, D20.
Thanks for the video!! If I'm more an xmen fan and don't want to buy everything would a good choice be Red Skull, Mutant Genesis and Apocalypse sets? Or would those not mix well?
I know you’ve said this about Crossbones before, but I really like playing him because of all the modular sets. It is a great villain to swap out modular sets to crank up the difficulty. I like playing him on standard, but adding in a bunch of difficult minion sets and make a real minion swarm like Mutagen Formula. The only problem is when I take out the Weapons Master set and draw the card that says discard until you get a weapon upgrade. There are still a couple in the deck from Crossbones cards, but not many.
marvel is a correction of LOTR. The purpose is to make player feel easier in deck building and gameplay. Well the difficulty drop against LOTR or Arkham is a lot , and makes it afterf you watched marvel movies or dramas
I realize you're speaking primarily from a true solo perspective, and I respect that. However, from a multiplayer perspective, Ship Command sucks, because every card in Ship Command wants you to exhaust the Milano and in a 4-player game, you're virtually guaranteed to get one every round, so the Milano is used primarily to resolve a Ship Command card, and its resource generator has no further bearing on the game after the first turn. It's like the designers were going: "Hey, here's a free resource generator for you, psych! You don't get to use it! LOL!". Regarding Collector 1, I understand your view from the true solo perspective, but since multiplayer gives you a higher threshold on the collection, it's actually a good thing he collects his own cards since you can use it eliminate the really annoying cards and choose to give him back the cards you don't mind seeing. Of course, this also thins his deck, and you can get acceleration counters on the Main scheme faster, but that's a balancing act that can be fun to play. Regarding "Mutant Genisis", I think it's ironic that the first scenario (Sabretooth) encourages chump blocking to protect the senator, then the very next scenario (Project Wideawake) punishes you for doing it. Scenario 1: "Hey you're gonna want to chump block to protect the senator." Scenario 2: "Now stop it!" LOL! Finally, I said this before, but I really recommend replacing "Goblin Gear" in the Venom Goblin scenario with "Goblin Gimmicks" from the Green Goblin scenario pack. It reduces the difficulty while still maintaining the theme, for those who may struggle with Venom Goblin. (Like myself). Great video really enjoyed it. Thanks.
I personally don't do true solo anymore. I prefer two handed because some main schemes have low thresholds for threat and going alter ego to heal means you need threat control at the same time.
@@Hyperion9997 Yes, and multiple heroes allow you to see the synergy & power that teamwork brings to the game, but there's also a challenge in true solo in having to time your flips to AE that some people enjoy so it can work either way. My problem is I always want to play an entire team, so playing less than 4 Heroes isn't as appealing. I've actually played 5 heroes & even 6 once. 5 were a little easier since it worked basically like 4 player but 1 hero could always be in AE. Ironically, 6 Heroes was MORE difficult because thwarting doesn't scale like threat does and the threat can quickly get ahead of you, but it was a fun experiment.
Ayy, my favorite expansions got top two, we take those. To be fair, I haven't played them much, I'm mostly ranking them based on how much I like what they add, and Mutant Genesis is my number one because Colossus is my favorite X-Man and I love the Sentinels (and then Shadowcat just turned out to be incredibly cool as well). As a player who's playing primarily via Tabletop Sim and thus I see a lot of the villains just spread out divorced of the context of their box, I have to admit I was _extremely_ confused why Loki was indelibly tied to the Infinity Gauntlet and I'm glad this video finally explained to me that it's because he's a boss in the _Thanos_ box for some reason? And it seems like he's the _final_ boss based on where you put him? Am I hearing this right? They put out a box with Thanos on the cover where the final boss was _Loki?_ Speaking as a huge fan of Loki and the Asgardians in general, that seems like a weird play and I don't think they should have done that!
The villains that I still remember because of how much I struggled to beat them are Zola, Collector I and Ronan… so far Galaxy’s most wanted is my least liked expansion BUT because of all the struggle, Star Lord is my favorite hero right now (rushed standard Ronan with Aggression and Drax in protection in 3 rounds)
to me, MG seems like RRS 2.0 sabretooth > crossbones mansion assault > absorbing man wideawake > taskmaster i think master mold ended up being so easy because people often complain about zola being difficult as a standalone scenario, magneto is sort of a red skull where they fixed the very high variance of the random side schemes (sometimes you get a turn 1 prison camps and stomp the scenario, others you get stomped by a turn 1 sleeper into turn 2 hazard)
sandman was a big disapointment for me, since there are so many potential mechanics that could have been added, but they wanted to keep him simple as an entry level villain. there are tons of LOTR scenarios where you dicards cards from the counter and either reveal discarded enemies/treacheries, take damage, raise threat or buff enemies based on what was discarded, etc. they could have given him bonus effects based on the number of counters (like unus) or have more cards that interact with the discard pile (like a minion that gets more stats based on how many sandman cards are in the discard pile, or a treacherie that adds more counters, etc)
I agree with GMW on the bottom, thing I really don't like: - most scenarios gather 2 threat per player, unlike almost every other scenario in the game where it's 1 threat per player - Nebula is over all very unpleasant design, basically her thing is too slow you down, at release I found her impossible to solo on expert (although I don't play rush) because of all the slow downs on techniques, 2 threat per player and resource sink with escape tokens or however it was called, in a way I dislike her more than Ronan, at the very least he just bonks you for 7 damage per hit without extra steps
Fun fact: I've play RotR with my friend on new year for the first time, and the only villain we had to attempt multiple time (three IIRC) was Absorbing Man. We wiped the floor with Tasky honestly. (I've played Stun-lock Cap, my friend played a Leadership SP//DR).
I LOOOOOOVE this game. But I do have critique. High damage rush decks will beat everything. So when people played different style decks before and started to complain that the game is too easy... then FFG listened and made some really really stupidly hard scenarios... that can easily be beaten by designated rush decks. What did we solve? Nothing! We made it worse. Now every time I encounter a scenario that tries to put pressure on the player from step 0 or tries to surge into a surge that will surge into another one and not give time to build or prepare or enjoy or whatever... guess what? High damage rush decks come in and beat the game. The same thing that made the game easy in the first place but now we made it so that this is almost the only way to play. Now I know I am over-simplifying but this is the feeling that I get. I would love to play a longer game where I have time to build up and prepare and what not but in most cases the game blatantly tells me to "shhh... here's a secret: play a rush deck instead or otherwise you will be overwhelmed by turn 2". I love this game and I own all the big box expansions and all the hero expansions and I play it every evening😀
Your take seems like it only applies to Solo play. They have to balance it around multiplayer as well which is what I play. In multiplayer “rush” doesn’t tend to do well. You build out, stabilize board state, and then after fully building out dump damage. If you come to multi where your whole gimmick is “deal 5-8 damage a turn” that doesn’t do much into 160 plus hp.
@@D20Woodworking 1 out of 4 isn’t a great ratio lol. I think Adam is above curve as far as box heroes go and Magik can do some bonkers stuff. She makes Hulk Ally playable. Throw honorary X-Men and Goldballs in the mix and you can swing for 13 per turn. Best defense card ratio for Flow Like water (5 defense events via Stepping Discs) and fun pool shenanigans via rigging Meta-Game cards. But really any hero that can run Summoning Spell, Sorcerer Supreme, and Spiritual Meditation is above most other Heroes.
Idk .250 can get you into cooperstown with the right other stats. But I also don’t hate magik. I just think she’s fine. Strange is the only one I actively hate
Great ranking. I think the reputation mechanic in Sinister Motives is an underrated part of the box as well. Informative and entertaining content as always!
Really really enjoying this ranking. Thank you so much, D20!
Great video as always! Took me about 8 replays to finish the whole video lol i couldn’t find time to watch it! I’m glad to see sinmo number 1 such a great box! We need another spidey box!
I think I understand - but don't agree with - your ranking of NeXt Evolution:
Villains: I think you're right that Sinister is fun, Stryfe is bad (he doesn't get enough criticism), and Morlock Siege and Juggernaut are both too easy (or at least Juggernaut is too one-note with the remove-the-helmet routine). Since you don't like On The Run, then I can see how this is a bust for you. I and many other just really enjoy On the Run: it's got variability, challenge, and just a lot of fun dynamics. But if you don't like it, you don't like it, can't argue with that.
Difficulty Leap: I find the "standard to expert difficulty leap" a weird criticism; I agree it's a big leap, but I really enjoy that in scenarios and would think you would, too. Like you said, it aims to please both newbies and veterans... doesn't it succeed? And since you can always make scenarios harder or easier with the dozens and dozens of different modular sets, it really allows you a very large difficulty range for each scenario.
Campaign: I don't think you mentioned the campaign, but if you don't care about the campaign, that again makes sense why you would rank this box lower - the campaign is really fun, really easy to set up, and since it's player-friendly, it really encourages players to actually play campaign mode because they get rewarded for the extra hassle. Such a big win.
Heroes: Agree on Domino, so great! I was surprised that you find Cable only "ok," I adore him; however, it makes sense based on the other huge thing you missed from your ranking of NeXt Evolution, which is...
Player Side Schemes: I don't believe you mentioned these at all, and they are absolutely hands down the single best thing about the box. I know you said you were ranking these first by scenario, second by hero, and you didn't mention aspect cards, but if you really meant to exclude them entirely, that's not a great way to rank the boxes; at least when it comes to NXE, where the aspect cards are so game-changing, and can't be separated from one of the heroes. The player side schemes are so fun to use, as well as powerful, and if you look at almost any top deck on marvelcdb it will have between 1 and 5 player side schemes in it (which is how I build my decks, too - virtually never leave home without at least one). However... I looked back at a few of your recent decks you played on stream, and noticed you seem to tend to run 0-1 player side schemes, and if you do include them, it's only the absolute best value ones (Call for Backup, Lay the Trap). So again, I guess it makes sense that you don't give the box a leg up due to player side schemes, but wow, as an overall product, it's absolute a top 3 box for me just on player side schemes alone.
I didn’t get into player side schemes because honestly. I don’t rate them that high. I know some people love them. I personally don’t. They are fine. They have their place. They can have some interesting design choices but it doesn’t (for me) move the needle as much as I would like.
But like I said. I rates it primarily on villains and frankly they almost all are extremely disappointing to me. But to each their own on these things.
Also. To expand on the difficulty leap. Yes. Mod sets can adjust them a bit. But the gap is so large I personally don’t think mod sets can adjust it that much. We are talking about roughly 5 percent of the deck that generally doesn’t do a ton of synergy with the worse cards in that deck (the villain cards) so yes. A bit of difficulty can be added or removed. But imo not the amount that is between that gap of standard and expert. It’s just that wide. And if you are a person trying to make that jump for the first time. It’s going to be hard to make it and potentially be off putting.
Thanks for the great content. My ranking would be Red Skull, Mutant genesis, Sinister motives, Mad Titans, Next Evo, Apocalypse, and Guardians. My question to you is did you factor in the campaigns in your rankings? I think the campaign is why next evo is highly ranked. That and the player side schemes.
#1 Rise of Red Skull,#2 Sinister Motives....#7 AoA( needle didn't move for heroes or villians for me)
The rest of the ranking? Spot On.
Great analysis, D20.
Thanks for the video!! If I'm more an xmen fan and don't want to buy everything would a good choice be Red Skull, Mutant Genesis and Apocalypse sets? Or would those not mix well?
Red skull works more so by itself but I think it would be fine. Generally speaking whatever box you buy you should buy the hero packs with it
I think i agree 💯with all of this! (though we don't have Galaxies most wanted or Mad Titans shadow, had reservations about buying them 👀)
I know you’ve said this about Crossbones before, but I really like playing him because of all the modular sets. It is a great villain to swap out modular sets to crank up the difficulty. I like playing him on standard, but adding in a bunch of difficult minion sets and make a real minion swarm like Mutagen Formula. The only problem is when I take out the Weapons Master set and draw the card that says discard until you get a weapon upgrade. There are still a couple in the deck from Crossbones cards, but not many.
marvel is a correction of LOTR. The purpose is to make player feel easier in deck building and gameplay. Well the difficulty drop against LOTR or Arkham is a lot , and makes it afterf you watched marvel movies or dramas
I realize you're speaking primarily from a true solo perspective, and I respect that. However, from a multiplayer perspective, Ship Command sucks, because every card in Ship Command wants you to exhaust the Milano and in a 4-player game, you're virtually guaranteed to get one every round, so the Milano is used primarily to resolve a Ship Command card, and its resource generator has no further bearing on the game after the first turn. It's like the designers were going: "Hey, here's a free resource generator for you, psych! You don't get to use it! LOL!".
Regarding Collector 1, I understand your view from the true solo perspective, but since multiplayer gives you a higher threshold on the collection, it's actually a good thing he collects his own cards since you can use it eliminate the really annoying cards and choose to give him back the cards you don't mind seeing. Of course, this also thins his deck, and you can get acceleration counters on the Main scheme faster, but that's a balancing act that can be fun to play.
Regarding "Mutant Genisis", I think it's ironic that the first scenario (Sabretooth) encourages chump blocking to protect the senator, then the very next scenario (Project Wideawake) punishes you for doing it. Scenario 1: "Hey you're gonna want to chump block to protect the senator." Scenario 2: "Now stop it!" LOL!
Finally, I said this before, but I really recommend replacing "Goblin Gear" in the Venom Goblin scenario with "Goblin Gimmicks" from the Green Goblin scenario pack. It reduces the difficulty while still maintaining the theme, for those who may struggle with Venom Goblin. (Like myself).
Great video really enjoyed it. Thanks.
I personally don't do true solo anymore. I prefer two handed because some main schemes have low thresholds for threat and going alter ego to heal means you need threat control at the same time.
@@Hyperion9997 Yes, and multiple heroes allow you to see the synergy & power that teamwork brings to the game, but there's also a challenge in true solo in having to time your flips to AE that some people enjoy so it can work either way. My problem is I always want to play an entire team, so playing less than 4 Heroes isn't as appealing. I've actually played 5 heroes & even 6 once. 5 were a little easier since it worked basically like 4 player but 1 hero could always be in AE. Ironically, 6 Heroes was MORE difficult because thwarting doesn't scale like threat does and the threat can quickly get ahead of you, but it was a fun experiment.
Ayy, my favorite expansions got top two, we take those. To be fair, I haven't played them much, I'm mostly ranking them based on how much I like what they add, and Mutant Genesis is my number one because Colossus is my favorite X-Man and I love the Sentinels (and then Shadowcat just turned out to be incredibly cool as well).
As a player who's playing primarily via Tabletop Sim and thus I see a lot of the villains just spread out divorced of the context of their box, I have to admit I was _extremely_ confused why Loki was indelibly tied to the Infinity Gauntlet and I'm glad this video finally explained to me that it's because he's a boss in the _Thanos_ box for some reason? And it seems like he's the _final_ boss based on where you put him? Am I hearing this right? They put out a box with Thanos on the cover where the final boss was _Loki?_ Speaking as a huge fan of Loki and the Asgardians in general, that seems like a weird play and I don't think they should have done that!
The villains that I still remember because of how much I struggled to beat them are Zola, Collector I and Ronan… so far Galaxy’s most wanted is my least liked expansion BUT because of all the struggle, Star Lord is my favorite hero right now (rushed standard Ronan with Aggression and Drax in protection in 3 rounds)
Dear lord Zola... We've must have tried Zola like 5 times with 3 players now lmao. (My collection is up to Red Skull currently)
to me, MG seems like RRS 2.0
sabretooth > crossbones
mansion assault > absorbing man
wideawake > taskmaster
i think master mold ended up being so easy because people often complain about zola being difficult as a standalone scenario,
magneto is sort of a red skull where they fixed the very high variance of the random side schemes (sometimes you get a turn 1 prison camps and stomp the scenario, others you get stomped by a turn 1 sleeper into turn 2 hazard)
sandman was a big disapointment for me, since there are so many potential mechanics that could have been added, but they wanted to keep him simple as an entry level villain.
there are tons of LOTR scenarios where you dicards cards from the counter and either reveal discarded enemies/treacheries, take damage, raise threat or buff enemies based on what was discarded, etc. they could have given him bonus effects based on the number of counters (like unus) or have more cards that interact with the discard pile (like a minion that gets more stats based on how many sandman cards are in the discard pile, or a treacherie that adds more counters, etc)
Admit it, this video was mostly an excuse to rant about Loki again 😄
Always is
Loki haters unite
I agree with GMW on the bottom, thing I really don't like:
- most scenarios gather 2 threat per player, unlike almost every other scenario in the game where it's 1 threat per player
- Nebula is over all very unpleasant design, basically her thing is too slow you down, at release I found her impossible to solo on expert (although I don't play rush) because of all the slow downs on techniques, 2 threat per player and resource sink with escape tokens or however it was called, in a way I dislike her more than Ronan, at the very least he just bonks you for 7 damage per hit without extra steps
Fun fact: I've play RotR with my friend on new year for the first time, and the only villain we had to attempt multiple time (three IIRC) was Absorbing Man. We wiped the floor with Tasky honestly. (I've played Stun-lock Cap, my friend played a Leadership SP//DR).
I LOOOOOOVE this game. But I do have critique. High damage rush decks will beat everything. So when people played different style decks before and started to complain that the game is too easy... then FFG listened and made some really really stupidly hard scenarios... that can easily be beaten by designated rush decks. What did we solve? Nothing! We made it worse. Now every time I encounter a scenario that tries to put pressure on the player from step 0 or tries to surge into a surge that will surge into another one and not give time to build or prepare or enjoy or whatever... guess what? High damage rush decks come in and beat the game. The same thing that made the game easy in the first place but now we made it so that this is almost the only way to play.
Now I know I am over-simplifying but this is the feeling that I get. I would love to play a longer game where I have time to build up and prepare and what not but in most cases the game blatantly tells me to "shhh... here's a secret: play a rush deck instead or otherwise you will be overwhelmed by turn 2".
I love this game and I own all the big box expansions and all the hero expansions and I play it every evening😀
Your take seems like it only applies to Solo play. They have to balance it around multiplayer as well which is what I play. In multiplayer “rush” doesn’t tend to do well. You build out, stabilize board state, and then after fully building out dump damage. If you come to multi where your whole gimmick is “deal 5-8 damage a turn” that doesn’t do much into 160 plus hp.
You're crazy, adam warlock is one of the strongest there is out there.
I put him in the top 50 sure
I’m seeing a theme here. FFG releases absolutely bonkers mystic Heroes and D20 hates them.
Considering I love scarlet witch, and she has been my favorite hero for years now. I’m going to go with no here.
@@D20Woodworking 1 out of 4 isn’t a great ratio lol. I think Adam is above curve as far as box heroes go and Magik can do some bonkers stuff. She makes Hulk Ally playable. Throw honorary X-Men and Goldballs in the mix and you can swing for 13 per turn. Best defense card ratio for Flow Like water (5 defense events via Stepping Discs) and fun pool shenanigans via rigging Meta-Game cards. But really any hero that can run Summoning Spell, Sorcerer Supreme, and Spiritual Meditation is above most other Heroes.
Idk .250 can get you into cooperstown with the right other stats. But I also don’t hate magik. I just think she’s fine. Strange is the only one I actively hate