Nelson's quicker than Quicksilver! Our 3-player epic showdown with Web-Warrior Fanatic (as promised last episode) is already up: ruclips.net/video/-VuEr9RyNLU/видео.html&ab_channel=NelsonAllOverCards
I’d like to see stuff that rewards status removal. Like removing a tough from the villain; remove 3 threat from a scheme. Or sacrificing a tough from yourself or a stun/confuse from the villain that gives you a bonus.
Colossus is really fun, would be happy to see that idea taken elsewhere. I know someone did a fun Mantis custom hero about removing confuses from enemies.
The innovation of the Iceman pack breathed some new life into aggression for me. I am more a protection and leadership player mostly, but tossing upgrades onto minions and punishing them is a very fun new way to play, has a satisfying combo feel to it. Same can be said with Leadership's new Sidekick play, this cycle has been great so far for creating new ways to play heroes.
I feel "Honed Technique" revitalized some older Aggression cards similar to what "Monica Chang" did for Justice. With "Honed Technique", "Uppercut" now becomes essentially a "Swinging Web Kick" (3 for 8 Damage) and "Melee" becomes 3 for 6 & 6 Damage, definitely nothing to sneeze at. So, while the "Dive Bomb" combo is crazy good, it has it's uses elsewhere as well. Try a "Honed Technique" Aggression build with Spider-man (Peter Parker), with "Uppercut" you will essentially have 6 "Swinging Web Kicks" in the deck, and His AE "Scientist" ability will help you pay to get "Honed Technique" on the board. On another note, the player side-scheme "Call for Backup" inspired me to pull the Aggression ally "Hercules" out of mothballs, in my multiplayer game I put it in the Aggression player's deck just to have a target for "Call for Backup". Getting him on the board for free is like 12 free damage, or at least 9 Damage & a block. Anyway, really enjoying the podcasts with you and Nelson, pls keep up the good work.
I wish that Aggression was the "ready" aspect. Pumping basic attack damage is already part of red, but with extra readys this would give red the versatility for heroes to use their thwart.
A nice discussion into Aggression. Being able to more flexibly assign damage (especially in instances of overkill) instead of just increasing damage output numbers could actually be a really interesting design space for Aggression.
Great episode as always! Loved both of your ideas on the “overwatch” style card for minion damage and the overkill redirect. I hope that’s coming to the game some day! Future Punisher pack?? 😂
Agreed about Dive Bomb being too good. Feels unintentional for the aoe damage to be buffed and limits design space going forward. I wonder if something like "Each enemy takes 1 damage" would work.
I’d like to see an aggression variant of Hard to Ignore where it strips 1 threat off the main for each basic attack performed. Or maybe even limit it more and make it proc on minion kill. But if protection has passive thwart support I don’t see why every aspect can’t.
Totally legit request, I love this idea. Aggression softly has this with War Room but that's only for allies defeating minions which is a lot less reliable than Hard to Ignore typically is and way more niche. We need this.
Aggression and Justice are my bread and butter most of the time (I always play 2h solo). Favorite heroes to play in aggression: Hulk, Wolverine and Nova
Great episode gentlemen. First, I think Aggression is underrated. I believe that building a well-rounded deck in red is certainly the most challenging, but a fun one at that, and can be effective. I will admit, however, that it can still struggle to deal with threat to this day (I recently have used the Age of Apocalypse campaign, on expert, as a testing ground for decks). That being said, cards like The Direct Approach have greatly helped my Boot Camp ally decks deal with difficult side schemes (in the AoA campaign, there are so, so many side schemes, and often 5+ worth of thwart to start). As another commenter noted below, Iceman helped introduce a new style for red, with the upgrades and corresponding allies and spells turning out to be hugely effective for me. Now for some comments on individual cards (keep in mind I play true solo): Looking for Trouble: I have found this to be MORE effective over time, because there are more and more minions that have nasty 'when revealed' effects, with LFT nicely sidesteps. Certainly not for every scenario, but for minion-heavy ones, it's great. Super good against someone like Unus, who has both a good number of minions, and many with surge (which again, LFT nicely circumvents). Bring It On: Generally speaking, utterly useless. If, in aggression, you are ever facing more than one minion at a time, something probably has gone very wrong (unless you intended for this). I tried to make this card work for so long, and aside from some extremely niche cheese applications, a la Vision, I rarely have found this card to do anything other than cantrip itself; in which case I would have rather just have had a usable card to begin with. Honed Technique: To me, this is a classic win-more card (again, in solo). The setup is punishing, it is costly, it wrecks tempo, and there is an ongoing following requirement to make it worthwhile. A fun party trick if you're already winning and against easier scenarios, but otherwise, a hard pass for me. Aside from some heroes like Nova, I simply never use this anymore. While I'm fiddling about to set this up, I am falling behind everywhere else, and in many expert scenarios I just don't have the time, and the payoff isn't worth it. Again, as I stated before, in aggression minion accumulation should almost never occur, and so it's cute collateral damage effect, in my games, is irrelevant I'd say well over 90% of the time. I DO agree, that in multiplayer the efficacy scales up to an unreasonable degree. In solo however, I rarely can justify its inclusion. Again, I just want to say thank you to both of you @VillainTheory and @NelsonAllOverCards for making this kind of content. I love listening to thoughtful and positive analysis and insights into this game, which in turn increases the enjoyment I feel when playing the game myself. Keep up the great work!
Wow thanks for the in-depth comment! We disagree on a couple of points as per what I said in the episode itself, but great arguments - it's interesting to see other perspectives. Interestingly to me, Boot Camp and Honed Technique both occupy the same space to me in solo decks and I think the "win-more" term is fairly applicable. They are both huge losses in tempo which generally aren't worth it or necessary in solo play. But I think both are extremely fun. We have a draft for Aggression cards coming up on Nelson's channel soon. I highly recommend you look out for it as we touch on a couple of points there that I think you'll like! (And maybe some you'll dislike, ha!)
@@VillainTheory To be fair, your arguments were broader in scope and considered more factors, whereas I focused exclusively on pure solo play, with only the cards used in general cases and not as solutions to particular problems. You make a good point about Boot Camp; I suppose because I typically have a few allies onboard when I play it, the effects feel more immediate and thus impactful, but you still make a very good point. If I were to build a multiplayer aggression deck, I would use Thor with the relatively new ally Shatterstar, Get Over Here, and a full set of Bring It On, and probably Honed Technique. In other words, in anything other than a pure solo setting, I agree with you completely, even though these are cards I would typically never even consider in solo. Looking forward to the draft video!
I am going to continue to play Widow's Bite as a stun on Quickstrike allies that prevents their attack; however, if I do that, then the Quickstrike should then trigger and remove the stun so that the ally is ready to activate on its next turn.
Late to the party because I'm traveling for work, but your idea for a Monica Chang-style ally for Tac Team would be incredible. Furthermore, imagine a Nick Fury Hero that can include S.H.I.E.L.D. cards from any aspect. Surveillance Team, Tac Team, and Med Team in one deck?!
Yeah, Player Side Scheme's gave Justice a huge boost in play, and is likely why it went from my least favorite to instead aggression being my least. Blade and Punisher would be amazing heroes to run player minions with, down the road, should they go that route.
You got me with the "Is Honed Technique Overrated?" in the thumbnail. 😂 I strongly agree with VillainTheory, I think Honed Technique is totally balanced outside of Dive Bomb, but Honed Technique + Dive Bomb is essentially invalidating in multiplayer. I noticed at Con of Heroes '23, HT+DB absolutely crushed all the challenges. At Con of Heroes '24, I noticed almost no one ran it - I think it was literally a case of freely choosing not to engage with how broken the combo is in multiplayer (I know that was the case for me: I adore my Ironheart Aggression deck, but I avoided playing it because it's too good in multi). I would 100% support an official fix, whether that's errata removing "attack" from Dive Bomb, or maybe simply banning it in multiplayer.
Glad to see the thumbnail doing it's job haha 😆 Interesting points. I know they're not doing any balance stuff with the next rule changes so they seem to be fine with it for now
@@VillainTheory Yeah, I actually brought up Dive Bomb to Caleb at Con of Heroes and he wasn’t worried about it, so I don’t think a change is too likely. To be fair, there are a number of ways to play certain combos against certain/many scenarios and more or less “invalidate” a challenge, so for example most players don’t choose to play like a Maria Hill recursion deck every game, or stunlock every villain, we often choose to play differently then just the most optimal builds. I think Caleb’s main thought if I remember was people are having fun, and that’s key, haha. But I do think it’s possible for it to be unfun when someone clears the board turn after turn.
It's so strange to me that they would go for Go For Champions (and still leave it really powerful) and not touch the infinite damage Nova combo now (no balance stuff in the next update they said). But ultimately some people love it and some of us choose not to use it much, so the system works...even if I agree that it's sometimes unfun to be another player at that table when someone did choose to play it.
It's ironic because regardless of where Aggression falls in the hierarchy of archetypes there's no denying, for me, that leadership is the most boring. I only go out of my way to play Leadership if it suits the hero, like Cyclops or Cap.
@@VillainTheory thank you for asking! I feel excited to utilize it for Iceman. I have an evil plan to create a recursion sacrifice deck so I can generate toughs and heal off of my Ice Clones and as a bonus for theme I'm gonna include Cyclops, Phoenix, Beast and Angel to have the original team back together.
Nelson's quicker than Quicksilver! Our 3-player epic showdown with Web-Warrior Fanatic (as promised last episode) is already up: ruclips.net/video/-VuEr9RyNLU/видео.html&ab_channel=NelsonAllOverCards
I’d like to see stuff that rewards status removal. Like removing a tough from the villain; remove 3 threat from a scheme.
Or sacrificing a tough from yourself or a stun/confuse from the villain that gives you a bonus.
Colossus is really fun, would be happy to see that idea taken elsewhere. I know someone did a fun Mantis custom hero about removing confuses from enemies.
The innovation of the Iceman pack breathed some new life into aggression for me. I am more a protection and leadership player mostly, but tossing upgrades onto minions and punishing them is a very fun new way to play, has a satisfying combo feel to it. Same can be said with Leadership's new Sidekick play, this cycle has been great so far for creating new ways to play heroes.
Iceman's pack didn't do much for me personally but I like the cards overall, hopefully we'll see them expand on it!
I feel "Honed Technique" revitalized some older Aggression cards similar to what "Monica Chang" did for Justice. With "Honed Technique", "Uppercut" now becomes essentially a "Swinging Web Kick" (3 for 8 Damage) and "Melee" becomes 3 for 6 & 6 Damage, definitely nothing to sneeze at. So, while the "Dive Bomb" combo is crazy good, it has it's uses elsewhere as well. Try a "Honed Technique" Aggression build with Spider-man (Peter Parker), with "Uppercut" you will essentially have 6 "Swinging Web Kicks" in the deck, and His AE "Scientist" ability will help you pay to get "Honed Technique" on the board. On another note, the player side-scheme "Call for Backup" inspired me to pull the Aggression ally "Hercules" out of mothballs, in my multiplayer game I put it in the Aggression player's deck just to have a target for "Call for Backup". Getting him on the board for free is like 12 free damage, or at least 9 Damage & a block. Anyway, really enjoying the podcasts with you and Nelson, pls keep up the good work.
Yeah, that Honed damage boost is sweet. And Call for Backup is strong haha, nice use of Hercules
Im so glad Nelson mentioned the Vision/Nova duo. That's one of the favorite combos for my wife and I.
It’s so incredibly fun!
I wish that Aggression was the "ready" aspect. Pumping basic attack damage is already part of red, but with extra readys this would give red the versatility for heroes to use their thwart.
I like this idea a lot, wizrad!
I'm sure they'll get another less-conditional ready in the future. I hope.
A nice discussion into Aggression. Being able to more flexibly assign damage (especially in instances of overkill) instead of just increasing damage output numbers could actually be a really interesting design space for Aggression.
Thanks! And let's see if we ever get anything like that 🤞
Thanks for the shoutout and for covering my question. Lots of interesting takes on this one, as always.
No worries, great question!
Nick Fury (hero)
Set-up ability: may include SHIELD trait cards from any aspect.
Yes, that definitely seems filtting!
I live in hope of this 🤞
We definitely need more decks that build around traits.
Maybe Dive Bomb only attacks minions engaged with you, but this ruins normal Dive Bomb. I agree that removing the “attack” seems the best fix
Great episode as always! Loved both of your ideas on the “overwatch” style card for minion damage and the overkill redirect. I hope that’s coming to the game some day! Future Punisher pack?? 😂
That would be a great fit with Punisher!
Watching this I just found out that overkill damage has to go to the villain. I thought you could spread that to another minion
Well hey, happy to educate! Sadly it has to go to the villain. And when the villain overkills on an ally, it always goes to you in the same vein
Agreed about Dive Bomb being too good. Feels unintentional for the aoe damage to be buffed and limits design space going forward. I wonder if something like "Each enemy takes 1 damage" would work.
I’d like to see an aggression variant of Hard to Ignore where it strips 1 threat off the main for each basic attack performed. Or maybe even limit it more and make it proc on minion kill. But if protection has passive thwart support I don’t see why every aspect can’t.
Totally legit request, I love this idea. Aggression softly has this with War Room but that's only for allies defeating minions which is a lot less reliable than Hard to Ignore typically is and way more niche. We need this.
Aggression and Justice are my bread and butter most of the time (I always play 2h solo). Favorite heroes to play in aggression: Hulk, Wolverine and Nova
Great choices! I especially love Nova Aggression
Great episode gentlemen. First, I think Aggression is underrated. I believe that building a well-rounded deck in red is certainly the most challenging, but a fun one at that, and can be effective. I will admit, however, that it can still struggle to deal with threat to this day (I recently have used the Age of Apocalypse campaign, on expert, as a testing ground for decks). That being said, cards like The Direct Approach have greatly helped my Boot Camp ally decks deal with difficult side schemes (in the AoA campaign, there are so, so many side schemes, and often 5+ worth of thwart to start). As another commenter noted below, Iceman helped introduce a new style for red, with the upgrades and corresponding allies and spells turning out to be hugely effective for me. Now for some comments on individual cards (keep in mind I play true solo):
Looking for Trouble: I have found this to be MORE effective over time, because there are more and more minions that have nasty 'when revealed' effects, with LFT nicely sidesteps. Certainly not for every scenario, but for minion-heavy ones, it's great. Super good against someone like Unus, who has both a good number of minions, and many with surge (which again, LFT nicely circumvents).
Bring It On: Generally speaking, utterly useless. If, in aggression, you are ever facing more than one minion at a time, something probably has gone very wrong (unless you intended for this). I tried to make this card work for so long, and aside from some extremely niche cheese applications, a la Vision, I rarely have found this card to do anything other than cantrip itself; in which case I would have rather just have had a usable card to begin with.
Honed Technique: To me, this is a classic win-more card (again, in solo). The setup is punishing, it is costly, it wrecks tempo, and there is an ongoing following requirement to make it worthwhile. A fun party trick if you're already winning and against easier scenarios, but otherwise, a hard pass for me. Aside from some heroes like Nova, I simply never use this anymore. While I'm fiddling about to set this up, I am falling behind everywhere else, and in many expert scenarios I just don't have the time, and the payoff isn't worth it. Again, as I stated before, in aggression minion accumulation should almost never occur, and so it's cute collateral damage effect, in my games, is irrelevant I'd say well over 90% of the time. I DO agree, that in multiplayer the efficacy scales up to an unreasonable degree. In solo however, I rarely can justify its inclusion.
Again, I just want to say thank you to both of you @VillainTheory and @NelsonAllOverCards for making this kind of content. I love listening to thoughtful and positive analysis and insights into this game, which in turn increases the enjoyment I feel when playing the game myself. Keep up the great work!
Wow thanks for the in-depth comment! We disagree on a couple of points as per what I said in the episode itself, but great arguments - it's interesting to see other perspectives.
Interestingly to me, Boot Camp and Honed Technique both occupy the same space to me in solo decks and I think the "win-more" term is fairly applicable. They are both huge losses in tempo which generally aren't worth it or necessary in solo play. But I think both are extremely fun.
We have a draft for Aggression cards coming up on Nelson's channel soon. I highly recommend you look out for it as we touch on a couple of points there that I think you'll like! (And maybe some you'll dislike, ha!)
@@VillainTheory To be fair, your arguments were broader in scope and considered more factors, whereas I focused exclusively on pure solo play, with only the cards used in general cases and not as solutions to particular problems. You make a good point about Boot Camp; I suppose because I typically have a few allies onboard when I play it, the effects feel more immediate and thus impactful, but you still make a very good point. If I were to build a multiplayer aggression deck, I would use Thor with the relatively new ally Shatterstar, Get Over Here, and a full set of Bring It On, and probably Honed Technique. In other words, in anything other than a pure solo setting, I agree with you completely, even though these are cards I would typically never even consider in solo. Looking forward to the draft video!
I am going to continue to play Widow's Bite as a stun on Quickstrike allies that prevents their attack; however, if I do that, then the Quickstrike should then trigger and remove the stun so that the ally is ready to activate on its next turn.
More power to you! It makes so much more sense that way to me from a perspective of fun
Late to the party because I'm traveling for work, but your idea for a Monica Chang-style ally for Tac Team would be incredible. Furthermore, imagine a Nick Fury Hero that can include S.H.I.E.L.D. cards from any aspect. Surveillance Team, Tac Team, and Med Team in one deck?!
I need that Nick Fury hero. Although I have technically experimented with a deck like that already...in Adam Warlock haha!
Yeah, Player Side Scheme's gave Justice a huge boost in play, and is likely why it went from my least favorite to instead aggression being my least. Blade and Punisher would be amazing heroes to run player minions with, down the road, should they go that route.
Hyped for another episode!! Let's gooo!
Woo! I enjoyed making this one a lot!
Just as I want a protection play style to be built around Upgrades, I wish aggression had one built around supports. 21:39
Aggression has a disturbing lack of supports
You got me with the "Is Honed Technique Overrated?" in the thumbnail. 😂 I strongly agree with VillainTheory, I think Honed Technique is totally balanced outside of Dive Bomb, but Honed Technique + Dive Bomb is essentially invalidating in multiplayer. I noticed at Con of Heroes '23, HT+DB absolutely crushed all the challenges. At Con of Heroes '24, I noticed almost no one ran it - I think it was literally a case of freely choosing not to engage with how broken the combo is in multiplayer (I know that was the case for me: I adore my Ironheart Aggression deck, but I avoided playing it because it's too good in multi). I would 100% support an official fix, whether that's errata removing "attack" from Dive Bomb, or maybe simply banning it in multiplayer.
Glad to see the thumbnail doing it's job haha 😆 Interesting points. I know they're not doing any balance stuff with the next rule changes so they seem to be fine with it for now
@@VillainTheory Yeah, I actually brought up Dive Bomb to Caleb at Con of Heroes and he wasn’t worried about it, so I don’t think a change is too likely. To be fair, there are a number of ways to play certain combos against certain/many scenarios and more or less “invalidate” a challenge, so for example most players don’t choose to play like a Maria Hill recursion deck every game, or stunlock every villain, we often choose to play differently then just the most optimal builds. I think Caleb’s main thought if I remember was people are having fun, and that’s key, haha. But I do think it’s possible for it to be unfun when someone clears the board turn after turn.
It's so strange to me that they would go for Go For Champions (and still leave it really powerful) and not touch the infinite damage Nova combo now (no balance stuff in the next update they said). But ultimately some people love it and some of us choose not to use it much, so the system works...even if I agree that it's sometimes unfun to be another player at that table when someone did choose to play it.
It's ironic because regardless of where Aggression falls in the hierarchy of archetypes there's no denying, for me, that leadership is the most boring. I only go out of my way to play Leadership if it suits the hero, like Cyclops or Cap.
That's fair! Leadership isn't for everyone. How do you feel about Magneto and Leadership right now?
@@VillainTheory thank you for asking! I feel excited to utilize it for Iceman. I have an evil plan to create a recursion sacrifice deck so I can generate toughs and heal off of my Ice Clones and as a bonus for theme I'm gonna include Cyclops, Phoenix, Beast and Angel to have the original team back together.
@@dontberash Reuniting the original team is such a cool idea
What if you guys did a 3-player game with villains and Modulars chosen so that Aggression would be most “needed,” and then not run Aggression?
Fun idea! So you're saying lots and lots of minions...