I don't recall what all I took out...copy or two of "call for help", I know I added: 2x Power Of Leadership Wonder Man don't know if these came with it or I added, Hawkeye and Falcon What I have found is keeping it at 40, adding the Power of Leaderships means I have at minimum 3 allies I can play at any time, even with 4 card hand (Stinger, Wonder Man or Ant Man with whatever resources come to hand). If there is threat on a scheme I am taking it off with tiny, if not going big. I mulligan hard for Ant Mans Helmet, Wrist Gauntlets, and Army of Ants. Double resources are only other cards I keep. Example: just drew test hand. Falcon, Hive Mind, Team Building Exercise, Wasp, Ant Man and Giant Man. Unless there is a minion I need to deal with starting in play or more than three threat out, I am tossing this entire hand. First Aid, Giant Stompx2, Strength, Wrist Gauntlets, Power Gloves:if this were first hand instead of redraw I will keep the gauntlets, the double....MIGHT keep one Giant stomp but might pitch it with everything else. Very likely play: play a 1 resource for Wrist Gauntlets, go Giant, pop Energy to stun the villain, and let rest of hand play itself. If this were the redraw...Wrist Gauntlets, pop to Giant (do 1 damage), pop Strength to stun him, Giant Stomp for 8 and attack for 3. 12 damage and stunned villain...not bad turn. Draw 4....energy, wonder man, ant mans helmet Team Building Exercise. I am playing the helmet, if there is only one threat attack then flip down to remove threat and draw a card (Helmet). If there is more than 1 threat I am flipping down instead of attacking. Ditch Wonder Man draw 5...ready for next turn. obviously what the encounter deck does will alter it but this is not an atypical start. From there it is assess what is needed and play it. I had Pym Particles and Army of Ants in the next hand...Pym Particles replaces itself while paying for Ants, Ants do a damage, I am prepped to thwart or attack as needed, can potentially stun him again which all but buys a free turn to handle what the encounter deck and threat are doing...he is fantastic. if I took a couple points of damage, flipping to Giant with the helmet lets me heal and be attacking...it is just a fantastic combo.

he has a bigger learning curve than a lot of heroes but if you are thinking he is as situational weak as Thor...rethink man. You definitely have to tweak his deck and learn the power of flipping between hero forms but once you do...he is doing something of value almost every turn. It is rare indeed you have a "I have to flip down to alter ego and neither thwart nor fight this turn", I encourage you to tweak him a bit and keep rolling. You will soon find he is on or near top tier strength wise. Side note, Thor, when put in a specific role, can be very, very powerful. If he has to get out of his lane...yeah, not so much but if you can build a true team he can work well

fits with what I was seeing...the out of box is just a little fat with the wrong cards and minor tuning makes him a beast. I am shocked by the fun factor, I was not expecting that. I am debating the inputting of Avengers Tower, I am not feeling resource poor very often due to his draw power so it is not hugely necessary

Due to an unfortunate knee injury I had a ton of time on my hands this past weekend. My incredible brothers, knowing I was an invalid, each bought a copy of Ant-Man and brought it by...so I decided to run him through every released scenario. First up was Rhino, which seems like the easiest scenario and no challenge. Using the deck out of the box, I played Rhino...and then again...and then rebuilt the deck because A) I triple the number of times I have ever lost to Rhino and lost to him for the first time since learning the game months ago B) never had an affordable ally when I needed it and had several cards I never wanted to play. After rebuilding I ran through it 3 more times and it was as easy as ever...maybe easier. Lessons learned from Rhino; flipping is key. Knowing how and when to flip. So far keeping my opinion I only picked up the deck because I am a completionist. Klaw was a bit of a challenge, but I got plenty of allies out and was able to handle all the schemes coming at me and ended up taking him out. It was a challenge but I saw some mistakes I was making in how I was using him. He really needs to thin his deck and his Helmet might be his most important card. Healing and card advantage combined with resize. Not hard to either heal 4 or thwart 2 while drawing a couple extra cards...or more...his suite of cards is awesome and learning to use them is key. Ultron was a piece of cake. Between Hawkeye and having the Ant Armies out, drones were laughable and with him never spinning an advance, took him out in very few turns with no issues. Starting to really like the deck. Key lesson is getting out not just helmet but his full suite...Army of Ants, Helmet, Wrist Gauntlets. And when I have a double resource in hand, keeping the villain stunned or confused pretty much every turn...nice! Still, at this point I am giving serious consideration to changing him to protection. It feels like it is vital to keep him on one of the two hero sides as much as possible. Because of the importance of getting his suite of cards out I was not using allies enough yet. And as effective as getting a free pip of damage or taking off a threat is just for flipping, he really needs to use his abilities every turn they are that powerful. Flipping to Giant form with 2 Giant Strengths out is nice...being able to attack with them is far better. I was thinking Indomitable and Desperate Defense might make him better but I don't really like making decks so figured I would continue on the Leadership path. Wrecking Crew was next up and again showed the strength of Army of Ants and flipping to Giant form. Never facing retaliate, that is nice...they were as expected a piece of cake, not much to see here. Mutagen Formula was next on the agenda and the first true test since I was in the learning phase with Klaw. It was a bitterly contested battle. This was a case I nearly fell pretty to the "stay in hero form at all costs" syndrome. A well timed double lightning to confuse the villain, flip down, pop up and finish him but it was a razor thin margin. But I did learn a fun new trick. Early on I was using the Hank Pym version strictly with 4 hp but he has a lot of value just throwing a spare resource to use as a chump blocker. His variability for cost is much better than I initially realized. Risky Business was of course a cakewalk but it was also another solid lesson. The Army of Ants gives laser sharp control. Easy to keep him at one counter until I wanted to flip him. Add as many as he wants, I will be taking them right back off but not flipping him. Having 4 easily distributed individual pips of damage is incredible (including flipping to Giant). I think it was about this point I realized how weak Ant Mans nemesis is. I have seen Yellowjacket about 8 times and he has yet to survive a turn or attack me and his scheme, particularly in single player, there is not enough threat to make it relevant. I think my favorite time was being in Giant form when he popped up, using Pym Particles to draw a card and play Wasp to do 2 damage to him, using her to remove Tech Theft, flipping to Tiny form and finishing him with Army of Ants x 2. Time for the campaign. Crossbones has often been an issue. When he gets numerous weapons built up he is deadly. Ant Man laughed him off . It was softer than Rhino. This was Ant Man hitting on all cylinders. With the Wrist Gauntlets, I was keeping him stunned when needed, keeping weapons off him, roughing him up. He did get to stage 2 courtesy of Advance but I was never in danger of losing. I would face 2 weapons the remainder of the campaign. Absorbing Man generally takes me about 5 or 6 turns to beat. I am never in danger of losing to it but I also take a conservative approach which is not necessarily good against Absorbing Man. This time? on my third turn I finished him. It was hardly even a game. It may have been somewhat helped by two early Giant Stomps... Taskmaster would have been about that quick except I wanted the heroes. Here again the power of Army of Ants came to the fore. I kept him at 1 HP and removed all his shields with the ants while keeping threat at zero, having a full suite of allies out...this would be the only time I ran into an accelerator token but I ended up with all 4 heroes and took the easy win. Suddenly Ant Man his high on my list of favorite heroes. Zola is a scenario I disagree with most people on. I typically find it among the easier scenarios and this was no exception. His retaliate is a minor nuisance at worst. With the power of Tiny Ants and flipping to Giant Form it can be totally avoided if necessary. With all the recovery Ant Man has available it is not necessary. Red Skull is a fun scenario. Knowing you will have to thwart off two schemes every turn, main and a bonus scheme can affect the approach. Fortunately with allies out that was easy, the Sleeper did not last a turn, and the game felt in control from the beginning. I am learning to prioritize Ant Man cards and allies. I was getting so many allies out I often was removing allies I planned to chump block with to bring in better allies. Giant Man with power gloves and reinforced suit, use First Aid...he doesn't suck. Again the scenario was a cakewalk. Also finding I don't need to chump block...with the Helmet down and resize in hand, it is easy to keep him at or near full health just by flipping regularly. Kang: This scenario is much better mult-player so you get the effect of playing both multi-player and single player in the same game. This way it almost felt like 3 single stage solo games. By now I have a really good feel for which cards to prioritize so it was another cakewalk. I have learned the power of Ant Man. Looking at him as a whole, a few things are quickly obvious. His character specific set has as good a synergy as any other. They combine to have a power greater than their individual cards. Having the Helmet out, using Pym Particles to pay for a card, hitting a resize...draw a card for Pym, draw a card for going Tiny...he can fill a hand quick. Between Tiny, Giant, and Avenger Team-Building Exercise feels like it should be part of his suite. I need to look at the wording on Avengers Tower, I think it would work with Team Building to make Giant Man a 3 cost hero...that would not suck. Regardless, with the synergy of the suite, you have bonus healing, thwart, and damage...he is a fantastic Swiss Knife to do what is needed. My initial take was he is a support hero. He is not going to reach the damage levels of a Hawkeye, he is not going to reach the thwarting levels of Captain America....although Hive Mind with 3 Army of Ants out is a solid 2 for 5 threat remove and you should almost always have 3 army of ants out. Hilariously, my first look at him I was a bit bummed about him not having a resource generator in his suite a la Expert Marksmen/god of Lightning/Super Soldier Serum was an issue but in practice Team Building Exercise handles that effectively and what would you take out? Maybe Giant Strength, arguably the weakest of his cards...but it is so thematic and allows massive turns. This happened a ton of times in the 12 scenarios. Have both Giant Strengths down, the Helmet, the armies of ants, and 2 resizes in hand. Do 3 damage using Army of Ants. flip to Giant to do 4th, attack for 5 and heal 2 (draw 1 for Pym Particles), Giant Stomp for 8 for 17 damage without having done much. Resize to take off a threat and draw a card. I had turns like this several times and not a few of them saw 2 resizes in hand. Not unusual for me to have about 13 cards in play, sometimes 15 or 16. It led to having great hand after great hand. With the shockingly high level of card draw it was easy to have 2 resizes and a giant stomp hanging out. Final review they did a great job. The more I flipped between tiny and Giant the easier the game was, the more effective Ant Man was at dealing with pretty much everything. It was reminiscent of how he was in the movies and he can steamroll pretty much any scenario. And the best part...when I started working through the scenarios, I anticipated Ant Man being one of the seldom used heroes. I have not found a Captain Marvel build I enjoy, she feels blasé to me. Thor and Hulk are okay but not exactly the first deck I reach for. At the other end of the spectrum are favorites like Captain America, Ms Marvel, Black Widow, Iron Man...decks that require a bit of thought to play well and also all decks that can do multiple things well. After running through the scenarios solo...Ant Man is in the top pantheon. Ton of fun and great design job.

easy to prevent though. You know she has 15 cards, you can count those in play, your hand and discard pile to know if there is one left. next level up would be knowing the specific card. next level beyond that would be stacking the deck using Amir to ensure the cards you want from her set are where you want them. She is incredibly powerful as you can easily build your combos, whether with her cards or other deck combos using Amir and memory.

been figuring out a few. Long ago in a galaxy far far away before many of you were born I played a lot of the early CCGs like Spellfire, BattleTech, Ultimate Combat, Doomtown, Raw Deal...deck building was never my favorite but it is definitely an important part and I have been working on building decks that are synergistic instead of just "oh this is a good card", I got past that syndrome years ago. I have learned some of the surface level deviousness like Gandalf's Search+Zigil Miner to get key cards, stuff like that. I have mostly been playing 2-handed which covers a lot of sins that get exposed when I single deck. Working on a "I don't really have enough cards yet" dwarf deck, and it has potential. When it gets Narvis Belt and Steward of Gondor out early (wow, you get good cards early and it works? shocker!) it can deal with questing and still handle minions. But missing either of those and it is either/or...so I can choose how to lose. Working on the moves within the deck. I can see the framework...and getting better at, instead of clearing the staging area every turn regardless of travel, using Northern Tracker to clear the dangerous ones, little things like that. But there is no question solo exposes my weaknesses. Side question; I have deliberately not done a lot of quest anaylsis; I have I think 9 quests at the moment (and some are far too difficult for the card pool I have at the moment) so one way to keep them fresh is to not memorize which ones have deadly treacheries which keeps them fresh...and sometimes causes me to lose a character (shadow made me discard defending character...grr) so it might be time to start looking through first. The real question is; how important is it for a casual player to build the deck to the scenario?

While personally would not be interested, I don't think it would be all that hard to develop. The villain mechanics would work fine as a framework to start working out how a hero could function as the villain, just put the hero and their deck in the villain's place with some slight modifications. You might have to start them with some stuff...Iron Man form with his suit, Black Panther with his, etc...a Leadership deck with an ally or two...they draw a card/2 cards/3 cards (adjust for balance) and play them regardless of cost. It might be an attachment, might be an ally, might be something like...say 4 justice. For that you could have some sort of mirror system...you are trying to get to 30 thwart, they are also or you start at 30, if they remove it all you lose...and just battle hp. Obviously they would need multiplication on their HP. And it would rely on you playing them the best of your ability. I see flaws in this but you could easily build a framework around something like that if you wanted. To me that is one of the strengths of this game. People who like it as is can play it that way, people who like more challenge can go Expert/Heroic 1,2,3, you could do a civil war style, and everyone can enjoy it their way. Although mine is obviously best.... :-)

side note, pet peeve I have. We have players in our group that tend to look at their encounter cards out of turn. I keep asking them not to and they contend "what difference does it make?" Well...we often have a Spider Sense or...what is Stranges' cancel treachery called? anyway, often have one of those and someone peeks ahead, sees "Shadows of the Past", audibly groans...there is almost no chance that Spider Sense is getting used before their turn. Just wait your turn, let it be a surprise. (to be fair, Hydra Patrol is MUCH worse in a 6 player game, but the point stands...everyone knows before they should that a nasty encounter card is coming) Just wait your turn to look. rant over. for now

So here is a weird question I am not real sure how to frame. I got a couple core sets and a couple miscellaneous add ons. Played a bit, then went away from it for a few years. Recently got back into it. Enjoying it but I can tell that my skill level is not as high as it could be. Part of it may be my approach. For example, on A Passage Through Mirkwood, I plan my first turn around having a clear board. I routinely quest for 4-5 progress tokens. I see other people who consistently add 1-2 tokens at most and who leave maybe the Spider alive or locations in the engagement field they could travel to. And as I watch their results, I know they are better players than I am but I have not yet put my finger on the why. What I am missing. Clearly it has to do with making skilled plays. I don't mean the brutally obvious...Sneak Attack/Gandalf, for example. Others I think are a bit more subtle...people love to use Henamorth (sic) to see the next card off the deck, which is clearly more powerful than in two handed or more, but can still give good info. But that presumes you know how to use that info...has to be more than just "this is top card off the deck, quest for..." What do you consider some of your most skilled plays? Do they primarily come in the deck building phase or the play phase? Example, I am playing a too high starting threat Aragorn/Legolas/Bard the Bowman in one deck and Eowyn/Frodo/Bifur on the other. The plan was to either feint or, preferred, Forest Snare the troll. In five or six games, I have not drawn into the snare once. Fortunately, I have found other ways to beat the scenario almost every time (except once when after the game I started thinking I might have forgotten to add threat the next to last turn and if I did, I lost that one as my threat was 49) Taking an undefended troll attack using Frodo to bump threat and then unleash the Legolas /Bard with Black Arrow first turn was fun...but that seems like an unwise strategy to rely on. More skillful play would mean I would not need to lean on unlikely opening card draws. I am considering swapping out Berevor for Bifur, but then I will be much more reliant on Song of Wisdom popping up sooner or I will not be able to play the cards anyway....unless I luck into a Steward of Gondor in the first couple turns. But those are clearly deck building problems. What are some game play things you do along the lines of Henamorth to see the future to help you get through the scenarios? I suspect I tend to use too much brute force (quest with Eowyn/Frodo/Bifur/Aragorn, pop up Aragorn) and not enough finesse. I am looking for a head start on being a better finesse player essentially.

as someone who played for a bit, life got in the way and just as I picked it back up, it goes on hiatus, what I would like to see is: primarily available of hard to get packs. My chances of finding a copy of Celebrimbors Secret, for example, are somewhere between slim and none. Would be great to see a way for newer players to get key packs that have cards we might enjoy

after Friday have some additional thoughts. I have typically played it between 1 and 3 decks. Friday we played with 4 people and the scaling definitely increased the difficulty. At one point we were 1 threat from losing and had I think 12 threat on a crisis sided scheme. It probably did not help that on the first turn we had incredibly bad hazard cards that left each of us with minimum of 2 obligations that put us behind. With literally any other hazard card...we would have taken Shadows of the Past over the "everyone have an obligation" thing. Sadly, our Thor player got slapped with 3 obligations turn one...16 of his key cards and the Helmet he had already played gone and he did not bother removing any of those obligations until the next to last turn of the game. Not the way I would play it, but it worked for him. When you have 1 or 2 obligations...they are a minor inconvenience at worst (unless you have...say..Shield Block in hand, get Depowered and then the villain gets a bonus attack. Percentage chance low, but can still wreck your round). They can be dusted quickly with minor headache. But when you have that many, meaning at least 2 people cannot play hero cards, you are going to struggle with threat. Fortunately, we were able to clear the crisis and 15 threat off the main scheme letting us buy a turn to get back in control...but that was close. Had the last hazard card been an advance I would have lost to threat for the second time ever. Once we got it under control, we then were able to take the time to set up for level two. Thor had Hall of Heroes, both God of Lightnings, Jjarnborn, Martial Prowess, can't remember the other, and Lightning Reflexes...and a couple allies...Captain America had 3 allies, team training, Hawkeye had double Expert Marksmen, quiver, Quincarrier, Mockingbird, Quake, Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, Dr Strange had Helicarrier, Wong, Brother Voodoo, Clea, Med Team, Avengers Mansion, Indomitable....we were untouchable... ...and then our Dr Strange player walked straight into a double depowered, when he flipped down, an advance and threated out in one turn. It was hilarious. We came out of stage two with just the one side scheme and the 4th stage was pretty easy. We were easily able to keep threat at zero and on the final turn, at least three of us could have done 20-33 hp of damage and the weakest attacker (me) had double arrows, 2 allies and would have done I think is was 16. The overall point is I can see where with more players and bad draws the first phase could be problematic. With unlucky obligation draws, I can see where a group that scuffles with the threat could have issues with using it as a setup time. Was different perspective to anything I had encountered in this particular matchup. I may post some thoughts on Team Covenants approach at some point, I think they illustrate it pretty well. They have a pretty aggressive playstyle, and some of the times when watching them they make moves that drive me nuts...that sometimes pay off and other times that one ill timed card flip that they could have made no issue wrecks them. I think it has a lot of value in studying different playstyles as, like most games I have played, the more playstyles you CAN play, the better off you are. It opens eyes to possibilities you might have missed otherwise. I plan to run a few Aggression characters for a while as that is far and away my weak spot. I have run characters that defend for 3-9 hp (or no damage at all) 2-3 times a turn, I love having 4 allies out in Leadership w/Avengers, Justice is probably my favorite...but when it is time to wipe out a villain with a lot of damage, not my strong suit.

good part about this is it works well beyond Black Cat. Throw a few cheap allies in (or expensive if you are playing someone like Black Panther which of course would remove Black Cat from the equation) and it really works well to get allies being, if anything, more powerful than the hero themselves.

I find him pretty easy. Of course, a large part of my philosophy is threat mitigation. I lost one game early to threat on a very unlikely back to back unexpected scheme but other than that it has never really been a problem. And if one can keep threat under control, it is no issue dealing with his attacks, the only time it is an issue is when he gets the overkill +2 card, cannot think of the name off hand, but even there I often have ways to minimize the effect. One of my favorite games, I did not attack even once, I just kept using stuff like Counterintelligence, Attacrobatics, Covert Ops...Black Widow, with Synth Suit and a suite of Justice cards was often doing 1-6 points of damage almost every turn...not when she flipped down of course, but seldom needed to. But it does point to something someone mentions further down the thread, I note I have tended to have either Black Widow or someone like Spiderman, Hawkeye or Captain America who has a card that invalidates the big attacks. Since other than stage 4 he doesn't really flood you with minions, it has never been an issue to deal with the obligations, although some of them I kind of like when they hit...thin my deck 8 cards? Yes please! Unless it hits a key, unreplaceable card, that is doing me a favor. Depowered does require an instant flipdown but since I always have threat well under control, that is sometimes a good thing. I suspect a lot of it could be playstyle (which I include deckbuilding as part of) because I actually rank Wrecking Clue more difficult than most people. And that likely has to do with I am so well equipped for threat that sometimes my damage dealing suffers a little bit. I have a pretty strong suspicion that if you and I were to rank the scenarios by difficulty there would be some pretty huge differences...I think most people find Zola tough and I think he is the easiest of those scenarios in Red Skull for example. That certainly is not the wider consensus as far as I have seen. As an aside, and specifically in regard to deck builds...I had a Hulk build I really liked, it was Leadership which allowed him to thwart at will. But the group I build the decks for, the guy playing Hulk likes the "I am just picking which way to do damage" aggression build and since he plays Hulk in our group sessions, I built it that way for him. I believe Sub-Optimal Orbital Leap and Chase Them Down are the only two thwarting cards in the deck. When I play as Hulk, which is rare, I will be the first to admit I play him poorly. The guy I built him for, by contrast, is magnificent with him. He found combinations I did not even realize were in the deck and Hulk is a deadly force to be reckoned with. Time and I again I have seen him make plays that I was like, "that is awful....oh wait, that was brilliant" and a lot of it has to do with playstyle. When it was Leadership he was a drag on the group but I was very effective. I bring that up because it bears on which scenarios I think are easy and which are tough. The ones that tend to require a lot of threat quickly (Absorbing Man, Crossfire, Ultron, the last stage of Kang) are far more likely to cause issues for me than scenarios that build up threat quickly. When 4,5,6 side schemes come in on one villain turn, I never stress because I will generally clear them up that turn or maybe one more. Pop in 6 or 8 strong minions? I may give a different answer....I suspect you are a much stronger attacking player than I am just based on what you mentioned above.

you can "game" the game a lot. Stage one is pretty soft, so you can easily just keep Kang at a couple hit points and just keep eliminating the threat while you get your board set up if you so choose, same for a couple of the stage 3 versions of Kang. And this is true of a lot of the scenarios. One reason Green Goblin Risky Business is considered so easy is you can easily just sit in Hero Mode building an unbeatable board and can attack as needed just keeping it to 1 or two tokens....it is no big deal if it gets to a large number because you should be well set to keep threat at zero and flip him when you are ready to one-shot him. We often deliberately DON'T do it just to make that scenario harder. Just depends on what we want from the game that particular day. So it completely depends on what you are looking for in the game. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the scenario, determining its weakness and attacking that. Some scenarios, in fact, if you don't do that you will struggle with. If you are good at removing threat, letting him have one Kangs Dominion is almost irrelevant, 3 threat is no issue. I have run through it I think 7 times so far and only once have I had a Kangs Dominion hit the table and it was a minor speed bump that had essentially no impact on the game, but I also tend to have a dedicated thwart machine so your mileage may vary

played through it 2 handed with Iron Man/Spiderwoman, Cap America/Hulk, and She HulkCaptain Marvel, it is definitely on the easier side of scenarios and with that I suspect I have been making it a bit harder than it is supposed to be. On the phase 3 I have been giving each version of Kang 36 hp because it was a bit unclear if it should be 18 or 36...I think it is supposed to be 18 as you are separating into your own game area, but with two players in game overall, when the first stage is defeated and the that player joins the stage, it is borderline too easy. The third pairing as built was by far the weakest and is the first time Kang won one of the side schemes (and got to be immune for...well, okay, less than a turn) and even there on the final turn I had 10-12 excess damage I could have dealt if I felt like it and had it well in hand. It is fun to switch through time and have so many potential opponents and a worthy addition to the game, and has a secondary thing of fulfilling a side wish for me. The forums are replete with people who enjoy playing on Heroic in various stages and that is great, but there is a lot of the population for whom it is very much a soda and pretzels game that prefer a more manageable scenario. From rumors I was hearing this one had the potential to be one of those "too difficult for casual players" type things, and certainly there is room in the game for a couple of those, but I hope they keep a mix of some difficult, some relatively easy scenarios coming so it keeps it fresh for people like the group I play with every other week.

for people like me who build (too) many decks simultaneously...this is a bit sad. Beat Cop, for example, I hope they reprint and put 3 copies in the next 2-3 Justice decks. Quincarrier will be great to have a second of. I think if one did a Venn diagram of people keeping every hero built at all times and people who like the reprints, the convergence in the center would be pretty big for them but very, very small overall, most people seem to build decks just a couple at a time suggesting I am in the minority on that desire.