I am using the prefabbed decks that come with the box to see how they handle solo play. I do not have the option to do group play by and large, so please take everything you read here with the knowledge that I have no idea how it relates to group play and probably won't for months. When I do get to do group play I'll let you know what I think then. Because I will be playing with everything out of the box, as-is, I will be doing the whole thing on Basic difficulty. I'll go through the box again on Solo Expert and will write up something for that, then.
What is This?
This is the first major expansion for Marvel Champions the Living Card Game. It includes five villains (Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola, and Red Skull) and arranges them in a campaign format. Fight the villains in order, upgrading your deck with campaign cards. It's a pretty simple set up, but simple can be very good. We'll see.
Last Time...
Hawkeye and Spider-Woman took out Absorbing Man, each doing it in one battle. Once again Hawkeye had the easier time of it, his deck being overall better; he got four delay counters. Spider-Woman had an easier time with Absorbing Man than she did Crossbones, but she did get nine delay counters. I prefer her character cards by a good degree to Hawkeye's, but the deck is overall is just a pain in the rear to work with. Spider-Woman has a bonus to her defense and more hit points, while Hawkeye has
Taskmaster
I couldn't find the rules for Taskmaster's hostages anywhere in the rulebook. Maybe I'm just an idiot? I dunno? (EDIT: IT'S ON THE 1A SIDE OF THE CARD OY) It wasn't until I found the side scheme that said specifically says the hostages are supposed to be put off to the side and then put under the "Captured by Hydra" side scheme that I really knew what to do with them. If you found it in the rules? Please lemme know where I missed it. If you're also scratching your head you're definitely not alone here. If you can't find it either put the captives off to the side for the "Captured by Hydra" side scheme! If you defeat that side scheme you just rescued that captive and now have them as a part of your deck. It's pretty dang cool. Y'know, provided you actually know what to do.
Taskmaster himself has some interesting permutations to him. He either gains two threat at the beginning of his turn or he gains a threat and you're dealt a damage. That crap adds up! And he only has one scheme, at twelve threat, which gives you about six rounds if you stay in hero form and don't change back. But the thing is that each time you switch from alter ego to hero mode you take damage, which means that if you're going to swap forms you need to make sure your healing wasn't undone by flipping back into hero mode. But the asshole card of the deck is Photographic Memory: it reflects whatever damage you were going to do back onto you. I found that to be a really interesting challenge to work around, especially considering that my attempts to buff my heroes would then turn against me.
Spider-Woman actually did really well against Taskmaster. Being able to stun and confuse turned around some of the more tense situations, not to mention being able to heal in hero mode, which helped her not get smacked around as much. She could get out a consistent damage output on most turns, which helped with Taskmaster's mediocre hit points. I was still tripped up by her deck but fortunately the core mechanics are good and fun, allowing me to compensate when necessary (which was often). I got White Tiger out of this particular game.
Hawkeye on the other hand lost once. And it was close. Hawkeye got tripped up by Photographic Memory a lot more than Spider-Woman, as he had no way of mitigating the damage with the default deck. Hawkeye's default kit also could not handle the rapidly escalating threat that Taskmaster could throw. I had to rely heavily on my allies to handle the threat, and ending my second battle with a grand beatdown that killed all my allies, but resulted in 17 damage at once. It felt amazing and it was the first time I actually had fun playing this deck. Moon Knight was rescued in this game.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed Taskmaster. He presented unique challenges that I felt like I needed to approach in a different way. And being able to gain a little bit more for the next fight really good. Had I been a bit more daring I may have decided to stick around to get the rest of the captives, but I'm still futzing around and would like to run the campaign a few more times before I start kicking around like that. Overall this is has been a really enjoyable experience so far. It's not Arkham Horror complicated, but I'm finding that I don't care about that as much.
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