2024_1006_0120

A group of friends discuss their recent Mid-Atlantic tournament series called Crisis Cup. They talk about the points system, upcoming championship, and their experiences in the fourth event. They mention some upsets, particularly in round one, where they played against new and inexperienced players. They also discuss the different affiliations and characters used in the tournament. In round two, they faced off against each other in a mirror match with Asgard teams. They talk about the advantages and disadvantages of losing priority in the game. In round three, they mention a special prize and the excitement of someone beating the player with the most points. They also discuss their own matches and strategic decisions made during gameplay. My name is Gary on the socials, you can see me as Crossroads. We'll go around the table and introduce the other people now. This is John, I go by Swooper on Discord and Longshank. This is Papa Booey, I'm going to go by Matt from time to time. And I'm Sean, and also run as ReynoldsRaph on the socials. The ReynoldsRaph. The one and only ReynoldsRaph. So we're going to start off by discussing the event that we just had. It was the fourth installment of our Crisis Cup. For anyone listening that's unaware, the Crisis Cup is a Mid-Atlantic tournament series we've been running with the help of some local stewards. We've had four events now. As each event, you score points depending on your placement. So first place gets ten points, second place gets nine, so forth and so on. All the way down to tenth place scoring one point. Your points are accumulated throughout the four event series. And then we had a championship cup for whoever had the most points. And then the top seven, plus whoever wins our last chance qualifier tournament, will make up a top eight event for a championship belt for the year's champion. Can't wait to wear that belt. So we'll talk about event four starting off. Me and Scooper were both officiating. And Papa Booey and Sean were both playing. There's definitely some upsets, especially early on in the tournament. Round one, I probably would have only been able to guess half of the games. I think a big thing we saw was the might of Asgard right at the beginning, pulling ahead. So, Sean, what do you think about round one? Well, round one, I had a very nice opponent. He was extremely new to the game. So I spent most of the game actually explaining to him how the game played and the rules to the game and kind of playing out his turns for him, but making sure that he had a good time. I was not out to scum anyone. At least not round one. We'll save that for the later round. So, Papa Booey, what about your round one? Pretty similar situation. Opponent, I think it was his first competitive game. He played the game plenty before, but never at a tournament. So there were some rules that were definitely not up to current. But we had a good game. He had fun, I think, and ended up winning that one. But tried to play as casually as we could. Yeah, I did notice we had a lot of newer players, but I don't think they were new to the game. I think they were new to a competitive scene. A lot of them had a lot of the OG crisis cards. We actually saw some Mystic Herbs popping up. I wish. I wish I missed those things. But all in all, I think it was a good event. We had some things to learn out. And I think, you know, after round one, round two really started to shine. Anything to add about round one, Super? Anything to add to that? No, I think we had a really good attendance. I mean, we're sitting at 24 people for our fourth event. So that's, you know, a really good turnout for keeping it going. We started with what? We started with probably less than that. I mean, I think our first tournament was, that was what? I don't know. Game console. We had, it was right under 24, I think. Yeah, because then we sold out 24, and then we upped it to 36, and we sold out 36 at Tables & Towers. And then this one we had 24 for the attendance. Overall, I think, you know, it's all a good turnout. We definitely have a huge mix of affiliations and characters and leaders and everything. Like there's definitely, there were a lot of Asgard players this time. But I don't feel like overall there's a clear winner when it comes to, you know, what team you're taking. What do you think the greatest round one upset was? He's not here to talk about it. Let's leave him alone a little bit. Still talking on that one. All right, so round two. Speaking of the round one upset, round two. How'd it go, Puppabilly? It went well. We're going to leave it at that now. I got to play Red9 for the first time. Oh, geez. And I was glad to finally get to play him. I've been hanging out and talking throughout the whole season. And that was the first time seeing him on the table. And with Asgard, he whooped my butt. The dice did not favor being humans on that day. But overall, I think I executed a good game plan. But Asgard will definitely remind you that if things start to go awry, they will punish you very, very quickly. Yeah, so I guess I should go back in retrospect and actually explain that. I was also on the Asgard scum train playing them myself. I also had a defender's backup in case someone ever made me play a 19 or 20 threat. Spoiler alert, and this is something we can talk about later. I lost priority in every single game I played. The best thing to happen to you. The best thing that could possibly happen. I got to play 15 three rounds. Jeez. Because that's how the dice work. I mean, I'm lucky. Yeah, I want to lose priority. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like losing priority is one of the biggest advantages you can have. So my round two opponent was also on the Asgard train. And we actually ended up playing 16 threat on that one. Which ended up being a point for point mirror. Actually, I'm sorry, it was 17 threat. We both took Hulk, Loki, and Big Thor. That's right. That was that weird game where I came over and it was like an exact mirror had dropped in the middle of the board. And you had your character in the exact same position throughout the entire game. Yeah, he took his first move, just moving up Loki at a very obvious spot. And then as I started moving my models around, he was just like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. And I'm like, oh, cool. So he just couldn't copy every single move I make from this point on. The only thing he didn't copy was the fact that I killed all his characters my round three. Yeah, none of mine. This is also a spoiler alert. The first mission or the first game and the last game that I ever actually cared about scoring any points. Missions did not matter when you're playing Asgard at 15 threat and 17 threat. And the only difference between you two, the team you took was one tactics card. One tactics card. I prefer Rainbow Bridge and he preferred Giant Flood. It definitely made a difference. It actually did, because he had just Hulk left at the bottom of three, and I was able to Rainbow Bridge everyone to try point Hulk and just be like, cool. So we're done here, bro. All right, round three. So round three, we got to see something awesome happen. So we had a special prize. And we put the bounty going into the tournament on the person who had the most points, which was a gentleman by the name of Schmid. He had the most points coming into this tournament. So the bounty was a prize. Whoever beat Schmid for the first time in this tournament got the bounty. Or if Schmid went undefeated, he got the bounty. So in round three, Spartafoes Dan from the Nova area was able to take down Schmid, playing Spartafoes against Schmid's Midnight Suns. So that was the big thing I knew happened on round three. We will go to Sean this time. Sean, how did your round three go? In round three, actually, I drew again into another Asgard mirror. This one actually was a little bit weird. I did get 15 priorities that I could have picked, but I did see that, and I guess if you didn't clock on this either, AMG had released that new restricted list update the day before this tournament. And, of course, now I have four restricted cards in my list and I have to cut down two. So because I had the Defender swap, I was like, oh, you know what? I really like Gamma. I'm going to keep Gamma. I'm going to have to drop Brothers in Arms. I'm going to drop Scuttlebutt Research. Oh, Researchers. Sorry. Research Agent. And I noticed he kept Brothers in Arms and Scuttlebutt, which is a huge damage boost in the mirror. And I did not want to play at 15 because I knew how that was going to go. So I actually chose to go up to 18. Because I had the Defender swap, I did have Immortal Hulk in that list as well, and I played Immortal Hulk, Big Thor, and Loki into his Big Thor, Loki, Bitteray Bill, and he took Zemo as a third. And, basically, Immortal Hulk is just not killable in that matchup. Though I was wrong on that because he actually did kill Immortal Hulk. He just put everything he did into Immortal Hulk on turn two, which allowed me to pick up Bitteray Bill and his Thor. Bitteray Bill was on bottom of two. Thor was on the top three because I had Activation. I don't want to do characters stacking on two. That was interesting. Zemo does not like catching Bill four times in a row, and that actually pulls up an interesting thing. I feel like he could have won that match if he stopped paying to reduce damage on Bill. Because turn one, I used Loki's Place ability to play some Immortal Hulk, then I Gamma Leafed, and I had two Activations into Bitteray Bill on the first turn. Both attacks went into him and threw him into Zemo three times, which saves Zemo on turn one. Again, on top of turn two before he totally wiped out Hulk. But he kept on paying to reduce every single time I threw him, and because of that, when he did his Brothers in Arms turn, he had three power on Bitteray Bill, which only allowed him to do one Thunder attack. If he didn't pay to reduce, how much health would he have left? It wouldn't have mattered because he was getting dazed that turn either way. He should have just taken it, started the next turn with eight power, and he should have taken out both Thor and Immortal Hulk with just him. But because of that, he had to put his God Hammer into Immortal Hulk. Then he had to put his regular Builder into Immortal Hulk, then he used Scuttlebot. He had to use all three of those cards just to take down Immortal Hulk, which Immortal Hulk at that time only had six health left. I see what you're saying, to keep the power from when he flicked. Yes, so instead of spending the ones to attempt to kind of mitigate it on your healthy side, you should have just accepted it. Then that way you have more power on your other side when you get injured, so you can Brothers in Arms and do your spenders that way. It's a total 20-20 situation, right? But it's not always right to activate every ability just because you can. But if you failed the daze on by one, then it would have been a great use of power. I guess. Neither one of us are going to try to play the mission. Spoiler alert, the end score was 16-0 in my favor. We did not score any points. I actually technically scored three points, but the other 16 came out of just tabling them. Personally, I would have taken it and then had the power to juice up and then daze all of his characters on his turn. Did you get 16 for tabling? AMG's actual primary for tournaments. It's still only 14 for conceding. I don't think you should get 16 for tabling. I think you should get whatever you score. If he scored zero and he tabled him and he won, you should get zero fucking points. I think it actually should be the other way around. I did have three, thank you. Well, then you should get three. I think if you table someone, you should get 14. Your opponent concedes, 16 flat. That way they can't manipulate anything. Only you can control the tabling. True. But then I guess at the same time, the conceding part, let's say we're playing a game and I only have, I'm going to table, not table you, but I'm down in points. So it's a really low scoring game. It's like eight to seven. I'm going to win on eight. You concede, then my score jumps to 16. So you can manipulate both ways. So either way, it's bad. Yeah. I think the main reason why they have it at 14 is just because if you come up with that situation where you're like, I hate this guy. I do not want to play against this guy. You get paired into that guy and you're just like, you know what? I don't even want to play this game. I concede. That's not giving the player that you don't want to play against extra points just because, I mean, you might have a justified reason, but any time you might not. Let's say in this situation, the person is a douchebag. You don't want to play as a douchebag. They should not get rewarded for it. Yeah. Well, I think that's why they kept it at 14, too, was so you weren't scoring out. So if it did come down to victory points, you were going to be down most likely. But I don't think you should get a full 16 for just tabling the other opponent and not playing the scenario. I think you should just get whatever you score. That's my opinion on that. If you're losing tiebreakers for victory points, well, it's strength of schedule first, then it's victory points. Yeah. And it's like, well, I played the game a little different and scored points rather than just rolling dice and hoping to match up. I don't think any of our events this season have gone down to points scored, has it? This season? Yeah, the last tournament we had, because I was in third because of that. Or fourth. I'd lost third because of tiebreakers. Oh, yeah, yeah. Last stuff. Oh, did you? Because of points scored or because of strength of schedule? We had to change strength of schedule. Oh, okay. The tournament I just came out of, PA, I won because of victory points. Me and the other guy had the same exact strength of schedule, but he was playing a very low-scoring team and I was playing Shield, so I had a lot of points. Yeah. So that's what topped me out over him. All right, Pablo, how'd your round three go? Three was against a dude named Gern, and that was one of my most fun matches I've had in a long time in a tournament. He was playing Weapon X, and it was my first time playing against Weapon X, I think, at all, even casually. And we went 17 threat, which is, admittably, like my most uncomfortable points value for me to play. My list just isn't very optimized for that. Schmitty, if you're listening, don't pick 17. He went wide as can be. I think he had six models at 17 points, and I had four. So I just went aggressive as can be, and round two was an excellent round for me. I think I dazed four of his characters in that round, and then everything just completely shut down after that. Like eight Dice Spenders were rolling one or two successes on attacks, and I just couldn't get anything through on anybody, even someone like X23, who really should go down when I'm throwing Dazed Dice Spenders at her, but sometimes it's just out the Dice Roll. Can't control that. But he played a great game, ended up losing, I think, like, I don't know, 16 to 13, something like that. I'll have it right in front of me in a moment. But it was cool to see that Weapon X, man, they can hit hard. The new Wolverine, Weapon X, he is fun. He's a really cool model because he's running across the board. He's a very fun character. I played him on Thursday, and he was a lot of fun to play. Yeah, 17 to 12. Oh, 17 to 12? Yeah. But yeah, takeaways from that match, other than just having to try and control the board with two characters down, at that point, I just was planning to swing for the fences and just came up a little short on that. But it was a fun game. Gern, if you're out there listening, I definitely want to get another match in at some point. So speaking of fun games, Bubba Berry, how'd Round 4 go? Round 4 was my favorite game of the day. It was all our favorite game of the day. I flipped the coordinators of the event 50 bucks before the tournament and made sure I got to play Jeremy at some point. Now, completely by chance, but I'm always happy when I get to play another member of TAG when we're in the tournament. And Jeremy and me got paired in the fourth round, and we got 15 points, our favorite point value for both of us. It was pretty much right down the middle. I think we had Gamma and Hammers, and it pretty much just came down to the fact that he had priority. He brought an Immortal Hulk. I brought a regular Hulk. And at the end of every round, I just threw his Hulk off that center point in Gamma and saved one victory point ahead, pretty much took the whole game through. And then, granted, in the final round of the game, just to seal that coffin with one last nail, a regular Hulk decided to go out and be a little ballsy and swing at Immortal Hulk, who had 10 health left. And with a regular strike attack just to gain some power on my side to maybe throw him away, I think I dealt 10 damage to him in one hit. So that was a little bit heartbreaking for Jeremy on that end, but sometimes the dice just spike, and it's always in a situation like that. Was he doing defenders? Was he leader lifts? Yes. Yeah, he was one. I've never heard about that, because he ran Immortal Hulk, Thor, Midgard Thor, and then Long. Okay. So it was pretty much a very cagey match. He was trying to hold his back line, and then it was pretty much just who held the center point for more turns. All right. That's wild. So, Sean, how was your Round 4 game? So Round 4, I got to play against a guy named Kyle. He actually won Best Standard. I think pretty deservedly so, at least on the Carol model that he had out. Once again, I lost priority. We had Research Station in there, and I'm like, cool, 15 it is. He was running Avengers, which I kind of raised the eyebrow at, because I don't think I've played Avengers, against Avengers at least, in two years at least. Real quick, so on all these 15s, you've been running like the Asgard 15. The Asgard 15. There was one time that I did Southern Fang Chi instead of Beta Ray Duel, and that was just that handout staggers in the mirror. Okay. How many times did you get to play Researcher? I think all four games. So that was, I think, one of my falls back on my roster afterwards, because I kept Researcher in there as well. I didn't get to play it once, and it was really making me start to wonder if I want to keep it in. I mean, we can talk about retrospective afterwards. If I were to run this back again, I would actually probably pull Researcher out. I really kind of missed either Rollers and Arms or having Brace, and with the Defender slot that I have available in my roster, I'm fine not always having to play 15. Yeah. Back to that round. Yeah, didn't know what I could start, Jack. Yeah, Kyle definitely has an interesting roster here. Yeah, when he showed me his roster, I'm like, I didn't know what you'd take at 15. I mean, I thought he might throw in Hulk, which he did. I did not think he was going to take Carol, but then I realized afterwards why he did it, because all my attacks are energy, and she has reverse piercing energy. Did she take Carol 1 or Carol 2? Carol 2. Carol 2. Carol 2 is terrifying. She is. Yeah. Though I feel like Kyle had a real chance of winning this. He played it right with some of the sequencing he did later on in the game. He kept on throwing Gatorade Bill out of the game. He just kept on picking him up and throwing him with Hulk, and then Gammon leaping Hulk back. So I was always losing at least one activation on Bill every single turn. The one thing I didn't fully agree with is he approached the matchup as if we were going to play for points. So he threw Carol straight up on the midpoint, and I believe we were playing a double E. So I think this was Gamma. It was Researcher Demons. It was Researcher Demons. Okay. And I guess he wasn't afraid of being incinerated, because I think Carol wasn't immune to incinerating, but he threw her right on the middle of his first activation. And then he threw – I just moved up Loki on mine, and then he threw Hulk up at the middle, expecting me to throw damage into Hulk, and I did not want to build power on Hulk. So I threw everything at Carol and Gazer on turn one, and I feel like if Carol had played back a little bit, she would have been way more impactful. But he just bettered me on turn one, so I took it. Yeah, you either got to get rid of her right away, or you got to ignore her and not give her the ability to fire. Right, right. And then it was just – either I go after her or I go after Hulk. I did not want Hulk to start next turn with eight or ten power, so you just got to take your poison. So I took her out, and she did go do her Super Saiyan activation the next turn. I think she took out – she did daze Loki, and I think she dazed Beta on her Super Saiyan activation, but then I just took her out with Thor. Yeah, and that's an accurate description. She hits like a truck. The second she hits that binary form, she is a menace on the board. So let me ask you this. Fast forward, you took down the tournament. Yep. You've played a fair share of punchy lists. You've definitely – you've played your share of attrition. You've played Red Skull 3. You've played – I don't know if you ever played Black Order. I did not play Black Order. I've actually played kind of both – bold skews on both sides, because I've also played webs a lot before. So now that you've played Asgard through a tournament and stuff, what's your feeling on the spectrum? Where do you feel like they sit on there? I feel like any brain-dead moron can play Asgard and win with them. They definitely need a tuning down. And I was even playing what I would say a sub-optimal, because, like I said, I dropped bullets in arms in order to keep Researcher on my list, and that card is just so busted. Would you put it back in then? Would you swap it? Yeah, I'd just take Researcher out. And on the map, if you play 15, it's just an auto-win with that freaking card. The amount of damage that you do on your go turn is just – it's just not right. I'm trying to remember. What are the 15s? It's Researcher and… Gamma. And, yeah, I believe it's Sword, because we played it the other day. But I wouldn't take Sword, because… That's a five-objective one, isn't it? It's four. Oh, that's the one that you move people when you control… I love Sword because it's a pay-to-flip, but if no one's on it, it's an automatic, because if one thing is going to drive me nuts, it's having a round one where all you need to do is roll one six-dash or a pay-to-flip, and you don't get it. Well, Sword is also a… It's not an extract. It's a secure. Correct. Yeah. And Researcher's a secure, isn't it? Extract. Extract. Oh, extract. That's what I meant. Yeah, I gotcha. So there is no other 15 extract. So with that, and we talked about earlier, we brought up the restricted list being in effect the day beforehand. Do you think by playing this tournament with the restriction, that's not enough? That's definitely not enough. Like I said, I could have tuned it more, and I definitely do like having the swap in there. I don't see a lot of dual affiliation in the Asgard build. They just kind of go, I have big Asgard, and then I have wide Asgard. I always like having options. I do think that the way I was playing it, the Defender swap, it's kind of my style for it. But if you're going pure Asgard, maybe you do want to keep Researcher in there, but the way I play it, I can play it other threat levels other than 15. I feel like they're one of the easiest factions to dual affiliate with. You only need your three core. You keep your three core for 15, and if you want to play Asgard, you can add people from there. Or you have seven other characters to play a different affiliation with. So Defenders is obviously an easy one to pick because they'll have a core or two that will just stick with it. Then you add in Thor, you add in Bill, you add in Loki. And Crime would be a really good one, too, because then you can just throw Loki into your Crime. Yeah. But the fact that you literally just brought that up is exactly the problem with Asgard and why they can't. Because Loki and Bill both like Crime. Yeah. And I did take Jane in my roster just in case anyone was actually playing S.H.I.E.L.D. because I just think her two damage on a single wild to everything that wants to cluster up is really good. Of course, I did not get to play against the S.H.I.E.L.D. because Jon had to drop out from tournament. Took Jane just for me. I did. I did. And honestly, that surprised me round two because when I looked over at Papa Booey and Red9 playing and I saw that Red9 took Jane, you know, I believe the answers were like, oh, that's... The first thing in my mouth was, oh, crap. I thought he was done at that point. I won't lie. Turn one, the roster he took and the moves he made in turn one or round one, I was elated. I was so excited. I thought I had it in the bag and I had a game plan going into it and it just did not work out. He's got that experience. He played Asgard all at Nova and made it, you know, to the second day for Nova and stuff. Oh, yeah. See what he's doing. Yeah, he's doing well. I haven't seen Jane get played very much, so he knew what he was doing apparently. He got it. Yeah. I think her leadership is just, it's too weird. Yeah. If you want to be within two to attack but not within two to defend, that's really just kind of counterintuitive. Yeah. I will say I think of that team he took in that game in particular, the leadership was probably the least influential part of that lineup. There were so many times where he didn't get to use the defensive re-roll and he didn't even get to use the offensive re-roll. I mean, she does slap. I mean, she is a five threat. She does hit. Yeah. She's not a great leader. No. No. I think the leadership is the weakest part of her card. It's hard, though, to compete with principal high. Yeah. And that's the hard thing about it. You're comparing them to him. Yeah. I don't think there's much of a comparison. Yeah. Some are just better than others. You look at crimes the same way when you're taking Kingpin. It's like, do I take Kingpin or do I take Klaw? I think Klaw's fun. Or you take M.O.D.O.K., too. Yeah. Exactly. Or Shadowlands. Yeah. Some of them are just, it's unfortunate. You know, Kabal, are you ever going to take Finn's leadership? Not that well. You're not going to put her on the table. I just like to have an option of which leaderships you like. You will get, I'm pretty darn sure with that box, you're going to get two leaders. Like Avengers with Hulkbuster. I like Hulkbuster's leadership. Does it get played? No. But I like it. Yeah. So you're playing the right opponent. Yeah. Well, right now is the time to play for the right opponent. Because Avgar's everywhere and his leadership just so happens to be pretty good against Avgar. I mean, that's fair. Yeah. But I think then if it was the opposite way and it was just like with the S.H.I.E.L.D. or X-Men running the table where they're just doing a lot of death by a thousand cuts, then yeah, Hulkbuster's leadership is unfortunate. Yeah. But you're also looking at Avengers who has a flood of leadership. Yeah. Three various leaderships. But they're like, you know, Steve-1's really good. Sam Wilson's really good. I think new Steve-3 is really good. Yeah. And then like Hulkbuster's is good, but he gets outshined so bad by the other three. Yeah. And then Sam-1's leadership's been nerfed, what, like 17 times? Yeah. What do we think about? So we're talking about the restricted cards. We've talked about, you know, the two that affected Asgard in Brothers in Arms and The Researcher. What about fallback? Do you think there's been any effect of fallback being restricted? I mean, there was. So John throws out that group text on Friday being like, oh, by the way, AMG just updated their restricted list. Hopefully it doesn't impact any of you too much. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it does. I'm like, okay, well, you know what? I played webs on our Tournament 3. I'll just grab my webs out. I'm like, oh. Full disclosure, I haven't played in like two months. I'm like, cool, mission objective's gone. Fallback is gone. It's now restricted. I'm like, oh, well, that's me. I can't even just like grab webs out of the closet and be like, what's wrong with it? I mean, fallback is not, I mean, it's good with webs. I don't know necessarily if it's stable. It is in the way that I run webs. I run mine a little bit more aggressively than some people. I think it was either fallback either didn't get rotated or didn't get restricted earlier. I mean, fallback's amazing. And it's a very good card. Definitely. And it's always been good. Oh, yeah. Not like a, hey, it just magically got better because of an affiliation. You know, that's actually like a double-edged nerf, though. They went after nerfing Asgard in that update, but then they nerfed the card that is anti-Asgard. Yeah. Why would you restrict a card if you're trying to make Asgard worse? Yeah. I think there's a broad stroke. I don't necessarily think Researcher and, I mean, Brothers was definitely aimed at Asgard. I don't know if Researcher was necessarily aimed at Asgard. Well, Brothers was just unfortunate because Brothers in Arms came out before Midgard, the Hero of Midgard. So it was meant to be played with the original Thor in mind. We see that hand out a lot, though. Yeah. Look at the Ultron card. Look at the... To that point, though, they banned the Ultron card. They were just rotated to that one. I don't think Brothers in Arms was that devastating. Age of Ultron was on a whole other level of, like, Jesus. Yeah. But Brothers in Arms, you can work around. Yeah, you can work around. If you focus hard, because that's what I did in the tournament, is I just focused really hard on separating those two, or just straight up dazing or KOing one of them, sure, and then you can't play that card. Yeah, I think that was one of the big issues with Researcher, is Researcher, in addition to another E, whether it's Gamma or Demons, or even Intrusions a little bit, basically just allows Asgard to clump without any fore-percussions. You know, if it's something like Challenge Rules, you can always play the outside of it and make them choose to separate their characters and play close. But when you've got, like, Researcher and Demons, what are you going to do? Like, all the points are in the middle. You put Shuri on the table and you push. Yeah. Or out of three of each other, I think three. Two. Is that two? Because the one thing you can do is push them. So you are a heavy push affiliation then. Brothers in Arms is kind of a dead card. That's why I like pairing Indomitable with it, because it's just one turn of, now, that's why I think it doesn't need to go away completely, because you can handle it on the board. You just have to know how to handle it. Of all cards for Asgard, though, that surprised me, it was the fact that they chose Brothers in Arms and not Odin's Blessing. Unconsidering they got rid of Exceptional Healing. Yeah. So, why are you going to do it to one faction, but you're not going to do it to another faction, which, quite honestly, I think benefits from it more. I think the reason they did it, honestly, like, Exceptional Healing should have been, like, a Weapon X card. They should have just made a Weapon X faction. That'd be cool. Because the problem is, is every time they made a Healing Factor character, they had to think about Exceptional Healing. Like, what happens if they made an Asgard character that had Healing Factor? Now, all of a sudden, they have Odin's Blessing and Exceptional Healing. Like, it's just, within the design space, I think they're struggling with a little bit. I just think, like, I definitely wouldn't ban or remove Odin's Blessing, but I definitely think that's the one that should have been restricted. Not Brothers in Arms. Yeah. That one is actually slightly more playable. So, you can play around it. At least turn one. I mean, I did win my round two by dazing his Thor on one, because it is three power to play it. So, there is an uptick. You dazed him round one? Yes. Because you threw his Thor up. We were playing... Well, that's not really Thor's mistake, huh? Well, yeah. That may have been his mistake. You threw up Thor as his second activate. Again, I never won priority, because you only have three characters activate, and you wanted to keep his Hulk back. So, you did it in the order of Loki, then Thor, then Hulk. We were playing meteors. He thought we were playing for points. I knew we were not playing for points here. He went to go flip the Colossus Meteor to him, and then, I mean, I rolled super hot. Like, I put one attack from my Thor into him and did six damage. And then, it's like, cool. I threw myself into him. Didn't have, like, two damage. I'm like, cool. Do you want to use Odin's Blessing? Oh, wait, you're at one. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're not going to get those opportunities often where you can spike that hard in round one. Round two, yeah, but... I mean, it's a dice game. Dice are dice. It doesn't make sense. If you want to win an MCP, you just... You just roll better dice. Yeah. I didn't know you could do that in round two, so... I did. And that's why I lost. I would like to actually say, in regards to our fourth tournament, a huge thank you to Peasant Games and Hobbies for hosting us and with the prize support. And also, a huge thank you to Game Envy. Game Envy is a great hobby supply company, local in the Maryland area, and they gave us prize support for Best Painted, and it's always appreciated. Well, back to that exceptional healing thing, I think we were talking about it, and it had come out, and we're like, why did they get rid of that card? That card's just gone. Like, why is it gone? And immediately, the mini-Stravaganza comes out, and, like, all those characters have healing factor. Like, oh, that's why. I think, so, I mean, we've seen that before, where they make changes for what's coming up. I think this most recent change, where they removed, like, all of, like, the unaffiliated, like, really good cards, I feel like they went really hard really quick with a big bunch of the cards to remove, and just the replacement cards aren't out yet. Some of the Team Tactics cards are, like, in a weird spot right now, where, like, you're really, I feel like everyone's almost running the same exact cards. I also think they want people to focus a little more on, like, faction and character-specific cards, and you do see, especially in a tournament setting, like, I can't, I don't remember off the top of my head how many Asgard players we had at the tournament, six or seven. It was a lot. You figure all of them are playing Team Tactics cards. Yeah. Or at least very similar tactics cards. But that's the thing, I think this change, like, it forces that to happen. Yeah. Like, there's not a choice about it. Like, oh, you're running Asgard, you're going to run these cards. I think that's kind of what they were trying to go for, though. I mean, Exceptional Healing was good against every affiliation that, you didn't even have to have a character in that affiliation. Like, if you just had, you could just splash in any healing factor. Yeah, splash in any healing factor character, and all of a sudden that card is really good. Yeah, and I think what they were having was, like, everybody was playing the same five, and they were just doing five unaffiliated cards, and, like, every person playing every list was using the same five cards. Or at least a lot of. So they're trying to, if I had to guess, again, I don't work there or have any inside information, but if I had to guess, it's to add a little more of, like, we want Asgard using these because we want this identity in that group. My only complaint about that is, and for those of you who don't know, I run in humans, and I'm not griping here because we got one of the best blow-offs in updates on cards that they could have done. I think that only hurts affiliations that don't have good attachment qualities. I look at people like Sentinels and, you know. Who? Yeah. The prime example of that was the card rotates, and then Defenders had two cards, I think. They had one. One card. They had portals. And then all of a sudden they got all these boxes. Now they're, like, loaded with cards. So I think it's just a matter of time before they, you know, certain ones, I don't know if Sentinels will get anything. I mean, you know, in humans it's getting a nothing. Correct. I'm sure you're going to get affiliation cards there. I do like them being more character-focused on the cards, though. I like having cards that are stapled to a character that you put into your roster. Yeah. I think all the unaffiliated cards, too, will just kind of fade away to be a minimum amount of, like, the seven that we have. Granted, they just added Survival, which I think is going to be a crazy card to get everywhere. Yeah, I don't know. Survival, I can't understand. I would love to be in the room and be like, what are you guys thinking? Yeah. What's the cost, though? It's seven or something? It's whatever your cost to your character is. That's what it was. So, yes, for Immortal Hulk, it's seven. Yeah. For Zemo, it's three. Yeah, so when they kill your Zemo and you flip him, and he has ten power on him, and Thanos is standing there ready to add four dice to him, and you're like, man, I've had that Zemo out before. He's back in the bag. Guess what? Not going to happen. That's when Namor wrecks him. That's hilarious that that gets over Survival. Namor's damage reduction thing. Oh. You cannot. It goes straight through Survival. Really? It specifically says damage reduction from XYZ and Team Taxis card. Wow. Does the Survival say specifically no damage, or you can't be targeted? No damage. You can target him. Oh, yeah. You can target him. You can roll the dice. Just do anything. Can they be pushed? Push, place, or throw? I don't know. Because if they can, I could just target with Medusa, do a Braid Bash. In your Thanos example, you just take Zemo away. You just punch him to the other side of the table. You're like, how's it going over there? I'm saying, like, Thanos is on the board with him, like on his piece. Oh, I see. All right. I thought you were saying Thanos is on the other side of the card. Yes. Okay. Yeah, you can still push. It looks like you can do everything that you need to do, except they don't take damage by enemy effects. So could you then throw the person, and they just don't take the damage? Yeah, I'm guessing that. Yeah. Turn him into a wrecking ball. Yeah. It would just like, let's say you put it on Rhino, and you throw Rhino into somebody. Oh, Rhino didn't take that one damage, but I just chucked five damage into somebody else. Oh, this is going to make Sentinels so good. Oh, sorry, you didn't take that one damage here. My bad. AMG fix Sentinels, please. They're like the best models he's made, and their faction is so sad. It's utterly miserable to play. Yeah. We got some new characters that just dropped, too. Let's take a look at Abomination. Oh, I'm so excited for him. A five-cost character. Size four, seven health, medium movement. I was assuming on a large base, because they all are. I think so. Yeah, it looks like he is. Four, three, three for defenses. And he's got a seven-dice builder, dishing out poison and push. I like this character a lot. Gainer. Gainer, I'm sorry. I like this character a lot, because it seems like they got the poison down right, where with other characters, you know, with Warlock and Omega Red, you have to take the damage as well. I think this one, being able to pump out that radiation stone, that's a cool ability. It makes poison worthwhile. Yeah. What do you all think of the Abomination? Actually, I'm looking at it. He actually might be a medium base. That would be crazy. He's on 65 millimeters. Oh, is he? Oh, it says right here. Yeah, 65. Oh, okay. I didn't see that. If I had it turned sideways, that would all cut off. Yeah, I agree. I like a lot that he, you know, he really looks like what you want Omega Red to do. Like, every time I play Omega Red, I'm like, oh, I want to throw out poison, I want to do damage. And then Omega Red can take some damage, and you're like, oh, that sucks. Yeah, getting out poison with Omega Red and Warlock and stuff, it just, it doesn't feel like it does anything for you. Yeah. So, do you pair this guy with Strucker at all? He is in Hydra. Yeah. So, he's Hydra and Criminal Syndicate. I definitely think, you know, he gives Hydra a good beater to go along with Red Skull... Two? Two. Yeah. Yeah, I like him a lot. I think he's a pretty cool character. I think he'd be fun to play. His cards are crazy. That MODOK card is super odd. I want to play that card so bad. It's five power, isn't it? It is, but it's worth every one of them. It does five damage. It's gross and medium. My only complaint is that it's on MODOK's turn. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If it was on anyone's turn, it would be fucking insane. It would be absolutely insane. It is nice that it's both MODOKs, too. So, you can play for the four-card one. Yeah. I actually... I think the wildest thing on him is that long throw again. On terrain throws? Yeah. Yeah. Both him and Thor having that. That's just nasty. Yeah, a long throw. You can be a sniper now. Like, they can do more reliable damage than a silver sable at long range. I also like that his... the real sniper. Everyone he gives poison to has that ability and loses a power. Right. It makes poison so much better. Like, it stands out. I like it a lot. Because poison's already going to sap your power in the beginning of the turn, so also making it take the power there. Like, you can really start starving people's power. Right. And then you have this other attack card, the Gamma Burst. So, during his activation, Abomination can spend three to play the card, push each enemy character with the poison special condition, and within two of Abomination, away medium. That's huge. He's on a big base. That is big. Any characters within two of them with poison, you push away medium, and they take a damage. I hope he gets run, you know, everywhere in every list for a little bit, and then I actually get the benefit from the Inhumans all being immune to poison. I have seen that the whole time. Ha ha! This comes up. I mean, do you just generally ignore him? He doesn't gain that much power if you're not attacking him. I think he... Does he not generate an extra power? Only when he takes damage. During the power phase. Oh, does he have another one? He generates extra power from taking damage, plus he generates an extra power during the power phase. So, each turn he gains two, then he has a gainer, so he doesn't even have to do anything. But the flat one. Yeah, but if he whips, he still gains. Yeah, that's true. Plus, if he gains... takes damage, he gains an additional power. I'm going to say, his superpowers are ones that you really want to use, and both of them are three costs. Yeah, but you gain a two-power turn. And you only gain one attack. And even if you whiff... Yeah. So if you're within two of somebody, you're punching, I'm gaining a power, spending three, doing your poison burst, or doing a throw, and then next turn you gain two, you attack once, you can do it again. Like, he's not going to be able to do everything every turn. No, no. But if you're... I feel like if you're going one-on-one, you've got your throw. If you're in a group of people, you've got your gamma burst. He's also moving medium compared to the other ones, like Hulks, they move slow. Yeah. So, moving medium's huge. Like, Ghost Rider moves medium. Yeah. And he's all over the place. Yeah. In his box, you're also going to get the Wrecking Crew, which is what I'm super excited about. Agreed. I was very surprised that they were all put onto one base. I thought that was neat. It gives hope for a lot of other characters in the future. Oh, it's under the... Yeah. Jarvis, pick the... Out. Okay. I just... You can just search and hit W-R-E-C-K. I know. Yeah, I love how all the attacks interconnect with one another. Yeah. As a wrestling fan, I love, you know, Paul Driver as well. Right. Yeah, he seems like a lot of fun to play. I think they are set for Crime and Cabal to see who they will be. This box makes me really excited to play Crime again. Yeah, these are definitely two great additions to Crime. And it makes me want to play M.O.D.O.K. Crime. Like... I'm actually excited to add... I don't know if Obama Nation will make it into my Inhumans roster, but Wrecking Crew is definitely going in. Yeah. Well, I just want to pile Driver and Suplex on my list, so... Yeah, I definitely want to find room for the Wrecking Crew in any list I play. I think there will be a lot of fun. Put him in S.H.I.E.L.D. with the Hylian Commander. I think it will be super fun to paint the world and have a different top on each other. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have a bunch of multi-person, like... It's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. I'm not going to lie, it's going to look like you're playing a Wrecking Army across the table. That being said, I think he looks super fun to play. Yeah. I love the flavor of those cards, making your opponent choose. That's so fun. So, I love the flavor of them, and I think it's so in line with what the character is trying to do, but it reminds me a lot of M.O.D.O.K. 2 when it came out, right? I loved that create two stacks and have your opponent pick one, and it turns out that everyone knows what's up, and they're always going to choose the one that you don't want them to pick. Was it a real game, or was it against... No, it was a real game. A real game. Dan Fortman? Yes. When you were undefeated going into that game? Yeah, okay. I think the one I was. I think the options that you're presented with here with his cards are a little bit more... The one I was thinking of is the one where it's like, okay, I dazed your character or KO'd your character, and you can choose to not have that happen, but then I get to go up to five Devil... What is it? What is it? Devil's steel tokens are over there? Yeah. Yeah, they're all very interesting cards. The thing is is that you'll play that card, and most of the time we'll be like, you know what? That character's dead. That's fine. Because even if I gave you... Even if I un-KO'd that... No one's going to play that card on the first attack. It's going to... The only time someone's going to ever be like, yeah, un-daze or un-KO my character is if you're out of activations, and then you play that card on your first... your first attack, and you have another one to follow up with. They're just going to be like, no, that's fine. I think he's going to run into the problem of, like, if you were just going to splash him for that exact reason. So, unlike Emma, where you just splash Emma and you take Hellfire with you, and that's all you need. Well, with Mephisto, you also... you have his readership card that you need to put in, plus he has four other cards that are really decent to use with him. So you're not taking any of them. The last one I'm talking about is are they high enough of an opportunity cost that you want to take them in the case of a splash? You can build a total affiliation around him and just go tall with it, but if you're taking them as a splash, I don't know if the cards have enough opportunity cost to really warrant slots in your offer. Yeah. And it's going to really hurt when you go up against a push-heavy team, and they just say, nope, he's not within three of anybody. That's true. It's going to really hurt. The main reason I'm not going to play with him is because I don't want to play with him because I don't want to be playing with him because I'm really intimidated when I'm painting him. I knew that's what you were going to say. Oh, lord. You don't like red? I do. All red? All red? Yeah. Shading and everything. Boom, boom. I mean, it's better than yellow. Uh-huh. You know, he's a solid block of red, and it's like trying to get the depth and the shading and everything. It's just very intimidating. You just dump them right in the pot. Inks go a long way. I think he's the most comic-accurate, flavorful character we've had in a long time. I've always said that Rhino is the perfect character because he screams what he is in the comic books. His cards is exactly like he would be in the comics. All of his abilities seem exactly like he would be in the comics. I think Mephisto is definitely on the same page as that. Will he get played as much? I don't know. Rhino's really, really good. But I think it fits so well with what he's doing. I mean, I'm excited to get Dracula on the table. The monster mash. Dracula looks fun. Lots of stuff to do. I still feel that weird pull for me. The fact that they're bringing in the monsters. There's so many characters that they could bring in and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters and they're bringing in the monsters Yeah, I don't remember how that went Yeah, I don't remember Yeah, I don't remember how that went I don't recall playing that I don't recall playing that Well, you know Well, you know there's only one tag member there's only one tag member that's undefeated against all the other tag members that's undefeated against all the other tag members in tournaments in tournaments and he doesn't like and he doesn't like to bring it up to bring it up to bring it up You guys are in a stiff You guys are in a stiff competition, though, for your competition, though, for your already in our top 7 already in our top 7 Schmidt is in there Schmidt is in there He's one of the spider foes He's one of the spider foes who just won the last tournament who just won the last tournament No, he didn't win No, he didn't win He got second He got second in his tournament in his tournament You don't count You don't count No, I don't count No, I don't count No, I don't count You definitely have some stiff You definitely have some stiff competition in there competition in there It's going to be cool It's going to be cool I like that whole line-up I like that whole line-up I'm excited to see who's going to be number 8 I'm excited to see who's going to be number 8 Well, there are plenty Well, there are plenty Are you running up and down? Are you running up and down? Yep, we're running We'll be out of We'll be out of Tables and Towers Tables and Towers or Bazooka or Bazooka depending on what they depending on what they feel like that day feel like that day All right All right I don't have anything else I don't have anything else Does anybody have anything? Does anybody have anything? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No? No?