Haha, that's fair!

I feel this lol

haha i feel yah

I do love a good counter system haha, it's fun to be able to predict and play around stuff. A small piece of order in a game full of random events.

Agreed that treachery removal is a little weaker. I've seen people say it's unaffected, but without a single Shadow of the Past to block I find it worth less than before. Sure, you can be one counter away from it going over and then block the encounter card that adds the final one, but chances are your next encounter card could also bring your nemesis in. And hey, maybe a boost effect just brings it in and you never have a Shadow of the Past-equivalent as an encounter card to block. Boost cancels went up in stock though.

Oof, I dread to think what Phoenix + Heroic mode looks like with Standard 3!

Yep... And nemesis minions with Quickstrike attack twice before Step 3 of the villain phase even starts...

Yep, double Quickstrike effectively. Pretty brutal in a lot of circumstances.

Yellowjacket's side scheme likes to ruin everyone's fun haha!

Nice! I'm glad of that too as I think I said in the video, a very welcome addition

Totally fair. I like the Nowhere is Safe art but I do agree that I mostly prefer the Standard 1 art. Shadow of the Past and Advance are just especially iconic.

And worse case you can go back to Standard 1 for some of that Gang-Up goodness!

Yep, great point. I can't remember if it made the final cut of the video but I agree. On the other hand, discard effects can also discard Shadow of the Past so it's hard to weigh exactly how much it affects the comparison

Thank you! You know, I wonder if I should have said about how much harder I think it is in comparison. It varies so much due to randomness. A game with Standard 1 can be just as hard if you draw Shadow of the Past on Turn 5 in comparison to a game with Standard 3 where an revealed effect adds the final counter. Gang-Up and Drawing Nearer can both be boost cards and you won't notice a difference. But "on average" I would put Standard 3 at roughly 25% more difficult, but you could argue they peak around the same difficulty with bad luck. (Nemesis on Turn 1 more likely with S1 vs. Nemesis as a boost effect more likely in S3.) It varies a lot with the hero too. Heroes with weak nemeses see much less of a difference...

​@@VillainTheory I feel the same. I've played Standard 3 a lot, both solo and with 2 players. Just yesterday I finished an expert Mutant Genesis campaign, me piloting a Leadership Magik and my friend a Protection Iceman. Against Magneto, we already had 4 counters on the Pursued by the Past by the end of turn 1. We were praying that we won't get that last counter anytime soon, but we were unfortunate enough to get it on turn 4 (and that's kind of lucky). We almost lost even though Iceman's nemesis isn't exactly the worst, but we already had our plate full with Magneto's cards. That 3ATK quickstrike was rough (I think you mentioned a similar example in the video? Might be remembering wrong.) Later that game I got my nemesis as well, and the counters were almost about to pop a third time by the very end. I think it also depends on the villain. If it's a more difficult villain that throws a lot of stuff against you, it can be bad even if your hero is strong and has a not very difficult nemesis. But 25% more difficult on average seems about right to me. It might've been nice to mention it in the video, but the video is totally fine as is, the data is more or less telling enough.

That's totally fair. I should perhaps have talked about it here, but I do think losing the thrill of surprise is the biggest downside of Standard 3. Which is funny because I really like how much more predictable on seeing the nemesis set is in Standard 3. Pros and cons, good to mix up both perhaps in the long run - at least for me. Variance should definitely not be seen as innately negative. The randomness is card games is what makes them so engaging. In Marvel Champions, every turn you have a different hand of cards - that's a brand new puzzle in itself to take on the random puzzle that is the board after random encounter cards. Random solutions for random problems, and making the best of it. That's the hook and I love it.

That's fair! I think a lot of people prefer Standard 1 and it's great we have both. I would love a Standard 4, 5 and 6 now!

Great point! And interestingly, with some of the weaker sets, that can actually weaken the encounter deck. But overall absolutely it can be punishing.

Hm! Looking at it, I kinda think you are right. I will have to message them in case there's anything we're missing!

Nice! That's great to hear

Expert 2 is a fun way to boost it, nice! We've been debating the difficulties on Discord and there's a lot of points in both Standard 1 and 3's favour. It's so interesting how many factors there are.

Hey! Thanks for doing this! I received your email and it's definitely very interesting. Did your effort include getting counters off boost effects too?

Yes, I accounted for the four cards that have boost effects. The code creates a 30 card deck and just keeps track of the standard 3 cards, drawing one as a boost card and the next as an encounter card each turn. Then it just continues drawing like that until at the end of a turn there are 4+ counters. It records how many turns that took and that is one “game”. Then I made it play 1 million games like that. At the end it tallies up how many games finished in 1 turn, 2 turns etc.

Oh, and for Drawing Nearer I just added one counter (assuming a typical single printed resource card is revealed) and then assumed that the player dealt with the obligation. I could also run a different simulation in which the player ignores it and see what effect that would have… actually now that I’ve said that I am curious to see what the effect would be. You will get a different probability curve based on the ‘ignore the obligation’ strategy. I’ll let you know how that comes out ;-)

Nice! I do think Standard 3 is a little more complicated than Standard 1, but as long as you're helping to run the game I don't think it will make a big difference and may be more fun (simply because I think Standard 3 is more fun overall). Something to note it is it has the same amount boost icons, but not boost effects. So the villains will ATK/SCH for the same on average.

It sounds like you might get your nemeses out just as much already ha! A fun and brave twist. Very cool

Oh nice, enjoy it! And I'll see if I can find some more graphs!

Interesting, I'd wager it has a higher percentage change on win rate but nothing remotely close to Standard 2 obviously

@@VillainTheory on thinking about it it was a very nebulous thing to say. I'd very much doubt it even alters a 90% win rate down to 89% but it might knock 25% down to 23%. Anyhow I've played around 100 games with S3 and I lost one to Shadow as a boost (Venom) QED. 😃

Standard 2/Expert 2 is something I should play more in general, I've not dusted them off in a while. Definitely would be fun to talk about them!

The surprise factor and scramble to recover is a really fun part of Standard 1! ...Good luck with Standard 2! Don't put it on Ronan!

Totally fair! I do have the advantage of playing a lot of 2-player, so there's still suspense over who gets their nemesis. Though sometimes we get both eventually in one game haha

Interesting homebrew! And I definitely think Standard 3 will help you see those elusive nemeses that have been avoiding you!

Honestly convenience/reducing setup time is a great thing to consider for a lot of card game/board game stuff. If it's more difficult, and there are easier options at hand, it will be used less.

Woo!

Ahaha, I was going to mention you in the video and forgot. You defy all logic and math 🤣

@@VillainTheory 60% of the time, it works all the time.

I did say that the chances get much higher in multiplayer! Last time I played Cable (and this was just 2-player) we somehow saw Stryfe three times haha! Cable is cursed.

@@VillainTheory I am more scared of his treachery. Man that things just ends game

Totally fair! I agree that I overall prefer the art on Standard 1, and part of me wishes it didn't bring nemeses out as a boost - but part of me does like it. Different pros and cons. Curious to see if Standard 4 (one day?) lands somewhere in between.

OOF! Klaw is gonna hit you with the double boost cards, huh. At least his activation damage/threat was hopefully low!

That's a great and very interesting point! I rarely play the same hero more than twice in a row outside of testing for a video these days. If anyone else is reading these comments here, I'd love to know if you've also experienced "nemesis fatigue".

@@VillainTheoryYes, I agree with @Anondod. I prefer the unpredictability of S1 as it feels more thematic to not be able to anticipate your Nemesis. D20 wouldn’t be nearly as fun to watch without S1 😂

Love this and wish I spoke about it a bit. We've had that too. Something else from Standard 3 that we've noticed here in 2-player is that it's often timed so that we're near the end of the encounter deck when our nemesis set enters the game. So quite often we're about to get an acceleration token and suddenly most of the cards we'll see in the next villain phase are the nemesis ones. On weaker sets you are 100% right, some times it makes things a lot easier then. Other times, with worse nemesis sets, it's awful. And I think that lends itself to the overall problem with rating the difficulty increase of Standard 3. Heroes with weaker nemesis sets care about seeing theirs a lot less. And heroes with a meaner nemesis get a much steeper difficulty increase. For my money, I think getting the nemesis sets more often is better overall. I think minions and side schemes are the most interesting types of encounter card, and I think the hit of both at once generally outweighs any benefits that I can think of (though Unleash Nova Force maybe comes closer here, especially with Specialized Training and Side-by-Side...).

@@VillainTheory I agree that generally I do like getting the nemesis more often and generally expecting to see it. With Shadows of the Past, it feels like rotten luck and I’ll sometimes skip it especially if I’m testing a deck (or custom). But with S3, the nemesis set becomes something you expect you could see starting around turn 4-5, so it’s not as feel-bad and you actually feel smart for building your deck / playing in such a way that you can handle the nemesis and side scheme when they hit the table.

@@andyn2854 That's also an amazing point. I mentioned that you can kind of prepare for the nemesis in Standard 3 while it just hits you out of the blue in Standard 1, but you put it in a much more direct and accurate way here that reflects the experience that creates. I wish I had thought of saying that too, ha! P.S. Are you interested in taking part in a small collab with some other creators in the community? It would end up on my YT channel - and it would ask for a minute or so of video, audio, or 1-2 short paragraphs. However you'd want to contribute. No pressure but I'd love to feature someone else from the custom content community.

@@VillainTheoryYeah, thanks, let me know details and I’ll see if I can contribute.

Yeah, poor Phoenix... It does add more variance in that regard, you are right, but I would personally say it's somewhat made up for by the points. 1) You can generally see your nemesis set getting more and more likely, which means you can prepare for it to some degree. And 2), by happening later, you are set up more and better able to handle it. It still hurts a lot though, notably with certain nemesis sets, notably when alter-ego. So it's not a perfect solution if low variance is your primary goal. For me, I think the variance it helps with is whether you will or will not see your nemesis in any given game. For Standard 1, it's often as low as 15-35%. For Standard 3, it's more like 80-95%. So I suppose it's a matter of perspective and what you prefer.

Ha! Let's kick it up a gear and play with Standard 2 as well!

@@VillainTheory I've done a several S2 & S3 combo option :) {signed, masochist} Admittedly, this does dilute the Enc-Deck in regards to Villain specific cards, so it **can** be a benefit. Arg, "modular sets"! We love 'em! 😀

No Okay maybe

@@VillainTheory 😂😂

Hi Agent Venom, I'm Valkyrie and I'd like to face Standard 0 (with no way for the nemesis to enter play!?)

@@VillainTheory Hers really is ridiculous lol

​@@VillainTheoryguess you're stuck playing wrecking crew