Ooh, shutting down as many minions as possible sounds like a fun challenge. Maybe even throw in Phoenix with the Karma ally - Mind Control, Mental Paralysis and Karma controlling a minion shuts down three more!
I really like Invisibility Gear. You're already playing a Justice deck, and if you know there's a really big attack coming your way, you can just turn it into a bit of threat that you can deal with later. It's basically a Protection card in Justice
I think Invisibility Gear has a few more use cases that are worth looking at. One is as a safety net for low hp heroes. Maybe you can take one hit from the villain and you do that, but then you reveal and encounter card that would make them attack again and knock you out. Invisibility Gear may be able to keep you alive by trading that attack for some threat that you can presumably handle much easier what with playing Justice and all. For this situation it's a singleton you put out there and use if the need arises, not a card you pack three of to use as much as possible. (Though in mutliplayer maybe you bring enough for the whole class to give everyone the same ability.) Justice Nightcrawler might like this, I think - he can easily handle one attack from the villain, but the second may be bad if it forces him to exhaust. Similarly, if you're in a bad spot where you can't survive the villain and all the minions attacking you or all of them scheming, but you can handle one of them scheming and the rest attacking. This allows you to split them up a bit. I've been in plenty of situations where neither hero form nor alter-ego is attractive because of a strong minion presence. If you're a strongly over-thwarting Justice player in a 3-4 player game this could also relieve some pressure from the Protection player if they're having a rough turn. "You don't need to protect me from that, I'll just add some threat instead." It could also be useful in a deck where you spread around a lot of confuse. If you confuse the villain on the turn you flip back from alter-ego, this essentially turns the confuse into a stun (if I understand the timing correctly). Jubilee can go shopping for it since it's an Item, so this could be useful for her. In a SHIELD deck Jemma can pay for it which will make the average cost go down at least a little, depending on how many other tech cards you're running. Speculatively, there could be more cards that trigger off of enemies scheming that could make for more useful combos than Sting Operation, but that's obviously just guessing. It would be on brand for the spy theme, though. So I agree that this is at least partly a tech card (I could see using this to make Juggernaut a lot less dangerous for example), but I think it could also be useful as something you put on the table as an emergency button to press when things are about to go sideways or to gain some more use out of a surplus that would otherwise be wasted. Is this a card I would put in every Justice deck for every hero? Absolutely not. But I think it's a card I will often include if I need a little bit of cheap insurance.
Well firstly thank you for the amazing in-depth comment! I appreciate you taking the time to share ideas here! So I had to check I didn't edit it out but around 3:56 I mention Invisibility Gear as an emergency option when getting attacked! So I agree it's got some use as a panic button. I didn't go deep into it though. To me, I feel like this is a way you might use it but not the reason to bring it in a deck. My main counter is that there are a million allies for +1 cost (2-cost) that do something, sometimes multiple somethings, and then sit there as emergency blocks. Which leads me to think that, unless the scenario is likely to hit you with overkill, you put the extra 2-cost ally in instead. If there is overkill, great now Thanos's Avatar of Death is completely countered and I love it. But it brings me back to thinking it's best as a tech card against a few encounters. (Which is totally legit if that is what it ends up generally being.) Regarding helping a Protection player, to play devil's advocate, is I kind of think that having a dedicated Protection player is actually an argument against needing Invisibility Gear. Sorry if it sounds like I'm shooting your points down! I haven't actually used the card in a game, obviously, so I would be very happy to be proven wrong and have another card I'm including in more places. I really like Jemma for this, great shout. The only thing is, and I fear I might sound like a broken record, but my train of thought is: that greatly reduces the pool of heroes to those that might take her, need a panic button, and can deal with the threat added on. Suddenly we're back in niche territory. But niche isn't a code word for bad or anything! I tried to convey in the video that I do actually like the card, so hopefully this hasn't come off as too negative. The biggest concern I really have is that all my decks are already bursting with cards and it's hard to stay at 40. Often I am at 41-43. And so I worry that Invisibility Gear would often be one of my first cuts. 😅
@ Haha, no worries! You're making good points, and I was probably pushing a bit hard to make it work. My guess (or maybe just hope) is that we'll get some kind of interaction that will make it better, but we'll see.
Great vid! I agree the Raft is so fun and exciting to play around. I can already see fun mini-challenges of trying to lock up all the “big bads” of the minions in game. One thing I’d say for Invisibility Gear is actually against some minions it could be useful. For example, Black Widow grabs Taskmaster with Face the Past, lets him do a big scheme before defeating him. Still niche, but I like the possibility of those kind of combos.
A big scheme in combination with Informant? That's fun! I still think it lives in Extremely Niche land unless we get a really big combo piece (e.g. a well-costed event that triggers when an enemy schemes against you in hero form?) but that's okay. If it was, say, 0-cost, it might be too effective at denying certain enemies.
@@VillainTheory so true, it’s got to be a difficult balance between “too strong” and “not quite strong enough”. Definitely lands in the niche category regardless. Might be more cards like that at this point in the game’s life cycle. Which I don’t mind, as long as they’re fun!
I do think playing it in a SHIELD build to get 4-6 threat removal over time while having a good target to exhaust for events is pretty good. But locking away a boss minion is amazing
This would be really fun with in Venom Justice with Face The Past. It’d be an absurd amount of threat removal, and then the Symbiotes would dilute the pool of which minions can break out. I can’t wait for this card!
Face the Past with Venom is so crazy! I believe they have 1 SCH, so that's 4 threat removed for all four of them but one will pop back out. Or 3 threat removed if you don't seal one in.
@ I could have sworn they had 2 SCH but you’re right, it’s just 1. At that point, you’d be better off just activating Multigun twice and thwarting for 4. Oh well. Venom + Face The Past is still a fun combo in Aggression.
I feel like Invisibility Gear can be very effective against certain nemesis minions or minions with quick strike that can be revealed as a facedown boost and hence can activate twice in a row against you, and if you're running justice it's really easy to remove that threat next turn instead of dying this turn. Also, seeing as how it's an upgrade, it can put into play and be saved for later. The last game i played, i ended up having back to back to back to back to back cards that surged, putting minions with quick strike into play and giving the villain additional activations and i ended up taking just enough damage from full health to zero. Being able to ignore just one of those would have kept me alive and allowed me to win the game. And that wasn't anything i could have anticipated the encounter deck was going to do to me, but here we are.
I think my biggest and easiest counter to this would be that an ally could have provided you everything Invisibility Gear would here in this situation, but without needing to make the minions scheme either.
Im looking at the raft as a great duo card working with an aggression player. Aggression players get so much value off a minion defeat. The raft is a great way to (1) Get at leaet one minion out every turn (2) The aggression player gets bonuses for that minion being in play (eg Thor, Bring It) (3) The aggression player gets a bonus for killing the minion (overkill, Hall of Heroes, chase them down, moment of triumph) (4) You get a bonuse little bit of threat removal when they go back to the Raft. Also, the raft makes the "minion upgrade" cards in the aspects much more viable, because you can guarantee a target, so you can get the bonus (gatekeeper comes to mind, and i think theres one that heals you when you defeat the minion?) This style of play would require you to be picky, though. Its not a forced response, so you can pick which minions you send there. If your plan was to be a minion-grinder, you would want low health, low threat minions without dangerous keywords/abilities, to be "imprisoned" and continually escape from the raft
I'm definitely looking forward to it as a duo card too! I do think you need a lot of value to make it worth giving yourself an extra minion but, in the right place, there's so much potential. Especially if, as you say, the minions aren't too difficult to deal with.
Cable has an interaction with Invisibility Gear. Temporal Leap is Hero Interrupt so in solo you can actually trigger it easily and replay your side scheme
I think invisible gear is mainly for minion instead of villain. Quite a lot minion has higher ATK than SCH and some nasty effects. While Villain scheming is terrible trade, minion SCH is fixed (without Villainous keyword) and less threatening. I agree that 1 cost is not ideal and the effect is nishe. However, I don't think it's that bad.
I think there's an argument to say that putting the 1-cost towards defeating the minion might be better. Quickstrike and Teamwork are interesting for it but it's going to be very niche again to match up against them where it makes a difference. But I don't want to come off too negative. Some people love building to counter specific villain/mod set combos! I think that's where this thrives.
The Raft really is just a perfect thematic design. Hopefully we get a Justice minion summon effect at some point to complement it. A really powerful spot for Manifold could be Justice/Leadership Spider-woman to help get down Mighty Avengers. Bucky in Wakanda is an MCU-only thing as far as I can tell. I don't think he has any connection in the comics unless it's been done very recently. Generally the game leans towards the comics, so I don't know if we'll see any more Wakanda support there. Since Shuri might be the only pack with Wakanda support, I wonder if we'll see a non-unique Dora Milaje ally to help make sure that package has enough support.
Justice minion summoning would be so good! I really hope we see something like that. I am guessing we'll get two more named Dora Milaje but have no idea really
I think thor is going to love The Raft. He already wants to run justice in solo because of his low thwart. So the raft will help with that along with giving him card draw threw minion engagment.
Great analysis! All interesting cards, expecially The Raft. In the most conservative case, it will eliminate 3 minions "permanently". Can't wait to play this new wave! Thanks for the video!
A couple of points about The Raft as well (but a lot shorter, I promise!). Mainly, for me the primary purpose is to keep bad minions out of play, and especially the worst nemeses. I'd gladly put this into any Phoenix Justice deck just to keep Dark Phoenix down to a single appearance. In a multiplayer game and/or with Standard III I think this is even more useful as the nemeses tend to show up more times in those situations. Also many scenarios have one or two minions that are much worse than the average encounter card and are well worth keeping out of circulation. As a minor point, I think evaluating the threat removal from the average Scheme of the minions in a scenario is a bit misleading since you choose which minions to put under The Raft. If you're using it primarily to remove threat, you should probably look at the minions with the highest Scheme rather than the average for all of them.
I'll drop a proper reply when I get more time, just want to say I do at some point say that you can wait and pick the perfect minions with higher SCH but that it's going to lower the tempo. Some of these scenarios only have 1-2 minions with that kind of SCH. It could be a long wait in lower player counts and isn't guaranteed in the higher ones necessarily. Will find the time stamp when I'm back!
Okay! I talk about waiting for the juicy high SCH minions at 15:41. At 1-2 player especially, I expect it to be a bit slow. But it is totally valid and your ability to do so will vary with the scenario, luck and what kind of pressure you're under. Some scenarios will be great for finding more higher SCH minions more easily, but they are also the ones with higher average SCH. Dark Phoenix is a great shout! Unfortunately Standard III says "find" your minion, and the Raft doesn't protect against "find" as far as I can tell by the rules. "Find" only excludes a few areas such as facedown encounter cards. But Phoenix's obligation does get shut down! Amazing. Going to love that. To go more into the topic of nemesis minions though, several heroes have a high SCH nemesis minion so, with some help from Face the Past, that is a great little combo. The Raft is such an intriguing card with many different angles
@@VillainTheory Sorry for missing that! And a big d'oh on "find"! I don't know why I thought they were protected from that. Well, at least you're not going to just draw her from the deck.
Great analysis, per usual. If one is running Government Liaison, I so see a card like Raft increasing in value as well. You may have mentioned that already, but I can't remember from watching this late last night. 🙂
Maybe I missed it here - is the Raft a Forced response? If not, what is stopping a player from getting 3 minions then just saying "nah I'm good, I won't put them under"
Absolutely nothing is stopping someone from just not triggering it! There's a couple points where I say about not wanting to add more minions to The Raft and that's what I meant. Perhaps I should have stopped to explain that more clearly, oops. I generally think, aside from some specific builds, that's going to be the best move. Stop at 3.
Also, haven't watched the whole video yet but I think Thor loves The Raft; if he gets those 4 minions under it he has guaranteed card-draw every villain phase, right??
I think Thor will like it but I think there are a bunch of subtle downsides that don't make it immediately spectacular. One of which I forgot to cover in the video was that if The Raft removes threat every turn, there may not be enough threat around to use Defender of the Nine Realms to its full potential. So I think you really need to build into it. It's something I want to test.
So if you do a big AoE attack and clear multiple minions from play, can you put all of them under The Raft and clear threat equal to their combined SCH? And would you resolve each minion one at a time, giving you flexibility as to which schemes you remove threat from per minion? If so...well that's just great.
Wow. The man who made Star Lord Web Warriors deck thinks the card thats obviously for Wakanda characters won't be too good outside them😅 I do wonder if we will be adding a few more cards that make scheming more desirable than it currently stands... Unless we have some other reason to make characters scheme, Invisibility Gear seems super niche. I will say AOA gives more breathing room even in solo, and it looks like AOS might be the same, but not sure I ever see running this in a general deck. I guess it lets you damage the minions with Quake... Sting Operation seems to have a lot of minions it's kind of built for, especially in AOS. But if you won't be flipping regularly or are not Nick Fury, not sure it actually has a ton of utility outside of an AE only build. Raft does look super fun. Good point on it being another shield support for all the great Shield stuff. My biggest problem with it, is often minions are the easiest and most fun encounter cards to deal with. Those big minion captures are awesome, but not entirely sure I want to capture the average minion, especially in earlier scenarios. Undercover is a nice solo card, and probably two players. Assuming I'm not way off base with my prediction, Silk will love this card. Totally a guess obviously. Manifold looks awesome, especially for those need a key upgrade heros. Antman and Angel were my first two very onvious includes. Good call on applying it to anyone. I really love the design space for Dora Milaje. Until we see the other cards in the set its hard to see if my excitement is misplaced, but its a fun design space for the game I don't think we have anywhere else. I do kind of wish they were playing with it somewhere likely to get further expansion, however. Maybe if it works they can use it for a bigger trait later on.
Haha! Well... Web-Warrior allies like Ghost-Spider find any hero's hero cards, and Web of Life and Destiny simply draws a card. Dora Milaje and Okoye reference the Wakanda and/or Dora Milaje trait. The benefits seem more restricted! But perhaps Okoye is equivalent to the Peter Parker basic ally, and the other Dora Milaje have some juicy benefits for the general hero roster!
I love the idea - but had to double check the rules. Unfortunately it looks like, to me, that he can escape when any card asks you to "find" him. Which some of his do say. Guess it's thematic for him to teleport out at least...!
I've been playing Nightcrawler this week, and I thought the same thing VT. "Find him" doesn't say to search the deck and discard pile. Even if he's *in play*, it doesn't matter. Find him. Deal him. No mercy. At least his side scheme has that "when defeated" effect
@@VillainTheory That's a real shame because as much as I love playing Nightcrawler Azazel is absolutely brutal. Would have been much better to just have him sit in the raft and forget about him lol
![Shuri's Black Panther Deep Dive [Marvel Champions]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LL8F77CjfDg/mqdefault.jpg)
![Shuri's Black Panther Deep Dive [Marvel Champions]](/img/tr.png)
Can see a fun heavy minion scenario using The Raft to lock up minions, Magneto wrapping them in metal , and a protection player pinning them down.
Ooh, shutting down as many minions as possible sounds like a fun challenge. Maybe even throw in Phoenix with the Karma ally - Mind Control, Mental Paralysis and Karma controlling a minion shuts down three more!
Your invisibility gag in the beginning was elite haha. Great vid VT!
Haha! Glad you enjoyed it!
VT: now with special effects!
It's all high budget, state of the art CGI
Who says it was special effects? 😎
@@estrada263 He did recently allude to possibly being James Bond. Maybe he really does have an invisibility suit.
I like my decks shuffled, not stirred
I’m lucky to own everything regarding MC, and honestly I’m not too thrilled by the Shield expansion, but info like this gets me really excited!
I can't rate an expansion before it's out but I'm pretty confident there will be some absolute gems in Agents of SHIELD!
I really like Invisibility Gear. You're already playing a Justice deck, and if you know there's a really big attack coming your way, you can just turn it into a bit of threat that you can deal with later. It's basically a Protection card in Justice
Ha! Great opening! Love the analysis on these new cards. Can't wait for the pack to release! Thanks VT!
Thanks for watching! Now I'm heading back to stealth mode... 🕵️
I think Invisibility Gear has a few more use cases that are worth looking at.
One is as a safety net for low hp heroes. Maybe you can take one hit from the villain and you do that, but then you reveal and encounter card that would make them attack again and knock you out. Invisibility Gear may be able to keep you alive by trading that attack for some threat that you can presumably handle much easier what with playing Justice and all. For this situation it's a singleton you put out there and use if the need arises, not a card you pack three of to use as much as possible. (Though in mutliplayer maybe you bring enough for the whole class to give everyone the same ability.) Justice Nightcrawler might like this, I think - he can easily handle one attack from the villain, but the second may be bad if it forces him to exhaust.
Similarly, if you're in a bad spot where you can't survive the villain and all the minions attacking you or all of them scheming, but you can handle one of them scheming and the rest attacking. This allows you to split them up a bit. I've been in plenty of situations where neither hero form nor alter-ego is attractive because of a strong minion presence.
If you're a strongly over-thwarting Justice player in a 3-4 player game this could also relieve some pressure from the Protection player if they're having a rough turn. "You don't need to protect me from that, I'll just add some threat instead."
It could also be useful in a deck where you spread around a lot of confuse. If you confuse the villain on the turn you flip back from alter-ego, this essentially turns the confuse into a stun (if I understand the timing correctly). Jubilee can go shopping for it since it's an Item, so this could be useful for her.
In a SHIELD deck Jemma can pay for it which will make the average cost go down at least a little, depending on how many other tech cards you're running.
Speculatively, there could be more cards that trigger off of enemies scheming that could make for more useful combos than Sting Operation, but that's obviously just guessing. It would be on brand for the spy theme, though.
So I agree that this is at least partly a tech card (I could see using this to make Juggernaut a lot less dangerous for example), but I think it could also be useful as something you put on the table as an emergency button to press when things are about to go sideways or to gain some more use out of a surplus that would otherwise be wasted.
Is this a card I would put in every Justice deck for every hero? Absolutely not. But I think it's a card I will often include if I need a little bit of cheap insurance.
Well firstly thank you for the amazing in-depth comment! I appreciate you taking the time to share ideas here!
So I had to check I didn't edit it out but around 3:56 I mention Invisibility Gear as an emergency option when getting attacked! So I agree it's got some use as a panic button. I didn't go deep into it though.
To me, I feel like this is a way you might use it but not the reason to bring it in a deck. My main counter is that there are a million allies for +1 cost (2-cost) that do something, sometimes multiple somethings, and then sit there as emergency blocks. Which leads me to think that, unless the scenario is likely to hit you with overkill, you put the extra 2-cost ally in instead. If there is overkill, great now Thanos's Avatar of Death is completely countered and I love it. But it brings me back to thinking it's best as a tech card against a few encounters. (Which is totally legit if that is what it ends up generally being.)
Regarding helping a Protection player, to play devil's advocate, is I kind of think that having a dedicated Protection player is actually an argument against needing Invisibility Gear. Sorry if it sounds like I'm shooting your points down! I haven't actually used the card in a game, obviously, so I would be very happy to be proven wrong and have another card I'm including in more places.
I really like Jemma for this, great shout. The only thing is, and I fear I might sound like a broken record, but my train of thought is: that greatly reduces the pool of heroes to those that might take her, need a panic button, and can deal with the threat added on. Suddenly we're back in niche territory. But niche isn't a code word for bad or anything! I tried to convey in the video that I do actually like the card, so hopefully this hasn't come off as too negative.
The biggest concern I really have is that all my decks are already bursting with cards and it's hard to stay at 40. Often I am at 41-43. And so I worry that Invisibility Gear would often be one of my first cuts. 😅
@ Haha, no worries! You're making good points, and I was probably pushing a bit hard to make it work.
My guess (or maybe just hope) is that we'll get some kind of interaction that will make it better, but we'll see.
Ahh I like it though, discussion is great and maybe we just need to push a little more to find the perfect way to use it!
@@VillainTheory Agreed!
Great vid! I agree the Raft is so fun and exciting to play around. I can already see fun mini-challenges of trying to lock up all the “big bads” of the minions in game.
One thing I’d say for Invisibility Gear is actually against some minions it could be useful. For example, Black Widow grabs Taskmaster with Face the Past, lets him do a big scheme before defeating him. Still niche, but I like the possibility of those kind of combos.
A big scheme in combination with Informant? That's fun! I still think it lives in Extremely Niche land unless we get a really big combo piece (e.g. a well-costed event that triggers when an enemy schemes against you in hero form?) but that's okay. If it was, say, 0-cost, it might be too effective at denying certain enemies.
@@VillainTheory so true, it’s got to be a difficult balance between “too strong” and “not quite strong enough”.
Definitely lands in the niche category regardless. Might be more cards like that at this point in the game’s life cycle. Which I don’t mind, as long as they’re fun!
I definitely don't consider the Raft as threat removal. It is entirely about removing minions from the game.
I do think playing it in a SHIELD build to get 4-6 threat removal over time while having a good target to exhaust for events is pretty good. But locking away a boss minion is amazing
This would be really fun with in Venom Justice with Face The Past. It’d be an absurd amount of threat removal, and then the Symbiotes would dilute the pool of which minions can break out. I can’t wait for this card!
Face the Past with Venom is so crazy! I believe they have 1 SCH, so that's 4 threat removed for all four of them but one will pop back out. Or 3 threat removed if you don't seal one in.
@ I could have sworn they had 2 SCH but you’re right, it’s just 1. At that point, you’d be better off just activating Multigun twice and thwarting for 4. Oh well. Venom + Face The Past is still a fun combo in Aggression.
I feel like Invisibility Gear can be very effective against certain nemesis minions or minions with quick strike that can be revealed as a facedown boost and hence can activate twice in a row against you, and if you're running justice it's really easy to remove that threat next turn instead of dying this turn.
Also, seeing as how it's an upgrade, it can put into play and be saved for later. The last game i played, i ended up having back to back to back to back to back cards that surged, putting minions with quick strike into play and giving the villain additional activations and i ended up taking just enough damage from full health to zero. Being able to ignore just one of those would have kept me alive and allowed me to win the game.
And that wasn't anything i could have anticipated the encounter deck was going to do to me, but here we are.
I think my biggest and easiest counter to this would be that an ally could have provided you everything Invisibility Gear would here in this situation, but without needing to make the minions scheme either.
Im looking at the raft as a great duo card working with an aggression player. Aggression players get so much value off a minion defeat. The raft is a great way to
(1) Get at leaet one minion out every turn
(2) The aggression player gets bonuses for that minion being in play (eg Thor, Bring It)
(3) The aggression player gets a bonus for killing the minion (overkill, Hall of Heroes, chase them down, moment of triumph)
(4) You get a bonuse little bit of threat removal when they go back to the Raft.
Also, the raft makes the "minion upgrade" cards in the aspects much more viable, because you can guarantee a target, so you can get the bonus (gatekeeper comes to mind, and i think theres one that heals you when you defeat the minion?)
This style of play would require you to be picky, though. Its not a forced response, so you can pick which minions you send there. If your plan was to be a minion-grinder, you would want low health, low threat minions without dangerous keywords/abilities, to be "imprisoned" and continually escape from the raft
I'm definitely looking forward to it as a duo card too! I do think you need a lot of value to make it worth giving yourself an extra minion but, in the right place, there's so much potential. Especially if, as you say, the minions aren't too difficult to deal with.
Cable has an interaction with Invisibility Gear. Temporal Leap is Hero Interrupt so in solo you can actually trigger it easily and replay your side scheme
That's a fun trick!
I think invisible gear is mainly for minion instead of villain.
Quite a lot minion has higher ATK than SCH and some nasty effects. While Villain scheming is terrible trade, minion SCH is fixed (without Villainous keyword) and less threatening.
I agree that 1 cost is not ideal and the effect is nishe. However, I don't think it's that bad.
I think there's an argument to say that putting the 1-cost towards defeating the minion might be better. Quickstrike and Teamwork are interesting for it but it's going to be very niche again to match up against them where it makes a difference.
But I don't want to come off too negative. Some people love building to counter specific villain/mod set combos! I think that's where this thrives.
The Raft really is just a perfect thematic design. Hopefully we get a Justice minion summon effect at some point to complement it.
A really powerful spot for Manifold could be Justice/Leadership Spider-woman to help get down Mighty Avengers.
Bucky in Wakanda is an MCU-only thing as far as I can tell. I don't think he has any connection in the comics unless it's been done very recently. Generally the game leans towards the comics, so I don't know if we'll see any more Wakanda support there. Since Shuri might be the only pack with Wakanda support, I wonder if we'll see a non-unique Dora Milaje ally to help make sure that package has enough support.
Justice minion summoning would be so good! I really hope we see something like that.
I am guessing we'll get two more named Dora Milaje but have no idea really
I think thor is going to love The Raft. He already wants to run justice in solo because of his low thwart. So the raft will help with that along with giving him card draw threw minion engagment.
Part of me just wants to imprison Loki!
Ahhh so much respect for Beat Cop!!!!
Beat Cop for the win!
If you can't beat them, join them!
Great analysis! All interesting cards, expecially The Raft. In the most conservative case, it will eliminate 3 minions "permanently". Can't wait to play this new wave! Thanks for the video!
Hey Oreste, thanks for watching!
A couple of points about The Raft as well (but a lot shorter, I promise!).
Mainly, for me the primary purpose is to keep bad minions out of play, and especially the worst nemeses. I'd gladly put this into any Phoenix Justice deck just to keep Dark Phoenix down to a single appearance. In a multiplayer game and/or with Standard III I think this is even more useful as the nemeses tend to show up more times in those situations. Also many scenarios have one or two minions that are much worse than the average encounter card and are well worth keeping out of circulation.
As a minor point, I think evaluating the threat removal from the average Scheme of the minions in a scenario is a bit misleading since you choose which minions to put under The Raft. If you're using it primarily to remove threat, you should probably look at the minions with the highest Scheme rather than the average for all of them.
I'll drop a proper reply when I get more time, just want to say I do at some point say that you can wait and pick the perfect minions with higher SCH but that it's going to lower the tempo. Some of these scenarios only have 1-2 minions with that kind of SCH. It could be a long wait in lower player counts and isn't guaranteed in the higher ones necessarily.
Will find the time stamp when I'm back!
Okay! I talk about waiting for the juicy high SCH minions at 15:41. At 1-2 player especially, I expect it to be a bit slow. But it is totally valid and your ability to do so will vary with the scenario, luck and what kind of pressure you're under. Some scenarios will be great for finding more higher SCH minions more easily, but they are also the ones with higher average SCH.
Dark Phoenix is a great shout! Unfortunately Standard III says "find" your minion, and the Raft doesn't protect against "find" as far as I can tell by the rules. "Find" only excludes a few areas such as facedown encounter cards. But Phoenix's obligation does get shut down! Amazing. Going to love that.
To go more into the topic of nemesis minions though, several heroes have a high SCH nemesis minion so, with some help from Face the Past, that is a great little combo.
The Raft is such an intriguing card with many different angles
@@VillainTheory Sorry for missing that!
And a big d'oh on "find"! I don't know why I thought they were protected from that. Well, at least you're not going to just draw her from the deck.
Sting operation vs master mold is going to be clutch!
That will be super handy!
Great analysis, per usual. If one is running Government Liaison, I so see a card like Raft increasing in value as well. You may have mentioned that already, but I can't remember from watching this late last night. 🙂
I'm not a big fan of Government Liaison but this looks to be the expansion/wave to really put it back on my map! I didn't mention it, good shout.
Maybe I missed it here - is the Raft a Forced response? If not, what is stopping a player from getting 3 minions then just saying "nah I'm good, I won't put them under"
Absolutely nothing is stopping someone from just not triggering it! There's a couple points where I say about not wanting to add more minions to The Raft and that's what I meant. Perhaps I should have stopped to explain that more clearly, oops.
I generally think, aside from some specific builds, that's going to be the best move. Stop at 3.
Also, haven't watched the whole video yet but I think Thor loves The Raft; if he gets those 4 minions under it he has guaranteed card-draw every villain phase, right??
Actually, guaranteed card-draw *and* threat removal
I think Thor will like it but I think there are a bunch of subtle downsides that don't make it immediately spectacular. One of which I forgot to cover in the video was that if The Raft removes threat every turn, there may not be enough threat around to use Defender of the Nine Realms to its full potential.
So I think you really need to build into it. It's something I want to test.
Yeah I'm not great at deck building, so I shall defer to your expertise!
On a more serious note: Shadows of the Past "rescues" your nemesis minion from the Raft, right?
Nope! Standard III's Pursued by the Past rescues it, but regular Shadow of the Past only looks at the set aside area.
@@VillainTheory Nice! That incentivizes Face the Past even moreso.
Yes and no. If Shadow of the Past can't find your minion, it still brings in the side scheme and then surges in addition...
So if you do a big AoE attack and clear multiple minions from play, can you put all of them under The Raft and clear threat equal to their combined SCH? And would you resolve each minion one at a time, giving you flexibility as to which schemes you remove threat from per minion? If so...well that's just great.
I believe so. Dive Bomb could be really interesting with it
Wow. The man who made Star Lord Web Warriors deck thinks the card thats obviously for Wakanda characters won't be too good outside them😅
I do wonder if we will be adding a few more cards that make scheming more desirable than it currently stands...
Unless we have some other reason to make characters scheme, Invisibility Gear seems super niche. I will say AOA gives more breathing room even in solo, and it looks like AOS might be the same, but not sure I ever see running this in a general deck. I guess it lets you damage the minions with Quake...
Sting Operation seems to have a lot of minions it's kind of built for, especially in AOS. But if you won't be flipping regularly or are not Nick Fury, not sure it actually has a ton of utility outside of an AE only build.
Raft does look super fun. Good point on it being another shield support for all the great Shield stuff. My biggest problem with it, is often minions are the easiest and most fun encounter cards to deal with. Those big minion captures are awesome, but not entirely sure I want to capture the average minion, especially in earlier scenarios.
Undercover is a nice solo card, and probably two players. Assuming I'm not way off base with my prediction, Silk will love this card. Totally a guess obviously.
Manifold looks awesome, especially for those need a key upgrade heros. Antman and Angel were my first two very onvious includes. Good call on applying it to anyone.
I really love the design space for Dora Milaje. Until we see the other cards in the set its hard to see if my excitement is misplaced, but its a fun design space for the game I don't think we have anywhere else. I do kind of wish they were playing with it somewhere likely to get further expansion, however. Maybe if it works they can use it for a bigger trait later on.
Haha! Well... Web-Warrior allies like Ghost-Spider find any hero's hero cards, and Web of Life and Destiny simply draws a card. Dora Milaje and Okoye reference the Wakanda and/or Dora Milaje trait. The benefits seem more restricted!
But perhaps Okoye is equivalent to the Peter Parker basic ally, and the other Dora Milaje have some juicy benefits for the general hero roster!
Raft will be brilliant for getting rid of azazel
I love the idea - but had to double check the rules. Unfortunately it looks like, to me, that he can escape when any card asks you to "find" him. Which some of his do say.
Guess it's thematic for him to teleport out at least...!
I've been playing Nightcrawler this week, and I thought the same thing VT. "Find him" doesn't say to search the deck and discard pile. Even if he's *in play*, it doesn't matter. Find him. Deal him. No mercy. At least his side scheme has that "when defeated" effect
@@VillainTheory That's a real shame because as much as I love playing Nightcrawler Azazel is absolutely brutal. Would have been much better to just have him sit in the raft and forget about him lol
Great breakdown, I’m a huge fan of control and manipulation of the encounter deck.
Thanks! And yes, I'm really glad they're leaning into it for Justice! I feel like we might even get more this wave