Factions First Blood

Last Thursday's Marvel Factions event was great. It was disheartening to see that three of our regular players declined to attend, but the four of us who were there had a great time pitting our heroes and villains against one another.

Roy and Scott both followed the BYOTT format as laid out in the tournament rules with Defenders/Masters of Evil and Masters of Evil/New Warriors respectively. Anthony joined us with his Green Lantern/Anti-Matter offering and I played a Heroes For Hire/Defenders team-up.

We played three rounds so that everyone was able to play all the other attendees. My first game against Anthony went well in my favor, although some willpower defense boosts and hidden characters were looking troublesome. I was able to get a 5 and 6 turn Luke Cage / Iron First pairing out on the board that allowed me to get into the hidden area and have some beefy stats to work with. By the end of turn 6 things looked good and a short turn 7 cemented the victory.

My second game against Roy started out grimly with my initial board being very sparse, only recruiting a single two-drop until turn four. The balance started swinging back and forth at that point, and while the specific details have exited from my short-term memory, I recall a very tight final turn with me only barely edging out a victory. That game was a lot of fun due to the big control swings back and forth!

The final game against Scott was an interesting one. He had some troublesome exhaustion effects which not only prevented me from substituting characters into play, but also from attacking with some of my bigger drops. A few character powers and well-timed plot twists allowed me to over come this and attack up the curve with my smaller characters on turns 7 and 8. While Scott may disagree I think it was a solid game on both fronts. Had he one or two more exhaustion effects to play out I think the game would have shifted in his favour.

I don't usually win 3 games in a row, so it was a lot of fun for me. I trust it was fun for all the other players as well. Simply having some new cards to explore interactions with, either in-set or adding to existing decks will be a lot of fun. I sincerely hope that some of our other players will think so too and return to the fold as we enjoy Marvel Factions throughout the summer and into fall!

Updated Ages List

With Factions becoming legal for our group as of May 15th, 2011 I've revised the Age list. It can be found HERE.