Marvel Champions - Black Panther vs Klaw

Yeah, this duffus. If you don't know Klaw from the Marvel Comics (not the guy from the MCU), this is the guy. He looks like a dud. He started out as a Fantastic Four villain and the basic premise is that he was a physicist who was transformed into solid sound. He was a regular opponent of The FF, Black Panther and others. Because of his association to the Black Panther, I choose to pit the two of them in my first Marvel Champions game away from the starting villain.

My friend Eric B had warned me that Klaw was a step up in difficulty from the Rhino. I felt comfortable with the ease to which I had dispatched the Rhino over and over and felt ready for a new (real) challenge.

I went ahead and used Black Panther with the Protection aspect and a minor tweak to the standard cards. Klaw fit with the Masters of Evil, so I used them with Klaw.

You know what? There is a decent game in here. Klaw was no cake walk. He is stubbornly resilient. At first, neither of us were making much headway (which as I discovered, is bad for the hero). The Black Widow joined my cause, and I got out a Med Team to keep her going - she helped keep the threat down while I was dinking at Klaw or whatever minion was bugging me. But then I stupidly switched over to my alter-ego and his scheme jumped to part two.

The Masters of Evil side scheme came out, which ups the threat.

I ran through my deck of cards, and when I drew an encounter (that is the penalty for running through your deck) I ended up with two minions stuck on me. Then the bad guy encounter cards ran through, which ups the threat earned each round.

Suddenly I needed to both knock out a lot of threat on the main scheme AND knock out the stupid Masters of Evil scheme so that the threat increase would go away. I couldn't do it all fast enough - the cards I was drawing just weren't what I needed when I needed them and I lost.

But you know what? I didn't feel overwhelmed. I felt like this was a close game and the bad guys won this round. If I had cake-walked through the game, I would have been disappointed. Klaw also actually felt different than the Rhino. The villain decks give you some flavor for that villain, and they did a good job with the powers and the way that things happen. For such a simple game, there are interesting choices to make and a decent story in each scenario. excited to go back to the game again for a rematch.

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