Marvel vs. Vipers

[Elginb]

I'm trying to think what the best Marvel strategy would be, assuming you had a flat board like we've been looking at.

Does it make sense to take the battle to the Venocs, or just sit and wait?

I can see some adavantage to sending the Hulk or Abomination out to see if they could take out a large amount of vipers right off the bat. But would it be better to turtle in the start zone and use all the heroes as blockers? That is, except for Cap, who would play the offense from behind a Mighty Marvel Meat Shield...

[CheddarLimbo]

Originally Posted by Elginb

I'm trying to think what the best Marvel strategy would be, assuming you had a flat board like we've been looking at.

Does it make sense to take the battle to the Venocs, or just sit and wait?

I can see some adavantage to sending the Hulk or Abomination out to see if they could take out a large amount of vipers right off the bat. But would it be better to turtle in the start zone and use all the heroes as blockers? That is, except for Cap, who would play the offense from behind a Mighty Marvel Meat Shield...

Do you mean Super Leap into the middle of them and then start doing Stomps?

That would work for a couple of turns (maybe two?), but then you'd be in the middle of them and they'd spread out to negate it. The Viper player just has to engage you with one to lock the hero down. With so many enemies, Hulk can't afford to take an engagement swipe, so he'll be stuck back to 1:1 attack/kill.

[winonavampire]

Originally Posted by CheddarLimbo

Do you mean Super Leap into the middle of them and then start doing Stomps?

That would work for a couple of turns (maybe two?), but then you'd be in the middle of them and they'd spread out to negate it. The Viper player just has to engage you with one to lock the hero down. With so many enemies, Hulk can't afford to take an engagement swipe, so he'll be stuck back to 1:1 attack/kill.

When I ran this scenario, this is what I did with Abomination. Super Leaped into the middle and started stomping. Except, I swarmed him getting 3 attacks each turn (and losing 3 vipers each turn), but, I don't think leaving them stomp around the starting zone is a good idea. You have to attack them 3 times a turn to get maybe 1 wound through...

[Elginb]

Originally Posted by CheddarLimbo

Do you mean Super Leap into the middle of them and then start doing Stomps?

That would work for a couple of turns (maybe two?), but then you'd be in the middle of them and they'd spread out to negate it. The Viper player just has to engage you with one to lock the hero down. With so many enemies, Hulk can't afford to take an engagement swipe, so he'll be stuck back to 1:1 attack/kill.

Well, they'd spread out, but they wouldn't be able to spread out fast enough to take juicy targets away from the Hulk. I think it would be in his best interest to take some leaving swipes if it guaranteed him, say, 5 or 6 Vipers. I mean, he's going to die, anyway, so if he can cause maximum damage, it might be a reasonable thing to do.

[Yodaking]

Okay, so instead of giving the Vipers a huge advantage by fighting it out on a flat board, here is the canyon board I created for a Marvel vs Viper battle.




It obvioudly favors the Marvel side and so it should not be any surprise that Marvel won. Early in the game, Marvel just plugged up the middle with Thanos backed by Captain America, with Iron Man setting up on the high ground.





The Vipers managed to run around the outside edge and get to Redskull a couple of times, putting 3 wounds on him before I could block up those two pathways with Hulk and Abomination.

Once the front waves of Vipers were taken down, the flanks were beefed up with some and Silver Surfer was sent forward. His ability to fly out, attack and then fly back to saftey was quite useful for taking out Vipers as they tried to regroup out of range of Iron Man.



At this point the game was clearly over and I wanted to just call it, but I finished it out just to see what the final results would be.



As you can see Iron Man was the real star of the battle. With hieght, his 2 attacks of 5, at range 6, were basically 2 automatic kills every time he was activated. With his ability to fly around, he could almost always move into a position that gave him 2 clear shots at two different Vipers no matter how much I spread them out. Captian America was a real killer too, but since I used Thanos as a bodygaurd and only 2 Vipers could attack Thanos at a time, he did not always have 3 targets avilable.

With so many Vipers I had plenty avilable to try out several differnt attack plans. None of them really worked out all that well though. I sent them up the middle trying to take down Thanos, then Captian. I sent them right or left trying to break through to take down Red Skull or get up top and hit Iron Man. It didn't really matter which way I went though, as they were killed shortly after moving. Frenzy was the only thing that let me really get an attack going and even then if rarely resulted in causing wounds since everyone had such high defense. The Vipers did almost kill off Captain, but then Thanos was Rejected by Death and returned to his body gaurd duties. Also when the Vipers got close to killing off Abomination/Hulk I just had them fall back and blocked up the flanks with a differnt Hero. So in the end the Vipers were denied any kills except for Thanos, who returned to the board before the game ended.

Here are the final results:

Iron Man: 107 Kills / 0 wounds
Captian America: 63 Kills / 4 wounds
Silver Surfer: 13 Kills / 0 wounds
Dr. Doom: 4 Kills / 1 wound
Thanos: 4 Kills / 3 Deaths, returned 3 times, finished with 0 wounds
Abomination: 2 Kills / 5 wounds
Hulk: 1 Kill / 6 wounds
Spiderman: 1 Kill / 1 wound
Venom: 0 Kills / 0 wounds
Red Skull: 0 Kills / 3 wounds

I'd say that all this experiment really proved is that who wins or loses a match-up is heavily dependant on the terrain avialable and tactics used. If the Marvel Heros are allowed to take advantage of their superpowers, like flying, they can be much more effective. Also if the terrain limits the Vipers ability to swarm/surround an opponent, they are screwed.

[winonavampire]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

Okay, so instead of giving the Vipers a huge advantage by fighting it out on a flat board, here is the canyon board I created for a Marvel vs Viper battle.

Here are the final results:

Iron Man: 107 Kills / 0 wounds
Captian America: 63 Kills / 4 wounds
Silver Surfer: 13 Kills / 0 wounds
Dr. Doom: 4 Kills / 1 wound
Thanos: 4 Kills / 3 Deaths, returned 3 times, finished with 0 wounds
Abomination: 2 Kills / 5 wounds
Hulk: 1 Kill / 6 wounds
Spiderman: 1 Kill / 1 wound
Venom: 0 Kills / 0 wounds
Red Skull: 0 Kills / 3 wounds

I'd say that all this experiment really proved is that who wins or loses a match-up is heavily dependant on the terrain avialable and tactics used. If the Marvel Heros are allowed to take advantage of their superpowers, like flying, they can be much more effective. Also if the terrain limits the Vipers ability to swarm/surround an opponent, they are screwed.

Awesome Yoda! I suspected these results when I saw your map. I am glad to see a counter example to my experiment.

[Toad Rocket]

Thats pretty interesting. I wonder how it would turn out on a BOV stlye map that doesnt favor one side so heavliy. On a map the wasnt designed to help the Marel heroes so greatly I think the outcome would still favor the vipers.

With that canyon I wonder if Red Skull was able to maintain line of sight of the heroes to take turns with them? Especially if he is in the canyone with high walls that might be an issue for the fliers. I suppose with a little care it would be ok.

[Yodaking]

For me, I never moved Red Skull. He started out lined up to look down the canyon and then only Captain and Thanos were the only ones I sent that way. I was careful to keep the guys I sent to block up each flank in LOS with Redskull and he could easily see the two guys I had flying around on top.

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