Hero Review: Bishop - A Surprise S-Tier? 

I always learn some new ideas while watching your videos. Now I have some new decks to go try. Thanks.

I've played another 10+ games with Bishop now, and I think I have a more clear view of his strengths and weaknesses. He excels against villains who don't have a lot of minions and who may hit hard but rarely activate multiple times. Once he has his uniform in play, Bishop can take one strong hit pretty much every turn and just keep going. With his rifle he can usually clear a weak-to-moderate minion each turn, either thwarting a bit himself or using his allies for that, and once he's charged up he can take a big chunk of health from the villain. However, if the villain tends to activate multiple times (like Venom Goblin) or if they have a lot minions (again, like Venom Goblin), Bishop will have a bad time. He doesn't have anything in his kit that helps him deal with this very well without stalling out his ability to thwart or do damage to the villain, and since he doesn't want to defend he doesn't have access to most of the usual Protection suite of defense shenanigans - no Hard to Ignore, no Unflappable, no Flow Like Water etc. And without any innate access to confuse he's pretty vulnerable if he needs to flip down to heal. But in those stand-up slugfests he's an absolute monster. In scenarios with relatively few minions where the villain doesn't pummel him over and over again, he can just keep going. However, I also think his ceiling is lower than I had thought. His Energy Absorption, Rifle, and Uniform are an incredibly strong combo, but they don't synergize very well with anything else. You can use some side schemes to get him set up faster, but beyond Sharpshooter there isn't a lot that helps him increase his effect much over that (admittedly high) level. Being rich is always good, but if you have to rely on resource sinks to make full use of your wealth it's not nearly as much fun. Being so rich in resource cards also means he has little help from resource generators, which is another way heroes can increase their power level. So I'm going to revise my opinion a bit. At first I thought Bishop was a sure-fire S-tier hero, probably top 5. Now I think he's definitely lower than that, but his power level will vary a lot depending on who he's up against. Maybe he's solidly A-tier, maybe he slips down to high B. Still strong, but not the powerhouse I first thought.

I've loved Bishop so far. Good call on Starhawk and Hope, somehow I had overlooked those two. I thought he'd be B-tier, but settled on A-tier after playing him. Thanks for the great content again!

I've been so impressed with how easily I've been able to take down so many expert villains with ease playing Bishop. He has caused me to reevaluate what it takes to be S-Tier. Definitely top 10 for me!

Love your content! Awesome review. I watched this before and after playing Bishop, i agree with your thoughts. When you say 10 resource cards, does that include the 3 in his hero kit?

I agree with you about how his reliability is his biggest issue. I mostly used him in Leadership (Uncanny X-Men is very powerful in general) and he felt very powerful the vast majority of the time. My friend used a Taunt build when we played the newest campaign on expert with the same cards you just recommended. There were several turns where he felt stronger than Doctor Strange. When my friend used a Taunt, then drew another Taunt, activated that, healed back pretty much to full health, then used the third Taunt, literally going through his whole deck... that was nuts. It was anything but unreliable. He still had a few iffy turns of course. Sure, you made the argument that it won't work against the hardest hitting villains, but Miles barely works at all against Stalwart villains and he's your top 4. At least to me he feels stronger than Captain Marvel, even with his reliability issues. With that said, I don't know if I'd put him in S tier for the exact same reason you didn't. There are too many amazing heroes up there and I think he might just barely not make the cut. I'll have to play him more, especially in solo. Great overall analysis, as always!

Bishop was definitely the surprise of the box for me. He is so much fun. I find him most fun in Aggression and Protection. The "punching bag" Aggression deck is a lot of fun and an excuse to use Aggressive Energy and the one that does 1 damage to the villain. I feel like 9 is the sweet spot for resources in a deck. This is a question that I would love for yalls podcast to address. Do yall think that Basic is becoming too dominant in the card pool? I find that it is and I agree with a comment from the winning hand podcast, where one of the host said Power in Us All was a mistake to print. With too many good basics, it's homogenizing good decks. It's particularly noticeable with newer heroes imo.

One thing to consider for him is deck thinning. The resource sinks and any other upgrades or supports will increase the percentage of resources in your deck allowing you to run 10 rather than 15 resource cards.

Bishop is solid S Tier. I used to play only in solo and after the release of Age of Apocalypse I started to play in Heroic mode lev. 1: the 90% of Heroes in MC win easily VS the 90% of Villains in expert mode, so I find playing in Heroic mode a little bit more challenging. Bishop went undefeated for over 30 matches in Heroic mode lev. 1, including Ronan and Venom Goblin (the most challenging of all). I love to play him in autority, best allies and draw recursion. Sorry for my english...

Wow…. I think I’d want to play him with a 50 card deck, but sounds like the game would be over before you even get through the deck! I think I’ll pick up AoA next month!

Bishop was very cool and thematically enjoyable for the first few games, but once he gets going, he seems to play himself, and it feels a little boring. Great video, dude!

How do you feel about Symbiote Suit with him?

I always thought bishop was gonna be a sleeper hit and I was right. It seems people think bishop is stronger magik and overall prefer to play him now days while before release magik was way more hyped.

You got Bobby yet?