Iceman Review - Marvel Champions 

That's it exactly! Close to greatness but instead ended up in "meh." I would love to have seen some slight number tweaks to his hero cards to take him to the next level.

If you have the Psylocke pack, Upside the Head is really good for confusing and sometimes even a stun. Also, any boxes or packs that give you X-Gene, Deft Focus, Team-Building Exercises, X-Jet, and Utopia, these all empower him dramatically for the resources and readies.

Sounds like for you theme is the most important thing with a new hero, which is totally awesome and good to know about yourself. I want a hero that is "fun" (obviously for whatever my standard is) to be unique and interesting and to work in several aspects. Iceman doesn't check those boxes for me. But! What's awesome is we have so many heroes nowadays that even if I love a hero and you hate them, and the other way around. It's all good. The game is in a very healthy spot right now with the amount of heroes we have so we can have such varied opinions on everything.

This!

This! Totally this! I literally finished an expert Mutant Genesis campaing with my friend piloting Iceman (playing Protection), his economy got so insane with 1-2 Team Building Excercises, X-Jet, X-Gene, Deft Focus and his own Belt that he was able to play a bunch of cards each turn, with multiple readies and constantly healing. We lost against Sentinel once (he caught 3 of our cards after the initial 2), but we beat Magneto first try (we were sweating though). He's very picky about heroes, but he had a lot of fun, controlling the board and nuking minions with Ice Blast. I did play Iceman myself in solo, it was less fun, but I still liked him.

Assuming you use his Freeze Ability yes, that is its worse. If you can't because of stun or something else. Then it's a card that is sitting there. That would be it's worst. But I agree on average it is a card draw card. Which I guess you would need for his very expensive kit.

On top of that. Mansion is more versatile for multiplayer games (obviously) so while it is the same for the solo community. Mansion is more versatile in multiplayer settings (just mentioning because I know the multiplayer community will want the recognition ha)

Why is it not realistic? This assumes there is a ceiling of what is a great hero design. That all things are a X number out of 10. And that if all current heroes are a 7 let’s say that’s average now. I don’t look at things like that personally because I believe that as you continue to do something, as you grow in your craft, as you practice, you will continue to make things better. There are a lot of flaws with early designed heroes. Does it make them bad? No. Not at all. But they have obviously come a long way in design since then. So personally I still stick with the idea that heroes can constantly be improved upon and the idea that people can’t get better at designing a hero, I just disagree with. As far as burned out? No. Not at all. Like you said. You don’t like which for reasons. And that’s totally cool. That’s how I can be with Iceman, is all.

​@@D20Woodworking What I'm talking about is, what would happen if most new heroes would reach that 10/10? You can argue, that at that point they wouldn't be 10/10, just 7/10 if you compare to them to one another. But this still feels off to me and doesn't fully make sense. On the flip side, I obviously agree, that most heroes can be improved on, but that's kind of subjective, kind of not. In general, players can see if something has an amazing design or not (Magneto or Scarlet Witch for example). But there should be a ceiling, where you just can't, because you hit a limit. At least that's what I believe. For example, how would you improve on Scarlet Witch without making her stronger or much more complex? I also agree that some early designs are somewhat a bit rough, half of She-Hulk's kit is meh for example and we have definitely come a long way. But perhaps because of how much of a long way we came is why we get pretty much only good heroes. Imagine having Cable or Domino back in the first wave, they'd be fantastic in comparison. But if you compare fantastic to fantastic, they don't seem anything special anymore. As for what is "great", is as I said, kind of subjective, kind of not. I think for example Magik's design is that high level greatness, but I know you don't think highly of her, totally fine. I understand that you don't agree with design evolution having a "ceiling" and that's totally fine. It gave me some perspective and things to think about, which is awesome. But at some point you might have to sacrifice balance or complexivity to evolve. I might be totally wrong and to be honest, I really hope you're right. Oh, glad I was wrong about the burnout. I love your topics/reviews/opinions especially.

So the way I would look at it is that there is no "out of 10" or at least we can't measure it accurately that way. If we compared much older heroes to other older heroes there would be a lot of "7+ out of 10s" because we didn't understand yet what they could do in this game. We didn't understand folding cards, player side schemes, manipulation of player decks (to the level it is now), manipulation of encounter decks, etc. I personally don't think we are at the peak of what the design space is. I think we have thought that over the years in the past and they have continued to surprise. You can look at the custom design space of what has been done over there and there is still so many interesting and cool mechanics that FFG could do (with their own spin on it obviously) that haven't been touched. Because of what I have seen over the years, what I see in the custom design space, what I have seen Caleb and others do with other games (LOTR for example) and how they have continuously improved upon and made unique things for longer lines than the Marvel Champions line, I don't think there is a ceiling that we can see yet. Maybe we do hit that ceiling at some point but I don't think we are near it. I personally think we can do a "out of 10" scale when the game is all said and done. When we know all the elements of it, when there is no space left to be designed, then we can see great design vs "bad" design. This wasn't really a response to your response (I mean obviously it was in the YT system) but me trying to flesh out the thought process more.

@@D20Woodworking That is exactly what I was talking about, when we eventually reach that "peak". I was referring to that alone. It's also why I don't keep expecting more, but if a new, amazingly designed hero arrives, or a new, crazy and fun mechanic, I'm all for it. But yeah, I agree that there is room to grow and I highly doubt we'll reach that ceiling anytime soon. Especially how the content has slowed down. I also agree with everything you just said, although I'm not very familiar with FFG's other games, or the custom stuff fans are making. Thank you for taking the time to type these detailed replies to me, I honestly really appreciate them!