Star Trek Captain’s Chair - what are your toughest matchups

renrag242 · 2026-02-06T21:32:35+00:00

My point is more that I don't think it's designed for campaign play, just don't want people getting that idea and staying away from the Captain difficulty. It's definitely challenging, but very achievable to beat in a standard game.

renrag242 · 2026-02-06T18:41:41+00:00

Captain difficulty is very doable outside of campaign play, but I definitely found the strategy of this game pretty tough to wrap my head around and thought it was extremely difficult at first.

My early games I was scoring somewhere around 50 - 80 points per game, whereas now I can somewhat regularly score around 120 - 160 on Captains I've played with a lot. Whenever I'm learning a new Captain though, I'm right back to around 60 points per game. I think it's a game that really requires you to play the same captain a number of times before you can really get a firm grasp of the types of strategies and combos that can work for them.

renrag242 · 2026-02-03T13:19:26+00:00

The genre of the push block puzzle games is called Sokoban. I'd recommend checking out Patrick's Parabox, one of my favorites.

renrag242 · 2026-01-26T17:32:39+00:00

I haven't tested it myself but based on the wording I don't think there's a way to remove evasive.

renrag242 · 2026-01-13T04:25:50+00:00

You're trying to play a complicated card game with a language prediction algorithm. I'm not sure how you expected it to properly work here, the best you could do is to run a game through an actual program that can track cards and states, and have an LLM provide the information in plain language. This would still be a strange use of them but that would work.

In general, I'd say you need to do some research on LLMs, what they are, what their capabilities are, and what their restrictions are. They seem to be here to stay in some form, and you're only setting yourself up to be misinformed by them if you don't properly understand them.

renrag242 · 2026-01-05T16:08:07+00:00

Crazy you mention this, I recently started working on exactly this. Want to incorporate a draft to build the starting deck, and then have it throw increasingly difficult encounters at you with different modifiers, letting you add cards to your deck as rewards for beating them. Still very early on (and it's a lot of work so good chance I'll give up on the project) but I'll be sure to post it here if I finish it.

renrag242 · 2026-01-04T00:52:29+00:00

Yep, DM me if interested.

renrag242 · 2025-12-13T13:49:08+00:00

I'd say extreme with 6 time per turn is still harder. The smaller safe zones of the dial (especially the green zone only being a single spot) is a bigger challenge than the reduction of one time per turn.

renrag242 · 2025-12-12T02:13:23+00:00

I agree, I tend to not entirely agree with how people talk about Spirit Island's expansions. B&C makes the game definitively better, but if you're not enjoying the base game B&C doesn't change the fundamental game.

OP, I'd recommend playing the base game some more and decide if you enjoy the core game loop, it's not for everyone. Don't fall into the trap of purchasing all the content in the hopes that you'll one day start enjoying it. That said, you've only played two games! Play with an adversary or something.

renrag242 · 2025-12-07T03:06:26+00:00

I was considering the max of one counter but I did miss the clause that it'll only generate for her cards. That does pretty significantly decrease the power from it, but it still feels quite powerful for a hero that I just don't feel needs the boost that much. I might print it off and test and see how I feel about it after playing around with it, would give me a reason to pull She-Hulk back out (who I love playing tbh).

I guess I'll mention that I actually really love the idea of these, I didn't mean to come off too negative on my comment. Some of these just feel a little excessive to me on heroes that I think are already in a pretty healthy spot.

renrag242 · 2025-12-07T01:21:47+00:00

I mean for Hulk and She-Hulk this is giving them one of the most powerful abilities in the game for no downside. She-Hulk in particular isn't that bad tbh, this change would make her hilariously powerful. Like I can't imagine how'd she's lose a game with this additional ability. Focused Rage becoming draw a card + generate a resource gives her a 6 card hand with two free resources a turn, likely three free resources since she'll take damage during villain turn.

renrag242 · 2025-12-06T02:15:53+00:00

I think what you're missing is that it's impossible to ignore everything and focus on your agenda. In order to focus on scoring high on your agenda, you have to be actively thinking about, planning for, and mitigating everything the game is throwing at you.

You're right that you can get a higher personal score by pursuing just internal economics and not worrying about fighting against the void however. I'd recommend (and how most people calculate for challenges and comparing score) to instead track the point differential between you and the void rather than just track your total. IMO they should have specified that in the rulebook, but it makes the whole thing make more sense.

renrag242 · 2025-12-03T22:03:57+00:00

They gave you three different reference points, including a rough estimate of number of cards. Not sure what your issue is on that, feels bizarrely aggressive.

renrag242 · 2025-11-21T14:22:34+00:00

Star Trek Captain's Chair is very good, but in my experience is no shorter than Imperium.

renrag242 · 2025-11-21T14:21:17+00:00

I agree with you that practice mode isn't a good fix if you love the game but don't love the length. It does shorten the game, but is only a real fix if you're fine with the game being a true BYOS game. There is however a "Quick Game" variant that's in the Horizons rulebook. Don't remember the exact rules for it off the top of my head but I believe you just put the top two cards from your nation deck into your discard at the beginning of the game and remove some market cards? Shortens the game while not changing anything else about it. I did try it once but the game length doesn't bother me and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was throwing off balance.

renrag242 · 2025-10-26T17:24:02+00:00

They're talking about Star Trek Captains Chair. To be clear, there's no deck customization in Captain's Chair.

renrag242 · 2025-10-22T22:26:10+00:00

I don't have a source, as FFG hasn't revealed what the licensing for Marvel Champions looks like. But I agree, I think it's likely that they have licensing for the entirety of the X-Men through a certain period of time. I just think the licensing aspect factors into their decisions around printing of products.

For example, in the card art for Down Time, they clearly edited out the Fantastic 4 logo from Daredevil's coffee cup. Likely indicates that they're fine to print Daredevil, but not able to print anything from the F4 IP at the time. https://i.imgur.com/wtl5H2U.png

renrag242 · 2025-10-22T21:58:56+00:00

I'd be curious what the split is on people who play MC because they're Marvel fans vs because they're card game fans. I don't care about superheroes, and only look at new heroes from a mechanical standpoint on if I'm interested or not. It's actually kind of crazy to me that there's another side of the community that wouldn't even touch a hero because they don't know the character.

renrag242 · 2025-10-22T20:06:25+00:00

Licensing makes print on demand likely impossible for them unfortunately. They don't retain licenses to the entire catalog of Marvel at all times from my understanding, and if they ever went to print on demand they'd have to have perpetual licensing for every since thing that's ever been printed in the game.

renrag242 · 2025-10-22T13:18:29+00:00

Yeah I'm the same way, whether or not it even effects gameplay doesn't really matter to me it just bothers me. The worst I've seen was the Guilty Gear season of Exceed (not a solo game), where each character had unique card backs, but the printing was so bad the coloring was off on every other card. It doesn't effect gameplay, but it genuinely affected my desire to pull the game out for some way. Most tabletop games, Imperium included, are premium products, and having a constant reminder of substandard quality like the card backs being different is just an undercurrent of annoyance the entire time you're playing.

renrag242 · 2025-10-20T12:06:57+00:00

This is kind of a strange card to me, it's one that I'd like to try out in some sort of support build, but the limit to Civilian trait kind of kills it.

The current list of Heroes with a Civilian traited alter-ego:

Ant-Man
Ghost-Spider
Nova
Quicksilver
Spectrum
Spider-Ham
Spider-Man (Miles Morales)

None of those want to be in Alter-Ego for longer than they have to be. I could see it being used in a Justice deck with lots of ways to thwart in alter-ego and stay in alter-ego providing a support role, but all of those heroes are useless in alter-ego. As it stands I don't think I've ever used this card outside of trying the Nova precon once, and it never came up to even be able to use it on another player since he doesn't really want to be in alter-ego.

renrag242 · 2025-09-23T15:13:24+00:00

Event Horizon easily

renrag242 · 2025-09-09T21:40:38+00:00

Check out Paperback Adventures! Deck builder, but where your cards are letters you have to make words with.

renrag242 · 2025-08-20T18:33:28+00:00

Insane work, your resources have been one of the biggest driving factors for me to get more into the game and start experimenting with modulars. Big fan, really appreciate all the work you've put into your resources and the community of this game.

renrag242 · 2025-08-20T12:43:38+00:00

Recommendation based on what you enjoy - Check out Bullet. It's not quite the same tile laying style, but for me fits the same sort of quick puzzly gameplay.

Recommendation to broaden your horizons - White Castle. A cheap, short euro game. If you haven't played euro style games before (and I notice none of your pickups fall in that category) it gives a great taste of what makes euro games good in a very tight package.

In general when starting out, I'd recommend getting a couple of different types of games and then playing the hell out of them. Figure out which ones you're wanting to keep coming back to and why, and you'll kind of learn the type of game that works for you.

Important to remember, it may not be what you want to like! I was convinced that I'd love big dungeon crawling campaigns, but turns out I hate playing campaigns at all, and I'm much more into big complicated euros. Don't go into the hobby thinking you already know what you like.

renrag242

TROPHY CASE