Forum Thread

aesthetocyst

Forum post.

Stax the Foyer

It should have been Loki.  No one denies this.  

Punisher5784

I thought for sure he was going to face newly rebalanced Nick Fury. That would have been a far more interesting match.. Shield v Shield

Mockingbird would have been good too but basically you're facing Strange so undercovered Coulsons cannot win

corytutor

I would have chosen winter soldier. 

Marine8394

I like the idea of WS. Peggy. Or Flaptan would have made it interesting.

dadows

under covered coulson. just threw a bunch of match damage boosts and prioritized blue. he got off blue and purple powers once each. i never fired a power. 

Daredevil217

aesthetocyst said:

My 'serious' pick for Coulson to fight would have been OBW.

More amusing choices (not necessarily great matches, just fun to see): Loki, Howard, Lockjaw, Quake.

That would have been a fun challenge. She siphons your Blue/Purple when she matches (plus the active purple) and she can increase your Countdowns. 

ZootSax

aesthetocyst said:

My 'serious' pick for Coulson to fight would have been OBW.

It would really depend on how she was covered for whether this would be better or worse than Strange for an undercovered Coulson.  A 3/5/5 OBW at Lv270 would be doing basically 5* match damage on her colors with two steals and a burst heal.  With Coulson needing 5 purple covers to do damage on that power and his yellow doing lackluster damage even with 5 covers, that's a tall order.  If they instead went with a 3/3/3 Lv222, like they have for other 4* support characters, that's a different story.

All that said, I'm in the camp that it should have been Loki.

Dragon_Nexus

Stax the Foyer said:

It should have been Loki.  No one denies this.  

I imagine it will be after the new Loki is rolled out.

Quebbster

I'd have picked Mockingbird...

D4Ni13

Definitely should've been Loki lore wise, but since no one created any special tiles, Loki would only use one active in game, so he wasn't fit. It is odd though, because when you are in the same situation as a player, it doesn't matter that you cannot use an ability at all. oh, well. 

I had a champ Coulson, so it wasn't such a big deal for me, although I won the second game and lost the first (no boosts).

Wonder if X-23 will fight OML with this pattern.

JHawkInc

The fight was fine. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Given what's available in the game, having a character that will default to denying Coulson AP and punishes him for firing powers is actually a pretty solid choice.

smkspy

My 5strange has been undercovered for the longest time that I didn't realize his yellow was also an active power and not entirely passive. So I let him collect yellow thinking blue and purple should be my focus.

Needless to say, my 303 champed Coulson lost first try cause he kept firing off his yellow and I was baffled as to why he was doing so. Learnt my lesson going back in the second time.

therightwaye

Fury, Clash to see who should be Director of SHIELD. I also like the idea of similar style yellows. 

Vhailorx

I don't think it's quite as simple as some above posts suggest.  Coulson is pretty tough, but he has almost no single target offense, even when champed.  The problem is even worse for undercovered coulsons. 

So matchups like bobbi, or fury could be very hard just because those characters have big damage powers that coulson cannot ever hope to match. 

And while strange is a bit of a snarky troll choice from demi, a lot of problem is actually with coulson.  he is terrible 1v1.  His blue passive generates a fair bit of damage with the right teammates, but is useless 1v1.  His blue active is also fairly difficult to proc on his own, since the expensive yellow is the only source of CDs.  His yellow is super expensive for what it does, and a lot of the value is just making more CD's to proc coulson's other abilities.  So the fight is basically coulson's purple with occasional help from the yellow if you can gather the ap and protect the cds.  Coulson's purple is a solid active power.  But at best it is still doing something like 4-6k (and that's for a champ coulson with a good cascade after the swap).  and while strange does bring a nasty blue power to the fight (which demi helpfully undercovered for the crash), he is also incredibly squishy (just 9k) and has an expensive and not terrible hard-hitting yellow nuke. Plus strange's purple is largely wasted against coulson.  I don't think the strange matchup is quite as bad as it appears at first glance. 

smkspy

Only change I could think of making is remove 5trange's passive yellow. Keep the active but not make it so punishing for using coulson's powers against him.

elvy75

While i  had no issues to beat strange, i found it odd that devs decided to have him and not someone else. Loki, Fury, Black widow, Mockingbird or Quake would all be so much better options

JHawkInc

aesthetocyst said:

JHawkInc said:

Given what's available in the game, having a character that will default to denying Coulson AP and punishes him for firing powers is actually a pretty solid choice.

With the exception of Strange v. Strange, or any other character with a stun, this fight would play the exact same with any character in game v. Strange. It was a bland and uninspired choice, but also a first, in that it had no basis in neither lore nor mechanics (beyond matching colors). As such it can be improved on, therefore this thread.

The most compelling argument you have for it being bland and uninspired is because you don't like it.

Strange was a perfect counter to Coulson for a 1v1, for several reasons.

Colors match completely, requiring you to both pursue your colors and deny at the same time. When you have the choice between any of your three power colors, you must also weigh in what happens when Strange goes for whatever you leave on the board.

Going for yellow helps Coulson get out countdowns, giving you Strike tiles and damage, AP via the yellow passive, the ability to steal AP via the blue, and can be strengthened via the purple passive (by speeding them up). Yellow is Coulson's bread and butter. Purple is your only direct damage power, and is useful for gathering AP. If you focus on these two, you leave Strange to gather blue, where the damage, stun, and AP drain will treat you poorly. So denying blue is good for anti-Strange, but is only useful for Coulson if you manage to throw some countdowns out. Focus too much on yellow/blue, and Strange can get enough purple to nullify any strike tiles you manage to place. Dodging yellow to set up combos, or because you're focusing on denying Strange blue/purple, just lets Strange start hitting you hard directly. And you have to be measured in your moves, as each power you fire triggers Strange's retaliation.

Coulson needs combos of his powers to be useful alone, and Strange, by design, punishes you for being inefficient in your combos, AND he punishes you for not being careful in gathering your AP in the first place.

As I said initially. The fight is fine, and if it's not broke, don't fix it.

Coulson vs 5* Strange is a great match, far better than the actual "gain AP and fire powers" fights (like XFW vs Cyke, or AV vs 4Cage, or Kingpin vs 3Cage, to name a couple recently), and thank the One Above All they didn't do something stupid like throw a mechanically boring match at us and justify it by saying "it fits the lore."

Dayv

It seems to me that the best solution is to be prepared to eat a couple yellow passives and chase purple, purple, and wherever possible, purple.  Have it at five covers, and use purple to make more purple, preferably in a match 4 or 5.  Do this over and over until one of you is dead.

... it worked fine for me, at level 366.  

DrDevilDinosaur

My champed Coulson emerged victorious on the third attempt. I took two losses simply due to some unfortunate cascades which fed Strange blue in a way that I couldn't deny and he stun locked me out of the match. Certainly frustrating.

Given the complete match in colours between Coulson and Strange, it should theoretically be an easier Crash since you don't have to match an off-colour in order to deny the AI. The fact that Strange punishes you for casting abilities is somewhat diminished by the fact that you don't necessarily want to be firing Coulson's abilities all the time. It was a little boring, but in a sense that's more desirable than a Puzzle fight because it means I'm not struggling to achieve a certain board condition (Sam Wilson vs Captain Marvel anyone?)

Jaedenkaal

aesthetocyst said:

My 'serious' pick for Coulson to fight would have been OBW.

More amusing choices (not necessarily great matches, just fun to see): Loki, Howard, Lockjaw, Quake.

OBW at 270 has about 7600 HP. (Less than XFW, it turns out). Sure, she'd heal herself for ~1200 (or ~2400 if you had no CDs out), and do about 220 extra damage per U/B/P match. I guess there could be some interesting tension there as she steals your AP and delays your CDs.

I didn't think Strange was that bad as an opponent. Uninspired, perhaps, but probably no more so than TAHulk vs Beast or Gwenpool vs Moon Knight.