(For those that haven't read/watched these reports before, I take heroes from the Marvel Champions LCG and test them out against the first scenario: Rhino. I do this with just the one hero, using the pre-constructed deck that you buy off the shelf.)

Last time, I talked about how I typically don't mulligan hands when I'm doing these tests as I'm figuring out the deck. A lot of people online told me how bad of an idea that was, since your setup turn can be one of the most important. Also, as I'm playing now, I'm starting to see cards that are worth getting rid of right off the bat. Right now, I'm chalking that up to getting more experience playing a variety of decks.

We looked at Rocket Raccoon, now it's time to take a look at Groot. I mean, we got a taste of Groot in the Rocket deck, but now it's time to fully embrace Groot as we play through his deck of mostly cards saying "I am Groot". Groot's powers work around these "Growth Tokens" that you get in alter-ego form. Then in hero form,  you either discard them to ignore damage or cards will behave differently based on how many tokens you have.

The first flop

Looking at my initial hand, I'm seeing some possibilities with the growth tokens. For now, I decide to discard the one to remove threat since it will be at least two turns before it is needed. In hindsight, this might have been a bad idea. Regardless, I decide to stay in alter-ego for a turn and build up some more growth counters.

Once we hit turn 2, I've got 6 counters and then can start doing some big damage with "I. AM. GROOT!" I managed to get two of these in my hand between the two turns, so I was quickly able to bash Rhino down to just 2 health remaining in Phase 1. Feeling really confident, I go into the villain phase and realize I don't have great tools for getting rid of threat as Groot's thwart is just 1. He's going to need some help of some kind, as between the normal rising threat and getting a crisis side scheme that blocks removing threat on main schemes, I quickly lost by like turn 3.

Let's try this again…

With the first game over rather quickly, I decided to set the game back up and replay it so that I could experience more of the deck. This time, I managed to get the Rocket Raccoon ally in play quickly, which gave me some protection against rising threat. I'm really liking the synergies here between the two characters, as shown with "Flora and Fauna" - getting 2 more growth counters for free on Groot can really help out! The two thwart on Rocket helps back up Groot's single thwart.

Between that "I. AM. GROOT!" card and "Root Stomp", it was super easy to get all the damage I needed to take out Rhino. In playing Groot solo, there is the hesitancy to go back to alter-ego in order to get more growth tokens. However, in a full game, being able to take a turn to build up 2-4 more tokens (flip, get 2 tokens, next turn get 2 more tokens and flip back).

Speaking of playing with others

I usually don't like protection decks. It's my least favorite aspect to play. However, playing Groot was pretty fun to play and play defensively. "Desperate Defense" is great with Groot because you are usually able to guarantee that you take no damage when you defend, so you aren't "wasting" a turn by exhausting your hero to defend. Also, because you don't take that much damage, your hit points are close to max to be able to get max damage out of "Fighting Fit".

My usual group for playing Marvel Champions is 4 players, so the next time that we play through a campaign, I'm really tempted to rock a custom Groot deck. The pre-made deck had a lot of great combos and cards in it, so I can only image what the Hero would be like with some of the custom builds that are out there. The few campaigns that I have completed have been mostly with Justice heroes, so it will be nice to take on a new "role" through a campaign.

Where does he rate though? While I still prefer the other aspects, Groot is probably the most fun I've had with Protection. That puts him in the #8 spot, in between Scarlet Witch and Ant-Man. It's only 2 spots down from his PIC Rocket, so I'd say that's pretty good game design. I really like the meshing of theme and mechanics that this game does so well.

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