I currently have a 2* Royal Talon Fighter at Level 100 on her, for the ability to randomly create an extra Strike tile.

I have a 3* Taskmaster Sword at 150, but the bonus doesn't seem to apply to Passive? (It's currently on Iron Fist.) (See also: 1* Vibranium Ore at 50 on Dr Strange.)

I also have a 2* Chewie still at Level 1, but I don't want to rely on Polaris matching (and therefore stepping up to get shot).

Others -- if they don't have someone listed, then they're open for required characters as appropriate.

3* 150 Hydra Henchmen
2* 100 Quantum Realm (3* Scarlet Witch)
2* 77 Yaro Root (3* Daken)
2* 56 Element Guns
3* 50 Chimichanga (3* Deadpool)
1* 50 Avengers Tower (3* Luke Cage)
1* 50 Destroyer Gun
1* 50 Pocket Radio
1* 50 Stepford Cuckoos
1* 50 Tinkerer
1* 50 Vibranium Ore
1* 50 Vintage Shield
3* 1 Milano (just got it yesterday)
2* 1 Chewie
2* 1 Quinjet
2* 1 Blackbird
2* 1 Carol Corps (3* Captain Marvel)
1* 1 Corvus Glaive
1* 1 Hulkling
1* 1 Kimoyo Beads
1* 1 Kra-Van
1* 1 Victorious

-J

I was hoping you had a 3* Carol Communicator. That heals the bearer when a special is matched

That sounds wonderful. But so far, Puzzle Gauntlet has mostly put me at risk of aggressively voiding my phone's warranty.

-J

The puzzles definitely work better with some characters over others. They do get easier as your roster grows.

I would love that. One of my girlfriends plays Songpop and their reward system has a monthly reset.

I was also thinking about the way they ran achievements for the holiday times and thought they could probably design a bunch of achievements for each season. Those actually got me to play the off-season PVPs more than I probably would have (and that's the point of achievements, isn't it - to get us to do things faster/more than we normally would). For example, they could have an achievement tied to each character so that when they were in PVP, the achievement would go into the season quest tab. Iron Fist's achievement could be something like "play a match with 2 Heroes for Hire characters." Or Polaris can have an achievement "get 20 strike tiles on the board." The Puzzle Gauntlets demonstrate that they clearly have ways of acquiring a variety of statistics midgame, why not use those and drive play?

For what it's worth, these were the teams I used:

Puzzle It Over 1 - Polaris. I used 3*Magneto and Luke Cage. I got Magneto's power off once and Luke was of no real help. But Polaris carried the team.

Puzzle It Over 2 - Storm and Polaris. Third doesn't matter, though I happened to use Silk.

Puzzle It Over 3 - Polaris, Silk, and Karnak. Let Hellcat get the purple tiles.

Change of Pace 1 - Polaris. Any defend creators. I happen to use Kitty and Apocalypse (though Apoc was not a good choice)

Change of Pace 2 - Polaris, 3*Storm and 5*Carnage

Change of Pace 3 - My first team for this was not smart, so I'm listing the one I used for rounds 2-4. Throg, 3*Black Widow, and Black Bolt. Build up green and wait until the enemy fires off their Throg's green and THEN you fire off yours (multiple times if you can).

Change of Pace 4 - Polaris and two other toons. I happened to use Electro and Old Man Logan. I would later change OML to Loki so I had an easy way to shuffle the board (I kept getting stuck with a team up tile in the bottom row)

Change of Pace 5 - The hardest of the bunch. I used Spidey 2099, Spider-Gwen, and Mile Morales. It is VERY important that you get Infinity War Spider-Man off the front line, every time you hit him, you lose half your web tiles.

Bending the Rules (versus Monica and Prowler) - I used Silk for this. Had to build up blue and be very patient. Clear the corners of team up tiles. Start firing blue. If a special tile gets into a corner, stop firing and manage it. Rinse/repeat. Tough node.

Changing the Game (versus Daken/Mantis) - I tried Silk 3 times before reaching for someone else. Others in my alliance have been successful with her. Ultimately, Karnak won me this one. I temporarily configured him to be 4-5-4 and waited until I had a column with 4-5 strike tiles already in it. I won firing his red when I happened to have 2 columns with 5 strike tiles and destroyed the other 3 and one of those columns ended up all strike tiles.

Final Note - I appreciate that I've got much more options in my roster than someone still struggling with 4* land. I'm not trying to be "in your face," I'm just putting out there the things that worked for me.

Aspirational goals.

-J

Something just occurred to me in thinking about the value of diving into classics from time to time.

The pull recovery rate is skewed heavily in favor of the classics.

We kinda figure on a 15% recovery rate, I think.

If that holds true, then the recovery rate on classics is more like 18.75%.

If I open 100 packs, I will earn back about 15 latest legend pulls.

That costs 2500 cp for LLs and 2000 for CLs.

In other words, in CLs, I would have spent the equivalent of 80 LLs to earn back the 15, or 18.75%.

Let me phrase that differently.

100 pulls are made, 2500 or 2000.
In both cases you get back 15 LL pulls.
An LL pull is worth 25 CP, so basically you get back 375 CP regardless of which store was used.
375 is 15% of what was spent in the LL store, but it is 18.75% of what was spent in the CL store.

What I normally do with the puzzle gauntlet is to play the 2 final nodes where you earn the advanced token and the special puzzle token. These have been so flipping hard that I have pretty much given up. It is also because I have a 4* Blackbird, but still, it is just not worth it. The synergy needed is beyond what the given characters can easily achieve and it is frustrating. Yes, I know I can't always use Polaris to make special tiles but at least make it doable.

I would be all for that. It doesn't even need to be anything substantial that little bit here and a little bit there will be a huge help. Heck, having the last season be a whole double ISO event was a HUGE help. I am almost tempted to start buying the bugle pittance until my itunes gift cards run out so I can get the extra rewards. I have hit a nice steady pace in PVE so I think it may be worth it.

Does anyone use itunes for music anymore? I bought a few songs and then realized that I could only listen to it on my apple products so that turned into a never again situation.

End of last hoard redemption:
ISO - 4,157,687
HP - 69,535
CP - 3,558
LL - 70
Pulls - 212

Beginning resources (change from last month):
ISO - 5,366,861 (+1,209,174)
HP - 33,825 (-35,710)
CP - 4,664 (+1,106)
LL - 93 (+23)
Pulls - 279 (+67 over 27 days)

Daily Gain - 2.48 pull/day

LATEST
Gamora - 1/1/2 + 1006 shards (includes 300 Shards coming from Venom Bomb/Next PVE)
Sersi - 1/0/0 + 728 shards
Big Wheel - 0/0/0 + 385 shards

Favorites:
For 4* favorite, I'll be keeping Ant-Man for about 76 pulls. That will reduce if/as there are any 4* bonus shards and/or Ant-Man covers pulled. The goal is to get Ant-Man up 2 more levels, getting me 400 Wa5p shards which will finish her off. For my 5* favorite, I'll have Wa5p for 17 pulls to get her the last 50 she'll need (besides the Ant-Man pulls) after which I'll either jump to Sersi or Big Wheel, depending on how the pulls are going.

Pulls made: 185

Results:
Gamora - 4/8/2 + 1353 shards
Sersi - 6/4/1 + 1228 shards
Big Wheel - 5/2/3 + 473 shards

Stats:
30 of 185 pulls were 5* = 16.2% pull rate, (the expected 1:7 is 14.3%).
4 x 4* bonus shards
1 x 5* bonus shards

Longest drought (# of 4*s between 5*) = 16
# of back to back 5* = 2

After applying everything (and getting Gamora to where she'll be champed next time she's in progression rewards):
ISO - 4,766,920 (-599,941)
HP - 36,625 (+2,800)
CP - 2,842 (-1,822)
LL - 6 (-87)
Pulls - 119 (-160)

Final Analysis -
I pulled a total of SEVEN Black Gamora covers. Any of those had been red or yellow and I'd have been done so much earlier.

I'm giving myself leeway with champing 5*s by knowing that as long as they are in the LT store, they will likely be coming around in PVE again, and that means I'll be able to mine at least 300 shards for them. So Gamora and Sersi are actually both done, as soon as each appears in PVE (hi Gamora - I see you will be in the next PVE). Which means by the time half-mutant gets into tokens, I won't need anything but one of their covers. Big Wheel is already at 10 covers and is likely to get to 2 covers of shards, so I will also only need one more pull of him in next month's cracking.

Of particular note, with 2 natural Ant-Man covers, I was able to mine all the Wasp shards I needed and she got champed. I also champed my first 4* "crop" (Wolverine).

All in all, a very satisfying Horde Cracking Day.

Happy cracking everyone, back again in 4 weeks!

Excellent pulls.
Was wasp your last? I was thinking that you had one more who was ridiculously far away.

Oh, and my horde cracking lasted all of one pull. Nice, but underwhelming.
I like the thrill of getting a few pulls in.

I like Phoenix’ upcoming buffs. I don’t think she jumps to meta, but still better.

Now if they could just change 5* Wasp to be playable and chemically sterilize the designer who created her in the first place I would be happy.

It took me 1 pull to get Big Wheel. I am not thrilled by that character and its move set so I am in no more of a hurry to pull for more covers.

On another topic. I was looking at the pool of 4* and 5* characters and it is getting really big. Yes the pool for 4*s is already big , but there are fifty or sixty 5*s already. I think that they are going to have to step their token distribution up and start to include classic legends tokens as rewards. The only way to do this and make it work is to NOT take away any CP prizes and restructure their prize pool because heroics and elite don't cut it. This would be easily implemented if they create an SCL 11 rather than mess with all the prize pools.