Marvel Champions is a living card solo or co-operative deck construction game released in 2019, where players will take their superhero and aim to thwart an infamous villain. The core box comes with five initial heroes, Spiderman, Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and She Hulk and three villains to fight with Rhino, Klaw and Ultron which offers a lot of mix and match variety from the outset. Given Spiderman and Iron Man are two of my all time favourite comic characters, this started me off nicely.
In this game you will construct your support deck of cards before you start, and each superhero comes with their own 15 themed cards they always use, which you will top up to 40 by choosing one of four aspects to play, aggression, justice, leadership or protection by adding in cards from that chosen deck, alongside some other basic cards. This means that each hero already has four alternative ways to play, sometimes increasing existing strengths or alternatively compensating for weaknesses. Suggested starter decks are provided, and even after you have expanded your game collection, this is a much easier deckbuilding concept to keep on top of compared to the infinite choices of Lord of the Rings or Arkham Horror LCGs, which overall this is a good thing in reducing the set up time.
You will draw a hand of cards each round, which varies depending on your superhero, and you will need to use the resources shown on one or more cards to pay and play another, so there is always a pay off decision within your hand each turn. Cards you play will generally be a combination of immediate impact events, ongoing support such as allies or locations, or attachment upgrades which boost or limit other cards already in play. The villain will fight back with their own encounter deck, spawning allies, upgrading or adding side schemes to distract you, and will be looking to defeat you either by knocking out your hero or completing their main scheme.
There are a couple of unique ideas in the game where you have alter ego and hero forms which you can flip to and from when you need heal up, prevent attacks or draw more cards instead of being more active in the hero agressive mode. Then your hero has a nemesis, such as Vulture for Spiderman, who can appear at any moment to cause untold extra grief. These are spectacular ways to generate the comic book feel of your character and are great design additions especially if you can really identify with a particular hero’s back story. The core cards for each hero really do bring out their key attributes making the superhero come alive in play.
This game offers a similar experience to other deckbuilders, but with an easier style and a cut down deck construction requirement, but one that still offers great card play choices. It is more focused on a combat battle and thwarting villain schemes, and feels in keeping with its comic theme, being great at providing the experience of taking the role of the superhero of choice. Over time the designers have done a good job at tweaking each expansion to add minor changes, however the core game structure is always maintained and expansions can feel fairly similar overall, with the theme the greater variant.
Despite my huge investment in Lord of the Rings LCG, i found myself expanding this game too, although mostly focused on my favourites which is Spiderman and the Avengers, so here are thoughts on the heroes i have played > Marvel Champions Heroes
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Expansions
There are many expansions you can add to enhance or change the gameplay as it is a really well supported game (my additions highlighted green = own, blue = part owned, red = not purchased) :
Marvel Campaign Boxes
These bigger box expansions focus on a light campaign theme with two new heroes, and a number of villain scenarios to play. Content value wise these are likely to be your best additions if you want more variety, however the general villain theme or heroes included may sway your preferences. Rise of the Red Skull was the first themed set and includes two well known heroes Hawkeye (leadership) and Spider-Woman (aggression/justice). The next campaign box was The Mad Titan’s Shadow facing Thanos and the Black Order and has the heroes Adam Warlock (all aspects) and Spectrum (leadership), who you may or may not have heard of before. A Spiderman themed campaign box release is called Sinister Motives was very appealing expansion for me with two heroes Ghost Spider (protection) and Miles Moranis (justice). For theme alone the box is great and well regarded, complete with some favourite villains, Sandman, Venom, Mysterio and the Sinister Six. The latest release is be Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and includes heroes Nick Fury (justice) and Maria Hill (leadership) and feature villains Black Wiidow and Batroc, plus an expose the mole storyline.
Hero Packs
These are individual hero packs, with their unique hero cards and a pre-build deck based on an aspect pack, plus some other new cards to use across all the four aspects. The choice you make here may come down to the heroes you know, and ones mechanically you may find play in more interesting ways. I selectively purchase heroes that appealed to me, shown below as grouped by the pre-built aspect deck they focus on :
Leadership : Captain America, Ant Man, War Machine, Ironheart
Justice : Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Venom, Spiderham
Protection : Ms Marvel, Doctor Strange, Quicksilver, Vision, SP//dr
Aggression : Hulk, Thor, Wasp, Valkyrie, Nova
Villain Scenarios
The villain packs focus on adding new game or story villain scenarios for your heroes to fight against, and there are no heroes in these sets. The Green Goblin is an essential purchase for any Spiderman fans like myself, and fits well alongside the core and Sinister Motives box. The Wrecking Crew comes with a group villain approach and The Once and Future Kang features an interesting timeline approach to the villain. The Hood comes with an entire crime empire and has nine modular encounter sets to expand any villain set up, which seems a good value addition. A X-Men villian scenario is MojoMania.
Guardians of the Galaxy Expansions
This theme set of expansions starts with Galaxy’s Most Wanted featuring two of the Guardians of the Galaxy crew of Rocket Raccoon (aggression) and Groot (protection), and generally is a lower rated campaign box with a really high and slightly forced difficulty level. The separate heroes wave packs include Star Lord (leadership), Gamora (aggression), Drax (protection) and Nebula (justice). I was not overly interested in this series, although i do like the films.
X-Men Expansions
A new phase of X-Men themed releases started with the Mutant Genesis campaign box, complete with new mutant powers that work within this series. This box contains two heroes as usual with Colossus (protection) and Shadowcat (aggression), fighting against Sabretooth, Magneto and the Sentinels. This was followed by Next Evolution which has heroes Cable (protection) and Domino (justice) and faces off against Juggernaut, the Marauders and Mister Sinister, and the final in this trilogy is Age of Apocolypse which features Lucas Bishop (leadership) and Magik (aggression) to fight Apocolypse, Unas and the infinite soldiers and the four horsemen. The hero packs I will again selectively buy from :
Leadership : Cyclops, Storm, Magneto
Justice : Phoenix, Gambit, Psyloche, Jubilee
Protection : Rogue, Angel, Nightcrawler
Aggression : Wolverine , X-23, Iceman
All : Deadpool
Playmats & Sleeves
There are themes card sleeves, and a number of neoprene player playmats you can find for each of the heroes, or one larger multiplayer mat, however i do not see these as anything particularly special.