Marvel Champions: The Card Game
Rhino rampages through the streets of New York, Klaw peddles illegal weapons to the world’s most dangerous criminals, Ultron threatens nuclear annihilation. The world needs champions to stop these villains! Are you up to the task?
Marvel Champions is a cooperative Living Card Game® that invites you to step into the shoes of the iconic Super Heroes of the Marvel Universe, battling dastardly villains and their diabolical schemes. But the champions of the Marvel Universe have more to worry about than a supervillain's plots. Each carries their own iconic history, full of their old enemies that can resurface at the worst possible time! Can you gather your team of heroes, take down the villain, and save the world?
Reviews and Articles About Marvel Champions: The Card Game
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Editor reviews
Big improvement over LOTR: LCG. Much more dynamic, with a lot more agency given to the player to do anything other than react. The ally meatshield element and war of attrition enemy is still here, however, and still slightly annoying.
I can't say that I'm particularly impressed. First off, it's basically Sentinels of the Multiverse; a game that I mildly detest, despite my long history in comics and my undying love for the RPG, Villains and Vigilantes. I don't really like co-op games and, other than Spirit Island (and, recently, TE Defenders and some games of TE Zombies), I generally won't play them. So, that's one strike. One plus is that they indulged in a lot of the classic Marvel stuff, even with updated imagery. Nick Fury is there, looking like Samuel L. Jackson. There's Tigra and The Shocker and Hydra and the Helicarrier and so on. Each hero has a nemesis that will be brought out by a particular card in the villain deck if it's drawn at the right time. She-Hulk's is Titania. Each nemesis does different things and will add cards to the villain deck that make it more difficult. Each hero also has an Obligation that forces them to do different things if drawn at the right time. Each hero also has an alter ego, which performs in different ways (changes hand size, different abilities, means the villain can't attack you but instead furthers his scheme, etc.) So, there's plenty of variety in both game state and game play.
However, like many of these games, it's very mechanical, since you're not playing each other but against the game, and it's easy to slip into a state where basically all you're doing is helping other players do interesting things. Iron Man builds up an engine (appropriately) and that player had about two dozen cards in his tableau that he could do a variety of things with. In one turn, he almost singlehandedly lowered the Rhino's threat on his scheme from 2 below a loss to almost zero. On the last turn, he wiped out a full third of Rhino's health by himself and won the game. Black Panther spent a lot of time summoning allies to good effect, while Spider-Man spent most of the time trying to stay alive. I, on the other hand, spent more than one turn not able to do much of anything because I was resource-starved. I think the point of both She-Hulk and Aggression is to deal out big bursts of damage and then rebuild. I was able to kinda do that once, but not nearly as often as I looked at my hand of cards and said: "OK. I can make one play and do nothing to affect the game state, so I'm done."
That's the case with a lot of these kinds of games. I've had it happen in Sentinels multiple times, where someone ends up just feeding cards and/or opportunity to other players so that they can actually do fun and interesting things. This is no different. I mean, that's teamwork, but you might as well replace that one person with a waterbird for all the participation that they have. This is also one of Fantasy Flight's LCGs, which means a constant outflow of cash for the next year or two to build it to the game state where it seems like some of the heroes actually have options. They've already announced the first expansion, which is The Wrecking Crew. That's really cool for the nostalgia factor, but it's not a game model that I want a part of, for mechanical reasons and because it's still a collectible game.
So, yeah. It's not a bad game. It's most certainly not in my wheelhouse. But I can't say that I'd recommend it right now even if it was.
I'm not interested Marvel characters vs a deck of bad things. If it has any of the design DNA leftover from LOTR LCG, then I can tell you that I would only be interested in the game as a replacement for kindling around the campfire. At least the art looks better than Legendary. I think this is a hard pass from me.
It's obvious they've learned a lot about what didn't work in the LOTR game. I always felt like deckbuilding was the whole game in LOTR and that games were almost 100% dictated by how well you built your deck and whether the right cards happened to come up at the right time. Marvel Champions feels better to me in that far more of the game is decided by your card play DURING the game. Also, the theme. Never once have I thought "Man, it would be so cool to see Bilbo and Denethor tooling around in the Dead Marshes." But She-Hulk and Captain Marvel teaming up to stop Ultron? That's what comic books were all about for me as a kid.
The core set is a complete experience but definitely feels like the framework for a lot more interesting things down the road. I think I'm on board, at least for a while.
P.S. Congratulations!
I did the one time I played it, which was years ago. Not sure how I’d feel about it now.
I should say that when it comes to superhero games, this is where a license will go much further with me than original characters made for the game. My investment goes way up if I’m playing as _the_ Spider-Man, not a thinly veiled Spidey analogue, so long as I’m doing Spidey things and Spidey things are happening to me. I care about that stuff and while it won’t give me the emotional gut-punch like when Peter tells Aunt May what really happened on the night Uncle Ben died in Spider-Man 2, I love seeing the alter-ego stuff come up in Champions because it’s well-executed enough.
Ah_Pook wrote: Had this had legs for any of y'all? I'm vaguely looking at a bundle of secondhand stuff, but I'm on the fence.
I wanted to resist it. Got in with the Core and a few packs, now I'm caught up and on a subscription service.......
I love it. I'm playing a lot solo, and it's fun playing casual with folks too. Its in a good spot now that there is some villain diversity. If you like it, you'll be in for all of it....so there is that.
Its my quarantine pick for 2020. A nice little puzzle solver with some deck building that plays well solo, and you can be clever with your friends when we all leave the bunker.
Ah_Pook wrote: the used bundle fell through but a fortuitous ebay coupon got me the base game for $25, so thats pretty cool. @boothwah, any expansion packs you think are immediate buys to go with the base game?
All of them. >.<
If you can get your hands on green goblin thats two extra scenarios. That would be a first buy. Or maybe the first campaign pack that hits next week, Rise of the Red Skull. It will have 2 Heroes and 5 villains for 40ish...yes I would buy that first.
Every hero pack is valuable in that it will give you more options to build the different aspects. Other than that, grab whichever Hero's you dig. I would say Captain America is most noob friendly in that he has a good kit and is straitforward. Dr. Strange is OP. Black Widow is my current favorite.
Deck building repository site. Great tool to log your decks, and tons of other peoples builds to kickstart your deckbuilding. There's some pretty good authors, that do some amazing write ups. I couldn't dig She-Hulk until I netdecked some dudes leadership build and now I love her.
Also, I really enjoy the Team Covenant content. Their early streams and play sessions from last year are great. They talk a lot about deck building, and their play is really clean.
Here's my current fun : two decks designed for two handed solo. Aggro Hulk paired with Justice Captain Marvel. I've cleared everything on expert with these two...waiting for Rise of Red Skull on Tuesday.
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/2879/hulk-weapon-gamma-1.0#
marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/2878/captain...ort-mode-justice-1.0
I don't really get tired of trying out new hero builds or combos...the real spice in the game is having different villains/scenarios. And thats where the game has been a little light up til now....but this month we get Rise of the Red Skull with 5 new villains, and then next month, s Kang set that I am stoked about.
Edit: with the assumption that you've spent stupid LCG money getting enough cards to enable interesting deck building, naturally
Ah_Pook wrote: @b each hero's kit is always going to be the same, that's where presumably the deck building comes in. Trying out different stuff to complement what their 15 cards are trying to do in different ways. Different aspects, different builds within each aspect etc.
Edit: with the assumption that you've spent stupid LCG money getting enough cards to enable interesting deck building, naturally
And that's what makes the hero the hero. Their kit.
But the magic is starting to happen, where the game's hit that really sweet spot, where there enough meaningful options in deckbuilding that your Justice Captain Marvel might work a lot differently than mine with only a 6 or 7 card difference. I have a She Hulk deck that I run that I I rarely use 6 - 8 cards of her kit, because I really am playing her for 5 cards that synergize really well with this engine in the leadership aspect.
But that's for grognards (self identifying) that are really into playing the heck out of this game in "hard mode" The puzzles only get longer (or tighter depending on if you are trying to brute force it), with more break points. There's perfectly tasty little puzzles for standard play.
But there's this whole other magic in the types of stories we get to tell with these toys, and it's pretty nice. I was reading a mid summer 1979 issue of Black Panther. It had Cap as a co star. They were fighting Klaw. Vision and the Avengers showed up. After the 4 year old went to bed, I went and set up BP and Cap vs Klaw and went to town. It was a fun little puzzle, and it was cool to do the last 4 damage with Vision. 12 year old me was doing a victory lap.
I don’t play with any regularity, I have maybe five games under my belt all told, but they are fun and I have so much stuff now it’s a little overwhelming. I am starting to sink in a little and get a feel for some of the Heroes.
My son and I took She-Hulk and Iron Man in against Green Goblin’s Mutagen Formula and just got rolllllled. We swapped out Iron Man for Black Panther and got rolled again, but it was closer. I could see a win in there, we just missed it. We’re trying again with Cap and Dr. Strange and we are absolutely blasting this guy.
Couple of questions. If I encounter the nemesis side scheme, I put the nemesis into play on their hero and put the guts in the discard pile, right? It doesn’t ONLY come into play via that one Standard card, right?
Can you “float” resources, e.g., pay for two 1-cost Cards with Genius?
Does damage “carry over” from Goblin I to Goblin II? If I hit him for 6 when he’s at 4, does his new form take the last 2?
jeb wrote: I
Couple of questions. If I encounter the nemesis side scheme, I put the nemesis into play on their hero and put the guts in the discard pile, right? It doesn’t ONLY come into play via that one Standard card, right?
Can you “float” resources, e.g., pay for two 1-cost Cards with Genius?
Does damage “carry over” from Goblin I to Goblin II? If I hit him for 6 when he’s at 4, does his new form take the last 2?
The Nemesis side scheme and other cards are set aside during setup and only enter play through Shadows of the Past.
I don't believe you can float resources like that. Paying for a card is a discreet Resource trigger, where you can activate cards with the Resource keyword on them or discard cards to generate the required resources.
I would play that that damage carries over but I'm not sure if that's correct tbh now that you asked.
EDIT: excess damage doesn't carry over from stage to stage on villains
boardgamegeek.com/thread/2303449/excess-...ly-stage-villain-def
We took on Crossfire in a little intro to Red Skull, using the prebuilt Hawkeye and Spider-Woman Decks. It looked to be a romp, we were through the first phase in just a few turns. Then things went really sideways, literally, as we encountered Side Schemes galore and could not get through as he built up weapons and started doing serious damage. We ended up losing, and he was still at 12 life or so.
I think we played the Schemes wrong, in our defense, we’d ruled a Side Scheme that adds an Encounter adds it the same turn it enters play, but I read up and it does not. I’m also not sure how Crossfire holds and uses 3+ guns.
jeb wrote: Looking at them now, I realize my last two could have been answered by the Grim Rule.
We took on Crossfire in a little intro to Red Skull, using the prebuilt Hawkeye and Spider-Woman Decks. It looked to be a romp, we were through the first phase in just a few turns. Then things went really sideways, literally, as we encountered Side Schemes galore and could not get through as he built up weapons and started doing serious damage. We ended up losing, and he was still at 12 life or so.
I think we played the Schemes wrong, in our defense, we’d ruled a Side Scheme that adds an Encounter adds it the same turn it enters play, but I read up and it does not. I’m also not sure how Crossfire holds and uses 3+ guns.
We goofed that rule too, and the those hazard side schemes creamed us - We also immediately revealed encounter cards when we were reshuffling hero decks (also not right) rather than dealing them to be revealed during the next encounter phase of the villain turn.
We missed the acceleration token for reshuffling the villain deck for a few games.
Other rule we overlooked first or second play through - Allies take consequential damage when you use their basic powers of attack, thwart - based on the number of pips in the ability.