Marvel Champions

>>>Marvel Champions is easily my favorite superhero game that isn't an rpg.<<<

It is -by far- the best superhero game ever made.

We need to get Blatz to report in here, he bought my extra set.

Getting Wasp tomorrow, fixing to queue up the Rob Base.

^not too hard, to be honest, the only one that usually comes up to rival it is Sentinels of the Multiverse, though it does not have the Marvel allure.

Ha, yeah...it’s not a high bar at all. Best prior was probably Legendary...or maybe Marvel Heroes, which was actually pretty bad. X-Men Alert maybe?

Just went 0-3 versus Red Skull with protection Black Panther and leadership Cap...just couldn’t get BP’s Wakanda Forevers firing off and Cap’s allies didn’t bother to show up.. Hydra just laying out the minions and that damn Sleeper really putting the brakes on any momentum. Didn’t even get close on stage II. It was the first time I played Red Skull, he might be my favorite of the villain decks so far despite it just destroying me.

Try Red Skull with the Legions of Hydra modular if you want a real kick in the teeth

Zola is a real bastard also. All the villains from the Red Skull box are a lot of fun. And personally I love the light touch of the campaign mechanics. Just enough to be fun and involving without becoming burdensome or make you feel like you're missing out if you play standalone instead.

Part 2 of my big Ultron fight last night. Thor, Black Panther, and Iron Man all carried their weight this game, but the true MVP was their ally War Machine. Anytime Ultron started to stack up some drones on the heroes, War Machine would go on a strafing run, taking 2 HP of damage but dealing out one point of damage to every enemy. That was also helpful at stripping the Tough cards off the occasional Frost Giants that showed up courtesy of Loki. Then Black Panther would tap the Med Team to heal the 2 HP of damage on War Machine. To support the ongoing participation, Black Panther even used his Ancestral Knowledge card to fish out both Med Teams and the usual Wakanda Forever cards from his discard pile.

Ultron had a pretty good run. His drones did have the odd side effect of greatly slowing down the buildup of upgrades on all three heroes, and that was a particular problem for both Black Panther and Iron Man. Both characters even have ways to fish for upgrade cards, but that doesn't necessarily work if they are temporarily being used as drone cards. But when I finally finished off Ultron's first form, BP had 3 upgrades in action and Iron Man had 6, so they were starting to really roll. And even though Ultron started out with 66 hp on his second form, I feel like he didn't even last four turns. Thor him hit with 3 Hammer Throws in 4 turns, and Iron Man dealt out a couple of powerful blasts. Ultron got close to rolling out his stage 3 scheme but not quite, and then he was done.

By the time Ant-Man arrives, I will have 11 heroes and every villain scenario except Kang, so I should have more than enough entertainment for now. But I still want Dr. Strange, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver. And definitely Kang. I was in grade school during the Englehart run on Avengers, so Kang and the whole Celestial Madonna saga made a big impact on me at an impressionable age. Then Kurt Busiek did an even better Kang storyline many years later, with Avengers Forever.

Beyond that, it seems like the design team will need to periodically deliver some interesting villain packs, until they maybe finally get the clearance to do a Fantastic Four boxed set and then the X-Men. They could also do a What If? set, maybe featuring alternative versions of existing heroes, like Miles Morales as Spider-man. And heroes fighting heroes was a classic thing in Marvel, back before every Marvel hero was on a first-name basis. Maybe have a mind-controlling villain who turns allies into minions, or a special scenario where heroes fight heroes like that epic AvX storyline years ago.

I saw someone float the idea of a Skrull scenario where your allies can get turned against you (they were Skrull all along!) and I want that so much now. Would be a fun thematic way to stick it to the dominant chump blocker/ally heavy meta.

Mastermind could take over a teammate and make things nuts. Put this on a Treachery card so folks don't sandbag the traitor.

The box insert is obviously sub-optimal, and I have seen some fancy alternatives for sale online. But I happen to have a stack of unused blank index cards laying around, in four colors that happen to match the aspect color schemes for this game. I also have some blank white index cards. So I'm just going to trim those down to size for dividers and handwrite names of characters or aspects or modular sets.

If you've got a laminator and printer handy I like these dividers

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/190552/marvel...l-dividers-lee-subsc

Gary Sax wrote: ^not too hard, to be honest, the only one that usually comes up to rival it is Sentinels of the Multiverse, though it does not have the Marvel allure.

The timing of you mentioning that is quite propitious as >G have literally just announced a revised 2nd edition of Sentinels. I have no particular attachment to Marvel IP so I’ll be keen to see all of the positive changes they are promising.

I've never played it, So Very Wrong About Games feels very strongly about it. I think the art on 1st ed looks terrible. (shrug)

sentinels was alright the couple times i played it, but i hate the art so so much. i think it was better as an app. im curious about 2e, but im already all in on marvel and aeons end, i dont know that i need another coop card game to play solo.

I actually owned the base set before and sold it because I didn't feel like getting caught up the monthly purchases. But reading all the praise here made me cave and I bought Barnes' extra set (and everything else on eBay).

Man, this game is good. I'm not sure I'd ever play with somebody else but I'm already having a blast with it. It's so thematic and it "feels" like a superhero game in a way that most don't. From the alter-egos to the cool villain mechanics. Even little things like the Enhanced Physique card where it costs you 2 strength tokens up front but returns 3 over time. Lots of clever little mechanics like that.

The first thing I did was break up all the decks and build a few "archetypes" for each aspect that I can just slot any hero into. They probably aren't very good decks but I like the convenience. I'll probably never get super into deck building but this game really doesn't require you to.

It seems to me that aggressive deckbuilding would be self-defeating in Marvel Champions. Like, congratulations, you won every game but it isn't challenging anymore. When I get around to tuning my decks, it will be just enough to make sure that the game stays fun and doesn't get too frustrating. Just for one easy example, a hero with a hand size of four probably shouldn't bother including cards that cost 4. Sure, they might get one out once in a while due to double resources or a discount, but usually it will just be a disappointment drawing such a card.

i mean deckbuilding is fun though, and the aspect system makes it easy to play around with without being overwhelming. standard difficulty is tuned to playing with the precon decks and expert is tuned to playing with custom decks, more or less.