I Need a Hero (Marvel Champions LCG)

Do we really need another infinitely expandable card game with a comic book superhero theme that can easily be played solo but also plays remarkably well with two?

UM YES OF COURSE.

Marvel Champions: The Card Game (2019)

Designed by Michael Boggs, Nate French, and Caleb Grace

Art by Marvel

Published by Fantasy Flight

I love the idea and format of the living card game. I know this is not always the most popular opinion in the tabletop hobby. Living Card Games tend to be a bit of a lightening rod for criticism, given that they can get expensive if you go “all in,” unless the player is coming from the collectible card game niche of the hobby. In that case, Living Card Games feel comparatively cheap. Being as I played lots of Magic: The Gathering, I’m used to the idea of paying for cards, and it doesn’t bother me. Granted, not everyone feels that way, and I understand, but I want to clear the air now and say that, for me, the release model of this game is not a bad thing. 

Anyway…

Lowdown (How to Play–in a Nutshell)

If you have any experience with a cooperative Living Card Game, either The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (2011) or Arkham Horror: The Card Game (2016), then the uber-generically titled Marvel Champions (2019) will feel very familiar. The main connecting line that runs through each of these games is Nate French, an in-house designer for Fantasy Flight, so it’s not terribly surprising that there’s a mechanical overlap.

You’ll come to the game with a pre-built deck consisting of cards that belong specifically to a certain hero (the base box includes Black Panther, Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Iron Man), as well a set of cards linked to one specific trait (like Justice or Protection), and then a few all-purpose neutral cards. With this deck, you’ll play cards and act with your hero to foil schemes associated with a villain. Rather than thwarting the villain’s scheme, you can attack the villain instead. On the villain’s turn, they will advance their scheme and then either attack you or scheme some more. Once that’s done, you’ll draw card(s) from the villain’s customized encounter deck and deal with those. 

When you’ve defeated the villain, ie gotten their life down to zero, you win. Being as this is a cooperative game, you’ve got plenty of ways to lose, but if you lose it will most likely be that your own health was driven to zero or the villain was able to complete their scheme.

Tea for Two (Scaling for Two Players)

This game plays up to four, and all aspects of the game relevant to player count scales automatically (including how much life the villain has, how quickly the scheme will advance, and how many cards from the villain’s AI encounter deck are drawn each turn). While it plays up to four players, I’d probably shy away from playing it at the full count because the game would take significantly longer. However, in all honesty, I’ve only played the game solo, but Fantasy Flight’s cooperative LCGs have a great track record with two players in this household, and based on the comprehensive design similarities, I have no reason to think otherwise.

The Never-Ending Story (The Bad Stuff)

Okay, so I’ll be honest here, I probably could have told you the bad stuff prior to playing this game. Now that I’ve played it, I can tell you that the problematic aspects of this design are inherently part of the conscious choices made by the designers. That being said, you’re either going to be bugged by these design choices or not, but they were all intentional.

First of all, Marvel Champions immediately distinguishes itself from both The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game by eschewing the campaign system that runs both of those games in favor of a non-campaign, one-off episodic design instead. Rather than experiencing a slowly developing narrative played out over multiple games, you will only ever really experience this game in self-contained, narratively loose skirmishes. I hesitate to even use the word narrative, honestly. If you read the cards, including flavor text, you’ll get an idea of what’s supposed to be happening, but it’s nothing at all like Arkham Horror, the most heavily narrative game of the bunch, or even The Lord of the Rings, a decidedly lighter narrative experience. 

This is not a bad thing for me, and I say that because I feel the campaign system actually keeps both Arkham and Lord of the Rings from hitting my table more frequently. Arkham felt like it relied too much on the narrative (for my taste), while Lord of the Rings’ narrative made me feel guilty to ever play without Kathleen, so often I’d want to play but not want to play without my gaming partner, meaning on the shelf it stayed. Also, because Marvel Champions is not narrative-based, you can skip any small expansion if you’re simply not interested in the hero without having to worry that you’re missing out on the story, making this inherently cheaper than other narrative LCGs. Again, this is very subjective. I’m sure that there are people who would say the narrative aspect of Arkham is what makes it the most rewarding of the lot, but for me if the story stumbled, the whole experience suffered for it (and I wasn’t so keen on a few of the Dunwich Legacy narrative choices).

Next up is the nature of the cooperative LCG. In this case, I don’t mean the release model, but rather the fact that the encounter deck, present here just as it is in both Lord of the Rings and Arkham, can be punishing. Ultimately, the probability of you succeeding is not only based on your strategic decisions in the game, but also on the luck of what is drawn from the encounter deck–and when it is drawn. More often than not, if you draw the deck’s cruelest cards at the worst moment, it will be all but impossible to overcome. You can prepare yourself as best you can, certainly, but sometimes winning is just not in the cards (Great job, Dad joke). Again, this is not a big enough problem to really bother me. I have certainly been frustrated playing Lord of the Rings, and that’s because, of the three, Lord of the Rings is the most punishing, by far. Arkham is second most, and Marvel Champions is actually the least punishing. At the same time, because of the cooperative aspect, I don’t mind the game feeling punitive. That’s the point, no? What’s the point of playing an easy cooperative game?

The only other drawback that someone might immediately raise objection to is actually something I really like. Deck-construction in this game is much simpler than with either Arkham or Lord of the Rings. Those two games are based on simple deck building restrictions revolving around factions, not terribly unlike Magic: The Gathering. Deck-construction in Marvel Champions has more in common with Star Wars: The Card Game. In Star Wars, cards come in blocks (or pods, if you’d prefer a whale metaphor). You choose an objective, most likely for a special ability, and with that objective you’ll also have a set of cards that will begin to build your deck, usually keyed to combo around the objective’s ability. As you select objectives, you’ll get their accompanying cards and slowly construct a deck, meaning decks are based on small, pre-built sets of cards rather than individual cards. It makes the build infinitely simpler.

Deck-construction here is similar. You’ll pick a hero and take a set number of cards as your deck starting set (like your 15 Iron Man cards or what have you). Then you’ll select one of those traits I mentioned earlier (Justice, Leadership, Aggression, or Protection), and add a certain number of cards from that trait. This is the most loosey-goosey bit, but the fact that you cannot combine traits really helps. Then you’ll augment what you’ve got with some neutral cards. Ultimately, your deck is only 40 cards, making it very easy to get a basic deck put together. While I am not a huge fan of tinkering with decks, making this a good thing, I completely understand this being a blemish on the game for those who really live and die for a good build experience.

There Goes My Hero (The Good Stuff)

All those gripes being said, Marvel Champions does plenty of things that I quite like, and that distinguish it from Lord of the Rings and Arkham.

First of all, Marvel is the lightest of the bunch. Along with the superhero theme, it’s clear that this was meant to be more of a gateway game. It’s not what I would call LIGHT, but it’s mechanically simpler than Arkham, and much simpler than Lord of the Rings, which I believe is clearly the heaviest of the bunch.

As an example, resources as you are used to are not here. Rather than managing a pool (or pools, in the case of Lord of the Rings) of resources, you pay for cards by discarding other cards from your hand, an evergreen mechanic that is so satisfying in its deceptive simplicity. Race for the Galaxy (2007) is another game that employs this same simple mechanic. What that means is that while the game is removing mechanics, its emphasizing the hand management here. And interestingly enough, your hand size will fluctuate based on if you are in Hero or Alter-Ego mode (ie which side your avatar’s card is face up). As your hand size fluctuates, it will present you with very difficult situations about whether you should hang onto cards and try to grow your hand size or discard as needed to pay for other cards.

And speaking of the Hero/Alter-Ego mode, this is one of the most satisfying puzzles of the game, because on your turn you can switch between these two modes, but only once per turn. Once the villain’s turn begins, they’ll interact with you differently based on if you are visible as a hero or disguised in your alter-ego. If you’re in hero mode, they attack you. If you’re in you alter-ego disguise, they’ll work on their scheme (slowly marching towards the end of the game). Is it better to stay in Hero mode and fight, thereby slowing the scheme’s progress? Or is it better to let the scheme progress so you can recover (heal) in Alter-Ego mode. Other than card abilities, this is the only way to increase your health, making it very important. This dilemma is so satisfying. What should you do, and when is always a delightful pickle to face.

And the theme. Yes, I love Marvel comics. I’ve read a fair amount of Marvel comics, mostly bronze age, and I find the implementation of theme here simple yet very effective. The mechanics are clean and streamlined, meaning some amount of theming is abstracted away, but so many of the card abilities are instructed by the hero’s comic book abilities. For example, Iron Man is underpowered at the start of the game (with a base hand size of only ONE when he is Iron Man), but as the game progresses and Tony is able to install upgrades to his suit, he will slowly become more powerful, and significantly more powerful at that. And as he adds upgrades, his hand size will grow, giving you a true feeling of acceleration

True, it’s still a card game, meaning that much of the heavy theming you may find in a more in-depth or complex board game is abstracted away. That being said, I really enjoy the implementation of theme here.

The End (Final Thoughts)

I apologize if it seems I’ve belabored the bad things, because that’s actually misleading. I think this game is great. Essentially, it’s exactly what I wanted. It plays well solo, it presents a ton of difficult choices, it’s hard, and it’s not campaign based. I can sit down and knock out a satisfying game of this in 30 minutes. It’s definitely challenging, and the heroes all feel very different when you play them. The Alter-Ego vs Hero modes not only present you with different abilities (most heroes have special abilities that are available to them based on which mode you are in), but there are also cards scattered throughout each hero’s deck that can only be played if you are in one mode or another. 

In regard to the villains, I also want to mention the fact that there are nemesis cards associated with each hero, like Killmonger for Black Panther or Titania for She-Hulk or Vulture for Spider-Man, who can be brought into play based on a specific card being drawn from the encounter deck. Each hero also has an obligation card specific to them that may be drawn to complicate their lives. The obligation cards usually entail the hero having to choose between being in Hero mode or Alter-Ego mode. For example, Spider-Man’s obligation card is “Eviction Notice,” which forces him to essentially turn back into Peter Parker and deal with the problems in his day-to-day life. When you do that, however, it allows the villain to scheme, once again pushing the game towards its ending. This aspect is so clean, but so clever and thematic.

For a game that is really fairly simple, Marvel Champions presents so many tough choices, eliminating some of the heavy resource management and complex card-play inherent to Lord of the Rings or Arkham Horror and replacing it with more puzzly questions of timing and hand management.

If you like tough and clever card games, this is definitely something you’ll want to check out. For me, the only thing preventing this from getting the highest marks is the fact that I still have a strong personal affinity for Lord of the Rings, a game Kathleen and I have played loyally for years. But if you’re new to the land of cooperative LCGs, this could be your newest obsession.

Player One

Eric

Revisit, 2022:

Marvel Champions has continued rolling along, releasing a bevy of content since this review was written back in 2019. As the ultimate catch 22, additional content has shown the issues in design here. Rather than introducing lots of new and interesting mechanics, my experience of Marvel: Champions has soured. New villains feel the same, and while heroes have proven interesting, each game is terribly similar to the last, regardless of which hero(s) or villain you may be using.

Each successive play for me has made me want to revisit Marvel Champions less and less, and I have. I can’t remember the last time I played this game. I’ll need to do be more comprehensive deep dive, but the initial Aging Report for Marvel Champions is not good.

Marvel Champions
by Michael Boggs, Nate French, and Caleb Grace

Strong theme and solid mechanics are here, but the gameplay is repetitive, and experience with other Fantasy Flight LCGs will share much of the same feel without some of the benefits of the other designs (Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror, specifically). After many plays, I find myself much more willing to play Lord of the Rings or Arkham Horror and leave Marvel Champions on the shelf.