Marvel Champions - Core Box

Marvel Champions is a cooperative game for one to four players. I have tried this out a couple of times at a friends place and quite liked it. After I picked it up, I realized how much fun and challenging it is solo.

I will discuss the good guys the players can use. First the game comes with five heroes: Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Iron Man, She-Hulk, and Black Panther. They all play differently with unique strengths and styles. There are also four to go with the hero decks: Aggression, Justice, Leadership, and Protection. Finally there are the basic cards that are not associated with a hero or an aspect. When making a player deck you can combine cards with a hero (all their cards), cards from one aspect, and basic cards as long as the deck is 40 to 50 cards in size. Can have no more than one unique and three non-unique cards in the deck.

The game also comes with three villains/encounters to face against your hero or heroes: Rhino, Klaw, and Ultron. There are five different modular encounter decks to use with them: Bomb Scare, Masters of Evil, Under Assault, Legions of Hydra, and Doomsday Chair.  There are also a basic mode or expert mode deck of cards. A villain deck must have all of a villain's cards, one encounter deck, and the basic or expert cards. You can add multiple modular encounters to an encounter deck but it will dilute the original encounter. It also recommends randomizing the modular encounter and shuffling it in so nobody knows what it will be.

What also attached me to the game was the math of options. Using the core box playing solo you have five heroes, each of which has a choice of four aspects, against three encounters/villains playable in basic or expert mode, and five modular encounters. That means there are 600 configurations with the starter box alone. That is 600 unique games and when it is a random shuffle to start players and encounters/villains if multiplies the options even more. When playing two, three, or four players games it means that a starter box will keep a group active for a while. When you add the expansion products made so far, the number of possibilities is nearly endless: 22 hero packs (two of which have modular encounters), four scenario packs (with five encounters/villains, 15 modular encounters, and different basic and expert mode decks), and four campaign expansions (with eight heroes, 20 encounters/villains, and 27 modular encounters). Each hero pack also comes with extra aspect cards, beyond those they come with, for customizing other heroes. That makes 35 heroes, four aspects with lots of options and specific hero flavoured ones, 28 encounters/villains, 44 modular encounters, and two basic and expert mode decks. In solo mode alone that is at least 689920 different combinations. But let's get back to the core box.

Even with sleeved up cards, everything can fit. That included the encounter/villain damage dial, threat markers, utility markers, damage markers, stun/tough/confused cards, first player token, player aid cards, and four hero damage dials

Here I am setting up for the first solo game, Spider-Man with Justice aspect vs Rhino with basic mode and Bomb Scare modular encounter. Each hero also comes with a specific obligation card (that goes into the villain deck, and specific nemesis deck that comes in once the basic mode card "Shadow of the Past" is revealed. 

Hero card come with two sides, the Hero side with THW (Thrart), ATK (Attack), and DEF (Defence) with other abilities on the card, and the...

...Alter-Ego side with REC (Recovery) and abilities. Each player turn you can flip your hero card once during the turn. Each side also has a hand limit that you draw up or discard down to at the end of the player turn.

Hero decks are made up of Ally, Event, Upgrade, and Support cards. Cost of the cards to play from your hand are in the upper left corner. To do that you have to discard cards to make that cost using the symbols on the lower left corner. Type of resource can be important depending on the card you are playing. Resources are Energy (yellow lightning bolt), Strength (red fist), Mind (purple atom like), and Wild which can be any of the previously mentioned three (green impact).

Allies are like minor heroes. They have hit points, thwart, attack, and special abilities. For thwart and attack, the number of stars beneath them indicate damage they take when using it. In Black Cat's case, she takes one damage when thwarting but none when attacking. That means this ally can help take out minions and villains all day long. If they do take points to be removed from play, the number in the middle right, they retreat to the discard pile and can come back again after a rest and reshuffle.

Aspect cards have the same four types of cards with one additional type, the Resource card. They provide more than one resource to use when buying cards or a special allocation of a resource.

This is similar to the Basic cards.

Here is a closeup of Spider-Man's Nemesis cards: The Vulture's cards and Eviction Notice. When the basic mode card ""Shadows of the Past" comes out, the hero's nemesis is put into play engaged with them, the special nemesis side scheme is put into play, and the other nemesis cards are shuffled into the Encounter/Villain deck. Eviction notice, as well as any hero's obligation card, is shuffled into the encounter/villain deck at the beginning of the game.

Here is the start of play and because I am playing basic mode Rhino his level one card is on top (in expert it would be level two), Rhino's main scheme is in play, and I have my hand of six cards after I have taken my mulligan, meaning after I deal my initial hand I can toss any number of those cards into my discard and draw back up to my hand size. 

Play then proceeds as follows. The first player (in solo games it is the only player) takes their turn under step one in the picture below. They mainly use guards to improve thier hero, reduce hit point or remove threats on schemes, help their fellow heroes, and bring out allies and resources. Once all players have finished all players perform step two. Then the villain places threat on the main scheme. For Rhino, the main scheme starts with no threat on it and it increases by one per player at this step. This number can be modified by side schemes. Then Rhino and each minion, in player order, either attacks if the player is in hero form or schemes if in alter-ego form. Normally when a villain attacks or schemes you flip a card from the top of the encounter/villain deck to add to the number listed on the card to determine how much damage the hero takes or how many threat is placed on the main scheme. Heroes can decide to have an ally take the damage before the card is flipped or exhaust the hero to defend and reduce damage taken according to the hero's defend stat. Otherwise the hero takes damage. Minions do not flip a card to increase scheme or attack, just use the printed number on the card.

Then encounter cards are dealt out to the heroes face down and are resolved order with first player going first. After everyone's encounter cards are resolved, the first player token is moved clockwise and it is now the player's turn. Once a level of encounter/villain has been reduced to zero hit points or less, the next level of villain is revealed. In all games there is only two levels of villain but be aware to read the card when going to a new encounter/villain.

Once Rhino's main scheme reaches seven times the number of players, at any time, then Rhino wins. Some villains have more than one schemes that have to be achieved in sequence. Ultron, for instance, has three.

In my first game against Rhino I won with Black Cat as an active ally, web shooters with two more uses left, Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, and Aunt May on the table. 

Rhino at the end of the game had no side schemes or minions but did have four threat markers on his main scheme. Rhino isn't supposed to be a tough villain but a good learner villain. 

So far with the core box I have played 44 games, broken down as below:

-Spider Man Justice vs Rhino (Bomb Scare 2, Masters of Evil, Under Attack, Doomsday Chair, Legions of Hydra), Klaw with Masters of Evil 2, Ultron with Under Attack 2. All wins.

-Captain Marvel Aggression vs Rhino Bomb Scare 2, Klaw with Masters of Evil 3 failed. I then changed the aspect to Leadership and vs Klaw Masters of Evil success and Ultron Under Attack 2 successes. Solo play was not conducive to use Aggression. 

-Black Panther Protection vs Rhino with Bomb Scare 2, Klaw with Masters of Evil 2. I switched up with Leadership against Ultron with Under Attack and got two wins.

-She Hulk Aggression vs Rhino with Bomb Scare 2 but against Klaw it was three losses. I switched to Protection and got two wins and against Ultron with Under Attack it was two wins. Again solo Aggression is very tough.

-Iron Man Aggression vs Rhino with Bomb Scare 2 wins but won and lost once against Klaw with Masters of Evil and three times lost against Ultron with Under Attack. Switched to Leadership and won two and lost one against Klaw and won one against Ultron. Recommendation based on my previous games is not to take the Aggression aspect in solo games...ever.

In a nutshell I really love the solo option for this game. Looking forward to more games with others and solo. I will also be trying out the other heroes, scenario packs, and campaign boxes and reviewing them here.

There are some free encounter/villain options out there:

-Story mode for the Core box: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/235820/marvel-champions-story-mode-s1-v10

-Team up with solo play: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/190714/marvel-champions-team-two-hero-one-handed-variant

-Spider-Man's Nemesis, Vulture, as a villain: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/226441/marvel-champions-vulture-villain-v1

There are also many other alternate fan made items: DC Comics Characters, DC and Marvel Characters, dividers, Hall of Heroes, and much more online at Board Game Geek or Reddit/MarvelChampionsLCG. Some really cool storage solutions, like these too. I especially like the reusing of cassette tapes for hero decks.