Marvel Champions: The Card Game provides fun, plenty of options
Marvel Champions: The Card Game is an ever-expanding romp featuring Marvel’s iconic heroes and villains. It’s definitely worth playing.
If you like mixing your love of comic books with your love of board games, then Asmodee has you covered like a street thug who got caught by Spider-Man.
Marvel Champions: The Card Game is a fun cooperative card game that features a massive array of superheroes and villains from across the Marvel universe. Together, players will control their favorite hero to stop a supervillain (or multiple) from bringing their evil plans to fruition.
The base game features five heroes and three villains. You’ll control either Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Black Panther, Spider-Man or She-Hulk and take on Klaw, Ultron or Rhino.
Every hero has special powers as both their superhero identity and their alter ego, so players will have to use some strategy to maximize the efficacy of both identities. You’ll play a card, then pass control the next player, until all the human players have had a turn.
Then it’s time for the villain phase, where the baddy will either attack or scheme. Either way, a boost card will be revealed and added to the villain’s base attack/scheme values. Then, every player is dealt out an encounter card, which will have to be dealt with.
Play continues until you’ve got the villain down to no health, or the villain gets all players down to no health, or enacts their main scheme.
Basically, right out of the box you’ve got a ton of replay value. The first time we played, Spider-Man, She-Hulk and Iron Man were used against Ultron.
We’ll chalk it up to first game jitters, because we lost. But we took a minute or two to discuss where we thought things went wrong, (ultimately, we didn’t use our alter egos enough, so we were constantly getting attacked) and tried again the following afternoon.
This time, Black Panther, Iron Man and Spider-Man were used in our rematch against Ultron. This time, true believers, the heroes emerged victorious.
Really, there’s a ton of little nods for Marvel fans in this game. The cards are incredibly thematic, with character abilities feeling like a direct tie-in to their comic-book counterpart.
For example, when playing as Iron Man, your card limit depends on the number of tech upgrades you’ve given your suit of armor. For fans of Tony Stark (both in comics and movies), this feels especially fitting. Every time Stark revamps his armor, he’s got a new trick and counter in it.
The obligation cards are done in a similar fashion. They do all kind of feel the same in terms of what the game requires the player to do, but the developers took the time to make each obligation relate directly to the character.
For example, Captain America’s obligation is ‘Man Out of Time’ and features a picture of Rogers’ compass (that he keeps a photo of Peggy Carter in). Spider-Man’s is ‘Eviction Notice,’ which is an obvious nod to his financial problems. Black Widow’s is ‘Burn Notice.’ They’re just fun little additions that make the game feel deeper.
Plus, the artwork on the cards is really great. They look awesome and if you’re like me you’ll spend a lot of time ogling over the cards in play.
You can get the game on Amazon for around $70.
Marvel Champions: The Card Game originally released in 2019, but in the three years since there have been a ton of expansions added to the core game.
Rise of the Red Skull features two new heroes in Hawkeye and Spider-Woman and five new villains in Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola and Red Skull.
The Mad Titan’s Shadow features Spectrum, Adam Warlock, Ebony Maw, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glave, Thanos, Hela and Loki.
Sinister Motives features Ghost Spider and Miles Morales, plus Mysterio, Venom, Doc Ock and Sandman.
The Galaxy’s Most Wanted features Rocket Raccoon and Goot, with Drang, The Collector, Nebula and Ronan The Accuser.
Each of those campaign expansions are around $40-$45.
But that’s not all – there are also five different waves of hero packs. These packs are usually $16.99 and feature 60 cards, including a new hero, signature cards and a justice deck.
Available currently are: Captain America, Thor, Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Doctor Strange, Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Agent Venom, Nebula, War Machine, Valkyrie, Vision, Nova, Ironheart, SP//dr and Spider-Ham.
Currently, there are Wrecking Crew, The Hood, The Once and Future Kang and Green Goblin scenario packs.
In short, there’s a ton of content here for you. And the library will just keep growing. So if you’re looking for an immersive, ever-expanding Marvel deck building game, this is perfect for you.
Shop Marvel Champions: The Card Game here.
This post contains affiliate links, where we may receive a percentage of any sale made from the links on this page. Prices and availability are accurate as of the time of publication.