Marvel Champions - First Thoughts
This article represents my impressions after the first play of a game. It should not be regarded as a full critical analysis of the game. I may write a full review later.
Spiderman is engaged with the minions that have joined Rhino on his mission against S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. Tony Stark takes his time getting the suit together. Mine is on. I am Black Panther. Wakanda Forever!
Champions Assemble
Marvel Champions: The Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games, pits heroes against a nemesis in a cooperative game where simple choices are tied up with tricky resource management.
Every card in your deck evokes a part of your character: part of their costume, a signature attack, locations and allies that are prominent in the lore of the comics. A simple combination of all the cards for your character and all the cards from a particular aspect; leadership, attack, defence etc. form your deck.
The nemesis sets their plot in motion, every turn they get closer to their goal. They have their own deck full of minions to fight, side plots to defeat and all manner of comic inspired disasters.
Heroes thwart the plot, attack the nemesis, and tackle minions. The nemesis reacts, attacking every turn and here is where things get interesting. Heroes must take the hit but if you are in your day wear, adopting your alter ego, then you can avoid it. The plot advances just that little bit more if you aren’t around to stop the Villain.
The alter ego gives you access to different cards in your deck, the ability to heal and allows the designers to play with the dual aspects of many heroes in the Marvel universe. Flipping back and forth between your hidden identity and your heroic persona becomes a constantly evolving decision point that was really enjoyable to play with.
Paying for cards is the real core of the player’s turn and you do this by discarding several cards to pay for one. This gives each turn a tug of war between what you need now, what is vital later and the space between the two that allows you to pay for cards. Lovely design.
The graphic design is not so lovely.
By way of example the above picture contains triangular threat tokens in yellow on the plot card. The black number highlighted on both plots indicates how much threat to put on the card. Any reason these aren’t the same colour and shape?
Rhino’s health pool is also visible in this picture. Can you see it? Let me zoom in a bit for you.
In tiny black and white writing as it is in on the hero cards. Minions have their health in a nice bright circle just above the text box and I could see no reason why it shouldn’t be there on the hero and villain cards as well.
I enjoyed my first play of Marvel Champions: The Card Game. It’s more replayable than I imagined and is very approachable in its deckbuilding. I’d have liked them to take a little more time on the graphic design and it is way too expensive for what you get, especially considering it is part of the LCG model.
More on Marvel Champions: The Card Game
Editor reviews
I agree that the Arkham LCG is not great value, despite my love for that game. However Marvel just feels like bad value, even if running the maths it might not be. £60 just feels like a lot for this type of product, though of course you can get it cheaper but let's just look at RRP. I know logically it is better value that the Arkham core, but I don't know it just feels off to me.
First off, let me state that my experience with Marvel Champions was a negative one. I was the fourth wheel on a tricycle, never able to do much myself (as She-Hulk), while Iron Man dominated the proceedings. It was one game and my first and, as with all such experiences, it's certainly possible that it was unique and subsequent plays could be much better. As it stands, it's basically Sentinels of the Multiverse to me, keeping in mind that I generally don't like co-ops in the first place.
That said, the other deterrent is the same as yours: I don't do collectible games anymore because of the constant outflow of cash for, quite often, minimal return. I simply don't play often enough to justify "keeping up with the meta", but the urge is there. In the case of Marvel, I think there's an even greater urge because of the model that the setting has employed since the 1930s. If you want to keep up with the story, you have to buy something every month. HPL's short stories, OTOH, are something you can complete and then realize that another "story" may not be published for a fair amount of time. Comics (successful ones, anyway) are not like that. There will be a new chapter every month.
This game was clearly structured like this because, not only does the audience expectation differ, in that even fans of HPL often don't know or remember all of the details of his various stories, anyone interested in Marvel can casually list off a few dozen (if not hundred) characters. That creates expectation, which FFG seeks to meet with new product. Do you know if they're going to base a new HPL set around The Doom that Came to Sarnath? Of course you don't, if you're even aware of that story. But do you know that FFG is going to produce Fantastic Four sets and X-Men sets and more Hulk sets (they're already releasing the Wrecking Crew) and all of their associated villains? Of course they are.
So, I can sympathize with the feeling of a lack of value. I suspect it might feel that way because of a built-in expectation for more.
Champions though has modular releases. A hero pack only has hero cards. A villain pack only has villain cards. Both have some extra stuff to add more value and variety to what you already own, but you can pick and choose your purchases and not feel so much like you’re missing something in a way you could never could before with an LCG.
Which is all a long way of saying that it’s not just the simpler deck building and rules that could appeal to new players but a friendlier release model too.
But yeah, I’ve heard nothing but good for the game (outside So Very Wrong), but I would rarely pick it over Arkham for solo.
That's what the vast majority of Sentinels games have been for me, which is why I won't play it anymore, despite my lifelong love for comics and games like Villains and Vigilantes. You'd think, in that respect, that Marvel would be of interest to me. But too often I see co-op games just like this, where the real thrill of participation is held by one or two players, while the rest are the ones who get sent to Kingsport to keep too many rifts from opening.
Interestingly, SUSD highlights a couple other areas where I had problems with the game, in that it's more number-crunching than gameplay. But it's kind of funny that they point out that what makes Arkham superior in their opinion is the heavy reliance upon campaign play, whereas Marvel (ironically, given the source material) lacks that aspect, entirely. I realize that will be a selling point to a lot of people, especially those who don't like campaign play in their dungeon crawlers (which makes the outright fanboyism for Gloomhaven around here kind of odd...)