Marvel Champions Review - Gambit-Level Cardplay

because it's Afghan that and we'll have a front yes how come not gonna Oh Quinn where are you did you don't get my text know about playing the Marvel champions card game no instead of the Arkham no game quints Tom made eldritch sausage rolls a pretty eldritch anyway hello great okay so in 2017 Matt and I got pretty obsessed with the Arkham Horror card game a cooperative game where everyone's character was a custom deck that would get stronger and stranger as you made your way through campaigns here at shot up and sit down we would call the Arkham Horror card game the best cooperative adventure since gloom Haven our only criticism was that it was quite expensive because each chapter in the story had to be bought separately although since our review the new upgrade packs that Fantasy Flight has been selling have made revisiting each campaign in a sort of new game plus a really appealing prospect but in the 21st century three things are inevitable death taxes and the Marvel franchise so Fantasy Flight has now released Marvel champions the card game another card game that sees cooperatively players taking a deck that is their character taking on another deck that is the scenario it's also still not for one to four players no matter what the box says with four players this game is still as slow as a baby covered in peanut butter trying to cross a ball pit and so I find myself exclusively thinking of it once again as a two-player game the biggest difference is that this game is now friendlier all that campaign stuff is gone replaced with one and done fights that you can squeak into a lunch break the other difference of course is that instead of investigators you are now Marvel's superheroes that's it but which Super Heroes is can you be in the core box I'm so glad you asked you can be family emergency business problems legal work affairs of state and eviction notice I'm kidding these are the obligation cards of Iron Man spider-man XI ha captain marvel and black panther who were all playable out of the box kudos here to Fantasy Flight for continuing the company's excellent stance on diversity of the first seven heroes released for marvel champions almost half of them are women and you know what that means this game is the proud recipient of the shut up and sit down feminism seal for being good enough my wife actually made this and I know what you're thinking did we pay her for her labor No so you've got your hero and you want to play Marvel champions don't worry I'm gonna teach you how the first thing you are going to do is assemble a scenario from whatever component parts you have in your collection it's almost an unintentionally March to cut and paste Hollywood movies should we do spider-man and Iron Man versus Ultron but there's also a bomb scare yeah done let's get lunch first you take a villian deck which in itself comes in a range of difficulties and then you can add optional modules to tweak the difficulty further right now working with these weird evildoers from the 60s might be manageable Bry no plus an invading alien army is horrible I mean it's also just a horrible story don't you think we should pick a yeah pick one bad guy yeah pick a lane right you then bulk up the villain deck with these standard cards plus some optional extra cards if you want to make your life absolutely wretched and you might because with no campaign for players to contentedly trundle through the appeal in Marvel champions besides seeing all the new cards you buy isn't overcoming harder and harder villain Depp's so you've got you venom back to finish that up you're going to grab the villain health dial and spin that up to its maximum if the heroes can pummel this back down to zero the heroes win you're also gonna pop out the villains master plan throughout the game the villain is gonna be scheming away like a mean scheme machine and if they ever get enough threat tokens on this to finish it the heroes instantly lose so you've set up the bad guys all that's left is for each player to chuck in their good guy if you're using one of the game's pre-constructed decks this is incredibly easy all you do is chuck your heroes obligation card into the villain deck and this is a lovely bit of color you pop your heroes personal Nemesis deck to one side every hero comes with a nemesis that might unexpectedly gatecrashed any scenario you play so when you're picking which hero you want to play it's like you're entering a relationship and then immediately hearing rumors about their evil acts I love you Tony but can we talk about whiplash they're a real dingus if you do want to customise your hero deck and honestly a higher difficulties you're gonna absolutely have to this has actually been made nice and easy as well you need 40 cards in total but every hero deck first starts off with that heroes 15 cards and then you pick an aspect for that deck either aggression protection justice or leadership or as I remember them damaging ducking disrupting and delegating and then you just fill in anything else you think your deck is missing with mediocre neutral cards a bit like you're pasting in grout now if all of this seems maybe a little intimidating because you would define yourself more as a Marvel nerd than a card game nerd I'm happy to say that Marvel champions is aimed at you it's got these pre constructed decks and a pretty good tutorial that on ramp you onto the experience very quickly and soon you'll find yourself saying things like I exhaust my Helicarrier and play the power of protection to play Luke Cage if that's something you want but also if you've not played a Fantasy Flight living card game before or you're in for a treat at any point blank Marvel champions you can look down at all the cards in play and see a story as if you were reading radioactive tea leaves picture the scene you're Tony Stark your personal med team can only treat one person and you have to decide whether they should operate on Hawkeye or she-hulk when both are badly injured but both need to go out and fight Ultron she-hulk's player tells you to treat and limps out to tangle with the villain with just one hit point left is this the end for our hero that her player drops gamma slam a ferocious card that turns all of she hops hurt into rage and does 14 damage to the villain knocking out Ultron and saving the planet ah I mean this as high praise often the cards played in a game of marvel champions read like the panel's of a middling comic book of course that is entertaining but like most card games it's even more entertaining when the story it's telling doesn't quite work picture the scene your black panther or at least you hope to be in about 15 minutes you need to pay for Black Panthers equipment cards first but oh this is embarrassing you just can't seem to find them in desperation you pay through the nose for The Avengers mansion tap it to draw a card and find your claws were they between some soft percussions also you can't afford the clause gives you've invested all of your resources as a head of state of Wakanda into a timeshare it's also continually funny to me how in Marvel champions your allies can take hits for you which means a vital part of the game is having a lot of friends with life-threatening injuries on speed dial so that when rhino is about to smash through a wall and deal three points of damage to you instead you can quickly text Black Widow to jump in front and take all the damage for you so instead of taking eight damage yourself she just lost her one hit point that she had left I mean she's gone now she's in your discard pile but that mapped out great speaking of maths and let's talk a little bit about this game that you're playing because it's tight mean and interesting so you're always on your turn you'll enjoy a hand of cards from your deck and some of these are going to be events which are one-off cars that behind little razzle-dazzle but lots of other cards will be upgrades or support or allies or Samuel Jackson and by paying for these cards you get to put them down semi-permanently and these cards become tools in your arsenal that then help you attack or defend or thought which is the process of removing threat from a villains scheme now this could be as dramatic is disarming bomb or as mundane as bling or not disrupting a meeting but before you can play any card you first have to pay its cost in the top left hand corner and you pay this cost with other cards from your hand so this actually turns every single turn in Marvel Champions into a bit of a brain teaser you can always play any card or cards you want but you have to figure out which options and opportunities you're gonna throw away to make it happen now if your only experience of card games is something like Magic the Gathering where you may or may not be able to play one card on your turn before receiving one more card you'll discover that Marvel Champions has the bounciness of professional parkour every time you're using this card to play that card and these two cards to play that card and then tap this card to draw this column and use this card to play that card please everything will vanish their hand like an expensive juicer before being given up around new one and this ridiculousness grows every turn as you play more and more cards to this tableau in front of you and this is part of the appeal of Marvel champions this sensation of growing an engine of progress until very quickly you will in each game feel like a superhero able to unleash a tornado of paper cuts on an enemy Hey damage how many hit points did he have anyway it to didn't mean to do that much damage can superheroes get done for manslaughter another decision on your turn you got to figure out whether you're gonna strip off your spandex or spring back into it again by flipping your ego or alter ego cards if Marvel champions has an innovation it could be summarized as this now to explain how this works I first need to explain the villain phase so once all the players have taken their turn you enter the villain phase and everyone is dealt a card from the villain deck this could be a new side scheme like the villain spending more time with their family out no it's an illegal arms Factory and now their hand is a government but just as often the card you draw from the villain deck is an additional bad dude who is going to do a bunch more bad stuff for every turn you haven't yet staved their head in but the villain phase is also where you're going to get whacked by the villain and any of their friends who are engaged with you dropping your health bar like a stone and if your health ever reaches double zero you are eliminated from the game and all of your friends have to try and finish the scenario without you however if you end your turn in mild mannered mode and the villains can't find you you receive no damage at all in fact you can heal but instead the villain and all of the friends who are engaged with you scheme instead adding threats to that plot which is going to lose the game for everybody so marvel champions is a game where in addition to try to deal health damage to the villain players are spinning plates or rather spinning their identity to manage their own health and the public plots but what makes this system really fun to engage with is that one of the two sides of your card is just better if you are chilling out on the sofa instead of having vans thrown at you then you actually draw one additional card at the end of your turn which is huge the end result of this system is just a really fun tonal representation of being a super hero you're made to feel so powerful dispatching enemies with the flick of a card like you were some kind of real-life subpar gambit the coolest Marvel superhero until some game effect or simple mismanagement leaves you in the form you don't ideally want to be in that turn and you go ah can you just actually stay in the fight for one more turn you say to your friend who is essentially stuck in a boxing ring while you are stuck in your apartment so there is a quick overview for you of Marvel champions a game that is well thought-out entertaining and with a core box that's pretty generous you know just with this corset you're gonna be busy for at least three or four evenings before you start eyeing up some of the expansion packs that have already started launching out a fantasy flight with the startling speed of a t-shirt cannon if you're a Marvel fan and think you could handle a game with both a crib sheet and a crib magazine I reckon you could feel very safe picking up a copy of Marvel champions however if you are like me and the sentence have you seen the trailer for the New Avengers movie has all the effect of ringing the doorbell of an empty house and if you would really rather have a good card game than anything else let me tell you every night that I spent playing Marvel champions I wished I was playing the Arkham Horror card game and in fact I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is after I'm done filming this review this box is going in another box destined straight for the shucks library and I am in fact going to order some new expansions for this game and I think I have a bit of a responsibility to you to break down exactly why that is I start by telling you what I just don't like about Marvel champions and to do that I first have to point out something you might assume from the number of cards showing either punching or Yi all these zero-gravity boobs that this game is a zesty action-packed romp it's actually extremely numerical are you gonna on your turn take to the skies as Ironman well let's crunch the numbers in order to activate your rocket boots and gain the aerial tray you have to discard either tiger ax or mark 5 armor and it might be quite valuable to keep those for later and if you are aerial you'll improve the damage of supersonic punch by 4 and your mark 5 helmet will clean up one additional threat to take your turn in Marvel champions is to tango with a ton of tiny calculations just like this one and let me point out this is not the bad part it's fun to build up an engine until enemies collapse under the weight of your integers but taking your turn in Marvel champions is solitary fun all of these fun deliberations that you get to wrassle with on your turn are sadly opaque to the rest of the table they're hidden in your hand of cards and in the tiny sideways text of your tableau which means Marvel champions becomes a game of players waiting for their turn interact and have fun with the thing and also where I felt an immediate pressure to take my turn and make my decisions as quickly as I could without messing the game up because there might be one - or Lord forbid three people waiting for their time what this then led to is by my second evening with Marvel champions my friends had stopped saying card names because nobody wants to hear you say I'm going to use chase them down and the power of regression to play Pepper Potts that I'm going to use Pepper Potts s ability and genius to play Tigra then I'm going to use Tiger to attack this / it's like no absolutely not people want an efficient delivery of information that is relevant to them way better to play with someone who goes I paid all this and I've killed that person and I've eliminated this scheme great done the game keeps its pace up however this of course neuters a lot of Marvel champions is narrative potential and also it doesn't entirely fix the problem if you've played Dominion you'll remember those tons of industrial-grade fair but you're looking at someone waiting for them to take their turn and they start their turn by going I'm gonna play this card to draw three more cards and then I'm going to tap this to draw two more cards and while for them they're having this beautiful moment where the possibility space of the talent opens up in their head like a fractal flower but for everybody else in the table you're just thinking I wonder if this turns gonna take so long that I can go and make a tea my final criticism it's not quite right to say that Marvel champions has an underwhelming ending because in truth it often doesn't have an ending at all a scenario often ends with a player stating the question can we kill the villain this turn and then the game ends with algebra as you all work out what happens if you stop playing upgrades and beating sort of minions and if you all just focus on doing damage well I could do a 7 9 10 11 12 how much could you do 13 12 13 25 you could do 7 25 + 7 32 how much health is a villain 1/2 31 we did it because the game has no variants you don't even need to play the cards except in a sort of ceremonial fashion but what this meant is when my friends and I finished the scenario even if we've been trying to beat it for like two nights the atmosphere would actually leave the room when we realized we did it as if someone turned off a karaoke machine just as the chorus coming up it's time to pack away our fun engines because we won yay and this is not a huge deal but it might be in a game where you're supposed to when you finish scenario get super amped to spend more money on another for what it's worth all of these criticisms are pretty minor quibbles I said it before I'll say it again Marvel champions is pretty fun it's pretty good it's nice but it pales in comparison to the dark magic of Arkham the best thing in the Arkham Horror card game is completely absent from Marvel champions and that is you guessed it the campaign and the campaign is great not just for that fun system of leveling up your deck and putting in new super cards between scenarios but because when you're playing a game where every game affects the subsequent one where every choice you make every NPC that dies is written down the game becomes so much more electric and you care about your friends tones you also care about your friends tons because the game requires substantially more teamwork if you play a gun instead of going into a room that drastically affects my turn so I guess the simple way to put it Marvel champions is a game where my turn is a lot of fun the Aachen card game is just a lot of fun full-stop another huge reason that Arkham feels truly magical in a way that Marvel champions absolutely does not is that so much of this experience takes place not in the little cards on the table but among your group of friends in conversation in the Arkham card game players are forever debating where to go whether to attack this monster or even the fabulous question of is it time to stop this investigation before we all die I mean goodness Marvel champions also is absolutely not the game to buy if you want to feel like a hero Arkham is the game where when you put yourself between the forces of evil and your friends you feel like you're truly risking something because you are and when you triumph over the forces of evil this is the game that will have you high-fiving your friends assuming you triumph you don't you don't often triumph in the Arkham card game I should stress this game isn't for everybody when we say it's mean that's because it's mean so I think we've lost a scenario I've been on the bright side both of our characters are permanently scarred cool that sounds great can you check the campaign long and I'll write down everything that we've lost okay so it's Thomas Winkleman yeah he gone Alexander pump mm-hmm dad as hell yeah oh yes it's mean if my Arkham group had a motto it would be never mind so in summary Marvel champions is simply a less ambitious design than the Arkham Horror card game this is sugary breakfast cereal as compared to this haunting meat sausage I should point out mobile champions has got campaign expansions promised down the line but it is so clearly not the game's focus it wants to provide a streamlined accessible bit of fun Brad I've gotta say if what you're after is a streamlined accessible collectible card game from Fantasy Flight I'd actually rather just play key Forge fantasy flights mind-blowingly innovative card game where every deck you can buy is a unique randomized product I mean of course technically nothing stops you from buying and keeping up with both of these games it's just they both demand a lot of time and a lot of money and also they get better the more you invest in each one of them as your card collection grows so we just cannot see a universe where I would call on my friends to play this instead of oh thank you very much for watching everybody oh she Hulk it's such a shame that the capitalist society that we both inhabit means that we can't be friends and must instead be compared like property I cannot for your friendship I only care that the people know that shut up and sit down is dedicated to making the best boardgame reviews in the world like these ones over here [Music]

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 280,973

Rating: 4.8130627 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Quintin Smith, Marvel, Marvel Champions, Card Games, CCGs, LCGs, superhero board game

Id: MRl70CQy83A

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mrquinns]

i am here to defend my opinions on Gambit

[u/JackContinues]

I fully agree with everything in this review, with the slight caveat that I think I liked it more than Quinn's did anyway.

I managed to grab all the released expansions before the classic FFG print cycle drought began which helps with replayability (not that it's too much of an issue with just the core box regardless), and it's been my go to game since Christmas.

I've found that what you lose in depth and a campaign compared to Arkham Horror, you gain in pick up and play and accessibility. Making it easier to get to the table, but maybe slightly less fulfilling once it gets there.

[u/threedog12]

This was not brought up in the video but I just really wanted to say that I love the actual box for Marvel Champions after having bought some FFG card games in the past. It's got a large amount of air still, but there's an insert that's designed to actually store not only the cards in the box, but with room for many more expansions. It is a small thing for sure but I really appreciate being sold a storage solution that will actually store the game instead of box that's 10% game and 90% air like Heroes of Terrinoth.

Love the review as always!

[u/lithicbee]

I have a bunch of Arkham Horror LCG but I am wary of trying to get my wife to play it because of a) the deckbuilding component and b) the high likelihood of soul-crushing defeat.

I have been eyeing Champions due to it's ease of deckbuilding and presumably lower chance of crushing one's soul.

But it sounds like I would be better off just continuing to solo AHLCG.

[u/WineCon]

This was a great rundown of the game, and it explained well what I think has been fun about it so far. I have to say I disagree with the conclusion, though, at least for my group. That "algebra" ending that Quinns talks about is definitely there, but it's led to more than a few high fives in my group, not to mention close calls and stories I want to tell other people in the know.

Moreover, Marvel, to me, achieves the same feeling of "being" the character I'm playing as that Arkham does. Only now I'm Spiderman, and I never, ever want to be Peter Parker, just like Peter Parker. It strikes a great balance of tension and decision making, in my opinion.

That said, Arkham and Marvel are very different games, and I don't begrudge anyone liking one over the other. I will say that Marvel has a few things going for it that are better, in my opinion, than Arkham:

​

1) No dead cards. No matter how bad the decisions you made about deck building are, the terrible cards you decided to add to your deck just in case that 1 in 100 situation comes up where it was useful, you can always pitch it to pay for something else. This is not true in Arkham, at all (although Arkham does much better than Magic: The Gathering in terms of not getting resource screwed at random).

2) Setup is WAY easier for Marvel than it is for Arkham. Grab a villain set (color coded to make t easy to differentiate); grab the standard 7 cards, grab a side scheme of like 5 cards, and shuffle them together with your obligations. Very easy. The font is still too small, making teardown a little more annoying. But in Arkham you routinely have to dig out about 5-7 sets of just a few cards, and those sets are denoted by a tiny symbol (just the same as in lord of the rings, another game I love but do not love the setup for). That's a slog, and teardown is just as bad. It's not Marvel Legendary, but it makes a big difference in determining which game I would like to play.

3) Straight up, theme is just better for me. But that's obviously very personal. I think it really colors one's impression of the two games if you're a fan of Arkham but not Marvel, or vice versa.

​

All in all, another entertaining review! Kudos to the SUSD team, and thanks for some thoughtful discussion! I'm going to keep waiting for the Champions packs to restock now.

[u/cleverlikeasloth]

The bit about being bored during other people’s turns was strange to me. Admittedly, I love Marvel, so it’s fun to see what the other heroes will do and what allies or locations will come out. Even if you don’t like the IP though, it’s still a co-op and you get invested in everyone’s turns because it’s a tough game and you’re relying heavily on your team to get stuff done. It’s exciting when someone pulls Shadows of the Past and the nemesis pack comes out. It’s fun being able to ask for cards from other players, and the bargaining/planning that is the result of the ask. Every deck plays so differently and it’s also fun just seeing what kind of wacky stuff the other heroes get up to, like watching Iron Man build his armor or Black Panther pulling off a big Wakanda Forever combo. Have I mentioned I think this game is fun?

[u/ACG-Gaming]

I dont think the "ask for actions" part was discussed was it? Maybe I missed it.

[u/DerBK]

To offer a different perspective:

As someone who gets LCGs for solo gaming, replacing the campaign with randomizable scenario elements is a huge plus in my book. It boosts replayability through the roof, especially as the number of available scenarios gets bigger.

Arkham is almost Legacy-like in comparison. Not that i have anything against that, i have played Arkham with 2 players just recently and look forward to doing so again. But for me the scenario model in Marvel Champions makes it much easier for me to justify dropping the money on the packs because i see myself getting more play out of the individual cards.

[u/the_elon_mask]

I play Arkham and Marvel Champions.

One is a well thought out stand in for an ongoing RPG campaign. The other is Marvel Champions.

Seriously though, AH is amazing but shines over several sessions of a campaign.

Marvel Champions is a great disposable session easily accessible by anyone.

I think both have a place in your gaming group but perhaps not in your collection.