Let's Play Marvel Champions: the Card Game

In August, Fantasy Flight announced the upcoming Marvel Champions: the Card Game, a Marvel-themed co-operative living card game. Frankly, it sounds exactly like the Lord of the Rings LCG that we've spent quite some time with, except with only one hero. Clearly we had to try it.

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To get the obvious part out of the way: yes, it is very much like the Lord of the Rings LCG, and will be immediately recognizable to anyone who's played the current crop of living card games, or indeed Magic: the Gathering, where all the basic mechanics are from. Each player controls a hero, who has a thwart (willpower in LotR), attack and defense stats, as well as hit points (a lot of them!).

There are some clever bits, though. Each hero has an alter ego, who has no combat stats, but instead has a different ability and a recovery stat, which they can use to restore hit points. What the villain in the scenario does depends on which form your hero is in: if you're a hero, the villain attacks you; if you're your alter ego, the villain advances their scheme. It's quite clever and gives the players a lot of control over how the game proceeds.

Each player also has a deck of 40-50 cards, which includes 15 hero-specific cards. In time-honored card game fashion, these basically consist of allies, attachments and events. Each deck can only include cards from one aspect (color/sphere) and basic (colorless/neutral) cards, so with just the core set, deckbuilding consists of choosing a hero and an aspect.

The only real twist is that you pay for cards by discarding other cards for resources. Each card has one or more resource icons in the bottom left corner, showing what kind of resources it produces, and there are resource cards specifically meant to be discarded for resources. Because you replenish your hand at the end of every turn, there's a real incentive to do as much as you can every turn, which suits the theme of the game very well.

Another fun thing is something FFG did in Arkham Horror, which is that each hero comes with their own unique weakness: both an obligation card that's shuffled into the encounter deck, and an individual nemesis and associated encounter cards that can be summoned into play by the encounter deck.

I love that one of the core set heroes is She-Hulk, by the way. As you can see, the cards are nice to look at and quite functional. The visuals throughout are in the contemporary Marvel comics style, with surprisingly few nods to the cinematic universe. It's interesting, for instance, that even though the Captain Marvel movie was a big deal, Yon-Rogg is definitely not Jude Law!

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We got stuck in with the recommended tutorial decks, i.e. Spider-Man Justice and Captain Marvel Aggression facing Rhino. Another key difference to the other LCGs is that instead of us trying to accumulate progress on a quest, we're trying to stop the villain from accomplishing his aims. I suppose this speaks to how superheroes are generally reactionary, but maybe that's a topic for another day. In this case, Rhino is trying to break out of prison, and we're trying to stop him.

In this case, it's mostly a simple enough matter of beating up on Rhino until we reduce him to 0 hit points, while stopping him from gathering too much threat on the main scheme (quest). We focused on the beating up part; when some minions turned up, I got to play a card with a picture of a raccoon on it.

There are four different kinds of resources in the game, but you don't need a resource match to play your cards. However, as the raccoon card shows, sometimes you get benefits from using a specific kind of resource for a certain card.

Finally, after some surprisingly devastating Swinging Web Kicks, Captain Marvel took Rhino out with an Energy Channel, and we were victorious.

A second attempt with the Captain Marvel Leadership and Iron Man Aggression ended up with my Captain Marvel eliminated from play, but she bought enough time for Iron Man to gather his gazillion tech upgrades and beat the crap out of Rhino.

Back in the Lord of the Rings card game, my partner plays a mono-Tactics deck with a heavy emphasis on attachments, based on Boromir and Legolas beating everyone up. Oddly enough, it's apparently a very short step from that to an Aggression deck with a heavy emphasis on attachments, based on Iron Man beating everyone up. Who knew?

I also tried my Captain Marvel deck solo, and enjoyed the experience. Solo play in the Lord of the Rings card game is quite different to multiplayer, because it's so much easier to control the pace of the game. Here, that's so much easier overall that the difference doesn't feel nearly as big, but I found solo Marvel to also be quite good fun. It was very rewarding to finally knock out Rhino with a maxed-out Energy Channel!

After the first scenario, we tried the second one, where instead of a straight-up fight to beat up Rhino, you get... a straight-up fight to beat up Klaw.

I'll be honest: the first two scenarios play out exactly the same way, and that was a bit disappointing.

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With potentially the entire Marvel universe to play with, it's not like this game is ever going to run out of material. As a household of Marvel aficionados, naturally we have lots of opinions on who needs to be included in the game as it expands. I mean seeing as how there's already a raccoon card, they're clearly going to do the Guardians of the Galaxy at some point, so I very much want Nebula and Valkyrie heroes. And obviously Nikki. Ally cards we need include Jessica Biel's character from Blade: Trinity. In fact, I'm holding out for a Blade-themed deluxe expansion or whatever they're going to call the box sets.

My list of heroes we absolutely need to see in the game:

Dazzler
Karma
Domino
Moondragon
Wildstreak
Vendetta
Death's Head
Misha from the Warheads

Although to be fair I guess I might have to accept Misha as an ally. And finally, of course, my favorite Marvel character of all time: Motormouth. I will be very disappointed if we don't get a Motormouth hero pack!

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So we've had fun with the core set! There's a couple of things I'm a bit leery about, though, in comparison to Fantasy Flight's earlier LCGs. We've been told we're getting hero packs, villain packs and story boxes; the first will include a new hero and a ready-to-play deck, the second has a new villain and some scenarios, and the story boxes will presumably have some of everything. So whereas with the Lord of the Rings you'd buy an adventure pack and get a hero, a pile of player cards and a quest to play, now we have to pay double (on top of a considerably more expensive core set!). Okay, we get more cards, but that leads to my other question: how is deckbuilding going to work?

While it's definitely a good thing that the core set comes with four playable decks (unlike, say, the Arkham one), restricting each deck to a single aspect means there's no deckbuilding to be done with the core set. In the announcement of the Captain America hero pack, we were told that that hero pack will come with 15 Captain America cards, 17 Leadership cards and eight basic cards, plus a new card for each other aspect. That's not exactly a lot in terms of deckbuilding. If the Cap deck is playable right out of the box, I guess some of the basic cards have to be at least functional reprints? The resource cards, for instance. So for a Leadership player, there's the 17 new cards and maybe something new in neutral; everybody else is getting three copies of one new card. This isn't exactly going to be a fast-growing cardpool.

I get that not everyone likes deckbuilding, but hell, I do. I'm fondly recalling the Lord of the Rings core set, with which you could build all kinds of decks by mixing two or even three spheres. I'm kinda bummed that it looks like it's going to be quite a while until I get to do any proper Marvel deckbuilding.

The other thing that feels a little bit disappointing is that so far, the core set scenarios have felt very similar. We have to stop the villain from gathering enough threat to win, and do enough damage to them to beat them up. And that's it. If all the quests are going to be like this, then I'm afraid this is going to get kinda old pretty fast.

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So, a verdict. Marvel Champions feels promising, and we've enjoyed playing it. Would we recommend dropping 70€ on a copy? Frankly, not really. At this point so much depends on where the game goes. Hero and villain packs will apparently be dropping throughout next year, and for me at least, whether the game is worth playing or not is really going to depend on whether they take both deckbuilding and the villain decks in new and interesting directions or not. Overall, we feel cautiously positive - but let's see.

Let's Play Munchkin Warhammer 40,000

The original Munchkin card game came out in 2001, and it's inexplicably taken them eighteen years to get around to doing Munchkin Warhammer 40,000. We never got into Munchkin back in the day, but I bought the July 2019 issue of White Dwarf to get the Blood Ravens rules, and it came with a card for Munchkin 40k. Now, since it would be silly to own just one Munchkin card, we decided this would be a good time to take the plunge and get Munchkin 40k.

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As you can see from the example card above, Munchkin 40k gets it: this is Munchkin humor in 40k grimdark, and it just works. Below is the beginning of our first game, in the prosaic surroundings of our kitchen table. The Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 box comes with 168 cards, which makes entirely adequate door and treasure decks, and a board and little cardboard standies for everyone. The board is used purely to mark which level everyone is on and where to put the cards, so it's theoretically totally unnecessary, but we liked it.

In case you don't know how Munchkin works, it's very simple: each player represents a tabletop role-playing game player who is, well, a munchkin; someone who completely ignores the plot and role-playing aspects of the game in order to make the best character possible and "win". Hence, the objective in Munchkin is to be the first to reach level 10 by killing monsters. To get there, you amass equipment of all kinds to help kill monsters - and stop other people from winning first! It's not particularly well balanced, and often devolves into an intense king-killing exercise where everyone piles onto the leader; and all that is exactly the point. It's why it's called Munchkin. It's a bit too heavy to be a party game, but not nearly heavy enough to be a Very Serious Game either - and far too tongue-in-cheek for that as well. In my opinion, Munchkin has a very particular niche of its own, and a lot of the criticism it gets comes from people who seem to think it should be something other than what it is.

To get back to Munchkin 40,000, this iteration switches things up a bit: we're no longer role-playing a dungeon crawl, but rather we're tabletop wargaming. Classes and races are out in favor of armies and vehicles, and some of the cards reference miniature gaming rather than role-playing; for instance, you can drop an enemy's level by playing Unpainted on it, or even worse, Proxied.

Below is the end of our first game. I won playing an Ork with a Lychguard Wraithscythe, Radium Pistol and Chosen Helmet, riding the Auric Aquilas. I won by playing both Purge Yourself from Imperial Records and Pilgrimage to Holy Terra, and defeating a C'tan while defeating my opponent's attempt to make me lose a level with Left Your Terrain at Home.

For our second game, we all somewhat hilariously started as Necrons, but later, erm, evolved; thanks to the Alliance card, I found myself playing both Necrons and Tyranids. The amount of grenades being thrown into the fight below demonstrates, I think, that we were getting the hang of this Munchkin thing.

After a long while spent with all of us at level 9, eventually my fellow Necron managed to find a monster in the door deck and, despite our best efforts, defeat it to win the game.

We had a great time playing Munchkin Warhammer 40,000. Thematically, it's a perfect match: 40k "grimdark" has always been a bit silly, and the writing and John Kovalic's art capture that silliness wonderfully. Our second game got a bit intense, and yeah, I can kinda see how people who played waaay too much Munchkin back in the day got burned out on it, but we very much enjoyed ourselves.

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The really scary thing about Munchkin is that it appeals to the collector in me. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be interested in owning multiple versions of the same game, but with Munchkin, the thing is that you can combine them. All of them, that is. So once we'd tried 40k Munchkin, clearly the thing to do was get another set. Seeing as how we've all been pretty diehard Marvel fans since the previous millenium, the obvious choice was Munchkin Marvel.

As you may be able to tell, we also got a blister pack. It is excellent.

Also, we found a copy of Fairy Dust Dice at our friendly local gaming store, and my partner loved them, so now we're also playing with a four-card Fairy deck.

The first thing you notice with Munchkin Marvel is that it takes itself a lot more seriously than 40k Munchkin. Here, everyone starts with a Role card that tells you what kind of SHIELD agent you are; each even comes with a little bonus applicable in certain situations. In addition to equipment, we can also have allies and be affiliated to a Marvel universe organization like the Avengers. Below is a picture toward the end of our first game, when I got Cryogenically Frozen and had to miss a turn, so I had plenty of time to get the camera out!

As you can see, even the art is much more serious! The cards are pretty succesful thematically; we did get a kick out of having stuff like different Iron Man armors and Captain America's shield, and even Infinity Gems, flying around, and fighting various Marvel bad guys. The presentation seems to be mostly geared toward the current Marvel cinematic universe, but the art is from the comics.

Below is the end of our game: our fellow operative, definitely a Hydra double agent, deployed a Life Model Decoy to defeat the Kingpin and make it to level 10.

Overall, Munchkin Marvel is fun to play, but thematically it's in a slightly awkward spot between being a serious Marvel game and proper Munchkin comedy. Crucially, Marvel lacks the meta level that's so important to Munchkin; you just can't have a card like Left Your Terrain at Home in Marvel! Also, I don't really think the Role cards add much to the experience, and I've come to dislike making players pick from a strict gender binary. Even in a household of fairly hardcore Marvel fans, we thought Munchkin 40k was just much more fun, and more Munchkin.

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Later, we got the opportunity to try a five-player game with the Faith and Firepower expansion. I started out as a Necron with a power sword and a Fairy Duster, as you do. One particular complaint I have with Munchkin 40k is that although I regard the Necrons as an innovation, I've now played as one so many times that I'm about this close to buying the codex and a Start Collecting Necrons box.

Faith and Firepower adds a little over a hundred cards; you can see the size of the door and treasure decks in the picture above. Most importantly, there are two new armies, the Sisters of Battle and the Tau, both of which we felt were good additions to the game, and a whlle bunch of stuff for everyone to use.

Five-player Munchkin turned out to be pleasantly chaotic. We had a bit of a moment when a player threatened to get too far ahead by fighting a Snotling. The Snotling, however, turned out to be a holographic projection, and what they actually ended up fighting was a Fairy Scary Heretical Grimdark Undead Mean Machine Angel, with his dial set all the way to 4.

The chaos lasted for something like three hours, until everyone's joint efforts were no longer enough to stop a Tyranid-Sisters of Battle alliance storming to victory in their Leman Russ.

If Munchkin 40k was good with three players, it's absolutely excellent with five.

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We're definitely going to try the Cosmic Chaos expansion and see if that makes Muchkin Marvel a bit more interesting, but what I think seems to be the best bet at this point is to keep playing Munchkin 40k, but add the Marvel cards to it. It's worth noting that the Marvel set is a particularly good candidate for this since none of the cards have any use restrictions! And since we've got kind of a comic book vibe going, there's also Munchkin Turtles. Mixing multiple sets of course means we'll also be interested in Cheat with Both Hands... You see where this is going. We're going to need some kind of card holders.

Our introduction to Munchkin has been great fun so far, and I would very much recommend Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 to anybody who's even a little bit into 40k and interested in Munchkin. So far, it seems like a perfect match. Also get the Judge Dredd expansion while you're at it, it's easily worth the price and, seeing as how Games Workshop stole most of Warhammer 40,000 from 2000 AD in the first place, very thematically appropriate. Another expansion that goes nicely with 40k is Space Ships. But just the base game itself is excellent fun. If you missed the Munchkin craze the first time around like we did, give Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 a shot. I think you'll find it's worth it.