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Marvel Champions is a one to four-player superhero game where players take on the role of one of five Marvel heroes to battle it out against one of three villains. Play as Captain Marvel, Spiderman, She-Hulk, Black Panther or Iron Man and face off against Rhino, Klaw or Ultron. Each Hero is represented by a deck of cards made up of basic cards, hero specific cards and aspect cards (one of leadership, justice, aggression and protection). Each Villain is also represented by a deck of cards comprising villain specific cards, basic villain cards and a modular encounter set. This time, we'll be looking at the Marvel Champions: Nova Hero Pack!
During a player’s turn, they will play cards. (paying for the cost by discarding other cards from their hand). Then, activate cards and perform a number of actions all in an attempt to defeat the “big bad” and to thwart his schemes. Players can also switch from alter ego to hero form once per turn. And activate their character's special ability as well the basic recovery, attack or defend actions. Once a player has performed all of their actions it passes to the next player. They repeat the process until all players have performed their actions.
Bring the War
Next is the villain phase. During the villain phase, threat is added to the main scheme based on player count. Then the villain will either attack (if you are in hero form) or scheme (if you are in alter ego form). When they attack or scheme a boost card is revealed from the encounter deck and added to the Villian’s base attack/scheme value. Each player (in turn order) is then dealt an encounter card. Any minions in play will also attack or scheme.
Players will need to manage the amount of threat tokens that are placed on a scheme as if a certain quantity is reached the scheme advances to the next stage and eventually the Villain will win by completing his scheme. In addition to the threat/schemes, players will also have to take out minions and deal damage to the Villain to reduce his health to zero and win the game.
Marvel Champions is a living card game (LCG) and as such the publisher Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) are supporting the game with new Hero & Villain packs to further expand the game, the combinations and replayability. Check out a full review & final thoughts of the core game here.
Pot Shots
Recruited by the Nova Corps, Sam Alexander is no ordinary teenage boy. When coupled with his Supernova Helmet, Sam’s job in the universe’s police force is to protect his family and the planet from intergalactic attacks. With lightspeed flight, a protective forcefield and the ability to unleash the Nova Force, this hero is not to be taken lightly.
Nova is a new hero pack released from FFG. It comes with a pre-built aggression deck along with additional cards from the other aspects and a new modular encounter set.
Nova is a one thwart, one attack and two defence hero with ten hit points. On the surface, Nova doesn’t seem that powerful until you take a look at his hero response. But before we do that we need to look at Sam Alexander. As an alter ego action you can spend one resource to search your deck and discard pile for the Supernova Helmet. If a wild resource is spent then the helmet is immediately added into play. The Supernova Helmet is critical to the strategy behind Nova.
The first thing the helmet does is give Nova the aerial trait. The second, and the probably more important, thing that the helmet does is generate a wild resource when it is exhausted. Now, and this is where the cool gameplay comes to the forefront with Nova, is that a lot of Nova’s hero cards play into this wild resource. For example, Lightspeed Flight and Pot Shot doubles the number of wild resources generated while paying for this card, which in itself is pretty cool.
Final Thoughts
Circling back to Nova’s hero ability, every time you use the basic attack, thwart or defence, you can ready the helmet. This can create some super fun and exciting turns. Another exciting and fun card is the Connection to the Worldmind which, as well as generating a wild resource, doesn’t count towards your hand size.
Some of the new aggression aspect cards are pretty interesting, cards such as Pitchback, No Quarter and One by One. Overall, I really like the Marvel Champions: Nova Hero Pack. There are some fun deck-building possibilities, but the pre-con deck is pretty decent in its own right. The use of the wild resource is a fun twist.
