Marvel Champions: The Card Game – Rise of Red Skull Review

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.

In Rise of The Red Skull, you have the choice to play as Crossbones, Taskmaster, Zola, Absorbing Man and, of course, the Red Skull! Exciting new additions.

During a players 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 characters 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.

Villains Rising

Next is the villain phase. During the villain phase, the threat is added on 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 number 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.

Expanding the Universe

So as you can probably tell from what I have covered so far for Zatu l that I am a big Marvel Champions fan. I like the IP and really enjoy the card game as well. So what does Rise of Red Skull bring to the table? Does the campaign mode offer a good narrative? Is this expansion a “must-buy”? Read on to find out more.

Missing Villains

Marvel Champions has had a decent amount of heroes released so far. But has been a bit lacking in villains. This expansion addresses that in a massive way. There are five villains in this one box. Each villain plays and feels very different and offer different challenges to face. “Bang for your buck” RoRS adds a ton of variety to the villain pol available and is worth buying just for the villains. Crossbones has his weapons with a new keyword piercing (which ignores tough status) and the experimental weapons stolen from P.E.G.A.S.U.S.

Absorbing Man uses environmental cards in a very interesting way with him taking on the traits of the environment in play and special abilities triggering depending on his trait. Red Skull has numerous side schemes that come in to play which do all sorts of shenanigans. Zola throws out mutated minion after minion with various attachments. There is so much to talk about with the villains but part of the fun for me was finding out some of these things for myself when playing the game so I don’t want to spoil too much. Suffice to say they are very thematic and add so much to the villains released so far.

Encounters of the Many Kind

The villains also come with their recommended encounter sets but these are modular and can be added into some of the other villains from the core game or previous releases. These can make for some interesting combinations and fun gameplay elements. The expansion adds a lot of extra replay-ability, diversity and customisation for the players.

Bringing the Fight

It would not be a big box expansion without some new Heroes to take down the villains. Rise of Red Skull introduces Hawkeye and Spider-woman. To very different, yet equally cool and thematic Heroes.

Hawkeye has a lot of arrow cards in his deck. These can be used for big points of damage, dealing with the threat of taking out multiple targets at once. Hawkeye’s Bow needs to be exhausted to use it and the bow provides a +1 attack to Hawkeye when in play. Hawkeye’s quiver is a fantastic card that lets you store arrows under it to be played in future rounds. Some of the combinations that you can pull off are brilliant. A new keyword “ranged” is introduced which ignores retaliate.

What FFG have implemented with Spider-Woman fundamentally shakes up the game. All heroes, up to now, ave one aspect. Not Spider-woman. When building her deck she can use equal cards from two aspects. This simple change adds so much potential to the hero. Again, the combinations and customisation are abundant and some of her hero specific cards are amazing. My favourite being a justice and aggression combo. So much potential for some cool deck building with Spider-Woman.

5 Step Campaign

The expansion also comes with a campaign. This is laid out in a comic book style narrative, very fitting with the theme of the game. You pick your heroes and use them to battle your way through the five new villains. New cards are added and removed and what you do in one mission will affect the game state in future missions. I don’t want to spoil too much so not going to go into specifics. I will however say that the campaign side of the expansion is the weakest part of the expansion. It works and it tells a story, but that the story is going to be the same every time you play.

The adding of new cards and effects of one game to another are great, don’t get me wrong. But the story is the same from campaign to campaign. Don’t expect Arkham Horror level of narrative and campaign. It just feels like you are playing five villains in a row with some minor deck tweaks. As I said, it works and there is nothing wrong with the campaign and I had fun playing through it the first few times.

Despite the campaign feeling a bit lacking, the Rise of Red Skull is a must buy expansion for any Marvel Champions fan. The five villains, two heroes and modular encounter sets are totally worth it. The expansion adds new mechanisms, customisation and replayability that I can overlook the campaign side of things.