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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: Angel 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 Villain'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.
Aerial
Warren Worthington III (aka Angel) was one of the original founding members of the Xmen until the Age of Apocalypse transformed him into the Archangel of Death. He eventually escaped Apocalypse's influence and now fights for the greater good, but the powerful and brutal Archangel side is lurking just below surface ready to be unleashed,
As has been seen previously Agnel has three forms. His alter-ego Warren Worthington III, Angel hero form and Archangel form all displayed in the three-sided card seen in packs like Ant Man and Wasp. This hero pack has fifteen hero specific cards and a pre-built protection deck ready to play. There are also additional cards in the pack to further expand your deck building card pool for customisation.
His base stats are two thwart, one attack and two defence. As Angel he has a response that lets your draw a card after playing an aerial event, which is pretty neat considering a lot of the cards in this deck are aerial. Archangel has zero thwart, two attack and a three defence. It also adds an acceleration icon with a response that allows you to deal damage to an enemy equal to the printed cost of a played aerial event. Combine that with the two attack base stat and you can get some hard hitting turns.
Cards such as Adaptive Plumage and Metamorphosis will perform different actions depending on the form that you are giving you a lot of decision space to play around with. It also makes Angel a very flexible character. Cards like Razor Dive and Natural Flight can cause some serious damage/remove threat, at very effective cost. There is also Avian Anatomy which is a resource card which after being spent for an aerial card event, returns that event to your hand. You can, with clever use of card play and switching forms have some pretty cool turns.
If I am honest, when I first played Angel I was not overly impressed. However, digging deeper into some of the cards and possible synergies I have been having a blast with this character. You can have some really powerful turns and he seems very agile (which I guess is appropriate considering).
Overall, Angel is a solid character, I don’t think he is going to be everyone’s number 1 hero to play, but he is great fun and my first impressions have changed since playing him a bunch.
