Deadpool Expanded Hero Pack: Marvel Champions

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: Deadpool 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.

Pool Party

Ok so Deadpool is Marvel Champions and if you know anything about this character (especially in the films) then you know it is going to be off the wall craziness. First off, Deadpool brings a whole new aspect, the Pool aspect. This is like any of the other aspects and comes with its own specific aspect cards and can be played with any other character. This pack comes with 78 cards. As well as the fifteen signature hero cards it comes with a pre-built Pool deck with additional Pool aspect cards to customise and play with.

Deadpool is all about risk reward. Oh, I should also mention, he is pretty much immortal and can’t be killed. He is a two thwart, two attack, one defence hero with a forced interrupt ability that triggers when we would be defeated. Instead his hit points are set to zero, he flips to alter ego form but one acceleration token is added to the main scheme. Like I said at the top of this review, this hero is crazy.

Many of Deadpool’s cards play off acceleration tokens, even Deadpools resource cards which generates an additional wild resource for each token on the main scheme. Cable, Deadpool’s signature ally, also benefits from additional acceleration tokens getting +1 thwart and +1 attack for each.

Maximum Effort has to be my favourite card though, not just because it is essentially Deadpool’s catch phrase, but you can take any amount of damage upto your remaining hit points and deal that damage to your enemy. Crazy, silly fun, but highly thematic. There is also the equivalent threat removing card Yoo-Hoo. Both cards can give you some last minute saves or winning damage at the cost of your own health.

There is a card called “This Card is Fire” which as long as the card is in your hand you take one damage. However, you can use the card to deal damage equal to the amount of damage you have sustained.

The Pool aspect cards are just as fun with Dogpool and Headpool allies. Some of the well known cards have been “modified”, shall we say, with sticky notes renaming them. So Uppercut is now Cutupper, Get Ready is Get Rage-y, Great Responsibility is now Not My Responsibility with some slightly modified actions.

In essence, Deadpool is an off the wall, crazy Hero that is just a ton of fun to play with. I wouldn’t say he is game breaking but he comes close and it just suits this character so well. His often fourth wall breaking antics in the MCU seem to come through in his cards. Deadpool is not one I am going to pick regularly to play but when I do I know that I will have a great game. The Pool aspect is also very interesting and I am looking forward to incorporating this aspect with some other heroes.