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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: Storm 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.
Weather Control
Ororo Munroe was once worshiped as a God for ability to control the weather. That is all in her past now though as she answered the call for Professor Xavier’s help. Now using her abilities in the fight for good, Storm is coming at the enemy with the force of a hurricane.
Storm comes with a pre-built leadership deck and fifteen signature hero cards and the ability to control the weather. Clear skies, thunderstorms, hurricanes and blizzards, Storm can manipulate the weather to her and her allies advantage. Storm comes with her crown which can be exhausted to gain the resource printed on the weather card as well as giving her +1 thwart. Her iconic cape gives Storm +1 defense as well as aerial in addition to exhausting the cape to ready storm after resolving the special ability on a weather card.
Weathering The Storm
There are several cards in the Storm Hero deck such as Weather Goddess, Torrential Rain, Lightning Bolt, Flash Freeze and Blast of Wind which all do various actions such as dealing damage and removing threat (amongst other things) and trigger the special ability of specific weather cards. This makes manipulation of the weather card in play critical and will result in some fascinating combos when played with other cards. Storm can be super powerful. Lightning Bolt, for example, is a three cost event dealing eight damage and triggering the Thunderstorm card, which in itself gives +1 attack, as well as an additional two damage. Under the right conditions, with the correct weather card in play Storm can hit hard and remove a decent amount of threat. But, like the weather, the conditions have to be right. It feels so thematic, it feels so cool and it feels so…..Storm.
Some Protection allies come into the game with Storm, characters like Havok, Mirage, Gentle and Pixie. Other leadership cards such “Uncanny X-men”, “Leadership Skill” and "To Me, “My X-Men” are added to the pool of cards which is always welcome.
Storm is such a fun character to play. From the manipulation of the weather deck to the weather events that trigger off this you can have some fun and powerful turns. Her base stats are a bit on the weak side with a one thwart, two attack and one defense, but the cards more than make up for it and she can be one of the more powerful X-Men characters released in this cycle.
