Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Every hero has two sides, hero and alter ego, and the game actually makes you weigh flipping between them, do you stay Spider-Man and keep swinging or drop back to Peter Parker to draw cards and heal, and that tension is the best mechanical idea in the box. It’s basically a solo or co-op boss fight generator, you build a deck around one hero, pick a villain scenario, and go a few rounds trying not to get buried under threat.

I came in skeptical of living card games as a format, the endless expansion drip usually bothers me more than it should, but the core box earns its keep on its own. Four complete hero decks, three villains at two difficulties each, more content out of the base game than most LCGs bother shipping. Scaling up to four players works better than I expected too, games run longer but they don’t drag the way some co-ops do at higher counts, and managing threat against your own health total while deciding when to flip identities stays interesting the whole way through.

The design has real sloppiness in a few spots, some of the rules interactions between specific hero cards and villain effects need a forum thread to resolve cleanly, and that’s the kind of rough edge that’s apparently just baked into this genre of card game rather than unique to Marvel. I’ve also noticed my group compares this constantly to other superhero deck games on the market, and while I get the impulse, I think that comparison undersells how well this one nails the specific feeling of alternating between civilian life and being a hero mid crisis. Where it loses a point from me is the expansion pace, once you’re hooked the roster of heroes and villains never stops growing and the completionist itch is real, I’ve caught myself wanting every hero pack the same way I used to want every Magic set.

Solid as a two-player game, genuinely great solo, and it’s the rare LCG core box I’d recommend buying without immediately budgeting for three expansions.