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Marvel Champions is a one to four player super hero 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.
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 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. Presenting the Spider-ham hero pack!
Nefarious Trap
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 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 amount of threat tokens that is 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.
Huge Wooden Hammer
FFG are back with another Hero and one that I think is going to be quite decisive. Spider-Ham, the cartoony character from the spidey-verse, packing porcine power he brings a unique style of gameplay to Marvel Champions. The Spider-Ham packs comes with 15 Hero signature cards and a pre-built justice deck.
The interesting mechanism with Spider-Ham is when he is in Hero form the more damage he takes the more Toon counters he receives. In alter-ego form when Peter Porker uses his basic recovery he also gains a Toon counter. These counters can be used for a variety of things. Each Tooncounter can be spent as wild resource (when in Hero form), increasing the removal of threat with cards like Ham It Up,dealing damage or removing threat with Hogwashed (flavour text optional) and cancelling card effects from the encounter deck.
The use of Toon counters do make for some fun and interesting plays. Spider-Ham feels like a risky character. He needs to be beaten down a few times to gain the Toon counters for some of the card’s effects to be useful. Taking too much damage though and you run the risk of losing the game. It is an interesting dynamic for sure.
The Hero pack also comes with some alternative spider-man allies which could make for some interesting “Spider” decks. Lady Spider and Spider-Man (Pavitr Parabhakar) both Justice cards along with Scarlet Spider (Kaine) and SP//DR (Peni Parker) basic cards and Captain Americat (Spider-Ham Hero card) combined with some of the other Spider Man cards from other sets could be an interesting Spider Man Multiverse deck. Yet to try, but something that I would be keen to explore in the future.
There are some new Justice aspect and basic cards in this pack but there are also some repeats from previous packs.
Overall, Spider-Ham is an interesting mechanisms and cards. It is not a deck that I would rush out to get but I am glad I have got it. The precon deck needs work but with some tweaks you can create a fun Hero. Personally, I am not a fan of the “give some a high five”, “Wiggle your body” or the “Read the Flavour” text additions but they are optional and I can see how they play into the comic book/cartoony style of Spider-Ham. They are just not for me and I simply gloss over them.
