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Marvel Mayhem from Hasbro Gaming is a fast-paced, family friendly card game in which 2-4 players aged 8 years and up can take on the roles of well known superheroes that feature in the Marvel comics, films and tv shows. Players can choose to play as either Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther or The Scarlet Witch in order to deal damage to their opponents all while maintaining their own health stats simultaneously.
Overview
The name and design of this game may be recognisable to you if you are familiar with the popular Dungeons & Dragons card based game, Dungeon Mayhem. Marvel Mayhem plays in almost the same way as its predecessor (minus one or two rule changes, simplifying the game even more so), except now with the hugely popular Marvel brand attached.
This allows players that may not be fans of the core D&D style game, to be able to have fun with all of the Mayhem also - yes, pun intended! However, whether you're a fan of D&D or Marvel, or neither, it doesn't affect the fun of the gameplay at all, it is simply a theme.
Game Components
In the box for Marvel Mayhem, you will receive:
- 4 x 28 card decks (a set for each superhero/champion), this also includes a distinctive special ability/reference card, as well as a hit point (HP) card for each of the heroes.
- A set of tokens for each champion (these include 4 x player markers, 16 x damage tokens)
- Game instructions
The cards in each deck are of satisfactory quality, not too thick and not too flimsy either. They are also the same size as cards featured in a standard playing card deck. So easy for younger players to hold. The tokens that pair up with their respected champions are made of slightly thicker cardboard shaped into small round discs. However, these are quite small, so they could be lost easily.
Awesome Images
Although the game's base colour runs with a classic black theme throughout the pack's artwork, there are plenty of inviting and bold colours to be seen. The design is much like Dungeon Mayhem where its monsters are given a more, what I would call, 'cutesy' style of illustration, which is ideal to appeal to a wider audience of tabletop gamers.
Images of the champions/superheroes are brightly coloured in their signature costumes as if they had jumped straight out of their respective graphic novels.
Rules Of Play
The rules of the game are very easily learned, I have played the game with adults and children alike and both have picked up the rules and the aim of the game relatively quickly.
To begin your game, you will first need to select your Champion (the superhero deck you would like to play with), shuffle the cards well, put aside your special abilities card, your hit point tracker card and place your HP tokens on said card. The youngest player is the first to play (which is rarely the case for myself).
Each player will have their own draw pile, which is the deck of their chosen character. Participants will need to draw three cards from the top of their deck and place them into their hands, keeping these hidden from their opponents for the duration of the game. At the beginning of each turn, the player will need to draw a card from the top of their draw pile and place it into their hand, then they can play a card facing up in front of their playing area so all other players are able to see which card has been put into play.
Depending on which cards you play, you may be able to place more than one at a time also. Players can play attack, defence, allies, special abilities or health cards in order to take down others and remain in the game themselves. This continues in rounds from player to player until there is only one champion left standing (technically sitting), this person is then declared the winner!
There is no doubt that Marvel Mayhem is Fast-paced, simple, fun and very competitive!
I can only hope that more champions/superhero expansion packs are released in the future to include many more of Marvel's beloved characters. Perhaps an antagonist style expansion featuring the likes of Loki, Thanos, Red Skull and Ultron? This is me politely putting in my official request to Hasbro Games (she says sitting with her fingers tightly crossed).
