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Marvel Champions: Black Widow Hero Pack
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Description
Marvel Champions: Black Widow Hero Pack
Marvel Champions is a Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight. That means that it will continue to grow and expand roughly monthly with new content. The good news is that this content is not random booster packs but set cards, like hero expansion decks, new schemes and villains.
The game play is cooperative and based around hand management. Each hero has some cards that are specific to them and then you either use a prebuilt deck, or take cards from two other decks, a general deck with generic cards and one of four attribute decks. These are leadership, justice, aggression and protection. Helpfully the deck names are an accurate description of what the cards will do! Cards are super important as every card you play must be paid for by other cards.
It is fun to fit characters with their best themed deck, Captain America with a leadership build for example, but also fun to mix it up a little too, especially given the challenge of the villains. Villains come into play with their own decks, with a main scheme you must stop, minions, side schemes and more. Interestingly each hero can be in their heroic form or their alter ego and the villain reacts differently to each. Villains will directly attack heroes, but if the hero is in their alter ego form then the villain doesn’t know who they are and will therefore continue with their evil scheme.
The game is thematic and fun to play providing a good challenge for players and meaningful team-ups.
No powers no problems for Natasha Romanoff. This highly trained operative is as deadly as her power allies and is known as The Black Widow. The Black Widow Hero Pack comes with a pre built Justice aspect pack, but as always you can easily create your own with the rules from the base game!
Player Count: 1-4
Time: 45-90 Minutes
Age: 14+
Trained from a young age by the KGB she is the ultimate assassin. Spy, martial arts expert and equipped with high tech weapons, Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, is outfitted to deal with any situation. She has turned her tails on the KGB and is now an agent of SHIELD and taking the fight to the bad guys.
Black Widow is an Hero pack for the popular Marvel Champions: The Card Game. The pack comes with a pre-built deck using the Justice aspect, her own Nemesis set, Taskmaster, as well as additional cards from the other aspects to further increase your deck building options.
Black Widow is an interesting character to play. She utilises “preparation” cards to perform a wide variety of actions. The Black Widow ability is a response ability that deals one damage to an enemy every time you trigger one of your preparation cards. This can make for some interesting and exciting combinations and card play. Upgrade cards like the Grappling Hook give a Hero Interrupt ability to cancel effects of Treachery cards.
Widow’s Bite, a preparation card, allows players to discard the card and deal 2 damage to a minion when it enters play and stun it. Dance of Death, which is probably my favourite card from her deck, is a Hero Action that deals 1 damage to an enemy, then 2 damage to an enemy followed by three damage to an enemy. Played at the right time this card can clear out the minions giving you a bit of breathing space.
Black Widow has some great cards and some interesting card play combinations. However, she feels delicate, she feels (for want of a better word) human. On screen she doesn’t have super powers, she isn’t a God (Thor), she hasn’t been bitten by a spider (Spider-man) and she hasn’t been irradiated with gamma radiation and turned in to a big green fighting machine (you know who I’m talking about).
She is human who has been programmed and trained to be a killing machine with a host of skills and abilities and her deck plays out like that. True to her cinematic counterpart her deck nicely reflects this in the way it plays. The preparation cards are fantastic for turning the tides against the enemy when needed causing all sorts of cancelling, negating and damaging effects. She has Agent Coulson and the Winter Soldier as her allies.
Her play style feels different, it feels unconventional and I really like the way she plays. Either solo or teaming up with another character she can take the fight to the enemy but it takes practice (or at least it did for me).
The Black Widow is another great addition to the Marvel Champions: The Card Game, once again FFG have introduced something different in to the game.
Marvel Champions is a 1-4 player superhero game. Each player takes on the role of a Marvel hero 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, consisting of basic cards, Hero-specific cards, and aspect cards. Each Villain is represented by a deck of cards, comprising villain-specific cards, basic villain cards, and a modular encounter set.
Marvel Champions is a Living Card Game (LCG). As such, the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games, is expanding the game with new Hero & Villain packs all the time. If you’re inclined, check out a full review & final thoughts of the core game here.
Set-Up
To set up the game, each player will select a Hero to play and place their identity card, alter-ego side up in front of them. The identity card will number the hit points they have and these are entered into the hit point dial. Each Hero will have an obligation card and a set of Nemesis cards which are set aside for the moment. The player then shuffles their player deck which will consist of Hero specific cards, basic cards, and aspect cards. Hero decks come pre-constructed but players are free to build their own decks whilst complying with the deckbuilding rules.
Next, a Villain is selected and is placed on the table along with the Villain’s main scheme and the Villain’s main deck. The Villain’s hit points are entered into the Villain’s hit point dial. The main scheme may have some setup instructions which are followed and resolved at this stage. The relevant encounter cards and modular sets and the Heroes obligation cards are added to the Villains the main deck and shuffled to form the encounter deck.
Each player then draws a starting hand of cards as detailed on their identity card and can discard any number of cards, drawing back up to their hand limit. If a Hero has any setup instructions these are resolved and followed now.
The game is played over a number of rounds, alternating between the player’s turns and then the Villains turn. On a player’s turn they can perform a number of actions:
- change form from alter ego to Hero or Hero to alter ego but only once per round,
- play cards from their hand paying the relevant resource costs
- Use their Heroes basic attack or thwart ability (only in Hero form and exhausting their identity)
- Use an ally they control to attack or thwart (exhausting the ally)
- Activate an action card they control (and exhausting the card if applicable)
- Use their alter-egos recovery ability to gain hit points (only in alter ego form and exhausting their identity)
Once a player has performed all of their actions they pass, the next player performs their actions until all players have passed. At this stage players can discard any remaining cards in their hand (if they want) and draw up to their hand limit (This may change depending on the form they are in) Each player then readies all of their cards (identity, allies, action cards).
Next is the Villain phase. At the start of the Villain phase threat is placed on the main scheme as detailed on the main scheme card. The villain and any minions then activate against each player. If the player is in Hero form the Villain attacks. If the player is in alter ego form the Villain schemes and adds a threat to the main scheme. Each time the Villain activates they draw a card from the encounter deck and add the number of boost icons to his base attack or scheme value. The Villain then deals each player an encounter card face down and in turn order, each player reveals and resolves the encounter card.
The first player token then passes to the next player and the player’s start the round again.
The game continues this way until the Villain has been defeated by reducing his hit points to zero for both stages and the player’s win. Players lose if the Villains scheme threshold reaches its maximum or they all have their hit points reduced to zero.
Strategy
What I love about Marvel Champions is the way the Heroes and Villains play differently. The key to success is figuring out how the Heroes play, their strengths, weaknesses, and how to best utilise them to take down the Villain. Certain Heroes require a certain amount of setup to become strong. He is best left in alter ego mode as he builds up his suit, armour, and weapons. Once he is up and running he can be a formidable character.
Figuring out when to stop building and when to take the fight to the Villain comes with practice and experience but it is worth that time investment. Where it might seem that you are not making progress by hitting the enemy it’s wise to learn the “arc” of the Hero and play into that. Being efficient with your cards and trying to not have any cards left in your hand at the end of the turn is a good idea.
The board state needs to be managed very carefully. Often the best move is not necessarily just smacking the villain in the face. Controlling the minions and the side schemes that can mount up is often a better move. Keeping an eye on the main scheme threshold is also key. Knowing how the Villains play and what’s in the encounter deck can help you decide how best to defeat them. At some point you will have to start dealing damage to the Villain but knowing when to push and when to hold off and control the threat/minions is critical. Like the Heroes, each Villain and modular encounter set has a different feel. Knowing how to handle them is essential. The timing of when to defeat one stage and advance to the next is often a critical step.
Aspects
There are four aspects in the game that all have their unique playstyles.
Aggression, as the name suggests, is all about hitting the enemies hard and fast. Generally, aggression based Heroes are not great at thwarting and removing threat from a scheme. Subsequently, t is often a race against the threat build-up and taking the Villain down
Justice is more focused on removing threat from schemes. Justice based characters are good at managing threat and keeping things under control however they are not typically hard hitters.
Protection is all about defending, preventing damage, and healing. It can react to incoming attacks, prevent that damage and sometimes cause reactive effects based on that.
Leadership is a very versatile deck and can do a lot of things but is mostly about bringing out Allies.Allies can be good for attacking, thwarting and defending and is a good all purpose aspect if used with a large selection of ally cards. Protection is reliant on these allies so Villains that target allies can make this aspect weak.
Deck building is a big part of Marvel Champions. You can customise your Heroes deck around the Villain you’re facing. There are great resources online such as www.marvelcdb.com
Zatu Score
You might like
- Added variety in to the core game
- Thematic cards/actions
Might not like
- Benefits from knowing the deck and multiple plays