Jackwraith replied the topic: #304189 13 Nov 2019 21:13

Played Marvel Champions tonight. First off, the art is fine. It's a step up from the stuff they're using for marketing and it's otherwise OK. There's nothing scintillating about it, but it's fine. We squared off against what was explained to us as the easiest boss: The Rhino. I was She-Hulk with Aggression and there was also Black Panther with Support (I think), Spider-Man with Protection, and Iron Man with Justice (the game's owner.)



I can't say that I'm particularly impressed. First off, it's basically Sentinels of the Multiverse; a game that I mildly detest, despite my long history in comics and my undying love for the RPG, Villains and Vigilantes. I don't really like co-op games and, other than Spirit Island (and, recently, TE Defenders and some games of TE Zombies), I generally won't play them. So, that's one strike. One plus is that they indulged in a lot of the classic Marvel stuff, even with updated imagery. Nick Fury is there, looking like Samuel L. Jackson. There's Tigra and The Shocker and Hydra and the Helicarrier and so on. Each hero has a nemesis that will be brought out by a particular card in the villain deck if it's drawn at the right time. She-Hulk's is Titania. Each nemesis does different things and will add cards to the villain deck that make it more difficult. Each hero also has an Obligation that forces them to do different things if drawn at the right time. Each hero also has an alter ego, which performs in different ways (changes hand size, different abilities, means the villain can't attack you but instead furthers his scheme, etc.) So, there's plenty of variety in both game state and game play.



However, like many of these games, it's very mechanical, since you're not playing each other but against the game, and it's easy to slip into a state where basically all you're doing is helping other players do interesting things. Iron Man builds up an engine (appropriately) and that player had about two dozen cards in his tableau that he could do a variety of things with. In one turn, he almost singlehandedly lowered the Rhino's threat on his scheme from 2 below a loss to almost zero. On the last turn, he wiped out a full third of Rhino's health by himself and won the game. Black Panther spent a lot of time summoning allies to good effect, while Spider-Man spent most of the time trying to stay alive. I, on the other hand, spent more than one turn not able to do much of anything because I was resource-starved. I think the point of both She-Hulk and Aggression is to deal out big bursts of damage and then rebuild. I was able to kinda do that once, but not nearly as often as I looked at my hand of cards and said: "OK. I can make one play and do nothing to affect the game state, so I'm done."



That's the case with a lot of these kinds of games. I've had it happen in Sentinels multiple times, where someone ends up just feeding cards and/or opportunity to other players so that they can actually do fun and interesting things. This is no different. I mean, that's teamwork, but you might as well replace that one person with a waterbird for all the participation that they have. This is also one of Fantasy Flight's LCGs, which means a constant outflow of cash for the next year or two to build it to the game state where it seems like some of the heroes actually have options. They've already announced the first expansion, which is The Wrecking Crew. That's really cool for the nostalgia factor, but it's not a game model that I want a part of, for mechanical reasons and because it's still a collectible game.



So, yeah. It's not a bad game. It's most certainly not in my wheelhouse. But I can't say that I'd recommend it right now even if it was.