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Marvel Champions: The Card Game gives you the opportunity to step into the shoes of Marvel’s most iconic heroes, using their incredible abilities to help the world rest easy knowing the Champions of the Marvel Universe are always on the job.

But stopping nefarious villains is no easy task. Each villain in the Marvel Champions: The Card Game Core Set comes with an army of minions, incredible abilities, and deadly schemes. These villains won’t just sit around and wait for your heroes to stop them, they are always plotting, and will do whatever it takes to make sure their schemes come to fruition.

Join us today as we preview the villain phase in Marvel Champions: The Card Game! During this phase, your foes have a chance to strike back at your heroes, presenting them with new challenges in the form of minions, upgrades, attacks, and more. It also gives the villain the opportunity to advance their schemes, inching ever closer to defeating the heroes!

The Villain Strikes

After the player phase ends, the villains get the opportunity to strike back! The villain and their minions attack heroes and advance their schemes while new encounter cards come into play, challenging the heroes with additional enemies and threats.

The phase begins with the villain advancing their scheme by placing threat on it. The amount of threat you place will vary from scheme to scheme, but any amount puts the heroes on a ticking clock. The main scheme may have several stages, but will invariably lead to the villain achieving victory. This means every turn the heroes' defeat inches ever closer, and you’ll have to plan accordingly.

Next, the villain and their minions activate, turning their attention one by one to each of the heroes. When a villain activates against a player, one of two things happens. Either the character is in their hero form and the villain attacks them, or the hero is in their alter-ego form, and the villain adds even more threat to their scheme.

The severity of the attack or scheme is determined by the villain's attack and scheme values, and is boosted by a card from the encounter deck.

When a villain activates against you, you give the top card of the encounter deck face down to the villain. If your identity is in its hero form, you can decide whether you want to block the attack or not by exhausting your hero. This will reduce the amount of damage your hero takes, but prevents you from exhausting your hero later, during the next player phase. Once this decision is made, you flip over your encounter card and look for boost symbols in the bottom right corner. The villain’s attack or scheme value is then increased by the number of those boost symbols.

Your character's form (hero or alter-ego) greatly influences the villain’s behavior each round. If you need to prevent the villain from scheming, make sure you are in hero form to confront them. If you are so worn down that you think an attack could be dangerous, it might be better to stay in alter-ego form to recover hit points and build up your forces. Just remember, in alter-ego form you won’t be around to stop the villain from advancing their evil plans! Finding the right balance between your hero and your alter-ego is one of the key skills to master as a Marvel champion.

After a villain activates against you, their minions will follow suit, inflicting additional damage or adding even more threat to the schemes at hand!

Next, the villain puts their plans into action, and each player draws a card from the encounter deck. These cards might be minions that engage with your character, a treachery that has a one-time effect, an attachment that strengthens the villain or weakens your character, or a new side scheme the heroes will have to confront. Each of these cards will challenge your hero to adapt to a new situation, but with the heart of a Marvel champion, there’s nothing you can’t overcome!

Finally, the heroes pass the first player token and prepare for another player phase, ready to unleash a devastating counter-assault!

A Never-Ending Fight

No one ever said the life of a hero was easy. Villains crawl from shadowy corners, equipped with minions, powers, and technology to help their devious schemes come to fruition. Will your Marvel Champions withstand their assault, take them down, and save the world? Find out when the Marvel Champions: The Card Game Core set releases in the fourth quarter of 2019!