Marvel Champions: Hero Pack 1 Review (Patreon)

This is the contents of the box, they didn't even bind all the hero rules into a small book, very little effort put in here - however given the price I am not really complaining.

I've been looking for a way to review the various hero packs in a concise manner and when I learnt about the release of the collected “Hero Packs” that were due for release I knew that this was the best way to go about doing it. Heroes in Marvel Champions are traditionally released in a plastic blister with a their hero cards combined with a pre-constructed deck in one aspect and a few extra cards from the other three aspects included along with some extra basic cards. The hero pack takes several of those decks and combines them into a single box; the big thing this represents is a fair saving in costs, with the six individual heroes costing about 100 Euros vs. paying around 65 Euros for this combined six heroes in the box. That's a considerable saving even if you consider that sometimes the older hero packs are on sale at times.

Now the downside to this arrangement is of course you don't get a choice, you get all six heroes, if you are not interested in playing some of them then the aspect cards that come in the pack need to do a lot of work. So I will be reviewing not just each of the individual hero's cards (their kit) but I will also be looking at how many staple, archetype defining or powerhouse cards come in the packs for each aspect.

First of all though, here's the box, which looks really nice until you open it up and see just how useless it is. I was hoping that this box could be something that I could easily transport a couple of decks and a scenario or two around. Those ideas have been quashed because this box is just another Fantasy Flight Games special, lots of wasted space and a frankly useless opening design. If this box had come from Plaid Hat (Ashes: Reborn) it would have been functional instead of just recycling fodder.

The cards are also a different printing quality from the previous ones, it's noticeable when you pile them up, but as one normally sleeves games like this it is not an issue. Certainly not as much of one as the various promotional cards being a different size. So while the packaging gets a fail the components pass muster. Let us get to the actual heroes and aspect cards!

The white edged cards are the new ones. The darker ones are from a Sp//DR deck I picked up to compare how they look fresh out of the box. Of course, good opaque sleeves eliminate this problem.

The six heroes that come in this box are all the members of “Cycle 1” and they are; Captain America/Steve Rogers, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Thor/Odinson, Black Widow/Natasha Romanov, Dr. Strange/Stephen Strange and Hulk/Bruce Banner. I'll give an overview of each hero and the aspect cards they are bundled with. But before diving into that I will note that these older packaged cards miss the extra scenario module that has become a staple in later years, it's not a big deal, we have loads of modules these days; but it does mean that as the series gets older there is more potential value in the later boxes.

Captain America

America's Ass is like the core game's Captain Marvel in that no matter how old his design is, he remains a relevant and powerful hero and can hold his own even against the latest scenarios. He is not a victim of power creep, in truth due to how flexible his hero kit is he just gets stronger and stronger because there are few non-tribal (aka Team Traited) strategies he cannot succeed at. This is thanks to five elements that make up his kit.

• Captain America has a potent 2/2/2 statline with 11 HP
• Steve Rogers reduces the cost of the first ally played each round by 1 (this works for any player, but just once across all players).
• Steve fetches his shield in set up and it not only is cheap, it increases his defense to 3 and gives him retaliate.
• He has great resource generators and good card draw in his toolkit
• Captain America can discard a card to ready himself once a turn.

While Cap's resource generation leans towards Power (Fist); most of the time cards do not care what type of resource you are using to pay for their cards, but when it matters, like in Aggression, it really makes a huge difference. As such, when you are discussing what the most powerful heroes in the game are, Cap's name is always going to be in the debate even if he doesn't top the list.

The aspect Captain America is bundled with is appropriately Leadership; and it includes multiple staples, Squirrel Girl and Hawkeye are incredible at dealing with minions (And Squirrel Girl is probably the second best Leadership 2 cost ally in the game behind Maria Hill). Wonder Man is used as a cheap tough blocker and Avengers Assemble is a staple 1-2 of in any Avengers tribal leadership deck. This pack also incudes the Quinjet, which has an entire archtype built around it and the absolutely bonkers for Ally Swarm style decks Strength in Numbers does a good impression of Magic's Ancestral Recall. This pack even has additional copies of the Leadership Recursion staple Make the Call which you probably won't need unless more than one player wants to play that style of deck (becomes more relevant when you own Spider-Woman). However, the non-leadership aspect cards in this pack are not very powerful apart from Expert Defense which does sees some play and can be considered a staple for certain protection archetypes.

Ms. Marvel

Kamala's hero kit is far more limited than the Cap's; while she can indeed shine with the right deck constructions, she leans heavily into supporting Attack, Thwart and Defense events which are all things that Leadership is not good at. This means that outside of meme decks Ms. Marvel comes in Red, Yellow and Green flavours only.

Ms. Marvel also has a few subpar cards in her kit, with Big Hands being a 2 cost 4 damage card and that is almost double the acceptable price and her Thwarting card Sneak By being another. However she makes up for that with excellent alter-ego abilities, great defensive “cantrips” (cards that cost zero and draw a card + effect) Wiggle Room and two incredible upgrades for multi-thwart and multi-attack cards. Kamala is at her best when playing aggression's Melee or Justice's Multitasking. Still she is one of the weaker heroes in this pack and she doesn't even have the Avengers trait – instead she is a Champion/Inhuman and while we do have good champions support in later sets, there is still nothing for the Inhumans. That means you'll have less support for her deck until your collection grows a bit more.

The Protection aspect portion of this pack is full of greatest hits with protection staples Tackle, Preemptive Strike and Energy Barrier all being present. The biggest boon from her pack though comes with the staple cards as she has the Basic staple Endurancea card so good that it turns up in around a quarter of all decks across all aspects. That's Nick Fury/Avenger's Mansion/Hellicarrier numbers there. She also includes Downtime which is a staple for heroes who like to flip roles a lot and aspect cards that are staples in every single other aspect with Concussive Blow (Justice), Morale Boost (Leadership) and Melee (Aggression). This is an incredible package of cards that either forge their own archetypes or help support other one and one cannot ever own too many copies of Endurance.

Thor

Probably the first moderate miss in this hero pack, Thor is a capable enough choice, but his potency is highly variable depending on the scenario and modules. This is because Thor cares about styling on minions, one cannot deliver an appropriate level of smack talk without a load of people to utterly dominate. Thor isn't a complete failure however due to his signature weapon Mew-Mew being available from the start of the game and also having recursion. This allows for Mjolnir to be utilised either as a weapon or as a resource (there are some interesting Odinson deck builds that make use of staying in Alter-Ego for high resource generation and let allies/supports do the work). The weapon also gives Thor access to the aerial trait which is something that becomes a lot stronger the more cards you own as there are some incredible aspect cards that require the hero to be aerial.

Thor is packaged with a bunch of aggression cards that seek to help deal with minions and it turns out that there are a LOT of staples in this selection. Chase them Down is still one of the preferred ways for aggression to help handle threat. Hall of Heroes is an incredible way of turning minions into card draw and Jarnbjorn might be one of the best consistent damage generators alongside Plan B. The other staple in this pack is Justice's Under Surveillance which appears in most solo/two player justice decks and recently Second Wind has been beginning to get some use for healing orientated Protection decks.

Black Widow

Natasha is a surprisingly potent hero in Marvel Champions, while she is at home in any of the aspects one of the most interesting ways she can be employed is as an alter-ego threat controller thanks to her spy trait and support from cards that come in this hero pack (and the Gambit hero pack). Her main gimmick is built around Preparations; a type of upgrade that is put into play and then provides an effect when a certain trigger is met. The most powerful of these is the recursion staple Rapid Response which has absurd power when combined with Make the Call and Nick Fury. It's also included in this pack. I wouldn't rate Widow as one of the top heroes in the game, but I think she's certainly in the top half of the rankings and is no slouch.

Her included aspect is Justice and she has multiple staples for the S.H.I.E.L.D archetype along with one of the most flexible “splash” tutors in Agent Coulson(he's often used along with 1 to 3 Preparation targets in decks). Quake is a phenomenally efficient piece of minion removal, Surveillance Team is frankly bonkers once you get Sinister Motive's Monica Chang and counter intelligence makes it into any deck Coulson is also in. The aggression preparation Counterattack and the Protection preparation Defensive Stance are also staples in certain archetypes.

He got better from being dead.

Doctor Strange

Clear the floor and make way for the top dog; Doctor Strange is without a doubt one of, if not the best heroes in the entire game. I'd posit that only Storm and Wolverine come close to rivalling how powerful the Sorceror Supreme is thanks to his wide range of card draw, resource generation, attack and thwarting capabilities. The single most powerful tool in his kit however is his Invocation deck, five cards that sit in their own deck with the top card face up, Strange can cast this Invocation as if it was in his hand and that extra consistency and options means a huge amount. Though Strange has had a little bit of a nerf in that the Cosmo ally has been clarified to define that she can only target player or encounter decks; no more can the best girl dig out from the Invocation or Thanos' Powerstone deck. It's a welcome change, but it doesn't hold Strange back one bit and there is no doubt that if you want a hero who can help you transition from Standard to Expert difficulty Dr. S is one of the best starting points.

Strange is another Protection aspect pre-constructed deck; and his contains a whole load of staple cards; all three of the included allies are powerful (Brother Voodoo, Clea & Ironfist); Desperate Defense is a staple in 'ready defense' protection decks while Momentum Shift is a staple in “regeneration” style aggro protection decks. Unflappable is pretty much a must have, Med Team is a powerful support card and The Night Nurse goes into every single protection deck in the game (even when multiple protection decks play together because they can rotate using her counters up as quickly as possible). 

Also this pack contains the Mystic trait staple The Sorcerer Supreme (used by all mystic heroes); the aggression basic attack rush archtype staple Skilled Strike and a popular Leadership Voltron ally Iron Man (Voltron is where you put lots of attachments on an ally and then they do most of the work).

The second best power suited hero in Marvel Champions in ally form.

Hulk

In the world of Marvel Hulk is “Strongest one there is.” In the world of Marvel Champions however it is the exact opposite. Hulk is one of the two weakest heroes in the game (along with Valkyrie); he was a victim of Covid-19 and some last minute panic nerfs that were not tested properly. This meant that the version we got out in the wild was far, far below the power of the version that went through testing. This is not to say that there are not Hulk Decks that can work, there are, though many of them tend to be Bruce Banner decks that leverage his genius trait with Ingenuity to fuel alter-ego/shield strategies or Leadership ones that use his large HP pool in combination with Clarity of Purpose (Spider-Ham Pack) to get a lot of allies out quickly. I love brusier type heroes like The Hulk and it's a shame to see this hero struggle though he has improved through gaining multiple cards with a pushed design cards like Limitless Stamina that are intended to help out the 14+ HP heroes who lag a bit behind the others (Thor and Valkyrie for example). Sp//Dr is the pack you want to get to help out Hulk.

Hulk's Aggression aspect portion of his pre-constructed deck however contains numerous staples and archetype defining cards; including the brutish Drop Kick, No-Sell staples Toe to Toe and “You'll Pay For That!” and the Aggression staple resource generator Martial Prowess also comes from this pack. We also have staples for the other aspects in Beat Cop, Inspiring Prescence and Electrostatic Armor.

So while Hulk may not be a gamma slamdunk in himself; his pack has a great number of excellent cards and this Hero Pack is one of the best ways to get access to these without paying a premium.

Why are you hitting yourself?

Summary

This is a collection of powerful, average and mediocre heroes split just like Cap's statline in a 2/2/2 mix; however even the weaker heroes in this pack come with powerful generic staples and archetype defining cards that add a lot of value to their particular inclusion. This box is the price of a complete board game for sure; but it is still a significant saving over picking up the packs individually and I can assure you that if you get heavily into Marvel Champions you will end up wanting these. I think that the campaign mini-boxes Sinister Motives, Mutant Genesis and Rise of the Red Skull are probably still the best purchase after you have explored the core game box as they come with more scenarios which is important for variety in experience, but it is hard to argue against the sheer value and power for all aspects this box offers as a whole with its wide selection of staples and archetype defining cards.

Finally, I do written reviews of individual cards over on marvelcbd.com however one is capped on how many reviews you can write based on total number of likes. Turns out people don't remember to hit <3 on card reviews very often. So, if you have an account, feel free to check out my reviews here and give a <3 if they're helpful.