Rogue Champions- Galaxy's Most Wanted

Marvel Champions dropped their second big box campaign, Galaxy’s Most Wanted, a few months ago. We reviewed the first campaign, and the third one is coming out soon, so it’s high time we take a look at this new one and see how it compares.

Campaign- B-

The campaign works much the same as Rise of Red Skull with a few noticeable differences. The biggest change is that as you play, you will be awarded with “units” that you can spend on new cards to add to your deck. Like reward cards from Red Skull, these don’t count toward your deck limits and have a strong impact on the game. The ability to purchase them, rather than picking from a small pool after each mission, changes the dynamic dramatically. If you do especially well in the first scenario, you can purchase the “best” cards and have them in your deck for the entire rest of the campaign.

You’ll note I quoted best before as among these cards there is no best card. They are well balanced with cards costing more units having more powerful effects but, likewise, having more overall cost. Most of the cheap cards have a zero resource cost to play but also have some drawback to playing. Cards costing more units have less drawbacks but begin costing resources to play.

The other major difference between the boxes comes in the campaign’s difficulty level. Expert version scales up dramatically. For reference, we fought the first bad guy, Drang, on expert ten times and lost every time. We dropped to standard and beat it in one go. The gulf between the two levels involved starting with minions in place, an acceleration token, the villain being immune to stun and confuse, and doing +2 damage per round.

Then we learned expert villain mode isn’t intended to be played with expert campaign mode. This is very much not obvious, as the use of the exact same word is very confusing. Expert campaign mode isn’t nearly as bad when you don’t have to start with the villain on stage 2. Though it is still more punishing than Red Skull.

Another new aspect added are player resources in the form of Milano and an Infinity Stone. Many of the cards, villain and campaign, are designed to make use of the Milano giving you another resource. But it is also something you can take into other games in the form of a modular encounter. Likewise, the Power Stone can be thrown in just because. It will change hands between players and the villains so both can benefit. Though, it will tend to benefit the players more as they can easily keep control.

Overall, the campaign feels onerous. Red Skull left me considering playing through it again. GMW left me just wanting to be done. The campaign cards are fun. Trying to beat increasingly difficult opponents with a fixed group has some appeal. But the way the campaign racks up the difficulty based on previous encounters also ramps up the things you need to keep track of and urgency to come out of the gate swinging. The better you do in each scenario, the harder the next one will become. This makes each villain feel more punishing than they probably are on their own, which sours the taste of playing them again.

Villains- B+

Like the previous campaign box, this one comes with five villains. These villains are a bit different in that the Collector shows up twice in two different forms. We now have a tradition that one of the villains will be the nemesis villain of a hero. Here, Nebula is a villain but also Gamora’s nemesis as Taskmaster was for Black Widow. She’ll soon also be a hero so that will be a first.

Drang is your first fight. He is a beast. Not only does he do quite a lot of damage, he does it even if you’re in alter-ego form through the use of his environment card. For those low health heroes this can cause trouble.

With his scheme also adding a previously unprecedented 2/player threat each round, and starting with threat to begin with, you’ll have a difficult time surviving incoming damage while keeping threat levels down. The Milano will serve as a vital resource in this mission, as deciding how and when to use it can make tremendous difference. Very rarely will it ever be used as a resource as clearing threat from the main scheme or blocking the effects of a villain card will be necessary.

Your next battle is against the Collector; twice. First to break into his vault and then successfully escape. While Drang is hard but familiar, the Collector adds a truly unique mechanic in the form of his Collection. Having your cards stolen causes a difficult quandary. Not only do your cards get added to the Collection but so do his cards. Defeat a minion? Now it’s in the collection. You trade one loss condition for another. Balancing this becomes a major piece of winning. Every character must remove a card from the collection almost every turn or it will fill up and you will lose. If you play on expert, when the Collector flips to phase three, the number of cards in the collection will turn into threat on the main scheme. If you’re not keeping both of those as low as possible, you can lose right then.

The second version of the Collector is closer to a normal villain but still has a twist. You can not win by defeating the villain. Instead, you must clear the threat from three stages of the main scheme. The Collector himself can not be defeated but you can still attack him to help the team along. If he’s defeated, he instead flips over and removes a bunch of threat from the main scheme. This means your heavy hitters aren’t left out of the game. To win this one, you need to be diving head first into threat removal from turn one, even more than on any other villain.

The difference in this mechanic over the normal beat up the villain goal is slight but still fun. Normally, early game your goal is to keep the main scheme in check and not worry too much about the villain. You can still do that but with the Collector’s health being lower than typical, it’s tempting to consider punching him a bunch in order to clear threat. This is likely a trap unless your hero is bad at threat removal. Like, say, Hulk.

Nebula is our fourth villain the campaign and she’s tough. The key to her is to carefully manage the evasion counters that get placed onto her ship. If you let those get out of hand, you’ll lose. This isn’t as bad as managing the Collection. Only the first player can do it, which feels less oppressive than everyone having to remove cards from the Collection every turn.

The main schtick for Nebula is her Techniques. There are many in her deck and they all upgrade her in powerful ways. They trigger when she activates, which means they happen whether you’re in hero or alter-ego form. Fortunately, unlike most previous villain upgrades, they aren’t flat numerical upgrades. They give her special effects, such as Retaliate, which can be annoying to deal with, but it’s not as overpowered as straight additional damage/threat.

Unfortunately, the techniques are symbolic of one of the biggest problems with this pack. Effect management. Nebula can have multiple on her and they all trigger every time she activates. You do discard one technique each time so that helps, but it still requires you to run through each card every time. As more and more cards enter the game with these nested triggers, the game gets more and more unwieldy.

Our final villain is the indomitable Ronan the Accuser. He is a tough fight. He doesn’t come with as many upgrades as Nebula, but his are far more nasty. His upgrades will give him Stalwart, Overkill, and Pierce. Plus additional attack and scheme. This is only the beginning of his trouble.

Ronan hits hard in his pursuit of the Power Stone. Gaining an extra Boost card when he activates against the wielder, on top of his already high attack, means he’s likely to steal it back unless you’re on alter-ego. Whenever he has Fanaticism out, your allies can’t even protect you thanks to overkill. He also has plenty of other cards that will just outright give him the Power Stone.

Managing threat is incredibly important with Ronan. If he manages to flip the main scheme to the second phase, you’ll be in a race for your life. First, it gives him the Power Stone. Second, you can’t remove threat from the main scheme as long as he has it. This isn’t like a Crisis where you can’t thwart the main scheme. You can’t remove threat by any means. It’s very easy to fall into a hole you can’t escape.

Heroes- A

The box introduced the first two Guardians of the Galaxy’s characters; Rocket and Groot. These two coming in a pack together is perfect and their design shows that. Their team-up card feels like a true team-up card as it can be used to help either of them, instead of just allowing something to happen if you have both of them.

Groot’s counter system feels unique (and was until Drax and then War Machine used similar mechanics). Counters that can be used to power cards or as health gives him a different play style than you’ve had before. This allows him to work in good offense or defense roles. He feels like a real tank with his ability to absorb damage with his counters.

Rocket is almost all offense, though he makes a decent thwarter as well. His interaction with excess damage limits his deck building potential (if you’re looking to maximize it) but it does make for an interesting mechanic. Instead of looking to parse out damage as frugally as possible, Rocket wants to compile as much damage as he can onto the weakest opponent.

Conclusion- B+

The campaign wears a little and isn’t as fun to play for my group as it was with the first box. But that might just be our group. The villains and heroes themselves are worth the price of the box. All of them have something unique about them, which is the important part with games like this. You may not like each villain, but playing against them will be its own experience which helps keep the game fresh.