‘Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’ Board Game Review
It’s been a while since Marvel Champions first launched, and without a doubt two of the most common cards to grace any hero deck are the iconic duo of Nick Fury and Maria Hill. Both powerful allies, these cards have been the mainstay of the Marvel Champions concept. Now, in Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, this awesome duo have their own hero cards and their own pre-built decks, and despite the lack of overt superpowers, there’s plenty in the locker to make the cache of new villains think twice. There are five new scenarios here too, with the likes of M.O.D.O.K, Batroc, Radioactive Man and Songbird all present, and even villainous Black Widow making an appearance.
First up, let’s talk about Nick Fury. Fury is one of those relatively few decks that omits the usual three “basic” resource cards in favour of more cards that add value. This is a bit unusual because most other decks need those cards to generate the resource required to do what they want to. Much as his ally card (which is often used a resource) proves, Fury is a resourceful guy and as it happens, doesn’t require much external help to do what he needs to do. He also has some cool new cards of his very own – including his suit upgrade card, which is with him from the very start of each encounter, and Nick Fury’s Flying Car, which is every bit as cool as it sounds.
Maria Hill is also just as interesting, especially when it comes to how she uses and manipulates her ally/support cards. Hill has just one attack and two thwart in her hero form, and she can also reallocate all purpose counters between any S.H.I.E.L.D support cards. In her alter-ego form, she can also search her deck for a S.H.I.E.L.D support card, and all allies in her deck gain the S.H.I.E.L.D keyword regardless of her form. This means that you’re going to be manipulating tokens, searching for allies and using their combinations and token abilities in various forms to best effect. Maria is great at taking down threat, but I have to say I struggled a bit with direct damage – although that should come from her array of allies over the medium to longer game.
When it comes to bad guys, Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has some quite interesting ones, available to play either as a five scenario campaign, or as a one-shot based on whatever setup you happen to fancy. Beginning with Black Widow, whenever a threat is removed from the main scheme, one of her traps will likely trigger. Each attachment, minion, and treachery in her encounter has an effect that can be triggered by Black Widow’s ability, meaning that attacking her while there’s threat on the main scheme comes at some serious risk; at worst, you could find yourself entangled in a stun net or even counterattacked directly. Fortunately, this ability can only trigger if there is actually threat to remove – so in some ways Black Widow is a decent opponent for Maria Hill, as she can keep threat low even as some of the more powerful heroes would end up harming themselves on a more frequent basis.
Next up is Batroc, who is a villain I don’t actually know much about outside the game and had never heard of before playing Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Batroc is pitched as a mercenary fighting on behalf of A.I.M, and in his default scenario, he cannot actually be defeated. Rather, upon losing his final life, he simply resets to maximum life (and the hero is rewarded by removing six threat from the main scheme.) In the story, this represents the heroes focussing on normal civilians abducted by A.I.M, and perhaps also hints at the lack of real stopping power that these “relatively normal” human heroes have.
M.O.D.O.K is a bit similar as well, and also comes with a method by which he can fully regenerate himself whilst the players focus on other things. In support of M.O.D.O.K are his Adaptoid followers or minion things, which start off as a fairly basic enemy, but grow in power as new upgrades are drawn for them. You really have to deal with these guys, or remove their upgrades if you can, or else they will most definitely overwhelm you.
On that note, the final group of enemies – the Inhumans – act as a single group of minions led by Citizen V (as the main Villain.) With V, Moonstone, Songbird, Radioactive Man and Mach IV, this is a tough ask for the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Each of these minions can be as tough as a villain in their own right, so the game suggests a setup where there’s just one minion (with a deck of supporting cards) per hero in play, which leads to some great replay value. You could never face down all these guys in a single session, and given that Marvel Champions is generally a one or two player game, that’s at least two or three plays of this one scenario before you see it all, and maybe as many as five.
Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is a great new addition to the Marvel Champions universe, with two new heroes who bring interesting and challenging gameplay. Both preconstructed decks are strong enough to use whilst also offering a few opportunities for deckbuilding, and the enemies are good fun and bring a ton of variety. I can see myself wanting to use both Nick Fury and Maria Hill in other scenarios going forwards, whilst I’d also like to see how these villains and scenarios play out with some of the superheroes we’ve already seen. This makes Marvel Champions: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D a good set for me, because there are certainly others that I’ve had much less interest in replaying.
