I’ve started doing “Battle Reports” for my Arkham Horror Living Card Game (LCG) plays, so I’d like to start doing them for my plays of the Marvel Champions LCG from Fantasy Flight Games. Unlike the Arkham Horror game, Marvel Champions doesn’t have as much story in each individual scenario. So I probably wont post a battle report every time I play the game, but if I’m trying a new hero/scenario/etc, I’ll post up some thoughts. Today, I’d like to talk about my experiences over the holiday break teaching Marvel Champions to my Dad.

(Potential for some slight spoilers on specific scenarios, but as I mentioned it wont impact your gameplay as the story isn’t the main focus of Marvel Champions)

For those unfamiliar with Marvel Champions, you can click here to see our review of the game. In short, the game is a co-op card game where each player picks a different Marvel hero and has a deck of cards representing that hero. Players then fight against a specific scenario, which can be fine tuned to make it easier/harder/more re-playable by adding or remove specific encounter sets to the Villain deck. Currently, the game consists of a core box of 5 heroes (Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, and Black Panther) and 3 villains (Rhino, Klaw, and Ultron), 2 new hero decks (Captain America and Ms. Marvel), and a villain expansion (2 different Green Goblin scenarios).

After spending Christmas in Maryland, my family and I went south to North Carolina to spend an extended weekend with my parents. I had just gotten the 2 new hero decks and Green Goblin earlier that week and hadn’t gotten a chance to play them yet, so I was itching to get Marvel Champions to the table again. Typically, my family hasn’t been as receptive to these LCG/CCG/TCG types of games, but on a whim I threw Marvel Champions into my bag in case the Marvel theme would be enough to get someone interested in playing.

Our conversation:

Him: “Didn’t we already play a Marvel Card Game?”

Me: “Um….I think I might have taught you Marvel Legendary”.

Him: “No, the other one”

Me: “I mean there was that Marvel Dice Masters game”

Him: “No the other one that we played earlier this year”

Me: “Oooooh, you mean 5 Minute Marvel. Well this is another Marvel Card Game”.

Knowing my Dad, I figured he’d want to play the new Captain America hero deck. I pulled out the basic Justice Aspect Iron Man deck (was curious how Justice & Iron Man worked together) and we took on Rhino. The scenario didn’t give us much problems at all, as Dad was able to deal punches to him repeatedly with his “I can do this all day” ability, while I was able to keep little to no threat on the scheme. When we beat the first version of Rhino and moved to the second version, Dad was a little let down that we had to do the same thing again, but he went with it.

By the time we finished the game, I really wasn’t sure what his take on it was for a couple of reasons.

A) I had done a lot of “alpha gaming” (when someone is more or less explaining what everyone should be doing with their cards) on purpose to help him see how the cards worked together, as this type of deck customizing game isn’t typically his type of game.

B) It was “later” at night (cough 8pm) when we started, which in the past has never gone well for me teaching games. At that point, I’m usually better off bringing out a smaller game that everyone already knows the rules for.

C) There was a hockey game on. So this meant every few seconds he’d crane his neck out to see how the game was going (He’s a huge hockey fan). Honestly, was kinda surprised he was willing to play a game in the first place.

I came out of our gameplay totally expecting him to be like “Meh, that was okay”, and for us to never play the game again, and honestly it would have been my fault for the reasons listed above. But, I was super excited to break out the game since I got the new hero decks that my proper brain didn’t kick in to say that it probably wasn’t the best environment. Clearly I’m not the only one who has ever done this right?

The next day, however, he was asking me more questions about what else was in the Marvel Champions box. “So, are there other villains to fight?” (Yep, Klaw and Ultron) “If someone else were to play with us, would they pick up a different hero?” (Yeah, it can play up to 4 people, each person with a different hero). “What other heroes are there?” (Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, Captain Marvel in the base box, but I have Ms. Marvel as well). He even made a comment to my brother, who was a big Spider-Man fan, that he should grab the Spider-Man deck and play with us next time. Whoa, he wants to play again! Cool!

Sadly, my brother prefers his gaming to be more electronic in nature. However, later that day, Dad said to me “Okay you want to play that next guy now?”. Um, yeah! I set up the Klaw scenario and we grabbed the same decks from before and went at it again. This time, I was less “alpha gaming” and letting him make decisions on what to do with his cards. Most of the time, I just stepped in if I knew he was trying to accomplish a specific combo but maybe missed an ability or action that would help him in completing said combo.

While more challenging, we still didn’t have too much trouble with the Klaw scenario. Compared to all the other Marvel games that we’ve played, Marvel Champions does the best job at making you feel like you are playing a super hero, in the way you are able to beat down the baddies but also when they smack you back. In both scenarios, whenever the villain would get an encounter card that healed them any amount of points, Dad would get super “mad” at the game (“Gah lee!” “Well that sucks!”). On the flip side, when my Dad drew Captain America’s Shield Toss attack card, there was a “Yeah Buddy!” He’s the type of person to get very vocal while watching a sports game, so I just giggled as it meant he was drawn into the game.

We had a lot of fun playing the two scenarios together. A lot of times, we end up playing very competitive games and digging into each other the whole time, so I wasn’t sure how much he would like the cooperative aspects of Marvel Champions. But when I was packing up to go home the next day and he asked me “So, Ultron the next time you come down?”, I knew I had him hook, line, and sinker.

What did you think of this Battle Report? Have you found Marvel Champions to be more accessible than other LCG/Card Games? Let me know in the comments, or you can hit me up on twitter or facebook.