Hi Guys,

Thought I share some thoughts about the game, for those waiting for theirs or are on the fence.

About us: We play exclusively co-op games at 2-player count. We generally enjoy dungeon crawls and deck builder/ deck construction games. We own all of the LotR and Arkham LCG content. Yes, we love the format and challenge they provide.

Our thoughts after ~ 20 plays of Marvel Champions:

Pros:

• Great co-op feel. Depending on your chosen aspect, the game can feel very co-op. Having allies block for the other player, applying boosts, using your heli-carrier. Very good!
• Marvel theme. I think this will differ for folks, but we love Marvel
• Distinctive roles. Each aspect feels very distinctive, even on the same hero. I.E. my wife played the Captain Marvel starter deck with aggression and HATED it. Combat focus is NOT her favorite. She switched to Justice and LOVED her...totally different feel to the hero
• Time. Each session with 2 players tends to last between 60-90 minutes. Great bite-size session
• Meaningful decisions. Rarely does a turn have 'automatic' or obvious actions. Lots of thought goes into how to play out your hero turn
• The encounter deck variability. Having hero 'obligations' and being able to swap different encounter sets makes the game interesting each time.
• Easier deck construction. The limitations for each hero in their deck construction makes this 'chore' easier.

Cons:

• Limited Hero selection. This will likely change, but if you don't like any of the included heroes or just 1, you may feel there isn't much content. (my wife really only likes Black Panther)
• Some 'fiddly' rules. Some rules may seem fiddly to a person new to the LCG. For example, boosting the villain's attack or scheme is easy to forget, particularly if it comes via an encounter card.
• Dials for hero health. I like the villain dial since health can scale fairly high, but the hero dials seem unnecessary for us. (Plus they were fairly low quality and tend to be tough to turn)
• No campaign. I think this may change too, but no confirmation. Having no way to link scenarios in a meaningful way is a con for us. We LOVE the Arkham mechanism, but realize it may not fit here. We'd love to see something like the LotR saga boxes.

Overall thoughts:

We love the game. Most of our cons will be fixed with more content. I'd highly recommend this to a couple looking for a challenging Marvel experience. Don't let the first few plays spoil you on the game. It is worthwhile to change up the hero decks and try something different. Make sure you're not missing any rules. Watch a play-through or two. Don't be shy about seeing what others are doing with deck building on MarvelCDB.

Most of all, turn off your phone, unplug from work, and have fun with your friend/ significant other!

2/4 of your cons will be fixed with more content released. They have a campaign expansion in the works, and it will be raining heroes after a couple of years of releases for this game (just like AH:TCG). I agree that the rules could have been presented in a better manner. It's easy to have a bunch of questions coming out of the learn to play guide. I replaced my dials with 3rd party products. Etsy already has a bunch of stuff posted for the game, and if you have deep pockets then Team Covenant made a token set that released along side the game. The tokens are extremely nice looking, but they are definitely not for a gamer on a budget. I own the villain set and I don't regret picking it up.

I like that the game plays reasonably fast. I can play a solo game out of the core in a half an hour. I also kinda like that by default the scenarios are all standalone. That makes the game more bite sized. One of the issues I run into with AH:TCG is it can be a bit cumbersome to have multiple campaigns running at once, and getting a group to commit to a whole campaign is more of an ask than to just do a standalone scenario which is often what I end up doing with my game group. My full campaign play throughs are mostly solo or me and my wife since we live together. It's easier to get that commitment from her

Agree with all of it, especially the dials and the need for a campaign. Gameplay is fun and some characters have a lot more decisions to make than others.