What’s crack-a-lackin champions?! BananaCrapshoot here once again to bring you another article about everyone’s favorite super hero card game.... Marvel Champions! This time I’m revisiting a series I started looking at and reviewing the 15 signature hero cards for each hero, without considering the identity card when doing so. This will be the first expansion hero we take a look at my personal favorite Marvel hero, Captain America! Without further rambling, let’s dive in!
As always we start with the signature ally, and Cap comes with a solid one. Her cost and health are right in line with her stat line, her Response is very strong and makes her an incredible Threat control ally, and as always every ally has the potential to ear a huge swing of damage to the face in place of your hero. Overall she’s a great ally and is probably, in my opinion, the third best signature ally we have access to behind Black Cat and Lady Sif.
Our first event is Fearless Determination, this art is so good it’s the poster on the back of his insert in his pack. This card is solid, it’s nothing great but is in no way a bad card. Giving cap +1 THW really becomes +2 because most of the time you will get 2 thwart actions off cap when you play this. It also helps you cycle through your deck to find your Super solider serums, shield blocks, heroic strikes, etc. I like this card even though it’s probably the weakest card in his pack.
I love this card. anything that stuns an enemy as a bonus effect I’m all about. 3 cost for 6 damage is what you’d expect for that cost. The stun is awesome and isn’t hard to come by since Cap has access to 2 copies of super soldier serum, which I will look at later, but they exhaust to generate a physical resource. This is also one of the two main cards in the builds where you don’t really play the game and cheese the boss like a dude fighting a MMO boss you can’t beat normally. If you don’t know what I mean, there’s a few Stun-Lock builds, the most common being Protection in aspect, where you have Heroic Strike here, 3 copies of Tackle, and mockingbird so you stun the villain the whole game never having to deal with villain activations. This is only really possible in solo play and shows how the game isn’t really designed for solo play. When I discovered this strategy with Cap it’s a big reason I play every game 2 handed because it’s way more balanced and seems to be as intended. 2 handed is where you play solo but control 2 heroes so it’s like playing a 2 player game, just solo. Well enough of that tangent, great card.
What can I say, another great card in this kit. It’s similar to backflip in that it prevents all dmg from an activation, this one does have a minor cost of exhausting Captain America’s Shield. That is there just so you can’t stack these multiple times in a phase. Nothing much else to say, this one is pretty straightforward, and good.
If you find a bad card in this kit let me know what and why, because here’s another good card. So cap had his single dmg stun damage card and here’s is AoE damage dealer. Most of the time you are hitting up to 4 people with this card but hitting even 2 enemies for 4 dmg each off 2 cards plus this one is “above curve”. This Card is thematic and the only downside is it returns the shield to your hand, but it’s thematic and feels great to pull off to finish all 4 chumps in the Wrecking Crew. Most of the time I use it to clear a bunch of minions engaged with me, especially in Ultron or Mutagen Formula where they spit minions out faster than toilet paper selling out in stores this past week. Cap can do it all and he does it all well due to cards line this in his kit.
The alter ego support Cap has is his extremely, lavishly decorated apartment. This has a good action and ability on it. Card draw is never bad and neither is healing. Don’t find myself in AE too much due to cards line shield block, and Cap’s Shield, but this is a good card anytime to flip makes your recovery +1 basically and draws a card. All for 1 resource. Solid cost and a solid card, one of the 3 weakest in the kit but still solid. This kit is ridiculously good.
Here’s the upgrade nobody cares about until the time they need it. Personally I lose to scheming our way more than I lose by dying. However for 1 resource you get a “get out of jail free“ card by staying on the table for one more turn hopefully when you would be defeated. This could be one of his weaker cards to one of his stronger cards depending on if you play it or not, I think this is in the mix for one of his weaker cards just because it’s probably the least played card for me in his 15. I do play it to thin the deck but early game it’s a resource.
Here we go, this is what everyone wants on Cap from the get go, his iconic vibranium frisbee. Restricted keyword not 100% relevant yet as we don’t have any situations right now where you could have more than 2 cards equipped on your hero with that keyword. The +1 DEF is nice but the real banana on this card is the Retaliate 1 that it gives you. If you don’t Play Black Panther ever and are unaware what retaliate does, after you are attacked you deal damage back to the attacker, so retaliate 1 deals 1 dmg back after Cap is attacked. This is a very strong ability over the course of a game, using it to eat away drones and finish off minions helps keep a clean board state. Overall this card is great and it should be, being the most iconic item in Marvel probably.
Super Soldier Serum is Cap’s resource generating card, giving you a physical resource anytime you want it. This makes the stun on heroic strike online almost always. There are 2 of these in the kit, not much else to say. Free resources are strong and this is the first hero we have with 2 copies of a card giving a free resource every round. That makes it way easier to play out all the cards in your hand each turn.
Overall I think this kit is ridiculously strong, it’s the strongest I have looked at so far for this series. Not one bad card here. They are all good to great. Cap does everything well and is stupid strong. You can ignore an aspect and play a vanilla all basic build and beat expert scenarios on the back of this kit of 15. He’s so good it’s to the point where I don’t want to play him anymore really because it’s almost easy mode, even on expert.
The Grades:
Tommy of Titan- 4.8
BananaCrapshoot- 4.8
I’m right with my co-host on this one at 4.8/5 for this set of 15. Honestly it was hard not giving him a straight 5, but I wanted to leave some wiggle room there for future hero design. Now just as a reminder to our scoring scale, 1 is unplayable and 5 is Super, stupid strong. Well that’s it for this edition of The Hero’s Journey. Thanks to everyone that reads our articles and listens to our podcast! I’m BananaCrapshoot, stay Scheming Champions!