Thursday 14 September 2023

Marvel United (and Xmen)

Super simple and very fast.

In this 1 - 4 cooperative board game players take the role of a Marvel superhero to try defeat one of the villains who always starts invulnerable. The game play loop is simple, the villain goes first often moving to one of the six available locations of the board and then doing something heinous (like punching people) and also spawning more thugs and civilians (and if there's no room for them something bad happens / villain dependent).

Then the three heroes get to do something, by playing a card from their unique deck. Symbols at the bottom are only ever: move, punch, heroism or wild which counts as any. The trick is on your turn, you get to use whatever you play AND whatever the previous player used and so on. Clear out 2/3 mini missions of rescuing civilians (heroism), beating thugs (punch) or clearing threats (threat specific - mini-bad guys might need punch, disarming bombs might need heroism) to make the main baddie vulnerable to your punches! But as soon as you complete 1 mini mission the villain moves after every two heroes do something instead of three.

It's very fast, has nice components (especially those quality chibi figurines), and is pretty fun! While the heroes don't really feel super unique apart from the few cards that give them and only them a special bonus, the villains in the base game and the Xmen game are great and have unique mechanisms that make them feel different from each other. It's a nice bonus in the Xmen box that you can play two of the villains (Mystique and Magneto) as heroes as well! The only negative for me is that once I've beaten all the bad guys I've no reason to replay it.

Still recommended, especially to Marvel fans! For those wondering in the base box that we have the available heroes are Captain America, Ant Man (my fave), Wasp, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Hulk and Iron Man to fight against Red Skull (spreads Hydra), Taskmaster (hard to hit) or Ultron (spawns thugs to win) while the X-Men base contains Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Gray, Beast, Storm and Professor X  to face off against Sabertooth (hunts specific heroes to win), Juggernaut (keeps running around to KO everyone), Mystique (hunts down a weak senator), and Magneto (kills civilians).

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