Cardboard Corner: Review of "Guardians of the Galaxy" expansion for Marvel Champions

Marvel Champions is a fast-paced, combo-tastic, cooperative card game. Every turn is a burst of two, three, four or more moves that reward creative play. While distinctly lacking in narrative (odd for a game based on a comic book enterprise), FFG has done its best to inject what little story it can into the model by releasing campaign boxes. Following in the footsteps of the first campaign box “The Rise of Red Skull” is the second, “The Galaxy's Most Wanted” (2021). Let's see if it evolves the game in positive fashion—as expandable card games should.

The five scenarios and two heroes contained in “The Galaxy's Most Wanted” are centered around the Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the many subsets of the Marvel universe. In timeless fashion, our heroes are just minding their own business when the Brotherhood of Badoon starts to unveil its nefarious plans. Our plucky heroes springing into action to stop them, the galaxy needs protecting. Yeah, quite generic...

Kicking off the campaign is the Drang scenario. While a relatively straight forward encounter, Drang's Badoon Ship nevertheless packs a major punch once its charge builds up. The second and third scenarios both feature The Collector, but in two distinct versions. The first encounter sees players losing bits and pieces of their arsenal (cards) as the collector does what his namesake says he does. Once a certain threshhold of collected cards is collected the player's lose, which makes for a unique spin on winning/losing a scenario. The second is a more standard Marvel Champions encounter in which the Collector's power ramps with the number of the main scheme, of which there are several. With the fourth scenario, Nebula, designers ask the heroes to juggle a third ball (on top of SCH and ATK) through Special attacks. Hitting players from all angles, she is the penultimate challenge to what may be the most difficult final boss in all Marvel Champion campaigns: Ronan. What to say about Ronan? The diplomatic description is: he tests players skills with the game.  The practical description, however, is that he is insanely difficult.  Dealing two encounter cards to each player each turn, it is to the players' shagrin that these turn up even deadlier surprises - double acceleration tokens, boost on top of boost on top of boost, six and seven hit point minions with guard and patrol, and on and on.  He's so tough that I would argue luck is 100% needed to beat him.  Don't get the right shuffle on the encounter deck and you're done before you've even started - really.    

The campaign system taking players through these scenarios is quite simple. Lightly (emphasis on 'lightly') resembling Arkham Horror:The Card Game, players earn Victory points by defeating certain side schemes and minions, points which can then be used to purchase powerful upgrade cards improving decks. In another campaign element, one particular minion appears each and every scenario. The more players find and defeat the minion, the more they are punished by having additional encounter cards added to the encounter deck—a strange mechanism, that. There are a couple other elements, but the last campaign element I will mention here is the hero's space ship, the Milano. While technically part of an encounter set, it nevertheless spends its time in the heroes' play area, interacting with each scenario in unique ways. Adding to the space opera feel, it adds a nice touch of flavor that I hope more campaigns will use. (The “Mutant Genesis” campaign, for example, would have been better if Professor X had been utilized like the Milano—a constant presence on the heroes' side, adding gameplay options and story flavor. Alas...)

And regarding the new heroes, let's not mince words: the Marvel universe sits on the corny end of the culture spectrum. Men in tights with superpowers is escapism of the most overt form. Pushing it towards the ultra-corny end are bad-mouthed raccoons wielding space blasters and tree men with vocabularies consisting of three words. Such are the heroes of “Galaxy's Most Wanted”, Rocket Racoon and Groot. Groot, with his tree-like toughness, focuses on protection. His gimmick is growth counters earned in alter-ego mode that can later be spent in a variety of ways: damage soak, attack, thwart, etc. Rocket Raccoon is the opposite. A glass cannon, he uses a variety of tech upgrades to b-b-b-blast his way through minions. His special skill is based around excess damage, which can be quite nice when swarmed by minions. In keeping with the limited size of the Guardians squad, each of the heroes has only two (as opposed to the typical four) ally cards in their pre-constructed decks.

In the end, “The Galaxy's Most Wanted” is one of the most cohesive campaigns released to date (up to “Mutant Genesis” as of the writing of this review) despite how corny the Guardians of the Galaxy are. Each of the scenarios switches things up nicely, escalating toward a challenging showdown with a MEGA boss. With a space ship that flits in and out of scenarios and environment cards that add nice flavors, it's a fun campaign. The heroes form a good pair, their skills (aggression and protection) complementing one another. I would rank this as the second best campaign released to date (behind “The Mad Titan's Shadow”), but do play and form your own opinion.