Marvel Legendary: Civil War Review

It’s Civil War in the Marvel universe! But whether you are #TeamCaptain or #TeamIronMan this is a safe and welcoming place for you both. Unless you’re #TeamIronMan. This expansion makes it abundantly clear who the baddies and the goodies are in this fight!

Players: 1-5

Time: 30-60 mins

Ages: 14+

 

 

After reviewing Marvel Legendary and it’s excellent expansion, the ludicrously over-titled Marvel Legendary: Captain America 75^th Anniversary expansion (really rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?), I’ve now been playing the much snappier titled but more content-heavy expansion, Marvel Legendary: Civil War! This is a beast of an expansion, and not just because it has a tiger woman hero and Squirrel Girl scurrying around. (Yes, Squirrel Girl, part of the Avengers NW branch, which is basically the equivalent of CSI: Croyden, just furrier). Civil War adds almost as many cards as the base game including 16 new heroes, 9 new piles of villains, 5 masterminds, 8 schemes and a load of grievous wounds (ouch!), special bystanders (help!) and, I kid you not, pets (sidekicks, as they are technically called, did also feature in the Secret Wars vol 1 expansion). This is going to be a long review.

Let’s start where it’s most sensible to start: the end. If you’ve still not got hold of Marvel Legendary and the Captain America 75^th Anniversary expansion despite my enthusiastic reviews, Civil War is unlikely to change your mind. It is definitely for fans of the comic books (Civil War is based on the comic book series more than the recent film) or lovers of the game system already. So, for those fans, let’s dive in deep!

Who’s feeling heroic then?

There’s so many new heroes to talk about that they’re at real risk of being lost in the throng. Excitingly I’ve learnt how to use bold text to highlight important words. So if you really want to know what I felt about Tigra, she’ll leap out at you from the page as you scroll down. Rauwrr.

Right! Let’s kick off with two heroes that use what is probably my favourite new mechanism of the expansion. Vision, the red-faced chap from Avengers 2, and Wiccan, who looks a bit like Thor’s younger, less good-looking, brother both enjoy a bit of Phasing! Which is a word I can’t ever read without hearing Archer shouting it in my head (maybe I have a problem). Phasing represents those special psychic powers like warping about and walking through objects that has probably got Vision into trouble more than once.

Explains the red face. Phasing let’s you swap the corresponding card with the top card of your deck, saving it for later but more importantly comboing with various abilities that ask you to guess some element (class or cost) of the top card of your deck to get a bonus. Some of which let you draw that card and so you can re-use the power! A satisfying set of tricks to pull. Daredevil also shows up with some fun cards that tie in well with those abilities, as well as an awesomely powerful special card that really let’s the bad guys know what it felt like to be in that corridor in episode 2 of the Netflix series… However! Secretly it’s not proper Daredevil but some other hero called Iron Fist wearing the mask! No, I don’t know who it is either but he’s turning up on Netflix soon too and judging by the way his fist glows I suspect it won’t be any good for the bad guys.

Tentatively I’ll now dip my toe into unknown waters with a bunch of heroes I have never heard of. Speedball is apparently one of the chaps who set off the entire civil war in the first place by causing some bad guy called Nitro to explode. Clearly he’d never played Crash Bandicoot. As such, his actions commonly put bystanders in peril, and he’s such a disturbed individual that his bouncing attacks get stronger the more dead civilians there are! Yep, he’s bouncing off corpses! Urgh!

Goliath is big guy with a big heart. About the size of a small car actually. He’s the first of our heroes to come with the size-changing power, which is sadly nowhere near as exciting as it sounds. If you play a card with the right symbol in your turn, cards with this ability cost 2 less monies to buy. On a villain you need two less damage to beat them. Presumably because you’ve grabbed them when they’re small. Still, Goliath’s deck is at least rescued by some excellent puns on the title (he works in a real… growth industry!)

Next up we have, and I’m not joking here, Hercules himself, generously fulfilling the stereotype of “hairy shouty greek man”, and leaving me with the sense that we’re starting to scrape the bottom of the Marvel barrel a little bit. Hercules is a little bit obsessed with his image and rescuing the ladies, and occasionally beats up his own side. But I suppose we should expect the son of Zeus to be a little arrogant.

Who’s a good little sidekick!? Yes you are! Yes you are!

Since I mentioned barrels and scraping there seemed like no better time to divert briefly into the sidekick deck which is, I feel, most appropriately summed up by Throg:

Throg. I just – I can’t even begin. The sidekicks form a deck of cheap cards you can always buy from, much like the shield officer stack. Appropriately kept face down (in shame) you get a random one with a random power that once used goes back to the deck, thereby not clogging up your deck. Now, I can get behind Falcon having a pet falcon that he can see through. Sure! But when we get to Hairball, Speedball’s cat with kinetic force meows or Ms. Lion, Aunt May’s dog I do start to wonder what the comic book authors were smoking. Still, they are a mechanically interesting addition to the game! Even f***ing Throg.

Back to the hero’s and this paragraph is a special two for one paragraph as we feature the decks of Storm & Black Panther and Cloak & Dagger, who fully utilise the split card mechanic of this expansion. These Divided cards feature in all the heroes’ decks but these pairings specifically focus on the mechanic, with every card in their decks being split, and a unique card that gets super-powered the more of these split cards you play. The cool part of these new cards is that when playing them you chose which half of the card you use, offering you more flexibility and choice when planning your turn. You’re CHOOSING A SIDE! Do you get it!? They do slow things down a little meaning you really might want to keep the player count for this expansion on the lower side but are otherwise fun. They don’t really get across the point of the divided nature of the Civil War as the rulebook claims anymore than the split wall colours in my flat represent the societal divisions of post-Brexit Britain, but we shouldn’t really be looking to Marvel Legendary for clever social commentary, should we?

Right! Who’s this exciting new hero? Oh, it’s Captain America… again. Seriously Captain, you’re coming across as a bit needy. Always having to be involved, with your love of all the different classes on display as usual. I was impressed at the start but your attempts to mix up your old act are getting a bit tired. I know you led the Secret Avengers and all that, but maybe it’s time to let the new blood take over, hey? You are 75 now.

Speaking of the new blood, Civil War introduces us (me?) to the Young Avengers, a gaggle of heroes rescued from the clutches of Shield. We have the Patriot (discount Captain America) who collects hero names rather than class colours, Hulkling (discount Hulk) who has a pretty cool shape-shifting ability that doubles other cards, and Wiccan (discount Thor). There’s also Stature, who is either REALLY BIG or really small. Oh, and of course Tigra who is, well, tiger woman, which naturally involves running around in her underwear all the time. And drawing lots of cards, none of which appear to provide her with any clothes, apparently.

And we’re still not done! There’s the more recognisable bullet-proof hunk that is Luke Cage who thoroughly enjoys jumping in front of others and long walks in the rain. Falcon returns with his feathery friend, getting more powerful the more heroes he leaves behind in the HQ and finally, FINALLY, we have Peter Parker, a central character in the Civil War comic who reveals his identity at the behest of Iron Man. As with the base game’s Spiderman, I have no idea how to make the most of his cheap card obsession! (But that doesn’t mean he’s bad)

Wooooooo! All 16 heroes! Now for some baddies.

Who knows what is good or bad?

The ultimate twist in Civil War is, of course, that the bad guys are, surely, still the good guys? Featuring the super heroes that agree on the need for to register and police the actions of superheroes, your foes include Iron Man, Shield itself and numerous members of the superhero community! It’s a unique prospect, albeit not one that has much in the way of mechanical impact.

It’s a bit of a shame the expansion as it stands doesn’t allow you to explore the two sides of the conflict. It would have been really cool if, in addition to having Bad Guy Iron Man and Good Guy Captain America you could have a set of Masterminds and Schemes that presented the conflict from the other side. With Bad Guy Captain America and Good Guys Iron Man and the heroes that in this set make up the villains. With Schemes representing the Secret Avengers operations against Shield & co. It’s the perfect opportunity for another expansion, Upper Deck! You can post the cheque to Matt Evans, Creaking Shelves HQ, …

Famously lead by Authoritarian Iron Man, perhaps the worst name for a toy I’ve ever heard of, the forces of… evil? Registration? Bureaucracy? Are up to your standard variety of schemes and general naughtiness. Iron Man fortifies parts of the city, a fortification that moves with each master strike. Kind of an armoured caravan. In this context, the fortified space makes the villains harder to beat, and worse Iron Man is protected from harm when a villain is in that spot. As if that suit wasn’t enough! His preferred villains also enjoy fortifying things, including the incredibly annoying Iron Spider who will sit on your deck, reducing the number of cards you can draw, until you squash him. Then there’s a pretty good chance he’ll just leap to the next player which, if nothing else, is damn funny for the rest of you!

Misty Knight who I’m somewhat struggling to reconcile with her role in the Luke Cage TV series here plays a vicious mercenary super hero, rather than a hard working cop. Her and her cronies both feature the Bribe special rule that lets you defeat them with resources as well as combat, a good thing too since the heroes for high take a fair pile of hits to beat! Ragnarok, who looks like angry Thor, gets tougher the more hero classes there are in the HQ, requiring a fine bit of coordination to overcome. I’d be angry too if some illustrator had created Throg as my sidekick.

Maria Hill also gets a shot at the limelight as the acting director of Shield! She has the amoeba like ability to spawn more Maria Hills in the city until you’re faced with an endless tide of Maria Hills consuming everything in their path! And when she’s surrounded by shield agents you can’t even attack her. To make matters worse, she and a number of villains in the set has the Shield Clearance special rule, meaning you’ll need to discard a shield card to attack them. Of course, Ms Hill requires you to discard two, which makes being in a position to actually attack her a real nightmare to orchestrate! Probably the hardest Mastermind in the set.

The final Mastermind is perhaps the secret mastermind behind the entire Civil War. Baron Zemo has always been a bit of a weirdo with his purple helmet fetish (No! Not that!) In previous incarnations he’s been terrified of cheerleaders and now weeps over his fallen comrades to the extent that he spends his master strikes rescuing their corpses from your VP pile. Although considering all the heroes in this set are kind of good guys, maybe they’re just hospitalised?

Scheme twist!

Civil War comes with 8 new schemes that didn’t really blow me away as much as the Captain America expansion schemes, but that’s not to say there isn’t anything interesting going on.

Epic Super Hero Civil War is just an minor tweak from the base game’s Super Hero Civil War, the epic nature being that maybe 5 more heroes will get KO’d by scheme twists… Epic. Also let’s you play it 1 player this time. Dark Reign of the HAMMER Officers is a tweak on Brainwash the Military from Captain America, which itself was a tweak to the Killbot scenario from the base game, but is made harder by the ever increasing rate number of Shield Officers and the fact that they all have Shield Clearance.

Avengers vs X-Men encourages players to build their deck around a single hero type which is inevitably going to go wrong as the HQ randomly refills, particularly if playing solo. If you have both hero types in hand when a scheme twist appears you’ll pick up a wound, but is otherwise a race to the end. Reveal the Heroes’ Secret Identities also focuses on the heroes. With each twist a hero is unmasked, making him or her more expensive to hire. There may be some trick to maintaining only unmasked heroes in the HQ… but good luck with that!

Predict Future Crime (the most villainous of schemes! Are you really the good guys for stopping this?) is a ‘stop the villains escaping’ scenario, with the deck spitting out extra villains every so often, with some scope for manipulating the order of the other cards (draw 3, any villains come out, you replace the others as you like). Another villain management mission is the exquisitely challenging United States Split by Civil War, where you need to try and keep the streets, bridge and sewers all clear of enemies. I’m a big fan of this one!

The final schemes are both about killing bystanders (always fun). Nitro The Supervillain Threatens Crowds takes us back to the start of the Civil War with scheme twists annihilating any bystanders in the city, and bringing out a whole fresh batch. There’s a high limit before you lose so it’s not unduly hard but I do like the story. Finally we have Imprison Unregistered Superhumans which is the best and coolest scenario if only for story purposes. The city becomes ever more fortified over the course of the game as the authoritarian regime takes hold. Any villains in the fortified spaces KOs a bystander (capturing an unregistered superhero) and only 3 KO’d bystanders will lose you the game. Very challenging: you’ll need to be on the ball in the early game to get ahead of the clamp down! Love it.

All-in-all a solid expansion. Not being familiar with the comics left me a little bit less excited for many of the heroes and while there are some challenging scenarios (particularly in combination with certain Masterminds) it’s a mixed bag. Which is true for the new mechanics too: Phasing is awesome, Size-Changing sucks. But for fans of Marvel Legendary, this is a solid box to add to your collection. Newbies are still better off looking at the Captain America 75^th Anniversary set first.

 

Rating: Civil at best