Image by the author

It was a frosty 50 degree May morning as a large group of people stood outside of the GameZenter in Roseville, Minnesota, waiting eagerly “Con of Heroes 2025” to begin. Waiting in the crowd, I was excited to not only play Marvel Champions with a host of new people, but those known only as avatars in a Discord server.

Going in blind I don’t think I was properly prepared for just how packed this weekend would be. And how much the motif of Carnage would set the theme for the entire weekend. I played a lot of Marvel Champions this weekend. Had success and failure, so let’s get into it!

Shadowy Justice: Like Lightning

The opening icebreaker event for the weekend was a twist on the recent Thunderbolts scenario. seen as I consider that to be one of Marvel Champions‘ strongest scenarios in years, I was on board. The hook for this twist on the scenario was that instead of using strictly Elite Thunderbolt minions, each hero’s nemesis minion was given ten additional hit points and the accompanying traits to enable the scenario to run.

At this first event, I played this with a friend and two people we met just before the game and gained a new appreciation for the base scenario. As with many custom or rules bending situations, I will say that the extra rules baggage combined with playing with previously unknown people led to a lot of moments of stumbling. But since I cherish this scenario, I was willing to make those sacrifices.

My Lucky Day

I had my Domino Aggression deck for this encounter, the same I have used in my current playthrough of the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” scenarios with Domino. As expected, it worked great here. Being able to prioritize either Wolverine or Legion with upgrades while my hero handles the turn-to-turn speed bumps has made for a consist deck that plays well with others. The only setback was not hitting Jackpot three or four times in as many turns.

Fireside Chat

We had the pleasure of having three of the game’s designers, Tony Fanchi, Frank Brooks, and Aaron Haltom, sit down for a small fireside chat late Friday afternoon. While the topics focused on discussing the teams vision for the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” box, plus some future products, the only real preview they could offer was that the product following the next campaign box was not a hero, campaign, or scenario.

My mind leapt to “format” after all these options were removed, such as a player vs. player variant of the game. But I’m not entirely sure how that becomes a tangible thing a company packages. Overall, any look behind the curtain at how the game is made and develop is a boon and Fantasy Flight Games was gracious enough to supply it.

Carnage in the Spider-Verse

Main event on Friday was the massive multiplayer custom scenario that the organizers designed: “Carnage in the Spider-Verse”. The scenario itself finds you fighting against Carnage while trying to balance side schemes and environments, hoping to build an advantage for the second half of the scenario. Massive multiplayer events are not really my jam, be it Marvel Champions or Arkham Horror. Yet, I tried to really embrace what the designers are trying to do when playing through this scenario.

Behind the stellar art and theming straight out of contemporary comics was a fun creation that I preferred over the 2023 multi table event, themed around Kang the Conqueror. Cultists, web-warriors, and Carnage trying to ascend to godhood, all piled into one scenario. Honestly, this was a brain bending experience and felt like it was a bit of a hat on a hat. With an additional hat found along the way. And when the event was over, I needed to step away and eat the first fast food value meal I could find, just to recover energy.

Absolute Carnage

For the game, I could have been a little better prepared. I had assembled the Justice Scarlet Witch I assembled the night before the convention and mostly from memory, without the assistance of MarvelCDB. Wanda is hard to mess up once you’ve put in your reps with her. But looking back, I should have focused more on threat removal, knowing that there would be two or three other players at the table, handling damage.

I think the scenario will be fun to run with a smaller group of three to five tables, making the second phase a little more approachable. Carnage starts his second stage with 20 life per player in the event. With forty tables running the scenario, it made the tension of the scenario unfathomable to some degree and staying a live felt like the one tangible strategy.

Symbiote Campaign

The next morning I sprang up bright and early with the hope of getting in any form of Marvel Champions. There was a campaign that was being run throughout the day and showing up, I didn’t prioritize participating. That said, there were two players who were looking for a third to join them for at least the first scenario of the optional four parts, which I obliged to join them on. We took our three heroes, Valkyrie (Protection), Scarlet Witch (Leadership), and Domino (Justice) against the Drang scenario, adding in the convention exclusive symbiote cards.

For a scenario that I would expect a 60% win rate against, we lost in brilliant fashion in both attempts. In the first we had the Toxin Symbiote Suit attachment on the villain, causing us to take two indirect damage every time they attacked. We regrouped and edited our decks to better work in a multiplayer setting. From there we went up against Drang with the Skorn Symbiote Suit attachment, giving him the Amplify and Hazard icons. Another swift defeat.

Bringing the Right Weapons

The Valkyrie deck I armed myself with for the scenario looked to answer the question, “Does Valkyrie run Change of Fortune well?” And the answer after the weekend was, maybe. The wacky setup didn’t help, but I think putting the Asgardian into Protection means having to reevaluate how you mulligan and progress your turns. Any action I took during the villain phase should have been with the goal of having Valkyrie ready when the hero phase began and I didn’t prioritize that until late into the second game.

Regardless, I had tremendous fun but had to bow out of the remainder of the campaign, as I wanted to experience more of the convention in an open setting. And honestly, I feel like the only negative thing I have to say about the campaign is that it occupied so many people’s time that I never got a chance to get in games with some of the content creators and/or fans that I was hoping to play with.

Parallel Loki Event

The last organized event that I took part in was maybe my favorite. There had been some rumblings that a content creator, Autumn of the blog The Rose of Gondolin, was going to be bringing an augmentation of the Loki scenario out of “The Mad Titan’s Shadow.” This content swapped out the Loki villain card for heroes mind controlled into being villains. While it didn’t make the official schedule, it did occupy six tables on Saturday evening. 

I had the pleasure of doing this event with one of the hosts of the Critical Encounters podcast, along with two other “minions” of the show. The mixture of the known scenario along with the custom villains being utilized in Loki’s place made this a highlight of my weekend. The designs and mechanics introduced by Autumn made for a really approachable multi-table event that had me wanting more. 

The fun hook of this event was that each hero that was being played was accounted for at setup and the subsequent villain version of them was used as part of the stack of villains that each table fought. The goal was to work through your stack of five random villains, with the entire event winning once we had defeated 24 of the mind-controlled heroes. 

My table fought the mind controlled Spider Woman, X23, Scarlet Witch, Bishop, and Iron Man. Ultimately being the only table that, I believe, got defeat during the event. I will be pushing hard to have this played at a local meet up in the future, as it offered such a great change of pace without feeling like a huge mental load.

Open Play Sunday

I knew that Sunday was going to be a shorter day and that I had no plans for taking part in anything that would occupy more than a single scenario at a time. And I can happily say that I was able to get in a three-player game against the Thunderbolts, played a custom Star Wars scenario created by Critical Encounters, and finally get in a game of modified Master Mold with fellow content creator: Charred Gambit.

Outside of the custom Star Wars scenario, I exclusively played a Justice Bishop deck that I found online. This deck was absolutely fantastic and could thwart down schemes with ease, while dishing out a healthy amount of damage on the regular. I attribute this to the fact that it plays so many resources that if you have out Bishop’s Uniform, you will normally heal back more damage than the villain dealt to you. If there’s one deck I can recommend from the weekend, it’s this one.

This Great Community

I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out one of the best surprises of the entire convention. I was aware that BoomGuy from The Winning Hand podcast would be bringing custom art heroes, commissioned from community members, Band of Sirens and Corbin, to give away. But I was not prepared for just how giving he would be. Upon walking in, everybody was given a randomized pack of five heroes and encouraged to make schoolyard trades for any heroes we might be searching for.

Additionally, there as another community member, Sunny, was giving away custom art oversized heroes. And the entire event had a raffle running all day Saturday, where each attendee would walk away with donated Marvel Champions items.

Even though I had gone to the 2023 Con of Heroes, this felt very different. As I walked out of GameZenter into a blistering 83 degree day, it felt so refreshing to finally experience the game not through a comment section or Reddit, but genuine connections with people. Looking at the small tweaks people had made to their decks to include pet cards or innovate on a bad scenario to try to take it down in a more focused way.

Also, since I was deconstructing and assembling at least one new deck every day, it caused me to play through several handful of heroes, some of which I haven’t touched in over 6 months. Overall I’m so thrilled that I went, I’m so happy that the custom art community was able to really come out and bring so much excitement to attendees old and new. I hope that there is a Con of Heroes 2026, because I want to be there singing it’s praises as well. Thanks for reading.