Images courtesy of Fantasy Flight Games
Marvel Champions’ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been released in North America. With that, I have finally had some time to absorb the new player cards through my recent unboxing video and I’m ready to imagine the possibilities within.
As always, there are cards that jump out at me immediately and make me really excited to sink my teeth in to discover their maximum potential. This week we’ll look at five cards that have me so excited to update my existing decks, and a few that highlight the newest heroes to the game: Maria Hill and Nick Fury.
Leo Fitz
As a Marvel Champions player, I tend to put attention on resource generators as a requirement of most decks that I build. But searching my deck for cards is something that I don’t always think about, because they don’t often exist outside of a hero’s kit. Leo Fitz changes that for the Tech trait. Coming in the Nick Fury deck, which houses seven Tech cards itself, Leo is going to be a consideration for heroes throughout the entire game’s history.
Outside of Nick Fury, many heroes care about Tech-traited cards. Rocket Racoon has eight pieces of tech in his kit, alone. Black Widow and Iron Man each have seven. And War Machine reaches the minimum I would look for, with a base of five. Additionally, Tech is usually how a character gains the Arial trait, opening up more consistent archetypal decks. And I can even respect that access to this level of repeatable card selection is limited to an alter-ego action, as it puts an added cost of tempo to the discussion.
Leo Fitz won’t make waves everywhere, but I know there are players who will get some extensive use out of it.
Concentrated Fire
Big attack events that further what a hero is looking to do are one of my guilty pleasures. And Concentrated Fire is exactly that for one of our new heroes. Nick Fury comes with a double-sided suit upgrade: Stealth and Assault. On the Stealth side, the villain can only scheme, with one of that threat being placed on the suit. And in the Assault side, accumulated threat can be used to increase the damage of attack events.
While a lot of the benefit of Fury’s suit upgrade comes from him negating attacks, jumping out of stealth mode to deliver a large attack and either replenish the depleted threat or jump back into stealth mode brings so much flexibility to Nick Fury’s gameplay. There’s enough going on in a game of Marvel Champions to induce decision paralysis, but the decision on Concentrated Fire is dependent on the current state of the scenario, and skilled players will be able to capitalize on it.
Important to note, this decision is not always present, as you have to defeat the enemy to reap the rewards. But when the Stealth side allows you a maximum of six counters on it at once, a limit the suit card carries that can be circumvented, you’ll likely have the ability to wipe out an enemy if you really want to.
For the most part, Nick wins the games in small actions that result in long-term success, but this is one of those really flashy ways to let the villain know you mean business.
Slingshot
There’s nothing quite like the ally card type. Similarly, there is nothing like a powerful ally. It’s hard to say if Slingshot will prove to be a powerful ally, but she certainly reads as fun. While the game plan may be overly repetitive and resource intensive, being able to drop Slingshot into play under any player’s control can be a consistent source of thwarting or damage. She’ll play similar to Domino’s Pistols or Psychic Link, but with a mandatory upkeep.
Marvel Champions players may not like to think about it, but there are plenty of turns where you have a nothing hand with no way to dig out of it. Slingshot gives Leadership players an option that can be ever-present. It’s also important to realize that Slingshot returns to your hand after you’ve already drawn up to your hand size, meaning that you’re not sacrificing card economy to play her.
The Iliad
I was quick to underestimate the six-cost supports that Maria’s deck brings to the game, seeing them as too expensive and too limited in their uses. I was completely wrong. Debatably the most powerful card in Maria Hill’s kit, The Iliad exists in the same space as Venom’s Multi Gun, being an answer to anything that ails you.
There’s a more nuanced discussion to be had about the all-purpose counters that Maria Hill plays with in her kit – that I’ll save for my discussion of the heroes in my next installment. But in short, Maria is built to keep counters on her supports and control the table in hero or alter-ego. With this in mind, it’s entirely possible to drop The Iliad and never have it leave the table, even a dozen turns later.
A card like this really hammers home how important it is for a hero to be aspect agnostic, able to specialize in enough areas that your aspect cards are simply amplifying a stated role for the deck. Maria decks will inevitably play without The Circe, The Bellerophon, The Douglass, or The Pericles, eventually. But The Iliad will always be a constant.
Once you’ve seen a Maria Hill deck in motion, it makes sense why her kit doesn’t come with attack or thwart events. Paired with Agent 13, The Iliad and cards like it are dominant forces on the table.
Organizational Support
As a card that wasn’t previewed before release, Organizational Support took me by surprise. Suddenly, I’m trying to find as many cards like Avengers Assemble! for different traits as I can. It’s hard to properly contextualize the power level of a card that can generate up to four resources at once. Band Together only allows for three and it sees a high level of play.
Organizational Support being locked into Leadership is extremely important, preventing it from being an overrepresented pseudo-staple. Don’t get me wrong, this card is superb in the right decks, but it won’t be successful in every blue deck. I’m most excited to see what this can do for Thor and Rogue, seeing as supports are an included card type to leverage. But any hero that has popular traits is likely to gain a lot from Organizational Support, including Iceman, who will be able to leverage Ice Wall while its accruing damage.
For the foreseeable future, this is the Competitive Balance that Leadership will be built around. With the right build, just about any hero can afford most resource intensive cards. If we see more heroes like Spider-Woman or Adam Warlock, possibly in the form of one that can play out of aspect resources, this is the kind of card that will do wonders.
Having put the first two scenarios through their paces, I assure you that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comes with a whole list of exciting cards. We’ll talk about it next time, but the new heroes are nothing to brush off either. What cards are you the most excited about? Share them in the comments, and until next time, thanks for reading.
