Being somewhat of a fan of superhero comics, I’d noticed the Marvel Heroes box sitting on a shelf on the very first day I stepped into CarcaSean. It wasn’t until much later that I ventured to ask Sean about it. At that time, he told me that he had only played it once himself and didn’t quite understand what the point of the game was. He recommended that I get our resident Ameritrash expert Han to teach the game to me. Even that was quite a while back and only this week did I get a chance to play this out-of-print game with Han, Sean and my wife.

Initially I had the mistaken impression that it was some sort of miniatures-based battle game, perhaps something similar to the Heroclix system. That was incorrect of course as I soon realized after getting into the habit of looking games up on BGG. Instead, pre-painted miniatures notwithstanding, it’s actually a rather abstract strategy game in which the players race against one another to score victory points by resolving various crises. The miniatures aren’t used to track tactical positioning at all and I’d say that the miniature for each team’s mastermind villain doesn’t even have any gameplay purpose.

Still, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the colorful figures. The game comes with 20 of them. There are four superhero teams, namely the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Marvel Knights (who aren’t even a real team!) with four heroes in each. Another four figures represent the mastermind villains for each of these teams, Magneto, the Red Skull, Doctor Doom and the Kingpin respectively. With the notable exception of the Human Torch, which I think looks like a pile of vomit, the figures look great. Even the board, which is basically a map of Manhattan, is crammed full of Marvel lore. While it might not be useful in the game to know where Peter Parker’s apartment is located, it certainly adds to the atmosphere.

Each player takes control of one of the superhero teams, sending them out onto the map to tackle trouble spots that are represented by “Headline” cards. Naturally the harder the Headline to resolve, the more points it’s worth. If your assigned heroes’ specialties match those on the Headline card, you can reduce the “Threat” level according to your heroes’ skills. If this drives it down to zero, then you gain the points without needing to fight. If not, you roll the indicated number of dice to get the actual Threat value and then it’s up to your opponents to spend that Threat value to play villain cards on you. Certain Headlines are marked with a special symbol which allows the player to your right to unleash your team’s mastermind villain on you.

This means that there’s little downtime in this game because you get to play the villains during other players’ turns. Only one lead villain can be used in a confrontation but the other players can help out by playing cards to give that villain bonuses. Combat is handled via a form of rock-paper-scissors wherein the player controlling the hero and the one controlling the lead villain secretly choose one of up to three powers to use during a round and reveal them at the same time. This determines the number of dice each player is entitled to roll and combat continues until one party has been knocked out.

For a fan of the comics, the main draw is really all the fanservice in the game. The names of the different scenarios are drawn from Marvel’s epic crossover events, Inferno, Age of Onslaught, Acts of Vengeance etc. In addition to the basic heroes included, other heroes make “guest appearances” in the form of Ally cards which can confer special benefits. Even the fonts used in the game comes straight from the comics. The artwork on all the cards are fantastic. If I had one complaint, I’d say that although the “Headline” cards mention specific types of trouble going on, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the villain who shows up. But that’s a minor quibble in a game that’s just drenched in theme.

In our game I took control of the Avengers who have powerful heroes but cost a lot of Plot Points to put into play. My wife wanted the X-Men just because there are two women, Storm and Jean Grey, in the team. Sean took over the Fantastic Four which Han claims are the most powerful team in the game while Han as the last player to pick a team had to settle for the Marvel Knight who have weaker but less costly heroes. I played a very conservative game which meant that my nemesis, the Red Skull, never had a chance to pop up. Even though I tried to go only for the easy Headlines, I had my Captain America get knocked out by a two-bit chump villain, Bullseye if I’m not mistaken.

The most mismatched fight in the game came when Han took a huge risk and made a play for a very dangerous Headline. The Threat roll gave the rest of us 10 points to spend on villain cards, so Sean slapped a freaking Sentinel on the table while the rest of us added cards to beef it up even more. Unfortunately for Han, his hero at the time was Daredevil. It was a very short and ugly fight. My wife risked going for Headlines with the Mastermind symbol twice but managed to play a special resource card both times that cancelled my ability to play the Mastermind on her, forcing my Magneto sit out the whole game on the sidelines as well.

I kept Thor as support throughout the game because his special ability in that role is to reduce the threat of any Headline in a district he’s in by one. My Hulk did a good job at tackling a couple of Headlines for him without much danger to myself. Sean complained about us ganging up on him even with Han in the lead and I remember playing Green Goblin to knock out his Mister Fantastic. At the end though Han won the game because he was the one willing to take the most risks and made good use of the Luke Cage Ally card which allowed him to cancel a KO for each Plot Point invested in it. It made his Spiderman almost impossible to kill!

My take: a solid game for anyone who’s into the source material. There’s so much stuff from the comics here that you could run a trivia contest at the same time as the actual boardgame. Personally, I’d love to play more of it and even see what expansions come out for it, but the game is out of print now because apparently Marvel isn’t renewing the license. For someone who can’t tell the difference between Hydro Man and Sandman however, it’s probably rather mediocre. There’s way too much randomness in the game for someone really interested in the strategic aspect and I suspect many of the cards are less than perfectly balanced. The different scenarios also don’t seem to change the basic gameplay by much and seem to be more fluff than anything else.