“So now I'm praying for the end of time, [t]o hurry up and arrive”

Welcome to a Grubsnatcher review. Each of my reviews will be named after a song, or after lyrics within a song. I will not use numerical ratings on any of my reviews but instead show elements that personify the game. I feel that numerical ratings will change between play groups as bad rules will be house ruled.

---

Marvel Heroes was one of my first superhero games into reentry of board games. I was enthralled to hear that Fantasy Flight game made a Superhero game. After reading some reviews I couldn’t decide if the game was for me. After hearing from my good friend, Puck4604, “that it plays like a comic book”, I thought it was worth a purchase. So I zipped off to my Friendly Local Comic/Gaming Store to buy the game. There it rested on the shelf, in its plastic perfect glory.

Components



The box is beautiful with Marvel’s main stable of characters on the front in dynamitic combative poses. The only character that looks a little out of place is Kingpin and Red Skull. Kingpin looks like he thinking about a burrito stand on the corner and Red Skull has this almost perverted looked of glee. Still, overall, it’s probably one of the best cover art for any board game. The cardboard was nice; with the nice embossed paper sleeve adhered firmly in place.

Of course, after purchasing the object of my affection I had little time to play it. When I got home I immediately put the game away. Soon a problem arose with the box: it didn’t fit the dimensions on my shelf. Distress ran through my system. My shelf didn’t have a place to fit this game! I couldn’t believe my eyes. My first attempt to move my games around did not prove efficient. So I tried a second tactic, I placed the box onto of the shelf. This was fine for about a day. At which point it began to bother me. So I did what any self-sustaining board game enthusiast would do. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a new bookcase. Problem solved.

The next day I popped the box. The miniatures are gorgeous and stand out immediately. I reached down to pull one out of its containment area only to receive the tug of resistance. I pulled again, but this time a little harder. Thankfully, the Incredible Hulk has incredible basing and had didn’t snap off. Sadly, many others did not have this same luxury. Storm looked to be the largest offender. She was firmly in place, but her small legs were begging to be broke. Let just say, this stuff is not that malleable of a plastics; it is a fairly rigid polymer and will snap. If you buy this take heed when pulling out the miniatures. One complainant I have with the box is that it’s space waster. There are many good games that suffer from this crime. It doesn’t detract from the game but is worth mentioning.



The board is a rather bland map of New York City. Each region of the city is divided further. Some of these regions are swarming with crime. I couldn’t tell. If you are interested in the Marvel Universe, it does show the locations of many main locales. It is a very nice tool to add in some immersion.

Each player receives a team of four Superheroes. The player on your right receives your super nemesis. This means you will technically be playing five different characters during the game. While you can only use your Superheroes to win, you can use your player controlled Super villain to hamper your opponent. Each character has a corresponding card that has explains ability in a concise and economic fashion.

The game also comes with a few decks of cards. The cards are slick and made of decent quality cardstock. It’s a shame they are designed for the hands of elven children. The cards are colorful and easy to distinguish one from the next. Yet, the font is a little on the small side, so it might be wise to wear some glasses.

Team Powers is a separate hand that is placed aside. It is not drawn but instead a open resource to use when you can. They give smaller powers like allowing your deploy your Superheroes at a cheaper cost or grants modifications to normal attacks.

The game comes with one set of red rubbery dice. One must be careful when attempted to roll: some of the icons are very similar. Two of the symbols look almost identical. While this problem is as bad as let’s say the Battlelore dice, it is something that does detract from the game.

There are also some other player aid chits to help designate areas. This also helps to see which areas will probably give off the larger rewards, but this isn’t always the case. The Plot Point chits work just about perfectly. They serve their purposes well. A sliding chit is used to calculate how difficult a crime scene will be.

Overall, the components are of excellent quality but still a little overpriced.

Rulebook and Player Aids

That night I attempted to read the rulebook. I stopped about within five minutes. It is a total and obsolete mess. It is probably one of the worst rulebooks that I have ever gotten my hands on. While not replete with grammatical errors, the formatting could have been more concise. One example is that rules for what you can spend Plot Point on are tossed around the book. One of the largest offenders is that Marvel Heroes is a combat heavy game. The rules for combat are in the back of the rulebook. This is unacceptable.

The game comes with next to no true player aids, which would have helped. Thankfully, there are awesome player aids and flow charts on the Geek. I suggest printing them, than mount them and finally bronze plate the player aids. You will need it.

The Game Flow

The player with the most victory points wins. Yes, you heard me. This is a superhero game that uses victory points. You receive victory points by fighting crime in the city. Most of the games are timed and those who receive the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

I should say as with a disclaimer that the player with the most victory points usually does win. The game does not have one set method of play. It has many ways to play the game, one that is very appealing. Sadly, the conditions feel very similar and only a few changes the game enough to feel these new rules be implemented.

There are two types of resources in this game: Plot Points and Threat Points. Plot Points are used to promote actions that will provide benefit to your heroes. Plot Points can be stored. They can be viewed as Deployment Points, if you wish, and are received for inactive heroes. Threat Points are only calculated when a Hero encounters a crime. The more Threat the crime is worth, the tougher the encounter. Threat not used is lost.

Hand management is required in the game. The deck contains allies, to boost your own heroes, and villains, to use against your opponent’s heroes. Allies require Plot Points to place on the board. In doing so, it does take away from other potential actions. Villains will be discussed a little later.

The game does uses rotating actions. Each player uses all his actions, and it precedes clockwise until they use all the superheroes have been accounted. Afterwards, there is a turn that consists of five rounds. A majority of actions within these phases do not take actions, but do take up precious time.

The game starts out with all your superheroes at home doing whatever superheroes do on their off time. I prefer to think they don’t watch Oprah or call in American Idol, but I guess that is a possibility. Besides your loafing heroes, you can send any of your Superheroes out on missions by spending their level which is given a numerical point value. A stronger character will be worth more, because he will be harder to take down. Other characters can be used to assist the Superhero in his crime fighting ways. The cost is only one Plot Point, because they don’t really fight in combat. The instead cheerlead on the sidelines, granting the Superhero certain bonuses.

You can also use your Plot Points to buy new allies in your quest for greater rewards. Most allies can only be used twice. Afterwards, they are discarded. Most allies have certain factions that will join at a discounted rate and receive three uses of the ability instead of the normal single shot. Those superheroes that stay at home do count for something. They give a currency called Plot Points, which is used to place Superheroes on dispatches to vanquish crime in the fair city of New York!

Along the side of the board there is a track that shows which districts have which crime problems. You must travel to these districts to fight this particular crime. Each crime spot is not of equal value. Some are easier to complete but garner less Victory Points.

The majority of the game you are sending your actions to manipulate the Story Track or dissolve Crime. Crimes are divided into three different categories. Each character can fight off different categories at different efficacy. When you attempt to solve a crime you roll a certain number of dice. These dice are reduced by that characters skill. These dice are than used to calculate the number of Threat Points that may be used in the encounter. This pool may be used by any player but only the first villain will see actual combat. The rest will only boost the combat potential of the villain, mostly giving the villain special attacks.

Some crimes are very high profile and attract power villains like flies to honey. This is indicated on the board with two lightning bolts surrounding the threat value. The player who controls that players Mastermind may attempt to plot against them. If the player’s win they may place a new power onto one of the heroes. If the villain wins, the crime fails and the Arch Villain becomes stronger.



Combat is handled in a form of Paper-Rock-Scissors. There are three values that are used in combat: Attack, Defense and Outwit. Each character has three different choices of powers. These powers are usually divided in a way that they exalt one of the three types of attack methods. Normally, a single character will have a broad set of powers that are different from one another. You must be careful with those on the high end of the spectrum. Those with high Attack will usually suffer from low Outwit or Defense. The player on your right, your arch nemesis will be playing the super villain involved.



For the longest time I could not figure out the purpose of Outwit. It was to me, one of the most useless parts of the power. There was a missing rule, and one that stands outside of my norm. When I play a game, I expect some rules cross the lines. I was expecting you roll attack versus your enemy’s defense. After that, you repeat and rinse. I assume Outwit was used for nothing except for determining who will attack first. This was wrong. Outwit is used at the end of the turn as well to inflict hits! The rule made a huge impact on the game. I don’t believe this is a flaw in the rulebook, but my own assumptions did not match the rules. Do not make the same mistake.

If you hero becomes wounded he is not dead. Instead he is returned home. You must spend time to heal him back to healthy. This can be devastating if the player expects to use this character in future rounds. Some foes are so persistent that they become a Most Wanted Villain. They may be used by other players in future rounds until the foe is defeated!

The game uses the Arch Nemesis token to help with the run away leader problem. The player to the right of the lead player with the highest victory points receives the Arch Nemesis token. This token allows the Mastermind of the lead player to join any crime, not just the ones with the symbol. While this may seem to work in theory, it sometimes falls flat in practice. Some leaders are so far ahead and their Mastermind’s too weak (from lack of use or the team is just too powerful) that it doesn’t pose a challenge.

One of the clumsiest and ill conceived ideas is that of the Story Track. The cards are placed on the track and may be pushed along by using Actions. A single action can also be used to switch two card positions. If the card is pushed to the end of the track, the player’s team receives that card. If the team is not being played, the card is discarded. If you collect enough of these cards you may attempt to give some extra powers to a superhero.

So that’s it. Marvel Superheroes by Fantasy Flight games. The game has some potential ideas, but deep down it’s just made a cohesive package. The superpowers do seem arbitrary. The game in fact could live without a board and feels like an afterthought. In fact, the entire game feels like an afterthought. This game needs to be placed back on play testing shelves for a few more months, maybe even a year.

Ponderings



A word about randomness: this game does have randomness but the worst type. It is feels meaningless and detracts from the game. When the game uses a rock-paper-scissors method of combat and the dice rolling to calculate the difficulty of the challenge I feel there might be something wrong. I would have preferred if all the players had something to be involved in the decision other than dice rolling.

Which brings me to my next point, the downtime is an abomination. Some games have interesting downtimes, such as Runebound, while the randomness of the dice rolls add some nail biting up sets. The combat method used by Marvel Superheroes is only interesting between the two involved. A part of me thinks this game would have been better if it just used the Runebound system. I’m not going to go down that route, because I believe there is a good system hiding under all this muck.

This game needs an expansion. And it needs one now.

“'[C]ause if I got to spend another minute with you I don't think that I can really survive.”