With work being rained out again, I spent most of my day working on minis. A date was finally announced for our local Bolt Action tournament so I decided that I needed to get off my duff and actually start painting. So far I've got one squad of the 12th Company finished up, plus my new transport which currently looks like it's fresh off the showroom floor... but more on that later.
After spending a number of hours painting, I decided to take a break and play a game. I have a few of them out here with me, but a number of them are... heavier? Not necessarily from a rules stand point, but length of game. A short game is good for breaking up the monotony but I wasn't feeling like sitting down for a long play this time. In the end, chibi super heroes seemed like the way to go.
I had seen Marvel: United back when CMON ran the Kickstarter for it. It was really tempting. I enjoy the superhero genre and the chibi figures just looked adorable, but a CMON Kickstater? Now that is anything but cute. My first experience with them was the Relic Knights Kickstarter which I ultimately wound up getting a refund on. Too many delays and it was just starting to feel like they were never going to deliver.
Jump forward to now and preorder has become synonymous with Kickstarter, at least from CMON's point of view. They do a good job with them, but they also push the envelope of the Kickstarter exclusive to the extreme. In fact, I've even heard it said by a reviewer that if you don't do the all in pledge, there almost isn't a reason to buy their products... and I tend to agree. Needless to say, I decided to pass on Marvel: United. After all the extras, it was massive but it was also quite expensive for what it looked like you were getting.
Then again, when you find the base game on clearance from Wal-Mart for $15... yeah, I had to pull the trigger on that one. Turns out that I'm glad I did.
The base game is for two to four players with seven heroes from the Marvel universe to choose from, trying to work together to defeat one of three villains. The main game play is from cards that the players lay down that have different powers associated with them, but that's not all you use. In addition the the powers on the card that you play, you also use the powers on the last player card that was played. This means that if you do it right, your heroes can string together their powers to ultimately take down their foes.
Yeah, that's a really high view of the game play but there are plenty of other people that have reviewed it, and probably have dug more into it all than I would. But is the game worth picking up? Based on my two solo plays today, I say yes. Both games were against the Red Skull (the beginner villain) but I mixed up the heroes for both games. The first was Captain America, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel, while the second featured the Hulk, Black Widow, and Venom. Even just from a single play for each of the heroes, I could see from why the decks were constructed that they nicely focused on the various heroes strengths. The mechanics are also very tight, with everything laid out step by step in the rule book.
The first game I had a couple of mistakes that went both ways, but in the end managed a win... just barely. The second game... well, let's just say "Hail Hydra" and leave it at that. This is also a game that you can't slow play, which I love. You drag your feet, and those villains will walk all over you so you have to push forward as fast as you can.
Now the question that I had before I bought this game was do I need to have all the exclusives to make this game worth it? No, you definitely don't. Just the base game has enough in there to make for fun gameplay, which is really good because finding the exclusives... yeah, not too easy.
In my research for this game, I found out that the exclusives for this one weren't necessarily driven by CMON, but by their partner Spin Master Games. I did find they have released a new bundle through Amazon that includes the base game, the Into the Spiderverse version of the base game, and Dr. Strange. This is selling for $50 which isn't half bad for as much as you get, and if I didn't have the base game already I might have snapped it up. Either way, if you are looking for a quick and easy family oriented co-op, I'd say this one is worth tracking down... as long as it's for a reasonable price. Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment