If you’re a fan of the Spider-Verse and looking to dive deeper into the world of Marvel Champions, then Marvel Champions Sinister Motives is the obvious choice. Sinister motives introduce Spider-Man Miles Morales and Ghost Spider and a whole host of Spider-Man-related characters, including some exciting new villains. With its solid theming and unique challenges, this expansion is sure to keep you engaged for hours on end.
Marvel Champions Sinister Motives Overview
The Sinister Motives Expansion is the fourth campaign expansion to Marvel Champions, a living card game from Fantasy Flight Games. The big box expansion comes packed with two new heroes and a whole host of iconic Spider-Man villains to face off against. The immersive campaign focuses on the tricky nature of dealing with the big threats, while also managing to be a friendly, neighborhood hero. If you manage to do both, you’ll receive fantastic rewards that will boost your abilities over the course of the brand-new cinematic campaign – and you’ll need all the help you can get when you face the final boss, Venom Goblin.
In this review, I’ll walk through all the unique challenges and thrilling surprises that await you!
What’s in the Box
The Sinister Motives Expansion features an extensive collection of new content, including a total of 265 new cards to explore. Note that this is an expansion and you will need the core game in order to play.
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2 fully pre-built 40-card hero decks, Justice for Spider-man Miles Morales and Protection for Ghost Spider
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5 brand new standalone scenarios to face off against, including Sandman, Venom, Mysterio, the Sinister Six, and Venom Goblin.
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A brand new cinematic campaign that incorporates other cards, adventures, and challenges while linking the four scenarios together into an overarching narrative.
These big box expansions are the most bang for your buck when expanding your collection because they give you so much more to explore. You’ll be expanding your hero roster, your scenario pool, and deck-building options. Let’s dig in on what’s in the box.
Heroes
Spider-Man – Miles Morales
Spider-man Miles Morales relies on stunning and confusing the villain, which thematically aligns with his invisibility and venom-blast powers from the movies and comics.
Equipped with his fully pre-built justice deck, built around the shield keyword, Miles strategically employs a playstyle that gains momentum from flipping to alter-ego, setting up traps, and preventing the villain from activating. If you aren’t used to flipping a lot, Spiderman may be tricky to steer since he has cards that allow him to flip twice on a turn. Every time he does he gets to slip one of his powerful hero cards from his discard, back into his deck, making him one of the most consistent heroes in the game, but also keeping him less reliant on aspect cards.
But his biggest strength quickly becomes his biggest weakness against steady and stalwart villains, which have become a lot more common – including the big baddie from this box, Venom Goblin. When that happens, his cards and abilities are nerfed and just become expensive attack and thwart events.
While his shield keyword cards are cool, and introduce a whole new archetype to the justice aspect, I’ve found them to be better utilized with other heroes. I tend to prefer Miles in Protection or Aggression and either focus on getting a lot of readies or getting out a lot of web-warrior allies. But, in general, his hero cards are the ones you end up playing, so you can run him in anything.
Ghost Spider
Ghost Spider’s fully pre-built protection deck focuses on her unique playstyle: dodging hits and redirecting it right back at the villain. Her aspect cards are focused around web warriors, but I quickly swapped that out for a defense deck that maximizes her ability to reduce and avoid damage from villain attacks.
In combat, Ghost Spider excels at evading and counterattacking during the villain’s turn, which addresses one of protection’s main problems – how long it can take to finish off the villain. With Ghost-Spider, she not only dodges but also deals significant damage and thwarts the villain’s plans in response to their attacks – so she still manages to get things done. It’s a game-changing playstyle (that we’ll see again with Shadowcat in Mutant Genesis).
Although it’s still possible to play her in other aspects, due to her exceptional proficiency in protection, I stick to green. It’s a weird version of protection and, in a lot of ways, feels more like an aggression deck, but it is so obviously the best way to play her, and is, unfortunately, my only knock against her – that she is so pigeon-holed. That being said, what she does, she does very well and I’ve gotten a lot of great games out of Gwen. Her playstyle remains one of my favorites in the game.
Iconic Spider-man Villains
Sandman
Prepare for an intense showdown against Sandman, who comes out swinging. Since he inflicts indirect damage, he makes it impossible to effectively chump block, removing that security. This was a great move on the designer’s part because chump blocking is overpowered and this was an interesting way to discourage an over-reliance on that strategy and test our skills.
As the game progresses, Sandman gains sand counters, representing his increasing strength and unlocking devastating attacks. As he builds up his power he can ensnare you in his sand traps and unleash his Sand Clones into the fray, both of which scale based on how many sand counters he’s accumulated. So ignore them at your peril.
Sandman also flies through his encounter deck, discarding lots of cards each turn, so if you’re not careful you could end up with a lot of escalation tokens, quickly. If you, like me, are a gluten for punishment, I’d recommend throwing Electro’s encounter set from the Green Goblin Scenario pack in here, and just watching as Sandman cycles through his deck, sometimes in one or two turns.
Venom
Venom encounter deck gives him a lot of extra boost cards which often have a nasty boost effect, and, as a result, he punches really hard. His scenario is thematically placed on top of a bell tower, and you can, if you choose, ring the bell. When it’s ringing you have the momentum and can knock his health down more rapidly, but this can make him more unpredictable and give him some escalated effects in the encounter deck, so it’s best to save that until you are ready to dish out a lot of damage at once, or are close to ending the game.
This is a fine scenario. A good fistfight. The bell tower was an interesting idea, but, because it’s optional, it doesn’t ring very often. I think I would have preferred something more like what we see with Hela, where, in order to progress, as part of the story, I have to engage with the bell tower. Having that narrative element where, to finally defeat him, I have to separate the symbiote from Eddie Brock would have made this one that much better, but as it is – Venom remains a solid, but not exceptional scenario, and ends up being a little easier than I think was intended.
Mysterio
Mysterio leans into tricky effects from his encounter cards and, once he gets going, will stuff your deck full of nasty illusion cards which then are placed in front of you as encounter cards. You can end up with crazy chains of encounter cards.
Thematically excellent, but just like the real Mysterio, his bark is much worse than his bite. He’ll get you bogged down with all these encounter cards, which could swing the game in his favor, but underneath that facade, he’s ultimately pretty weak. He’s one where, since he gets a lot of cards into play, switching out his modular encounter sets can have a really big impact on the difficulty and fun of the scenario and I think putting in a more difficult modular with a bit more teeth, can make this scenario one that very replay-able. As designed though, this one was a little too easy.
Sinister Six
Is one villain not enough for you? Well, how about six Spider-Man villains including Scorpion, Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, and Hobgoblin? The notorious Sinister-Six villains offer unique challenges because they take turns attacking and scheming and, if you’re not careful, you’ll be taking them all on at once, making them difficult to overcome.
You don’t defeat this scenario by reducing the villains’ health. Instead, you have to remove the threat in order to escape. Otherwise, the members of the Sinister Six will just keep appearing.
This is a MUCH better implementation of multiple villains than we’ve seen before. In the Wrecking Crew Scenario, it was too easy to game who the active villains were and then pick them off one by one. In Tower Defense protecting the tower added an interesting layer of complexity. But in both cases the main issue with multiple remains. As you defeat villains, the scenario becomes easier, which means that the scenario gets less interesting and dramatic as you play. But here they get it right because it isn’t just about knocking out villains. I’d still say that, with a decent deck, this one isn’t that difficult, but it is fun and thematic and manages to get the drama right, and each of the different villains offers unique challenges.
Venom Goblin
There is some debate as to whether this scenario is the most difficult scenario in Marvel Champions or if that honor still belongs to Ronan. Ronan is pretty brutal, but Venom might be a more interesting test of your skill.
Venom Goblin starts difficult, but not impossible, but when he gets his glider, you are in big trouble, because he then activates twice, making him difficult to overcome. As a result, he can be a little swingy, depending on when he gets his glider, but he does feel better to play against than Ronan because you at least have a chance to set up.
He also has an interesting mechanic, juggling three main schemes. It adds an interesting decision space and shakes up the typical formula. But to be clear this scenario is a bit too hard and demands you bring your very best decks. He’s definitely the toughest of the new villains and a great final boss.
Sinister Motives Campaign
I love the theme here and the added elements from the campaign serve to enhance that theme by adding threats from your personal life. Doing community service, J. Jonah Jameson publicly trash-talking you, or Osborne tech mysteriously showing up in the hands of the villains.
Over the course of the campaign, if you meet certain objectives you can pick up rewards and benefits depending on how you score on the reputation track. This is a mechanic we’ve seen before and doesn’t really drive the story, but I really like it when my characters get stronger over the course of a campaign, especially if the villains get tougher as well. That trajectory isn’t perfect, but because they introduce Osborne tech and additional side schemes, and because Venom Goblin is tough, I still think that feeling of progression works.
If you are lucky (?) you might even earn enough points on the reputation track to try on the symbiote suit.
Conclusion
Sinister Motives is an excellent addition to Marvel Champions and might be the very best big box expansion. With its engaging gameplay, rich content, and exciting campaign, it is a must-have for any fan of the Marvel universe.
Whether you’re a seasoned player or new to the game, this expansion offers endless hours of fun and each of these villains offers unique challenges. I’m a bit biased because the Spider-Verse is my favorite content in the Marvel Universe, but this would be the first expansion I’d recommend people pick up. If you prefer another team from the Marvel Universe, I also fully endorse Red Skull or Mutant Genesis. But, for my money, this is the best way to start expanding your Marvel Champions collection.
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For more Marvel Champions content, check out our comprehensive list of expansions with links to all our reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What age group is the Sinister Motives Expansion suitable for?
The Sinister Motives Expansion is recommended for ages 14 and up due to the complexity of the gameplay and the strategic thinking it requires.
2. Can I play the expansion without the base game of Marvel Champions: The Card Game?
No. The Sinister Motives Expansion is not a standalone game. You will need the Marvel Champions core set to play.
3. How many players does the Sinister Motives expansion support?
Just like the core game, the Sinister Motives Expansion can be played solo or with up to four players.
4. How long does it typically take to complete the Sinister Motives campaign?
The length of the Sinister Motives campaign can vary based on player count and strategy, but on average, it can take between 2.5 hours to 3 hours.
5. Is there a specific order to play the villains in the campaign?
Yes, the Sinister Motives campaign guide provides a specific order to encounter the iconic Spider-Man villains which follows the narrative of the campaign.
6. Can I play as one of the villains in the Sinister Motives Expansion?
No. In Marvel Champions, players play as the heroes. The villains are controlled by the game mechanics.