Iceman Marvel Champions Hero Pack Review: Chill Bro or Chill, Bro?

What is a Hero Pack Anyway?

A Marvel Champions hero pack includes a fully playable deck, including a two-sided identity card (hero and alter-ego) along with fifteen signature cards that are unique to that hero and can only be played when using them. There are 25 other cards added that make up the pre-built deck. These cards can later be used with any hero and will be limited (in almost all cases) to basic cards and cards from a single aspect.

In addition to the prebuilt desk, these packs usually come with a few extra cards from the other aspects. The idea is that, since you can play the new hero in any aspect, these new cards can give you some options and ideas for building other decks. There is also a hero obligation card, to be placed in the villain’s deck, as well as a unique nemesis set that can show up to aid any villain if triggered during a game.

If you like the deck construction element of the game, you’ll want all of these. Eventually. If that’s not your jam, they all come perfectly playable out of the box, so just get your favorite hero and start playing. Having both options is part of what makes Marvel Champions: The Card Game so great.

Check out our comprehensive buyer’s guide for more info on this.

The Iceman Marvel Champions Hero Pack

Iceman Marvel Champions comes with a fully playable deck in the aggression aspect and his kit is packed with attachment cards (and cards that play off of attachments). He kicks off with a stat line of 1-2-2, which isn’t all that great. His deck includes six extra cards because his mechanics are all based around his six Frostbite upgrades – which attach to the villain and reduce their stats by 1, both for attack and scheme.

Thematically he is set up to use his mutant power to generate cold and manipulate ice. Fittingly, his freeze ability on his hero side allows you to attach a Frostbite card after you use a basic attack or a basic defense. Notably, this is not triggered by thwarting and is restricted to basic activations. So attack or defense traited cards don’t count. This means that readying is fairly strong for Iceman, since every time you activate you can place out a Frostbite card.

Many of his cards have boosted effects if there is a frostbite attached, like his two Sand Clone allies which don’t take consequential damage when attacking a villain with Frostbite attached. Or Arctic Attack and Ice Blast, both of which do additional damage, based on the attachment. Ice Blast is particularly exciting because it allows you to put Frostbite attachments on the villain and each minion engaged with a player – then you do damage to each character with Frostbite attached. So if there are a lot of minions out, you could potentially wipe the board with that card. Obviously a lot more interesting in multiplayer, but could be a great one to build around.

He has two resource generators: Power Belt, which gives him a hero resource for an ice-traited card, and Cyokenetic Protection, which allows him to draw a card when he triggers his freeze ability – and if he draws an ice card, he gets to ready. It would be really cool to find a way to make that more consistent because reliable readies are what his kit desperately needs. Theoretically, alter ego ability should allow you to stack the deck with ice-trained cards since, whenever you flip down you can shuffle one ice card from the discard back into his deck for each copy of Frostbite in play, but the odds are still pretty weak.

Ice slide could be a great card, a two-cost upgrade that gives you plus one to all your stats and the aerial trait, but its fatal flaw is that it is shuffled back into your deck when you flip down. This makes it prohibitively expensive to play, especially if you are planning to flip down and stack your deck with ice cards. As it result it likely won’t see a lot of play.

As the team’s prankster, he also has some tricks up his sleeve to impede the villain. Frozen solid is an interesting card, canceling an activation and adding a Frostbite. The fact that it cancels the activation, is really handy against stalwart villains since stun and confuse don’t work on them. It’s especially nice that it isn’t limited to canceling an attack, allowing Iceman to flip down safely. Ice Wall is equally interesting, but extremely expensive at four cost. It gives you and/or your team 8 hit points that can be used to absorb hits. It absorbs all the damage, so even something with overkill can be absorbed, but it can be tricky to get it to absorb more than two or three villain attacks, which makes the cost difficult to justify over just putting out an ally – particularly one of the equally expensive allies with tough.

All in all, interesting cards, and a fresh mechanic that demands to be experimented with – getting those Frostbites out, to help protect the team. I think, unfortunately though, it lacks a real center of gravity and ends being a lot of ideas, and not a lot of action or interesting synergies with existing cards.

Prebuilt deck

The Iceman hero pack comes with a prebuilt aggression deck that is focused on bringing out minions and giving them attachments. I have to admit that I thought, for sure I was going to prefer protection for Iceman since he’s set up to protect the board with his signature cards, but I did find him a fairly efficient minion killer, especially with the ability to read from the new event, surprise move, which boosts your attack and allows you to read after defeating a minion with an upgrade. Since that upgrade could be a copy of Frostbite, it seems like it might synergize well. But, here’s the trick, to get the Frostbite out you have to have already attacked. So you have to be able to read or get an upgrade out another way in order to set up the chain of frostbite and minion murder that this card is intended to facilitate. It allows any hero to experience Valkyrie at her best, but she can pay to put out her upgrade and here you basically have to pay by activating, which makes it fairly awkward to execute.

The set of allies was cool though, especially the new aggression allies that are boosted by attachments. It’s a bit of a bummer though to realize that, perhaps the best card in his whole prebuilt deck is the new take, which deals 7 damage to an enemy with an upgrade attached, for three resources. I would rarely run it otherwise, but since he can get the upgrades out so reliably, this card is great here.

Very weak thwarting, to the point where you basically have to rush. Your basic thwart is extremely weak and costs you your chance to get a Frostbite out. Almost never worth it. His thwart event is okay and there are three copies, so that’s more likely where any thwart will come from, and if you are pulling out minions with Looking For Trouble, you’ll get threat removal from that.

Again, some interesting ideas. Not a lot of synergy, so it feels a bit like I have to decide which set of cards to ignore. Unfortunately, I found that, in my playthroughs, I was more likely to play the aggression cards than the actual cards in his kit, which isn’t a great sign.

Aspect Card Highlights

There are some great new toys in this pack for heroes who like putting attachments on the villain (I’m looking at you Valkyrie, Cyclops, and Rogue). This pack will give you lot of reasons to revisit those heroes again, with new aggression cards inviting players to try out new strategies.

First the allies: Shark Girl gets plus one damage per attachment when attacking. And there’s no limit So, say Bobby Drake discovered a way to get all sick Frostbite’s out at once, you’d be hitting for 8(!). Glob comes in and deals two damage to an enemy with an attachment upon entering play. Shadowcat blanks the icons on any one side scheme (making her an auto-include in most ‘Pool decks) and Beak removes a threat for each X-men ally you control upon entering play, which could be very strong, especially in a Utopia build.

Suppressing Fire is a new zero-cost attachment that heals you two when you defeat the attached minion. Has become a staple in any Wolverine Aggression deck. Suppressing Fire, as I mentioned above, is one cost and gives you a +2 attack and a ready if that attack defeats the character it’s attached to. Great for minion slayer decks, since it gives you the ability to ready up and slice through the next minion. Take That is an interesting card that allows you to do 7 damage to an enemy with an upgrade attached. The restriction does make this one a little less reliable outside of the heroes I mentioned above, but it’s a very cool option for heroes who can reliably get attachments out.

Then you have a couple of welcome reprints of (mostly) excellent cards, including the Team Building exercise, which reduces the cost of a card that shares a trait with your hero (and, pro tip, allows you to play allies from your hand during other people’s turn, which you would otherwise not be able to do. Hint: do this with Maria Hill). You also get more copies of The Power in All of Us, which we’ve been asking to get since we first got it in the Wasp pack. Gives you two resources when used on a basic card and is otherwise a wild resource. basically a must if you are running a lot of basic cards. Recuperation is not a great card in my opinion, allowing you to recover the amount of your REC, without exhausting it. This can be useful for some heroes who suffer a lot from exhaustion, but it’s too expensive and still requires you to flip down in order to use it. I can’t imagine ever running it over Crew Quarters, which gives you two health every time you flip down (one on the turn you flip down and one on the turn you flip back up) and doesn’t require you to exhaust. And it’s only 1-cost and stays out the whole game.

Back of the Pack

Because the Iceman hero pack includes a bonus modular set, it doesn’t have any extra aspect cards.

Nemesis Set and Obligation

Can’t imagine them going with anyone other than Pyro for the nemesis – even though we’ve already seen a few versions of him in the game. He’s got a big attack at three and deals indirect damage, which makes allies pretty much useless against him. His side scheme, when defeated makes you discard three cards and deals indirect damage for each resource icon discarded. His two burn! cards are similar, making you discard two or three cards and taking damage. If he manages to get his flamethrower attached, he’ll also discard a card and deal additional damage for each resource icon discarded as well.

Not that interesting of a set, but it does manage to put out an annoying amount of damage before you can clear him and could put a wrench in your plans if he comes out at the wrong time.

I do like his obligation, which makes Iceman take damage every time a Frostbite is attached. Can’t be removed until he flips down and does a basic recovery. It is never removed from the game and is instead, always discarded. I like it when the obligation feels really unique to the hero and, because this penalizes Iceman’s main mechanic, I like this one a lot.

Bonus Modular Encounter Set

The Iceman hero pack comes with a bonus Modular set (which comes with select hero packs starting with the Web-Warrior cycle) we get the bizarre and terrifying Sauron – a man turned pterodactyl. He’s a beefy, nasty villain, that keeps popping up. The side scheme has a crisis and brings him into play when defeated, which is a great way to increase the percentage chance that the encounter minion will come out, which is a nice touch. It comes out from the encounter deck that you add life drain to him, which removes two health from your hero and puts a tough status on the attached minion whenever that minion attacks.

His three Eye of Sauron cards make you discard cards and has a negative impact for each energy resource discarded. It’s a really annoying card because it could make you discard something you need from your deck and could potentially exhaust your character or make you discard a card from your hand.

All in all, a solid encounter set, that I see myself using a fair amount. I need to find a way to combine it with the savage lands in Dark Beast’s deck since that’s thematically where he should show up, but it doesn’t really work mechanically. Still experimenting with that.

Play Style and Recommended Decks

When it comes down to it, Iceman is just not that powerful and he isn’t really focused enough with his kit to create anything meme-worthy. His cards are very expensive and it seems clear to me that the designers struggled to properly value the Frostbite cards so they ended up making everything too expensive.

Does that mean he’s not fun? No. He is an excellent support character and probably works best in a multiplayer situation focused on limiting the amount of thwart and/or damage the villain is putting out. Because of his Snow Clones, he can reliably put out small amounts of damage each turn, but it isn’t earth-shattering. However, when you are able to set up a big Ice Blast it is immensely satisfying – feels like getting the perfect Lightning Strike turn with Thor (and is equally slow to set up).

The trick to success is reliable readying so you can get a lot of free Frostbite’s out. Utopia and X-Men allies are the most obvious way to do that. Using the allies that come in his kit already can be a fun way to maximize the usefulness of the attachments, but all the cards you need for a Utopia strategy are grey, so can be used in any aspect.

He can really struggle with threat removal, especially in his precon build and for that reason, Justice or Rush Aggression seems like the right choice for solo. However, Leadership that leans into maximizing the Snow Clones or Protection, which focuses on readying and reducing damage output can be good choices.

Recommended decks on MarvelCDB.com

I like Cool for the Summer by Dr00 in Leadership, which uses the Domino ally to make sure that Cyokentic Protection hits consistently, getting you ready.

I’m generally not a huge fan of the ‘Pool aspect, but I think it is utilized well in Web Warrior Fanatic’s resource rich Chillin By the Pool. You are maximizing the Utopia readying strategy with a bunch of grey X-men allies, but you are using Stick-to-it-tiveness to its greatest effect, getting a ready-for-one cost each turn, with Get Rage-y enhancing your Snow Clones as well. This is, surprisingly, the most consistent way to play Iceman.

Conclusion: Thin Ice

Not a perfect hero by any means, but should you add the hotheaded Iceman to your roster? If you are an aggressive player, absolutely. The aspect cards are a game changer for a minion-based strategy, giving you a way to get health and readies from doing what you want to do anyway – killing minions. There are some great allies here – Beak being particularly valuable to X-men players.

I really like these reprints. You could get these from picking up Ant-man and Wasp – but if you don’t have those packs, or are only playing the X-men content, you can get them here. I also like the Sauron encounter set and am having fun with that in different scenarios.

Iceman isn’t the most powerful hero in Marvel Champions the card game, but he is very different and can be a great deck-building challenge. I think picking him up and trying him out in each aspect is probably worth any dedicated deckbuilder time, but if max power is your priority, you’ll get a lot more mileage out of another hero pack.

Not something I’d prioritize if you are still building your collection, but these cards are a great addition to an already well-rounded collection and you might find that Iceman’s playstyle brings new life to some lesser-used cards.

For More Marvel Champions content check out our comprehensive list of Marvel Champions expansions for links to all our reviews.

FAQ – Iceman Marvel Champions Hero Pack the Card Game