Marvel Champions Galaxy’s Most Wanted: An Intense Expansion for the Gutsy

Get some fresh batteries for your walkman and load up your favorite mixtape, because The Galaxy’s Most Wanted campaign expansion brings the whole cast of unlikely heroes from the Guardians of the Galaxy to Marvel Champions the Card Game. Explore the strange civilizations from the cosmic side of the Marvel universe and push your luck against some of the most challenging scenarios in the game. Earth’s Alpha Flight Station is a significant location under threat from villains, emphasizing the importance of the Guardians’ mission to defend Earth against extraterrestrial forces.

In this campaign, two new heroes, Rocket Racoon and Groot, join forces and take on, what feels like, the whole galaxy. You’ll pilot the Milano across five distinct scenarios – fighting off the Bands of Badoon, escaping the clutches of the Collector (twice), wrestling with Nebula for control of the Power Stone, and then testing your mettle against the brutal Ronan, the Accuser.

Strap in, because this story is (likely) not going to end in a dance contest. The hammer is coming down and things are all but guaranteed to get ugly out there, and only the guardians stand a chance.

What’s in the box?

Galaxy’s Most Wanted is the second campaign expansion for Marvel Champions: The Card Game. It introduces a brand-new campaign with five separate scenarios, each offering a unique challenge that will test even the most seasoned players.

It includes seven modular sets, that can be used to customize gameplay and ensuring that no two games are ever the same.

It also includes two new heroes, Rocket Raccoon and Groot, unlikely heroes from the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Rocket and Groot, Unlikely Heroes

Rocket

Rocket is a genius with a love of giant guns and violent chaos. Fittingly, his deck comes with a fully loaded arsenal of pistols, rockets, and a big old Particle Cannon that’s great for blowing up minions, which is where he excels. His hero ability, “Murdered You” allows him to pick up a card every time he deals excess damage to an enemy. There’s no limit, so as long as you are murdering minions, you’ll be drawing cards.

As a result, his fully pre built aggression deck comes with cards that allow you to reliably bring minions out. Then, it’s up to you to take them out, with you array of weapons. He’s a hero that definitely wants to flip, because one your guns are empty, you’ll want to flip to your alter-ego side and use his tinker ability, which allows you to ditch your empty weapons, to draw two cards.

So as you can see, he draws a lot of cards and does a lot of damage, but he also has really great thwarting capabilities, getting up to three base when, you get his upgrades out. Plus he has a card, I’ve Got A Plan, that allows him ready and thwart again with plus 1. So you can easily clear 7 threat in a turn. Very nice to have since you’ll want to flip.

While it may be tempting to always build him in red – especially because he can get aerial with his Thruster Boots, making him one of the best options for building a Dive Bomb/Honed Technique deck – don’t forget to try him in leadership. With his robust economy, Rocket can get out a lot of allies. One of the strongest decks I’ve ever constructed was a ‘Strength in Numbers’ Rocket deck that leaned into his Genius trait, leveraging the synergy with Moon Girl, Ingenuity, and Beast. Nevertheless, there are a lot of ways to fashion a commanding Rocket deck. 

Worth noting that a lot of the synergies I’m talking about didn’t appear until later card releases, and when Rocket Racoon first joined the game, he was considered fairly weak because of his low HP, but as the card pool has expanded he has definitely become one of the strongest heroes in the game and one of the most fun and thematic to play.

Groot

As a character, Groot is one that can take a lot of hits, both verbal and physical, but it when comes down to it, he can unleash a power that surprises everyone. He’s a bit unassuming, lazy even. Until he isn’t.

To capture that feel, they’ve given Groot an interesting design that incorporates growth counters, both as a boost to his defense, but also as an additional currency to pay for his powerful action cards. When used as a defense mechanism, he has that feel of the gentle giant, but when spent for attacks, he has some of the most powerful cards in the game.

There are a couple of different ways for him to get these growth counters, but the most consistent is by flipping down, so he is a hero that will want to flip. Like any hero that can’t reliably stay in hero mode for all but two turns of the game, he is considered by the community to be fairly weak as a solo hero.

It does feel strange to flip with him, because his defense is so good, and he comes with a pre built protection deck designed for ‘perfect defense’ which he is able to do incredibly well due to his counters. But here’s the catch, if you use his counter for defense, none of his hero kit works. For Groot it’s really about keeping the counters out there, so he can spend them on big attacks and thwarts.

Those two halves of his kit, don’t actually go together all that well, so he’s more of a deckbuilding challenge than we originally thought. A blue deck with cheap allies that can chump, a yellow deck focused on confuse and flipping down safely, or a green deck focused on getting tough out consistently, are all better options than his original prebuilt idea of defending and readying multiple times on the villain’s turn.

He does come with some really cool cards. I got this box after Mad Titan’s Shadow, because, at the time, it wasn’t available and, at that point I was desperate for one of the cards in his kit: Deft Focus, which reduces the cost of a superpower event. It’s an essential card. His green cards also have some Protection staples, including Desperate Defense, Dauntless, and Hard to Ignore.

Four Brand New Villains: The Cosmic, The Crushing, and The Collector(s)

Galaxy’s Most Wanted introduces five separate scenarios, featuring four brand new villains: Drang of the Brotherhood of Badoon, the Collector (featured in two separate scenarios) Nebula, and Ronan, each with its own unique challenges and mechanics. Each villain comes with their own unique mechanics and challenges, making every encounter a fresh and exciting experience. These villains confine their criminal activities not just to Earth but across the broader universe, presenting diverse challenges and civilizations beyond our planet.

Because these scenarios are thematically intended to take place across space, each scenario requires that you include a special mod set, Ship Command, which puts the Milano, the guardian’s signature ship, into play as well as a set of encounter cards that present challenges that might require you to exhaust the Milano in order to deal with. You get an additional resource each turn, from the ship, but you almost always have to use it to neutralize a villain effect, as most of the villains also have different elements that interact with the Milano and, ships of their own.

Let’s delve into the details of each scenario, exploring their strengths and weaknesses:

Brotherhood of Badoon (Drang)

Drang is still considered one of the best minion-heavy scenarios in the game, alongside Ultron, Zola, and Green Goblin. He pumps out Badoon after Badoon, some more challenging than others. But why would you want to face a bunch of minions? Well, some heroes and some aggression builds require minions in order to trigger their effects and, in some scenarios, you can go multiple rounds without seeing a minion, making some of those cards and abilities inconsistent. So it’s nice to take those decks up against a scenario with reliable minion spawn.

This is the first character to have stalwart, which he gets when his spear is equipped. This means he is unable to be stunned or confused. He also puts his ship environment into play, which charges up and hits with indirect damage every time it gets four counters.

Interesting elements, and, because it was actually possible to beat this scenario, it was the most loved from the box. It doesn’t see as much play anymore, in part because it has become a bit easy – especially since you are required to play with the Milano, which gives the team an additional resource each turn.

Infiltrate the Museum (Collector 1)

In this scenario you have to fend off the Collector before he is able to add you and your friends to his collection. Any card (allies, spent upgrades, minions, etc) that leaves play is immediately added to his collection and, if he ever has more than 5 per player, you lose the game.

Even if you deck build around this mechanic to limit cards that are discarded from play, you are still in bad shape, because the collector also puts his own cards into the collection, including minions and side schemes. On top of that, many of his encounter cards have effects that discard your cards (putting them in the collection) or just directly stealing your cards.

Don’t get me wrong; I like to play this game at high difficulty. But this scenario isn’t hard – it’s unfair. And that’s why it is still considered one of the worst in the game.

In the Escape the Museum (Collector 2)

Now this scenario gets a bad wrap, and I’m not sure why. I think everyone, just lumps it in with Collector 1 and remember it (incorrectly, in my opinion) as being bad. It is not bad, in fact, it tells a great story.

You are facing off against the collector again, who can’t be killed. Instead you are working to escape the museum, get on board the Milano, and blast your way out of there. To accomplish this you have to clear threat from a progression of side schemes representing your path to escape.

Every time you knock out the Collector you prevent an activation and get to remove threat from the scheme, so it still allows heavy attack heroes to participate in the fun.

It actually feels like a frantic race. It is a high quality scenario that gets unfairly dismissed because of its association with this box. We’ll see better implementations of this with Hela and Magneto, but this one is still worth playing and is probably the best scenario in the box.

Nebula

Nebula is famous for two things. It is the first scenario to feature a villain that it is also a hero and it is so swingy that you’ll either breeze through it, or lose horribly.

You’re grappling with Nebula and her band of space pirates for control of the Power Stone. She adds evasion counters to her ship each turn, increasing the amount o threat she’s able to put out. She’s also amassing technique attachments that give her additional effects each time she activates.

Depending on the way things go with the deck, you could end up in big trouble, quick. And with her it can be almost impossible to recover.

Ronan the Accuser

Even now, this is the hardest scenario in the game.

Ronan hits hard, often multiple times per round. He has an extra encounter card every turn. He consistently attacks will overkill and piercing, and as long as he has the universal weapon attached, he can’t be stunned or confused. Plus he puts out a bunch of nasty side schemes and threat.

Some villain phases you just sit there helplessly and watch yourself run out of options.

So what can you do in the face of such villainy? It’s a great question and one that will push your deck building abilities to the limit. You’ll need to bring your A game every time with Ronan.

If you don’t like the game on hard mode, skip this. But, I mean, you gotta try it. You’ve got to see just how hard this game can be.

The Campaign: This is Where Things Get Uncomfortable

Here’s the deal: The campaign mode is too hard. Adding extra (brutal) side schemes and nasty auxiliary challenges, including, but not limited to, being hunted across the whole galaxy by a Badoon Headhunter. You can pick up some cool cards with interesting effects from the market as you work through the larger campaign, similar to what we saw in Rise of Red Skull, and you have the Milano, which can mitigate some of the villain’s effects or give you an extra resource. But it isn’t enough.

One of the biggest problems is that effective management of all they throw at you requires thwarting – a lot of thwarting – to the point where you are pretty much locked into leaning on the Justice aspect or going all in on a rush strategy. Neither of which are really viable for all five scenarios. I’m not mad about it, I know some people are, but the expert campaign is so punishing that it borders on being un-fun.

It should be said that, coming back to this campaign, now, with the extensive card pool we have, is WAY better than it was on release and you do have a chance. So, the designers at Fantasy Flight Games did a great job of creating the most difficult content for the game, which we need (I’m looking at you, Doctor Strange and Spider-Ham), but they just got the release timing wrong.

So if are new to the game, you’re in luck. But buy this one last. Thank me later.

In Conclusion: Only the Guardians

The Galaxy’s Most Wanted campaign expansion lives up to its reputation as some of the hardest content in Marvel Champions – even with the expansive card pool we have today. It remains a unique challenge, and something you should grab eventually, but with its challenging difficulty and intricate mechanics, I’d say it caters to hardcore fans and deck builders seeking a real test more than it will to casual players.

It should be said that the theme is great. You get to explore a whole galaxy of strange civilizations, powerful artifacts, and uncovering the true motives of the criminal activities. Rocket and Groot join forces as the game’s first guardians and add some really intersting mechanics to the hero roster.

For those with a larger card pool and some experience, it offers an engaging and rewarding experience. However, newer players may want to build up their skills and collection before taking on this expansion. 

I’d say if you are consistently beating things on expert, it’s time to pick this one up. 

If you want to know what I’d recommend picking up first, check out my review of Rise of the Red Skull and for the whole array of what you can buy and my advice on how to build up your collection, check out my full buyers guide for Marvel Champions.

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

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