It’s All About the Modulars
Marvel Champions The Hood is an interesting one because the main focus isn’t really on The Hood himself. The cards for the new scenario only make up 16 of the 78 cards. The majority of the pack is all about including a whopping 9 modular encounter sets. Plus, there are alternate versions of the Standard and Expert Sets thrown in for good measure (which, at the time of release was one of the most anticipated additions to the game and had the community clamoring).
The Hood uses modular sets as his main gimmick, and, here’s a fair warning at the top of this review, I love the modular encounter sets. They are one of my favorite parts of the Marvel Champions experience. I value them for their theming, their difficulty scaling, and the way you can change up the dynamics of a scenario by mixing up the modular. They offer so many more customization options. If you are only playing with the recommended modules, I think you are only playing half the game.
You make a stack of seven modular sets, but they start out set aside. He starts the game with one and random sets from the stack are added as the game progresses. Thematically, this represents his budding criminal empire becoming more dangerous as new villains and thugs join his notorious organization.
I love putting the encounter sets front and center and having the option to combine a group of sets to, sort of, build a world of villains, minions, and schemes for the Marvel heroes to face off against.
Unfortunately Pretty Swingy Design
Marvel Champions The Hood, however, is not a crowd favorite, and it is mainly because he has a tendency to put out a lot of encounter cards. He’s been referred to as “Surge, the scenario” because his special ability has him discard cards looking for cards from modular sets, which then come into play as face-down encounter cards.
As the game progresses and he adds more modular sets to his deck, he is more likely to get these cards into play, which I think is, generally, a cool idea. Escalating difficulty is important in this game, because (ideally) your heroes should become very powerful by the of the game, so you need scenarios that get more difficult as they go.
What people tend to dislike is that he can stack up a bunch of encounter cards on you and win and it doesn’t feel like it had much to do with the decisions you made in the game. That, personally, doesn’t bother me too much. I don’t mind losing this game, in part because -in true solo – it’s so quick to just reshuffle and try again, no problem.
I think the thing I don’t love is that, instead of the villain getting stronger as you get stronger, with this scenario, he tends to get a lot stronger, when you are weak. For instance, one of the primary ways that he gets out more modular is when the main scheme flips to the next stage. But the main scheme flips to the next stage, not as an inherent part of the game’s progression, but as a consequence of you losing control of the board state.
So when you show some weakness, he gets stronger – potentially a lot stronger – and a game will turn on your failure to remove enough threat and spiral out of control fast.
It would be better, as we’ve seen with some of the more innovative uses of narrative progression through side schemes in Hela and Magneto, you can ensure that a villain gets stronger as you get a stronger evening out the difficulty curve. That’s when this game is at its best. Challenging and engaging through the final turn.
A Deckbuilding Challenge
Even the worst scenarios in the game (I’m looking at you Collector 1) present interesting challenges to practice your deckbuilding skills against. The Hood’s dangerous criminal empire is far from the worst, but it puts some pressure on what cards you bring to battle. Building for a specific scenario isn’t the usual in my games (since I often don’t know who I’ll be playing when I play multiplayer), but here, the demands are high to bring a well-honed deck that is balanced enough to not depend on drawing the perfect opening hand. A worthy test.
If you need to set up slow and can’t keep the threat down, you will probably lose to this formidable threat. But if you bring a rush deck or a balanced control deck, you will have a much better shot with him. Just remember that when those encounter cards stack up, things can get out of control quickly, and in some games, you just have bad luck.
You may hate this scenario, depending on what you are looking for from Marvel Champions. Do you want something predictable and fair? This is not the one. But know that it’s a winner for me, for exactly those same reasons – swingy, strange, different. I’m in.
Here’s the deal though; take the risk, because what we discuss in the next section is worth the cost of admission whether you end up liking The Hood or not.
The Modular Encounter Sets
You heard that right: nine new encounter sets from across the Hood’s criminal empire. For this pack they also ranked the difficulty of each set included, and gave recommendations on what to include for more of a challenge, which was an excellent choice and something that I wish would be officially rolled out and applied to all sets. Obviously difficulty is relative to the scenario that a modular is included in, but even knowing the design intention of each modular, plus sets where they might be more or less difficult. Something like that would be really cool… I’m looking at you Fantasy Flight Games.
This is really where this pack really shines and is the main reason it’s a must-have for me. These are all great additions to the game and each one feels unique.
Beasty Boys
The Beasty Boys is a team-up of two formidable minions, Mandrill and Griffin. Their kit is focused on stun and confuse and their effects are amplified when heroes have a negative status effect.
Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm are a particularly high-health minion, but the interesting thing here is all the brutal attachments that come along with them. Whenever they activate they discard cards, looking for their attachments, so they are pretty likely to come into play. If you draw one, and there are no mystic minions on the board, they attach to the villain, which is a great touch, ensuring that these well-designed attachments, never whiff.
Mister Hyde
This set has a pair of baddies that are about punishing as minions get in this game. Even more so, if his alter ego happens to be in play. Calvin Zabo is brutal in his outright, but it’s tough to justify clearing him from the board since that brings Mister Hyde out as well. This is a great set. I think they should have added one more card here, to make it even more likely you will get the elements of this set into play.
The Wrecking Crew
The Wrecking Crew is probably my most played modular set and totally redeemed the designers after the lackluster Wrecking Crew scenario pack. I was glad to get these villains in a format that makes more sense and, because they are villainous, this one makes any scenario into a brute-heavy battle. These guys mixed in with Rhino or Absorbing Man make for an improved fight – but these guys are great, tough sets that can be a brutal matchup for any hero.
The Sinister Syndicate
Only slightly less difficult, but great for the same reason: the sinister syndicate boasts a bunch of quality, named minions with interesting effects that demand they be cleared from the board. The great move here was adding all the boost effects – to make sure you aren’t getting away with anything, even if the minions don’t come into play. That makes this set really interesting to add to someone like Klaw or Venom.
Crossfire’s Crew
Crossfire’s crew will efficiently seek and destroy your allies, so heroes will have to come prepared. Because chump blocking is so strong in this game, I really like all the ways the designers have found to respond to this imbalance. Sets like this and anything with overkill, ally control, or penalties for ally blocking are good, overall for the game.
Ransacked Armory
You’ve got all these new minions, why not give them some scary attachments to keep them on the board longer? I also like that, if the attachment whiffs, it brings out a minion instead. That’s a great addition to efficiently increase the number of threats on the board.
State of Emergency
And if you like more threats on the table, how about a bunch of thematic side schemes, keeping your heroes busy saving the city, while they fend off the bad guys? This one keeps you honest since you’ll need to make sure your hero can handle the required threat removal, or things will get out of hand quickly.
Streets of Mayhem
Don’t like side schemes? Well, this set of environments has you chasing the villain around the city through various environments, where characters gain different advantages. I think environment cards are, generally, underutilized in modular encounter sets, and I like the thematic idea of setting the scene of the battle. I will admit that the global effects can be tough to additionally keep track of, but I do like that it’s a mixed bag and the state of the game is always changing. This is one that could really freshen up any scenario and because each card has surged (a great example of good use of surge, since they have an ongoing effect, not an immediate one), with this one there’s really no reason you couldn’t throw this in on top of other modules.
Alternate Difficulty Sets
The solution to this was called Heroic mode and you would simply add more encounter cards to each player. People would play anywhere from Heroic 1 to Heroic 3, dealing out 3 extra cards (!) in each villain phase.
Doing that does make it more difficult, no question, but led to brutal swingy games, that didn’t really align with the design intention, in my opinion. So we were all very excited to get our hands on Standard II and Expert II, which promised to crank up the difficulty.
And it definitely did. But maybe too much…?
Dark Dealings is fine – a nastier Advance (which was already plenty nasty) that boosts the villain’s scheme. Like that. Total Annihilation, however, is bad. Adding overkill? Good. Adding Surge? Why? That’s not balanced. Really not sure why they didn’t just boost the villain’s attack by 1, add piercing in addition to overkill, or have the villain and all minions attack.
I don’t hate Surge, but I only think it makes sense on cards that don’t have an immediate impact or are put into play as part of the villain’s mechanic. So minions that have surge – that makes sense. Card effects that whiff because you are in an alter-ego or there isn’t a relevant target in play, that’s what Surge should do. But the villain attacks, plus surge? Meh. That’s a lazy way to up the difficulty and is never going to be balanced.
Formidable Foe, I think, pulls the whole thing down. I’m sure that the design is intended to discourage building heroes around stun-lock strategies, which I agree is overpowered, but, ultimately, I wish this card was a side scheme – a nasty side scheme that either started the game in play or went into a play as a boost effect so that you were sure to see it. Even an attachment that had a per-player cost to remove that required the whole group to sacrifice resources or discard cards at random in order to remove, would have been better.
Individual villains that have stalwart or steady make sense and add flavor to individual scenarios, but making this permanent just means that status effects are too weak to really matter, across the whole game, ruining the cost curve for many cards. An expert it impacts minions as well. That’s just WAY too far, in my opinion.
I have to say though, that I LOVE Seek and Destroy because it brings in your nemesis minion. I like the nemesis sets a lot and any effort to get them into play more often is good. This is a big focus in Standard III and Expert III that’s coming out with the Age of Apocalypse box and I’m hopeful that we’ll see a much better implementation of the ideas here.
Conclusion: Lots of Options in a Small Box
The Hood is a good addition to Marvel Champions, showcasing the interesting ideas the design team at Fantasy Flight Games are willing to explore. It’s a formidable threat and should give you some tough games – but is ultimately a bit unbalanced and swingy, so keep that in mind. There are much better ways to expand your villain roster than picking up this scenario pack.
I wanted to love Standard II and Expert II, but it came up short. Fingers cross for Standard III.
All that said, while I’m a bit critical of this box, I am so happy that this pack exists because it’s part of a tradition of pushing the boundaries of the game and trying interesting things.
I would recommend buying this scenario pack. Probably not before getting a couple of campaign boxes, of course, but if you’ve got a decent-sized collection already, there are a lot of cool ideas here and the content makes everything you have more interesting.
We earn a commission if you make a
purchase, at no additional cost to you.
For more Marvel Champions content check out our comprehensive list of expansions with links to all our reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: How does the Heroic mode differ from the new Standard II and Expert II difficulty settings?
A: Heroic mode increases the difficulty by adding more encounter cards to each player. Standard II and Expert II are official difficulty settings introduced by the creators to add complexity to the game, often through added mechanics and card effects, rather than simply increasing the number of threat cards.
Q: Are all the new cards in the difficulty expansion balanced?
A: While some cards are seen as successful in increasing the difficulty in a balanced way, such as Overwhelming Force, others like Total Annihilation and Formidable Foe are considered less balanced, according to some players. They appear to add difficulty through mechanic changes that may not be as well-aligned with the game’s design intentions.
Q: Is Marvel Champions the Hood scenario pack worth purchasing?
A: The Hood scenario pack is a good addition to Marvel Champions for players looking to challenge themselves with a formidable threat and increase the replay value of their existing scenarios. It is recommended for those who have a decent-sized collection and want to try out new and interesting ideas, despite some cards being unbalanced.
Q: Will Standard III and Expert III address the balance issues found in the previous expansions?
A: There is hope within the playing community that Standard III and Expert III will provide a better implementation of the difficulty concepts introduced in earlier expansions. Much anticipation surrounds the Age of Apocalypse box and its potential to refine these ideas.
Q: Is there a particular order in which I should purchase scenario packs or campaign boxes?
A: It is generally recommended to start with a couple of campaign boxes before purchasing individual scenario packs, especially for newer players. This ensures a more rounded experience and provides a better foundation for the additional challenges presented in packs like The Hood scenario.