The Rise of Red Skull expansion brings the Agents of Hydra, including the titular Red Skull, to the game. It is the first campaign box expansion and remains one of the best ways to expand your collection after playing through the core box, giving you two new heroes and five scenarios that still hold up as some of the best in the game.
Even with all the content that has come out since, this is still the right next step as the first big box expansion. It is the right step up in terms of complexity and new keywords. It gives you an incredible amount of replayaability without throwing too much rules overhead at you.
Of course, at this point, there’s a lot of expansions to consider, so check out my comprehensive buyers guide for more discussion about what types of expansions are available and the order you should consider buying them in.
In this review, though, we’ll dive into the Rise of Red Skull expansion and what makes it such a great choice when expanding your collection.
What’s in the Box?
The Rise of Red Skull Expansion is the first of many campaign expansion boxes, which all offer an incredible value, including two heroes and five scenarios, as well as an optional campaign that links the different villains in the box together into an overarching narrative. While there are a few cards recognizable from previous expansions, they contribute to the variety and complexity of gameplay:
Rise of the Red Skull specifically includes:
• Hawkeye and Spider-Woman each with a premade deck that can be shuffled up and played right out of the box. Both heroes have unique mechanics and play styles, which we’ll discuss in detail below.
• Five brand new villains from across the sinister and secret world of Hydra, including Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola, and, of course, Red Skull himself. There is a great variety here and almost of these still see a lot of play time despite the growing villain roster in the game.
• A campaign mode: The expansion introduces a narrative-driven campaign mode, which weaves the five scenarios together into a cohesive storyline as you fight to keep the Power Stone out of the hands of Red Skull and his minions. It introduces cards that can be earned in between games and added to your deck. This campaign expansion lives by introducing new modes, detailed scenarios, and new characters, significantly enhancing the gameplay experience.
Admittedly, the narrative elements aren’t as strong as they are in other card games, Like Arkham Horror: The Card Game for instance, but there is a feeling of progression and accomplishment built into the campaign mode that does add to the game overall. It isn’t something I do all the time, but I always enjoy running the campaign when I open a new box and revisit when I have time to play several games in a row.
It can also provide an interesting deck building challenge, since you’ll play through the campaign with the same hero and, for the most part, the same deck. Some adjustments are allowed, but you’ll want to have a deck that can solve various problems, not one that is tuned to a specific scenario. I tend to build my decks that way anyway, but I like the challenge of creating one deck that can beat five, very different villains.
The Heroes: Hawkeye and Spider-Woman
The Rise of Red Skull expansion brings Hawkeye and Spider-Woman, who are both great choices thematically and belong in a Hydra themed box. They both bring interesting mechanics and ideas to the game. Hawekeye is pretty squishy and hard to steer and presents a tough deck building challenge, whileSpider-Woman remains one of the most interesting and powerful heroes in the game.
Hawkeye
Hawkeye is a little tough to get right. The designers get lots of points for, thematically, focusing his kit on loading up on arrows and then letting them fly. Of course, to that effectively, you’ll need his bow – which you can spend a resource to pick up as an alter-ego action, (putting you at a one resource disadvantage in your first turn, compounding his already weak economy). Then you’ll need his quiver. Then you’ll want to get out his resource generators to help pay for these arrows.
That’s a lot of set up, just to get off the ground, because, in the meantime, he has weak thwarting, and only 9 hit points.
When you do get set, you’ll get to fire off a couple arrows per turn, and that is satisfying and can be powerful in the end game, but it is tough to get there.
It probably sounds like I’m giving him a negative review, but let me reframe – I’m giving him a low power rating. Which, let’s be honest, makes some thematic sense. He’s just a dude that shoots arrows. He isn’t a sorcerer or a super soldier. He’s just a guy.
I play this game for the deckbuilding, so I also like heroes where I can’t just throw a couple aspect cards in and know it will all work out, like you can with someone like Captain America or Captain Marvel. Hawkeye really requires careful design and attention paid to tempo and composition, strengths and weaknesses. And his playstyle forces you to think about timing and response windows in a way that other heroes don’t.
Put another way, to be successful you need to build a Hawkeye deck. And that’s all right with me.
He comes with a prebuilt Leadership deck with some interesting allies and a couple essential cards like team training – which gives all your allies an extra hit point, and Might avengers which boosts their stats. Great deck building cards, but not, in my opinion, great options for Hawkeye, because of his weak economy.
Spider woman
Spider-Woman is on the opposite end of the power spectrum, but still offers a very unique and interesting deck building challenge. Her gimmick requires that you use two different aspects, with equal amounts from each color. Because of this she opens up all kinds of interesting combos that aren’t available with any other hero. This has, likely expanded the replayability in the game, more dramatically than any hero, because now, every card doesn’t just change what you can do in that aspect, but has to be considered in combination with the cards from every aspect. Can’t really be overstated.
In addition, her primary mechanic is boosting her stats every time you play a card from a different aspect. She starts with a 1/1/1 stat line, but when you play aspect cards, she boosts all her stats by one, so if you can get out even two aspect cards in a turn, her stat line becomes an incredible 3/3/3. If you are able to get a ready, as well, that’s really strong.
She comes prebuilt with a Justice and Aggression deck, including some staple cards that you’ll want for deck building.
One of my favorite heroes and one that continues to become more interesting every time new cards are released.
The Villains: Agents of Hydra
The Villains: Agents of Hydra
Crossbones
The Crossbones scenario was, for a long time, the scenario of choice for testing new decks, It isn’t easy, per se, but it is a relatively straightforward challenge and does an incredible job and slowly escalating the difficulty as the scenario goes on. That is important in this game because, as your hero gets set up, sometimes you can get to the point where the “third act” has no drama and it is a foregone conclusion that you will win.
In Crossbones, he keeps pulling out new Experimental Weapons that boost his stats and have negative impacts on your hero. You can spend resources remove them, but it will basically cost you a turn. He also has three different stages of his main scheme, which I like a lot better, than, say Rhino, who has a single scheme. When that pops, it’s over. When this pops, you give Crossbones an experimental weapon and keep playing.
For that reason, it really is the perfect mid-range difficulty scenario and remains interesting to play against. It is good for testing decks because it puts pressure on you from the start, but gives you some space to build your board; however, if you choose to build out, he will get stronger to match you.
There is some fiddly-ness with the additional of the experimental weapons deck, but it isn’t too much to handle. This is also the scenario that introduces the piercing keyword, which was a necessary and important addition to the game – allowing attacks to ignore tough statuses.
All in all, great bread and butter scenario.
Absorbing Man
Absorbing Man is the least difficult scenario in the box and argulably, in the game. In a lot of ways, I think, he was intended to improve on the main weakness of Rhino, which is his low scheme threshold, in this case raising it from 7 to 12. However, he lacks the ability to hit as hard as Rhino and doesn’t have many tricks up his sleeve.
His mechanic is based around changing to match his environment, which is great thematically, The cards from his deck trigger different effects depending on what traits he is able to borrow from his environment. When he only has one trait he is pretty weak, but if has his Superhuman ability side scheme out then he takes on all attributes and triggers multiple effects off each card. He’s also a lot more interesting when he gets his Ball and Cahin attached, boosting his stats.
However, both of these things have to come into play. In expert, you do start with the superhuman ability in play (or when he gets to stage two is you are playing standard), which is good, but otherwise the likelihood that both these villain upgrades will come out at the same time to boost his abilities isn’t super likely.
I will say that, in the campaign, he is more interesting, because you are penalized for each turn that it takes you to beat him. Thematically he is trying to delay you from catching up with the Red Skull and foiling his plans, and, if you end up with a ton, it negatively impacts your score and starts you off on a bad foot in the next scenario. Outside of the campaign, though, there are some cards that still use these delay counters, so late game, you do get additional negative effects, but he’s just too easy early, that, by the time you get to late game, it just isn’t that interesting.
I will say that I do enjoy revisiting him with really difficult modulars especially Wrekcing Crew from the Hood, which makes sense thematically and significantly increases the difficulty of this scenario – but as is, it isn’t one I return to very often.
Taskmaster
This one is surprisingly tough and adds some interesting mechanics that disincentivize flipping into hero form. If you are in hero form when the villain phase begins you have to decide whether to take damage or add threat to the main scheme, so you might want to hide in alter-ego, but every time you flip up you flip a card and take a damage for each boost icon, making it really expensive to flip down.
Taskmaster also gets really nasty attachments like his sword over the course of the game and leads a team of pesky hydra minions that spawn like crazy.
Taskmaster is challenging and really puts some pressure on you to stay in hero form – the entire game if you can – but he deal so much damage, that it’s almost impossible to do.
Whenever I pull this out, I’m reminded of how interesting mechanically he is and, while he is not as difficult as the next two, he is a good challenge.
Zola
Zola doesn’t seem like much of a threat on his own, with his low hit points and weak stat line, but, man, this guy puts out a lot of minions – and to add insult to injury, his minions almost all get free attachments, boosting their stats and giving them extra life points, or they have tough or guard. These can really stack up and I’ve had games where I’m just drowning in minions, and Ilikely) succumb to their advances.
Additionally, this is the first villain with retaliate, meaning he hits back everytime he is attacked – so you really can’t afford to hit him with your allies or with basic attacks. When you hit him you want to hit big.
It’s funny, this one is really annoying, but it’s a great challenge and also, one of the first times we have gotten a scenario with reliable minion output (other than Ultron, of course). This is great for characters like Thor or Rocket or aggression builds based around minion slaying, so it’s an important addition to the game.
It remains challenging and is one where you really need to bring a tuned deck in order to be successful.
Red Skull
It is still a topic of debate for me, whether Zola or Red Skull is more difficult. They both get out of hand quickly, but instead of stacking up minions, Red Skull reliably pulls out a new side scheme each turn and for each one he has out, it boosts his stats.
To win you’ll have to prioritize thwarting and keep the number of side schemes to a minimum, all while fighting off a strong bad buy that hits hard and often.
This one is always a tough fight, but moreso than other scenarios, because it leans so hard into the side scheme gimmick, if you build your deck around it and play the right strategy you can make it a lot easier.
I’m not sure how I feel about that as a whole. I tend to build a deck, just trying to make a good deck and then I’ll play it against a few villains. As a result I’ll build something for solo that is well-rounded enough, to manage all possible challenges. For multiplayer, I’ll lean more into a specialty.
For Red Skull, though, there is a right way to play him, so you can tune your deck to the scenario in order to increase your chances of winning. I guess my question is, do I like a scenario that requires building a finely tuned deck, or a scenario where a good deck is required to win. I think it is the latter. That said, this scenario is extremely well designed and different from every other in the game. It’s a real challenge and fitting of the big boss for a campaign box.
Campaign Mode
The Rise of Red Skull campaign, introduces a comic book style narrative to the game, which was not present in the core box. Scenarios can still be played standalone, but they can also be played in order as part of an overall story. The campaign mode is well-balanced for solo game play, with mechanics such as hit points and threat adjusting according to the number of players.
This campaign does a good job of having escalating villain strength, though Absorbing Man is easier than Crossbones, so that feels right. They also added a reward system where players can purchase upgrades for their deck in between scenarios based on their performance, which helps to add to the feeling of progression, as your hero becomes more powerful to face the escalating threats.
The inclusion of new power-ups other cards and abilities adds additional fun gameplay elements. If you meet certain achievements, you can purchase new cards and upgrades to use in future missions, which is very interesting way of adding a feeling of progress to the campaign.
Does the campaign mode offer a thematically rich experience. Not really, and it’s the one weakness of this box. It is done a bit better in future expansions, but as long as you don’t expect Arkham Horror level campaigns, you won’t miss it. That said, I liked playing the five scenarios and villains in order. Despite its flaws, it’s definitely an improvement over the core box, and I appreciate the option for enhanced play on occasion.
Conclusion: A Must-Have Expansion
The Rise of Red Skull expansion is easy to recommend. You’ll want the heroes and the scenarios are solid. Well designed and still hold up to this day. It should be considered a mandatory purchase for serious Marvel Cahmpions player.
If you prefer other themes, like X-men or Spider-verse, you can skip this box and not necessarily miss a beat. That’s the beauty of this game; it’s completely modular. But I think you’ll find that this box introduces additional complexity to this game in a very satisfying way and sets you up well to take on future expansions and additional mechanics.
Because of that, I do recommend picking this one up as your first campaign box. It’s an exceptional value and you won’t regret it.
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 of our reviews.