Warning, this is a longer episode because both things have a lot to talk about. Also warning, there are spoilers everywhere. Do not listen if you aren’t caught up on Hawkeye and Spider-Man No Way Home.

Thank You For Listening!

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. Because of listeners like you we are over 5000 total downloads for the podcast. That is way faster than I thought I’d get to the number. I think it was earlier this year where we hit 2000 listens and in the span of less than a year, we’ve more than doubled that, so thank you again. Also, no episode next week, since this one was double length. I’ll be back in 2022.

There are a few ways that you can help support the podcast and help the podcast grow. If you share it with a friend, that is one of the best ways. Also subscribing or leaving a rating and review make the podcast easier to find. The podcast is available on iTunes, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Stitcher.

We also run a Patreon which you can find here. Any funds raised go to improve the quality of the 10 Minute Marvel podcast, the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel, and Nerdologists.com Website. Thank you for considering supporting us with your funds.

Comments/Questions?

Let me know what you thought of Spider-Man No Way Home? Have you seen it in theaters yet, if not have you managed to avoid spoilers? Also, what do you think is going to happen in tomorrow’s Hawkeye finale?

You can let me know that over on Twitter. Tweet your thoughts to me @TheScando or with #10MinMarvel. Or you can leave a comment in the comment section below.

Again, thank you for listening. I really do hope you are enjoying the content. And I hope that the podcast will continue to grow in 2022.

I’ll see you next time.

Send an Email.
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game

This is going to be a little solo game. It says it’s a 9 card game, so you’d expect a small package. In this game you are overlapping cards to grow fruit. The more fruit you get the more points that you have. But you need to overlap the same types of trees, so it makes it an interesting puzzle.

This is a very fast game to play. And while it says 9 cards, it comes with 18, so you split the cards and you can play it twice very quickly. Which I think works well for the game. This is a game that I sit down and play 4-10 times in a sitting because a game takes five minutes or maybe 10 if you are trying really hard to optimize everything.

Marvel Champions: The Card Game

A bigger game, this one can be played multiplayer, but solo you take a hero against a villain to try and beat them up and stop their schemes. I really like this one as a thematic Marvel game. Each hero plays very differently, and you can change up how they play through deck building. The villains play differently as well.

And this is a game where the base box comes with some heroes, but you can get additional heroes. Now, there are a lot of heroes and a lot of content out for the game. And while I own it all of it, you don’t need to. If someone you know likes Thor, get them the base box and the Thor expansion. Or maybe they like Spider-Man and his villains, give them the base set and the Green Goblin pack. You can customize who the person can get really easily.

A Gentle Rain

Back to another small game with A Gentle Rain. This is for the casual gamer who might like that solo activity. A Gentle Rain is meant to be a relaxing game and it really is. You are flipping over tiles trying to match sides. If you can get it so that you match all the corners, you put a disc down. The goal is to get all of the discs out or as many of them as you can.

This one is a simpler game than Orchard and takes up a bit more space, but both of them fall into a category of fast and little games to play. This game also has a really nice aesthetic. This is even a solid one that you could give someone to take into work as something to fidget with when they get stuck on a work problem or something like that.

Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

A lot of roll and write games can be played solo. I could have picked Metro X, Ganz Schon Clever (or any of that trilogy) and a whole lot more. But Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade is a fun one because it’s a thematic roll and write. In it, you are playing a pinball game basically seeing how high a score you can get.

The cool thing about this roll and write is that they have four different boards, plus four more coming in an expansion. Some of the boards are easier, or pinball machines, so you can learn the basic concept of the game on that, and then move onto harder boards. And even the harder boards don’t make the game much longer or more difficult. If you want a good thematic game in a small package, this might be it.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

On the flip side, this is a very thematic game, but in a very big package. It’s also going to be harder to find than some. I know places like Game Steward, I believe, still have copies of the Kickstarter available though, so not impossible to find. This is a big survival game that can be multiplayer, but also works well as a solo game where you control one character.

This is a dark retelling of the Avalon and Arthurian legends. And it has an amazing story. I recommend playing it in story mode because it’s a great story to experience and the survival in the regular mode can be very challenging. I’ve played through the main quest and started on the expansions and talked about it a lot because it’s an amazing game. It’s going to be more expensive but such a good experience.

Honorable Mention Solo Games

Of course, I can add in a few honorable mentions. Onirim is a fun little solo game where you are trying to deal with nightmares and create patterns in cars you play down to get doors. There is a lot of shuffling and A Gentle Rain and Orchard have replaced it for me. I could have put Gloomhaven or Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion on the list as well. Those can be played solo, but unlike Tainted Grail where you can play with one character, in Gloomhaven you need to control two.

What are some solo games that you’d want for Christmas or that you’d recommend to others?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Thanks For Listening

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. If you are, there are a few ways that you can help support. First, share it with your friends. But you can also subscribe or leave a rating and review. All of those things help the podcast continue to grow.

We also have a Patreon. All the funds from the Patreon go to help improve this podcast as well as the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel and https://nerdologists.com website. You can find the Patreon and the different reward levels over at Patreon.com/nerdologists.

Comments/Questions?

Let me know your non-spoiler thoughts on The Eternals. I’ve heard very mixed reviews about it from some people loving it to other people hating it. Let me know your thoughts on their newest movie. Are you seeing it in theaters or waiting for Disney+? I’m hoping to go this weekend or early next week, though we’ll see if it makes it into the podcast in time.

And if I can’t make it, let me know what topics you’d want covered in the upcoming weeks. I’m always looking for more comics to read as well as characters to cover. I might cover the Sinister Six coming up here soon as Spider-Man No Way Home isn’t that far away from coming out. Right now the rumors are that we’ll be getting a Sinister Six group of some sort in the movie, but we’ll have to wait and see. You can leave a comment below or over on Twitter @TheScando or with #10MinMarvel.

I will say, don’t tweet the leaked images to me from Spider-Man No Way Home. I’m trying to avoid spoilers on both that and the Eternals still at this point.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Thanks For Listening

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast and thank you for listening. If you would consider sharing the podcast that would be amazing. Sharing the podcast as well as subscribing and leaving a rating and review help more people find the 10 Minute Marvel podcast. We are on iTunes, YouTube Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.

You can also help support the podcast financially over on patreon.com/nerdologsists. All the money goes back into helping improve the podcast, this website, and the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. Than you for considering supporting this with your money.

Questions or Comments?

So question for everyone, which are you looking forward to more, Loki or Black Widow?

Also, what topics do you want me to cover on the Podcast, is it fun when I do dives into stories or characters?

Let me know in the comment section below. You can also tweet your thoughts to me over on Twitter. My username there is @TheScando or you can use #10MinMarvel.

I’ll see you next time.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

The Game

As I said, the game I played was Marvel United. In particular I broke out the Enter the Spider-Verse expansion. I thought about doing the Tales of Asgard expansion instead, but when the choice was between Spider-Ham and Beta Ray Bill, I think I made a solid choice. I played the game as if it was a two handed cooperative experience versus a purely solo game, though I talk about how the solo mode works for the game.

Marvel United is a cooperative game where you take 2-4 heroes up against a villain. You are trying to stop their evil plan. You fight thugs, thwart plans, and rescue civilians until you can track down the villain and attack them. What that means, is basically you have three things to try and complete. After the first one is done the villain becomes more active, after the second one you can start beating up the villain, and you need to take out the villain, at least in the case of the Green Goblin.

The Beer

Yesterday was National Beer Day, and while I was a bit distracted in my description, I had a brew from Outstate Brewing in Fergus Falls, MN, my home town. I picked it up when I went up for Easter. A New England style Hazy IPA, it is pretty solid. I like IPA’s a lot, but I don’t always love hazy IPA’s. Too often they taste like someone dumped fruit juice into an IPA, which is how a lot of them actually are made. That is too sweet for me and too fruity, I want a bit of bitter or tart when I drink a fruity beer. The beer name was Edge Catcher, and unfortunately it’ll be hard to find unless you are in that area of Minnesota as Outstate Brewing was founded right before the pandemic and has very limited distribution.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

It’s been a fun few weeks for the podcast, and I want to thank everyone who has found it. If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider sharing it with your friends, subscribing, or leaving a rating and review. Those help more people find the podcast and help 10 Minute Marvel grow. You can find the podcast over on iTunes, YouTube Music, Spotify, and Stitcher. All of those things help the podcast continue to grow.

If you want to get a hold of the podcast, feel free to leave a comment below. Or you can find me on Twitter @TheScando or with #10MinMarvel. I’m always looking for new comics to read, theories on up coming Phase 4, and more.

I’ll see you next time!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

To add in a little more detail about making the list, I’m saying that these games are best with two players, so two player games still do count. But I’m talking about games that could play up to a high number, but for some reason, time between turns, randomness of the game, I think that they work best with two players and would recommend trying them there first or that they’ll be most enjoyable at that player count.

Let’s see the list…

10 – Sword & Sorcery
This dungeon crawl game I’ve only played at two players, but I can’t really see playing it with more. Now, even at two players we’re controlling more characters, two each, but that hasn’t caused the game to bog down. I feel like, with more players, we’d end up spending more time in discussion for this cooperative game and planning to then have fairly random results on the dice. The game needs to be snappier with how you get through it, and with only two people at the table, even though I might not be taking my turn, I can always be the one rolling for monsters, and if there aren’t monsters, turns go incredibly fast. With more people, there’s just be more downtime for players, even if playing with the same number of characters. Sword & Sorcery, though, is a very fun ameritrash style dungeon crawl game where you’re chucking dice and leveling up to get through a fairly generic fantasy story with a few choices in it.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
I’ve done with solo and two players, and I prefer two players in this game, for the reason that, using the app, you need to do house keeping, and that house keeping can be a bit of a bear, but, if you are splitting the duties between two people it makes it easier. Plus, the minimum number of characters you can play with is two, so even solo you’re controlling two characters. This is the Star Wars dungeon crawl game taking place as Vader is chasing the rebels from their first base eventually leading to Hoth and beyond. You are not playing the main characters, Vader shows up as a side character whom you can’t beat, but that’s fine, the game is a lot of fun, and it feels a bit like a Rogue One type of game, but, for me, more enjoyable.

8 – Five Tribes
Now, I enjoy Five Tribes at all player counts, two through four, but I think it works best at two for one main reason. When determining play order for each round, it is done by bidding. Normally, each person has one play order marker, but in two players, each player has two. That means that you can set it up where you go twice in a row. Five Tribes is really a point salad type of game where everything you do is going to give you points, with an Mancala mechanism thrown in there where you’re moving meeples and then get to keep the matching colors of meeples to do something. So if you can see two really good moves, playing two players, allows you to bid for them and set up two good turns for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll probably only get one of them, which might mess up strategy.

7 – Skulk Hollow
First of the two player only games, Skulk Hollow is a ton of a fun as one player plays the foxen kingdom and the other an old guardian that has awoken on the lands. Each side has their own goal, the foxen trying to take down the guardian, but the guardian might have other things to consider like killing the foxen leader or maybe killing a certain number of the foxen kingdom, placing out a number of tentacles, or something along those lines, it varies as to which guardian you play. This gives the game a lot of replayability, because not only do you have the different guardians, but different leaders for the foxen kingdom. So playing the two sides gives a different game feel and playing the different leaders or guardians against each other can change things up as well. The card play is very slick in the game, and the whole thing just works well and looks really cool on the table.

6 – Hats
This was one of the first games when I thought of the list. Hats is a game that plays more than two, but definitely one that I think works better at two. At four, it’s just more random, and I’m not sure that I’ve played it at the three player count. In this game you have a hand of cards that you are playing down onto a table at the Madd Hatter’s tea party. Where you play a card gets you the previous card that was there, and you’re trying to set it up for getting the most points. At four players, the scoring is just more random. You can card count so potentially set up a scoring to help you, but with that exception of one scoring, you’ll just need luck on your side. But at two players, there’s more strategy to the play. You can go digging for cards and try and set-up what looks like poor scoring for yourself to only swap it at the end of the game to get even better scoring. It becomes much more of a strategic experience at the two player count and is a more interesting game that way.

5 – Star Wars Rebellion
Technically it can be a four player game, but Star Wars Rebellion is really a two player game where one side plays the Empire and the other the Rebels. At four players, you just split the two sides up and it’s still just two people playing the Empire and then two playing the Rebels. Keep the decision making more focused and Star Wars Rebellion is great. It’s a good cat and mouse game as the Empire tries to hunt down the Rebel’s secret base and the Rebels are trying to do missions and survive long enough to turn the tide against the Empire. You can have Darth Vader face off against Obi-Wan as in the movies, but maybe Darth Vader will run across Chewbacca or Han Solo or Wedge Antilles, you never know. There’s good strategic play, but then also a lot of fun space battles and land battles on planets surfaces that you can partake in as well which are good dice chucking.

4 – The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I’ve played The Dresden Files with, I believe, all of it’s player counts, and I think that I like two players the best. Mainly because it’s a faster back and forth turn taking game instead of waiting for things to get passed around between more people. You do have the interesting thing of playing two characters with their decks shuffled together, which can create some interesting situations, but overall, I feel like it works pretty well. In this game you’re playing through the Dresden Files books, and you’re trying to defeat villains and solve cases. But you have limited resources to do that, so you’re balancing keeping those resources up by discarding cards, but also knowing that you won’t likely draw any or at least many more cards, so what you have in your starting hand you’ll have for the game. The game play is smart, and I like that you’re playing through a book at a time. A very enjoyable game for fans of the series, and an interesting puzzle for those who haven’t read them.

3 – Dice Throne
Dice Throne can technically be played as teams or King of the Hill style where you go after the person who has the most life, but I like it best at two players. There are a couple of reasons for this dice chucking combat game that make it work better at that count. First, there is less downtime. Either it’s my turn and I’m playing cards and rolling dice, or it’s my opponents turn and I’m likely rolling my dice on defense. With higher player counts, it’s going to potentially put you in a situation where you don’t roll anything for a couple of turns. The other thing is that the game is just faster overall. With the higher player counts, again more turns, but to go with that, more health to get through, so you could, theoretically, have someone eliminated and then sit there watching for a bit. But at two players, once you get the other person’s health down to zero, game over and you can reset and play again.

2 – Hanamikoji
Two player only game where you are trying to win the favor of Geisha. It’s a unique theme as you are playing down cards to give them gifts, but what makes it most interesting in the card play in the game. Each player, per round, is given four actions that they can do once in a round, you can play a card secretly or discard two cards secretly, and those a fairly normal sorts of actions. But the other two are very interesting. You can play down three cards face up, your opponent gets to pick one of those gifts and put it on their side to win a Geisha’s favor and you get the other two, and then the last action is that you can put down two sets of two cards in front of you where your opponent again picks which one they want and you get the others. It offers some really brain burning decisions, and often times you need to force your opponent to decide your strategy by the cards you put down when they are choosing from them. Rounds are very fast, and the game is just a lot of fun.

1 – Marvel Champions
Now, I can’t say that I’ve played this at higher player counts than two, but I have played it at one player. From what I’ve heard with four players, the game can be a little bit slow between turns as you’re waiting for everyone else to go. But at one and two players this game is a lot of fun. In two, you can think about strategy more so, and develop interesting combos or strategies that work well together as compared to solo game play. Now, both I enjoy a lot, but teaming Captain America up with Thor taking down the Green Goblin was a blast, or you can do She Hulk and Spider-Man versus Ultron. You have a ton of different options and playing at two players it allows you to do a team up that maybe you wouldn’t normally see in the comics or maybe one that you really love from the comics that you can now play in game. Marvel Champions is just a really good card game that lets you feel like a super hero.

This list, I was worried, was going to be hard, but there are some games that are just two players that I really love and others that I really do think work much better at two players. Maybe later this week or the start of next week I’ll do a six plus player list for when things start to normalize again and we can do board game nights. I know that I have one of the big two player games missing from my list, it’s on my shelf, but I haven’t done 7 Wonders Duel yet. I’ll need to get it to the table, and there are a lot of other games that are enjoyable to very good at two players, but I just prefer them with more.

What are some of your favorite two player games? Are there some games with higher player counts that are just better at two players for you?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Marvel Champions is a cooperative superhero game where you play as a superhero who is trying to thwart the plans of a villain and defeat them. On the heroes turn, you can play cards that might be an ally or give you an additional ability or allow you to thwart the villains scheme or attack the villain. But these cards cost resources, and to get the resources to play these cards, you need to discard cards, so while you might want to play all the cards in your hand because they do something good, you are limited in number to how many you can play because they are going to cost, and the better cards cost more. Then the villain goes, and depending on if you are in the alter-ego side of the superhero side of the character card, they will either work on their scheme or they’ll attack you. Plus, then you need to encounter a card, it might be a henchmen that you need to take care of, otherwise they’ll be pinging you for damage, or it could be treachery card where it causes some other action to happen, like scheming or attacking again. This goes on until either the villain has completed their plan or the hero has taken out the villain. If the superhero takes out the villain, the heroes win, but each villain has two versions that you have to face off against, so taking them down once isn’t enough.

This game does some really interesting things. First, let me say that one of the big things about the game is that it’s a living card game. That means that there are expansions coming out. In the base game, you have plenty to play with Ultron and Rhino as villains and the likes of Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, She-Hulk, and Spider-Man as villains. But the expansions give you new characters or villains to face off against. You can get Green Goblin so that you have to worry about him and his glider in a fight, and you can get Captain America to face off against him. There are other heroes like Ms Marvel, Black Widow, Thor, Doctor Strange, and Hulk that have been announced or are out. All these expansions, and a Red Skull campaign expansion coming sometime this summer, can make the game more expensive, but also you don’t need them all, if you don’t care about Hulk and Ms Marvel, don’t pick them up, and you can still have a great game with lots of fun things in it. And while the expansions are pretty consistently coming out, they aren’t that expensive, which is nice.

But let’s talk about some of the other cool things, first there is the alter-ego and superhero piece. It’s really clever and gives it a great comic book feel, in my opinion. In the comics (I’m going to mainly be using Spider-Man as an example), it’s common for Spider-Man to get knocked around, Peter Parker then needs to rest and recover, which he can, because people don’t know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but the villain, thinking that they’ve defeated Spider-Man will scheme and plot and get closer to their goal, when Spider-Man then shows up again to stop them. The flipping between sides, alter-ego and superhero, is very much that feeling. Each hero has things that they can do when they are on their alter-ego side and their superhero side that are different as well. For example, Captain America, when he’s in alter-ego form, he can recruit allies easier, but when he’s on the Captain America side, he can un-exhaust so that he can do more actions. So it make sense, Steve Rogers/Captain America is the leader of the Avengers often, so he can go out and recruit a hero, and he also never gets knocked down and out of a fight, so he’s always ready to attack and then un-exhaust and do it again, as he says…

And each hero has their own things like that, which fits their character and makes them unique from the rest of the heroes.

Another cool thing is that the heroes have different aspects to them, and you can change this up. So maybe you want Spider-Man to be more protection cards, you can give him more defensive cards in his deck. That way he’ll be able to stay in Spider-Man form longer and not have to flip back and forth between the two as much. Or maybe you want him to be aggressive you can change out his aspect to that, or Justice or Leadership. That’s going to give you another way to change up things. I played Captain America with a protection cards, and I was able to stay in the superhero side of things for all but one turn because I was taking damage so slowly. But if you wanted to, you could make Cap very aggressive and he’d deal out a lot of damage fast, or leadership makes thematic sense because he often leads the avengers. So you can mess around with deck building that way to create what type of team you want to play with.

Are there any downsides to the game? It takes a few minutes to set-up and if you aren’t familiar with deck building you might just be stuck with the decks that they recommend or you might have some weird deck builds that happen. But you can learn how to do better deck building. I think that the one downside right now is that it is hard to find the expansions, they aren’t printing enough and it takes some time to get a reprint done, and with COVID-19 as well, that could delay the reprints as well. Right now I have the Wrecking Crew villain expansion and Thor character expansion, but those are basically sold out as well. But, with that said, those packs will show up again, and there is enough in the base box that it’s worth it to just grab that and play and learn with those characters.

Now, I’ve done some comparisons already, and that’s in the Board Game Battle with Marvel Legendary, so is there room for both on your shelf, I think if you like Legendary, you will probably will find that this is different enough, and vice-a-versa. But I also want to bring up the other living card games that Fantasy Flight has put out, there is Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Arkham Horror. So how does this compare to the one that I’ve played, Arkham Horror? I think that it’s close between the two, if you go back to my deck building/construction article yesterday for Top 10 in that genre, you can see that Marvel Champions is the spot above, however, it’s close. I like the story driven nature of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and that’s something that I do miss with Marvel Champions, but that is also coming. I think that I just like the superhero theme a little bit better and being able to pull it out for one game. But because one, right now, is a single game and the other is a campaign, I think that there’s room for both on shelves.

Overall, clearly I like this game. I think that it plays well at both 1 and 2 players and offers unique challenges both ways. There is a lot of really interesting things going on in the game, and it feels like a comic book. If you’re at all interested, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. But, with that said, know that the cost could add up over time if you’re a Marvel fanboy/fangirl, like I am. Because I’ll want to get most of it over time. I also think that this can work for a more casual player to pick up and learn. Fantasy Flight does a good job with their rule book, and the game is pretty simple, but still offers good challenges, so this a game that people interested in it will probably be able to understand easily.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: A-

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

This first list is going to be Deck Building Games, now on BGG, they combine pool and bag building games as well, but I’m only going to do deck building. However, it is going to include deck construction games as well. Because you are technically constructing the deck, it is just prior to the game, but it is also a large part of the game. I will call out those games. In deck building, you are constructing the deck to do something in the game, it might be getting victory points, it might be for buying more cards, fighting or many other things. Let’s see what my list looks like.

The List

10 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth
It’s a long title and an interesting game, a deck construction game, you start out with an archetype and some character cards. But you can play against type, so maybe Gimli as a leader and Aragorn as a tank, and between scenarios you can spend experience to level up the deck and get better cards. How you use the cards is interesting, most of the time you are looking for successes on cards, but you can also use cards for a more permanent ability, but the better the ability, more likely it’s to have successes on it, which means you want it in the deck for your challenges so that you can pass them. It’s a good mechanic because it makes so many decisions tough. Plus, there’s a campaign for it, and an app driven story, this is weaker than Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition for that, but the app helps so much, if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, it’s definitely a game to check out.

9 – Dragonfire
I haven’t played this game as much as I’d like though I have played both Dragonfire and Shadowrun: Crossfire, which are both built off of the same system. I’m going with Dragonfire because that’s the one that I own. The game offers interesting scenarios and challenges for the players to defeat, and you start out with your class which means that you are a little bit better at something than others. You get to purchase cards to improve your deck, but at the same time, you’re trying to deal with monsters and avoid becoming exhausted or taken out. It’s a tough game that I don’t feel like I fully have a grasp on the strategy for it yet, but I like the deck building aspect and I think that it does some interesting things with leveling up your characters. Definitely a fun time to play, and while I like the Shadowrun RPG theme better than the D&D RPG theme, I think that both are fun, so either works, just depends if you want fantasy or cyberpunk.

8 – Magic: The Gathering
MtG was a game that I loved and I’d play all the time for a while, but unfortunately I don’t have a group anymore for it. But I still love it for the deck construction aspect of it. You could build all sorts of crazy decks, and I think, almost as much as playing it, I loved finding an odd card that didn’t have an obvious way for it to work, but I would figure out a way to create a deck around it. Sometimes they were cool decks, and sometimes they failed horribly, but it was always fun to experiment. And then we got into commander which adds a challenge of only having a single copy of a card in the deck and a 100 yard deck, so there was always something new to try and build. I miss playing it as often sometimes, but it’s a classic and extremely popular game for a reason. It’s also addictive to open packs once you get into it.

7 – Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
This is just a fun game as you get to play through the books, getting further in your education and improving your deck. You get to sling spells, get friends to help you and try and defeat everyone. The game starts out pretty simple, and I like that, because it can continue to add in mechanics and rules and cards for each book that you go to, which makes it more thematic. It does get longer the further in you go because, while you are theoretically getting better cards the longer it goes, in the later chapters, you’re dealing with the villains from the first books as well as the ones from the later books so that number always increases. But Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is just a good deck building game and a good theme that will draw people in.

6 – Ascension
This is the most generic deck building game on the list. In it, you have a basic starting deck, you get to buy more cards that allow you to buy more cards or fight monsters that show up. You can combo things together with card draw and constructs, and that’s probably the only unique bit is that you have constructs that you can play out and they stay out while heroes go into the discard at the end of the turn. So you can vary your strategy by either going construct heavy or maybe hero and attack heavy or buy heavy. Each of them gives you a chance to win because you get points for killing monsters, but you can also get points for getting cards and some constructs are worth a lot of points. This is my preferred introduction to deck building.

5 – Clank! In! Space!
Some games take themselves seriously, but Clank! In! Space! is not one of those games. You’re an adventurer/thief, stumbling around Lord Eradikus’s spaceship, trying not to make too much clank so that you don’t get tracked down and knocked out. The cards are all references to other sci-fi things, and it just works really well. It’s a deck builder where you have a few different types of cards that can combo together to create some epic turns, if it shuffles out right, plus it’s push your luck with deck building as well, because you can go further into the spaceship to get a better treasure, but it’ll take you longer to get out and Lord Eradikus might get you before that happens. But if he doesn’t, you’ll be in a much better spot to win. The game is light fun with good replayability.

4 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
Aeon’s End: War Eternal is such an interesting deck building game that gives you a chance to not have to worry about the randomness of your deck. When you buy cards, they go into the discard, when you spend your cards on a turn, they go to the discard, but cards that you spend on a turn, you can sort those. That’s not a big deal if you’re shuffling the deck, but you’re not, when you run out of cards, you just flip your deck, so it gives you the ability to potentially set-up hands. Add in the game play, which has an interesting spell casting mechanic where you need to prep them, tough monsters to fight, and a town to defend, the game gives you so much replayability just out of the base box and then there is more in expansions and other editions. It’s just a nice twist on deck building that works really well for my style of play, plus it’s cooperative.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Another deck contrusction game on the list, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a great experience creating your character so that they can investigate, attack, or deal with whatever might come up better for a given story. And then you get to take them through a campaign, so it’s not just a one off game, so between games you get to improve your deck so that you’re more prepared for the next part of the story. And characters, depending on their skills will be able to use certain types of cards better or will need help on some skills, so will need more of those cards in their decks, you can really tailor your investigator how you want.

2 – Marvel Champions
It was hard to know where to slot this one in, it’s deck construction, so you build your deck before the game, but it is so much fun. I’ve been writing about it a bunch recently, and it just works for me, all it’s missing is a campaign, which we’re getting. In it, you play as a superhero who is taking on the likes of Rhino, Ultron, or Green Goblin. What makes this work and be an interesting deck construction game is the different archetypes. So you could play someone like Spider-Man with defensive cards in his deck to keep him standing longer without having to flip back to the Peter Parker side, or you could be aggressive hoping to end the game faster. It gives you so many options when you’re constructing your deck. It just feels like taking your superhero up against a villain who has some grand or small scheme.

1 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
Why is this my favorite, it’s actually fairly low rank on BGG, but the game is just a ton of fun, and I think it does some interesting things for a deck builder. You are never short money, which is nice, but when you buy cards and you are creating your defenses to stop an alien bug attack on your mining base, you can help other people as well. So you build up your defenses, but you can also help build up others, so even if someone has a bad card draw, you’ll be able to help them, or vice-a-versa. It’s just an interesting thing that makes the game feel even more cooperative in it’s nature and not something that you can do in many other deck building games. Plus, you’re blasting alien bug monsters, and I’m always down for that.

I’ve left a few games off of here that do have deck construction or deck building in them because I think that, while it’s important for those games, t here are other things that are also as big a part. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is one of them, but that one is a story driven survival game with deck construction being part of how you level up. The same goes for Gloomhaven, you can improve your hand of cards versus a deck there, but you can improve your modifier deck as you level up. I wanted to go with games where the deck construction is a huge part of the game. I think with the exception of Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, though you are using the deck for everything, you do need to really focus on the deck building part of the game.

There are a couple of notable deck building games that aren’t on the list. First, Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, I just find that game to be okay. I think that there’s so much in the game now that it can be hard to keep track of everything and you can pretty easily end up with a less than ideal combo of heroes that don’t synergize as well as they could. If that happens, you just get stomped, and I feel like that is pretty common for that game. Dominion also didn’t make my list, and while I know that some of these games, if not all, wouldn’t have existed without Dominion, it doesn’t make Dominion a good game. It’s a pure deck building game, I’ll give it that, but it’s not thematic and it’s not nice to look at, and because it has a static market, someone who has played it more or played with a certain combo is going to be at an advantage because they know what to build immediately, and there’s always an optimal strategy. I like games that make me adjust as I go and stretch me that way, and I don’t think Dominion does that.

What are some of your favorite deck building games? Are there any, based off of what I like, that you think I should check out?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

There’s plenty of reason that people compared the two. Both of them are card games with deck building elements, though with one you build the deck ahead of time and one you build it through in game purchase of cards. The other obvious thing is that they are both Marvel themed. I could have added some more contenders if I had opened this up to the DC deck building game as well, but I wanted to keep it focused on Marvel, especially with Marvel Champions being a newer game. Both still have a lot of expansions and Champions is getting a regular flow of new heroes and bad guys to add into the game. Generally what you’re trying to do is similar as well, there is a villain who has their own scheme that they are trying to do and as players in the game, you are trying to defeat that villain, though, what that means in the games can be different. Let’s take a closer look at both competitors.

Marvel Legendary

The older of the two games, it has a ton of content. The content that it has dwarfs that of Champions at this point, though Champions will slowly start to catch up as it is releases more expansions on a more regular basis. In Marvel Legendary you put together a team of heroes and shuffle them together to create your hero deck that you’ll be able to purchase characters from. Each player starts with a basic deck of a few SHIELD agents, some that give you purchasing (recruiting) power to get hero cards into your deck, and some that give you attack power. When you purchase these cards they go into your discard pile, and once you’ve drawn all the cards from your deck, you shuffle up and use the deck with the new cards added to it to try and stop the mastermind and the other villains showing up in town. One thing that I think works well in the game is that you can’t sit back in your deck building and only focus on purchase power until you can really buy a lot of attack power. Because there are always villains coming out, that can mean that you’d potentially screw yourself over with villains escaping town before you’d be able to really deal well with them as you can lose if the hero deck is gone through. Now, there are some downsides, because you are getting a mix of heroes, it’s possible that they won’t synergize that well and you won’t be able to build up the combos that quickly that you need. In fact, I feel like this is very common with the game when I’ve played it.

Marvel Champions

Whereas you are building your deck in game, in Marvel Champions you are building the deck you’ll play with before the game. Each deck you build is going to be specific to a character, and just out of the base box, you could build a deck for Iron Man, Black Panther, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, or Spider-Man. Then you can send that hero up against the likes of Rhino or Ultron. Beyond just a basic deck construction of it being, for example, just a Spider-Man deck, you can give them a fighting style. You could make Captain Marvel Aggressive style if you want her to deal a lot of damage, on the other hand, you could give her Leader or Defensive for a build that would be less focused on combat. And while certain styles will synergize better with her cards than other styles might, you’ll basically always be able to make a deck that works with any style. Beyond that, your hero deck is going to have a single hero in it, you aren’t going to be combining in a single deck Spider-Man and Iron Man cards, it’s going to be either Spider-Man or Iron Man. There are sidekicks to help that you can call in, like Nick Fury or Hercules, but they aren’t as powerful as your character. Another cool thing is how the characters work, in the comics, you have T’Challa and Black Panther, the alter-ego and the superhero identities. So, in the game, they mimic that and you can flip between the two. When you are the hero, the villain is going to be scheming on their master plan a little bit but mainly going after the hero to knock them out. But if you flip over to alter-ego, the villain won’t be able to attack you, because they don’t know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but instead they’ll scheme more. There’s a downside to being flipped in alter-ego form, though, you aren’t able to attack them or thwart their scheme as that might reveal to them who you are. It’s a very clever little thing in the game, but it gives it a good comic book feel. The biggest issue with Marvel Champions right now is keeping up with it and finding what’s already been released. We know that we have Black Widow, Doctor Strange and Hulk being added as characters soon, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on Ms Marvel or Captain America yet, or the Green Goblin villain pack.

Let’s get ready to rumble……..

Ding

This is almost a mirror match, but Marvel Champions gets out to quick advantage where it is younger and doesn’t carry around as much baggage as Marvel Legendary does. But Legendary is able to fight back as it has a weight advantage and tries to bully Champions into a corner with all the different characters that it has. But it’s moves are too slow and lumbering, Champions escapes the corner and is picking up new moves all of the time. It uses the agility of Black Widow to get behind and Hulk smashes Legendary down to the mat. Thor drops Mjolnir on Legendary.

1…. 2…. 3

We have a winnter:

Marvel Champions

For me, this isn’t all that close, Marvel Champions is a better game, and I was even worried about picking up Marvel Champions because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But the game just works better, you don’t end up having combos that don’t work that well, which you do in Marvel Legendary, and the game plays a lot faster. While with more players Champions will add time to it’s game, you are immediately doing something and immersed into the comic book nature of the game as compared to Legendary where you might spend half the game getting to the point where you are able to pull off a combo and that might never happen just because of a shuffle. In Champions, you’re able to play good cards right from the beginning. And I think because of that, you always feel like you have a chance in the game, even though my playing Spider-Man solo against Rhino has been a resounding defeat both times, I always felt like, because I was learning, I knew where I had gone wrong, as compared to Legendary where there are so many variables that it might just be nothing that I did wrong, and I still get stomped. I think that Legendary is fine and I’m willing to play it, but I’d always prefer to play Marvel Champions.

I do want to think about, if you already own Legendary, does Champions do enough different for you to add it to your collection? For me, I’d say yes. I think being able to focus on a single hero and play that hero, plus the superhero and alter-ego sides, it makes the game feel different enough. The deck building and management during the game feels different as well, because you might want to get some powerful cards, but those might also cause you to go through your deck faster, which is a negative in the game but not a negative to the game. If it’s the other way around, I think that maybe the Legendary core set, but if you were to get expansions for one of the games, definitely Champions as with it, it feels like it’s giving you more options versus Legendary where it feels like bloat at times.

Which do you prefer?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.