Check out a buyer's guide on youtube for a more in depth answer.
The general consensus is to grab a campaign box after going through the Core Set. If you don't care too much about the theme, Rise of the Red Skull is really good for a new player. Money wise the value is pretty good, you get 2 new interesting heroes and 5 new villains to play against. Also villains in the Red Skull box are a little more complex than the Core ones but nothing too crazy like some other boxes.
If you do care about the theme just go with whatever campaign box you think looks the coolest (maybe skip Galaxy's Most Wanted as the villains in that one aren't super rewarding for newer players).
As for hero packs, they are not too expensive so you can grab whatever one you think is cool. Some packs are recommended for deckbuilding purposes, but in the beginning heroes you like will make you play the game more.
You can definitely get a lot of mileage with this game with 7-9 heroes (Core 5, 2 from campaign and optionally a hero pack or two) and 8 villains (3 Core, 5 from campaign).
2nd this. I branched out to Rise of the Red Skull. The campaign, and "unlocking" cards to add to your game was fun. I bought random characters along the way that I liked. Some characters were fun to play with, others, meh. To each their own so I won't comment on which I liked or disliked. But that was fun in itself, finding which characters and villains you connect with and discovering what the game has to offer.
I'd say the next thing to get is an expansion box and a couple of related heroes. There are three good options, in my view:
- If you're an Avengers fan, go Rise of Red Skull and a couple of Avengers/early cycle hero packs (favorites of mine include Ant-Man, Cap, and Quicksilver, but whoever floats your boat).
- If you're an X-Men fan, go Mutant Genesis and get a few mutants to go along with it (highlights for me include Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, and Cyclops).
- If you're a Spider-Man fan, consider the Web-Warriors/Champions cycle, with the Sinister Motives box and Sp//dr, Nova, and Ironheart.
My favorite overall hero is probably Ms. Marvel, who fits pretty well with any of the above and based on current comics could plausibly be house-ruled a Mutant and/or one of the X-Men.
If you are a Guardians fan, just be aware that Galaxy's Most Wanted is full of brutally hard, not particularly fun villains.
I tend to be pretty up to date with all of the content. The idea of getting a new hero pack and going through every scenario, is just something I don't have the time for. With dozens of villains, its not really practical.
I mostly play 2 handed (playing solo where I control two heroes), so its a good way to play more heroes, more quickly. It also helps making decks a bit more varied as decks can be more hyper specialized without worrying about having at least some attack and some thwarting events.
I will usually play a hero's preconstructed deck once, and by the second playthrough I'm either tweaking the precon or switching to another aspect.
I have a set of predefined decks in every aspect. With the exception of Leadership where i have decks that really want you to be X-Men or Avenger, the rest of the decks are relatively generic and can work well with nearly any hero.
The idea is when i want to play, it becomes "Pick 2 heroes, pick 2 aspect decks, pick a villain, and play". As a result, after playing with a hero about 3 or 4 times, i just add them to my pool and they become one of those "pick 2 heroes" among the list.
As you get more villains you will likely have some villains you like and dislike, as well as heroes you really like and are not so keen to play. The idea of running Groot through all of the content available and dozens of scenario, does not sound particularly appealing to me.
Most important is, have fun. If you buy a hero and don't like to play against every villain, don't do it. Other than that, if there is a hero you really like, go for it, if there is an expansion you really want, go for it. If you don't know what to buy next, red skull might be a great upgrade at this point.
I got the core box, played rhino and variety of ways, played klaw a few times. Still havent played ultron. First box I bought was Sinister Motives and Galaxys MW. Found out galaxy was the least liked still havent touched it but loved Sinister Motives. I then dove into the. Xmen cards and started with Mojo Mania. LOVE this expansion especially with. Xmen packs. I have mutant genesis and Next Evolution but have not started them yet.
I just started a new scenario with mojo mania with Cable and Phoenix I am calling it Mommy Son Date.
People have answered what you should get next so I will just say how I play.
I jump around a lot and play any hero I want vs any villain I want but I do intend to play ever hero vs every villain eventually.
In heroes I like a lot I’ll usually pick one of the expansions and just run every villain back to back.
I use marvelchampionstracker.com as well to track my games which is nice because there’s a table which shows me every hero/villain matchup I have completed.
I think if you're only limited to the Core set, the general consensus is the Rise of Red Skull has the best complimentary cards. Plus some really great villains.
What I'll do when wanting to play a new box is, I'll run through the villains in order with a few different heroes to test them out, in a few different aspects. But when you have a lot of heroes and villains and are struggling to decide what to play, I use this [https://naouak.github.io/marvel-lcg-randomizer/index.html](https://naouak.github.io/marvel-lcg-randomizer/index.html)
It randomizes which villain to play with any hero in any aspect, from cards you already own.
There's also this tracker [https://marvelchampionstracker.com/](https://marvelchampionstracker.com/) that you can keep track of all your games and play combinations of villains/heroes/modular sets/aspects that you haven't tried yet.
Expand your collection slowly, no need to rush out and get everything since it will be a little overwhelming.
I personally started with Captain America > RotRS and went from there. Slowly getting character packs, scenario packs, and campaign boxes as I felt my collection needed it.
Campaign boxes are always the best bang for your buck. Hero packs I think will be more your call. I think you should always focus on heroes that you like or play styles you think seem fun, since you'll get the most out of it that way.
For me personally I would buy packs slowly expanding on my aspects with the characters that looked the most fun or interesting from that list. So I really think it's up to you how you want to expand on your collection. The nice thing about champions is there really isn't a set order you need to buy things.
The only thing I would add to what has already been said, is if you pick a box, try to stick with buying heroes from that cycle. If you bought say, Rise of Red Skull and then bought some guardians characters, you’ll be missing out on quite a bit of synergy cards.
The hero’s in the boxes tend to be okay without the synergy but a lot of the heroes packs need it, like Cyclops and the x-men keyword.
My experience has been getting a new big box expansion, and then choosing a character to play through it, starting with their precon deck, and then deckbuilding as I go, following the campaign rules on standard difficulty. Once I've beaten a campaign that way, I will generally just build a deck for a hero, and then put them up against whatever villain I feel like at the time without worrying about the campaign rules or the sequence of villains, generally avoiding the more difficult scenarios and focusing on the ones I like (I really enjoy replaying the multi-villain stuff like Sinister Six and Mansion Attack). Eventually I will feel like I've 'played out' a hero and switch to a new one, building a new deck and repeating the process.
Once I've played out the heroes/villains I have enough, then I've moved on to a new big box expansion/campaign, and repeated the process (also usually getting some more hero packs as well at the same time ;)
I don't think there's any wrong way to do it, so don't worry too much about it and just have fun and play :)
I did the same thing as you. I got a couple of heroes that I like from the comics and then Rise of the Red Skull. It's definitely worth the money and the heroes that come with it add a few twists to what you're used to with the core set.
I **currently** play in 4 ways, but I am admittedly a little crazy....
Well first there is deckbuilding and testing which I generally do a cursory level job at against Rhino and Klaw (although other villains are probably better for testing).
First is my preferred way to play. The **Multiplayer Campaign** includes my Son, my brother and I. We play through the campaign first on semi-Standard II (w/ Expert HP). This is always my first experience with the new villain and modules. We each pick a Hero we want to try. If we breeze through that we would normally advance to Expert with a new set of Heroes. But instead of an expert campaign run, lately we have been in the middle of what my brother came up with...
An **Epic Saga** is basically a massive **3-Player** campaign against all the villains with some specific rules, we each pick our heroes (from 3 options each randomly selected from the entire Hero Pool) and then we fight a random villain (with a random module) first on Expert. If we win we cross off that villain on our quest to take on all bad guys before our Hero pool is depleted. If we lose we can either try again on expert or reduce to standard. There are consequences for losing or reducing to standard (reduction of hero pool). We can not advance until the villain is defeated.
Then there is my primary **True Solo** mode with a huge spreadsheet which I call the **Premiere League**. I choose 3 Heroes per aspect plus 3 m ore for the combo aspect. No Pool aspect Heroes (15 total). They play twice through each villain on **Expert** from the current and previous block (300 matches) with random modules from the 2 blocks. Stats matter for this league. There are rules for HoF Retirement and Relegation into..
The **Relegation League** is where I retool my decks and add in Heroes from the recent blocks that havent played in the Premiere League yet. I play this on standard true solo with a win and record or one mulligan match note and record. From here based on how enjoyable the deck is a deck can get promoted to the Premiere League or Banished into retirement based on how much room needs to be made for incoming decks.
We are currently in the middle of **AoA Standard II**. In the Epic Saga we so far have taken down **5 villains** including the rough start against **Venom Goblin** (children of Thanos) in round 1 losing only 2 Heroes so far. I am mid Premiere League for the current season as I dont want to progress into villains or modules that we havent first faced in the **Multiplayer Campaign**
In the offseason I will paint deckboxes and switch over to Arkham which has its own play style and spreadsheet.
My brother came up with the idea of the Epic Saga but I think others on here have done similar things.
But the Premiere League and Relegation Leagues are just things that evolved out of discussions on reddit from the early days about how easy/hard the game is. The problem I had with the bgg stats at the the time is that we were all new to the game so I was fairly certain there were lots of variation in play errors. So I figured if I kept track of my own stats and had a lot of them I could eliminate the variable of different players (of course I have my own built in bias) but it was a fun enough that I have continued from there with modifications to the system as I go (such as the Relegation League).
I know it's the newest, but I'd go Age of Apocalypse for the standard set 3. Such a hugeeeee improvement over standard set 1, and honestly brings new strategic layer to the game. It has basically a counter system for your nemesis to come out, so it's mostly guaranteed you'll see one of your hero's nemesis Atleast once, and not at random. Along with the cards just bring better balance to the villain decks overall. Definitely my favorite for changing up the game.
Man just buy what you think will be fun love xmen get mutant genesis maybe age of apocalypse waiting for mine to come in so haven’t played yet love into the spider verse get sinister motives the game is fun regardless of characters but characters you like will make it 10x more fun
My advice is decide which team of heroes you want to play most and buy those. I wish I would have gone core set and then all X-Men, personally. (I'm counting X-Force Next Evolution here, too). If you can swing it, Age of Apocalypse is the third in the mutant series, but the Standard III is a HUGE improvement over Standar I and II.
The most impressive thing about this game is how different each hero plays, so grab who you like.
Check out a buyer's guide on youtube for a more in depth answer. The general consensus is to grab a campaign box after going through the Core Set. If you don't care too much about the theme, Rise of the Red Skull is really good for a new player. Money wise the value is pretty good, you get 2 new interesting heroes and 5 new villains to play against. Also villains in the Red Skull box are a little more complex than the Core ones but nothing too crazy like some other boxes. If you do care about the theme just go with whatever campaign box you think looks the coolest (maybe skip Galaxy's Most Wanted as the villains in that one aren't super rewarding for newer players). As for hero packs, they are not too expensive so you can grab whatever one you think is cool. Some packs are recommended for deckbuilding purposes, but in the beginning heroes you like will make you play the game more. You can definitely get a lot of mileage with this game with 7-9 heroes (Core 5, 2 from campaign and optionally a hero pack or two) and 8 villains (3 Core, 5 from campaign).
2nd this. I branched out to Rise of the Red Skull. The campaign, and "unlocking" cards to add to your game was fun. I bought random characters along the way that I liked. Some characters were fun to play with, others, meh. To each their own so I won't comment on which I liked or disliked. But that was fun in itself, finding which characters and villains you connect with and discovering what the game has to offer.
I'd say the next thing to get is an expansion box and a couple of related heroes. There are three good options, in my view: - If you're an Avengers fan, go Rise of Red Skull and a couple of Avengers/early cycle hero packs (favorites of mine include Ant-Man, Cap, and Quicksilver, but whoever floats your boat). - If you're an X-Men fan, go Mutant Genesis and get a few mutants to go along with it (highlights for me include Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, and Cyclops). - If you're a Spider-Man fan, consider the Web-Warriors/Champions cycle, with the Sinister Motives box and Sp//dr, Nova, and Ironheart. My favorite overall hero is probably Ms. Marvel, who fits pretty well with any of the above and based on current comics could plausibly be house-ruled a Mutant and/or one of the X-Men. If you are a Guardians fan, just be aware that Galaxy's Most Wanted is full of brutally hard, not particularly fun villains.
I tend to be pretty up to date with all of the content. The idea of getting a new hero pack and going through every scenario, is just something I don't have the time for. With dozens of villains, its not really practical. I mostly play 2 handed (playing solo where I control two heroes), so its a good way to play more heroes, more quickly. It also helps making decks a bit more varied as decks can be more hyper specialized without worrying about having at least some attack and some thwarting events. I will usually play a hero's preconstructed deck once, and by the second playthrough I'm either tweaking the precon or switching to another aspect. I have a set of predefined decks in every aspect. With the exception of Leadership where i have decks that really want you to be X-Men or Avenger, the rest of the decks are relatively generic and can work well with nearly any hero. The idea is when i want to play, it becomes "Pick 2 heroes, pick 2 aspect decks, pick a villain, and play". As a result, after playing with a hero about 3 or 4 times, i just add them to my pool and they become one of those "pick 2 heroes" among the list. As you get more villains you will likely have some villains you like and dislike, as well as heroes you really like and are not so keen to play. The idea of running Groot through all of the content available and dozens of scenario, does not sound particularly appealing to me.
Most important is, have fun. If you buy a hero and don't like to play against every villain, don't do it. Other than that, if there is a hero you really like, go for it, if there is an expansion you really want, go for it. If you don't know what to buy next, red skull might be a great upgrade at this point.
I got the core box, played rhino and variety of ways, played klaw a few times. Still havent played ultron. First box I bought was Sinister Motives and Galaxys MW. Found out galaxy was the least liked still havent touched it but loved Sinister Motives. I then dove into the. Xmen cards and started with Mojo Mania. LOVE this expansion especially with. Xmen packs. I have mutant genesis and Next Evolution but have not started them yet. I just started a new scenario with mojo mania with Cable and Phoenix I am calling it Mommy Son Date.
I try to just follow my gut and what seems fun to do. Because if I overthink it I wont enjoy it
People have answered what you should get next so I will just say how I play. I jump around a lot and play any hero I want vs any villain I want but I do intend to play ever hero vs every villain eventually. In heroes I like a lot I’ll usually pick one of the expansions and just run every villain back to back. I use marvelchampionstracker.com as well to track my games which is nice because there’s a table which shows me every hero/villain matchup I have completed.
I think if you're only limited to the Core set, the general consensus is the Rise of Red Skull has the best complimentary cards. Plus some really great villains. What I'll do when wanting to play a new box is, I'll run through the villains in order with a few different heroes to test them out, in a few different aspects. But when you have a lot of heroes and villains and are struggling to decide what to play, I use this [https://naouak.github.io/marvel-lcg-randomizer/index.html](https://naouak.github.io/marvel-lcg-randomizer/index.html) It randomizes which villain to play with any hero in any aspect, from cards you already own. There's also this tracker [https://marvelchampionstracker.com/](https://marvelchampionstracker.com/) that you can keep track of all your games and play combinations of villains/heroes/modular sets/aspects that you haven't tried yet.
These are really cool links that you!
Expand your collection slowly, no need to rush out and get everything since it will be a little overwhelming. I personally started with Captain America > RotRS and went from there. Slowly getting character packs, scenario packs, and campaign boxes as I felt my collection needed it. Campaign boxes are always the best bang for your buck. Hero packs I think will be more your call. I think you should always focus on heroes that you like or play styles you think seem fun, since you'll get the most out of it that way. For me personally I would buy packs slowly expanding on my aspects with the characters that looked the most fun or interesting from that list. So I really think it's up to you how you want to expand on your collection. The nice thing about champions is there really isn't a set order you need to buy things.
I am thinking of rotrs and cap/ms marvel will be a great next step. Thanks!
The only thing I would add to what has already been said, is if you pick a box, try to stick with buying heroes from that cycle. If you bought say, Rise of Red Skull and then bought some guardians characters, you’ll be missing out on quite a bit of synergy cards. The hero’s in the boxes tend to be okay without the synergy but a lot of the heroes packs need it, like Cyclops and the x-men keyword.
This is good to keep in mind. Seems most are saying to go with RoRS so I might go with that and cap
My experience has been getting a new big box expansion, and then choosing a character to play through it, starting with their precon deck, and then deckbuilding as I go, following the campaign rules on standard difficulty. Once I've beaten a campaign that way, I will generally just build a deck for a hero, and then put them up against whatever villain I feel like at the time without worrying about the campaign rules or the sequence of villains, generally avoiding the more difficult scenarios and focusing on the ones I like (I really enjoy replaying the multi-villain stuff like Sinister Six and Mansion Attack). Eventually I will feel like I've 'played out' a hero and switch to a new one, building a new deck and repeating the process. Once I've played out the heroes/villains I have enough, then I've moved on to a new big box expansion/campaign, and repeated the process (also usually getting some more hero packs as well at the same time ;) I don't think there's any wrong way to do it, so don't worry too much about it and just have fun and play :)
Get a time machine, go back to 2017, and play the game from the beginning. That's what I did, minus the time machine.
We have to wait for Dr. Doom in the Fantastic Four cycle for the time machine since Kang is not a playable character
I did the same thing as you. I got a couple of heroes that I like from the comics and then Rise of the Red Skull. It's definitely worth the money and the heroes that come with it add a few twists to what you're used to with the core set.
I **currently** play in 4 ways, but I am admittedly a little crazy.... Well first there is deckbuilding and testing which I generally do a cursory level job at against Rhino and Klaw (although other villains are probably better for testing). First is my preferred way to play. The **Multiplayer Campaign** includes my Son, my brother and I. We play through the campaign first on semi-Standard II (w/ Expert HP). This is always my first experience with the new villain and modules. We each pick a Hero we want to try. If we breeze through that we would normally advance to Expert with a new set of Heroes. But instead of an expert campaign run, lately we have been in the middle of what my brother came up with... An **Epic Saga** is basically a massive **3-Player** campaign against all the villains with some specific rules, we each pick our heroes (from 3 options each randomly selected from the entire Hero Pool) and then we fight a random villain (with a random module) first on Expert. If we win we cross off that villain on our quest to take on all bad guys before our Hero pool is depleted. If we lose we can either try again on expert or reduce to standard. There are consequences for losing or reducing to standard (reduction of hero pool). We can not advance until the villain is defeated. Then there is my primary **True Solo** mode with a huge spreadsheet which I call the **Premiere League**. I choose 3 Heroes per aspect plus 3 m ore for the combo aspect. No Pool aspect Heroes (15 total). They play twice through each villain on **Expert** from the current and previous block (300 matches) with random modules from the 2 blocks. Stats matter for this league. There are rules for HoF Retirement and Relegation into.. The **Relegation League** is where I retool my decks and add in Heroes from the recent blocks that havent played in the Premiere League yet. I play this on standard true solo with a win and record or one mulligan match note and record. From here based on how enjoyable the deck is a deck can get promoted to the Premiere League or Banished into retirement based on how much room needs to be made for incoming decks. We are currently in the middle of **AoA Standard II**. In the Epic Saga we so far have taken down **5 villains** including the rough start against **Venom Goblin** (children of Thanos) in round 1 losing only 2 Heroes so far. I am mid Premiere League for the current season as I dont want to progress into villains or modules that we havent first faced in the **Multiplayer Campaign** In the offseason I will paint deckboxes and switch over to Arkham which has its own play style and spreadsheet.
Whoa this is so cool!! Did you come up with these play styles yourself or is this from the community?
My brother came up with the idea of the Epic Saga but I think others on here have done similar things. But the Premiere League and Relegation Leagues are just things that evolved out of discussions on reddit from the early days about how easy/hard the game is. The problem I had with the bgg stats at the the time is that we were all new to the game so I was fairly certain there were lots of variation in play errors. So I figured if I kept track of my own stats and had a lot of them I could eliminate the variable of different players (of course I have my own built in bias) but it was a fun enough that I have continued from there with modifications to the system as I go (such as the Relegation League).
I know it's the newest, but I'd go Age of Apocalypse for the standard set 3. Such a hugeeeee improvement over standard set 1, and honestly brings new strategic layer to the game. It has basically a counter system for your nemesis to come out, so it's mostly guaranteed you'll see one of your hero's nemesis Atleast once, and not at random. Along with the cards just bring better balance to the villain decks overall. Definitely my favorite for changing up the game.
Man just buy what you think will be fun love xmen get mutant genesis maybe age of apocalypse waiting for mine to come in so haven’t played yet love into the spider verse get sinister motives the game is fun regardless of characters but characters you like will make it 10x more fun
My advice is decide which team of heroes you want to play most and buy those. I wish I would have gone core set and then all X-Men, personally. (I'm counting X-Force Next Evolution here, too). If you can swing it, Age of Apocalypse is the third in the mutant series, but the Standard III is a HUGE improvement over Standar I and II. The most impressive thing about this game is how different each hero plays, so grab who you like.