You are going to have to forgive my rage. I had typed up what I thought was a really good review of Crossbones.... and then Blogger ate the whole post. The whole. Frickin. Thing. I honestly felt so bitter about it I almost rage quit right there. I still might. So here's take two! Here's hoping Blogger behaves. Yes, I know I could just use a Word Doc. You're absolutely right. But something about being able to see the pictures and the formatting helps me focus more than if it was simply a Word Doc. Pick your poison, right?
Alright, rant over.
Constraints of Review
I am using the prefabbed decks that come with the box to see how they handle solo play. I do not have the option to do group play by and large, so please take everything you read here with the knowledge that I have no idea how it relates to group play and probably won't for months. When I do get to do group play I'll let you know what I think then. Because I will be playing with everything out of the box, as-is, I will be doing the whole thing on Basic difficulty. I'll go through the box again on Solo Expert and will write up something for that, then.
What is This?
This is the first major expansion for Marvel Champions the Living Card Game. It includes five villains (Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola, and Red Skull) and arranges them in a campaign format. Fight the villains in order, upgrading your deck with campaign cards. It's a pretty simple set up, but simple can be very good. We'll see.
Crossbones
We're finally at the main event, the man himself: Crossbones! What a delightful pain in the ass I found him! Crossbones specializes in weapon attachments, which bring him passive bonuses and other abilities that turn him into a constant threat if you aren't discarding the appropriate resources. Crossbones has a side deck that brings out additional weapons with each advance made in his scheme. Respect these weapons and prioritize them, otherwise you'll end up like me, facing a monstrosity of a villain who will just chew you up and spit you out like you were bad breakfast. His second character stage in particular is nasty, allowing him to pull out a machine gun and deal just loads and loads of damage. I found that when he went to second stage I had to pick and choose my fights very carefully, as he could one hit either Spider-Woman or Hawkeye with ease. Fortunately, Crossbones has a glaw jaw, with the lowest hp for any villain so far. So it's possible to nova him as well, you just have to be smart about it.
I had a very hard time with Spider-Woman, losing three times in a row before I got the trick and finally won. Spider-Woman doesn't have a whole lot of damage mitigation in her deck and no interrupts, which means that I had very little to actually protect me. That being said, her Pheromones card (Stun and Confuse!) let me switch back pretty often without taking a lot of threat. That being said, I was too conservative on switching back: it's a three stage scheme, so it's not like you can't retreat a bit if you need to.
With Hawkeye, however, I won on the first game. That may be because I played him after Spider-Woman and got wise to the tricks that Crossbones has? I don't know? What I do know is that it's good to have Allies (read: chump blockers) to deal with Crossbone's evil ways. You have to be able to ride out the bursts of stupid amounts of damage to deal with Crossbones, which Hawkeye's deck is able to do very well.
Conclusion
I know the community has been talking about the lack of villains for a long time. It's been warranted. But if Crossbones is any indication of the quality of this box I think I can safely say the wait has been worth it. Crossbones was a lot of fun to play against, with some really interesting spikes and weaknesses that made fighting him a really entertaining prospect. And that's after five games, in a row. They were short. Intense. Powerful. But man, I liked fighting him.
I'm really excited for the rest of the box.
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