Marvel United is a game I have heard about for quite a while. Multiple youtube board game content creators speak about it often. To be honest, I am very much not a fan of the Chibi style big head figures. That kept me from being interested. What changed you might be asking yourself. CMON the company that released it recently announced they will be doing a kickstarter for DC Superhero United. Same system but with Batman. I’m in.
In preparation for that I wanted to get the X-Men set. (When going to MoCon I tried and the stores in Illinois I went to didn’t have it, but one had the Avengers set. So I got it to play that weekend. Why isn’t this then a review of the Avengers base set you might be asking yourself. Because I don’t like the Avengers but love the X-men.)
I have several plays of Avengers and several of X-Men. Briefly, the gameplay has each player choosing a hero and gets a 12 card deck while the villain has his own 12 card Master Plan deck. There are six locations that the heroes move around based on the cards you play. On these locations you will perform heroic actions like saving civilians, beating up thugs, thwarting the villain threats, and ultimately beating the bad guy into submission.
This set comes with 6 heroes (Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, Storm, Jean Grey, and Professor X) and 4 villains (Magneto, Sabretooth, Mystique, and Juggernaut.) Interestingly two of the villains also come with a hero deck allowing you to play Magneto and Mystique on the good guy side. This fits with the lore as there have been times they were heroes. Although the same can be said of Juggernaut and Sabretooth as well. Actually any mutant has likely been on both sides of the hero/villain line at one time or another.
A great thing about the game is that there is such a wide variety of things they can do. It makes every hero and every villain feel different. And it is all cross compatible. So I can play a team with Hulk, Wolverine, and Batman (once the DC one comes out!) against Ultron.
The game is designed by Andrea Chiarvesio, Rugerfred Sedda, and Eric M. Lang. I am familiar with Lang and have enjoyed many of his games. A great thing about this one is that the base sets are usually in the $30 range and the expansion sets are more like $20. Now I wouldn’t go trying to get the full kickstarter X-men set, that will likely cost more like $600. I may have looked and thought about it. (There are 80 X-men characters about half of which are kickstarter exclusives.) It is a fairly quick game too and while it doesn’t say a time on the box it feels like 45 minutes is a good estimate. I confidently give this game an 8 star review. If you are looking for a game that has an easy point of entry, this fits that bill nicely.
Cthulhuville 