What is Marvel Champions?
Marvel Champions is both a single-player and co-operative card game where you attempt to pilot a Marvel hero to success against a range of different villains from across the Marvel Universe. Your main aim is to defeat the villain through thwarting their schemes, attacking minions, and finally attacking the main villain themselves. However, you can fail in your goal if the villain schemes too many times and completes their main scheme, or if they attack you and your hero is defeated.
This is where the deck-building aspect of Marvel Champions is critical! Marvel Champions uses a system where you pay for the cards in your hand with the other cards in your hand. You must tailor each deck to each specific villain to enable you to win. Decks can be built using four different aspects: Justice, which focuses on preventing the villain from scheming; Aggression, which relies on high-damage attack events to take out the villain quickly; Protection, which focuses on reducing the villain’s damage or disrupting the flow of the villain’s turn; and finally Leadership, which focuses on calling characters from across the Marvel Universe, also known as Allies, to assist you in your fight against the villain.
Introduction
Hercules is one of the newest characters released in Marvel Champions as part of the Civil War wave. He comes with a strong pre-con Leadership deck, but more importantly, he introduces a unique mechanic within his hero kit: Labours. Hercules, just like in the myths, must take on extra challenges beyond what the villain has to throw at him. However, he will be suitably rewarded for his troubles through the Gifts he receives in return.
Hercules Hero Kit
Hercules’ kit completely revolves around his Alter-Ego action, which brings one of his three Labours into play. This can be “Defeat the Hydra”, where Hercules must defeat an extra tough minion; “Embody Pathos”, which requires him to remove an additional side scheme with a considerable amount of threat; or “Protect Humanity”, where Hercules must defend to prevent the villain from attacking his allies. In return for completing these trials, Hercules is rewarded with one of three different Gift cards. Each Gift allows him to immediately draw four cards upon completion, while also providing a small permanent buff, such as increased hit points.
His Gifts become truly amazing once you look at the rest of his hero cards, as almost all of them interact with Gifts in some way. Gift of Battle, Son of Zeus, and Wisdom of Athena all scale with the number of Gifts you have in play. This means that once Hercules has all three Gifts on the table, he can play multiple events every turn for free. Alongside this, Olympus generates a number of resources based on the number of Gifts you have in play, meaning that despite Hercules’ four-card hand size, he can still achieve a massive amount every turn.
Hercules’ other hero cards are mostly upgrades that either scale with the number of Gifts he has in play or provide small increases to his base stats. These should generally be played early to help him overcome his Labours and accelerate his overall game plan.
Hercules Aspect cards
Hercules comes in the Leadership aspect, and the focus of this pre-constructed deck revolves around high-cost allies that Hercules can find ways to play for free. There are a couple of reprints, with Call for Backup, Limitless Stamina, and Quincarrier being the three biggest examples. However, all of these are some of the best cards in the game, so I personally welcome these reprints, especially for newer players with a smaller collection.
Hercules’ standout new cards are Recruitment Drive and Avenge Me! Recruitment Drive is an upgrade that can only be played in Alter-Ego form. Once in play, it allows you, at any point during your turn, to play an ally from your hand for free. This is exceptionally strong with Hercules’ high-cost allies, such as Namora, who costs four resources and would normally consume most of your available resources for the turn. With Recruitment Drive on the table, you can instead play her for free and still have all your resources available to develop the rest of your board.
Avenge Me! is another economy-focused card that allows you to draw two cards when the ally it is attached to is defeated. Drawing cards is arguably the strongest effect in the game, and getting allies defeated is a very easy objective to accomplish, as they naturally leave play over time while blocking attacks or using their abilities. While it does not have perfect synergy with the allies included in Hercules’ pre-constructed deck, in a slightly modified build this card becomes arguably one of the strongest Leadership cards released to date due to the incredible amount of card draw it can provide.
Hercules modular encounter set
Hercules comes with a new unique encounter set, All Versus All. It is easily one of the hardest encounter sets in the game and is something Hercules finds incredibly difficult to deal with if he does not already have his Gifts in play. The extra encounter card granted by the All Versus All side scheme is one of the worst effects you can face in solo, making it a side scheme that should be removed as quickly as possible. The problem is that both minions, Hecate and Kyknos, add additional threat to this side scheme whenever they activate. This can quickly result in the side scheme accumulating too much threat to remove efficiently. The situation then becomes even worse when the extra encounter cards begin to pile up, creating a snowball effect that can easily lead to a swift defeat.
As a result, I would only recommend including All Versus All” in your games if you are looking for a significant challenge. While it creates some very tense and memorable moments, it can quickly overwhelm even well-built decks if it is not dealt with immediately.
Conclusion
Hercules is a unique hero for Marvel Champions and, considering there are now 44 hero packs in the game, that is quite an achievement for Fantasy Flight. I would strongly recommend picking him up, both for Hercules himself and for the strong selection of aspect cards included in his pack. He is significantly better in multiplayer, however, as before he gets his Gifts into play he is arguably one of the weakest heroes in the game. As a result, he greatly benefits from having other players support him during the early stages of a scenario while he works towards completing his Labours. His accompanying encounter set is also potentially the hardest optional encounter set printed in a hero pack and should probably be avoided during your first few games with Hercules until you become familiar with his playstyle.
That said, All Versus All provides excellent replay value for those with larger collections who enjoy pushing powerful heroes to their limits. Overall, every part of the Hercules hero pack introduces a unique new element to Marvel Champions, from his Labours and Gifts to the challenging encounter set and powerful new Leadership cards. As a result, I would happily recommend it to both new and veteran players alike.
