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
Wonder Man swings into Marvel Champions with one of the most unique deck-building mechanics. His ability to include Energy-resource events from every aspect enables an incredible range of possibilities, giving him immense replayability and allowing players to experiment with deck archetypes that simply would not be possible with any other hero. Wonder Man also arrives with what may be the most interesting deck-building card ever released for a hero: Cameo. This single card dramatically expands the deck-building options for all heroes.
Wonder Man’s Unique Gameplan
Wonder Man revolves around printed Energy resources, as they interact with every part of his kit. He begins the game with Ionic Physiology, a permanent upgrade that grows stronger for each event you play with a printed Energy resource. For every event tucked under Ionic Physiology, Wonder Man gains +1 ATK, up to a maximum of +3. This alone can push him to a 4-attack stat, the highest attack stat ever seen in a hero kit. This comes with one major drawback: all the cards beneath Ionic Physiology are discarded whenever Wonder Man makes a basic attack. Fortunately, there are several ways around this limitation. Unified Strike, for instance, allows you to exhaust your hero to add their matching stats to an ally's activation. As Wonder Man is not directly using his attack stat, the cards beneath Ionic Physiology are not discarded, allowing him to maintain his boosted ATK while still generating value. Wonder Man can abuse many interactions like this, using effects that benefit from his high stats without requiring him to make a basic attack. Learning how to maximise these interactions is key to getting the most out of the character.
The Rest of Wonder Man’s Hero Kit:
The rest of Wonder Man's kit revolves around Energy resources, enabling him to build up Ionic Physiology. Active Altruism and Ionic Blast are both cheap Energy-resource events that thwart and attack respectively. They can also be overpaid to increase the strength of their effects. This is a useful mechanic, as it means Wonder Man is almost never left
with dead cards in hand. Even if you cannot pay for the normal costs of a combination of cards, you can instead invest additional resources into one of these events to increase its potency. However, this does come with one glaring downside: it further reinforces Wonder Man's complete reliance on Energy resources, as only Energy resources can be used to overpay these cards. You could argue that, because four of Wonder Man's five upgrades and supports focus solely on providing Energy resources, he has some flexibility when it comes to the other resource types included in his deck. In practice, however, I have not found this to be realistic, as you still need a constant stream of Energy events to power up Ionic Physiology. Wonder Man's other notable cards are his upgrade What Are You? and Energy Siphon, both of which add a unique flavour to his gameplay. Energy Siphon is the highest-value resource card ever printed, generating up to four resources if you are willing to take three damage for the resources not printed on the card. This can give Wonder Man an incredible early game if he opens with either of these cards. Meanwhile, What Are You? prevents Wonder Man from being defeated and allows you to tuck three Energy events from your discard pile beneath Ionic Physiology. This provides both a significant survivability boost and a powerful way to reset Ionic Physiology, thus making it one of the most valuable cards in his kit. Few heroes have access to an effect quite like this.
Wonder Man’s aspect cards
Wonder Man comes with a Justice deck, but unlike most hero packs, his pre-built deck does not focus primarily on a single aspect. Instead, it leans into his ability to use Energy-resource events from every aspect, providing players with a wide range of new cards across the aspects. Because of this unique design, I will highlight one standout card from each aspect included in the pack. From Aggression, the reprint of Bombs Away is a useful card that synergises particularly well with Wonder Man, as he is always Aerial and therefore always meets its play condition. The card requires you to exhaust an Aerial character to deal 3 damage to both the villain and every minion in play. While niche, it can provide value in the right situations and, thanks to its Energy resource, fits naturally into Wonder Man's gameplan. In Justice, any of the four new allies are strong additions, but Hawkeye stands out. He can potentially deal 8 damage to minions through 4 arrow counters that each do 2 damage to a minion after an ally thwarts. He can also provide 2 thwart and still block a villain attack. He pairs well with his own ability, as his response triggers whenever an ally thwarts, meaning he can activate his arrows through his own thwart activation. As a result, decks using Hawkeye do not need a large ally count to get value from his ability.
For Protection, Disarming Defence is an excellent addition to perfect-defence decks. If you defend against a villain attack without taking damage, it allows you to discard a villain attachment while also granting +2 DEF for that defence. Considering most villain attachments require three or more resources to remove, this card can easily pay for itself while providing defensive value. Once again, its Energy resource makes it particularly appealing for Wonder Man. Finally, in Leadership, we have the card everyone wants to talk about: Cameo. Cameo allows you to choose an ally from another hero's identity-specific deck, something that was previously impossible in Marvel Champions. The downside is that you must remove two cards from your starting hand to shuffle the chosen ally into your deck, which can slow your early game. However, the possibilities it enables are almost endless. Strong targets include Ms. Marvel from Nova's hero pack, who can recur events back to your hand, and Amadeus Cho from Hercules' pack, who can provide card draw every turn no matter your hero. Overall, Cameo is a fascinating design from Fantasy Flight and, for many veteran players, is likely the number one reason to pick up this hero pack.
In conclusion
Wonder Man is an interesting new hero who, at first glance, appears to offer almost limitless deck-building opportunities thanks to his ability to include any Energy-resource event. However, I found that his complete reliance on Energy events ultimately funnels him towards a relatively small number of archetypes built around cheap Energy-resource cards. This is not to say that he is uninteresting, but rather that I do not think he provides quite as much replayability as I initially expected. Fortunately, this is offset by the strength of the aspect cards included in the pack. Wonder Man comes with oneof the most interesting collections of aspect cards offered in a hero pack. His pack includes valuable tools for a wide range of playstyles across every aspect. I also find myself continually coming back to Cameo, a card that has inspired me to build decks I never would have considered otherwise. Overall, I would recommend Wonder Man primarily to veteran players. Those with larger collections will have access to the broadest range of Energy-resource events, allowing them to experiment more with his deck construction. Likewise, experienced players are best positioned to take full advantage of Cameo's unique deck-building possibilities by pairing it with allies from across the game's roster of heroes.
