The Marvel we all now know and love was driven by Stan Lee, most famously, in the 1960s. Its popularity is almost without equal in the comic book landscape with DC being its only major competitor. That being said, Marvel still enjoys an almost 40% share of the comic book market. The success of the comic books and, latterly, the success of the films have brought hordes of fans to the franchise. It is only fitting that that they decided to branch out into Marvel Board Games for that little bit extra merchandising revenue. In honour of the six infinity stones, we thought it best to discuss six board games. They are not necessarily the best in terms of sales or popularity because we tried to produce a somewhat varied and interesting list.
Table of Contents
- Reality: Hail Hydra
- Power: Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War
- Soul: Marvel Champions – The Card Game
- Space: Marvel Villainous
- Time: 5-Minute Marvel
- Mind: Marvel United
- Marvel Board Games: Snapped or Saved?
Reality: Hail Hydra
We wanted to start this list with a game we are almost certain you will not have heard about. In the comics, Hydra is a terrorist organisation that grows within other established governmental agencies. Its infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D is one of its most significant and terrifying achievements. The point in Hydra is that you never know who is on your side or not.
The board game follows a very similar theme. All the players work together as heroes to battle the various villainous invasions of New York. Some players are Hydra operatives who have infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D, they are known to each other, but not to the good team. Each round the villain gets progressively stronger; they can be defeated by the players who will place, face down, cards which either have a positive or negative number on them. The total is added together and if it is higher than the villain’s health, they are defeated.
Hydra agents, of course, will be trying to feed negative cards into the pile and so you need to pay close attention as to who is playing strangely. In Addition, each player has a unique ability that can be used once per game. Examples of powers are: doing damage to the villain, damage to the city, and looking at other player’s hand.
An underrated game to be sure, but incredibly cheap, under £10, so certainly worth a look at. It certainly bucks the trend of other Marvel board games.
Power: Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War
Thanos Rising was released in 2018, right around the cinema hype of the Phase three of the Marvel Cinematic universe. This is a purely co-operative game. It is all about the players versus Thanos, rather than eachother. There is only one way to win, but many ways to lose – all focused on the team succession or failing together. To win, you must take down Thanos before he achieves any of this objectives – rather straightforward right? Losing, however, can be done in the following ways:
- Thanos gets all six infinity stones.
- A hero team has all heroes defeated – for example, if all the Guardians of the Galaxy were defeated, the forces of good have now lost major contributors in the battle against evil.
- Thanos defeats 10 heroes – there just are not enough heroes to fight him any longer.
Each round players will deploy to one of three sectors of space. Sectors may have villains creating mayhem, items/actions that will make your heroes stronger, or a hero on the brink of defeat that needs saving.
Thanos has the chance to gain infinity stones through a series of dice rolls. When he acquires one of the stones he can throw increasingly more difficult obstacles at the heroes.
The thrill and hype around Infinity War has somewhat died down as we now go into phase 5 in February 2023, but it is still a worthwhile game.
Soul: Marvel Champions – The Card Game
Marvel Champions takes all of your favourite Marvel characters, both good and evil, and puts them into a collectible deck building type theme. What is best about this game is that all decks are playable right out of the box; with many different ways to play each core deck. What we mean by this is that in most trading card games there is an “obligation” to buy booster packs in order to get that one extra card that will really make your deck/archetype really shine. With Marvel champions you do not need to have that financial obligation to keep buying and buying, the starter decks work just fine by themselves.
The game has you playing as real superheroes, by this we mean you have an identity card, such as Peter Parker, and obligations, such as Eviction Notice. Like real heroes you have to juggle your alter ego and life outside of being superhuman. You will play with a hero deck against a villain, like Rhino, that has health points and various action cards. Defeat your nemesis to save the city!
Space: Marvel Villainous
Marvel Villainous takes Disney’s hugely successful board games partnership with Ravensburger and throws a Marvel spin to it. We have spent too much time playing the hero in this list. There is something satisfying about being the bad guy and the Villainous series does it ever so well. The format is not too dissimilar from the original. You move your villain around their independent board gaining currency, vanquishing heroes, and using fate cards to create obstacles for your opponents.
Villains in this edition include:
- Hela
- Thanos
- Killmonger
- Ultron
- Taskmaster
The beauty of Villainous is that all villains have different aims to win and all have individual decks which suit and, in the case of fate decks, hinder them. It is the bespoke feeling of each Villain that makes the game so loved and unique. It is more of the same from the series and we are here for it!
Time: 5-Minute Marvel
Super simple and super quick, 5-minute Marvel is a great representative for the Time Stone. It comes as the Marvel licensed edition of the hugely success five-minute dungeon. Players pick one of ten heroes each with unique skills and abilities.
Players fight through a dungeon crawler-like map fighting one villain at a time. They have five minutes to defeat each villain who get progressively harder until they reach that guy again – yes its Thanos. Villains are defeated by matching symbols from the players held cards to symbols on the villain, a chaotic game of snap.
Its simplicity and fast pace make it a great game for younger children to play, who do not necessarily have the attention span for longer games.
Mind: Marvel United
In a similar vein to Thanos Rising, Marvel United focuses on the co-operative experience to defeat the villain. The difference here though is that there are a variety of different villains (28!) all with different heinous plans.
You will pick one villain to play against who has their own deck, in the same way, you pick one of 57 heroes with their unique cards. Each villain and hero has its own miniature, it is nice to see the level of detail and care given to this game.
The Villain starts with different amounts of health scaling to a 1, 2, 3, or 4 player experience. Heroes must defeat henchmen, rescue civilians, and defend against threats to scupper the villain’s plans. The game has a cartoonish theme which many would think is more suited to younger audiences, but there is no reason for adults not to enjoy it too. Use strategy and tactics to turn the tide of battle!
Marvel Board Games: Snapped or Saved?
The Marvel Board Games on this list share a very common theme. They are linked very closely to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To be honest, we cannot blame them. Marvel is one of the most successful franchises in the whole of human history, so why not merchandise it? Most of the games were published 2018 and onwards, this is around the time Marvel were promoting Infinity war. The benefit that you get of this is that the games are modern and very polished. Marvel Villainous, for example, learnt from the original Disney’s Villainous and its three expansions.
