The dice are split into 3 colours, each representing a different aspect of the X-Men – red dice symbolise fighting skill, blue dice intelligence and teamwork and yellow dice their mutant powers. They all have their own ratio of symbols which will help you determine what characters are best for which missions – for example Wolverine is mostly red (fighting) dice with some blue (teamwork) dice, whereas Phoenix is mostly yellow (mutant power) with some blue dice. Marvel Champions: The Card Game takes the very well-worn formula of players coming together as a band of heroes to fight a classic villain, and mixes things up with its clever approach to card gameplay and challenge. A living card game from the publisher behind Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Marvel Champions manages to provide a unique experience that rewards and punishes its players in equal measure. If you’ve read the X-Men comics, you’ll know that a lot of the time it’s more like reading a telenovela than a superhero adventure. The X-Men are constantly teaming up and falling out, finding love and betraying friends. This is reflected in the game, too. Final Score: 3.5 Stars – A good evolution of the Elder Sign system that creates a fun cooperative experience with solid replay value.

Whenever you start playing X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, you’ll find yourself pitted against an undeniable threat. The X-Men may learn of a secret lab using mutants as test suspects, Jean Grey may be consumed by the power of the Phoneix Force, or Magneto may declare his intentions to reshape the world under the leadership of the Brotherhood of Mutants. With Marvel being more popular than it’s ever been before, now’s the time to lure your friends into playing board games with you via the appeal of their favourite MCU characters. How could they resist a board game with Captain America and The Hulk, that also happens to be really great, too? To give you some ideas to indulge your love of the comics, films and TV shows, here’s our list of the best Marvel board games.Magneto and the Brotherhood are planning something big, and the Professor has gathered a small team to find out what it is and shut it down. But the world doesn't stop just because the Brotherhood are on the move, and crimes are still committed, new mutants are appearing, Blob is causing havoc downtown and some of the X-Men just can't get along. But if you and the rest of the X-Men can get it together, and work as a team, you might just be able to keep the world from going under. Are you in? Then let's go. Our chosen six X-Men waiting to deploy in X-Men Mutant Insurrection. There are a lot of heroes and a host of other mutants who can be recruited as supporting characters. Most of the powers are very similar, and mainly offer rerolls for certain dice colours and symbols. There are exceptions, of course. Shadowcat’s threat-specific phasing ability is notably unique. And Angel’s ability to move success markers from one objective to another is one of the best in the game. The X-Men are known for their unique abilities, and a bit more variety in this area would really help the replayability. Final Thoughts Having to consider if a mission is going to go south because Wolverine and Cyclops hate each other is a pretty perfect marriage of mechanics and flavour.

What Perdue is alluding to here is that players can work together by swapping their assist cards with one another for the round. This means that Wolverine might lend Cyclops a couple of dice he might not normally have access to that gives him the bonus of collecting training tokens after the dice are rolled. Of course, the X-Men have plenty of tools that they could call upon. New mutants can be found around the world, such asYet Perdue’s throughline for this game comes from somewhere a little further out, “my big influences for games like Mutant Insurrection – and I guess really for most games – are tabletop RPGs and Cosmic Encounter,” says Perdue, “RPGs with rulesets that varied a lot depending on your character type, like Shadowrun, really cemented for me how powerful mechanics can be in helping to make a theme or setting engaging, and I love the freeform storytelling.” As members of the Avengers, the players will need to work together to travel across the galaxy in an effort to foil Thanos’ plans, gradually neutralising his various threats using the heroes and equipment they have at their disposal. From the formidable Captain Marvel to the smashingly good Hulk-Buster suit, the players will have to gather the cards they need to stand a chance against Thanos and his forces. Due to the popularity of the original game, there are many, many different versions of Love Letter out there, including one featuring Batman characters from Marvel’s rival comics company: DC. Most of these are simple re-themes that keep most of the gameplay mechanics from the base game, but with one or two extra elements like characters from a known property or roles with abilities unique to that version. Your missions lie at the heart of every game of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection. You’ll save humans from imminent danger, travel across the globe to advance the story, or come face-to-face with a villainous mutant intent on rampant destruction. No matter where your mission takes you, every mission offers a series of objectives that you’ll need to complete, using the symbols that you roll on your dice. Fantasy Flight's head of miniatures, John Shaffer, was on hand during the In-Flight Report to show off the company's upcoming range of minis. Star Wars X-Wing and Star Wars: Legion are getting a bunch of new minis including iconic ships and characters from across the Star Wars saga. Those minis are poised to release in November 2020 for both Legion and X-Wing.

The key thing here when attempting missions is that if Wolverine were to complete one or two objectives (lines) on a mission, but not the last one, and there were no other hero there, then that mission would immediately trigger a fail condition. If, however, Phoenix (or any other character) were also on that mission, then they could also attempt it – and they would only need to complete any objectives Wolverine had left behind. In many, many cases, a mission simply cannot be completed by one character in one go – so teamwork becomes absolutely necessary. X-Men: Mutant Insurrection is apparently based on an older FFG game in the Elder Sign series, and in both games, the players lead a team of characters against an increasingly challenging series of somewhat randomised encounters, in the context of a wider plot. Where Elder Sign was based on the somewhat overused Lovecraft universe, X-Men: Mutant Insurrection is obviously based on the comic book world that shares the same name. Notably then, fans of the X-Men (comics in particular) will see characters and artwork that they are very familiar with, and this is one of those occasions where I think the thematic universe actually enhances the appeal. As the game progresses, other allied mutants can also appear, offering special abilities like Sage, who lets you reroll two blue dice, ignore Magneto symbols. The X-Men can also build bonds with each other, which offer unique benefits when you deploy on missions with your bonded partner. Love for example lets you add an extra dice of any color to your pool. But bonds can be broken, and love can turn into regret, which takes away a dice from your pool. X-Men Mutant Insurrection games always work towards the final showdown with famous villains from the X-Men universe. Once you’ve rolled your dice, you have two chances to re-roll your dice in search of the results that you need to complete your objectives. You can reroll any number of dice freely, but beware the villainy result! Some missions, such as a fight with the ground-shaking Avalanche, have a deadly villainy effect—if you’re fighting Avalanche, you’ll suffer two damage to reroll dice showing the villainy result.

Fight for the Future

This is due to not only hero powers, but that there are three different types of dice. I appreciated that the dice were broken up into 3 different types, each of which favors one of the game’s icons. This prompted decisions where we would discuss which X-man to send where based on how their dice were distributed. Throughout the game, your hero can also acquire bonds with other heroes (or have them broken for detrimental effects) that give you bonuses for being at the same mission. So, the decision of which mission to attempt and who to send there wasn’t always that obvious. Players can choose from 16 different X-Men to control, from the franchise’s biggest stars such as Wolverine and Rogue down to deeper cuts like Armor and Magik. Because the game is fully cooperative, you’re welcome to play more than one character if you have fewer than six people at your table; the game plays at its best with four or more characters, since you’ll get more complexity in choosing your team-ups and get to see more missions. A bond like Love can be a powerful boon—but if it gives way to Regret, it could tear the team apart from the inside. Which is what the artwork does. It sheds the gritty and grimy nihilism introduced in those Christopher Nolan directed Batman movies that’s permeated all versions of what superheroes have to be ‘about’. Between missions, and during the main phase of the game, players can also decide whether to retreat to Professor Xavier’s office for a pep talk, or to the Danger Room. Both of these will help your character heal and provide you with training tokens or other bonuses. Like any game like this, being out of the action is useful, but only while you’ve got cover.

That idea is at the heart of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, a fully cooperative dice-rolling game where up to six players battle against a series of classic villains. Designers Richard Launius and Brandon Perdue understand that while the X-Men may be individually powerful, their success and failure is always based on how they function as a team. Players can choose to play either standalone battles against one another or in an overarching campaign that’s made up of multiple sessions. Choosing the campaign will allow players to improve their heroes and villains’ abilities between battles, imbuing the whole experience with a sense of progression. For a dungeon-crawler with great Marvel characters and fun gameplay mechanics, you could do worse than Marvel: Strike Teams. So, where are we meant to peg these particular X-men and villains? Nowhere particularly, suggests Perdue, “ Mutant Insurrection goes for classic or iconic looks to the characters so that it’s not attached to a specific version of the X-Men.”

We’re X-Men. We know the risks. I have little fear for our friends… They’ve made their decision. And until we see them again, I will keep them in my prayers. But I fear more for those who would stand against them.” There’s a fair bit of replayability to X-Men: Mutant Insurrection thanks to its different plots and character combinations, and it’s a game that’s absolutely designed for expansion. Providing more playable characters, threats, plots and allied mutants could give the game the longevity of Marvel Champions, providing superhero fans with a new way to share their love for their favourite heroes and storylines. The overall goal is to advance the plot cards. These will be mission-specific, but usually involve beating certain missions or villains throughout the game. Players can even look forward to a few mini-narratives interspersed throughout the missions. As players work their way through the plot cards, they’ll eventually end at a Final Showdown. This is a multi-turn battle with 2-4 mission cards that require the heroes to defeat them all or die trying. You can send up to 3 heroes to a location. Game Experience: This influence can be seen throughout the whole of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection, with each game’s flavour coming from the heroes you play as and the villain scenario you’re up against. PROTECTING THOSE WHO FEAR THEM A twist on the beloved deduction card game that’s more than just a different theme As it is in the original Love letter game, each card in Infinity Gauntlet has a different power.