Rules Reference Debrief

Greetings!

The Marvel Champions design team is proud to present you with version 1.4 of our online Rules Reference. Over 8 weeks of work was dedicated to this update, and the document grew by a total of 18 pages! That’s a lot of additional content, but players shouldn’t feel obligated to read the entire document because the vast majority of these updates simply expand previous entries to add clarity.

So what is new in version 1.4?

Defintion of "You"

Well, the number one issue we wanted to address was easily the definition of the word “you” and what it means in Marvel Champions. It was easy for us to understand how it worked because we designed the game, but it turns out there was a lot of grey area for everyone who doesn’t live in our heads. The frustration that comes with that is not part of the experience we want for you. (See what I did there?) So, we have greatly expanded the entry for “you” and done our best to explain what it means in nearly every situation we could imagine. As a quick rule of thumb, the word “you” on upgrades, events, resources, and encounter cards refer to your identity, whereas the word “you” on allies and supports does not. Hopefully, this will help clear up all that grey area.

Defend, Defense

Next on our list was to reconsider our previous revision to “Defend, Defense.” Any update we make to our rules is intended to make playing the game easier and more enjoyable. So, when we got feedback from players that they were unhappy with our previous update to the defense rule, it made sense for us to reevaluate our decision. In this case, we felt that our previous effort to streamline defense was an overcorrection that still didn’t satisfy. As a result, we took a fresh look at the defense rules and figured out how we could fix things by simply limiting the number of people who can declare defenders and play defense cards to one per attack. This brings the defense rules back to their original intended function in the game, and that’s something we’re very happy about.

Here is an example to help illustrate how defense cards work:
Rhino (Core Set 95) attacks Iron Man (Core Set 29), but Iron Man chooses not to defend. The opportunity to make a basic defense passes to Ms. Marvel, and she also chooses not to defend. The attack is currently undefended with Iron Man as the target. Rhino’s boost card is turned faceup and it has 3 boost icons. At this time, Ms. Marvel plays Preemptive Strike (Ms. Marvel 14) to cancel the boost icons and deal 3 damage to Rhino. Because Preemptive Strike is a defense card, Ms. Marvel becomes the defender. She becomes the target of the attack and it is no longer undefended. However, she does not reduce the damage by her DEF value because she did not exhaust her character to make a basic defense. As a result, Rhino would deal his full 3 ATK damage to her, but Ms. Marvel plays Wiggle Room (Ms. Marvel 5) to prevent that damage and draw a card. She can do this because the defender can play as many defense cards as they choose while no other player can. After the attack resolves, Ms. Marvel has defended the attack and can play Counter-Punch (Core Set 77) to deal damage to Rhino equal to her ATK.
One important thing to keep in mind with defense cards is that they still can only be played when their triggering condition is met, whether that is during an attack or not. For example, Shield Block (Captain America 5) can be played any time you would take damage, whether it comes from an attack or not. But Shield Block cannot be played to make Captain America the target of an attack against another hero because the card's triggering condition of Captain America taking damage is not met.

Modes of Play

The last major update we want to highlight is the one we are most excited to talk about, and that is the overhaul to our “Modes of Play” section. Since Marvel Champions was launched in November of 2019, one of its biggest selling points has been its modular design. Players have repeatedly commented on how nice it is to customize their experience by swapping out encounter sets and playing at varying difficulties. As wonderful as that has been to hear, we wanted to take it a step further by breaking down the barriers between the different modes of play. We updated this section to allow players to combine their favorite elements from each mode in order to play the game the way that they like best.

For example, if you’re looking for a shorter game with an epic challenge, you can now play a combination of Heroic Mode and Skirmish Mode (previously called Rookie Mode) where you deal players an extra encounter card each round but you only need to defeat one villain stage. You can also play an expert level campaign without including the Expert encounter set. It’s up to you! We will continue to develop and play-test primarily for Standard Mode, but we want you to know that the “right” way for you to play Marvel Champions is whichever way you enjoy best.

We hope that you will continue to enjoy Marvel Champions: The Card Game for many years to come!

Excelsior!
Caleb Grace

To download the updated Rules Reference, visit Rules in the Support Section here.