On the Case
Presenting a First Look at the Jessica Jones Hero Pack for Marvel Champions: The Card Game
“…gotcha.” – Jessica Jones
Briefly known as the costumed hero Jewel, Jessica Jones’ life came to a screeching halt when the supervillain Purple Man kept her as a psychically-controlled prisoner for eight months. Once she managed to escape this abuse, she built Alias Investigations to help those with nowhere else to go. Now, she and her husband Luke Cage are splitting their time between fighting the good fight and raising their baby girl, Danielle “Dani” Cage.
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the Jessica Jones Hero Pack for Marvel Champions: The Card Game!
As a stalwart member of the Defenders, Jessica Jones enters the fray with this expansion pack, which introduces her as a new playable hero alongside her sixteen signature cards. Paired with a pre-built Justice deck to aid her in thwarting the villains’ schemes, you’ll be able to wield Jessica Jones’s impressive detective skills (and equally impressive strength) from the moment you open the box. With the unique ability to defeat the villain outright purely through thwarting, Jessica Jones brings a totally new playstyle to the game.
Gathering Evidence
As a superpowered private eye, Jessica Jones takes a different approach to hero work compared to the rest of her peers.
This “different approach” is already apparent when you look at her alter-ego (Jessica Jones, 1B) form, which puts her signature, permanent support card Alias Investigations (Jessica Jones, 2) into play. This support gives Jessica access to an all-new way to defeat the villain outright, without necessarily having to attack them, and most of her kit revolves around this card. In her hero form (Jessica Jones, 1A), she can place an evidence counter on Alias Investigations each time she uses a basic power. Since there’s no limit to the number of times you can do this per phase, being able to ready your identity with cards like Breakthrough (Jessica Jones, 5) becomes especially important to Jessica’s game plan.
Of course, Jessica’s basic powers aren’t the only way she can add counters to Alias Investigations. For starters, the card itself can gain some counters once per round when you defeat a side scheme (including a player side scheme), giving you even more incentive to take them out. Thanks to her alter-ego ability, Incognito Mode, Jess can flip down to make use of cards like Snooping Around (Jessica Jones, 6) without losing any momentum. If Snooping Around reveals a minion or side scheme, simply use Incognito Mode to flip back to hero form and take that minion/scheme out, relying on Circumstantial Evidence (Jessica Jones, 10) or a Stakeout (Jessica Jones, 14) to get even more counters on Alias Investigations. If the minion is a little too durable to take out in one turn, have Jess don her signature Leather Jacket (Jessica Jones, 11) to help her get through the villain phase and add yet another counter to Alias Investigations (while also looking quite stylish).
Even with so many ways of adding evidence counters to Alias Investigations, sometimes you may not be able to build them up fast enough for your liking. When that happens, you can always spend some of those counters to deal with the villain’s forces the old-fashioned way, such as with the card “Big Mistake” (Jessica Jones, 4) letting you punch the villain really hard or Jess’s 4K Digital Camcorder (Jessica Jones, 9) letting you discard a pesky minion from play. If things get especially dicey, you can have Jess Call in Favors (Jessica Jones, 8) to grab an ally from her deck at a discount, such as her husband and crimefighting partner, Luke Cage (Jessica Jones, 3).
Jessica Jones already has plenty of potent tools in her signature kit, but that doesn’t mean she won’t appreciate extra assistance from elsewhere. That’s where the rest of her pre-built Justice deck comes in! Her best friend Captain Marvel (Jessica Jones, 15) can potentially remove threat and confuse an enemy just by entering play, while Squirrel Girl (Jessica Jones, 17) can call on her little helpers to clear the last threat off multiple schemes. By hosting a Strategy Session (Jessica Jones, 19), Jess can let any player search their deck for a player side scheme or remove some threat off of one that’s already in play, such as Run Them to Ground (Jessica Jones, 20) or her own personal, repeatable player side scheme, Piecing It All Together (Jessica Jones, 7); and don’t forget that defeating a player side scheme still counts for adding evidence counters to Alias Investigations!
On the topic of player side schemes, Defend Our City (Jessica Jones, 29) comes with the new “prerequisite” keyword, which dictates either the form your identity must be in or a trait your identity must have to be able to play it. In Defend Our City’s case, you can only play it if your hero has the Defender trait, and when it’s defeated, each player can search their deck for a Team-Up card and gain a discount on it for the rest of the phase. Naturally, this applies to Jess’s own Team-Up card, Unbreakable Bond (Jessica Jones, 27), which can both heal her and/or Luke Cage and keep her thwarting momentum going. Speaking of momentum, the new Joys of Life (Jessica Jones, 26) event can ready just about anyone at the table, thanks to the alliance keyword allowing any player to pay its character-exhaustion costs. Since Jessica can freely flip to alter-ego once per round, she can pay for or benefit from either option, and even if you choose to exhaust her, a Grapnel Launcher (Jessica Jones, 23) can let her still contribute some thwarting. Finally, though Jess can end pretty much any player phase in hero form if you want her to, whenever you do enter the villain phase in alter-ego form, you can still punish the bad guys for scheming with some skilled Entrapment (Jessica Jones, 24). With all these tools in her belt combined with her own inherent skills, no villain’s scheme will come to fruition while Jessica Jones is on the case!
Snooping Around
With her versatile access to alter-ego form and Alias Investigations allowing her to take down the villain in a new and unique way, Jessica Jones is a potent hero and a powerful addition to any team. Look forward to taking on Kingpin and his criminal empire as Jessica Jones when the Jessica Jones Hero Pack arrives this August!
You can pre-order your own copy of the Jessica Jones Hero Pack (MC61en) at your local retailer or online through our webstore today!
Written by Peter Schumacher
