SoraRabbit Short Hop 001: Marvel Champions Ms Marvel

Welcome to a brand new corner of the SoraRabbit Hole! Sometimes things will come along— be they comic book issues, expansions for a game I like, or maybe a trailer for an upcoming movie or show— that I’ll want to talk about. This thing I want to talk about could be too sparse to fill a full post. I could put them in one of my State of the Fandom Addresses, but that would require four or five items to discuss. So what’s the answer? A SoraRabbit Short Hop of course! A Short Hop will be a quick look at something, a continuation of another post, something along those lines.

In this case, it’s a continuation of my post about Marvel Champions The Card Game. In that post I mentioned how there would be regular expansions released. The only expansion they had at my local game store when I visited this weekend was the Ms Marvel Hero Pack.

“Embiggen!” (Credit: Marvel, Fantasy Flight)

Since this is just a look at the expansion, I won’t get into the rules or concept behind the game. Go ahead and read my Marvel Champions post if you’d like to know what this game’s all about. I posed a few questions in there as to the way the expansions would work. Notably, the base set does not come with enough cards to build decks for all five characters. I suspected that the Hero Packs would come with the hero cards and not the aspect or basic gray cards. I am happy to say I was incorrect in that assumption. This expansion comes with the hero cards, basic cards, and aspect cards. It also has a few extra aspect cards to customize your decks with.

For those who are unfamiliar, Ms Marvel is a Marvel Comics super hero living in Brooklyn, New York. Her alter ego form is that of Kamala Khan, a teenage Pakistani American. She is an Inhuman, which is a genetically altered human/Kree hybrid. The Inhumans have a variety of powers, their altered DNA reacting differently for each person. The way it reacted with Kamala was to give her the power to alter the size and shape of her body. (Picture Mr Fantastic crossed with Giant Man.) Ms Marvel was, at one time, an Avenger. Now she is the leader of the Champions, a diverse group of young super heroes who include in their ranks Nova, Miles Morales, Vision’s daughter Viv, and Iron Heart among many others. She is also a huge fan girl, especially when it comes to Captain Marvel. She writes fanfic in her spare time.

Kamala and Ms Marvel. (Credit: Marvel, Fantasy Flight)

Looking at her hero card, she has very low stats, but there are cards in her deck that can alter those stats, which fits in with the theme of her character. She’s all potential and fulfilling that potential is the challenge of playing with this deck.

I played a single player game with this pack in preparation for this review. I’m sad to say I lost, but I’ll blame my unfamiliarity with the cards. She has an interesting milling mechanic and can regain cards from the discard pile to reuse as resources. She relies heavily upon her family (in alter ego form) and her sidekicks (in hero form). She has some fun cards, changing her size to avoid damage, counter attacking, and slapping the opponent down.

The Sam Alexander Nova. (Credit: Marvel, Fantasy Flight)

The additional cards that came with the set look to be very helpful, and I do plan to merge those into my custom decks when I start constructing them. I feel like Ms Marvel, as her deck is prebuilt, would work well with someone of the Aggressive aspect. (I plan to test that next time I play.)

All in all, this is a solid expansion that comes with a great new character for the game and some extra cards to boost either this deck or other decks. Next time I plan to get the Green Goblin Scenario Pack. I love the Goblin and it would be interesting to finally have a villain other than Rhino to battle. (We still haven’t graduated from Rhino. Sadness.) But anyway, if you’re a fan of the Marvel Champions Card Game and would like a new hero to play with, I highly recommend this set.

Thank you for reading my first installment of SoraRabbit Short Hop. There will likely be many more of these in the lull between my major posts. Let me know what you thought!