My love of Marvel comics has been well documented. I love so much about the characters and universe they exist in. When it comes to tabletop gaming, I’ve played just about everything I could get my hands on, looking for a game that immersed me in that universe. That said, it’s no surprise that I have dabbled in HeroClix off-and-on since its release in 2002. I’m familiar with the game enough so, that I was able to randomly go to a FLGS for their weekly Battle Royal, and come out victorious a year or two back. It’s a casually fun game. So, when WizKids announced Marvel Strike Teams, a Heroclix game that uses their “combat dial system” in a campaign based, story driven game, my interest was piqued.
I was able to get my hands on a copy of the base game AND the first expansion: Avengers Initiative. I played through the training scenario with my son, then a couple of stages with different friends. So let’s dive right in. You can go to the official WizKids page HERE to get exact game specs, number of pieces, etc.
Marvel Strike Teams
Publisher: WizKids
Designer: Andrew Parks
Theme:
The theme of Marvel Strike Teams is the ENTIRE MARVEL UNIVERSE. There is no better sandbox to play in. Travel to the corners of the cosmos with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We could go to the dungy, grimy alleys of New York’s criminal underbelly where the Defenders seek out justice. There are countless parallel worlds such as the Spider-Verse or the far future of 2099. Even the otherworldly kingdoms of Asgard and Atlantis are never far away. Which is why it’s slightly disappointing that the only settings we have in Strike Teams are Hydra bases and abandoned warehouses. I know the game is just newly launched, but according to WizKids’ own solictits page, there are no planned expansions for 2019. I hope this is an oversight, because the Hydra base and warehouses (that look extremely similar) will get stale pretty quickly. Please give me the Savage Land, the Skrull homeworld, or Wakanda.
Aside from the settings and environments, what makes the Marvel Universe unique is the characters within. At first glance, I was a little disappointed. All characters have the same type of movement ability. They all have a reaction ability that increases their defense when attacked. They all have either a melee or ranged attack… and within their accessible Action cards they have the other type of attack as well. Characters didn’t seem quite like characters, and more like a combination of attack and defense values. Upon further play, there are some nuances I noticed. Many of Iron Man’s abilities don’t have the “duration counter” cooldown effect, showing the constant energy supply of his armor. A few of Falcon’s abilities are movement based. Captain America’s ranged attack can hit multiple enemies as if his shield was bouncing off of foes. There is theme there that sets the characters apart, it’s just subtle. Considering what WizKids is capable of as displayed through the HeroClix character cards and abilities, it seems like they could have done more to make the characters feel unique.
Honestly, a lot of my complaints stem from the fact that there aren’t enough expansions to expand the scope of this game beyond S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers vs Hydra. Even with the first expansion, we get Loki and Ultron… but no new henchmen; just the 6 Hydra Agents in the base set. But seriously… flesh this game out. Give me X-Force, or give me death. (That’s a lie. I’ll continue living even if there is no X-Force expansion for Strike Teams)
Gameplay:
The gameplay is… misleading. Ok, hear me out. The game says “HeroClix” right on the front of the box. The back of the box does clarify that this isn’t compatible with traditional HeroClix. But I expected some sort of similarity; ESPECIALLY since the front of the box says “combat dial system”. There is absolutely no reason you would “clik” the character’s bases during gameplay. You only “clik” the dials after each stage when leveling up characters. The game could ultimately exist without any clicking character dials. And that’s disappointing.
Part of it might be my fault, but I expected this to be a campaign based version of HeroClix, with some optional role playing features. The only similarity between this and HeroClix is that both are tactical skirmish games with beautiful looking, fully painted miniatures. I was just expecting more ‘strategy’ and less ‘skirmish’.
So, one player controls the villainous mastermind, and all other players control the heroes. There are objectives for each stage of gameplay, with 3 stages making up a mission. The objective cards could be treated as an afterthought during gameplay. Yes, players can earn objective points according to these objective cards, but objective points can also be earned by defeating opposing characters. So you COULD just decide to try to defeat enough opposing characters to get objective points that way.
Also, each stage only lasts 4 rounds. This is barely enough time to make a single attempt at completing the objective. During one play through, our Stage 1 Objective was for me (the villains) to destroy the armored cocoon that is holding a potential hero. I was luckily able to sprint towards the goal (because I just so happened to choose a movement based ability for Radioactive Man). After 2 of the 3 needed successful attacks against the cocoon, the good guys were able to defeat Radioactive Man, sending him back to the respawn point. After my initial attempt failed, I was in no position to attempt the objective again before the end of the first stage.
The second stage had an objective where I was to place an item (a dossier) in any square on the map that the good guys would need to acquire. I simply placed this at the far end of the map under a forklift. This would require my opponents to deal 4 damage to the forklift to destroy it, before retrieving the dossier. The map was so large that I doubt the good guys would even be able to reach the dossier in four rounds. Let alone, with my mastermind (Loki) standing in the way. The game’s objective cards are largely unattainable and can be totally ignored if you’re just trying to obtain objective points to win.
During the good guys’ turn, the heroes must coordinate and work together. Kind of. All that means is that they need to decide the order that the characters will resolve their actions. At the end of each stage the heroes must decide which characters are leveling up, since the pool of objective points (the resource for leveling up) is shared among players. There’s very little co-op required. A single player could just as easily control all the heroes to the same effect.
For Parents:
I played the tutorial stage with my 6 year old son and we enjoyed it. This would be noteworthy if the tutorial stage was ANYTHING like actual gameplay. There is so much that the tutorial waters down. In some instances, this would be fine. But in this instance, it was disappointing. The tutorial gave me a false understanding of the game’s mechanics and how ranged attacks function.
There are so many small tokens that are unique to the set, so if you lose it, you’re out of luck. Choking hazards aside, I didn’t trust my kids to handle the ONLY character tokens unique to those characters. There are also plastic cubes that are used to mark Action Points and Damage, but those were less of a concern since there are many of those.
The box says ages 14 and up. In this case, I would have to agree with that. Kids younger than 14 are going to have a VERY difficult time following along with the turn order and keeping track of which tokens go where.
Final Thoughts:
Here’s the deal. WizKids makes a product for HeroClix called Fast Forces packs. These are non-random sets containing specific, thematic teams for HeroClix. I think most of them contain 6-8 figures with a map and are considered a great jumping on point to begin team building. If I was going to make a campaign based HeroClix experience, I would begin by including scenario and objective cards in these team packs. That way, you are marketing to the HeroClix crowd to play the game in a different way.
With the way the game is produced, with the box saying “a HeroClix strategy game” and using the same “combat dial system” graphic that is on HeroClix products, it’s incredibly misleading and confusing. Are they marketing this towards HeroClix players? If they are, they will likely be taken back when there is no clicking of character bases during gameplay. If they are trying to market it towards non-HeroClix players, using the HeroClix brand name would seem to be a turn-off. There seems to be a lot that I don’t fully understand with the graphic design and target market for the game.
That same theme continues with gameplay as well. I just don’t understand the reason behind some of these very conscious decisions. There’s barely enough time to attempt to complete an objective, if you even feel the need to attempt it at all. It’s a skirmish game first, an aesthetically pleasing game second. Strategy seems to be far down the list. And there’s no real attempt to make this a role playing environment as we see in games with a similar set-up like Descent or Imperial Assault.
I was very excited to try this game out, but can’t help but feel disappointed at the gameplay. Even my excitement at being able to play in the Marvel sandbox I mentioned earlier is met with disappointment. The base game gave us a S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers vs Hydra setting, and the first expansion followed suit, introducing no new settings or environments. We don’t even have Spider-Man in the game yet.
And some characters are flat-out bad. Iron Man is severely handicapped by his ability to only gain 3 Ability Points per turn. Even as you advance to later stages in the mission, leveling him up to obtain more impressive abilities, he can never gain more than 3 ability points at the start of his turn, opposed to Captain America who can gain 5 and Agent Coulson who can gain 6. When you take in to account that you’ll often want to move more than one space and attack in the same round, this becomes very difficult and destroys any illusion of growth the characters have through the mission.
I feel like there was a lot of potential with this concept. It seems a shame that it’s not an enjoyable game.
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