Marvel United – Your ever-expanding guide to the multiverse of CMON’s cooperative battler

Despite three seasons of gigantic Kickstarters, Marvel United might be one of the best games that you’ve probably never heard of. Originally designed by Eric M. Lang and Andrea Chiarvesio and published by CMON, this solo, cooperative or competitive battler offers simple rules, fantastic, highly stylised miniatures, and varied, challenging gameplay. 

In this piece, we’re going to start out by discussing two of the Marvel United core sets — specifically Marvel United (with no further subtitle) and Marvel United: X-Men. Both of these boxes offer standalone rules, playable characters and villains, but can also be combined (with the tens and tens of different expansions and core boxes already released) for different combinations of heroes and situations. 

Marvel United

Starting with the very first core box to be released, I have no doubt that Marvel fans will be pretty pleased with the variety of heroes on offer even in this most basic box. With characters like Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man (to name just a few) available right from the start, Marvel United actually delivers a lot of the big hitters that you would often expect to see in value-add expansions. There’s also Ultron, Red Skull and Taskmaster to fight against, offering a fairly well rounded experience.

As a base experience, Marvel United keeps things fairly simple, whilst majoring on fun. Marvel United uses a deceptively simple system where players simply play a single card from their hand, and then act based on the symbols — and occasional special action text — shown on it. Additionally, because cards are played into what the game refers to as “the timeline” the current hero will also benefit from the symbols (but not the actions) shown on the hero card that was played prior.

Every three hero turns (or every two later in the game), the chosen villain will play their own card into the timeline, causing the villain to move and for various other effects to be triggered. Different villains do different things – including bringing their own Threat cards (which must be dealt with) that can include storylines such as bomb scares, or even villains like Bob: Agent of Hydra, or Madame Hydra, who must be defeated.

There are many ways to lose Marvel United, including by spending your whole hero deck (and having no cards left to draw) or as the result of villain specific situations such as Red Skull’s fear track. Winning is simple — just defeat the enemy villain. The snag with this is that the villain can’t actually be damaged until the players have completed at least two of the three challenges presented to them, which include defeating villains, rescuing civilians and so on.

Marvel United is the perfect entry point to the series, offering a straightforward but rewarding experience with lots of thematic heroes that you’ll want to keep using even as you expand your collection. Captain America has great leadership skills, Hulk, erm, smashes etc, and despite the simple rules, you do get a real “feel” for each hero throughout every game you play.

Marvel United: X-Men 

Second up in this multiverse spanning review, we have Marvel United: X-Men. This is another core set (and I believe that there are at least a few more which hopefully we’ll get to on another day) so if you prefer Wolverine and friends to Cap’n America and his Avenger pals, you might actually wish to start here. There are a few gameplay reasons to do so as well, with Marvel United: X-Men having a few variations and new modes that don’t feature in the basic core box.

For starters, Marvel United: X-Men introduces a competitive mode where one player can control a supervillain (such as Magneto) to fight against the other players. This is quite good fun and definitely adds something completely different to the basic experience, but in addition, characters like Magneto and Mystique can be played both as heroes or villains (and so their models are purple, representing a blend of the usual blue for heroes and red for villains.)

Aside from the lovely addition of some of the most famous X-Men (including Dr Xavier, Rogue, Cyclops and Jean Grey in addition to those I’ve already mentioned), Marvel United: X-Men offers more gameplay possibilities. The cost here comes in the form of complexity. Whilst Marvel United: X-Men remains pretty straightforward for adults or experienced gamers, it might still be better to buy the basic core box if you want to hand the game to your kids and expect them to be able to play it.

You can buy Marvel United from almost any game store, but there are also exclusive bundles available at outlets like Amazon, where you can nab this bundle including an exclusive Doctor Strange character pack.