Playing – Marvel Mayhem

New Game to my Table
Even as a card game that could get really unbalanced, I’d have to call Dungeon Mayhem (and it’s expansions Monster Madness and Battle for Baldur’s Gate) a game that I and my table greatly enjoyed. It’s silly and swift and has enough “if you know, you know” content to make me giggle as I play a card and cry out the flavor text of “Go for the eyes Boo!”. The basic mechanic is solid, the 5-6 player expansion introduced a way to keep eliminated players involved by delivering a single point of damage on their turn (but could not be the final point of damage), and the icons are pretty straight forward.

I expected to enjoy Marvel Mayhem for the same reasons and I wasn’t wrong. I do have a few quibbles about it like why these characters would be fighting each other (Red Dragon Inn justifies the party infighting as the result of drunken mayhem and determining how the bar tab would be settled). They didn’t tie this one to something like Civil War or Secret Wars and that’s not a bad thing but it would have set up an in game justification. There’s enough unsaid that one could connect this to the MCU or one of the animated series (the art style isn’t quick comic book like that of some of the other Marvel games). I’m also not a fan of elimination games that leave players left waiting for the game to finish, but this is a quick enough game that there isn’t much downtime between games. If you don’t like games where everyone might gang up against a single player or that is very dependent on the luck of the draw, I’d advise skip this game series.

There are a few tweaks that makes it different from Dungeon Mayhem but nothing earthshattering that would prevent you from quickly jumping into a game. On your turn, you draw a card and play a card from your hand. The basic cards will do some combination of lasting protection, healing damage, dealing damage, and draw a card & play a card from your hand. Each deck comes with a mini guide of the symbols (shields, hearts, crossed swords, lightning card) and the action they represent plus a brief description of the super special cards.

There’s some variation in the cards that give each character flavor even with the basic cards. Additionally, each character deck has some powerful cards with special text and effects like ignore defense cards or force opponents to swap their discard and draw pile. I strongly recommend anyone playing to read that flavor text out loud as it makes the card more than just a mechanical effect. Play continues until only one character is left and all others have been reduced to zero health.

Change number one from Dungeon Mayhem – your hand is pretty much set at three cards (four when you draw up at the beginning of our turn but you have to play something) and there aren’t any cards that lead to giant forked chains of additional actions like in Dungeon Mayhem (if you played the wizard or rogue, you know what I mean). Marvel combines the “Draw a Card” and “Play an additional Card” into a single “Draw a card and play a card of your choice” action. There are still some pretty strong chains of cards that can happen but it’s way less chaotic than some 10 card combos from Dungeon Mayhem that had many cards that gave you multiple actions from a single card play.

Change number two – a couple of defense cards per deck have lasting effects for as long as that defense card is in play (they last until they absorb their value in damage). These effects are vulnerable to attacks and in the couple of times we played it, nothing too overpowering came about because of it.

What amazes me is that there weren’t expansions for this game. The only four character choices available are Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and Scarlet Witch. This is a Marvel product – some folks will shamelessly buy a a game for just that. When I look to how there’s Marvel Splendor, Marvel Villainy, Marvel Remix, Marvel Love Letter, 5 Minute Marvel, Marvel Legendary, Marvel Munchkin, Marvel Smash Up, Marvel Risk, and way too many expansion packs for Marvel Champions (and this is in no way an exhaustive list), I have to ask for a simple and quick card game like Marvel Mayhem didn’t even get a 5-6 player booster with Captain America or Hulk or Thor. Where’s the Marvel Villains Mayhem that could be played on it’s own or combined with the original? I find myself looking at putting together my own homebrew for Loki, Thanos, Taskmaster, and Ultron.

Would I play it again? As a quick card game to learn and play for up to four players, you better believe it True Believer! Not for an entire evening but for at least a few rounds worth.