How to play Marvel United & Review

Marvel United is a cooperative, hand management game.

Title: Marvel United

Year Published: 2020

Designer: Andrea Chiarvesio, Eric M. Lang

Publisher: CMON

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~40 mins

Set-up Time: ~5 mins

Ages: 14+

Theme: The Marvel Universe

Mechanisms: Hand Management

How to win: Defeat the Villain

Game Description

In “Marvel United” you take the role of iconic Marvel Heroes cooperating to stop the master plan of a powerful Villain controlled by the game. Each Villain unveils their unique master plan, with cards that trigger different effects, and threats that pose challenges across the locations. Heroes must choose carefully the cards to play from their unique decks, that not only offer different actions and superpowers to use, but also combine with the actions of other Heroes to do the impossible. Build your storyline, unite your powers, save the day!

How to play Marvel United

A quick look at how to play Marvel United including all the rules from the base game and examples of play where required. I also tack on the changes for solo rules at the end.

Theme

The reason to get this game really. It’s just a Pandemic-like, a very light Pandemic-like. Would I get this if it were themed on say, Star Wars or Harry Potter? No. What it was a newly created and deeply crafted world with tonnes of Lore? Still no.

The fact that it is from all aspects of the MU is great including the Spider-verse with, I believe, more to come in the future. Exciting.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is a little fiddley but fine. You have to place lots of things out and place bits on those things but it’s not too bad.

The rulebook is really good with large, easy-to-read blocks.

The solo rules could have used some more explanation in the rulebook. Most people have more questions than answers after reading them.

Components & Artwork

These are great… Mostly. I LOVE the minis and their cute little chibi faces. Everything else though is pretty average. The card is standard for both the player boards and playing cards and the little tokens are, well… very little.

I do have upgrades coming from Kickstarter which should make things better so we’ll see.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Very simple… it is quite rules-light and the cards are obviously very easy to understand.

It’s a co-op so hands can be laid face up if needed to help everyone out.

Marvel United Summary

So there are plenty of games like this where you fight a big bad while putting out fires around the board. I already mentioned Pandemic but these games for me are more about theme than gameplay.

To prove this, the only two of these games I own are this and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game.

So, how basic is this one?

The cards have barely any detail, they all look similar character to character. But the few special cards do have effects that make the character slightly different and themed to their persona.

What you do is very easy. Hit things, save things, complete things and try to not get KO’d while using only 3 very simple actions.

But it just works. I like games like this that are easy and rules-light but you do have to play well, it’s not easy.

You have to keep your eye on the Villain of course but also the numbers of thugs and civilians as well as where your character will end up. Will they be in a location that will help? Or on a henchman that could BAM! a few cards out their hand?

You also have to communicate a bit if you need the person before you to play a certain card so you can have a good turn. Maybe you play a double attack but you need to piggyback a move action off the previous card.

Also, hope your table is big enough for that circle of cards you need to play around the outside of the board!

Marvel United Round-Up

A very cute and fun game I enjoy playing, even solo and that’s VERY rare!

Rating: I give it 7/10