This post was last updated on January 18th, 2023
“Avengers, assemble!”.
Epic soundtrack. Chills all over the body. I still remember the scene as if it was yesterday.
It often happens that when I watch movies or play video games I then search for any board games inspired by those media.
And today isn’t different. I have recently watched the latest Marvel movie, Eternals, and even though it didn’t give me the chills I would have loved to get, it left me with the curiosity to know more about Marvel board games.
I have tried many superhero board games (including Marvel ones) over the years and after some digging to find and try new games, I came up with my personal best Marvel board games list, which hopefully will give you the same good vibes as a Marvel movie does.
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Best Marvel Board Games
1 • Marvel Villainous – Infinite Power: choose a famous supervillain and try to accomplish your own goal while sabotaging the other players.
2 • Codenames Marvel: collaborate with your teammates to correctly discover all the Asset cards of your team colour, that are hidden on a 5 x 5 grid.
3 • Marvel United: choose your alter-ego among some of the most iconic Marvel Superheroes and use their Hero’s card deck to fight villains.
4 • Infinity Gauntlet – a Love Letter game: 1 vs all game in which one player plays as the supervillain Thanos, and the other players must cooperate in order to defeat him.
5 • Marvel Champions: a cooperative living card game in which players choose their favourite alter-ego and together fight against a Villain.
6 • Legendary – a Marvel deck building game: a cooperative deck-building game where players draw, recruit and play cards to make their deck stronger turn by turn in order to defeat powerful Villains.
7 • Splendor Marvel: command a squad of Superheroes, acquire iconic locations, and gather the necessary Infinity Points to claim the Gauntlet.
8 • Marvel – Crisis Protocol: a miniature board game in which 2 players fight each other using a personalized team of Heroes and Villains.
9 • 5-minute Marvel: an amazing filler board game where players fight together against an iconic Villain in a 5 minutes time frame.
10 • Thanos Rising – Avengers Infinity War: a cooperative dice game in which players must defeat bad guys before Thanos gets too powerful and destroy the Universe.
Marvel Villanious: Infinite Power
Published in 2020, this game is the Marvel version of the classic Disney Villainous board game, in which players play as a villain with the goal of dominating the universe.
It’s an asymmetric board game where players must synchronize the unique abilities of Thanos, Hela, Ultron, Taskmaster and Killmonger, in order to overcome the opponents and fulfil their own goals.
Gameplay-wise, the game basically uses the same amazing formula as Villainous and the replayability is almost infinite thanks to all the possible combinations of cards, gameplay mechanics and situations.
MARVEL VILLAINOUS: INFINITE POWER
2 – 4 players | 40 – 80 min | 12+
Codenames Marvel
As its famous and older brother, Codenames Marvel puts 2 different teams – S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra – against each other in order to see who can guess correctly all their Asset cards that are hidden on a 5 x 5 grid.
Each team has a Director (who knows where each of the cards their team is looking for is located) who can provide hints in the form of code phrases to their Agents on where to look for the cards.
The first team to correctly find all their Asset Cards wins the game.
Together with your team’s cards, there are the opponent team’s cards and the assassin, which has to be avoided at all costs if you don’t want to lose immediately.
CODENAMES MARVEL
2 – 8 players | 15 min | 8+
Marvel United
Marvel United is a cooperative board game in which players take on the role of Marvel Superheroes in order to defeat the Villain’s plans.
Choose your alter-ego among some of the most iconic Marvel Superheroes, such as Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Hulk, Wasp, and Ant-Man, while the villains are Red Skull, Ultron and Taskmaster
Each game is a storyline where players use their Hero’s card deck to fight villains. You may use your cards to move your Hero about, save Civilians, kill Thugs, eliminate Threats, and use your Hero’s special abilities.
Meanwhile, the Villain will prowl the city, plotting, causing mayhem, deploying Henchmen, and assaulting the Heroes. Only after completing the required Missions will the Heroes be able to strike the Villain directly and eliminate them for good!
MARVEL UNITED
1 – 4 players | 40 min | 14+
Infinity Gauntlet – a Love Letter game
Infinity Gauntlet it’s a 1 vs all board game that takes inspiration from the beloved game Love Letter.
One player plays as the supervillain Thanos, while the other players are Marvel Heroes who must cooperate in order to defeat Thanos before he can assemble all the Infinity Stones.
This game is played over several turns where Thanos and Heroes players draw and play cards, each of them having unique effects, with the final goal to win the battle for the universe.
A perfect strategy between players will be the key to defeating the supervillain. Not an easy task as players can’t communicate about cards they have seen or direct other players’ actions!
INFINITY GAUNTLET – A LOVE LETTER GAME
2 – 6 players | 15 min | 10+
Marvel Champions
Marvel Champions is a cooperative living card game in which players can choose their favourite alter-ego, among dozens of Marvel Superheroes, and together fight against a Villain.
In the core set, you’ll be able to choose between Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Iron Man while the Villains are Rhino, Klaw and the terrifying Ultron!
Among all the Marvel board games listed here, what makes this game a little different is the fact that being a living card game means that its replayability is almost endless.
During the years Fantasy Flight regularly published a plethora of expansions, giving the players more and more reasons to carry on playing the game.
MARVEL CHAMPIONS
1 – 4 players | 45 – 90 min | 14+
Legendary: a Marvel deck-building game
Legendary is a cooperative deck-building game with very straightforward gameplay.
Each player gets a basic deck of Hero cards.
At the beginning of the player’s turn, you’ll have to draw a card from the Villain deck which depicts how Villains infiltrate the city, kidnap Bystanders, and cause spectacular disasters.
Then, from your hand, you play Hero cards to create Attack, Recruit Points, and unique powers in order to attack and defeat the enemies or add better Heroes to your deck.
Whenever your deck runs out of cards, shuffle the discarded cards including the new recruited Heroes. Your deck will eventually become stronger and ready to face whatever evil scheme Villains have in mind.
LEGENDARY: A MARVEL DECK-BUILDING GAME
1 – 5 players | 30 – 60 min | 14+
Splendor: Marvel
The classic Splendor board game is brought back to your table with a new skin, featuring Marvel Heroes instead of Renaissance merchants.
Following the path of the original Splendor game in 2014, Splendor Marvel inherits the main mechanics, already well known and loved by players, adding only a few elements here and there to add a little variety to the gameplay.
Unlike other Marvel board games, players don’t take on the role of a single hero, but instead, command a squad of Superheroes who will stop at nothing to prevent Thanos from obtaining the Infinity Gems.
Form an unbeatable squad, acquire iconic locations, and gather the necessary Infinity Points to claim the Gauntlet!
SPLENDOR: MARVEL
2 – 4 players | 30 min | 10+
Marvel: Crisis Protocol
For all the miniature board game lovers out there, I’ve got you covered!
Marvel Crisis Protocol is a game of miniatures in which 2 players fight each other using a personalized team of Heroes and Villains, selected from a pool of 10 iconic characters (Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Baron Zemo, Crossbones, Doctor Octopus, Red Skull and Ultron).
In addition to those 10 grey plastic miniatures, you will also find character cards, dice, bases and terrain tiles, such as cars, lampposts, traffic lights, and so on.
Even though the pieces contained in this box are already quite enough to let you play almost endlessly, you can further expand the collection of characters and terrains by purchasing them separately to make every Crisis Protocol game always different.
And if you’re also into painting miniatures hobby, having this game is an absolute must.
MARVEL: CRISIS PROTOCOL
2 players | 45 min | 14+
5-Minute Marvel
When I got to almost the bottom of this list of best Marvel board games, I noticed there was something missing.
Every time I play board games, I usually like playing a filler game between meaty ones and my chosen filler of this category is 5-minute Marvel, a game that always brings a lot of laughs and chaos to the table.
In this card game, all the players cooperate together to defeat hordes of enemies in order to reach and eventually fight the supervillain boss.
Players also ride against the clock as you only have, guess what, 5 minutes to win.
Choose your character between 10 iconic Marvel heroes and the supervillain between 6 evil ones, such as Thanos, Loki or Green Goblin.
Then set the clock and start fighting foes, time is already running out!
5-MINUTE MARVEL
2 – 5 players | 5 min | 8+
Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War
Thanos Rising is a cooperative dice and card game, in which players recruit heroes and form a team to fight Thanos and his allies in order to stop his evil plan: collecting the six Infinity Stones and putting the Universe into absolute chaos.
To win the game, you must defeat 7 out of 10 Villains before Thanos gets too much power by collecting the Stones.
Players play their turn by recruiting heroes and attacking villains by rolling dice.
Keep your guard up though, as Thanos will fight back and if he can defeat ten (or more) heroes or all the heroes of one team you lose the game!
Due to the roll-dice mechanic, each match is different from the other, giving the game enough replayability for a few games.
THANOS RISING: AVENGERS INFINITY WAR
2 – 4 players | 60 – 90 min | 10+
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