Definitely Marvel Champions. Witcher Old World is a fun game that I’m glad I bought, but (1) it’s not really as good solo IMO (it’s fun enough I guess but would get old fast), and (2) there is an expansion for it called Monster Trails which improves many things to the extent it’s practically essential (most crucially the combat, giving the monsters actually meaningful distinct abilities instead of just having different amounts of health and one minor passive ability). And unfortunately that expansion is not available at retail yet (it’s supposed to be this year but nothing official yet. Designer has said it’s coming on BGG threads within the last couple months). The other expansions are cool too, but they’re expensive as hell.
Marvel Champions on the other hand has a ton of variety you can expand upon for less money at a time. I play it allll the time, solo, and I love it. I strongly recommend it for solo. I could say more about it but I’m not sure where to start. Essentially, if you’re looking for a good solo game and it’s between these two, I’d recommend Champions ten times out of ten.
That being said I will reiterate I think Witcher Old World is a good game. It’s just a lot of setup and requires expensive and/or currently unavailable expansions to make it truly shine. One other note related to that is that without one or another of two of the expansions (Wild Hunt - still not available at retail; or Legendary Hunt - available but something like $70-$80), it is strictly a Beat Your Own Score game. Whereas with Marvel Champions it’s a quick setup game you either win or lose. As far as difficulty to learn, I would not say Old World is harder to learn. I found it fairly easy to learn all things considered. Marvel Champions is easy to learn the basics but there are all kinds of complications and edge cases and interpretations such that it would take a while to become truly expert on the rules. But it’s worth it, and the core box has fairly simple stuff going on so it eases you into it. Plus there’s a whole active and very friendly subreddit where people will answer any rules question you post within like an hour.
Sorry this comment wasn’t organized better! lol
No I read it all clearly lol, I appreciate it. Another comment suggested old world is a good game story wise (I assume being a witcher world fan that'd be a draw), would ya agree?
I'm looking at used copies of both, for old world it would include the Ciri Kickstart campaign bundle (ciri, monster trails, wild hunt, adventure, lost mount) with deluxe edition base game. I can't deny it's not cheap but it's far cheaper than found online used or anything. 400 canadian for the 2. It's more steep than I'd like but am willing if it's something I see myself doing multiple playthroughs.
Marvel champions for 170 Cdn includes base, rise of red skull, and heroes:
Ms. Marvel
Quicksilver
Wasp
Thor
Ant Man
Black Widow
Captain America
Phoenix
Not sure if that extra info influences anything, at least in terms of what I'd be getting to start.
If you really like The Witcher and you’re getting the Kickstarter bundle with Monster Trails, for a price you can stomach, then I am not going to discourage you from that. It’s a complete game with that stuff for sure and you’ll probably like it. I did the exact same thing - bought the Kickstarter bundle from someone on eBay who was mercifully selling it *at cost* plus shipping which was a small miracle. It also has the Wild Hunt expansion which provides a non-beat-your-own-score solo mode (although it changes the game pretty drastically and the reviews of it are kinda lukewarm from what I’ve seen).
As far as whether it’s a good story game: it does not have any sort of campaign or meaningful quests with colorful characters. It is thematically strong and feels like The Witcher but I wouldn’t call it a “story” game. It feels very board-gamey if that makes sense. You drop into it for a fresh session, play for a couple hours, and then it’s over. The “adventuring” is not what I imagine most people think of. You are moving around a map with a mini and encountering narrative scenarios, but the way it works is whatever location you’re at, you choose from the town deck or the countryside deck. You’ll get a small encounter written on the card with different rewards depending on which of several options you pick to resolve the situation. Sometimes it will give you a “quest” which simply entails going to another specific location and drawing a specific card to resolve that quest with some more short text. Unlike something like Star Wars Outer Rim, the encounter decks are not different depending on which city you’re in. It’s just the same city or countryside decks no matter where you are. Which is understandable, since there are like 20 cities on the map. Otherwise, the map movement is all about landing on locations so that you can get a specific thematically dry bonus based on an icon on the location. One example is at one city if you land there with zero money, you get one free coin. To make that thematic, I joked to someone that it’s a place you can reliably beg for money if you’re poor.
There are some other small thematic hiccups, such as at least one encounter card casually referred to my character slaying some drowners - but a drowner was one of the three capital-M Monsters that was placed on the map that represent the main objectives of the game (everyone is racing to kill X number of monster minis before anyone else). So it’s like, why is one of my ultimate game scoring goals right now to kill this drowner on the map if I’m also passively slaying drowners “offscreen” so to speak as part of my little encounter card stories? Just a little oddity but nothing severe.
It does have a little RPG flair in that it lets you pick those encounter outcomes, your character has stats to improve, you’re traveling around the world, etc. But, the movement around the map feels fairly dry and almost like a Euro sometimes. The cardplay aspect of the game is great though (the actual battles). It’s deck building with card combos and it’s very satisfying IMO. But taken altogether, it feels more like a high production, strongly Witcher themed optimization challenge with the flair of an adventure/RPG type of game.
I think the Witcher Old World is awesome but really shines with the Legendary Hunt expansion. I also think Witcher Old World is more about the experience of a story with the gameplay definitely being important but has luck/variability from the narrative.
Marvel Champions is definitely the better game in terms of gameplay in my opinion, but I bounced off the theme pretty hard.
It's far steeper price but I'm looking at old world with kickstarter exclusive, those 4 added expansions, do you say it really changes the solo experience, and make it far more worth it? If you've used them
I have only played with the Legendary Hunt so far and it makes it much different. The base game has a set of objectives for you to complete and the fewer turns you can accomplish them, the better you've done. The legendary hunt adds a boss monster that acts as a turn timer for you that you must defeat. It pushes you to take more risks and also creates more rewards on the board to help with that tight timer. The boss monster will also have certain criteria that affects the fight with them, which can help inform your deck building strategy.
Marvel Champions is much more solo friendly IMO.
Old World is a sprawl (on a table) and the solo mode has been added on top of a game designed to be a PvP game. MC has been designed to be a Coop game and to be playable in Solo from day 1.
Not that Old World is bad, but it is less satisfying to play in Solo.
If you've played it solo with then, would you say kickstarter exclusive bundle makes Old World a much more appealing choice, or still go with Marvel champs every time?
I can't deny leaning towards old world but it's more for me just due to liking theme and witcher world more, and I like the idea of map and minis. However, in saying that I do enjoy a number of card based games in video games
I'll make my answer short: I don't care about the Marvel universe and I love The Witcher. But, I'll choose MC anytime. You don't need to like the Theme to enjoy MC mechanics and gameplay.
To be honest, I'll sell the Old World soon. It doesn't hit the table and I don't keep games I don't play.
I'm sure you can find a used copy of MC Core Set to try the game: if you like it, you'll have plenty of expansions to try after. If you don't like it, resell it.
From a solo perspective, Marvel Champions I think has helped bridge the gap of complex and simple for a lot of newer solo gamers than most games. It's like a tried and true top suggestion for a lot of different tastes that leans on both sides pretty well. It was number 3 of the [peoples choice top 200](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/324731/2023-peoples-choice-top-200-solo-games-1-200) for a reason.
While it's not my favorite of the LCGs, it definitely has a universal quality that's hard to ignore, especially if you had issues with other more complex games.
I haven't played Witcher Old World so hopefully someone else can champion it or argue against it for you. It at least has the benefit of now being a more expensive Living Card Game.
you got two totally different beasts here
I have both and love both marvel champions maybe being in my top 3 all time games
however I will recommend witcher as you can get the standard edition for 40 bucks or so? marvel is a money pit no doubt about that. go witcher see if you like it then if you do find you love solo play try the base marvel down the road
either way you go both are great choices so there's really no wrong decision and you can always go back and buy the other game
yes I've played it extensively and I think the base game is really great solo when you add the fan made autonoma instead of just playing to beat your own score. it's pretty professionally done and is pretty much necessary you can get it for free on BGG
Do you have any experience with CCGs like Magic the Gathering? Marvel Champions is a similar rules complexity to Magic, but as a 20 year Magic veteran, MC has me googling weird card interactions and rules clarifications constantly. The game itself is not terribly hard to learn, but you should be prepared to google a lot, or hop on a friendly discord server for rules help. With all that being said, it’s been my main game for 18 months, since I got the core set for Xmas 2022. Super fun and thematic. Addictive to keep buying more scenarios and heroes.
Very little experience with ccgs. Moreso pc games like slay the spire, hand of fate, and others. Always have liked the ideas of ccgs but don't have a group to play coop or vs with. At this point, mainly due to cost, I am leaning to marvel champs. Witcher appeals to me more but it's very expensive when factoring in expansions as some were Kickstart exclusives and from what I read drastically change the solo experience positively. From used bundles of each with expansions that interest me I'm looking at 200 difference
Sweet, a used bundle for MC is the way to go! So many ways to have fun with the game. I’ve played a lot of 2-handed solo just trying out different hero combos, or playing through the campaigns. But recently I’ve also started participating in something called Solo Champions League, which essentially has curated scenarios that everyone plays for a few weeks at a time, uploading their scores to a leaderboard. I am not super interested in turning a solo/coop game into a competition, but I absolutely love the deckbuilding challenge that each scenario presents. And true-solo works great too.
That sounds interesting about the league, I may look into that when I understand the game better. I'm not super competitive, but it sounds like a nice idea to put myself up against others even casually for a bit of extra incentive to play at times
For me the real highlight of the league is having a reason to do a “deep dive” on one particular hero/villain matchup - discussing ideal card choices and combos with friendly folks on discord, and seeing how efficiently you can solve that scenario while mitigating bad luck. You have to submit 3 consecutive games of the exact same matchup/deck. But also it just gives you something specific to play each week, which is nice to have after finishing all the campaigns. Sometimes I also use a marvel champions randomizer website, which tells you which heroes to use, which aspects to build them in, and which villain/modular you’re facing.
Definitely Marvel imo, I only play solo and I had the Witcher kickstarter but ended up selling it. It’s a solid 7.5/10 whereas Marvel is a 9/10 and I’ll never sell it.
Sounds like you've made your decision, and it's probably the right one. Like a lot of others here I wasn't wowed by the theme of Marvel Champions, but i started playing it in January and it's easily become my most played game and definitely one of my favorite, in spite of the theme (though i've warmed up to the theme quite a bit since playing).
I just wanted to point out a humorous irony though - it's very rare to hear people choosing MC because it was the cheaper option ;) It's true, your initial investment in MC right now is cheaper than what The Witcher would be according to the bundles you mentioned, and there is a TON of gameplay in that MC bundle. But in the long run MC could cost you a LOT more :D Cheap gaming is not something the LCGs are know for!
Anyway, if you do wind up with MC, hope you enjoy! There is a really good sub here - r/marvelchampionslcg - if you need to discuss anything deeper about the game or have rules questions.
Definitely Marvel Champions. Witcher Old World is a fun game that I’m glad I bought, but (1) it’s not really as good solo IMO (it’s fun enough I guess but would get old fast), and (2) there is an expansion for it called Monster Trails which improves many things to the extent it’s practically essential (most crucially the combat, giving the monsters actually meaningful distinct abilities instead of just having different amounts of health and one minor passive ability). And unfortunately that expansion is not available at retail yet (it’s supposed to be this year but nothing official yet. Designer has said it’s coming on BGG threads within the last couple months). The other expansions are cool too, but they’re expensive as hell. Marvel Champions on the other hand has a ton of variety you can expand upon for less money at a time. I play it allll the time, solo, and I love it. I strongly recommend it for solo. I could say more about it but I’m not sure where to start. Essentially, if you’re looking for a good solo game and it’s between these two, I’d recommend Champions ten times out of ten. That being said I will reiterate I think Witcher Old World is a good game. It’s just a lot of setup and requires expensive and/or currently unavailable expansions to make it truly shine. One other note related to that is that without one or another of two of the expansions (Wild Hunt - still not available at retail; or Legendary Hunt - available but something like $70-$80), it is strictly a Beat Your Own Score game. Whereas with Marvel Champions it’s a quick setup game you either win or lose. As far as difficulty to learn, I would not say Old World is harder to learn. I found it fairly easy to learn all things considered. Marvel Champions is easy to learn the basics but there are all kinds of complications and edge cases and interpretations such that it would take a while to become truly expert on the rules. But it’s worth it, and the core box has fairly simple stuff going on so it eases you into it. Plus there’s a whole active and very friendly subreddit where people will answer any rules question you post within like an hour. Sorry this comment wasn’t organized better! lol
No I read it all clearly lol, I appreciate it. Another comment suggested old world is a good game story wise (I assume being a witcher world fan that'd be a draw), would ya agree? I'm looking at used copies of both, for old world it would include the Ciri Kickstart campaign bundle (ciri, monster trails, wild hunt, adventure, lost mount) with deluxe edition base game. I can't deny it's not cheap but it's far cheaper than found online used or anything. 400 canadian for the 2. It's more steep than I'd like but am willing if it's something I see myself doing multiple playthroughs. Marvel champions for 170 Cdn includes base, rise of red skull, and heroes: Ms. Marvel Quicksilver Wasp Thor Ant Man Black Widow Captain America Phoenix Not sure if that extra info influences anything, at least in terms of what I'd be getting to start.
If you really like The Witcher and you’re getting the Kickstarter bundle with Monster Trails, for a price you can stomach, then I am not going to discourage you from that. It’s a complete game with that stuff for sure and you’ll probably like it. I did the exact same thing - bought the Kickstarter bundle from someone on eBay who was mercifully selling it *at cost* plus shipping which was a small miracle. It also has the Wild Hunt expansion which provides a non-beat-your-own-score solo mode (although it changes the game pretty drastically and the reviews of it are kinda lukewarm from what I’ve seen). As far as whether it’s a good story game: it does not have any sort of campaign or meaningful quests with colorful characters. It is thematically strong and feels like The Witcher but I wouldn’t call it a “story” game. It feels very board-gamey if that makes sense. You drop into it for a fresh session, play for a couple hours, and then it’s over. The “adventuring” is not what I imagine most people think of. You are moving around a map with a mini and encountering narrative scenarios, but the way it works is whatever location you’re at, you choose from the town deck or the countryside deck. You’ll get a small encounter written on the card with different rewards depending on which of several options you pick to resolve the situation. Sometimes it will give you a “quest” which simply entails going to another specific location and drawing a specific card to resolve that quest with some more short text. Unlike something like Star Wars Outer Rim, the encounter decks are not different depending on which city you’re in. It’s just the same city or countryside decks no matter where you are. Which is understandable, since there are like 20 cities on the map. Otherwise, the map movement is all about landing on locations so that you can get a specific thematically dry bonus based on an icon on the location. One example is at one city if you land there with zero money, you get one free coin. To make that thematic, I joked to someone that it’s a place you can reliably beg for money if you’re poor. There are some other small thematic hiccups, such as at least one encounter card casually referred to my character slaying some drowners - but a drowner was one of the three capital-M Monsters that was placed on the map that represent the main objectives of the game (everyone is racing to kill X number of monster minis before anyone else). So it’s like, why is one of my ultimate game scoring goals right now to kill this drowner on the map if I’m also passively slaying drowners “offscreen” so to speak as part of my little encounter card stories? Just a little oddity but nothing severe. It does have a little RPG flair in that it lets you pick those encounter outcomes, your character has stats to improve, you’re traveling around the world, etc. But, the movement around the map feels fairly dry and almost like a Euro sometimes. The cardplay aspect of the game is great though (the actual battles). It’s deck building with card combos and it’s very satisfying IMO. But taken altogether, it feels more like a high production, strongly Witcher themed optimization challenge with the flair of an adventure/RPG type of game.
I think the Witcher Old World is awesome but really shines with the Legendary Hunt expansion. I also think Witcher Old World is more about the experience of a story with the gameplay definitely being important but has luck/variability from the narrative. Marvel Champions is definitely the better game in terms of gameplay in my opinion, but I bounced off the theme pretty hard.
It's far steeper price but I'm looking at old world with kickstarter exclusive, those 4 added expansions, do you say it really changes the solo experience, and make it far more worth it? If you've used them
I have only played with the Legendary Hunt so far and it makes it much different. The base game has a set of objectives for you to complete and the fewer turns you can accomplish them, the better you've done. The legendary hunt adds a boss monster that acts as a turn timer for you that you must defeat. It pushes you to take more risks and also creates more rewards on the board to help with that tight timer. The boss monster will also have certain criteria that affects the fight with them, which can help inform your deck building strategy.
Marvel Champions is much more solo friendly IMO. Old World is a sprawl (on a table) and the solo mode has been added on top of a game designed to be a PvP game. MC has been designed to be a Coop game and to be playable in Solo from day 1. Not that Old World is bad, but it is less satisfying to play in Solo.
If you've played it solo with then, would you say kickstarter exclusive bundle makes Old World a much more appealing choice, or still go with Marvel champs every time? I can't deny leaning towards old world but it's more for me just due to liking theme and witcher world more, and I like the idea of map and minis. However, in saying that I do enjoy a number of card based games in video games
I'll make my answer short: I don't care about the Marvel universe and I love The Witcher. But, I'll choose MC anytime. You don't need to like the Theme to enjoy MC mechanics and gameplay. To be honest, I'll sell the Old World soon. It doesn't hit the table and I don't keep games I don't play. I'm sure you can find a used copy of MC Core Set to try the game: if you like it, you'll have plenty of expansions to try after. If you don't like it, resell it.
Right to the point, thanks for your input. I appreciate it!
From a solo perspective, Marvel Champions I think has helped bridge the gap of complex and simple for a lot of newer solo gamers than most games. It's like a tried and true top suggestion for a lot of different tastes that leans on both sides pretty well. It was number 3 of the [peoples choice top 200](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/324731/2023-peoples-choice-top-200-solo-games-1-200) for a reason. While it's not my favorite of the LCGs, it definitely has a universal quality that's hard to ignore, especially if you had issues with other more complex games. I haven't played Witcher Old World so hopefully someone else can champion it or argue against it for you. It at least has the benefit of now being a more expensive Living Card Game.
I think seeing it at #3 did influence it being in top 2 choices.
you got two totally different beasts here I have both and love both marvel champions maybe being in my top 3 all time games however I will recommend witcher as you can get the standard edition for 40 bucks or so? marvel is a money pit no doubt about that. go witcher see if you like it then if you do find you love solo play try the base marvel down the road either way you go both are great choices so there's really no wrong decision and you can always go back and buy the other game
Have you played old world? Can you attest to base game being a bit underwhelming for solo play? That was my biggest thing seen reading reviews.
yes I've played it extensively and I think the base game is really great solo when you add the fan made autonoma instead of just playing to beat your own score. it's pretty professionally done and is pretty much necessary you can get it for free on BGG
Do you have any experience with CCGs like Magic the Gathering? Marvel Champions is a similar rules complexity to Magic, but as a 20 year Magic veteran, MC has me googling weird card interactions and rules clarifications constantly. The game itself is not terribly hard to learn, but you should be prepared to google a lot, or hop on a friendly discord server for rules help. With all that being said, it’s been my main game for 18 months, since I got the core set for Xmas 2022. Super fun and thematic. Addictive to keep buying more scenarios and heroes.
Very little experience with ccgs. Moreso pc games like slay the spire, hand of fate, and others. Always have liked the ideas of ccgs but don't have a group to play coop or vs with. At this point, mainly due to cost, I am leaning to marvel champs. Witcher appeals to me more but it's very expensive when factoring in expansions as some were Kickstart exclusives and from what I read drastically change the solo experience positively. From used bundles of each with expansions that interest me I'm looking at 200 difference
Sweet, a used bundle for MC is the way to go! So many ways to have fun with the game. I’ve played a lot of 2-handed solo just trying out different hero combos, or playing through the campaigns. But recently I’ve also started participating in something called Solo Champions League, which essentially has curated scenarios that everyone plays for a few weeks at a time, uploading their scores to a leaderboard. I am not super interested in turning a solo/coop game into a competition, but I absolutely love the deckbuilding challenge that each scenario presents. And true-solo works great too.
That sounds interesting about the league, I may look into that when I understand the game better. I'm not super competitive, but it sounds like a nice idea to put myself up against others even casually for a bit of extra incentive to play at times
For me the real highlight of the league is having a reason to do a “deep dive” on one particular hero/villain matchup - discussing ideal card choices and combos with friendly folks on discord, and seeing how efficiently you can solve that scenario while mitigating bad luck. You have to submit 3 consecutive games of the exact same matchup/deck. But also it just gives you something specific to play each week, which is nice to have after finishing all the campaigns. Sometimes I also use a marvel champions randomizer website, which tells you which heroes to use, which aspects to build them in, and which villain/modular you’re facing.
Definitely Marvel imo, I only play solo and I had the Witcher kickstarter but ended up selling it. It’s a solid 7.5/10 whereas Marvel is a 9/10 and I’ll never sell it.
Sounds like you've made your decision, and it's probably the right one. Like a lot of others here I wasn't wowed by the theme of Marvel Champions, but i started playing it in January and it's easily become my most played game and definitely one of my favorite, in spite of the theme (though i've warmed up to the theme quite a bit since playing). I just wanted to point out a humorous irony though - it's very rare to hear people choosing MC because it was the cheaper option ;) It's true, your initial investment in MC right now is cheaper than what The Witcher would be according to the bundles you mentioned, and there is a TON of gameplay in that MC bundle. But in the long run MC could cost you a LOT more :D Cheap gaming is not something the LCGs are know for! Anyway, if you do wind up with MC, hope you enjoy! There is a really good sub here - r/marvelchampionslcg - if you need to discuss anything deeper about the game or have rules questions.