Marvel United: Multiverse has a Civil War in their new expansion box (and uses it to solve their Young Avengers problem)

Breaking news! Minutes ago, CMON’s Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign announced its third new expansion box and a new stretch goal: Marvel United Multiverse – Civil War!

While Civil War wasn’t on my list of 10 predicted expansion boxes in my last post, I’m still claiming victory. That’s because this box includes Kate Bishop, and if you buy it from Kickstarter it will also include Hulking.

That’s two of the four core Young Avengers down. Plus, the box came just as the Kid Loki stretch goal was met, which introduced a Wiccan stretch goal. That’s two more Young Avengers down, including another of the core four.

We’re now missing just three characters able to play a complete Young Avengers team across any of their incarnations: Stature (Cassie Lang), the final core founding member; Grant Morrison’s creation Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr), from Kieron Gillen’s run; and the depowered mutant Prodigy, also from Gillen’s run.

Given the potential Ant-Man synergy I’d still expect them to fit in Stature before this campaign ends. Marvel Boy and Prodigy are slightly more obscure, so I wouldn’t lay heavy odds on seeing the pair of them.

(Want to play Marvel United right now? Grab either the Marvel United or Marvel United X-Men core boxes right now. They are fun cooperative games that are fun to play with adults and kids alike.)

The Marvel United Multiverse Civil War box does more than just introduce Kate Bishop and Hulking to the game. It re-implements Captain America and Iron Man from the core Marvel United box with beefed up cards. It introduces a MCU-friendly Iron Spider skin for Peter Parker with new cards. Plus, it includes missing 80s Avengers Tigra, Wonder Man, Yellowjacket, Spectrum (Monica Rambeau), and the first giant-size hero sculpt with Bill Foster AKA Goliath!

Civil War also introduces an entirely new mode of play: player-vs-player.

Marvel United has always been a cooperative game, though Marvel United: X-Men expansions X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold introduced a competitive points-scoring mode.

Now you can fight directly with other heroes for the first time. There are no villains or threat cards present, heroes can damage each other, overflows force you to discard, and you can only use a location effect if your team controls a location. The box introduces a symmetrical hero-vs-hero mode with the same rules and goals for each side, as well as an asymmetrical game that more-closely follows the plot of Civil War.

We’re largely cooperative board game house, so even though I love the contents of this box I doubt we’ll be doing much PVP together. However, I’m fascinated to try to hack the PVP rules so the game also includes a villain and threat cards, so that each team of heroes is waging a battle on multiple fronts. Also, these new rules make it more temping than ever to produce a hero deck for every straight-up villain, since now players can use these rules to have a team of villains play directly against a team of heroes.

You can be sure I’ll be home-brewing hero decks for every single standard villain we’ve had to date!

Also, if you missed it, since my last post CMON added the ability to purchase the “Promo” boxes of all of the stretch goal heroes from the first two campaigns. They’re pricey, but they contain SO MANY HEROES AND VILLAINS! I found that getting these boxes from the last Kickstarter is what really made this game feel like it included infinite play possibilities.

Where does this leave my predictions for the remaining 2-4 expansions in the campaign from my last post? And, would I change or increase any of the odds?

#1. Thunderbolts AKA Dark Avengers – 11:2 odds (84.6%). Previously #2 with 4:1 odds. I think with this box being all heroes we’re now due for a box full of villains and anti-heroes. Also, between Civil War and War of Kings, CMON is firmly into selling 00s storylines. (Guide to Thunderbolts & Dark Avengers)

#2. Annihilation AKA Marvel Cosmic – 5:4 odds (55.5%). Previously #9 with 2:9 odds. This is increasingly feeling like the kind of box this campaign is leaning into. It’s a major event with an iconic villain and it lets them squeeze in some slightly more-obscure characters who are rooted in the 80s and 90s. (Guide to Marvel Universe Events – Annihilation)

#3. War of the Hulks and/or Incredible Hulks – 9:8 (52.9%). Previously #10 with 3:17 odds. It feels like the stock of this expansion has risen with the announcement of Civil War. It’s a mid-00s event and a chance to re-implement Hulk from the core set and She-Hulk from the S1 stretch goals, which is on-trend for this campaign. (Guide to Hulk, Guide to She-Hulk – Jennifer Walters, & Guide to Red She-Hulk)

#4. Midnight Sons and/or Legion of Monsters – 7:11 odds (38.8%). Previously #3 with 8:5 odds. With every box so far focused on a specific storyline from the 00s, this box seems to be farther out of CMON’s sweet spot than I thought. Now that we have Elsa Bloodstone as a stretch goal, they might just slip us some of these characters as further stretch goals rather than in a box. But.. it still has a lot of potential characters and a lot of 90s nostalgia, and could be hung on an event like Siege of Darkness. I’m not counting it out quite yet. (Guide to Ghost Rider & Guide to Werewolf by Night. Plus, check out the Cosmic Circus Midnight Sons reading guide from my colleague Vin!)

#5. New Warriors – still 3:8 odds (27.27%). Previously #7. The New Warriors have more nostalgic heft than many of my other predictions, and Speedball was closely tied to the kickoff of Civil War. With the Civil War box digging more deeply into the Avengers roster for cuts like Tigra and Yellowjacket, I feel like there’s still a solid possibility this one could happen. (Guide to New Warriors)

#6. Eternals – 2:7 odds (22.2%). Previously #5 with 4:5 odds. One of the CMON architects of the campaign cagily called the possibility of seeing Eternals a “roll of 4” on a D20. I’m not going to argue with the odds set by one of the game masters! I still think this set can capitalize on MCU synergy, especially with the surprising news that The Eternals was Disney Plus’s most-watched movie of 2022! That’s a shocker, considering Doctor Strange also hit streaming in 2022. (Guide to Eternals)

#7. Runaways – 2:9 odds (18.18%). (Previously #6 with 4:7 odds.) If the Young Avengers weren’t a big enough deal to front their own box, my hopes for the Runaways have plummeted significantly. They actually shared a few crossover event titles with Young Avengers, so if fewer Young Avengers had been announced with Civil War I’d still have a hope! However, this is feeling less and less likely. (Guide to Runaways)

#8. Squadron Supreme – 1:9 odds (10%). (Was #4 with was 1:1 odds.) Again, if we can’t have a Young Avengers box, then this team is way too obscure. Plus, they’ve never been participants in a huge Marvel story (though they do pop up in Hickman’s incursions). Given the team’s obscurity, I suspect we’ll only see Hyperion, if anyone.

#9. Age of Krakoa AKA Dawn of X – 3:29 odds (9.375%). (Previously #8 with was 4:13 odds.) It feels like Krakoa trends too new for CMON to hang a box on the story given the way they are sticking to the mid-00s. Something like Messiah Complex feels much more likely if we get an X-focused box (and could still include many Academy X heroes, but not Quentin Quire). (X-Men Reading Order)

Honorable Mention: I don’t think we’re going to see Power Pack (too obscure, not oos enough), Avengers Academy (more obscure than Young Avengers), Agents of Atlas (too new), or Doctor Strange Academy (too new). I think Superior Foes of Spider-Man remains as unlikely as it was before, but not more unlikely.