So, Marvel United: Multiverse was the #1 spot on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2014: it has so many expansions for Marvel United!  But, let’s get one thing straight!  The main reason we were so looking forward to this was one reason: Galactus.  And his Heralds. 

The Coming of Galactus: Marvel United was easily our most anticipated game or expansion of 2024!  This expansion is yet another expansion in the Marvel United line;  we have reviewed the base game (see here and here) and the Marvel United: X-Men  (see here and here), and we talked about the Expansion Absorption here.  In general, we have raved about Marvel United!  Marvel United is a cooperative super-hero game for 1-4 players (there are one vs. many expansions that that player count to 1-5, but we aren’t discussing those here).

To be clear: you need at least one of the four base Marvel United games to play The Coming of Galactus: This is NOT a stand-alone game.  You need at least one of: Marvel United, X-Men: Marvel United, Spider-Geddon: Marvel United, or the newest Multiverse: Marvel United. 

See Multiverse: Marvel United above.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing (Admit It: You Just Want To See The Minis)

This is a pretty big boy of a box. See the box with a can of Coke for perspective.

It’s the same width and height of all the other Marvel United expansions, but it’s a very deep box! The Marvel United people have done a good job at keeping all the boxes consistent so it’s a little easier to store.

This looks pretty cool when you open it up: you can see Galactus peering at you: there’s an 8-page rulebook and some new center locations.

Admit it, you just want to see the Galactus mini! See above as we he is “swaddled” in a little foam blanket with a wire holding him in. 

I think Galactus is just invading Earth because he wants a Coke.  See above.

His heralds are also pretty cool minis (see the wire sticking out from Galactus above). See above and below.

Gabriel: The Air-Walker!

Terrax!

Firelord and Nova (aka Frankie Raye)! 

Each Herald also has his own Villain Sheet. See above.

The Herald bad guys cards are pretty cool: see above.  Also note that Frankie Ray (Nova) is can be either a bad guy or a good guy!  Did you know Nova was in the Fantastic Four for a short time???

But, it’s Galactus‘ cards that we care about!! See above.

This expansion looks fantastic.  I was so excited to get it played! See it all unpacked above!

Gameplay (The Coming of Galactus Mode)

There are basically two gameplay modes in this expansion.  The first one is fighting Galactus; this is called The Coming of Galactus.

Galactus sits in the middle of 6 regions of Earth: these are all special locations that come in the box.  Note that the game has a funny starting condition: the players start in the region of Earth they are playing the game in!

Galactus’ Master Plan cards have him rotate (kind of like Thanos rotates in Thanos Rising, if you have ever played that game).  The region he stops on gets hit pretty hard.

When Galactus BAMS! a region, everyone takes a damage, all civilians and thugs are removed, and all the other BAMS! activate.  It’s pretty brutal if he rotates to your space. See above as the Thing gets KO’d!

If a region ever gets overfilled OR a hero is KO’d, then a Galactus Master Plan card is put face down in the storyline!  This makes it even harder for the good guys to get anything done, as Galactus is taking away actions!   See above as heroes lose because Galactus just takes over the storyline and the heroes can’t get anything done!

To win, the players must overcome 8 challenges!  Calm Down Civilians, Steal The Ultimate Nullifier, Take Down Air-walker, etc (see three of them above)!

The final Challenge is always the same: “Convince Galactus to Spare Earth!”  Yes, you cannot take down Galactus, buy you can reason with him.  This is an interesting new mechanism, as you have to put the tokens down in PAIRS (i.e., no single stars) to succeed on this Challenge.

If you ever run out of storyline cards, or any hero completely dies, the game is over as Galactus has eaten earth!  Your one chance to win is to “reason” with Galactus!

Solo Play (The Coming Of Galactus)

So, Marvel United has two official Solo Modes and one unofficial Solo Mode.  (Thank you for following Saunders’ Law!)  The original Marvel United and X-Men: Marvel United have a fairly contorted solo mode (called S.H.I.E.L.D. solo mode: see SOME of the rules above) which was far too complex; it wasn’t appealing to us at all.  In fact, it became a standard counter-example in our discussion of solo modes: How To Play A Cooperative Game Solo? 

The newest Spider-Geddon: Marvel United (and Multiverse: Marvel United) has a new solo mode called Commander Mode!  We definitely liked it more than the original S.H.I.E.L.D. solo mode!  Spider-Geddon: Marvel United made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2023 because of the new solo mode!

But, at the end of the day, I prefer two-handed solo for Marvel United.  Why?   Because it’s easy: there are no special rules, you just play Marvel United the way it’s “meant” to be played!!  Since there are SO MANY NEW THINGS for Marvel United (Team Decks, Items, New Expansions, etc), the last thing I want are new rules that I have to consult for solo mode.  Alternating between two heroes playing is the easiest way to get going so I can concentrate on all the new stuff.

For The Coming of Galactus first play, I chose Magik and Warlock (see above) from the X-Men: Stretch Goals set (see below).   Those are my favorite two characters!  Since I am learning a bunch of new rules, I wanted to play with characters I already knew.  This is called “change as few things as possible to make it easier to learn“.

Somehow, it seemed right that a galactic refuge outcast like Warlock and a dimension hopping outcast like Magik would take on Galactus.  The outcasts are the only ones crazy enough to take on the World-Eating Villain!

So, I ended up playing two games with these heroes: I won the first and just barely lost the second. But I cheated in the first game.

How did I cheat in my first solo game?  I kept three of the Challenges out all times (see above).  Recall, the only way to win is take get to the last Challenge and defeat that!  But I think the right thing to do is only show a single Challenge at a time!!  So, I think I won the first game because I cheated.  Learn my mistake: only one Challenge is active at a time!

One of the things that makes the Galactus scenario so hard is that every KO (and overflow) causes Galactus to put a Master Plan face down!  See above as an overflow happens and Galactus clogs the storyline!  This is terrible because you lose a turn (Magik and Warlock only have two plays now before the next Master Plan) AND Galactus is closer to winning!

My second game was a loss, but a heart-breaking loss as I simply ran out of cards!  This time, I played correctly with the Challenges (only one Challenge up at any time).  

See above as Warlock and Magik need literally one more card to win!  This was both cool and heart-breaking at the same time!  I think if I had Magik’s Soul Sword (Items are new in the Multiverse expansions), I may been able to pull this off!

What a blast!  Magik and Warlock were a surprisingly good team against Galactus.  This is partly because their Special Effects don’t matter as much with Galactus (as their special Effects tend to deal with Crisis tokens: see above)!  Why do I say that?

The two Power Cosmic Threat cards (see above) disable ALL SPECIAL EFFECTS until you defeat them!!!   This game is so tight, you almost never have a chance to disable these Power Cosmic Threats, so all the Special Effects you have become useless! In a game without Crisis tokens, Warlock and Magik didn’t care too much that their “specials” are disabled.  I remember thinking when I first started: “Oh, Magik and Warlock are bad choices, because their specials mostly deal with Crisis tokens“.  Nope! Since they are disabled most of the time (if not the entire game), they didn’t care! 

Overall, I had a great time playing solo.  This was SO MUCH FUN!

Cooperative Mode (The Coming Of Galactus)

For cooperative mode, we played a 3-Player game with members of the Fantastic Four.  The Fantastic Four is a special expansion for the base game: we reviewed it here.

I played Mr. Fantastic, Sara played Invisible Girl, and Teresa played The Thing.

Over the coarse of one night, we ended up playing The Coming of Galactus three times!

Our first loss was crushing, as we got KO’d and overflowed so many times that Galactus clogged the storyline.  We learned a lot from this first play: most importantly, don’t let the Civilians or Thugs overflow!  The consequences are too dire!

It was a crushing defeat (see above), but we all wanted to try again!

We did significantly better the second time, but still lost as we ran out of time! See above!

In our third and final play, we were able to win!  We learned a lot about the game: what to do, what NOT to do, what strategies to take!  

That hardest part of this is that it’s just so easy to be crushed by Galactus if you aren’t careful, but the game is quick enough to reset and play again!  After three plays, we finally eked out a victory.  We had fun, but we all started getting a little loopy:

When I wasn’t looking, Teresa started playing with the figures. Apparently, Sue Richards ran off with Nova.

Solo Play (The Heralds of Galactus)

The Heralds of Galactus is a secondary way to play this expansion. 

 While each of the Heralds has its own board (see above), and you can play each Herald separately as the main Villian, the mode: The Heralds of Galactus has you fighting all the Heralds at once!  See below!

This is a really interesting way to run the Heralds:  all of them are out on the board, and all of the their dashboards are out as well.  As you play, the Heralds cycle-through each other.   

There’s a little track at the top that keeps track of which Herald is next.

This was a fun way to play; the Heralds each got a chance to do their thing, but it wasn’t too overwhelming as each Herald gets their “special” BAM! every 4 turns (as they cycle through).  It’s kind of cool that this mode does seem to work.

I played this mode solo with .. you guessed it: Magik and Warlock.

In the The Heralds of Galactus mode, Magik and Warlock are perfect choices!  Why?

This Scenario focuses quite a bit on the Crisis Tokens.  Both Magik and Warlock manage Crisis tokens VERY WELL!  See Magik’s Mystical Armor above and Warlock’s Techo-Organic Lifeform below!

One of the things the Heroes need to worry about is the dwindling supply of Crisis Tokens that come out during play: if they ever all come out, the player’s immediately lose! See above as the S.H.I.E.L.D. Hellicarrier gets a lot of Crisis tokens!

In my solo game, I was never in danger of losing by running out of Crisis tokens! Warlock’s first card allows him to discard Crisis! And once Magik got her Armor out, she didn’t have to worry about Crisis tokens either.   The Heroes could concentrate on what mattered and mostly ignore the Crisis tokens! Warlock and Magik did a great job taking down the Heralds!

In the end, this mode (The Heralds of Galactus) is a little more of a by-the-numbers expansion, but I liked it.  I liked thee way the Heralds cycled through to create a unique experience.

Controversy!  What Does Facedown Mean?

There has been some discussion on BoardGameGeek (see this thread here) about what it means to “put a Villain Master Plan facedown into the Storyline“.   This is especially important to the Galactus scenario, as a Hero getting KO’d forces a Galactus Master Plan to get added  facedown to the storyline … and we know heroes get KO’d all the time with Galactus!

My original stance is that a card facedown takes up space in storyline  and causes the players to have fewer actions.   Other people in the BGG  thread feel that you shouldn’t lose turns because it doesn’t explicitly say that.

Let’s explore this issue.  What does it mean to place a Master Plan card facedown in the storyline?  Let’s take a look at the Point and Counterpoint!

Point: A Facedown card causes the Heroes the lose an action!

1. Simplicity: If the purpose of the facedown rule is  to simply reduce the number of cards in the Villain’s Master Plan deck (and thus end the game earlier), the rule would have been written to be simpler:

   “Discard a card from the Villain’s Master Plan deck”.

If the rule were written like that, I would 100% agree that the players don’t lose an action.  But since the rule states explicitly to place a card facedown in the Storyline, it implies it takes up space!  What does it mean to take up space? To lose an action!

2. Thematic/Cartoon

Take a look at this snapshot of a cartoon page from a newspaper.

In this snapshot above, each panel of each cartoon takes up space. If a panel is removed or covered, then there is physically less space!

That lack of space means the cartoons have less space to tell their stories.

Much like the storyline in Marvel United: reduced space means fewer panels for the players to act and tell their story!

3) Thematic/Game Balance

It always struck me that a KO should be fairly devastating: a hero has been knocked out, and it feels it should be a big deal!

So, when a KO from Galactus causes “one Master Plan facedown in the storyline”, that feels it should be reasonably devastating!  If we just lose one Master Plan card, but keep all three turns, that feels lame to me!  It doesn’t feel like it is thematic or balanced! In fact, I have seen players gets KO’d on purpose just so they could get  back to full cards!

If the heroes must lose an action (because there’s less space in the story), then it feels more thematic and frankly more balanced.

A KO should be a big event the players try to avoid: it should have grave repercussions.  That leads me to believe the players should lose an action as well as reduce the number of Master Plan cards. (In Galactus especially: there are 18 Master Plan cards, so it’s almost never a problem that you run out of Master Plan cards, at least in my experience!)

4) Symmetry

Take a look at the cartoon page again. See above.

Now, take a look at a storyline where the players lose a turn whenever a Master Plan is played facedown to the storyline. It looks symmetric: like a page of a comic. See above.

Now, take a look at a storyline were players get all three turns; the facedown Master Plan cards cause the storyline to have ragged edges and no longer look like a real comic page.

Humans naturally like symmetry: I would argue that the natural tendency is for humans to want the symmetry of the panels and suggests that the panels should stay symmetric and avoid the ragged edges.

In conclusion, the rule about placing a Villain Master Card facedown in the storyline, both thematically and physically, implies less space and fewer actions for the players.  The fact that the rule is NOT written in the simpler form of “discard a card from the Villain Master Plan” implies there’s more to the rule than just reducing the cards in the Villain Master Plan Deck; it implies reduced space and thus fewer actions.

Counter Point: The facedown card in the storyline should NOT cause players to lose an action!

The rule that says “place a Villain Master Plan card facedown in the storyline” says nothing about losing turns.  Since it’s not said explicitly, players do not lose turns.

—————————————-Choose a side.  Which side do you land on?

If you chose that side that facedown implies fewer actions, the game becomes harder, as the heroes have fewer actions in the game in response to the Villain.

If you choose the side that that says “facedown does NOT imply fewer actions”, the game becomes easier, as the characters always get all three of their actions.

From my playtesting, I have tried the game with both facedown  interpretations (fewer actions or full actions) … and in both solo and cooperative modes!! And guess what? The game still works either way.

One way is just harder than the other.

What I Liked

One) The minis are all amazing.  

Two) The new idea in this expansion (have to place PAIRS of tokens, 8 challenges, cycling through Heralds) keep this game new and fresh.

Three) I still love how this game looks, especially with the storyline. It feels like you are looking at a comic book storyline!

Four) I like that the Coming of Galactus mode is hard, but it seems like you can still learn from it to come up with strategies!

Five) I had such a good time playing this solo (two-handed solo mode).

What I Didn’t Like

One) My friends didn’t like this nearly as much a I did.  Their main criticism was “the game was too random“.  I agree there is a lot of randomness in the game (Where does Galactus turn to? What cards come out? Where are the Heralds?), but I would argue that, after three cooperative games, we had discovered strategies that worked because we got better every game!  We were able to win!  And I think we could do it again!

Two)  In The Coming of Galactus mode, you simply have to take damage and get KO’d.  Some Marvel United expansions MIGHT have a player or two get KO’d.  Not here!  Each hero will probably get KO’d at least once or twice or more!  You have to get comfortable with the idea: “you will have to take damage and you will have to get KO’d multiple times”.  If you don’t like that feeling, then this game will not be for you.  Once you sort of “get used” to that, I don’t think it’s that bad.

Three) I wish the rules were explained just a little better.  A sentence being more explicit and saying “There is only one Challenge active at any time: once you complete the Challenge, flip over the next!”.   This is the problem with so many expansions; sometimes they don’t have time to make things a little clearer.

Four) The Power Cosmic is the most frustrating Threat in the Coming of Galactus mode!  And there are TWO COPIES of it!  So, for most of the game, you don’t get to take advantage of your Special Effects on your Hero cards!  All the things that make the Heroes “special” are taken from them!  I got “lucky” in my solo games and used two characters (Magik and Warlock) that didn’t really care, but The Fantastic Four were really hampered by this!   But, I think we won our very last cooperative game because we were able to enable the Fantastic Four Special Powers in the very last few rounds! 

This can be very thematic: “The Fantastic Four lost a lot of their powers, but once they got them back, they rocked!!!”  I could see this being  comic book arc: the heroes must overcome obstacles to get their powers back, and then rally in a climactic ending!  BUT this can be very frustrating if you don’t deal with it correctly.  My friends did not like this: they said it made it feel like you couldn’t do very much, and it was frustrating.

Conclusion

This was a very divisive expansion.  The Coming of Galactus might be my favorite expansion of the year so far at a 9.0/10, Teresa likes it at about a 7/10, but my friend Sara gives it a 4.0/10.    Her thoughts were that the randomness of Galactus, the absolute beating the heroes takes, and Power Cosmic Threat cards take away from the fun.  And I get that.  But I thought that it was all very thematic! Once you get comfortable with the idea that “you will get beaten up a lot“, you can strategize and come up with ways to defeat Galactus … which we did, but it just took us three games.

I will point out that we all WANTED to play three games to defeat Galactus. It was easy enough to replay three games in one night, and very satisfying once we were finally able to defeat the mighty Galactus.