Fantasy Flight Games and Asmodee‘s Marvel Champions initially released with 5 powerful heroes, and each one caters to a different skillset and style of play. The starting roster includes heroes like Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel, but it also includes the Iron Avenger himself, Iron Man. The deck comes with Iron Man’s specific set of cards as well as the Aggression deck and includes plenty of armor upgrades and heavy firepower. If you’re curious about how Iron Man plays and what to expect from him, we’ve got the full breakdown.
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Iron Man is actually one of the more advanced characters to use in the game, mostly due to the hand size restriction while in Hero mode. His default hand size in his Hero form is 1 (yes, 1), and he starts off with only 9 hit-points. That said, his core ability nets him a +1 to hand size for every Tech upgrade you control, so priority one early on is to get through your deck and get some of those upgrades to maximize him.
The good news is that his Alter-Ego form lends itself to this. Despite the lower 3 Recovery, the Alter-Ego mode features the Futurist Action, which allows you to look at the top 3 cards of your deck and add 1 of them to your hand. That means you might need to be in this form for a few turns depending on what you draw, so be prepared to build up some Threat on the main Scheme. You can speed up this process a little with the Stark Tower Support card, which allows you to exhaust it and return a Tech card from your Discard to your hand (though you can choose any player to receive this bonus).
There are 4 Upgrade cards (all with the Tech Trait) that are the most important to snag, and the first is the Mark V Armor (cost 3). This will get you 6 extra Hit Points and an extra card while in Hero mode. The second most important is the Rocket Boots card (cost 1), which gets you an extra hit-point and the chance to spend a resource and gain the Aerial Trait until the end of the phase.
That Trait is important for two other Upgrade cards, those being the Powered Gauntlets (cost 2) and the Marv V Helmet (cost 1). The Gauntlets allow you to deal 1 damage (2 with Aerial Trait) while the Helmet lets you remove 1 Threat from a Scheme, but you get to remove 1 Threat from each Scheme on the board if you’ve got the Aerial Trait. The Aerial Trait also directly benefits the Supersonic Punch Event card, dealing double the damage.
Two other cards are also worth adding to your deck. The first is the Helicarrier Support card, which reduces the cost of the next card a player plays by 1, and it can be you or another player that receives this benefit.
The second card is the Repulsor Blast, which deals 1 damage to an enemy by default, but then allows you to discard the top 5 cards of your deck and for each Energy Resource symbol you Discard you get to deal 2 additional damage.
Iron Man also comes equipped with 5 Allies, though 2 are native to the basic set, so everyone has them (Mockingbird and Nick Fury). The next 2 are Hulk and Tigra, native to the Aggression deck, and Tigra is actually the most valuable of them. First of all, she can Attack and Thwart, unlike Hulk, and her Response Action also allows her to heal 1 damage after defeating a Minion, meaning she can hang around if used correctly.
Iron Man also comes with his buddy War Machine, who costs a bit at 4 but boasts 4 health and has a handy Action. It allows him to Exhaust and take on 2 damage, but then he can deal 1 damage to every enemy on the board.
Alright, that’s the breakdown on Iron Man, but you can check out more of our Marvel Champions coverage right here, and feel free to hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Marvel and tabletop!
