Trickster Takeover

Villains come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large and brutish, others surround themselves with likeminded minions. Some of the most dangerous villains, however, are the ones who use cunning and trickery to manipulate the world to their whim.

So, what happens when two of those trickster villains team up?

Fantasy Flight Games is thrilled to announce the Trickster Takeover Scenario Pack for Marvel Champions: The Card Game!

This 78-card scenario pack—guest designed by former Marvel Champions designer Michael Boggs—slinks into the scene with two brand-new scenarios featuring the Enchantress and Loki, two conniving villains with a ton of tricks up their sleeves. In addition to being able to play these scenarios in the traditional standalone way, the Loki, God of Lies scenario can also be played in a brand-new Epic Multiplayer Mode, a Marvel Champions first! Also included is a special modular encounter set featuring enthralled minions you can recruit to your side. Can you survive this brutal battle of wits?

Sovereign Sorceress

To kick off the shenanigans, the heroes must face off against Enchantress (Trickster Takeover, 1), the charming—and manipulative—Asgardian mystic.

Right off the bat, Enchantress hits the heroes with her Hypnotic Gaze (Trickster Takeover, 7A-11A) during scenario setup. There are five different copies of this card, each with a different Enchantment on the opposite side, and you won’t know which one you’re dealing with until it flips. While still on the Hypnotic Gaze side, your identity gains the Defiant trait, representing how your hero is resisting Enchantress’s temptations. After your Hypnotic Gaze gains enough charm counters—such as from Enchantress’s attacks or through cards like her Crown (Trickster Takeover, 16) or an Enthralled Lackey (Trickster Takeover, 17)—the card flips to its unique “trance” side and gives you the Enthralled trait.

Each trance-side Enchantment hits you with an immediate effect when it’s revealed, and also possesses a unique “Forced Action.” This is a special type of action that you have to perform before you can end the player phase, though you can choose the moment that you do so. For example, the Trance of Greed (Trickster Takeover, 8B) has a Forced Action that lets you draw a card and then forces you to immediately play that card, or else take a damage if you can’t. You have to perform this action before the player phase ends, but you could wait to perform it until your hand is empty so that you don’t need to waste any resources on the drawn card (assuming you have a hit point to spare). Or, you could draw the card early in your turn, hoping it’s something you want to play right away. Similarly, the Trance of Wrath (Trickster Takeover, 11B) has a Forced Action that deals you a point of indirect damage while also letting you deal 2 damage to a minion. With careful planning, you can choose when to trigger these actions and get the most out of their effects while mitigating the costs.

In addition to the Forced Action on the trance side, the trait you gain from your Enchantment attachment can also determine how some of Enchantress’s other cards affect you. Cards like “Do My Bidding” (Trickster Takeover, 23), Spell Blast (Trickster Takeover, 25), or the Spellbound (Trickster Takeover, 22) side scheme all get nastier when your identity has the Enthralled trait, while minions like the Enthralled Brute (Trickster Takeover, 18) or Sindr (Trickster Takeover, 19) become tougher to face. To top it all off, if you have the Enthralled trait, then every charm counter that you would gain ends up as a threat on the main scheme (Trickster Takeover, 4B) instead. With her tricks and her charms, Enchantress is not to be trifled with!

Trickster Magic

Before we preview the second scenario, it’s only fitting that we talk about the special encounter set that comes in this pack, Trickster Magic!

This encounter set represents the trickster villains’ powers at work, including all the trouble they’re able to stir up as distractions for the heroes. These range from tricky side schemes like The Trickster Tango (Trickster Takeover, 60) to complicating the battle with a Love Triangle (Trickster Takeover, 62). However, the highlight of this set is its four Enthralled minions, Absorbing Man (Trickster Takeover, 56), Titania (Trickster Takeover, 57), Whirlwind (Trickster Takeover, 58) and Zzzax (Trickster Takeover, 59). Each of these minions is a fairly formidable foe, but they’re not exactly working with Enchantress (or Loki) of their own free will. If you manage to knock them back to their senses, these four will actually team up with you to help take down the villains who were controlling their minds!

For example, if you defeat the Absorbing Man minion, then you immediately get to put the Absorbing Man (Trickster Takeover, 63) ally into play under your control. The same goes for the other three, and any of them could potentially swing the flow of battle in your favor. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend!

The God of Lies

After dealing with Enchantress, our heroes will have little time to breathe before being thrust into conflict with Loki.

As we mentioned earlier in this article, this scenario marks the introduction of a brand-new Epic Multiplayer Mode for the game. Loki’s avatars have spread all across the globe, and the heroes must work together like never before to shatter the mischievous god’s illusions and bring him down once and for all!

To kick things off, we have the primary villain card of Loki, God of Lies (Trickster Takeover, 27A). This is the “true” Loki, and the one that everybody currently participating in the scenario (in Single Group Mode or Epic Multiplayer Mode) needs to defeat in order to win. Sounds simple enough, right? Except nothing is as it seems with this masterful trickster, and he has no qualms of breaking the game’s normal rules: no matter what you do, you cannot directly attack or damage Loki, God of Lies at any time. This is thanks to Worlds Collide (Trickster Takeover, 28B), a unique main scheme shared by all player groups which not only prevents anyone from damaging Loki, but also prevents any threat from being removed from itself. The only way you’re going to be able to damage Loki is to “shatter the illusion,” and to do that, you’re all going to have to fight off his various avatars.

There are four different avatars of Loki: Loki the Rascal (Trickster Takeover, 29A), Loki the Miscreant (Trickster Takeover, 30A), Loki the Knave (Trickster Takeover, 31A), and Loki the Wretch (Trickster Takeover, 32A). Each player group has to deal with their own batch of these four avatars, facing off against a randomly-chosen Avatar of Loki that gets swapped out for another every time they manage to defeat one. As you fight your Avatar of Loki, you’ll build up “shatter counters” on it through defeating side schemes like Lofty Goals (Trickster Takeover, 47) or minions like Grendell (Trickster Takeover, 38) or Malekith (Trickster Takeover, 39). Each time your group manages to defeat an Avatar of Loki, it will gain a surge of shatter counters and flip to its Fading Figment (Trickster Takeover, 29B) side, triggering the Shatter the Illusion effect that lets you damage Loki, God of Lies based on the number of shatter counters you built up. Your group then gets a new, random Avatar of Loki to deal with, and the fight continues as before.

So now you know how to damage the real Loki, but the odds are still stacked against you; after all, Loki’s plan is affecting the entire globe, and with him raising Mischief and Mayhem (Trickster Takeover, 33B) in every player group, just one slip-up from the heroes could swing momentum back in the trickster god’s favor. Fortunately, defeating an Avatar of Loki also adds some “synergy counters” onto one of four special Synergy environments. These cards represent the heroes from around the world working together to take Loki down, and they provide some pretty powerful benefits. For example, Domineering Force (Trickster Takeover, 52) can be used to boost the attack of a friendly character by 4 damage, while Unified Front (Trickster Takeover, 55) can serve as a fantastic resource generator for the entire team. Each player group has their own copies of these environments to work with, and when you’re playing in Epic Multiplayer Mode, you can choose any group in your “pod” to grant synergy counters when you defeat your Avatar of Loki.

Of course, it’s not like Loki himself is going to just sit there and wait for you to win. When he drops to half health, Loki, God of Lies flips to his second stage (Trickster Takeover, 27B), triggering his Intense Focus (Trickster Takeover, 34A) and powering up his avatars for the rest of the game. If your group is playing in expert mode, then you started the game with Intense Focus in play, which means at this point, it flips over to Total Focus (Trickster Takeover, 34B) instead, fishing the Dark Scepter (Trickster Takeover, 36) out of the encounter deck and boosting the avatars even further. Both Intense Focus and Total Focus represent Loki concentrating his power on fighting the heroes, hoping to snatch away victory through devious means. Even so, with a bit of synergy and a whole lot of teamwork, you and your fellow heroes can prevail against the God of Lies!

The Trickster Tango

With manipulative tactics and tricks up their sleeves, Enchantress and Loki are bound to make a splash in Marvel Champions: The Card Game. Do you have what it takes to stop this dastardly duo? Look forward to taking on this tangle of tricksters when the Trickster Takeover Scenario Pack arrives this August!

You can pre-order your copy of the Trickster Takeover Scenario Pack (MC55en) at your local retailer today! Online preorders will open soon.

Written by Peter Schumacher