The Avengers are one of the power teams of the Marvel universe. While the Fantastic Four stay together largely because of family ties (albeit with regular cameos), and the X-Men share a common bond of powerful mutations (like some crime fighting freak show), the Avengers are simply a collection of powerful heroes whose aim is to right wrongs while wearing figure-hugging spandex and perhaps a cloak. Their recruitment restriction seems to be that characters must be “goodies” (though this is regularly stretched by such players as Scarlet Witch, Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk, who is more a force of nature) who are good at what they do—fighting crime. In the Marvel universe, which is replete with people imbued with the ability to do the extraordinary, the Avengers have a pretty wide base of players to choose from.

There seems to be a subtle theme within the naming conventions—any plot twist with an exclamation mark in its title is very, very good (with Charge! and Fall Back! being the exceptions to the rule). I have actually started adding exclamation mark to some of my cards that seem to warrant one. A Press the Attack or Finishing Move just seems that much more game-changing and surprising when one gets to exclaim it. Suffice it to say, Avengers Assemble! more than earns its exclamation mark. Character search effects tend to rank among the most popular cards in any set, as missing drops is one of the easiest ways to lose a game and search effects make that much less likely to happen.

In a similar vein to Signal Flare(!) and The Ring Has Chosen(!), Avengers Assemble! includes a character discard within its effect. But unlike its predecessors, this is part of the cost, and it’s a little more specific in that it requires the discard of a leader character card. Given the strength of the leaders we’ve seen thus far in previews, this seems not an unreasonable drawback. Indeed, I would venture to suggest that playing plenty of leaders will often be very powerful. The leader mechanic seems naturally to suggest that running lots of leaders so that their abilities stack up will be a powerful strategy. Sure, the fact that the discard is a cost makes Fizzle(!) a lot more painful, but with the extra drawback comes a little extra benefit, too.

If one recruits the character fetched on the turn it was fetched, it gets a +1 ATK/+1 DEF counter. This can easily be enough to turn a character from a little small to perfectly reasonable, or indeed can compound the danger that a large character represents. There are also some rather fun little things that you can do with Avengers Assemble! on occasion that help you to supersize your characters. It seems fairly unlikely that there are many army members in the Avengers, given their massive quantities of specialist heroes, but with a team-up, you could reasonably put yourself in a situation where you recruit a few copies of Anti Green Lantern and have each get a little bigger thanks to this kind of search.

Even more interestingly, if you have spare copies of Avengers Assemble! in hand, then you can think about using more than one on a single turn to stack up the +1 ATK/+1 DEF counter element of the card. If you use two copies of this powerful searcher in a single turn, then you may risk missing a later drop, but the immediate benefit will be a character that is almost an entire drop larger than the standard. There may even be a power-up waiting in hand to go along with it. None too shabby.

With Avengers Assemble!, your big special characters will be just that little bit bigger. And you can afford to have more character variety, as they can be fetched when needed, which is pretty special. I expect to see this card joining the ranks of Teen Titans Go!, It’s Clobberin' Time!, and Bamf! as team-stamped plot twists that are right at the top of the must-include list for their appropriate teams.

Have fun and be lucky!

Tim “Hoping to Crack an Avengers Assemble at the Sneak Peek” Willoughby