Vs System 2PCG: The Marvel Battles

I had noticed Vs System 2PCG: The Marvel Battles back in 2016, but Netrunner was then the undisputed king of one-versus-one card games, while L5R 2.0 was arriving with momentum. It was not an ideal climate for another LCG, especially one from Upper Deck, and the game ultimately never took off. Still, the company keeps supporting it now and then with new card packs, which keeps it alive for people who discovered it later, like me. This reissue is a major, more streamlined reworking of the old VS, with cards and rules built for a more modern, immediate experience—and, very practically, for online play.

At its core, it is not rocket science: you play decks of heroes and look for the synergies between them. The rules are streamlined enough not to overwhelm you, without making the game entirely automatic or empty. Interaction comes through the confrontation between the two sides and through how each deck uses its heroes and cards against the other.

Deckbuilding is not excessively complicated, but it has enough depth to keep me engaged. At first, you can build clean, thematic decks; once you begin mixing different hero teams, more hidden combos and less superficial connections emerge. That is the nice part: I can keep decks ready for the group while still looking for new combinations, without turning every gathering into an optimization workshop.

For me, its big victory was the feeling of the whole package. On one Black Friday, I picked up the base set and four expansions for 100 euros—roughly a thousand cards—and built eight decks in a single afternoon. They can comfortably remain on the shelf for two or three months of games with the group without being exhausted immediately. In a period when card games seem clinically dead, that felt like exceptionally honest value for money. It is not the genre’s new monarch; it is, however, a light LCG that you put on the table and have a good time with.

Updated session

The second stretch of games confirmed rather than changed my first impression. The group grew from two players to three, even though the pandemic made it difficult to get more people hooked, and we began exploring the combos and team mixes more carefully. The game remains honest in terms of value, and I am still waiting for the moment when four of us can meet up: 2vs2 is where, for me, the whole thing truly takes off.