“Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master—as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!”
   –The Hydra Oath

The nefarious organization known as Hydra has insidiously spread its tentacles through all of society, corrupting governments and subverting justice around the world. Their dark plots may begin with an unexpected attack on Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., but you can be certain that there are tendrils running deep below the surface. Your battle against evil is only beginning…

The Rise of Red Skull boasts a massive infusion of new content for your games of Marvel Champions. Hawkeye and Spider-Woman join your roster of heroes with fully pre-built and ready-to-play player decks stuffed with new cards. Whether you’re playing these new heroes or relying on old favorites, you can test their mettle against five brand-new villains: Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola, and Red Skull. Each of these five scenarios offers a unique challenge, and while you can simply choose a villain to battle, this campaign expansion lives up to its name with the introduction of campaign mode to Marvel Champions: The Card Game.

Hydra Rising

If you’ve been eagerly waiting for more Marvel Champions scenarios, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in this campaign expansion. Every villain in this expansion has his own schemes and tactics, such as Crossbones’ obsession with Weapons. Crossbones (The Rise of Red Skull, 58) gains the new piercing keyword while he has a Weapon attachment like Crossbones' Machine Gun (The Rise of Red Skull, 64), which he can use to pile on additional damage whenever he attacks. And that’s not even mentioning the deadly experimental weapons that Crossbones can loot from attacking Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.!

In a marked contrast to Crossbones, your battle with Absorbing Man (The Rise of Red Skull, 76) introduces an unusual type of encounter card: environments. These environments grant Absorbing Man powerful new abilities, such as the extra threat added when you fight on the Snowy Hillside (The Rise of Red Skull, 81). And of course, Absorbing Man takes on the traits of his environments, giving many of his encounter cards distinct characteristics based on where you fight him, and changing the flow of this scenario every time you encounter it.

Of course, you could choose to fight Crossbones and Absorbing Man as entirely separate scenarios, connected by an overarching story, as with the Core Set scenarios. The Rise of Red Skull gives you an additional option, however, by introducing campaign mode. In campaign mode, you’ll play through all five scenarios of The Rise of Red Skull, taking down each villain in turn. In addition to being the ideal way to play through and experience Red Skull’s devious plot, campaign mode lets your choices echo throughout the campaign and gives every player the chance to upgrade their decks with certain cards they find along the way. You may even challenge yourself with the expert campaign, which introduces persistent damage between scenarios and forces you to take punishing obligations if you want to heal.

The story of The Rise of Red Skull campaign is told in beautifully illustrated comic panels!

Combine campaign mode with five new villains and three Hydra-centric modular encounter sets that can be added to these scenarios or any others, and it’s plain to see that your heroes will have their work cut out for them. So it’s a good thing that two new heroes swing into action with this campaign expansion!

Take Your Shot

If you’re ready to harry the villain from long range, then Hawkeye (The Rise of Red Skull, 1A) may be the right hero for you. Rather than wading into the fray, Hawkeye specializes in watching from afar, firing Arrow events like an Explosive Arrow (The Rise of Red Skull, 6), which can effortlessly clear out all the minions engaged with any player at the table. Of course, you’ll need to exhaust Hawkeye's Bow (The Rise of Red Skull, 2) to fire these Arrows, but this is an upgrade you’ll want in play no matter what—since it raises your base attack and gives all of your Arrow events the new ranged keyword!

In his pre-built deck included in this campaign expansion, Hawkeye uses the Leadership aspect, and you’ll find a wealth of new Leadership cards for any hero to utilize, including Kate Bishop as Hawkeye (The Rise of Red Skull, 11). As long as you’re willing to discard cards from your hand, Kate can be an exceptional source of damage, especially if she teams up with a hero who has high-resource cards, such as Captain Marvel or Hulk.

Hawkeye may prefer to fight from afar, but Spider-Woman (The Rise of Red Skull, 31A) is more than willing to leap straight into action. With her superhuman agility, Spider-Woman raises all of her base stats when you first play an aspect card each round. Most heroes would be limited to raising their stats once with this ability, but as a double agent, Jessica Drew (The Rise of Red Skull, 31B) allows you to choose two aspects during deckbuilding, equally splitting your deck between them! Even aside from extra triggers of Spider-Woman’s ability, bringing two aspects together in a single deck opens the door for dozens of previously unexplored combos.

With Spider-Woman’s pre-built deck in The Rise of Red Skull, she brings together Aggression and Justice aspects, mixing maximum damage with threat removal. With her allies like Spider-Girl and Spider-Man swinging into combat to help tackle the villain and remove threat from schemes, Spider-Woman is perfectly placed to take her fights to the next level.

Hawkeye and Spider-Woman arrive on the scene within this campaign expansion, but there’s one scenario pack and four hero packs planned to follow up The Rise of Red Skull before the game’s second campaign expansion. You can catch a glimpse of what’s on the horizon in the image above!

Cut Off One Head

We’ll take a closer look at these heroes and villains in future preview articles, and for more information, you can watch our announcement livestream here. Prepare to battle Hydra and face down a full cadre of new villains in The Rise of Red Skull campaign expansion! Look for The Rise of Red Skull to release later in 2020.