The game takes place across a 36" x 36" battlefield, with the primary objective of the game being to collect more victory points than your opponent. Victory points are acquired by completing objectives, which are chosen at the start of the game by choosing a pair of Crisis cards, representing a "Secure" objective and an "Extraction" objective. Players assemble a squad of superheroes to take on the two objectives, choosing from a roster of ten that they prepared at the start of the game; though the hero and villain divide is optional during roster building, you do gain bonuses by building a roster around a canonical team. With the additional help of "Team Tactics" cards which can create mid-game events, the game ends once either six rounds have passed, or one player earns 16 victory points.
This work features examples of the following tropes:
- A Commander Is You:
- Black Order: Elitist/Gimmick. The Black Order are a tightly-knit but powerful affiliation built around controlling your opponents and taking them out, which they can gain easy victory points from doing. They have a major gimmick with the Infinity Stones, which can be equipped by characters to grant them powerful abilities, but increase their threat cost. Their big weakness is that they are very expensive to field; for example, a basic Black Order list involving Thanos, Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight along with the Mind and Reality Stones equals a whopping 15 threat for just 3 characters. An opponent who is able to split up and focus down the Black Order, or earn lots of quick victory points early in the game before they can get going, stands a good chance against them.
- Dark Dimension: Gimmick/Economist. The Dark Dimension are unique among affiliations for how leader-centric they are. Dormammu's leadership ability, "Flames of the Faltine", forces him to become your team's leader and turns every other character into a member of the Dark Dimension, meaning Dormammu will always dominate his lists in a way that is rarely true of other leaders. Dormammu is next to Thanos as the game's strongest character; expensive but with a statline and ability list to back it up. His leadership ability pushes the Dark Dimension away from being a strictly Elitist affiliation however, as larger teams of weaker characters are best-positioned to benefit from Flames of the Faltine's ability of improving power generation at the cost of harming characters who earn too much.
- Sentinels: Elitist/Brute. A pure Sentinel list is going to have maybe four models total, as fielding both Sentinels and the Prime comes in at a pricey 13 Threat. But while it's slow-moving, the sheer amount of damage that they put out once in range 3 can easily knock out most characters in a single activation. They struggle on missions with distant objectives due to lack of board control, however.
- Actually Four Mooks: The S.H.I.E.L.D Agents, Hand Ninjas and Howling Commandos models are 3 characters all on one base.
- Amazon Brigade: The A-Force is available as an affiliation.
- Booby Trap: Rocket Raccoon and Mysterio have reactive superpowers that can damage foes who encroach upon their sphere of influence. Mystique and Punisher can blow up terrain if an opponent stands too close, as can Green Goblin with a tactics card.
- Capture the Flag: The extraction crisis "Mystic Wakandan Herbs: Fact or Fiction?" is this.
- Car Fu: Any character that can throw a size 2 terrain piece can do this.
- Clothing Damage: Most characters have their costume damaged and roughed up on the 'Injured' side of their character card.
- Combination Attack: A number of tactics cards will often involve two or more characters teaming up to perform an attack. For example, both Thor and Iron Man have cards that let them interact with Captain America's shield to perform an area and range-extended beam attack, respectively.
- Composite Character: The game's depiction of its cast is mostly based on the classic Marvel-616 universe, and the visual designs of the heroes are closely aligned with that, though there are a few nods to other versions of the characters.
- Shuri has a set of superpowers which emphasizes her position as a scientist and engineer, which puts her closer to her Marvel Cinematic Universe depiction than her comic book one.
- Baron Mordo has the history of his comic book counterpart (Transylvanian sorcerer who betrayed the Ancient One and allied with Dormammu) while having the appearance and equipment of his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart.
- Counter Spell: Tactic cards "No More Mutants" and "Shhh..." counter enemy superpowers.
- Damage Typing: The game divides attacks into three categories: Physical, Energy, and Mystic. Each character has different resistances to each weapon type, so exploiting a character's weakness to a certain type of damage can be quite devastating.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Dormammu, an interdimensional being of immense power, can be dazed from a normal human's punch if the dice will it.
- Enemy Mine: Though the Teams mechanic discourages it to an extent, there is nothing stopping you from mixing heroes and villains together in your squad. In moderation this can even be a great idea, such as using Thanos's powers to help out a team of Web Warriors.
- Fastball Special: Hulk's tactic card Gamma Launch allows him to throw teammates across the board, often faster than they might be able to move normally.
- Healing Factor: Some characters have an innate superpower that removes damage counters at end of activation.
- Hero Shooter: The game is essentially a tabletop adaption of the genre. Though the powers and abilities each character possesses can vary greatly, characters typically have the same sort of load out structure: a free 'builder' attack for you to obtain power with, a more powerful 'spender' which acts as an ultimate attack, the occasional attack which serves as something in-between the two, and a range of both passive abilities and ones which you must spend power to use.
- Physical, Mystical, Technological: The game splits its Damage Typing into Physical, Energy and Mystic.
- Stance System: A number of characters have multiple forms they can switch between using various methods.
- Doctor Voodoo is accompanied by Brother Daniel, the spirit of his deceased brother. Brother Daniel starts the game attached to Doctor Voodoo, giving him a buff to his stats and his ability to throw objects. He also has the "Possession" which moves Brother Daniel to an enemy; debuffing himself but forcing that enemy to drop any objective and prevents them from interacting with objectives while Brother Daniel is with them. Brother Daniel can move back to Doctor Voodoo either at the start of his turn for free, or in response to an enemy attack for a power cost.
- The Hulkbuster is a Mechanically Unusual Fighter for lacking an injured state, instead switching to a different form when he is knocked out. As the Hulkbuster, he is a Lightning Bruiser. When the Hulkbuster is destroyed, Iron Man emerges and serves as a very fragile support piece. If Iron Man is able to survive long enough to earn 10 power, he can recall the Hulkbuster armor and start the cycle new.
- Ms. Marvel can spend power to temporarily become embiggened, giving her a more powerful attack and a nifty objective snatching ability.
- Ant-Man and Wasp transform back and forth from "normal" and "tiny" forms.
- Hood has a normal form and a powerful possessed form that is vulnerable to mystic attacks.
- Support Party Member: There's a few:
- Shuri's basic attack is a good utility tool, but it is limited to just one point of damage per use. Her real strength comes from her superpowers: "Upgrades" lets her spend power to re-roll her teammate's dice, and "Head of Wakanda R&D" lets her gain power when she rolls critical failure results, giving her an extra passive source of power. Her secondary weapon, "Sonic Crush", is also a guaranteed stun with a chance to stagger enemies, overall making her a great superhero for controlling enemies who close in on her and her teammates.
- Wong can generate power for himself as an action, but doesn't have a powerful attack to spend it on. Instead, he can give that power away, remove damage tokens, and remove status conditions from allies.
- Lockjaw can teleport himself or an ally. Additionally, he can improve attack rolls made from his team to a targeted opposing character.
- Turns Red: Every character has two Stamina bars. Characters start the game 'Healthy', and upon losing their first set of Stamina become 'Injured', which in some cases can alter a character's stats or change their abilities.
- The Virus: One of the Sentinel's tactics cards infects a non-Sentinel character on your roster with nanites, giving it the Sentinel keyword and some benefits.
- Written Sound Effect: Deadpool's miniature, naturally, features him jumping on a rocket
◊ as it makes a visible "FWOOSH!" sound.
