5 Minute Marvel is freaking awesome.
5 Minute Marvel was designed by Connor Reid and published by Spin Master LTD. Games don’t have to be complicated to be fun and 5 Minute Marvel proves that.
The game plays in 5 minutes (surprise!) and there is a free 5 Minute Marvel app you can download to use as a timer.
Game Objective
Those 5 minutes are packed with fun mayhem as the players try to cooperate to beat a stack of bad guys before time runs out.
Game Components
There are 10 Hero Mats of our favorite Marvel Heroes: Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman, Black Widow, Rocket and Groot, Ms Marvel etc. Each Hero Mat shows the Hero’s special ability.
Also each Hero has a small stack of 10 Hero Action Cards. These cards are more powerful than the generic Resource Cards.
There is a large stack of generic Resource Cards with one or two Resource(s) on each card: Red (Fist), Blue (Tech), Green (Shield), Yellow (Energy) or Pink (Jump). The actual Resource doesn’t matter from a strategy view...you try to match the symbols/colors to the symbols/colors on the Door cards.
Door cards show the Resources needed to defeat the bad guy that was behind the door. Also Door cards show the type of bad guy: Minion, Goons, Villain or Mastermind. Some Hero abilities can immediately defeat a certain type of bad guy.
Also Crisis Cards are mixed into the Mission Deck with Door Cards to form a stack of bad guys and situations that the Heroes must defeat.
Six Boss Mats start with Green Goblin as Level 1 and go up to Thanos as Level 6. Each Boss gets harder to beat and start with a larger mission deck of Door and Crisis Cards.
Game Play
Each player assumes the role of one of Marvel’s favorite 10 heroes. Each hero has a special ability on a Hero Play Mat and a small stack of Hero Cards. There is also a stack of Resource Cards that the heroes use.
As part of setup the players pick a Boss Mat and shuffle together Door Cards and Crisis Cards to form the Mission Deck. The number of cards is indicated on the Boss Mat. The higher level the Boss the more Door and Crisis cards the Heroes must defeat.
Heroes start with a hand of 3-5 cards depending on the number of Heroes. At any time during the game a Hero can fill his hand up from either the generic Resource stack or his own Hero Cards.
There are NO turns. Once the timer starts the controlled cooperative mayhem begins!
Players quickly throw down Hero Cards, Resource Cards or use a Hero Ability to defeat the current bad guy. Once the bad guy is defeated those cards are swept aside and a new Mission card is turned over.
If the Mission Card is a Crisis Card then it must be resolved.
Players draw back up to their hand limit from either their Hero Deck or the Resource Deck.
This is all happening as quickly as possible. The Heroes win if they complete the Mission Deck and defeat the Boss within 5 Minutes.
Thoughts
As with lots of things in life it is just as important to understand what they aren’t as what they are. 5 Minute Marvel is not a deep, strategic, slow moving game. It would not be a good fit with our Geeky Guys. But it has shot to the top of our family’s must play list.
Every game session over the last month has included 5 Minute Marvel...and that is pretty cool.
The Good: Our kids and grandkids love this game. We played it over 30 times in the first week.
The Bad: If you are looking for some high brow strategy game that takes 3 hours...try something else.
The Dastardly: Wow. Great game. It is also a good work out!
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