5 Best Marvel Board Games to Play Before Avengers: Doomsday

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026, and Marvel has just shifted the marketing into a higher gear. A new trailer premiered at Disney’s D23 event in August, introduced on stage by Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell, and it made one thing clear: this film belongs to Doctor Doom.

What the D23 Trailer Showed

Three things stood out, and all three are the sort of setup tabletop games are unusually good at recreating.

• Doom is the centre of gravity. Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor von Doom is not one threat among many, he is the reason everyone else is in the room. That is the classic overwhelming big bad structure.
• The rosters are colliding. The Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are all on screen, with Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm warning the others about what is coming. Marvel has not put this many teams on one board before.
• Doom brought an army of Sentinels. Not a single villain but a villain plus an endless wave of minions, which is exactly the shape of most cooperative superhero games.

If that setup appeals, the games below are the ones that put you inside it rather than watching it.

That’s a long wait for an Avengers-sized team-up. The good news: assembling a roster of heroes and throwing them at an overwhelming threat is something tabletop games do exceptionally well. Here are five Marvel games built around teams, tactics, and big-bad showdowns, and exactly who each one is for.

Looking specifically for the web-slinger? We covered that separately in our guide to the best board games for Spider-Man fans.

Quick Comparison

Game	Players	Time	Price	Best For
Marvel United: Multiverse	1 to 5	45 min	$$	Families and co-op nights
Marvel Champions	1 to 4	45 to 90 min	$$	Depth and solo play
Infinity Gauntlet: A Love Letter Game	2 to 6	15 min	$	Quick one-vs-many showdowns
Marvel Dice Throne	2 to 4	30 to 40 min	$$	Fast competitive duels
Marvel: Crisis Protocol	2	90 min or more	$$$	Hobbyists who want to paint

Price guide: $ is roughly the cost of a couple of coffees, $$ is a standard board game box, $$$ is a hobby-level investment. Actual prices move around, so check before buying.

The Quick Answer

• Playing with family or newcomers? Marvel United: Multiverse.
• Want the deepest game and great solo play? Marvel Champions.
• Need something fast, affordable, and easy to teach? Infinity Gauntlet.
• Want loud, competitive fights? Marvel Dice Throne.
• Want a long-term hobby with painting included? Crisis Protocol.

1. Marvel United: Multiverse: Best Team-Up Feel

If you want the sensation of a team actually fighting as a unit, Marvel United gets closer than anything else on this list. The line, created by Eric M. Lang and Andrea Chiarvesio, is cooperative: each player takes a hero and the whole table builds a shared timeline of cards. Your turn doesn’t happen in isolation. You play a card next to what the previous hero did, and the combination of the two is what your character actually executes.

The Multiverse Core Box is a standalone entry point, so you don’t need an earlier Marvel United release to play it. The main mode is cooperative, with a competitive variant included in the same box. Sessions run about 45 minutes and it scales from solo up to five players.

One buying note that applies across this whole product line: CMON has released several Marvel United boxes and the hero rosters differ between them. Make sure you’re buying the Multiverse Core Box specifically, and if a particular character is the reason you’re buying, check the listed contents first.

Best for: families, casual co-op groups, and anyone who wants the shortest path to a satisfying team-up.
Skip it if: you want a heavy strategic workout.

Check current price on Amazon

2. Marvel Champions: Best for Depth and Solo Play

Marvel Champions is the game to reach for when you want a Marvel experience with real strategic weight. Each player picks a hero who flips between their hero form and their alter ego, then builds a deck around one of four aspects: aggression, protection, justice, or leadership. That choice matters as much as the character does, and it’s where the roster building actually lives.

It’s cooperative, it scales from solo to four players, and the villains genuinely fight back with escalating schemes you have to answer. The core set offers plenty of replay value on its own, but the game’s real depth comes from the ecosystem around it: hero packs, standalone scenarios, and campaign expansions.

That ecosystem is also the warning. This is a living card game, which means a continuous stream of releases. It’s the best thing about Champions if you want a long-term hobby, and the most expensive thing about it if you feel compelled to collect everything.

Best for: solo players, deck builders, and anyone who wants a Marvel game with long-term depth.
Skip it if: you want a self-contained box with no expansion pull.

See Marvel Champions on Amazon

3. Infinity Gauntlet: A Love Letter Game: Best Quick Showdown

Every Avengers movie comes down to a room full of heroes against one overwhelming threat, and this tiny card game captures that shape better than games ten times its size. One player is Thanos, hunting the Infinity Stones. Everyone else is the resistance, working together to knock him down before he assembles the set.

It’s built on the Love Letter engine, so a full game takes about 15 minutes and the rules are remarkably easy to learn. The asymmetry is the point: Thanos holds two cards to everyone else’s one, which sounds small and completely changes how the table plays. Hero players have to coordinate without handing Thanos a read on their hand.

At this size and length it’s less a centerpiece and more the thing you play three times in a row while waiting for the pizza. That’s exactly what makes it easy to recommend.

Best for: quick sessions, larger groups, and anyone who wants to be the villain for 15 minutes.
Skip it if: you want depth or a campaign.

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4. Marvel Dice Throne: Best for Fast, Loud Battles

Dice Throne is what happens when dice-combination gameplay gets a superhero makeover. You roll custom dice to trigger your character’s abilities, spend cards to modify results and defend, and hammer your opponent until someone’s health runs out. The Marvel four-hero box includes Miles Morales as Spider-Man, along with Scarlet Witch, Thor, and Loki, each with a distinct board, dice set, and deck.

The comparison people reach for is Yahtzee, which undersells it. In Yahtzee, the dice are the whole game. Here they only generate your options, and the real decisions come from which abilities to upgrade, when to spend combat points, and which cards to hold for defense. Each hero also has their own upgrade path, so learning a new character genuinely changes how you play.

It’s the most directly competitive game here. If your group wants everyone rowing in the same direction, one of the co-ops above is a better fit.

Best for: competitive friends, quick game nights, and players who like dice.
Skip it if: you want cooperative play or a long campaign.

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5. Marvel: Crisis Protocol: Best for the Long Haul

Crisis Protocol is the most demanding entry here, and for the right person the most rewarding. It’s a two-player skirmish game where you build a squad against a points limit, deploy it on a 3D table, and fight over objectives. Atomic Mass Games keeps expanding it with new characters and affiliation packs, so your roster grows over years rather than months.

The current entry point is the Earth’s Mightiest Core Set, with 13 character miniatures plus 26 terrain pieces. It sits in a completely different price bracket from everything else on this list, comfortably into three figures, and street prices vary a lot between retailers. The miniatures also arrive unassembled and unpainted, so building and painting is part of the deal, not an optional extra.

Budget time as well as money. A full game runs 90 minutes at a minimum, and new players learning the rules should expect closer to two hours.

That’s the filter. If assembling and painting sounds like a chore, this isn’t your game and one of the four above will serve you better. If it sounds like half the fun, Crisis Protocol is the deepest Marvel experience on the table.

Best for: two-player groups, hobbyists, and anyone who enjoys the modeling side as much as the game.
Skip it if: you want to open the box and play tonight.

See Crisis Protocol on Amazon

The Non-Marvel Alternative

If what you actually want is a tight two-player duel and the Marvel license isn’t essential, the Unmatched system does that better than anything on this list. Every set uses the same rules and they’re all cross-compatible, so you can start anywhere and mix fighters freely. Our review of Battle of Legends, Volume One covers the best entry point, and there are Marvel sets in the same system if you want to stay in the universe.

New to modern board games in general? It’s worth starting somewhere simpler first. Our top 10 entry-level board games covers options that teach in five minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are any of these games based on Avengers: Doomsday?
No. These games are based on Marvel characters and the broader Marvel universe rather than being adaptations of the film. Their rosters aren’t tied to the movie’s lineup, which also means no spoilers.

Which one can I play solo?
Marvel Champions and Marvel United: Multiverse both support solo play. Champions is the stronger of the two if you want solo sessions with real strategic depth, and a large part of its community plays exactly that way.

Which is best for a large group?
Infinity Gauntlet goes to six players and takes 15 minutes, which makes it the easiest sell for a crowded table. Marvel United handles five, and the rest cap out at four or two.

Can you play as Doctor Doom in any of these?
It depends on the specific game and expansion. Doom appears across several Marvel tabletop products, but he isn’t included in the base boxes of the five games featured here. Check the contents of individual expansions if Doom is specifically who you’re after.

Final Verdict

None of these games substitute for the film, and they aren’t trying to. What they offer is the part the cinema can’t: you’re not watching a team get assembled, you’re the one arguing about who covers which threat while the villain’s plan advances another step.

For most people that experience is cheapest and quickest to reach through Marvel United: Multiverse, which is why it wins overall. It teaches in minutes and works with the same mixed group you’ll probably be seeing the movie with.

Marvel Champions is the one to buy if you already own a shelf of co-ops and want something you’ll still be exploring long after Doomsday leaves theaters.

If you want the other side of the licensed shelf, our guide to the best Star Wars board games covers five boxes worth owning, including the one where Ahsoka Tano is actually playable.

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