My new hobby is Marvel United, and if you’re here, you either a) don’t need me to explain this game to you or b) you’re liable to read whatever I write anyway, bless you. Since it’s a new hobby, it’s got a huge slice of my brain. In the spirit of Marvel stuff:

A few parameters and guiding assumptions here before we start:

1. In other rankings, you generally find that punches are overrated and heroic actions (“stars”) are underrated. Punches are still more valuable on the whole, since almost all Villains need to be punched out for you to win, but being able to use your stars is, more often than not, the way you get the Villain vulnerable.
2. This is a collaborative game, and being able to leave actions for your teammates matters a lot. Some characters are capable of doing something hugely effective with non-collaborative actions, but many special actions aren’t really that much more effective than leaving a double-action card out for the next player.
3. I’m assuming a three-player game here with standard difficulty, i.e., every character has a single-wild and a double-wild card. I’m also not factoring in equipment for the characters who currently carry it, either.
4. I’m a big fan of Brian Nors Jensen’s generator for Marvel United, and I like to use it because it helps games feel fresh. Generating games is also, for me, my favorite way of monkeying with the difficulty level of any one game. Based on my rankings below, I have a pretty good sense of which game is going to make my matchup against, say, Brood Queen more difficult, and if I want the challenge I can roll that way.

I’ve also categorized the characters in types of my own reckoning. It’s not enough just to say that “this character has a lot of punches” when you’re looking at Winter Soldier and She-Hulk; they play differently. How they deploy those punches matters, and is different than how Cyclops (First Class) or the Punisher use theirs. I apologize in advance for how many of these there are, and obviously for how much crossover there is between categories, but at a dozen or so they start getting indefinite.

Category	Defining Quality
Falcon Punchers	Like Captain Falcon in the Smash Bros. games, the point is to punch, though the character has some utility outside punches
Punch Monkeys	This is a derogatory term; these people punch at the expense of anything else
KO Merchants	Heaviest on punches, but able to move places to do it without needing teammates to lay down move actions
Prime Movers	Generally speaking, at least eight movement actions on the cards, or failing that the ability to move other characters
All-Stars	At least six stars, typically able to do multiple heroic actions in one turn
Token Farmers	Able to get tokens for themselves or give tokens to others
Most Action Heroes	In one way or another, has the capacity to stack more actions in a single Hero turn than they could receive on the card preceding theirs
Timex Watches	Able to avoid KOs, either by ignoring a damage, gaining more cards than usual, or by being able to keep at least one card at all times
Villain Minders	Multiple ways to affect Villain or Henchman BAMs, or able to see the next Master Plan card
Border Warriors	Most outstanding quality is to be able to perform actions in adjacent spaces
Novelty Acts	Most special actions are interesting, but the juice is generally not worth the squeeze
Masters of None	Capable in many different areas of gameplay without being reliable turn to turn in any of them
Paul Georges	Not ace players you can build your team around, but very strong and welcome on any team (cw: sports reference)
Innings Eaters	Unlikely to make the moves that will win the game for you, but reliable team players (sorry, another sports reference)
Gym Class Zeroes	Would not pick these guys early for kickball in middle school
Not Team Players	Better alone than with a team, frequently to the detriment of the team
Needs Friends	Does not make sense to play this character without other characters from their team or partner from the comics

Last thing. Marvel United is a game that’s generally designed for parity and personal choice. As far as I can tell, the point of the game is not to have clear delineations of who the best characters are, which separates it from something like HeroClix. Most characters aren’t going to be “better” than other characters across multiple replays, and that’s why my list shouldn’t be understood as hard and fast. Situation matters. Some characters I’ve ranked low will be great against a particular Villain or with the right location effects in hand. My rankings aim for an imaginary median game.

Excelsior!

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1. Spider-Man (Token Farmers 1) / The Patrick Mahomes of Marvel United, a character so capable that he can elevate even mediocre companions. Double action cards galore, plus move cards with special actions so good that they’re practically OP. Being able to set yourself up for as many as eight tokens without having to rely on anyone else to give them to you gives you a ludicrous amount of highly varied potential actions.
2. Doctor Doom (Most Action Heroes 1) / With Season 2 characters, and almost certainly with Season 3 as well, Doom has the potential to really foul up the team. Starting hands and Doom don’t mix, which is why he’s dropped all the way to #2. On the other hand, once you’re actually at the midpoint of the game, Doctor Doom’s ability to rack up extra actions is unparalleled. It’s the difference between being able to do three actions (any single-action card, like the “Mine is the Power!” card I’m referencing, plus a double-action card before) and being able to play as many as seven. It’s math that bends the game so much that it’s almost not fun to play as the guy.
3. Phoenix (Not Team Players 1) / As long as that card from the starting hand that allows people to act like your cards aren’t there is in play, then you’re golden. If that card gets turned over, then Phoenix is nearly unplayable in a group game. The upside is high enough to keep her in this rarefied air.
4. Sunspot (Token Farmers 2) / Doom and Phoenix make their environments a product of themselves, which Sunspot can’t quite do. In a two-player game he has the potential to be fairly frustrating, although he’d be ranked highly for his ten arrows no matter what. His ability to farm tokens, and especially wild tokens, is so good that a well-rounded pair beside him should be able to handle just about any Villain.
5. Psylocke (Villain Minders 1) / Four special ability cards that are as good as anyone’s outside of Doctor Doom. Two of them cancel the next BAM!, and two allow you to, essentially, give yourself two actions of your choice. The regular cards could be a little better otherwise, but this is still a hugely valuable character.
6. Kitty Pryde (Border Warriors 1) / Kitty’s special abilities for herself are more than sufficient for a great character. She only has three double-action cards, but the fact that she can move and protect other characters takes some of the sting out of that. Add as many as eight extra actions from Lockheed, and a strategic player can get serious value out of her deck.
7. Multiple Man (Most Action Heroes 2) / Allows you to play chess while everyone else is playing checkers. At the midpoint of the game, you might conceivably be able to perform an action anywhere you want to, which is a spectacular thought. One of the very rare characters you can play for breadth rather than depth of actions, although he’s got such a trove of double-action cards that you can play him for depth of actions too.
8. Doctor Strange (Villain Minders 2) / The cards as a whole are fine, a description that carries over to most of the special action cards as well. But the “Orb of Agamotto” is probably the single most valuable card any character has, right? If he were a Season 2 character with that in his starting hand, I think he’d have to be top five.
9. Nova (All-Stars 1) / “Hope Summers is the best threat-clearer in the game” is a canard. It’s mostly true in that all it costs you is a card to clear any threat, but untrue in two ways. One, there are simply too many Villains who do mean things to you if you KO, and two, being at a card deficit is a pain in the butt to play from. Nova doesn’t cost you any cards and the ability to knock out two-thirds of your average threat card without moving is so, so valuable. My ideal three-player game probably includes him.
10. She-Hulk (KO Merchants 1) / Unlike similarly punchy players like Weapon X or Drax, she’s not stuck in the last place you left her. The slow burn of her “Transformation” cards means that you get to lay down punches towards the end when they mean the most. When you couple that with the ability to actually move around, that means I’d rather have her than any other punch-first character.
11. Black Panther (Most Action Heroes 3) / “Panther Habit” is an objectively funny phrase, but the extra moves you get on his cards are awesome.
12. Nick Fury (Most Action Heroes 4) / Only has four cards with move actions, but one of them is a double move, and a special card allows you to move someone else twice. There’s an argument to be made he’s about as helpful for moves as Quicksilver. An instance where the whole in a team game is more than the individual parts. Sits one spot below Black Panther because you have less control over where those extra moves go.
13. Adam Warlock (Timex Watches 1) / Not as valuable as the “Orb of Agamotto,” but “Immortality” is probably the most “asleep in the back seat” card of any in the game. It’s also more than worth it to, essentially, trade a card of yours for no effect for a Villain card with no effect; it amounts to five consecutive cards’ worth of action instead of three. It’s not quite as good as Doom, but it’s exceptional. The extra double wild doesn’t hurt either.
14. Scarlet Spider (Token Farmers 3) / For my money the best of the new characters from the Spider-Geddon box. Has the same kind of ability to farm tokens that Spider-Man does, even if, fittingly, it’s not quite as good as the original. The starting hand card is not quite as good as I wish it was.
15. Emma Frost (Paul Georges 1) / Even by my standards a little low on punches, but there are a couple extra wild cards out there that allow you to work from two previous cards and not just one. That special ability as well as the two which allow you to draw a card and fend off damage makes Emma a valuable character against tougher Villains.
16. Longshot (Villain Minders 3) / Longshot’s two “Probability Manipulation” cards allow you look at as many as six cards from the deck, which is obviously not Doctor Strange level, but it does allow you to change the order they appear. It’s a huge advantage, and it’s why I’d argue Longshot is the most undervalued hero in the game. He’s not one of the most popular X-Men characters and he doesn’t punch a lot, so I get why he doesn’t show up higher on most lists, but I’ve also beaten Green Goblin using those “Probability Manipulation” cards.
17. Beast (Core Box) (Paul Georges 2) / The majority of characters have between fifteen and seventeen action symbols on their twelve standard cards. Beast has twenty. Play him efficiently and it’s like having a thirteenth card in the deck.
18. Thor/Beta Ray Bill (KO Merchants 2) / The same character, except Thor’s got three cards that total an extra nine punches, and Bill’s got three cards that total an extra six punches and three more cards. Comes down to preference, but either way this is a character so strong you can design a team around him. Them. Probably suboptimal to use both.
19. Cloak and Dagger (Needs Friends 1&2) / The characters are designed for one another so completely that there’s not a point in playing them separately. Maybe I’ll try it sometime for science, because science is necessary and very boring.
20. Storm (Prime Movers 1) / Probably the best of the really movement-forward heroes, combining a lot of moves for herself with the ability to move other people around as she sees fit given the right card. Not a self-sufficient character, as she doesn’t really have the punches to be helpful there, but a team with Storm is never groundbound.
21. Jean Grey (Border Warriors 2) / Jean is a really well-rounded character, which means I wish she had one more move or one more star for her teammates. The “Telepathy” card which allows you to switch any hero card with the most recent one in the timeline is valuable, although it’s obviously more valuable in the back half of the game.
22. The Thing (Timex Watches 2) / I play the Fantastic Four separately more than the designers planned for someone to do, I think. The rest of the team is very far away from Ben Grimm in quality. The Thing is one of the best punchers in the game even without the “Teamwork” card; the “Rock-Like Skin” card is a great card for the whole team to have, given that you can choose for him to take damage that doesn’t land over and over again against certain Villains.
23. Bishop (Timex Watches 3) / The “Energy Resistance” card that keeps you safe from adjacent damage is either super, super helpful or totally worthless depending on the Villain. (He’s up this high because it’s more often super helpful.) He also needs to be played with someone who can help him move around, because the best of his abilities are in avoiding damage while clearing threats and saving civilians. You still need someone else to do a lot of work for you, but it’s collaborative on purpose! What I like about Bishop is his versatility. As we go down the list, there are a number of characters who are like garlic presses or other single-use kitchen tools. Bishop lends himself to many uses.
24. Nightcrawler (Paul Georges 3) / Not being able to lay down any move cards for teammates means you’re going to limit your teammates’ choices for characters. In a standard game, Nightcrawler has only three cards with two actions, and that’s a hardship as well. Being able to literally pick your spots makes up for a lot of built-in downside to the character.
25. Captain Britain (Token Farmers 4) / Another character who’s really good on his own thanks to his ability to heal or pull tokens, but not great with other characters. Almost as low on double-action cards as Nightcrawler.
26. Quicksilver (Prime Movers 2) / A ridiculous twenty-one actions, although it’s rare that your teammates are ever going to be able to make hay with all those double-move cards. Yondu being able to defeat a bunch of thugs with that one card is tired; being able to defeat one thug in each location you enter with “Speed Fighting” is wired.
27. Mantis (All-Stars 2) / Being able to cancel a BAM! is a huge boost, even if she can only do it once. She’s got a little bit of everything except movement, but “Astral Projection” allows her to do multiple actions in other locations. Not a dominant player but a consistently effective one.
28. Superior Spider-Man (Border Warriors 3) / Not my favorite character in the Spider-Geddon box, but the Spider-Bots give you some discount Multiple Man vibes. Actually falls down the list for me because of the bottom of the deck card, which is more baroque than it is useful.
29. Beast (First Class) (Most Action Heroes 5) / Works on the same principles as Black Panther, although in practice he is much more star-heavy. A more even distribution of actions would get him closer to being as good as Black Panther.
30. Mirage (Masters of None 1) / On the low side for actions, and two move cards is pretty bad. (Even the people in the Punch Monkeys category, which we haven’t seen unwrapped yet, tend to come with three.) What pushes Mirage up here are her six special action cards, which come in three flavors that could, respectively, prevent multiple hero KOs, change threat cards, or attack in adjacent locations. If half of those hit, it’s easy to imagine them swinging the game in your favor.
31. Cannonball (Prime Movers 3) / Is the game with Cannonball more about tokens than about movement? Probably. Do his tokens all come from moving as much as possible? Yep. A dearth of heroic actions limits the ultimate upside of the character.
32. Captain America (All-Stars 3) / I think he’s pretty clearly the best character of the original core box. Six of his twelve cards are double-action, and three of them give out wild tokens. I’m sure the cards will be updated significantly in the upcoming Civil War box, but I may continue to play with this deck with that ostentatiously spot-on new mini.
33. Marvel Girl (Border Warriors 4) / A very straightforward character as far as adjacent actions go: you can punch or star in an adjacent location four times. It’s not fancy, but it’s one of the most convenient special abilities out there; there’s rarely a time you can’t use it.
34. Silver Surfer (Timex Watches 4) / I don’t love most of his cards, although the sheer number of wilds he deploys is enjoyable enough. The special ability he has to switch out an entire location is…a lot. But “Near Immortality,” if you get it early enough, makes it so that you can have five or six cards in your hand at once. It’s a wonderful advantage.
35. X-23 (Timex Watches 5) / The most valuable single thing she has is the ability to draw a card any time she gets under three. The “Master Martial Artist” card, spoilers, is the same mechanic as the frustrating Shang-Chi special ability, so I don’t love that, but she also distributes tokens with her other special cards. The most versatile Wolverine skin.
36. Northstar (Prime Movers 4) / I like a character who can bring others with him when he moves, and Northstar starts with that ability. Not overwhelming from any other perspective, but is able to do enough things that you don’t feel like you’re stringing him along just for a couple cards with arrows.
37. Punisher / (Falcon Punchers 1) / Only thirteen actions at the bottom of twelve cards, which is suboptimal, but there are ten extra punches on the special ability cards that make him one of the elite finishers in the game.
38. Warlock (Innings Eaters 1) / Obviously the ability to discard crisis tokens is kind of a mixed bag, although when you’re playing a Carnage or Venom, that power is like sitting on pocket rockets. Also a surprisingly reactive character, with a bunch of movement cards, the ability to build a sizable hand, and enough punches to do work.
39. Star-Lord (Token Farmers 5) / The special abilities give out tokens, although the reason I’ve got him above other token-givers like Shuri, Groot, and Professor X is because he has plenty of his own abilities you can control. Of the other nine non-special cards in a twelve-card deck, seven are double action.
40. Guardian (Innings Eaters 2) / Let’s give a big welcome to Captain Canada, who brings some heavy brass canuckles to the fight. Not a support character you’re going to have to make up for in any one area, since there are more than enough actions to go around on his cards.
41. War Machine (KO Merchants 3) / Packs seventeen moves at the bottom of the cards in a standard game, plus six others from the special abilities, almost all of them punches. Not necessarily the pure power you’d get trying to finish your game with She-Hulk or Beta Ray Bill, but one of the very best at managing thugs in multiple locations.
42. Logan (Timex Watches 6) / One of the less punchy Wolverines, but appropriately given the Days of Future Past box he comes in, the hardiest. An instant antidote to Corvus Glaive, Ronan, Bullseye, and other KO token Villains.
43. Spiral (Most Action Heroes 6) / A hard character to pin down, but the “Spell Dance” cards are basically like the “Transformation” cards She-Hulk can play, only with more optionality. The best move there is probably to draw cards, which is a little dull, but there are times when it’s nice to be able to clear two or three thugs for free, or to clear out a threat card with those built-up stars.
44. Shuri (Token Farmers 6) / Not especially fun to play. She doesn’t have a bunch of her own actions, and her special abilities are entirely about arming other members of your outfit and restoring health. Great character to give your mom who doesn’t really like board games but also lives to be helpful.
45. America Chavez (Most Action Heroes 7) / Quietly has eighteen moves on twelve cards, and the special action cards include a nice damage avoider as well as a double wild in the special abilities.
46. Professor X (Masters of None 2) / I’ve found him to be underwhelming when I’ve played him, but you know what they say: don’t hate the character, hate the player. The upside is clearly there, though, with multiple cards that allow him to play symbols as wild as well as the ability to parcel out tokens. There aren’t many characters so clearly designed to go up against a Villain as Professor X is designed to go up against Magneto; his ability to change two thugs to civilians is not very helpful outside that scenario but extremely useful within it.
47. Groot (Token Farmers 7) / Probably fits a little better into the “Most Action Heroes” category, but at the same time I can’t get on board with that because he only has one action on each card. Being able to draw an extra card is always a boon, but he’d be more effective if one of those “you and another hero can punch in your respective locations” cards were another move or star. Regardless: we are Groot.
48. Mister Fantastic (Border Warriors 5) / Reliant on a starting hand card to perform the adjacent actions, and then there’s a soft limit on what kind of actions you can perform. Within a game with the Fantastic Four, he is almost as useful as the Thing, but outside that structure he falls short. Really useful with heroic actions, with as many stars on his cards as Captain America has.
49. Storm (Mohawk) (Masters of None 3) / Doesn’t have the movement upside or the really nifty long-distance punches that Storm sans coiffure chic has, but the powers are generally similar enough that it’s hard to push her down much further than this.
50. Lady Deadpool (Innings Eaters 3) / Not many actions on those cards, but sequence them the right way and it’ll matter less for your teammates. There are a bunch of punches to go around, as well as a few cards that specifically work on rescuing civilians. The difference-maker here is the healing factor, meaning that you can almost always keep cards in your hand.
51. Magik (KO Merchants 4) / The sheer amount of punch hanging around on Magik is too much to ignore at this point, and she can more or less get herself around the board to make that happen. Her “Soulsword” cards are about as good as what Thor has against Henchmen.
52. Wolverine (Timex Watches 7) / The difference between X-23, Logan, and Wolverine is most of all a question of preference. All of them come with the “Healing Factor” card, which is, to my mind, the primary reason to pick any of them for your team. Wolverine’s double punches as special abilities are apt, but they’re more straightforward compared to some of the more interesting things X-23 and Logan can do.
53. Ant-Man (All-Stars 4) / Low on punches and moves, but heavy on heroic actions. Ant-Man also has fewer actions across standard difficulty than is optimal, but he makes up for that with a card which allows him to use a faceup card in the Storyline a second time, and thus regifts a presumably helpful action to the next player.
54. Falcon (KO Merchants 5) / Falcon is one of my favorite characters to play because it’s rare that any of his movements are wasted. All of his special ability cards are the “Air Strike,” which allow him to move to any location and punch; they also each come with an arrow, which theoretically lets you move on and continue with another useful action. He’s not particularly high-impact, especially compared to the other players in this category, but I like that he opens up the board.
55. Symbiote Spider-Man (Token Farmers 8) / Another personal favorite. Even though his game is basically the same as Spider-Man’s and Scarlet Spider’s, the tokens are offset a little bit in his case by the fact that his starting hand card comes without an action. That starting hand card is also the one that allows you to move if a Villain ends their turn in your location, which, for me, is the reason I’d play as Symbiote Spider-Man as opposed to one of those two more highly ranked spider-fellas.
56. Yondu (Falcon Punchers 2) / There are a lot of punches in this dude, and if you have an especially crowded set of locations, he can clear that up real fast with “Yaka Arrow Whirlwind.” It’s too bad that it doesn’t give an action to the next player, though, and it’s also too bad that “Turncoat,” while a fun idea in theory, has never once felt like a good idea to me while I was playing as him. Maybe it’s because I’ve never played Yondu against one of his natural enemies: Magneto and Deathbird.
57. Doop (Novelty Acts 1) / Time for us to feel the sweet pinch of Doopid’s arrow, a character who I am genuinely concerned I have placed too low. He’s not a great team player, as he basically plays single moves and barely anything else. But he is a strong manipulator of tokens, if not on the level of Shuri or Groot, and he also can switch out any card in the Storyline not once, not twice, but three times. The ultimate meme team is Doop, Howard the Duck, and Squirrel Girl, and among that group he’s the clear ace. Play Doop against Lady Deathstrike or Sabretooth and farm wild tokens in the most hilarious way possible.
58. Cyclops (Core Box) (All-Stars 5) / Two double-star cards puts him in this category even if he seems like an easier fit in the Border Warriors one. Half of his cards in a standard game only have one action symbol.
59. Iron Man (Innings Eaters 4) / The actions on his cards don’t mix very much; he has eighteen of them, of which only four appear on cards with a different type of action on it. He’s more likely to have actions you won’t be able to use than most of the people listed this high. The special abilities are helpful for the team, if unspectacular.
60. Moon Knight (All-Stars 6) / They’ve built some weirdness into the character that isn’t there in Cyclops, for example, and that unpredictability has nicked him. On the whole I think he’s a good character to have, especially if you’re playing primarily from Season 1 material. Another character who needs some help moving from place to place, but there are a lot of stars and punches to dole out and some opportunity for tokens as well.
61. Blink (Prime Movers 5) / Not an incredible team player, but a full third of her cards allow her to move to any location you want her to. Is a much more normal character to play than Nightcrawler is, although playing with Blink makes you appreciate that all of Nightcrawler’s BAMF cards come with either a punch or a star.
62. Gambit (Prime Movers 6) / The special abilities on the cards make him seem like he should be a token farmer, but in my experience that’s not really where the best of him is. (Taking action tokens from other characters is a troll move second only to Mister Sinister’s “only you win” mechanic in his promo deck.) With eight arrows at the bottom of his cards, Gambit is a much tastier version of the kind of character who’s got nine arrows but whose special abilities are only vanilla.
63. Iceman (Masters of None 4) / Five stars, five punches, five moves.
64. Spider-Man Noir (Timex Watches 8) / The target mechanism that you can lay down on Henchmen or Villains is a little bit tortured in practice; it’s a fun piece of gameplay but it’s not all that efficient. Spider-Man Noir does, thanks to his starting card, get to avoid a damage each turn as long as he’s alone. Let him be emo and reap the benefits. Is a person still alone if he’s blasting “Anthem of Our Dying Day” from his speakers?
65. Snowbird (Novelty Acts 2) / Snowbird has weird cards, which makes her a few steps up from benign against most Villains (some extra actions on her cards, good with heroic actions), but which might theoretically make her exceptional against others. Snowbird is someone I’d want to bring against Thanos because she cannot be made to play cards randomly. She’d be ridiculous against M.O.D.O.K., or with someone like Gwenpool on her team, because she gains tokens for cards turned facedown. Like the rest of the Alpha Flight characters, she’s better with other Alpha Flight characters in the game, but she’s not nearly as hamstrung by that teamwork business as the members of the Fantastic Four are when they are fractioned out.
66. Rogue (Not Team Players 2) / It’s been a while since Phoenix. Rogue has the potential to stack a ton of actions for herself with her four “Power Absorption” cards, but each of those cards only comes with the one action (none of them moves), and there’s a real chance you could be using that card without very much good to choose from earlier in the Storyline. Not a particularly good fit with a lot of the characters in the top 25 or so.
67. Dazzler (Token Farmers 9) / Another character with some boom-bust potential, though with Dazzler you get multiple pulls at the slot machine. Her “Light Projection” and “Sound Conversion” cards make it possible to get a heck of a lot of tokens, which she needs, because she has five actions which aren’t moves or wilds in a standard difficulty game.
68. Colossus (Timex Watches 9) / See above about game mechanics that are “a little bit tortured in practice.” The “Fastball Special” cards are near and dear to my ’70s X-Men heart (“Eat your heart out, Olga Korbut!”), but they’re completely unpredictable. To work well, you have to (a) be in the same location as someone else who (b) has some punches in their hand and who can (c) be thrown somewhere where having those extra punches are meaningful. Being able to shrug off the first damage of every turn is better than the special abilities; ironically, those special abilities are pretty bad if you’re only playing with the characters in the X-Men Gold Team box. Get him with the characters from the early Claremont run and you’re in better shape.
69. Boom Boom (Falcon Punchers 3) / Only three punches on the bottoms of the cards, which seems low for someone in this category; she’s got as many move actions as Gambit, who is in a different genus altogether. The special abilities favor adjacent play, but for pure thug clearance, Boom Boom’s “Time Bomb” card is about as good as it gets. Delayed gratification Yondu.
70. Peni Parker (Most Action Heroes 8) / I know I said way back there that I’m not counting equipment, and I’m still not, but the batteries are so much a part of Peni’s actions that I really can’t extricate them from the character. The extra actions you get with those are fine enough, but what has her in this zone is her ability to ignore the first damage via the starting card. Great mini.
71. Banshee (Innings Eaters 5) / A discount Psylocke in a bunch of ways, which is not a bad thing to be considering how useful Psylocke is. Having only two stars is a shame, and two adjacent attacks doesn’t quite measure up to being able to change cards in the Storyline, but as we’ll see, anyone who can stun a Villain or Henchman is worthwhile.
72. Iceman (First Class) (Villain Minders 4) / I really like the frozen tokens that the snowier version of Iceman has. The ability to move from one place to another without spending a move action is not something you’re going to get value out of every game, but it’s a lifeline when you do use it. There are also a number of Villains where I would rather stop them from moving around the board than even cancel their BAMs; think of how useful it is, too, to have your Villain stuck in one place for a few Hero turns so you can get your licks in.
73. Jessica Jones (Masters of None 5) / Epitome of the category she’s in, down to the fact that she’s not even the top example of it. “Expert Detective” is a real hit-or-miss card. Either you’ve played a move card and gotten no real benefit, or maybe you’ve managed to land four or five wild tokens. Casino Jessica. Goodness knows I keep trying to make that card work and it keeps not working, but someday it will. (Call 1-800-GAMBLER if you or a loved one struggles with a gambling addiction.)
74. Strong Guy (Novelty Acts 3) / It’s always very tempting to save a bunch of tokens so you’ll be able to move towards the Villain at the end, or so you can lay them low with the three extra punches you’ve been carrying around all game. Strong Guy does not allow you to act that way, and if you get too close to acting that way, you’ll KO. He’s the only character in this game who I think of the same way I think of accumulating points in a Weight Watchers program.
75. Rocket Raccoon (Token Farmers 10) / Like Gambit, has a fun mechanism for tokens which implies that he hasn’t really come across those goodies with clean paws. Another one of those characters who you can say “Has more punches on the cards than Thor has” and it’ll be true, if misleading.
76. Ghost Rider (Most Action Heroes 9) / Among Season 1 characters, Ghost Rider has one of the more appealing sets of special ability cards, although “Mystical Chain” is overkill for what it’s actually worth. Still, assuming you can actually perform all the actions on those cards, you’re getting at least seven extra actions through those special ability cards.
77. Havok (Innings Eaters 6) / Havok would rank a lot higher if his cards which allow him to punch three times in an adjacent location weren’t blank at the bottom. As it is, he’s the punchiest character in this group we’ve had since Lady Deadpool. I think he might be the only character who is the single exception to a “give one damage to EVERYTHING in the location” special ability; Cyclops (First Class) doesn’t hurt him on the “Optic Blasts” card.
78. Polaris (Masters of None 6) / A slightly underwhelming character to play, but not a slouch, either. It’s also unfair that Havok is getting an X-Factor glow-up for Season 3 but Polaris is not getting a matching weird ’70s costume glow-up.
79. Hope Summers (All-Stars 7) / I talked about this some with Nova back there, but practically speaking, giving up a card to clear a threat is the kind of thing that’s useful only when you’re in something of an extreme spot. It’s obviously valuable if you need to clear a threat in order to clear a second mission and make the Villain vulnerable, but working from a card deficit is one of the quiet ways to lose a game. Hope has a good complement of punches and arrows, which we like.
80. Howard the Duck (Novelty Acts 4) / No, Howard doesn’t actually do that much. He puts a lot of blanks on his cards; he’s got nine actions total for his teammates. In most ways he sucks. But look, if Doctor Strange’s “Orb of Agamotto” is the single most powerful card in Marvel United, then “Neutron Disintegrator” is a near second. You know how Sandman creeps up to near twenty health tokens? Or how Thanos can just have a zillion of those little health tokens on his dashboard while you’re starting to run out of punches? Here comes Howard the Duck, able to cut off all of those health tokens but one with a single action. I should probably have him lower than this, but whatever part of my brain is the one I can hear snickering won’t let me do it. I was going to put him 69th but even I thought that was a little too on the nose.
81. Puck (Timex Watches 10) / A character who can do a little bit of everything, including the ability to swallow one damage per turn against Henchmen. This shouldn’t matter, but I can’t help but adore his upside-down mini and the name of his starting card: “Compressed Rubber Physiology.”
82. Archangel (KO Merchants 6) / Archangel has a couple of good cards which allow him to attack in adjacent locations in the same way that Havok does (and with an arrow at the bottom of the card, no less), but if you’re trying to build off Archangel’s cards, it’s hard not to feel like all you’re getting from him is a stream of move actions.
83. Pixie (All-Stars 8) / Even though I have her in the bottom half of these rankings, Pixie stands out to me as one of the more underappreciated Heroes in the game. A bunch of genuinely useful special ability cards. Can move anywhere on two of them, can stun a Villain or Henchman on the other two. Where she falls short compared to the All-Stars above her is in her dearth of attack actions outside her two punches at the bottom of cards. Basically everyone else either has more than two, or has a special ability card which adds some punches to their repertoire. Pixie can feel vestigial at the end of the game.
84. Black Cat (Villain Minders 5) / We’re starting to move into a set of Villain Minders who can see what’s coming and avoid it, but not necessarily for something better. Black Cat has four cards which allow her to see the next card in the Master Plan deck and then decide if it’ll play or not, but if not, one may very well get something just as bad. Not a fun character to play alongside, necessarily, although she can definitely supplement herself with tokens.
85. Apocalypse (Not Team Players 3) / If you think this is too low for Apocalypse, I wouldn’t argue with you. Apocalypse is a powerful character, and he can deal significant damage in a single turn. He’s the kind of character where the path from “Villain is vulnerable” to “Villain is KO’d” is one card long. This is the best-case scenario. The worst case scenario is that his teammates are scrambling for actions most of the game and then no one wants to play with you afterwards because you’re hogging all the fun stuff.
86. Venom (KO Merchants 7) / His “Tracking” cards were the inspiration for the first name I gave to this category. I like that he can typically get where he needs to go in order to punch, but in a very real sense you can get more heroic actions out of Apocalypse than you can out of Venom.
87. Firestar (Prime Movers 7) / The best cards Firestar has allow her to star twice as a special ability, with a move at the bottom of the card. The rest of her deck is pretty standard stuff, almost impersonally so.
88. Domino (Villain Minders 6) / Domino has four special ability cards that I like a lot, all of which have to do with canceling the effects of Villains or Henchmen. (Or, in one case, punching them, which, if they’re low on health tokens, has the same effect as canceling their effects.) It’s a nice tribute to the character from the comics, who has the ability to push fortune in her favor; the thing about it is that you can’t quite make your own luck with Domino.
89. Luke Cage (Timex Watches 11) / I feel bad about putting Luke Cage this low, because I went into this thinking about how much I appreciated his ability to get extra cards, his ability to shrug off damage for a full Villain turn, things like that. Then he ended up here anyway. I mostly can’t put him higher than this in this category because everyone else above him has the ability to ignore the first damage on a turn, full stop, with the exception of Silver Surfer. However, Silver Surfer can pick up two cards at a time once he plays “Near Immortality,” and Luke Cage can only do that once. That he’s only the second Season 1 character in this category is also worth noting.
90. Scarlet Witch (Novelty Acts 5) / Absolutely one of my favorite characters to play, and she is loaded with double-action cards. Despite having two cards that are blank at the bottom, she can still play sixteen actions in a twelve-card game. The problem is that her special ability cards…are all kind of mediocre? There are cleared locations more powerful than her “Chaos Magic” card and other characters get more than one of the “three punches in an adjacent location” “Psionic Energy Blast” card. As cool as it is to cancel the first damage everyone gets after a BAM, there’s no guarantee there will even be a BAM on the next Villain card. Return to the fact that two of those three are blank cards, and it’s just not a reliable deck.
91. Weapon X (Punch Monkeys 1) / We’ve unveiled our first Punch Monkey, and oh boy can this monkey punch. Fifteen of those sweet, sweet punches are available to Weapon X, who can not only knock out all the thugs you need to clear that mission, but can have enough left to potentially KO your Villain, too. His “Healing Factor” makes you play a card randomly if you’re not taking damage, although with this deck, I dunno that playing a card randomly is much of a punishment.
92. Blade (Falcon Puncher 4) / The special ability cards drop Blade a fair distance, although I don’t think I’d argue with you if you put him twenty spots higher than this. He’s effective at giving actions to other characters, and while he only has three heroic actions, two of them come with moves as well. It just occurred to me that I have not played him against Morlun yet.
93. Valkyrie (KO Merchants 8) / Not a character who can get most of the punching done by herself, which pushes her down the list a good bit. Three cards that let you move anywhere you want and punch put her in a similar category with Falcon, though I find it’s generally more useful to have three extra arrows scattered around the Storyline than three extra punches.
94. Jubilee (All-Stars 9) / Has the same card distribution as Pixie, a character we might best describe as “Zoomer Jubilee,” but the special ability cards aren’t as good. I’ll grant that she can punch her way out of a box in a way that Pixie can’t, but Pixie can also cancel BAMs and move other characters, while Jubilee, notably, can ignore the effects of BAMs for herself alone. Teenagers only think about themselves.
95. Hawkeye (Border Warriors 6) / I like playing as Hawkeye, a character who’s got a couple of fun special ability cards, but he’s got the opposite problem as Shang-Chi. (“Have you written up Shang-Chi yet?” No, it’s funny you ask, but I’m not going to write him up for a little while yet! “Is it because of how much you hate the MCU movie?” It’s not because of the MCU movie, I can hate the way Shang-Chi the Marvel United character plays all by itself. “Sheesh.” Anyway.) He can redirect damage to enemies in his location; he can punch twice in the opposite location; he can treat each symbol on the Storyline as “punch-punch.” These are three very solid abilities. Personally I’m a big fan of that second one, since no other Hero in this game gives you the ability to snipe from across the board. It’d be a very satisfying way to end a game. Unfortunately, Hawkeye would be better with three identical cards than three heterogeneous ones.
96. Marrow (Novelty Acts 6) / The special abilities that allow you to reciprocate damage or avoid a KO are nice enough, but they don’t elevate the character. I’m surprised she’s even got three heroic actions.
97. Cyclops (First Class) (Border Warriors 7) / I don’t have a ton to say about this character, who is perfectly cromulent, in my opinion. I do want to register my frustration at this point that one of the precious (fine, precious to me) boxes from Season 2 is given entirely to reskins who are all purposefully worse than the characters who are in different boxes. Surely most of the maniacs who were going to buy a First Class box sight unseen from the Kickstarter would have bought a New Mutants, Generation X, or Excalibur box? Or honestly, maybe they wouldn’t have, maybe I’m just a mark.
98. Forge (All-Stars 10) / As we get further down the roster of all available characters, we’ve reached a point where it’s worth noting that the difference between 60 and 95 is significantly smaller than the difference between 25 and 60, or, indeed, from 95 to 120. Bell curves and all. Forge can definitely use heroic actions all over the board and with more intensity than the last few All-Stars can, though he’s less helpful to his teammates due to his dearth of moves.
99. Feral (Novelty Acts 7) / Does some minor KO Merchant stuff, but the selling point when I’ve played her was for the ability to avoid a crisis token. It’s underwhelming, to say the least, but she’s still functional.
100. Mystique (Novelty Acts 8) / You can spend a lot of time trying to free up your “Metamorph” cards for maximum effect, but in practice they’re more unwieldy than they are dangerous. Mystique also carries a bunch of punches and only two heroic actions, so there’s a real risk that she gets samey on you.
101. Silk (Masters of None 7) / Silk is a character with one of the more frustrating special abilities from a starting hand, which is to be able to move if no one has played a move in the last two Hero turns. I don’t find that it’s a terribly common thing to happen, least of all at the end of the game when it counts the most.
102. Nebula (Punch Monkeys 2) / I actually like Nebula a fair bit. She has a good special card in “Image Projection,” and eight punches, plus two special ability adjacent punches, can definitely go a long way. You just need a lot of help from everyone else.
103. Old Man Logan (Needs Friends 3) / Speaking of needing friends, here’s a character who doesn’t have any punches of his own en route to developing a collection of as many as eight punch tokens that he can’t use until he uses his bottom of the deck card. The promise of that many punches is definitely alluring, but just to use it you need some help getting over to the Villain. It’s a lot of tempest in a pot of tea, but you’re talking to the guy who has Howard the Duck ranked better than twenty spots higher.
104. Spider-Woman (Villain Minders 7) / There’s a nice combination of movement and punches here, but to really like this character, you have to decide that moving the Villain turn back on two separate occasions is a game breaker. I can’t quite get there.
105. Legion (Not Team Players 5) / Between only having one action per card and doing a ton of damage to the other Heroes he plays with, Legion is perhaps the most emphatically antisocial character currently available. The special abilities on his cards are also pretty solid as long as you can get away with being in your own location as much as possible, though at the same time there are plenty of characters with good special abilities who don’t require you to actively run away from them on the board. Playing Legion is an experience in the same way that seeing a Darren Aronofsky or Gaspar Noe movie in the theater is an experience: it ain’t for everyone.
106. Spider-Punk (Falcon Puncher 5) / This is probably a little unfair to Spider-Punk, who is an effective enough character, but I find myself wishing he had a little more in his arsenal every time I play with him.
107. Sasquatch (Falcon Puncher 6) / See above, but if you’re playing Alpha Flight characters then he should definitely be higher on this list. The punches he has are plentiful, but most of them don’t carry over to other players.
108. Daredevil (Token Farmers 11) / In theory, Daredevil is the kind of character I should be much higher on. He’s got seven heroic actions, which is a boon, and he has the ability to rack up a bunch of tokens in similar ways that the Spider-Folk can do it. In an actual game, all of this is a lot harder to pull off because half of his cards only have one action, and he’s got a total of three moves. There are characters with many stars and many ways to get tokens who do both more efficiently.
109. Ghost-Spider (All-Stars 11) / The special abilities are very Season 1, which is to say that they sound more impressive than they are helpful. It’s not that I can’t think of ways in which swapping threat cards or defeating all the thugs in my location would be useful, but that within a game I think I’d rather just have one more card with a double punch or double star.
110. Iron Fist (Border Warriors 8) / The moves are pretty limited, but everything in this guy’s arsenal is about being able to punch in a different spot than the one he starts his turn in. This is not such a bad way to be, all things considered. That describes both iterations of Jean Grey, and I have both of them more than seventy spots higher than Iron Fist. The thing about Jean Grey and Marvel Girl is that they have more to offer than adjacent actions, and Iron Fist kind of doesn’t.
111. Wasp (Masters of None 8) / Among characters in the original core box (not counting Venom), Wasp is ranked fourth for me. She moves well compared to everyone else in that box, with five arrows and one special ability card that allows her to move to any location, though as we’ve seen that doesn’t qualify as moving especially well compared to the characters in the Prime Movers category.
112. Korg (Falcon Punchers 7) / He’s made of rocks.
113. Human Torch (Needs Friends 4) / Human Torch’s starting card lets him turn his stars to punches. This does not give him more actions to play, and in fact this particular talent forces him to rely on other characters to deliver those heroic actions to him, as he only has three himself. Other special ability cards force damage on everything in a location, but this is more effective against thugs than anything else, and on top of that requires him to drop a card. Having seven moves gives him some utility, but he is not my idea of a good time.
114. Namor (Border Warriors 9) / A lot of what makes Namor useful is his ability to clear out civilians and especially thugs from other locations, but on the civilian side, it really is just about clearing them out and not rescuing them. My preference is for characters who can accomplish Mission cards while managing those Overflows. Moves a lot less than what you’d expect.
115. Deadpool (Timex Watches 12) / The cards are basically identical to Lady Deadpool’s, but with the not very welcome addition of a child’s birthday party via the Chaos deck.
116. Vision (Not Team Players 5) / Does contribute seven heroic actions no matter what, but there’s also a blank card in there for an effect (add up the last four cards’ worth of punches on one target) I’ve never actually been able to pull off. You’re really not getting much in the way of moves either.
117. Captain Marvel (Border Warriors 10) / “Photon Blast” allows you to deliver as many as six attacks in adjacent locations, which is definitely helpful, but you had better get all of your money’s worth out of that. Captain Marvel does not have a single card which allows her to move and punch in the same turn. The double action cards are nice, but four out of five get you to double up on an action rather than move somewhere and do an action.
118. Gwenpool (Novelty Acts 9) / There are a lot of special actions on Gwenpool’s cards, and the only one I like is the one that allows you to use Jeffrey, the land shark. Given that Jeffrey is going to be playable with a pet companion deck, I’m going to run out of reasons to use Gwenpool real quick.
119. Black Widow (Villain Minders 8) / Thirty-five spots behind Black Cat seems a little unfair when the underwhelming special ability cards are identical, but Black Widow doesn’t have a mechanism to gain tokens.
120. Invisible Woman (Needs Friends 5) / Quite possibly my least favorite starting hand card, which allows you to avoid damage as long as you play your next card face down. I guess there’s some utility there against the right villain, but in the majority of cases, I don’t think it helps you actually win games.
121. Anti-Venom (Novelty Acts 10) / The same starting hand mechanics as Silk, and they’re not any more useful here than they were up there. What Invisible Woman is to Lady Deathstrike or Ronan, Anti-Venom is to Baron Zemo or Arcade.
122. Elektra (Punch Monkeys 3) / A single heroic action puts Elektra in a group with other morally dubious characters like Deadpool or Doctor Doom. The punches are varied enough (adjacent, with movement, double-action, etc.) that you can accomplish some stuff with them, but there’s a whole category of characters better suited to your move ‘n punch needs.
123. Spider-Man 2099 (Masters of None 9) / A character with eighteen actions in a standard game really shouldn’t be down here, but the special abilities are so milquetoast that you’re really relying on your teammates and supporting with said actions. Hilariously would be a good fit against someone like Emma Frost, who likes canceling special abilities on Hero cards. I can definitely understand why this character is getting an update in Season 3.
124. Warpath (Villain Minders 9) / The special ability cards are reasonable, if not exciting. Comes with two cards which allow him to perform a star and a punch, which is fun if you’ve been left a move arrow by some kindly soul. A character with four moves, four attacks, and four heroic actions is almost always going to leave you hoping for something a little meatier.
125. Cable (Novelty Acts 11) / A lot of discarding cards or swapping out cards for the promise of more actions down the line. On the whole, the people who make these games do a really great job of matching game characters to actions and special abilities that recall the original characters. Only giving Cable three punches, the Cable drawn by Rob Liefeld and Marc Silvestri and Jim Lee with hilarious firepower, is a whiff.
126. Magneto (Gym Class Zeroes 1) / Breaking the seal on our final unseen category: the Master of Magnetism. Another character who I am really, really looking forward to seeing with a new deck in Season 3, because this one is so unhelpful to teammates that it’s honestly kind of unhelpful to the character himself. The best card is a slightly more versatile version of Havok’s “Plasma Blast.”
127. Shatterstar (Masters of None 10) / Shatterstar is a mouthful of overcooked rice without any seasoning. It’ll keep you alive, but for what?
128. Winter Soldier (Punch Monkeys 4) / Like Weapon X, another character who can theoretically get you fifteen punches by himself, and may even have a better chance to give you all of them because six of them are delivered as tokens. Only marginally more maneuverable than the battleship that Weapon X is. Has a single star on the bottom of his cards. So unwieldy that he singlehandedly unbalances an entire team’s design.
129. Hulk (Gym Class Zeroes 2) / You’ll have noticed by now that I’m not including promo decks, a set of purchases for sickos so far gone that I’m relieved I don’t qualify. (To any sickos reading this: I salute you.) My understanding is that the Grey Hulk deck is a more faithful study of the character than this version from the first box. Like Magneto and Spider-Man 2099, the updated versions from Season 3 feel like they’re going to be welcome corrections more than grabby reskins.
130. Ms. Marvel (Masters of None 11) / The “Morphogenetics” card, which allows you, in effect, to swap out your entire hand for cards you’ve played earlier, would be more enticing if Ms. Marvel’s cards were better. The special ability cards are definitely under the aegis of “sound better than they are.”
131. Fantomex (Not Team Players 6) / “Cyber Mind” is a nice card that allows you to perform one action in the Villain’s location each turn. It is not nearly as tantalizing as Howard the Duck’s hilarious “Neutron Disintegrator.” Why bring them up together? Both characters leave the same number of actions on their cards for their teammates.
132. Gamora (Novelty Acts 12) / Gamora’s shtick is to use tokens (wilds and punches, not arrows or stars) to allow her to punch more than she has already punched. I like the idea of being able to take those tokens you’ve used and double them when it matters most. Until then, though, Gamora is something of a letdown, with so-so cards that basically offer what like, Sasquatch’s cards can give you.
133. Squirrel Girl (Punch Monkeys 5) / Three cards with single punches, plus a blank one. I understand I’ve planted my flag on dumb victory conditions, but Squirrel Girl’s is meek in the extreme. If you’ve played all three special ability cards, and your Villain is at one or two health, then you win. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been one or two punches away from winning, so it’s not like it’s impossible that this would help, but also…if you’ve gotten the Villain down to two health tokens, aren’t you probably going to finish the job anyway?
134. Sunfire (Gym Class Zeroes 3) / If Sunfire’s “Solar Fire” cards, which allow you to do one damage to everything in an adjacent location, had an arrow at the bottom, we’d probably be talking about him a couple dozen spots higher. As it is, Sunfire has fifteen actions on twelve cards, two of them are blank, and although he can gain attack tokens from entirely empty locations, that’s not likely to yield you much over the course of a game.
135. Shang-Chi (KO Merchants 9) / I appreciate that the guy has four double-action cards with an arrow and a punch. There are a lot of actions on his cards. But those three “Master Martial Artist” cards which allow him to add punches from previous cards are so difficult to actually hit on, and even if you do, you have to be in a game where you actually need that volume of punches against Henchmen or rapidly filled locations. Among characters in this category, Shang-Chi, down to the hyphen, is closer to She-Hulk than anyone else. He just doesn’t have the ability to make his own punches the way that she can.
136. Wolfsbane (Gym Class Zeroes 4) / Some relatively tempting special ability cards, but there are only three double-action cards outside of standard difficulty.
137. Mockingbird (Gym Class Zeroes 5) / I will grant that being able to prevent Overflow in one’s own location is a nice touch, but even having nearly identical action counts to America Chavez can’t make her as efficient a character as she needs to be to reach playable status.
138. Miles Morales (Gym Class Zeroes 6) / I think if Miles had “Web” or “Invisibility” as all three of his special ability cards, then we’d be cooking with gas. Even though Miles only has two arrows in his entire deck (crazy!), he’d be a much more interesting character if he were able to push back Villain turns or avoid damage regularly. As it is, you’re relying mostly on the luck of the draw to play those cards when they might be most useful. And also not helping anyone else get around the board.
139. Angel (Prime Movers 8) / Two double-action cards which distribute star tokens to other players can be neat. The ability to move to another location and be able to give two damage…only to two separate thugs is so disappointing compared to what most other characters can do. Also, four of his eight moves are on those two aforementioned cards. About as helpful as you’d expect someone who’s fabulously wealthy to be.
140. Okoye (Gym Class Zeroes 7) / A rare case where they were a little too faithful to the idea of the original character. One who’s built on self-sacrifice is a pretty interesting idea, but in a board game that’s already meant to be collaborative, self-sacrifice turns out to be mostly self-defeating. My last example of a character who’s got more punches at the bottom of her cards than Thor.
141. Drax (Punch Monkeys 6) / Eleven punches at the bottom of the cards! An incredible number! Don’t ask about anything else that Drax is potentially able to do, because the answer will be both short and depressing. (Worth noting that Drax matches out at fourteen punches, which means he doesn’t even do as much damage as some of the other slightly more adaptable characters of his type.)
142. Spider-Ham (Punch Monkeys 7) / If this character were good, the mini would be going for fifty bucks a pop on the secondary market.
143. Bob, Agent of HYDRA (Gym Class Zeroes 8) / I tried to make a case as to why Bob should not be the last overall character, and then I read over his cards one more time and, alas, I could not get there. Maybe there’s something to be said for playing him against Dormammu? I don’t think I totally believe that either.

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Thanks for sticking with me. For those of you who are curious to see how the categories break down, I’ve included those below. I’ve color coded the tables. Red is for attack categories; green is for movement; orange is for heroic actions; purple is for categories where most of the characters are in the top half of the rankings; blue is for categories where most characters are in the bottom half.

Category Rank	Overall Rank	FALCON PUNCHERS
1	37	PUNISHER
2	57	YONDU
3	69	BOOM BOOM
4	92	BLADE
5	106	SPIDER-PUNK
6	107	SASQUATCH
7	112	KORG

Category Rank	Overall Rank	PUNCH MONKEYS
1	91	WEAPON X
2	102	NEBULA
3	122	ELEKTRA
4	128	WINTER SOLDIER
5	133	SQUIRREL GIRL
6	141	DRAX
7	142	SPIDER-HAM

Category Rank	Overall Rank	KO MERCHANTS
1	10	SHE-HULK
2	18	THOR and BETA RAY BILL
3	41	WAR MACHINE
4	51	MAGIK
5	54	FALCON
6	82	ARCHANGEL
7	86	VENOM
8	93	VALKYRIE
9	135	SHANG-CHI

Category Rank	Overall Rank	PRIME MOVERS
1	20	STORM
2	26	QUICKSILVER
3	31	CANNONBALL
4	36	NORTHSTAR
5	61	BLINK
6	62	GAMBIT
7	87	FIRESTAR
8	139	ANGEL

Category Rank	Overall Rank	ALL-STARS
1	9	NOVA
2	27	MANTIS
3	32	CAPTAIN AMERICA
4	53	ANT-MAN
5	58	CYCLOPS
6	60	MOON KNIGHT
7	79	HOPE SUMMERS
8	83	PIXIE
9	94	JUBILEE
10	98	FORGE
11	109	GHOST-SPIDER

Category Rank	Overall Rank	TOKEN FARMERS
1	1	SPIDER-MAN
2	4	SUNSPOT
3	14	SCARLET SPIDER
4	25	CAPTAIN BRITAIN
5	39	STAR-LORD
6	44	SHURI
7	47	GROOT
8	55	SYMBIOTE SPIDER-MAN
9	66	DAZZLER
10	75	ROCKET RACCOON
11	108	DAREDEVIL

Category Rank	Overall Rank	MOST ACTION HEROES
1	2	DOCTOR DOOM
2	7	MULTIPLE MAN
3	11	BLACK PANTHER
4	12	NICK FURY
5	29	BEAST (First Class)
6	42	SPIRAL
7	45	AMERICA CHAVEZ
8	70	PENI PARKER
9	76	GHOST RIDER

Category Rank	Overall Rank	TIMEX WATCHES
1	13	ADAM WARLOCK
2	22	the THING
3	23	BISHOP
4	34	SILVER SURFER
5	35	X-23
6	43	LOGAN
7	52	WOLVERINE
8	64	SPIDER-MAN NOIR
9	68	COLOSSUS
10	81	PUCK
11	89	LUKE CAGE
12	115	DEADPOOL

Category Rank	Overall Rank	VILLAIN MINDERS
1	5	PSYLOCKE
2	8	DOCTOR STRANGE
3	16	LONGSHOT
4	72	ICEMAN (First Class)
5	84	BLACK CAT
6	88	DOMINO
7	104	SPIDER-WOMAN
8	119	BLACK WIDOW
9	124	WARPATH

Category Rank	Overall Rank	BORDER WARRIORS
1	6	KITTY PRYDE
2	21	JEAN GREY
3	28	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN
4	33	MARVEL GIRL
5	48	MISTER FANTASTIC
6	95	HAWKEYE
7	97	CYCLOPS (First Class)
8	110	IRON FIST
9	114	NAMOR
10	117	CAPTAIN MARVEL

Category Rank	Overall Rank	NOVELTY ACTS
1	57	DOOP
2	65	SNOWBIRD
3	74	STRONG GUY
4	80	HOWARD THE DUCK
5	90	SCARLET WITCH
6	96	MARROW
7	97	FERAL
8	100	MYSTIQUE
9	118	GWENPOOL
10	121	ANTI-VENOM
11	125	CABLE
12	132	GAMORA

Category Rank	Overall Rank	MASTERS OF NONE
1	30	MIRAGE
2	46	PROFESSOR X
3	49	STORM (Mohawk)
4	63	ICEMAN
5	73	JESSICA JONES
6	78	POLARIS
7	101	SILK
8	111	WASP
9	123	SPIDER-MAN 2099
10	127	SHATTERSTAR
11	130	MS. MARVEL

Category Rank	Overall Rank	PAUL GEORGES
1	15	SCARLET SPIDER
2	17	EMMA FROST
3	24	NIGHTCRAWLER

Category Rank	Overall Rank	INNINGS EATERS
1	38	WARLOCK
2	40	GUARDIAN
3	50	LADY DEADPOOL
4	59	IRON MAN
5	71	BANSHEE
6	77	HAVOK

Category Rank	Overall Rank	GYM CLASS ZEROES
1	126	MAGNETO
2	129	HULK
3	134	SUNFIRE
4	136	WOLFSBANE
5	137	MOCKINGBIRD
6	138	MILES MORALES
7	140	OKOYE
8	143	BOB, AGENT OF HYDRA

Category Rank	Overall Rank	NOT TEAM PLAYERS
1	3	PHOENIX
2	66	ROGUE
3	85	APOCALYPSE
4	105	LEGION
5	116	VISION
6	131	FANTOMEX

Category Rank	Overall Rank	NEEDS FRIENDS
1	19	CLOAK and DAGGER
2	103	OLD MAN LOGAN
3	113	HUMAN TORCH
4	120	INVISIBLE WOMAN