Piecing Together Marvel Puzzle Quest: Captain Marvel

Have you been waiting for another Carol Danvers to take into battle? Well wait no longer gang!

D3 Go! and “Marvel Puzzle Quest” ring in the new year with a 4-Star, high-flying, cosmically-powered Captain Marvel ready and raring to clean bad guy clocks. We talked to D3 Go! Producer Josh Austin about the blonde bomber and everything she brings to the game.

Marvel.com: Another year gone, but another year of incredible “Puzzle Quest” action no doubt in front of us. Can you give us a little taste of what’s to come?

Josh Austin: Happy New Year! We are busy working on a few features in 2017, including one that should be coming very soon that will improve the overall player experience and hopefully makes everyone very happy. We’ve gotten some really good feedback in our recent in-game survey and we hope to get started on some fun new events in 2017 based on the info we have received.

We are also working on our process to [ensure] more general testing is getting done and we also want to facilitate more community requests. Sorry we can’t be too specific until we lock something down, but players will have plenty to be happy about this year and we have more great characters coming soon!

Marvel.com: And we have a new 4-Star character coming down the pipeline. A new Captain Marvel right?

Josh Austin: Yes, Carol Danvers is coming to “Marvel Puzzle Quest” as our newest 4-Star character. We have a modern and an older variation already released, [but] this new Carol Danvers design focuses on the recently released variation with her newer short hair look.

Marvel.com: How is she different than her 2/3-Star versions? What did the team want to focus on for Carol this time?

Josh Austin: Where the other two Captain Marvels have two attack powers and one strategic or reactionary power, this new Carol Danvers is more about taking charge, rallying her team, and causing more tile manipulation [than] straight up damage with some board affects. So she is more of a support character that creates specials tiles to do damage against the enemy team.

Marvel.com: And let’s talk a little about her abilities?

Josh Austin: Following the theme of Carol’s appointment to Commander of the Alpha Flight Space Station, Captain Marvel (Carol Danver)’s first ability is a new variation of Photonic Barrage. For 8 Black AP she strategically fires off Photonic Blasts at her enemies while soaring around the battlefield. This power converts a chosen Black tile into a 5-turn Countdown tile that creates a Strike tile every turn and deals damage when it expires.

Her second power is called Executive Decision where Carol is taking charge and rallying her team to get things done. For 5 Yellow AP the player can reduce a chosen friendly Countdown tile to 0. There is also a Passive that triggers for this power every time a friendly Countdown tile expires, that improves a random friendly tile by increasing its base amount.

Her last ability is called Energy Manipulation and it’s a Green Passive, which means no AP is needed. This power is similar to Captain Marvel (Modern)’s damage absorption ability, powering up her own abilities, gaining 2 AP every time the enemy matches their strongest color. If the enemy’s strongest color matches the player’s strongest color she deals damage to the enemy team when the opponent matches their strongest color tiles.

Marvel.com: Who does she fight best beside? With all this Civil War stuff going on right now, how does she match with Tony Stark?

Josh Austin: If you are unable to find an Iron Man version to fight with, we are working on one that may actually work well with her in future that we can’t reveal yet. In all seriousness, with all the tile and board manipulation she’s really great when she is matched up with Tony’s friend War Machine, especially since she was designed to synergize well with him!

Since War Machine creates multiple Countdown tiles, they can play off each other’s powers to create a very reliable and simple strategy to utilize Countdown tiles. Pair them up with Medusa who relies on/creates special tiles and you have a solid team! She also works well with Green Goblin to immediately retrieve his glider, Scarlet Witch’s Arcane Incantation to gather Purple AP to make quick matches using the Purple tiles, or Hulk (Bruce Banner)’s The Other Guy tile can also be manipulated to launch as soon as the Countdown tile appears on the board to get him to transform faster.

Marvel.com: Sounds like players are going to have some pretty awesome teams to play around with. Is there anything else we need to know about the new Captain Marvel?

Josh Austin: Carol will be available and featured in Deadpool vs. MPQ on January 5, in the Vault Story Event happening on January 8, and the Versus Event called Flight and Fight starting on January 12.

Stay tuned to Marvel.com for more “Marvel Puzzle Quest” news and interviews!