Marvel's Midnight Suns

Midnight Suns is a 2022 tactics game from Firaxis set in the Marvel universe. Lilith, the mother of demons, has risen, and a team of heroes gathers in an old abbey to fight her. You play as an original character, the Hunter, alongside heroes such as Iron Man, Captain Marvel and Wolverine.

Battles are turn-based but run on cards. Each hero brings a deck of abilities, and each turn you draw a hand and play a limited number of cards, moving and using the environment as you go. Between battles you walk around the abbey, train, research and build friendships with the heroes, which unlock new abilities.

Its battles are clever: the card system makes each turn a puzzle of what you drew, and the environment gives free attacks to players who look for them. The abbey portion is long and divides players, but those who enjoy it find a relationship game of real size.

It is a long way from XCOM. There is no permadeath, no cover in the usual sense, and no hit chances: attacks always land.

Midnight Suns is the Firaxis game that walks furthest from X-COM. It keeps a base between battles and a turn-based fight, and changes almost everything else. Its value here is as a measure: it shows which parts of X-COM a studio can remove and still make a tactics game.