Shadow Labyrinth, the second scenario in Marvel Champions' Shadowland Scenario Pack, breaks one of the game's most consistent rules: it does not have a villain in the usual sense.
Instead of a character that attacks and schemes against you, the opposing force is Shifting Corridors, an environment card that drains a ticking resource called passage counters instead of taking traditional villain actions.
Layered on top of that is a trap deck full of cards offering genuinely difficult choices every time one is revealed, which is a different kind of pressure than a Marvel Champions table usually has to manage.
Here is how the full structure fits together, based on Fantasy Flight Games' own preview of the scenario.
Shifting Corridors is described by FFG as the scenario's villain, but mechanically it does not attack heroes or advance a scheme the way Rhino or Klaw would. Each time it would activate, it instead removes a passage counter and reveals a trap card, converting the usual villain-activation beat into a resource drain and a new hazard at once.
This is a meaningful design departure for the line, since almost every other Marvel Champions scenario is built around managing villain health and scheme threat as the two core pressure gauges. Here, passage counters function as a hard clock instead.
During the first half of the scenario, called Into the Labyrinth, your goal is to remove all threat from the main scheme before Shifting Corridors runs out of passage counters entirely. Succeed, and you advance into the Chamber of Vile Secrets, where you face off against another Dark Protégé; run out of time, and the scenario presumably escalates against you, though FFG's preview did not spell out the exact fail-state penalty in detail.
That framing makes this scenario feel closer to a countdown puzzle than a standard fight, which rewards efficient thwarting over raw damage output in a way most Marvel Champions content does not.
Running alongside the main encounter deck is a separate trap deck full of TRAP! cards. With one stated exception, each trap offers three distinct outcomes when revealed: Avoid, Disarm, or Trip, each with a different cost and consequence attached.
Blinding Powder, for example, can be avoided by discarding a Thwart event, disarmed by discarding two random cards for a bonus tough status card, or tripped outright for 2 damage and a confused identity if you cannot or will not pay either cost. Caltrops works similarly but asks for a Defense card to avoid or an identity-specific card to disarm, turning every reveal into a real resource decision rather than a coin flip.
The Hand member Iron Monk removes your ability to avoid traps outright, while Nervous Jitters raises the cost of avoiding or disarming them. Hall of Punishment specifically punishes the easy route of tripping a trap instead of dealing with it properly, and Path of a Thousand Cuts makes anything other than disarming noticeably more dangerous.
Lord Deathstrike adds a further wrinkle by feeding additional cards into the trap deck and carrying the patrol keyword, which blocks thwarting against the main scheme entirely while he is in play. Removing him quickly becomes a priority the moment he shows up.
Even setting the trap deck aside, the labyrinth itself works against you. Sudden Shifts can rearrange the physical layout mid-scenario, Dead Ends force you to smash through obstacles you cannot otherwise bypass, and No Time to Think can strand a hero in a situation where teammates are unable to help.
Together these cards reinforce the sense that Shadow Labyrinth is less about a single enemy and more about surviving a hostile location, which is a genuinely different design brief than most Marvel Champions scenarios set out to solve.
Decks that generate consistent, repeatable thwarting have a real edge here, since the win condition is a race against the main scheme rather than a fight to the death against a villain's health pool. Cards that let you discard resources cheaply also matter more than usual, since several traps ask you to pay with specific card types to avoid or disarm them.
Pure attacker builds without much thwart or card-discard flexibility will likely find this scenario frustrating, since there is comparatively little here to simply punch through.
No, Shifting Corridors drains passage counters and reveals traps instead of attacking or scheming.
FFG's preview did not detail the exact fail-state penalty, so treat that as unconfirmed until the rules reference is available.
Avoid, Disarm, and Trip, each with different costs and consequences.
You advance into the Chamber of Vile Secrets to face another Dark Protégé.
A scenario built around a ticking clock rewards efficient play more than raw power, so sleeve your thwart-focused cards now; a set of premium card sleeves keeps your go-to cards in good shape through repeated attempts.
!
