Read The Field Manual – How to Play Marvel: Avengers Alliance for People Who Like Manuals

M:AA is a combat-oriented turn-based role-playing game, loosely based on the Cinematic Marvel Universe (the one where Director Nick Fury looks like Samuel L. Jackson). Here, players take the role of a rookie agent from S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intelligence and Espionage Division), who has just finished combat training when a mysterious pulse from outer space rains a mysterious substance (which SHIELD later calls ISO-8) that can enhance the performance of both men and machinery to the point that a thug armed with a knife can damage Iron Man’s high-tech armor, resulting in a mad dash by various criminal organizations in the Marvel Universe to gather as much of it for themselves as they can. Despite his or her just being out of SHIELD agent school, the player is immediately paired up with Iron Man and tasked to assemble a team of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Armed with nothing but a standard-issue SHIELD jumpsuit and Needle Gun, as well as a magical bottomless backpack that only he or she can see and use, he or she must stop the crime wave spreading across New York. That’s just for starters.

The new guy.

Basic gameplay proceeds as follows. Players choose a mission to undertake (there are typically six per chapter) and chooses which threats (color-coded by difficulty, blue ones are the easiest fights, red ones are the hardest, while yellow ones lie in between) to combat first.

Color-coded for your convenience. The red skull is a High threat, the blue ones are Low threats, and the named threats are either mini-bosses or the mission boss.

Defeating enemies in combat nets the agent some silver (in-game common currency), and experience points, which are also gained by up to two heroes that fought alongside the agent. Earn enough experience, and the agent levels up, while heroes who have earned enough experience to gain a level must take some time off for training. Training makes the hero unavailable for a fight until training is done, but he or she comes out of the training room with new abilities or room for better stats. These stats are Health, Stamina, Attack, Defense, Accuracy, and Evasion.

Stats - where would RPGs be without them?

Players will need to watch their team’s Health points while in combat, because an agent or hero who loses all of his HP is knocked out and removed from combat. Combat is also dictated by Stamina – it is consumed whenever the agent uses one of his equipment or a hero uses one of his powers or attacks, and if it is depleted (or drops so low that no actions can be taken) the Recharge action or a consumable item must be used to replenish it. While there are also items that restore Health, and some that restore both Health and Stamina, there is no equivalent action to recover Health by forgoing an action or turn. Finally, both the agent’s teams and the enemy teams start the match with full health, and in the good guys’ case full stamina as well.

      Attack determines how much damage weapons and powers will do against a target, which is mitigated in turn by the target’s Defense. The chance of an attack hitting is dependent on the Accuracy of the attacker, as well as the target’s Evasion stat. These 4 stats may increase or decrease during combat, as a result of items, attacks, equipment, or powers.

Engaging enemies in a fight drains 10 Energy from the agent, of which he or she can have a maximum of 60. Energy recovers in real-time, at the rate of 1 Energy point every 6 minutes. Also, when an agent gains a level, his or her Energy is replenished to full. 

An Agent's Energy meter. Note the buttons on the left to  use stored energy from the inventory, and to  add more energy either from visiting your allies' maps or purchasing stored energy in-game.

Thus, even at low levels of play, a bit of resource management can already be seen in action. Pick the most Energy-efficient fights you can win and gain experience to level up. Leveling up in turn, allows you to prevail against tougher fights that will net you more experience.

Recharging your agent’s Energy meter and getting better stats are just some rewards of leveling up. The in-game store has items that are unlocked by the agent reaching a certain level. Other items must be researched in order for them to be made available for purchase, and apparently SHIELD is reluctant to release high-energy laser rifles and the like to rookie agents. For heroes, gaining a level either means new powers and abilities, or an ISO-8 slot. Yes, the rocks that every criminal organization is fighting over can be used to upgrade your own heroes, including your agent. I like to think of it as making a slight alteration to a hero’s outfit, like sewing a pocket for the piece of alien mineral. 

This screen allows you to add alien rocks to your suit to gain better stats. Click on the Iso-8 you want, then click on one of the slots beside the agent. You can "overwrite" occupied Iso-8 slots, allowing you to tweak your stats at the cost of losing a previously installed piece of Iso-8 and its corresponding bonuses.

Essentially, heroes’ outfits, suits, uniforms, whatever you’d like to call them, have 8 Iso-8 slots, and an agent can purchase new suits to get different abilities and to get more Iso-8 slots of his own. Iso-8 pieces can provide bonuses to one, two, three, or even all stats, though some research is required to make them available for purchase in the store. No research is required to slot the fragments you manage to take from fallen enemies, though.

I’ve been mentioning research for quite some time now, so let’s now take a look at how it works. Once a player has access to the Research button, he or she can choose a topic of research, which will unlock an item in the store and possibly further research down the line, usually level-locked. 

"Sorry Agent, we can't sell you this fist-mounted lightsaber because you haven't paid the lab rats enough for them to realize that there is such a thing as Plasmic Stability."

Research costs silver to fund, as well as SHIELD points to authorize. 

Taking the information from the image above and the one before it, to get an Energy Fist, a player needs to spend 207,040 silver and 31 SHIELD points.

SHIELD points and silver are also consumed when training heroes, and it is not uncommon to see players struggle in the beginning to amass both, and making tough decisions whether to unlock new technology or to develop their available heroes further. While silver can be earned by defeating enemies and completing missions, where does one get SHIELD points? We’ll get to that in a bit.

Spider-Man literally needs a day off to train from level 10 to 11, which will unlock his 7th Iso-8 slot. That, as well as 200,000 silver, which this player only has 251,555 of, and 35 SHIELD points, which is a drop in the bucket for this player.

At its core, Marvel: Avengers Alliance is essentially a single-player RPG with some Player Versus Player thrown in, that boasts a massive ‘socialization bonus’ – a term which I cannot be credited with inventing. Inviting your friends to join the population of the game yields rewards for you, as is the case with most Facebook games. Here, friends become sources of the in-game resources silver, energy, challenge points (for PVP enthusiasts), and SHIELD points, as well as certain consumables, in two ways. First, any of your friends who also play appear in-game as areas you can visit. 

Here we are visiting Tony's neighborhood. Yes, that Tony - genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

You can click on indicated points to retrieve aid packages from them every 12 hours or so. These include silver pieces, Energy points (which are immediately added to your current amount of Energy), Challenge points (also immediately added to your current total, and can only have a maximum of 5 at any time), and SHIELD points. While a player can only receive 30 silver pieces (interesting!) per click (each coin icon representing 10 silver), a yellow lightning bolt restores just 1 Energy, and a red lightning bolt restores 1 Challenge. A purple SHIELD icon gives the player 3 SHIELD points at once.

We managed to snag a handful of silver and a small energy boost. The silver gets added to our current silver on hand, while the small energy, which will restore 2 energy points when used, goes into our inventory.

 Secondly, if your friends in the game actively play, you can send them gifts in-game. As of this writing, players can send each other EMP grenades, Pumpkin Bombs, First Aid Packs, and Shawarmas, all of which are consumable items in combat, as well as Unstable Iso-8 (available only during in-game events called Special Operations, with a limited-edition hero as the prize should a player participate and complete them), 2 Energy points (which are stored in the player’s inventory as opposed to being immediately), 1 Challenge point (which is stored the same way as gifted Energy), and finally 1 SHIELD point, which is immediately added to a player’s total. 

If you need EMP grenades to fight robotic opponents and you have none at the moment, where do the EMP grenades you send to your friends come from?

The Unstable Iso-8 is replaced with another consumable when there are no Special Operations running. Up to a maximum of 50 gifts can be collected per day, but a player can send as many gifts of whatever types as he or she wants to his or her friends.

For security and privacy purposes, the time stamp, names, and pictures of the gift senders have been blacked out.

The game’s reliable source of silver is also dependent on your friends list. There is a part of the game called the Flight Deck, representing the runway of the SHIELD Helicarrier.

See the green Z's above the jets? Put those lazy bums to work!

 Here, heroes may be assigned to a jet to fly Remote Operations, taking them out of the combat roster for periods of varying duration, and upon their return the hero will have earned some experience and brought home some silver. The amount of silver earned per jet depends on the level of the hero, the level of the jet, and the length of time the hero was away.

Use these short missions to let your heroes earn silver for you while you're busy with other tasks - like household chores or the work that's been piling up on your desk while you were busy playing.

A level 12 hero, which is the maximum in the game, will bring home 90% bonus silver per completed remote operation. The thing is, training a hero from level 11 to 12 costs 300,000 silver.

To purchase new jets, one spends silver, and sends out a request to friends to join the player’s flight crew. Once the crew is assembled, the new jet becomes available for Remote Operations. Higher level jets, which earn more silver, can be obtained if one’s agent has reached the appropriate level, can pay the silver for the upgrade, and has enough friends to crew the vehicle. It is possible for one’s friends to be part of more than one jet’s crew, thus it is entirely possible to field a complete set of 8 fully upgraded jets with just 8 friends who actively play the game.

If you have no Facebook friends to invite or willing to help you along with the game, the last resort is to use gold. Gold in-game is a resource that is progressively more difficult to come by the higher your level is (you gain 1 gold each time you hit a new level), but it can also be bought using real-world money, via credit card. 

Are you willing to part with your hard-earned cash for the game?

Using the current conversion rates in-game, 1 gold can be exchanged for 1 SHIELD point (not recommended) or 2 Command Points (which are used to recruit heroes, and buy alternate uniforms for them). Gold is also used to purchase powerful and limited-edition weaponry and equipment. Gold can also be used to fill in for missing crew for your Flight Deck jets, at a rate of 1 gold per crew missing.

If you’re not picky about inviting people on Facebook to become just gaming friends, you can (as yours truly did) create a forum account for the Facebook version of the game, and visit the Find Allies thread. Here, you can click on people’s Facebook wall links and send them a friend request. (PRO TIP: you might want to consider creating a list for your gaming-only “friends” to keep them separate from your actual friends and relatives.) This saves you the onus of using gold to crew your jets, and if you don’t like your Facebook page getting bombarded with updates and pictures you don’t find funny, you can always block them.