Comic Hunters is a competitive drafting game for 1-4 players that’s currently only available in Brazil. Using this dark corner of the web called “Ebay”, I was able to secure a copy … paying way too much money. (I’d rather not say how much. Really. Please, stop asking. Just go look for yourself and see how much it is on Ebay).

I was really interesting in this game because I collected comics in a former life, and I actually have some of the comics depicted in the game.

To be clear: the cards depict actual Marvel comics covers! See above. In fact, I have all 10 of the comics above! Anyone who has been following Co-op Gestalt for any amount time knows how much we like Superheroes (see our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Cards Games)! So, Comic Hunters was a natural buy for us!

Sleeves

This has been a bit of a journey for us.  Since the game was so expensive (please stop asking how much, allright?), we went ahead and got some matte sleeves for the game.  We found a list here on BoardGameGeek of sleeves that fit the game.  You need 135 sleeves: we went ahead and chose the Gamegenic sleeves for the game. See below.

Over about 40 minutes one night, I sleeved all 135 cards.

The sleeves seem very nice: they aren’t too shiny.

Portuguese

Those of you paying attention might remember Comic Hunters is from Brazil … which means the game is mostly in Portuguese.  Luckily, the comic cards themselves are all language independent (with the original Marvel comic cover in English) : they have icons, so the cards don’t need anything special. See below.

Most of the board is pretty iconic, with numbers and symbols. The only section that really sees Portuguese is the Round Tracker: see below.

What does that mean? Luckily, it’s very easy to correlate the round with the drafting by just matching the text to the round description (to the left of the round marker): that picture shows an iconic reference for the four types of drafts in the game (see below).

So, for most of the game, you can get by not knowing Portuguese … except for the rulebook. This is a fairly complicated game, and you can’t get by without an English translation of the rulebook. See the Portuguese rulebook below.

Rulebook

So, there is an official English translation of the rules on BoardGameGeek in the files section (in fact, there’s two of them!) They look almost exactly like the original rulebook, in graphic design and sectioning, but in English! See here.

For about $7, I went ahead and printed the rulebook in black and white at my local FedEx copy center.

The rules work fine, although I did have to trim the edges manually to make it fit in the box. (I left the top part on for possibly stapling it later).

For about another $24, FedEx was also able to make a much more professional color English copy, with a nice coil binding: see above.

So, I have three copies of the rulebook: one color copy in Portuguese (the original), one B&W copy in English, and one color copy in English. See above. They all fit in the box.

Why did I get a B&W copy as well? As it turns out, it takes a few days (potentially) to make the professional copy. I really wanted to play right away, so I had FedEx make the cheaper B&W to get me going. I think it will be an advantage to have multiple copies of the rulebook for this game: there are some quirky sections that will benefit from multiple rulebook copies.

The rulebook gets about a B or B+ on the Chair Test: It opens up nicely and looks great, and fits on the chair next to me and it fits in the original box. The only problem is that the font is just a little small.

Overview

In Comic Hunters, thematically you are trying to collect a certain set of comics to get the best collection! There are eight main Marvel superheroes you are tracking: Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Dr. Strange, Hulk, SIron Man, Spider Man, and Thor.

Mechanically, this is a drafting game with cards (like Seven Wonders or Sushi Go), but with four very different kinds of drafting: to win, you need the most victory points at the end of the game.

You can see the Seven Wonders-like scoring pad that comes with the game, but it’s all in Portuguese. I just used a 3×5 index card to emulate the scoring pad. (I think BoardGameGeek has more official English scoring pads, but I didn’t really need them).

Scoring

There are several competing scoring criteria for your comic collection: Size, Variety, Highlights, and Secret Stash.

For Size, you consult the board (above), and it tells you how many victory points you get for each collection (For example:5 Dr. Strange comics will score you 12 points). See above.

For Variety, the number of hero collections you have gets you points. If you have just Spider Man, Dr. Strange, and Iron Man comics in your collection, you would only get 5 Victory Points. (You have no variety, man!). You need at least 3 comics of that hero to count against Variety. See above.

For Highlights, you check the board to see how icons you match (See above). For example, If you have the most Number One issues, you would get 15 Victory Points! There’s New Look, First Appearance, Special Edition, Epic Battle, and Number One. There’s only three highlights in play per game.

Finally, for Secret Stash, you just score the number of points on that chart (see above).

Drafting

Like Seven Wonders, this is a victory point drafting game. Like Seven Wonders, there are three rounds (Ages) to the game. Like Seven Wonders, there is scoring at the endgame to find who the winner is. But the drafting has some big differences from Seven Wonders!

First of all, there are 3 drafts per round, notated by the Itinierario! And four very different types of drafts!

The first draft (Loja or Store) is the most like Seven Wonders: each player gets 4 cards from Era 1 comics, chooses 1 to keep, then passes the rest to the left/right (depending on the round). By the time you are done with this draft, everyone should have 4 comic cards!

The next type of draft is Sebo or Flea Market!  Players set-up n rows (where n is the number of players) with a starting card.  See below for a 3-player start! On your turn, you can either add a new card to any row OR take a row!  

Here, you are trying to balance when a row is great! If you take a row too early, you get fewer cards.  If you take it too late, someone else may get the row you want!

Convencao, or Convention is when you set up a large 5×5 grid of comics and take either a row or column (after being allowed to move one card). Each player gets two chances to take a row or column.

The final Drafting type is Site De Leilao or Auction Website. It’s basically just an auction using the secret stash counter as money.

In the auction, there are some asymmetric rows put out (depending on the number of players). For the solo player, only two rows are put out: one row with 3 comics and one row with four comics. Winners gets the row of choice.

Avengers Assemble!  Collection! 

At the end of each round (after 3 drafts), you take your comics and figure out which ones to actually buy: This is Organizar Colecao or Assemble Collection part of the round. The comics you acquired over the round (over the 3 drafts) become either money (to buy other comics) or comics to keep (which must be bought with other comics).

The Market Value of each comic (its sale price or buy price) is the Era it comes from: recent comics are Era 1 (worth 1), 80s-90s comics are Era 2 (worth 2), and silver age comics are Era 3 (worth 3). This info is on the back of the cards as well as the front.

This is where you are trying to make collections of your comics, keeping in mind the scoring conditions at the end of the game. You also have to make brutal decisions on what comics you have to sell to keep the ones you really wants! Cards that are sold go to the Convention deck and players keep the bought ones. (You can also move comics you already from previous rounds between collections).

After three rounds, players add up victory points and the most points win!

Solo Game

Even though Comic Hunters is competitive, it does have a solo mode, which is why we feel justified talking about this here in our cooperative blog. We can always play any game with a solo mode cooperatively like we did with Eila and Soomething Shiny (see here), Flamecraft (see here), and Canvas (see here): just play the solo mode as a group.

In the solo mode, you play against Jeeves (the Avenger’s butler). As you play, basically Jeeves tends to get the comics you DO NOT get, but he does’t have to pay for him! As you play, you try to get the best comics for yourself as well as trying to limit Jeeves’ options.

You collect comics are normal… see above …

And Jeeves gets your leftovers! See above.

Although the game flows the same, the rules for draft are altered in order to compensate for the solo player and Jeeves. So, there is an entire section to the rulebook about how each of the drafts changes to deal with Jeeves. It’s more complicated than you might expect, even if you know the base game. I found I had to re-read the rules a number of times in solo mode to get the nuanced differences.

The solo game is fun! I have played it a number of times and it took a while to get it! What’s cool about the solo mode is keeping track of three things: which cards you buy, which cards Jeeves gets, and which cards go to the Convention deck! Some of the cards you don’t acquire go to the Convention deck, which means you may still see it again! As you try to limit Jeeves’ options, you may decide to discard certain cards to the Convention deck so you can see them again! That little twist, of comics going to the Convention deck (so they can reappear in later rounds), makes the solo mode that much more interesting. I think that helped elevate the game for me.

The major flaw of the solo game is simply that the rules had to be readjusted fairly heavily to accommodate solo play. Even if you know the base game, it’s still quite a bit of work to get into the solo game.

But the solo game is fun.

Cooperative Mode

I wish this game had a cooperative mode.  Like I said, we can always play this cooperatively by simply playing the solo mode as a cooperative group, but I feel like this game deserves a really good cooperative mode: It’s really great.

Coming To America?

Part of the reason I picked this up is that it’s not clear if Comic Hunters will ever come to the USA in its current form. For licensing reasons, it’s unclear whether an American company could get the rights to all the Marvel comics covers.  There have been whispers that some company may bring it to the USA in 2024, but it’s unclear if the game will have to be re-themed (for licensing reasons) with different artwork.  See this BoardGameGeek thread here for more details.

Conclusion

Am I glad I spent way too much money on this game?   Yes!  The art is phenomenal (well, it does contain some of my favorite Marvel comics covers) and the gameplay is really different and original.  I am enjoying the solo mode quite a bit: there’s quite a few interesting ideas, and I just love living in this world of Marvel Comic Hunters: 8/10.  If you think you would love this world, give it a try:  I know that many conventions have a copy of this game in their game library (Dice Tower) to try.  We’ll also have it out at RichieCon-7 this year for people to try.

If someone had showed me Comic Hunters before Seven Wonders, I don’t think I would have ever played Seven Wonders, but I suppose Seven Wonders and Sushi Go did have to pave the way for drafting games to be popular before this could flourish.

I just wish this game had a good cooperative mode.