Comic Hunters is a game originally from Brazil: it took the world by storm as a drafting game with 4 different types of drafting and also Marvel comics covers as the cards (see below)! We really liked it! See our review here!!

This game has been so popular that they translated the rules to English, and it has been selling for $200 or more on e-bay!

After all this popularity, it looks like Arcane Wonders is going to pick up the game in the United States: see here! You don’t have to pay $200 for it anymore!

My only lament was that the game was either solo-only or fully competitive … until now.

Development of Cooperative Rules

These cooperative rules for Comic Hunters have been in development for about 6 months now.  (Let’s be clear: I have no affiliation with any of the developers or companies, I am just a fan of the game).   I’ve had some basic ideas, thrown some away, playtested, tried new ideas, lather rinse repeat …

You can see version 0.9 of my beautiful, hand-crafted Whim cards above.

We’ve been playtesting at 2 and 3 player counts: the current rules only work for a 2 to 3 player cooperative game.  We run out of cards when we try to play 4 players (see why below), so currently the cooperative mode only supports 2 or 3 players.

There’s been quite a bit of playtesting and editing: hopefully you’ll find this something you can enjoy!

Introduction

Here’s the introduction from the rulebook:

You and your friends have been collecting comics together for years! You love to go to the comic store, conventions, and flea markets together, looking for some rarities.  Sure, there have been some friendly rivalries for comics along the way, but you and your friends love comics.  If only your allowances were bigger, but that makes you appreciate the comics you do have a little more…

Then one day the Jerk comes into your life: he’s an Insufferable Jerk who just ruins everything!  He thinks he knows everything, he thinks his way is the only way to do anything, and he puts down everything about you and your friends.  He just happens to be rich and inserts himself into your groups.  He tells everyone his collection of comics is the best! He is so annoying!

Your job in cooperative Comic Hunters is to get bragging rights over the Insufferable Jerk (sometimes referred to as IJ).  In order to win the game, players must get bragging rights over the Insufferable Jerk in all aspects of comic collecting.  To do this, at least one of the cooperative players must outdo the Insufferable Jerk in every aspect of the game:

   a) Combined, your collections must have more variety than IJ!

   b) From size perspective, at least one player must have more comics of a hero for each hero!

   c) For each highlight, at least one player must beat IJ!

   d) At least one player must have more Secret Stash points than IJ!

As a group, if you can outdo the Insufferable Jerk in every single aspect of comic collecting, you can shut him up! You hope to teach him collecting comics is supposed to be fun, not some sort of power play.

Players work together get the best comic collection they can, as a group.

Downloads

See above for the version 1.0.0 of the game! (The current version is 1.0.2 in the downloads section: the changes are mostly just very minor clarifications and rewordings). To play cooperative Comic Hunters, you need three things:

1. A copy of the original game Comic Hunters
2. The cooperative rulebook:  see the PDF download at the end of post.
3. The 5 Whim Cards: see the PDF download at the end of the post.

The cooperative rulebook you might want to print, but you can always just look at in online (see below). The 5 Whim cards you must print! They will be “about” 3x5in when you print them.

The cards are all one-sided, so you want to print each card on a separate page and par it down to about 3×5. I used cardstock for mine. The idea is that these cards will go above the comic board:

These Whim cards are the AI that controls how the Insufferable Jerk works.

Feel free to download and try this out! I currently am keeping all rights to this, but I may release this to the public domain later on.

Feedback

We’d appreciate any feedback!  Problems?  Mistakes?  Please feel free to reach out to us at returnfromsubroutinellc@gmail.com or post on BGG in Comic Hunters section!

See downloads below (remember, you need to download 2 things).