My Kickstarter copy of Aeon’s End: Outcasts arrived just yesterday (September 3rd, 2020). For those of you who don’t know, Aeon’s End: Outcasts is a cooperative deck-builder for 1-4 players. It’s set in a fantasy universe with spell casting, gems, and artifacts. This is the fouth (!) big-box stand-alone expansion to the game (putting the grand total to five big box stand-alone boxes). I have kickstarted EVERY VERSION so far!! If you don’t know anything about deckbuilders or the Aeon’s End series, see my review here of Aeon’s End: War Eternal and the original Aeon’s End!!!

Ennui

So, I almost didn’t back this expansion. I have to admit, I was experiencing some ennui with the Aeon’s End series. I mean, I have 4 big box expansions, and 10(?) small box expansions, plus the matte and Legacy recharge kit. Don ‘t get me wrong, I like Aeon’s End a lot (but see below), as it made the number 1 spot on my Top 10 Cooperative Deckbuilders! BUT, a lot of my Aeon’s End games sit half-played, with a lot of content still in shrink-wrap. So, I almost didn’t back this expansion … in the end, I did because … I am a completionist?

Out of the Box Experience

One of the things that Aeon’s End does better than most games: the unboxing and jumping into your first game is VERY PLEASANT! And Aeon’s End: Outcasts continues this tradition! See the picture above! The starting leaflet tells you what decks to get out, how to organize them, and how to start. I admit to some trepidation/”worries of ennui” before I opened the game, but I forgot how easy it is to get going!

The art looks great (see above) , and the newer cards are a little different. Because there are so many predecessors to this Aeon’s End, the newer cards are necessarily more complex and you have you to think a little more how to use them.

Rulebook

The rulebook is quite good, just like all the other versions.

In general, I had no problems with the rulebook. They showed the components, demonstrated set-up, and discussed rules clearly, just like the other Aeon’s End rulebooks. Aeons’ End: Outcasts DID show new rules by highlighting them in yellow (the most interesting new rule being curses that will clog your deck).

Solo Play and House Rules

So, to be clear, there are straight-forward solo rules to play Aeon’s End: Outcasts. They are covered very well in the book: you take the role of one mage playing through the game (with a very minor rule clarification: allies include yourself)—This is outlined on the last page of the rulebook. BUT, there is something that differs from the app! Something I HATE in the app, but the main rulebook don’t cover!

An easy way to LEARN Aeon’s End is to pick up the Handelabra implementation of Aeon’s End. It has the original game and a some extra content at the time of this writing. It’s a decent implementation, and it works pretty well. There is one rule that the APP enforces that the ruleboook doesn’t cover: In the solo game, how many turns does the solo player have per round? See the little bar at the very top row of the screen above. First off, the Nemesis (the bad guy) will always have TWO turns per round (in both the app and the board game). IN THE APP, the solo player only gets THREE other turns per round! IN THE BOARD GAME, it’s implied/deduced (because it’s not clear) that the solo player gets FOUR turns per round!!!

I kind of hate the app because of this! Often enough (it’s not uncommon), the Nemesis will get FOUR TURNS A ROW (two at the end of the round, then another two at the start of the next round) without the player doing anything!!! This can be completely devastating and random and you just lose, especially in the later game. I hate this as you just watch yourself lose.

In the board game, it’s less likely to happen (as you have FOUR plays to TWO of the Nemesis), but I have a house rule that the Nemesis can never go more than twice in a row. If he were, I just reshuffle the round deck and try again. I can enforce this house rule because I control the round deck. I have actually stopped playing the App because of this … even though I love Aeon’s End.

What’s Different?

To be clear, although this an “expansion”, this is also a stand-alone big box game you can play WITHOUT any of the other content.   Aeon’s End: Outcasts doesn’t change the rules TOO much: it mostly just adds new content (like the new monster above).

It adds new spells, artifacts, and gems (see above for some examples).

It adds new characters (like Taqren above).

Whereas both Aeon’s End and Aeon’s End: War Eternal were just standalone deckbuilders with no story, Aeon’s End: Outcasts adds a campaign (very much Aeon’s End: the New Age) with a story. There’s a little storybook (which is much better than Aeon’s End: The New Age, where the campaign was on hard to read little cards) and a bunch of envelopes to open at the end of chapters. After each chapter, new content gets revealed, and a story emerges (nothing is shown to avoid apoilers)! It’s also completely resettable! (It’s a not a legacy game).

Conclusion

So, although I have some Aeon’s End ennui (say that three times fast), I am glad I got this version (Aeon’s End: Outcasts).  The storybook and chapters make me look forward to playing it.  The new characters and cards are interesting, even though they take a little more thought than the base game (because they have to mix it up to create new content).  The art is great, and the game is consistent with all the other Aeon’s Ends in terms of quality: the quality is quite high. See the discussion of high quality in my other review of Aeon’s End: War Eternal.

I think Aeon’s End: Outcasts might be the best Aeon’s End so far?  The campaign gives the game direction (so it’s not just a mish-mash of 100s of cards), and the fact that’s it resettable makes it easy to bring back to the table.  The new storybook also makes it easy to manage the story: the original Aeon’s End campaign game (Aeon’s End: The New Age) had the campaign text on CARDS, and it was too much/too fiddly to keep track of.   If you could buy only one Aeon’s End, I’d say pick this one.  If you love it, there are tons of expansions to make it bigger …

About a week ago (it’s Aug. 29, 2020), I received Part II of the Ruin Of Thandar Campaign: The Lost Village in the mail.  It was originally a Kickstarter, but I ended up ordering it from Miniatures Market and got it as soon as it came to retail.  There are a lot of Kickstarters that have already gotten their copy, so I am late to the party, BUT it also seems to be sold out already at most online stores at the time of this writing.

What Is The Ruin Of Thandar Campaign?

The Ruin of Thandar is a cooperative expansion campaign for Hero Realms.  The Lost Village itself is Part II of that campaign  (with more obviously planned).  For those of you who don’t know, Hero Realms is a competitive, 1 vs.1, deck-building game.   I liked the original Ruin of Thandar cooperative expansion so much it made #4 on my Top 10 Cooperative Deckbuilder Games (and  it probably should have made my Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively, since the base game REQUIRES these expansions to be fully cooperative).

Besides the base game of Hero Realms, you also need the Character Packs (see below).  The Character Packs give you a little more specialization (almost but not quite Variable Player Powers), and a little more flavor to the game: Each Character Pack has 18 cards (replacing the base starting cards, and adding two “ability” cards).

Hold on, we’re not there yet.  In addition to (a) Hero Realms and (b) The Character Packs (one pack for each player), you also need (c) The Ruin of Thandar expansion Part I.

Why do you need the Part I Ruin of Thandar expansion?  In the campaign game, you “level up” as you play (getting new cards, new Skills, new Abilities, and new Treasure).  Once you are done playing the Ruin of Thandar, you will have a lot of cards from that expansion explicitly for your character!!  These cards are needed for The Lost Village!

SO: you will have to have played all the way through Part I, saved/remembered what new cards you upgraded to, and THEN you can finally play The Lost Village!

Unboxing and Components

The Lost Village comes with a bunch of new cards and two books.

One book is the “rulebook” (although not quite, see below) and the other is the Adventure Book. The Adventure book outlines the adventure the players will experience.   The Adventure book is broken into “Chapters” and depending on whether you win or lose, you go to a different “Chapter” (kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure games).

The game is cooperative because all the players work together to take down “the Big Bad”.  In the base Hero Realms, you damage to each other.  In the cooperative, you do damage to the “the Big Bad” or the Master.

As the bad news cards come out (this is a cooperative game, so bad news cards HAVE to come out), each card  (see below) will activate one of the special abilities of the Master: the color in the upper left of the bad news cards corresponds to the ability on the Master card(s).

If you get 3 of the Mastery cards (see diamond picture above), you can flip the Big Bad to the other side which is Level 2 and harder!

There are “essentially” 3-4 Scenarios/battles/adventures you will play through, and the bad news cards related to each scenario are labelled on the bottom left (4,5,6 since this is PART II of the adventure which already did 1,2,3).

Rulebook

The rulebook for the Lost Village is … okay.  The game doesn’t make it 100% clear up front, but YOU NEED THE RULEBOOK FROM The Ruin Of Thandar TO PLAY THIS GAME!!  Since this is Part II of a campaign, all the Lost Village rulebook does is “augment” the Ruin of Thandarr rulebook.  IT IS NOT A FULL RULEBOOK!

The text is a little small.  I wish it were bigger, but since the boxes are pretty tiny,  I guess they had to make it fit.  It was still much better than the Disney Shadowed Kingdoms rulebook though! Eh, the rulebook was ok.  I got through it.

The original Ruin Of Thandarr rulebook seemed … better.  It felt like it had better editing, better layout, better examples.  I guess since The Lost Village was just an expansion, they didn’t have to do as much?

The Game

The game is really just the deck-building game of Hero Realms or Star Realms.  You buy cards from the market (upper part of the picture above) and add them to your hand.  The object is to do enough damage (cooperatively) to the “Big Bad” in the middle to win the game.  Cards start simple, giving you either coin (to buy new cards) or swords (to do damage).  As the game progresses, your deck gets better and better as you buy better cards, allowing you to cull, draw more cards, etc.  It’s a deck-builder!

What makes it little more interesting is (a) your special powers (see the left part of the picture above) and (b) you are playing a campaign where you can “level-up” and get new skills, abilities, treasure and (c) you are playing cooperatively.  When playing cooperatively, you can help out characters adjacent to you around the table!  Notionally, each player has his own “Monster Area” and there’s also “The Master area” (where the Big Bad lives).  You usually can’t attack the Master (Big Bad) until you clear your area first.

The game flows very quickly once you get set-up:  At its core, Hero Realms is one of the easiest deck-builders I’ve played.

Set-Up

The set-up can be a bit much.  In order to play The Lost Village, you’ve had to play through The Ruin Of Thandarr and remembered what cards you got!   It’s been quite a bit of time since I have played, so I went ahead and played all the way through The Ruin of Thandar again before playing the Lost Village.

So: set-up:  I strongly encourage you to keep cards related to each box next to each other!!!   It’s very easy for cards to get into the wrong box because we are essentially pulling cards from (a) the Hero Realms base game (b) Character Packs (c) Ruin of Thandar box and (d) The Lost Village box.  See my set-up below.

First, get all the cards that you need out of the base box.

Then you want to get the Character Cards out:

 

Then the Ruin of Thandarr cards:

And finally the Lost Village cards.

Putting this all together, you can put out your very first play of Adventure 4 (the first Adventure from the Lost Village).

If it seems like I am making a big deal about set-up … I am.  It was by far the worst part of the game.  Keeping cards and decks separate so that they don’t become unwieldy was a lot of work.  It was very fiddly and annoying.  HOWEVER, once I had it set-up, it wasn’t too bad.  Honestly, the best thing to do is to leave it set-up once you start playing … you DO NOT want to set this again and again!

Solo Play

My first game was to play through all of The Ruin of Thandar (keeping all treasure/abilities/skills cards I got from that expansion).  Then I started into The Lost Village.  Solo play was easy: you basically alternate playing your deck, the Master’s deck, your desk, the Master’s deck… until someone wins.  The game seemed a little easy as a solo game, but there were some unclear rules (someone had to show a green card to stop something BAD from happening, but since I was the only player, I allowed myself to be able to do that).  It’s possible I misinterpreted those and it was too easy because of that.

But you know what, I wanted to keep playing and get all the way through the Adventure!  Usually, I do my first impressions review after just a little play, but I played ALL THE WAY THROUGH!  I was having a blast and I didn’t want to stop !!  Of course, life gets in the way, and I had to play this over 3 nights but I really looked forward to my plays.

It was fun and straightforward to play, it was fun to upgrade my character, it was fun to run the bad guy and see what he doing to me, it was to fun to see what craziness would come out, it was fun to explore and read the story!  Overall, it was  … fun!

Conclusion

So, for some reason, this game reminds me of an Escape Room!  Not because of the puzzles (because this is a deck-building, damage-inflicting game NOT a puzzle game), but because of the nature of the The Lost Village.  In The Lost Village, there are 3-4 “episodes” in the box, much like 3 “episodes” in the Unlock Game:  Epic Adventures. You are probably just going to play each episode once (as they each tell a story) … once you’ve seen the story, it’s not quite as compelling the second time.  And the price point is about the same as the Unlock Game: Epic Adventures  (assuming you already had all the Hero Realms stuff) at about $20 for The Lost Village.  You get about 3-4 sessions of adventure with a story and are kinda done.

I had a blast playing through solo, but the replayability seems limited. The story was fun, but not particularly strong.  The scenarios themselves were a hoot, and the levelling-up and found treasure made each game something to look forward to.   I  will say the whole game is very fiddly ONLY because it’s so hard to keep the base game, Character Packs, expansion I and expansion II separate.  (If you don’t keep them separate, you may have trouble putting everything back together to play again).

I liked this a lot.  I will be playing through it again with my friends!  I look forward to the next expansion …

Recall that we did Part I of this review here.  Now that I have played a lot more (both solo and cooperatively with a group), I feel like I can talk about final thoughts on this review.

Marvel United has gone over like gangbusters.  I have liked all my solo plays (I have tried many different combos: Hulk and Iron Man, Captain America and Ant-Man are my favorites), and my friends really enjoyed the co-op experience.

Not much more to say: everyones like it!

Strategy

There’s a surprising amount of strategy because of a simple mechanism: saving your tokens.  If you can’t use one of your actions, you get a token and you can save it for a future round.   Most of the time,  people almost forget about this mechanism, but I think the ability to carefully save tokens for when you need them brings this game up a notch in strategy! Without it, this would still be a good game, but I think that the game gains an extra level of strategy with this mechanism.
EDIT: Oops! I think I have been playing this wrong because I have been playing Solar Storm a lot (see first part review here).  In Solar Storm, if you don’t take one of your actions, you can save it for a future turn (and get a token).  I think you can ONLY get a token if a Hero’s special card gives you one … I don’t think you can get one otherwise.  (The rulebook doesn’t say either way, but it would probably point it out it you could).  So,  I think we played a few turns wrongs.  This might, however become a house rule for us because I hate the idea of “turns where you can’t do anything” because your tokens just don’t make sense.

How To Take The Fun Out of a Game

Mail Order Monsters was a game (for the Commodore 64) that me and my friends adored back in High School.  (Yes, that was a long time ago. Shut up).  My friend Sloppy in particular loved it: He loved it so much he had a notebook called How To Take the Fun out of the Game! In this notebook, he wrote down all the stats of all the monsters, what their powers were, ways to cheat (you could add the FNE Ray to the players with a simple binary edit), and just in general a catalog of everything in the game.   It took the fun out because it listed all the stats: you didn’t get to discover them.

To that end, I present to you the chart to take all the fun out of Marvel United.  How do you read that?  On the left is the name of each hero.  Each hero has 12 cards: 9 “base” cards with no special abilities and 3 specials (endemic to that hero).  So the first 9 columns are are base cards, the next 3 columns are the special cards.  So, the cards are labelled with “Move”, “Wild”, “Punch” or “*” (for star, ie., Heroic).  For example, Ant-Man has 2 cards that have two “Heroic” symbols (**).     Ant-Man also has some combos: a Heroic/Punch (*P) and a Move/Heroic (M*).

 

 

 

 

The special columns might be a little confusing.  Each special card has a “base” symbol that can be used by either the hero or the next hero.  The special ability (in parenthesis) can ONLY be used by the Hero.  For example, Ant-Man has a “Move” special card, which only he can use to move again and punch thrice: M(MPPP)

The last 5 columns are simply a summary of the stats on the right: How many symbols in the entire deck are “Move”, “Wild”, “Punch”, “Heroic”, or “Special”.  For example, Ant-Man has 4 Wilds total.  He also has 3 Punch but his specials allow him to do 6 Punch total (the value in parentheses).

A Few Thoughts About the Stats

Note that all characters have a Move, a Wild and a double Wild (Wild/Wild).  All characters also have 3 special cards and 12 cards total.  I suspect that in the expansions, these numbers will change more than they do here: these are only the statistics for the base Wal-Mart version of the game.

Awards!

… but nobody cares about charts!  Everyone wants to know “Who’s the Best character?” Well, based on the stats, here are some awards:

Most Heroic!  Captain America and Ant-Man

Both Cap and Ant-Man have 7 total Heroic symbols!

Most Wild!  Tie!  Ant-Man and Captain Marvel. Honorable Mention: Captain America!

Both Ant-Man and Captain Marvel has 4 Wild symbols total.  Captain America’s base is 3, but with his specials, he can give up to 3 more Wilds to other players—Since his 6 is very specialized, we give Cap an Honorable Mention.

 

Most Punchy by Themselves!  Captain Marvel

With her special cards, she totals 13 Punch (!) total.  But only she can use 6 of those punches (and they have to be on adjacent locations).

Most Punchy for Everyone! Venom

He has soooo many punches that he and other players can use: 8 total (where as Captain Marvel only has 7 she can share).  With his specials, Venom has 10 Punch total!

Most Move! Tie? Iron Man and Venom

The chart makes it look like Hulk or Venom might be the best movers (at 5 and 5(6) respectively), BUT on one of Iron Man’s special cards, he can distribute another 2 Move to him OR his compatriots, effectively allowing 6 total for anyone!  So, it’s hard to call: we’ll call it a tie! (But Venom also has a special card to allow him to move anymore: it’s a not a Move symbol per se, so maybe he has 7 total?)

 

Most Doubles Total!  Captain America

If you count the specials, he has 10.  If you don’t count the specials, he has 7 total doubles.  Either way, Cap has the most doubles!

Most Damaging! Hulk!

If Hulk uses his special on a Location with the main Villain, A henchmen, and 5 Thugs, he can do 1 damage to each of them, effectively doing 7 damage!

 

Conclusion

After living with the game for a while, everything I said in Part I of this still holds:

1. It’s a great intro game: I like it significantly better than Horrified as an intro cooperative game
2. It’s a great gateway game into more complex Superhero games like Sentinels of the Multiverse, The Reckoners, and Sidekick Saga
3. It’s a great value ($30 at Walmart)

Now that I’ve played more, do I regret not backing the CMON Kickstarter? Again, I am ambivalent: more content is good, but I am still happy with the base game.  It’s good to know there are expansions if I want them, but I still happy exploring the base game.  In fact, I’ve found that if I get an expansion I DON’T TYPICALLY PLAY IT!! I have sooo many games that when I pull out a new box, I usually have to remember the base game first!!  So, I am okay with not getting the CMON Kickstarter version (for hundreds of dollars).

One more thing: the co-op experience works great, and so does the solo mode (although, I’ve avoided the solo mode of the game and just played two characters: it works fine). This game has gone up in my estimation, probably to a 7.5 or 8 out of 10 and will probably break the top 5 of my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Card games (if it ever gets updated).

 

 

I was very excited when I saw this cooperative game mentioned in the Dice Tower news!  It’s a two-player (only) cooperative game, just becoming available at Target!  Currently, I think it’s a Target exclusive and you can ONLY get it online.   My wife ordered it for me online immediately and it just arrived the other day!  I have been pleased with most if not all of the Target (Wonder Woman, Jaws of the Lion) and Walmart (Marvel United) exclusive cooperative board games that have been coming out, so I was hopeful for this!

Unboxing

This was a surprisingly small box.  It was basically a little bigger than a dual-deck box.  There aren’t too many components:

The cards look nice, and the art is nice but they are definitely cheaper cards.  Mine had a little tear almost instantly.  But I do like the art: it’s very evocative.

The hero cards are decent.  I like that I can read all the text on the cards fairly easily.  But that’ll change once we get to the rulebook.

The Rulebook

This is one of the worst rulebooks I have read in a while.  There are a lot of mistakes, and the text is so tiny, I couldn’t read it!  I ended up taking a picture of the rulebook with my camera just so I could zoom in on it and read it!!  I think this this is the tiniest text I have ever seen.

The Components page was ok, but there aren’t a lot of pictures in the game.  I couldn’t “really” tell the cards apart BECAUSE THE ART WAS SO TINY. They are just all “purple”!

I couldn’t read this it was so small.  This is where I took a picture with my phone. See below the picture I took!

So, by zooming in on the above picture, I could read the rules.  One of the very first set-up had some confusion. Where’s the Zero on the Shadow/Magic Track?

There is NO ZERO indicated on the track, even though the rulebook says there is.  After reading through more rules, I figured out that the markers go all to the way to the left (you win if you get the Magic track to the right and you lose if you get the Shadow track all the way to the right).

I could forgive that, but this is just indicative of how bad the rulebook is.

This is the smallest text I have ever read and it put me in a really foul mood to play the game.  This was not a very good rulebook: possibly the worst one I have read this year.

Set-Up and Solo Rules

This is a game for ONLY two players.  (No Saunders’ Law here).  Each player sits across from each other in this game and alternates turns.  We can apply the idea of Changing Perspectives and play Shadowed Kingdom solo by playing both players (and swapping chairs a lot).   Recall, the Changing Perspectives idea is where you “ignore” the secret information of your compatriot(s) and make decisions solely on the information of your current role.  In this game, the roles are simply player one and player two.  When you switch to the other player, you can only make decisions based on the information available to that player. (Don’t forget to switch sides on the table too!)

Above, you can see I have a pad of paper with each player’s knowledge.  As the game proceeded, I updated the knowledge of each player independently.   There are times when there is no information (the two cards I pushed got taken out, and I have no idea what’s in there), so I usually just “pushed” in hopes of getting something good.

Theoretically, this idea should work for this game.  After all, there’s not much information to record for each side, and you can make decisions based SOLELY on the state of the board and your secret information (much like solo rules for Shipwreck Arcana).    It should work.  But, it doesn’t.  The game is simply too random.  There’s never really that much information available to make any useful decisions.

Gameplay

 

The game is both way too simple and way too complex at the same time.  You can really only do two things on your turn: “Discover” a card (push a card) or “Dispel” a card (slide left or right).   The Kingdom area is a 2×2 grid: when you push card, you push a column towards the other player, and the other player has to read and so what the card does.  If you dispel, you have to use your oldest card (yes, your OLDEST card … of two cards) to push a card off one row (that card is discarded and your new one takes it’s place).  So, every turn you are either pushing to a column or sliding a card out of a row.  The Kingdom remains 2×2 for the whole game.

The complexity comes because there are a lot weird little idiosyncrasies: The card you dispel with HAS to be the oldest.  You can only have 1 or 2 cards, depending on whose turn it is.  If you get pushed to you take the card, do the action, put it in your hand.  If you dispel the card, you discard that card and randomly draw from the top of your deck.  The idea, I think, is that the current player (about to play) always has two cards and the other player has one card.

It’s just that, there are a LOT of little rules for such a small game.

The way you score is simple: your compatriot “pushes” magic to your side. You need to make it to 6 Magic to win the game.

If you unfortunately push Shadow, then the Shadow Track increases.  If it makes it to 6, you lose.

The Magic/Shadow Track:

 

First Impressions

The base strategy seems pretty simple: if there’s Magic, try to put it out so it can get pushed.  If there’s Shadow, don’t put it out unless you have to, and if so, immediately dispel it.

The problem: this game is just luck.  Every so often, you get a glimmer of information, but then something takes it away ALL THE TIME.  Magic and Shadow both make you reshuffle your decks and start a new deck.  You ONLY have two cards at any time you play, so you don’t have much choice.  You have even LESS choice when you dispel, as you HAVE TO use your oldest card.   When you dispel, you still have to RANDOMLY draw the top card of your deck and play it.  (You don’t really have any control over what’s the top card of your deck).  Many of the cards just randomize the Kingdom.

The problem: you have too few decisions and too much luck.

Oh, and I have heroes with special powers: I never used the special powers once in the game!  So, what’s the purpose?

Conclusion

I didn’t enjoy this game at all.  I thought it might be like the Mind with Special Powers (you aren’t supposed to talk or strategize).  It wasn’t: there’s no notion of “reading each other” … you just play cards.    I was hoping it might be like a simpler Shipwreck Arcana.  It wasn’t: there’s so much randomness.   There were no real decisions in the game, and there was WAAY too much luck.

For a while, I thought this might be a good game for kids, but I don’t think this after playing it.  There are far too many weird and confusing rules that “straight-jacket” kids into doing things a special way (discard your oldest card, push a card and make your friend read it and keep it, do the special text even though it’s not clear who they are referring to).  And there are rules that are unclear that infuriated me and would confuse kids.

This is a complete miss for me.  I may do a second part of this review if I can get my game group to play this, but I hated this game:  The tiny terrible rulebook, the lack of decisions, and the abundance of luck.  Stay away.

 

In March 2020, the CMON version of the Marvel United Kickstarter ended.  I had originally backed it full in (and even reported on it here), but got very annoyed as CMON kept adding more and more things for me to buy as the campaign went on.  At one point, I was in for $200+ for a game I didn’t know anything about.  I bailed: it was just too much  … even though this was a cooperative Superhero game, my favorite kind of game!

Fast Forward to Summer 2020: In July, Walmart “accidentally” released the retail version of Marvel United.  It was an “accident” because the Kickstarter backers had not gotten their version yet, and there was quite an uproar.   They (CMON and the Kickstarter) quickly close the loophole, and only a few people got the retail version (see the Kickstarter notes).

I tried to get one! I tried to order online (it was closed already), I went to the store (“We don’t have that”).  In early August, the Walmart site reported the GAMES WAS IN STORES (again, before the Kickstarter backers were getting theirs), so I drove across town to get one.  (“Oh, the website is wrong”).  Finally, my wife said “This is ridiculous” and ordered me a copy on eBay (for $34: $5 over the $29.99 cost at Walmart).  It arrived the first week of August.

Unboxing

Because I got it off eBay, I have no idea if the game had an insert.

Everything was already punched out and in bags.  Basically, I paid an extra $5 for pre-punched and labelled version.

The game looks good, especially considering the price!

The Rulebook

The Rulebook was good.  It had a nice components page (see above) and a nice set-up page.

In general, the rulebook was pretty good overall.  This is a simple game.  I got through the rulebook pretty quickly and it taught me the game.

Heroes and Villains

The miniatures that comes with the game are quite good.  You have to understand that I am not a miniatures person: if a game comes with miniatures, I tend to not lot like it. Let me be clear, I like the miniatures here—they are really nice .

You get seven heroes (Hulk, Captain America, Ant-man, Iron Man, Venom (?), Black Widow, and Captain Marvel (female version)) and three villains (Ultron, Red Skull, and Taskmaster).  Apparently, Venom DOESN’T come with the CMON base game: the Kickstarter backers get someone else.

Heroes

Each hero has their own deck of 12 cards.  Each Hero will start the game with 3 cards (drawing 1 more on every turn) and play a card every turn.  The cards represent your hit points: if you are every reduced to 0 cards on your turn, you have to lose a turn to recover and then you heal back up to 3 cards.  This is friendly game: Heroes can’t die.

Villains

Each villain has it’s own card, with its own victory conditions, and its own “BAM” special attack.  You choose one villain to fight at the start of the game.

Locations

The game has 8 Locations (you choose 6 and put them in a circle when you play).  Each Location has its own special ability you can use IF the ability is not covered by a Villain Threat card.

Set-Up and Solo Play

The game set-ups pretty quickly.  Each player chooses a hero to play and takes the mini and deck for that hero; Set set-up above.  For a solo game, you are SUPPOSED to play 3 Heroes and there are some “special rules” for Solo play—I didn’t want to deal with that! I played solo by playing two Heroes.  (I’ve done this a lot lately: I prefer playing two positions rather than playing the “official” solo rules: I did that for Solar Storm as well as Star Trek: Frontiers.   Why?  I think it’s because there are “exceptions”  that you have to remember when playing the solo rules; rather than learn the exceptions, I want to just play.  Remember, I had to write down the solo rules for Forgotten Waters on a piece of paper … I didn’t want to deal with that!  I just want to play.)  And you know?  This Two Hero Solo mode worked great.  THE GAME IS SIMPLE ENOUGH IT’S VERY EASY TO PLAY TWO POSITIONS FOR SOLO PLAY.

Interestingly, the city set-up reminds me of the  Rebirth DC-Deckbuilding Game, where you can move around the city in a circle.  Note that when you start the game, each City Location has a “threat” covering the special power of the City Location, and you can only get the special power if you clear the threat on the Location (see below).

Gameplay

The gamplay flows pretty quickly: each player takes a card, plays a card (choosing from among his 3 or so cards) and activates the actions on that card PLUS THE PREVIOUS PLAYER’S card!   Every 3 turns, a Bad Guy plays a card causing Bad News (see Red Skull cards above).  This is a nice self-balancing mechanism for any number of players: Bad Guys ALWAYS play after 3 Hero cards, no matter now many heroes!  (Later in the game, the Bad Guy plays after only 2 Hero cards).

This is a real simple mechanic and moves quickly.  It forms a “comic book storyboard”: See above.

Your little symbols allow you to do one of 3 (4) things:

• Move: move via adjacent Locations
• Punch: do damage to a Villain, Thugs, or Henchmen (you can’t do damage to the Villain until you’ve taken out enough threats)
• Heroic Action: either save a civilian or help remove a threat
• Wild: one of the above three

The cooperation in the game comes from working with your compatriots to figure out what symbols to put out on your turn BECAUSE THE NEXT HERO GETS TO USE YOUR SYMBOLS ON HIS TURN!

There are other mechanics (depending on the Villain), but usually your game involves saving some civilians (which kind of has a Pandemic disease cubes vibe), punching thugs, and removing threads and doing enough so you can punch the big bad and WIN!

Ambivalence

So, you’ll notice I went out of my way to get this game.  But you’ll also notice I choose not to back the Kickstarter.  I feel very ambivalent about this game!  I love Superheroes!  BUT I don’t like the FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”) that Kickstarters foster where I have to get everything.

Here’s the thing, I kind of wanted to dislike this game, so I could justify that I didn’t back it !

“See?  it’s a bad game!  It’s a good thing I didn’t back it!”

But, it was a good game.  I had a good time. I’ve played through two of the villains now and I will probably play through Ultron this weekend.  I like this game.  I had fun.

Do I regret not backing the Kickstarter?  Maybe a little bit.  I think more content would be nice, but the base game is good.   Here’s my only real complaint with the game:  I don’t really feel like I am playing a unique super hero. Each hero has some special powers sprinkled through out the deck, but there’s not very many: I don’t get to use my unique special power very often.   On the other side of the coin:  the little miniature, the back of the deck, the occasional special text definitely contribute to making me feel like Ant-Man! But at the end of the day, I feel like I am just playing the symbols.  Which is fine: it is a good game.  It’s a simple game.  I can teach this to just about anyone.

I almost feel like this is a good gateway game for  heavier Superhero games like Sentinels of the Multiverse, The Reckoners, or Sidekick Saga (see my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Card Games).

Conclusion

This is a good cooperative game for 1-4 players.  You can teach it quickly, and you  can play a game in about 20 minutes.   I know a lot of people really like Horrified as a good mass market intro cooperative game, but I think this is a significantly better gateway game than that!  This game is fun!  The minis are great!  For $29.99, this is a great deal!    It will probably make my next Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Cards games next time I update that list, but it probably won’t break into the top 3.

 

 

Recently, (last week: July 2020) I received the newest Unlock box of Escape Room Games: Unlock! Epic Adventures. I played through them all solo (sigh, it’s still hard to get a group together these days) and decided to put up a review.  Sooooo … how do you put up a review without giving away too much?  And still give the reader something to think about?

Overview

So, I’ll give a quick overview (with my thoughts) and discuss some related issues.

There are three adventures in this box:

1. The Seventh Screening: An easy (their rating and mine as well) adventure set in a older movie.  It’s a light hearted Horror Movie.  It’s fun, thematic, easy, and has one of my favorite puzzles I’ve seen in a while in an Escape room game.   After I finished it, I immediately called my friend (who loves cheesy horror movies) and said “You have to play this one!”.  This is probably in my top 5 Escape Room games.
2. The Dragon’s Seven Tests: A medium (their rating: I think it’s harder) adventure with a Zen-like theme as you solve puzzles to become a disciple of the Master.  After I played this one, I said to myself “I hated that”.  I thought the puzzles were unrelated to the theme, I thought they were obscure, and I hated the real-time puzzle.    There were 1 or 2 puzzles that made be smile, but in general, this is one of my least favorite Unlock! games of all time.  It’s possible the theme didn’t resonate with me, so maybe you’d like it.  I also played it solo: maybe it plays better with a group where different minds can offer different solutions.  I didn’t like it.
3.   Mission #07:  A hard (their rating: I think it’s easier) game. Can you find the spy that infiltrated your organization?  This is probably in my top 3 Escape Room games of all time!  The game moves quickly, it’s immersive, the theme shines through, the puzzles are (mostly) interesting.  The very last puzzle was absolutely fantastic.  I had a blast playing this, to the point that I look forward to playing it again (in a few years after I have forgotten the puzzles).

In general, really liked the first, hated the second, and LOVED the third game.  In general, I’d recommend this Unlock! box of 3 puzzles, even if I didn’t like the second Escape Room!  (Okay, so review over?)

Unlock Games: 1 Game vs. 3 Games

In the last few years, the Unlock games were available separately: A favorite was the Unlock: The Adventures of Oz.  And you could buy it separately … and you still can for about $14.99 (MSRP).

BUT, newer Unlock releases make you buy all 3 from a set (to be fair, they have been doing this in Europe for while).  These are typically $29.99 (MSRP) for all three.  To my knowledge, you cannot buy the newest games individually anymore.  In other words, I can’t tell you: “Just get the Seventh Screening and Mission #07 game, ignore the Dragon game”. You have to get all 3.  (To be fair, the two good ones make it worthwhile).

Bang For The Buck

So, let’s do a cost-benefit analysis from the three major types of Escape Room Games: Unlock, Exit, and Deckscape.

1. Unlock games require an app to play them: the games could become unplayable in the future if the company doesn’t keep the app in maintenance.  With that proviso , the games are completely replayable.  The MSRP for a single game (for those you can get single, not all of them are) is $14.99.  Miniatures Market and CoolStuffInc usually have them for $12.99.  If you have to buy 3 in a set (like the Epic Adventures of this review), the cost is $29.99 (MSRP) or $23.99 at MM/CSI.  Games typically last an hour to 90 minutes.  Let’s call that 75 minutes on average.
   

      Cost  per hour:  ($23.99/1.25 hours)/ 3 Games ~= $6.40 per hour.  (for package)
   Cost  per hour:  ($12.99/1.25 hours)/ 1 Games ~= $10.39 per hour  (for singles)

   

2. Exit games can only be physically played once (as you rip/tear cards/boxes), and then they are done.  You don’t need an app: everything comes in the box.  There is one game per box (with one exception).  They are dozens of Exit games, usually about $14.95 (MSRP) or $10.99 (MM/CSI) each.  Games typically last 60-120 minutes.  Let’s call that 90 minutes on average.
   

       Cost  per hour:  ($10.99/1.5 hours)/ 1 Games ~= $7.33 per hour

   

3. Deckscape is just a deck of cards.  You don’t need an app.  You also don’t destroy the games: they are completely replayable.  There are about 6 out right now. The MSRP is $14.90, $10.99 at MM/CSI.  Games typically last 30-90 minutes: let’s call it an hour.
   

     Cost per hour: ($10.99/1.00 hours)/ 1 Games ~= $10.99 per hour

The best bang for the buck are the Unlock games (with three games per box):  it only costs about $6.40 per hour to play.  And you can pass the games onto your friends, as they are completely replayable.  BUT, Unlock games may be obsolete in the future if the app isn’t maintained.

The Deckscape games look the worst bang for the buck (at $10.99 per hour), but they will never be obsolete and you can easily share the game (and the cost) among several groups of friends to bring the cost down to just $3 or $4 per hour.

The Exit games, although they aren’t replayable, have an excitement to them, as you bend, tear, destroy cards as you play!  The Exit games tend to be very immersive, but once you are done, you are done. $7.33 per hour is sunk cost: you can never get it back.

Conclusion

In general, it seems like the major Escape Room games cost (on the order of) $10 per hour to play.  You can usually only play them once. Is that a good deal?  Only you can decide that.  Was Unlock! Epic Adventures good?  For me, Epic Adventures has two of my favorite Unlock adventures of all time … and one I really didn’t like (possibly my least favorite).  So, do the math: is that worth it for you?   For me, the two hours of sheer joy and immersion from my two favorites here was totally worth it.

 

 

 

Over the last few months, my normal game groups have changed character quite a bit … because we can’t get together to play!  We have played around and discovered a number of ways to play card and board games “online”!  By “online”, we usually mean “over the Internet”, but we could mean with just a three-way call over the phone with audio only! Even “over the Internet” takes a on a few meanings because we discovered a number of ways to “play online”!  So, this Top 10 is organized by “how we play online” rather than by our favorites.  Below, we categorize the games into several ways to play.

 

Physical Games That Have Components That Need to Be Shared Beforehand

Requirements: These games have physical parts that need to passed out to all participants before the games begin online.

Baker Street Irregulars
How to Play? Over Discord/Zoom (or multi-way phone call) with audio (video helps, but not required)
Video Feed? Not required, but helps non-verbal communication
Requirements? Physical Copies of the book must be passed out (the base game comes with 4 books, so you can share those): Each player must have exactly one book to play
Chat Necessary? Will be useful for Episode 2, otherwise not necessary

This is a fantastic game in the Sherlock Holmes universe that we reviewed very recently here and here!

Crusoe Crew
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom (or multi-way phone call) with audio (video helps, but not required)
Video feed? Not required, but helps non-verbal communication
Requirements? Physical Copies of the book must be passed out (the base game comes with 4 books, so you can share those): Each player must have exactly one book to play
Chat Necessary?  Not necessary

This game started the Cooperative Graphic Adventure game, and to be honest, this game has gotten better the more we have played it.  We have reviewed it here and here, and this game made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2019 as well!

Games over BoardGameArena

Requirements: Someone must have a BoardGameArena (boardgamearena.com) account to invite everyone to play

Hanabi
How To Play? Inside your browser (BoardGameArena.com)
Video feed? Not required, but helps
Requirements?  One player must have paid to have a board game arena account.  That person can invite others to play.
Chat Necessary? Either Zoom/Discord or chat for communications can be useful, but not required.  Since this game is all about “limited communication”, it may make sense to ONLY use the browser (each play has his own browser) and have no external comms.

Games You Can Play Over Tabletop Simulator

Requirements: Someone must have bought a Tabletop Simulator License (played over Steam).  That player must share their screen with everyone over Zoom/Discord. That player ends up doing all the maintenance to run the game in Tabletop Simulator while the other players talk over Discord/Zoom (and communicate what to do via Discord/Zoom).

To get steam, go the https://store.steampowered.com/  From there, you can get Tabletop Simulator.

Note: These games (below) CAN ALSO BE PLAYED WITH PHYSICAL COPIES OF THE GAME! Just One player just has to share a copy of the board/cards over a  feed (like he would be “sharing the screen” of Tabletop Simulator over Zoom/Discord). To do this streaming, you may have to be clever to stream the video over a different stream than your discord/Zoom set-up: it depends on your set-up/equipment. Similarly, the person with the physical copy will have to do all the maintenance of the game over the stream while the others tell him what to do.

Just One
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom
Video feed? Required
Requirements? See below
Chat? Can be Essential: depends on how you play

There are two ways to play.  In both ways, the beginning plays the same: The guessing player looks away as the other players look at the card/word over video.  The players then think of Just One word as an answer.  From here, how you play changes:

1. If you are playing completely electronically,  then, chat is essential: when people write their  “Just One” word, they write them in chat! The guessing player doesn’t look a chat until players have cleaned up the chat and written ONLY the non-matching words.
2.  You can write answers on paper, chalk boards, etc. if you have multiple
   copies of the game, those players can use the built-in pens/boards.  Then, share answers (as appropriate) just like Just One in person!

There’s almost no maintenance if you are the player running the game: the player with the physical copy just shows a card to the video feed every so often.

(If you want to be very clever, you could play this only via texting, where you text clues and answers exclusively over your phones.)

Yggdrasil
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom
Video feed? Required
Requirements? Share video over Discord/Zoom
Chat? Helpful, not required if you have audio

This game works up to 6 players: we have played 4 in chat and it worked extremely well. The amount of maintenance by the player “running” the game wasn’t too bad.  This game made our Top 10 Cooperative Games Off The Beaten Path some time ago!

Burgle Brothers
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom
Video feed? Required
Requirements? Share video over Discord/Zoom
Chat? Helpful, not required if you have audio

The game only plays up to 4: we have played 5 in chat and it worked decently (one person was the “the consultant” and “the cheerleader” and each other player took the role of character). The amount of maintenance by the player “running” the game isn’t too bad.

Games You Can Play Over the Internet Where You Have a Physical Copy

Requirements: At least one player must have a physical copy of the game (multiple copies among other players helps).

Legacy of Dragonholt

How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom or possibly multi-way phone call
Video feed? Very, very nice to have, you strictly only need audio
Requirements? A glass of water: there will be a lot of reading!
Chat? Can be very useful for sharing info, but not required

This is an adventure game with a lot of text! This game works because it’s mostly reading from the books, and each player maintains their own state (each character in the game will actually be maintaining quite a bit of information for the character they play). You will get sick of hearing the same person read the books over and over, but multiple copies of the game can help alleviate that.  This game made our Top 10 Cooperative Storytelling/Storybook Games!

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom or possibly multi-way phone call
Video feed? Very, very nice to have, you strictly only need audio
Requirements? A glass of water: there will be a lot of reading!
Chat? Can be very useful for sharing info, but not required

Like Legacy of Dragonholt, this is an adventure game with lots of text, but much simpler. We played with my friend’s niece for her birthday!  It worked really well because we all picked up a copy of the game (it’s like $25 at Target) and that way we could all read text.  This is a fun, silly choose your own adventure game.  See the Top 10 Cooperative Storytelling/Storybook Game here!

Adventure Games: The Dungeo
How To Play? Over Discord/Zoom
Video feed? Required to see the board
Requirements? A glass of water: there will be a lot of reading!
Chat? Required

This is the only game I haven’t played online (I have played it with friends before the Pandemic): my friends assume me this works well over the Internet as well.  I love this game!  It made my number 2 spot on my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2019!
This is an adventure game that’s very reminiscent of point-and-click adventure games of early days.  There’s a lot of reading, and you need to share the share of board (either via Video preferred, some other way).

Games on IPAD/Computer

Requirements: Everyone must have a digital copy of the game on their own device.

Sentinels of the Multiverse
How To Play? Over your device
Video feed? Nice to have, audio is all you really need for comms.
Requirements? iPad, iPhone, or Android device.
Chat? Can be very useful for sharing info, but not required

So, all players need to buy the game from Handelabra (it’s a fantastic version of the game).   Then, everyone plays over the Internet.  The nice thing about the game is that each player can be on different kinds of devices: iOS (Apple) iPhone or iPad, or Android device AND THEY STILL WORK TOGETHER!!!   Handelabra has done a fantastic job on this app, and a fantastic job so people can play together on their own devices.

The only thing to look out for: Make sure everyone has the “same set of Heroes/Villains”: there is the base game, and then there are expansions (“Season 1” and “Season 2).  It’s better if everyone has everything, but there is some good play in the base game if you want to give it a try.

This game made the Top Spot of my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Card Games!  I still love the physical game, but the app really does make the maintenance easier (and gets rid of the fiddliness that some players don’t like).

 

 

We did Part I of the review here (with unboxing, solo rules, and first impressions).  What do we think of it now that we’ve played through it?

This picture is a summary of the review: “It was fun!”  You can even see little scratch marks of some of the math we had to do in the game!

Thoughts

In order to get a full review done, we played all 4 adventures in the book with 4 of us.  In this age of Social Distancing, I had to physically pass out the books to my friends at work.  Then, on game night, we would each have our own little book to play with.  Nominally, this is how the game plays anyways (each player has their own book), but normally you play together in the same room.  Not us!  We ended up playing over Discord with only the audio.  And you know what, it worked really well!

The only thing this is shared among all players was the Map of London: We ended up putting that up in Discord. Other than that, each player had their own notes and their own book!

To play, we all chatted over Discord, taking notes, and followed along in the same panels.  Sometimes, a player would do something only they could do! For example, my character Wiggins was observant and good at noticing things, so he would occasionally go off BY HIMSELF, take a little side-quest for just a few panels.  The rest of the players would wait (never more than a minute) for him to get back .. when he got back, these little side-quests (typically) gave much-needed clues!

The Four Adventures

There are four Adventures in the book.  We have played through all four as a 4-Player group (and I played the first adventure solo before we played as a group).

• Adventure 1: Simple mystery: shows how the game works, but it has enough puzzles to be fun. About 75 minutes?
• Adventure 2: This adventure was .. different.  It was fun, but there was more math than we expected.  About 90-120 minutes?
• Adventure 3: ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!  This adventure is the reason to get the game! It was an interesting, well-written mystery that had us on the edge of our feet the entire time.  120 minutes.
• Adventure 4: Fun clean up, although there was one poorly expressed warning that really confused us and soured our final experience (see below). About 90 minutes.

Overall, there’s about 6 hours of content in the books.  To be clear, once you’ve played an adventure, you probably can’t play it again (unless you wait a few years, hopefully forgetting the mystery).  The game (especially Adventure 2) almost feels like an Escape Room game, where players cooperatively interact solving lots of puzzles.

The graphics are cute, and they work really well.

Quality

We mentioned in another review of a very closely related game (Crusoe Crew: See review here) that there were binding issues: pages would fall OUT after just a few plays!

Luckily, the binding was NOT a problem this time! We played 6 hours with these books, turning pages quickly, going to different parts of the book, and generally flipping a lot of pages.  None of the books had any problems: the bindings are fine.

Some Notes

If you make it to the last adventure, we have a suggestion.  If you end up getting the game, read this BEFORE you do the very last adventure.  There was something poorly expressed which kind of soured our very last adventure.

Skip this and go the conclusion to avoid spoilers!

Adventure 4: That sentence with the warning is poorly expressed, it should probably read:

Warning, only panel numbers with marked sewer panels are considered valid numbers!

The poorly worded sentence implies that only sewer panels WITH NUMBERS RIGHT ON THEM are valid, and that’s not true!  After we went through the last Adventure, we were stuck (and frustrated) until we realized that the warning in the book is poorly expressed.  We figured it out when we realized that the last Adventure is 1 out of 4 stars difficulty, so we were making it too complicated!   It had to be the simple answer! And it was!

Conclusion

Sara’s picture of her character from the game summarizes it all: this game was fun! It worked VERY WELL over the internet (over Discord), and we were able to play 6 hours of really fun Escape Room type game/puzzles.    Adventure 3 of the game was worth the price of the game alone (It was FANTASTIC), but the other 3 adventures were still good and worth playing.

If you can’t pass the booklets of the game out (because you all live in different cities), it’s easy for each player to buy their own copy of the game and still play remotely.

Now that I am done with the game, I will be passing it on to my friend Sam, who will playing it with his family in their house.

Final thought: This is probably the cooperative game that has played BEST over the Internet.

It turns out me and my family have been cursed by the Sea Hag of the Scottish moors, so we can’t roll well on dice.  If you want to make money on this, you should bet against me in Vegas.   I have noticed, recently, that I have been doing better at dice games lately (or perhaps that’s part of the curse?), so perhaps the curse is fading ?  Either way, I have been enjoying a lot of cooperative dice games lately: these are cooperative games where dice are the major component of the game.  (Maybe this is why the curse has lessened, I am playing cooperative dice games WITH MY FRIENDS rather than against them?)

Here’s my top 10 fully cooperative dice games.

10. Pulp Detective

Plays Solo?  Yes.  This is 1 or 2-Player game only.
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below), but they are a little generic.
Real-time? No

The dice are the driving force to the game as you roll and re-roll the dice every turn.

This is a small cooperative dice game which has a lot of play for such a little box.   You are solving one of the “mysteries” by rolling dice and placing cards.  My favorite part of the game is the the card placement:  the physical way that you play cards (next to previous cards) can trigger special things.  This is a very small game, but I liked it.

9. Pandemic: Rapid Response

Plays Solo?  No.  I have played solo my playing two positions, but it doesn’t work well.
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below) and they are colorful!
Real-time? Yes

This is real-time dice game, which I usually don’t like too much, but this one is fun and the components really are nice.

Players move around the globe (see track on the outside), working together on a “rapid response” to the Pandemic: this is a real-time game that puts the “rapid” in Rapid Response.   This is available at Target and has a mass-market feel, but the dice are pretty awesome.

8. The Masters’ Trials: Wrath of Magmaroth

Plays Solo?  Yes.  By default, plays co-op 2-4, with some mods for solo play (it works well solo).
Custom Dice? No.  Just some colorful plain 6-sided with pips.
Real-time? No

This is a bargain bin find. I got this for pretty cheap (and it seems to be cheap everywhere I look).  The thing is: I liked it.  It played well solo.  The dice crafting idea is interesting, but it’s more implemented “abstractly” by changing cards, rather than actually changing the actual physical dice (like you would do in Dice City).

I think the reason this game didn’t do better is that there isn’t a lot of replayability: there’s like one boss at the end.  But, the art is great and I had fun!

7. Elder Sign

Plays Solo?  Yes.  Plays up to 6!
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below). Not super colorful dice.
Real-time? No

Players take the roll of character(s), and roll dice at Locations to “explore” said Location at the museum.  If you successfully explore a Location, you gather resources … if you fail, evil things happen to you!  You gather resources over time,  hoping to collect what you need to to defeat a big Cthulu type monster.  There’s a lot of different monsters and a lot of different characters the players can choose from (and tons of expansions). It’s really just a dice rolling game, but it’s quite thematic. 

I think I would like this game more, but it’s quite lucky.  There’s some dice mitigation (using spells and items) but they get used up pretty quickly.  I sometimes get very frustrated when the dice just do not go my way.  You can lose very easily if you have a bad night, but yet, I still do like it a lot.  It’s so thematic and pretty.

This game made my Top 10 Cooperative Fantasy Flight Games.

6. Kung Fu Panda: The Board Game

Plays Solo?  No: there are no solo rules.  I have played solo by playing two characters and doubling the time limits.
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below). Not super colorful dice.
Real-time? Yes

This game centers on dice because you are constantly rolling and re-rolling your dice in real-time as you explore the universe of Kung Fu Panda.

This game alternates between #5 and #6 for me.  If I want a brainless real-time game, #5 (see next entry) is a better game.  But if I want a few more choices (but have to remember some more stuff), Kung Fu Panda is a better choice.

The production on this game is really great.  There are tons tiles to explore, and TONS of miniatures! Each play has special powers (playing one of the characters from the movie), and the game really embraces the Kung Fu Panda Universe.

Here’s the thing: there’s a lot to remember in this game for a real-time game!!!   But this gives the game has a real nice decision space (granted, you have to make those decisions in real-time).  So, it’s a trade-off: do you want a real-time dice game with exploration that’s easy?  … then see Entry #5 (below).  Do you want a real-time dice game with exploration with a little more meat?  .. then Kung Fu Panda is for you.

5. Escape! The Curse of the Temple

Plays Solo?  No.  Too easy to get stuck if you play alone!
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below). Not super colorful dice.
Real-time? Yes

This game centers on dice because you are constantly rolling and re-rolling your dice in real-time as you explore the temple.

This is a dumb, silly, real-time game exploring a temple.  There’s a not a lot to teach or to remember to play: you can usually just jump right into the game.  Of all the games on this list, this is probably the easiest to explain and play.

Each player has some dice, and they have to roll certain combos to find things and explore.  Sometimes, your dice get locked (the black side) and you have to unlock it (with the gold side).  In the worst case, you have your friend unlock your dice when ALL of yours get unlock!   This is why you need multiple players!!!  It’s too easy to get completely locked!!

Players explore trying to find their way out together.  This is the only game I don’t actually have because a lot of my friends already have it!  (And it’s also hard to get right now?)  A silly, real-time roll-as-much-as-you-like same for multiple people.

4. Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War

Plays Solo?  No.  You might be able to if you take 2 positions.
Custom Dice? Yes!  The faces have custom sides (see below)
Real-time? No

This is a fun game where players roll dice and try to stop Thanos from getting all the Infinity stones!  The components are pretty cool, with custom dice, cool cards, and a Thanos in the middle changing where he looks!

Players role dice to recruit new heroes (and activate abilities) to help them defeat Villains.  The players win if they defeat 7 Villains before Thanos collects all the Infinity Stones (or they die, or too many heroes die).  It’s a fun game, if a bit lucky.

If you don’t like the Thanos theme, this has been rethemed for Harry Potter: Death Eaters Rising (in a Harry Potter universe with Voldemort as the big bad) or Dark Side: Rising (in a Star Wars Universe: not available in the USA?).

This game made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2018 and my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games.

3. Set A Watch

Plays Solo?  … yes.  Sorta.  It’s not great, because you have to play 4 characters, but it works well enough.
Custom Dice? Not really: You have standard colored 6 and 8-sided dice.  My version has numbers on all dice faces (rather than the pips below).
Real-time? No

This game has worked shockingly well in many different types of gaming groups: My heavy, medium, and light gaming groups have all embraced and enjoyed the game.  Players each take the roll of adventurers trying to travel back to the city: each round, one adventurer stays back tending the campfire, and the rest protect the camp by taking out monsters in the night.  Dice can be used directly to defeat monsters (by beating the HP value of the monster) or you can just a die to activate special powers!  Each player has 3 special powers!   Players work together really well, strategizing how to defeat all the monsters with the dice and player powers.

The reason I think this game works so well: your dice can be used for multiple things! Either: One of three powers, or the actual number rolled.  Players feel engaged as they make decisions.

This game also made my Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2019.

2. Batman: The Animated Series–Gotham City Under Siege

Plays Solo? Yes, rules included, and it plays well  (you play two characters)
Custom Dice? No. They are kind of small, plain 6 sided dice, but they are pretty colors
Real-time? No

Those of you paying attention will notice that Batman has (ironically) risen above Thanos Rising (number 4 previously on this list).   In my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Card Games, Thanos Rising is above Batman in the rankings.  What’s changed?   Very simply, Batman allows solo play and it gets to the table more so I have really been enjoying.   It’s a lighter game, but it seems like you can “usually” do stuff with the dice you roll.

Players take on the roll of Batman, Robin, Batgirl, or the Commissioner and roll dice fighting crime.   You assign dice to abilities on your card, which allow you to do special things.  Really fun, if a little lucky.

This game also made my Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2018  and my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero games.

1. Reckoners

Plays Solo? Yes, rules included, and it plays well
Custom Dice? Yes! The nicest dice of any game on this list!
Real-time? No

I picked this up because it was a SuperHero game, but I was skeptical it would be good.  It was fantastic!

There was no question what game would be number 1 on my cooperative dice games list.  This game is fun, it’s full of interesting decisions, and the components are stellar: the best on this list.  But the main reason this is number 1: all your dice do something!  A lot of dice game require a threshold (“roll over 4”), roll an exact number (“roll a 1 to activate”), or have some dice that do nothing.  Every single side of the dice will do something good for you!  You roll your dice a few times, keeping what you want and rerolling the others (ala Yatzee!).  You may not get exactly what you want, but every dice face will give you something GOOD the in the game.  Even if it’s not relevant, you can use a “unused” face for movement (to move around the city).  So, every turn, you do good: literally.

This game surprised how good it was.  The gameplay was rich, the components amazing, and a lot of depth for a game based on rolling dice.  This is easily by favorite cooperative dice game!

This was my top game of 2018! Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2018  and it was very high on my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games!

Solar Storm was a Kickstarter that fulfilled in October 2019.  It promised fulfillment in May 2020.  Mine arrived just a day or two ago (June 30th, 2020), so they were a little late. In a COVID 19 world, that’s not bad.  Honestly, if a Kickstarter delivers within a month of its promised date, I call that a win.

Solar Storm is a cooperative game where players work together to fix their spaceship! Players must divert power to the core (“More power, Captain!”) to power the engines so they can escape the gravity of the massive star (see cover).  It plays 1-4 Players in about 45 minutes. There are solo player rules (but see below).

Unboxing

I was a little disappointed because I had a ding in my box (see, just over the designer’s name?), but in general the box arrived in good shape.

The back of the box shows the components, has readable text, and demonstrates what the game looks set-up.  This may be one of the better back of boxes I have seen: If I saw this in the store, I would be impressed and more likely to buy it!

The box is smaller than I expected: this is a smaller game.  It’s a little bit bigger than Space Hulk: Death Angel (but not much).  I don’t know if Space Hulk: Death Angel has recently entered my consciousness (it was in my Top 10 Cooperative Fantasy Flight Games), but Solar Storm invokes more than a few comparisons to Solar Storm (see Conclusion below).

The components are nice: the space meeples are slightly silly, but I like them.

Most of the game, however, is cards.   The cards are very nice linen-coated.

The main cards are resources (4 different type: red, green blue, purple, and wild for fixing the ship), Locations (the ship itself), and Damage (Bad News! cards).

The Locations look real nice!  And you can read the special power on the Location.

Overall, the components look nice and very readable (although the Resources are a little generic, but they are very clear).

Rulebook

The rulebook is small (because it has to fit in a small box).  I personally REALLY don’t like black backgrounds and white/light text for rulebooks!  It’s harder to read and the black tends to “smear” over time  (so you see smears in the rulebook).  It’s worsened by the tiny font.   Black background, tiny font: I am not a fan of these choices.  I understand why: it’s a game with  a space theme.

But, the rulebook is pretty good besides those choices.  The back of the rulebook is used for a very good summary of the game (see above).  There are also summary cards for each player.

The first few pages do a very good job of enumerating all the components in the game with corresponding pictures.  This makes it MUCH easier to unbox and figure out what all the components are (“Wait, what are the Rooms?  Oh ya …”).  I was very pleased with this.

What does the game look like when set-up?  See above! A very good picture.  Makes it MUCH easier to set-up the game.

You”ll notice in my pictures, I have to “hold” the rulebook open to see it.  This is another pet peeve of mine: I want a rulebook to lay flat on the table so I can consult it while learning the game.

Despite breaking 3 of my cardinal rules of rulebooks (tiny fonts, black background/white text, won’t lay flat), the rulebook was good.  I was able to learn the rules fairly quickly.  If you are like me, you’ll probably need your glasses (for the tiny font), something to hold the rulebook down (because it doesn’t lay flat), and bright light (for the black/white contrast).  Caveat Emptor, but the rulebook was good despite those issues.

“Wait, that picture shows the rulebook laying flat!  Are you exaggerating Rich?”  Maybe a little: I had to “rough up” my rulebook (bend it back) a little to force it more flat (but I hate to do that: I am one of those people who tries to keep his games in pristine condition).   I’ll be quiet about that now.

Solo Rules

The game comes with solo rules (Ya, Saunders’ Law!) .. but you play with 3 characters.  After playing a few times, I see why it’s the “endorsed” solo mode: the interaction between the 3 characters creates some interesting interplay!  But, it was easier to learn playing two characters like a 2-Player game.  Once you know the rules, the solo game is better with 3 characters, but I suggest just playing 2 characters your first time to get the feel.

Gameplay and First Impressions

My first game: I lost!  But I had fun.  There’s a lot going in this game.

Like Pandemic, you have a certain number of actions per turn, so each player can perform up to three things.  I love that if you DON’T use all your actions, you can save them up with the action tokens for a later turn!  Very strategic!

A typically turn is (a) moving (b) discarding cards to “fix” a Location (you have to match the cards at the Location) and (c) “hopefully” diverting power.  You need to divert power from all 8 Locations to win the game.  You divert Power by discarding 3 Matching resources, if you have them.

There’s a bunch of reasons I lost my first game:

1. I forget to scavenge!  As an action, you can roll a die and try to get MORE resources (you tend to run out quickly in this game)
2. I forgot I could save my actions!  Rather than “waste” an action doing something kinda ok, I could saved an action for the next turn to do much better!
3. I forget to use the special actions of the spaces! (Each Location has a special action you can ONLY use if the space is completely fixed).

Learn from my failures.  There’s more to the game than that, but that’s the essentials.

Lost Opportunities and Worries

So, after playing a few times, I am worried the game may get a little samey.  The base game ONLY has the 8 Locations (you always need the Power Core in the middle) with the same 8 special actions.  I think just a few more Locations (or even better, flip the Locations and add a different Location with a different power on the opposite side) would have made a lot of difference!  As a Kickstarter, I got 9 extra Locations which will help me elongate the life of the game.  But I think those should have been standard.  Having said that, the game still has lots of life (especially since you can simply get rid of more wild resource cards to make the game harder).  I feel this is a legitimate concern to be aware of.  It’s a cool, small game which doesn’t cost too much, so maybe this isn’t a big deal.

A more “esoteric” comment, and this may be just me: I wished this game had “Special Player Powers”.  The game doesn’t have these roles, but what I wanted was  play the Junk Scavenger, or the Captain, or the Transporter Chief, or the Engineer, each with their own special ability.  This isn’t in the game , but how cool would it have been:

• The Junk Scavenger: Can adjust scavenge rolls by +1 or -1 (almost always want +1, but in the end game, you may want -1 so you don’t take ALL the resources!)
• The Captain: Can take 4 actions per turn
• The Engineer: Can use any resource to repair anything (once per turn), maybe for an extra action?
• The Transporter Chief: Can “teleport” any resource he has to anyone, or vice versa, or can move himself or someone else for one action (maybe if he’s in the Transporter room)

Don’t get me wrong, this is a really sharp, tight little co-op! Special abilities like this (above)  would require major playtesting, and more art, and maybe unbalance the game.  I love the art in the game: imagine how cool it would have been to have a character sheet with a gruff looking Junk Scavenger?  I think it might have helped immersion just a little more.

Conclusion

In the end, this was a tight little cooperative game.  It I had to describe it to someone, I would describe it as Pandemic meets Space Hulk: Death Angel.  It’s like Pandemic because you have to “fix the ship” when it gets hit by damage (not unlike healing cities in Pandemic), and it has that “Bad News” cards that damage the world as well.    Also, every player has action points.  However, a lot of this game also reminds me of Space Hulk: Death Angel: the art, the theme, the size, the scale, the limited randomness.

In the end, I liked this game.  It has lots of interesting decisions and a surprising amount of depth considering how small it is.  My only worry is the game might get a little “samey” because the powers of the Locations don’t change (there’s exactly 9 Locations so they are always the same) unless you get the expansion (the Kickstarter version comes with more Locations to keep the variety up).

I recommended this to my friend Josh: I think he and his son Jackson would really enjoy this game.  It’s easy to learn, but short enough (30-45 minutes) that the younger Jackson will stay involved the whole time.