Tag: boss-battler

Review of Secrets of Zorro: Or “Where Do You Think YOU’RE Going, Señor Beaver?”

I freely admit that The Secrets of Zorro board game kinda sat around my house unplayed for a while.  I got it from Kickstarter, about 3 or so months ago … but it didn’t look great.  I mean, I did back it and I did pay real money for it (as I always do)!  So, I uncovered it one game day, and said, “Hey, let’s try this: I hope it doesn’t suck.”

The Secrets of Zorro is a cooperative worker placement and boss-battler game for 1-4 players. It obviously lives smack dab in the middle in the Zorro universe … the Zorroverse? That’s right! Cooperative worker placement? Boss-battler? Zorroverse?

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

Each player assumes the role of one of the children of Zorro!  The “real” Zorro has died, and it’s up to his children to assume the mantle of their father! They will fight for justice together! (There are no special asymmetric powers, you are just kids of Zorro!)

To fight for justice, you must defeat the evil Governor who is destroying the town!  This is a Boss-Battler after all!  See above!  We tended to refer to bad guy as the Governator (with thick Arnold accent), because this village is in California after all….

As part of the worker placement system, each player gets 3 worker placement tokens (only 2 at certain player counts).

The tokens are placed around the village, doing different things at each Location!  See above as the tokens go on the black spots!

The function of each Location in the village is outlined in the rulebook (see above), but basically you can go to the Tavern to see “what’s going on” with the soldiers in town, you can go buy some cool new gear, you can heal yourself at the doctor, you can work the fields to get some money, and you can bribe some guards at the Citadel to get more info about the solider’s movement! 

And last but not least, you can explore your father’s Secret cave to find some of his old stuff! See above! (Dad has some GREAT STUFF!)

As a cooperative worker placement game, the group decides “together” the order in which to play and activate the locations!  That’s right! Player Selected Turn Order permeates this game! (See here for more discussion of Player Selected Turn Order). Players work together to figure out the best locations to populate as a group!

It’s important to go to the Market, The Tavern and other places around town because you NEED to reveal the Green cards (above)!  These cards contains “soldier movements” in the night, and will indicate how the soldiers will be doing bad stuff!

In the night phase, the Soldiers will go to the “outskirts of town” doing dastardly deeds for the Governator! See above!  Players, as the kids of Zorro, need to keep the soldiers in check!  If you don’t “deal” (ie., fight) with the Small Gold Convoy above (on the West side of town), they will cause the Governor’s plan to advance by 2!  (The red +2).  If you defeat the soldiers, you get 2 gold (the green +2) instead.

Players must choose where to go at night!  Sure, you are fighting cooperatively, but you only have limited resources, so the more you know about the soldiers movements (see above: we have three soldier groups going to the north), the better you can spread out to combat the governor’s forces!  In the day, you have to balance upgrading your kid of Zorro (buying new stuff, adding advantages, looting your Dad’s cave) with tracking the soldier movements (by bribing soldiers, drinking with some locals, or hanging out with the merchant!)  It’s actually quite thematic: you gotta hang out  in town to get intelligence!

The fighting system is simple but interesting!  The players, as a group, get to choose how to attack, and in what order! (Again, more Player Selected Turn Order!) Each kid of Zorro has 5 such combat cards, 1 of each above. There are whip attacks (which can hit multiple soldiers), horse tramples, and some sword attacks!  They all feel very thematic!  See above!  

As you play, you can get more stuff to help you: Tornado (by far the best card in the game, coming from your Dad’s Secret cave) augments your Horse Charge AND allows you to be in two places at once during the night!  You can also buy gear like the Black Costume above (for 3 gold) from the Merchant!!

Once you decide to fight, you dedicate some of your fighting cards (in whatever order you please) to fighting the soldiers!  The Small Gold Convoy got two Strong Soldiers!  Gulp! 

Luckily, Tornado and the Horse Charge can take one of them down in a single hit! See above! You do have to fight the soldiers left to right …

Basically, you alternate day (worker placement) and night (battle soldiers) until you exhaust all the soldiers in the citadel and force the Governator into a final fight!  The better you do at keeping the soldiers (in the night phase) in check, the fewer the Governator will have in the final battle!

If you can beat the line of solider protecting the Governator and take him out (see above), you win! If you take too long or lose too many battles with solider at night, you lose!

It’s worth noting the wound mechanism is simple and clever; if you ever lose a fight, you have to place one of your fight cards in the wound section of your character, and you can’t get it back until you heal or see a doctor (normally, you get all your fight cards back every night).

Rulebook

I didn’t love this rulebook.  It was missing some rules, and it could have been better in a few sections.  But because this is a very thematic game, some of the missing rules you can easily extrapolate.  For example: Where do the soldiers go if players lose a combat?  I had trouble finding the rule, but it seems thematic that they go back to the Garrison.  The lack of clarity in some rules wasn’t a deal-breaker (like it was in Corps of Discovery from a few weeks ago) because this game is pretty darn thematic!

The rulebook gets about a B- on the Chair Test.  It can work on the chair next to me, as it stays open, but it could be slightly smaller and have a slightly bigger font.  B- is still pretty good.

The Components list made me grumpy (see top of page) because there were no pictures! In fact, I had to count cards to make sure I understood what each type of card was! That’s not ideal.

The Set-Up (above) did help answer a lot of questions, and it even had a nice picture with the correlating instructions on the opposite page!  So, that helped alleviate some of the component issues.

The rules were okay.  A few might have been clearer, but it taught the game.  See more pictures above.

The picture (above) with list of actions at each Location was pivotal to playing the game!

Except for one major rule omission, the rule book was good enough. We moved forward with only a little bit of grumbling. It taught the game well enough. Let’s move on.

Solo Play

So, congratulations to The Secrets of Zorro for following Saunders’ Law and having solo rules! 

The solo mode is a true solo mode where the solo player inhabits a single kid of Zorro.  

Theres not too many changes for solo play: For balance purposes, the solo character gets 10 combat cards (see above) instead of the 5 or so.  

The solo player actually gets 6 worker placement tokens (see above for 3 of blue and 3 of green).

And when going out of town during the night phase, the solo player can go to TWO outskirts places by himself.  

Other than that, the game pretty is the same as the cooperative game.  In this case, the solo player is just operating a lot of workers and combats by himself!

The solo game works pretty well to teach the game: after one game, I felt like I had most of the rules down.  It was also pretty fun.  I could see playing solo again.  It was also pretty quick: the game box says the game takes 45-60 minutes and that is pretty accurate!  The game’s mechanism are straight forward, and as the solo player, I had lots of choices! It’s easy to learn.

Cooperative Play

Even though the solo mode was fun enough, the game really shines as a cooperative game!  Over two weeks, the game came out numerous times!  By request! Once as a 3-Player game with me, Teresa, and Andrew (see above) …

… and once as a 4-Player game with me, Sara, Teresa, and Andrew!  

The Player Selected Turn Order really keeps everyone involved all the time!  During the day phase, players have to decide when and where to place their tokens! Then during the night phase (when you fight the soldiers), that same Player Selected Turn Order is still in force as  players decide the order in which they attack!  It made everyone feel involved and active!

In fact, as the Kids of Zorro working together, a little bit of role-play even emerged! 

“Hey Sis, can you help me fight to the North?
“Okay, Bro, but you owe me!  Dad always liked you best!”

It was actually a little surprising that the role-play emerged! I wasn’t expecting it!  But, as Kids of Zorro, we all felt kinda connected!  That role-play was a major benefit I did not see when playing solo! That extra little silliness really ratcheted-up the cooperation!

This is not a heavy, plodding game: it has a light air to it, and was much more fun than I expected!

“Where Do You Think YOU’RE Going, Señor Beaver?”

A very very long time ago, when I was a kid in the 1980s, the same 10 or so movies showed on HBO all the time.  There was one such Zorro movie that me and my friends watched and quoted quite a bit! My friend’s CC and John watched the movie a lot more than I did, but one of the lines from the movie  still gets quoted today: “Where do you think YOU’RE going, Señor Beaver?”

I had to ask my friend CC: “Um what was that movie you and John always quoted?”  It was Zorro: The Gay Blade starring George Hamilton.  It was a silly movie according to CC!  It was a fun romp … it was funny and a little silly, but still had lots of action and great sword play! Just like you want from a Zorro movie!!  I bring up that movie because, somehow, the spirit of that movie seems to shine through this game!  This is a light game, but still enough interesting decisions and cool combat with swordplay, whips, and horses!  You fight bad soldiers to take out the Governator!  But it’s fun!  Not too heavy!

And no, I’m not going to tell you the context of the quote.  You have to watch the movie to find out for yourself.

House Rules

This game is really fun, but it needs some house rules.   The thing is, they are all thematic and make the game more cooperative and more fun!

1) First of all, there is no trading!  See rules blurb above.  I get that it might be for balance, but it makes the game feel like “you just get what you get, you have no choice“: And that’s not fun.  It really came home to us how ANTI-THEMATIC this “no-trading” rule was when I was wounded and needed a gold to heal myself.

“Hey Sis, can I have a gold? I really need to go to the doctor!”
“NO!  I cant give you one!”
“But we all live in Dad’s house at the end of the day and come home to each other … you can’t give your wounded brother a single gold to help him heal?”
“NO!  Go work in the fields and get your own gold!”

We assume (maybe wrongly) that we all go back to Dad’s house at the end of the day.  It seems like we should be able to share at least gold and equipment at the end of the day (I get that Advantage cards can’t be shared) because we all sleep in the same house?  Like I said, add some trading at the end of the day makes the game feel more fun and more engaging and more strategic (as you feel like you don’t get STUCK with something).

2) Ride to other Outskirts!   The Horse Charge is the best base attack in the game!  But it seems very thematic that if you discard the Horse Charge during the night phase, you can ride to another “outskirts” Location and help your brothers and sisters!!!  The fact that Tornado already allows something like this speaks to this rule.    It’s not too damaging to balance, as it’s the best base attack in the game!

It was our experience that both of these house rules made the game more fun, more thematic, and more cooperative!  

Things I Liked

The Secrets of Zorro was: Easy to learn.  Easy to teach.   It had reasonably quick games.  The art on the cards was really nice.  I loved how the Player Selected Turn Order permeated the game in both worker placement and combat.  I was surprised and delighted by how much role-play emerged in the cooperative game!  The game was very cooperative and engaging at all times!

Things I Didn’t Like

I love the art in the game, but I don’t love this cover.   There’s some great art in here and I feel like the “attract mode” of the cover might cause some people to pass it over. Don’t!  It’s a fun little game!

The rulebook could use a little sprucing up (better back cover, a few rules need to be clarified or elaborated, components description page needs to be much better).

Overall Reactions

We all liked this game enough to play it two weeks in a row!

Andrew: solid gameplay, 6.5 or 7. Probably 7 with house rules.
Sara: 7?
Teresa: 7? 7.5?
Rich: 6.5 or 7 for solo game.  7.5 for cooperative game, 8 with house rules.

I think the only reason it didn’t get a higher score was that it is still pretty light and doesn’t have tons of replayability (they do, however, have an expansion which helps with some of that).   This was a keeper for my group: Probably 7.5/10 overall.

Conclusion

I didn’t expect to really like The Secrets of Zorro, but I really did, as did my group!  The cooperative experience was really engaging because of the Player Selected Turn Order and the role-play that emerged from being the kids of Zorro!  

We have a few house rules to suggest that make the game more fun (making it about a 7.5/10), but even the base game was still a 7/10!  The Secrets of Zorro was fun, quick to teach, quick to play, and a fun experience fighting for Justice!

Just don’t accidentally pronounce Zorro like Tsuro with your friends!! For a few minutes, Andrew was confused why we were fighting bad guys in the Tsuro game???

One-Hit Heroes: A Solo and Cooperative Review. Insert Funny Phrase Here.

I know, I know. You really want me to make some kind of funny phrase like “One-Hit Heroes is a one-hit wonder” or “One-Hit and it’s out!” But those aren’t really apt descriptions, so insert your own funny phrase above! Let’s look below to see what it’s REALLY like!

One-Hit Heroes is  cooperative boss-battling game I backed on Kickstarter back in April 2024.  It promised delivery in March 2025, and lo-and-behold, it arrived March 29, 2025!  So, it made it! Barely!

I hav to admit I was a little spicy with the delivery, as they literally left it ON THE STREET!  See picture above!  The package is literally on the street in front of my mailbox! Oi!

Luckily, everything was fine: the box and everything was in perfect shape.  (I got two little upgrades with the box; a epilogue box and an extra hero pack: see above).

I was pretty excited for this! This was #6 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025!

Let’s take a closer look!

Unboxing

This is a medium sized box; see above and below for perspective.

It does have a slightly weird shape; it’s not a Ticket To Ride sized box.  However, it’s not too bulky or too awkwardly shaped.

It contains some cards and tokens, as well as three separate “Episodes”.  See above.

The components are all pretty high-quality. The cards are NOT linen-finished and are all very shiny.  That’s actually my major complaint with the components of the game; when playing, the games seems very “shiny”: the cards, plastic trays, are all “shiny” and can be distracting.

Rulebook

The rulebook is good.

The rulebook feels like it has a weird form factor (look how loooooong and thin it is above) …

… but when you open it up, it fits PERFECTLY on the chair next to me! See above!! The rulebook stays open, it’s easy to read, and there is no pages drooping over the edges!  One-Hit Heroes gets an A on the Chair Test! See above!

The Component page is nice; it shows and adds correlative text to everything.

The Set-Up page looks good and is easy to follow, for both the Heroes and the Boss.  See above.

It does a great job explaining the player mats!

Overall, the text is big, easy to read, has a legible font, and is annotated with many pictures describing play.  There are also parenthetical phrases notated for “extra information”.

The back of the rulebook could have been a little better, but whatever, this was a good rulebook.  It explained the game, showed the components and set-up, and was fairly easy to read.

Gameplay

Players work together to take down a boss; a single boss battle takes about 20 minutes (the box is pretty accurate in its time).  An “Episode” in the game is 4 to 5 boss battles, which each boss getting harder and harder.

Each player takes and plays one character of the six above.  Each deck has 11 cards with very different personalities.  Take Sofia, for instance; her story is on the back of her card!

What do her cards look like?

See some of the cards from Sofia above.

Each player grabs a tray  (above) for their character and puts the cards into the tray (below).

As the game name implies (One-Hit Heroes), the Heroes can only take one hit before they die! Even more so, if any character dies, all players lose!  It’s up to the players to stop from getting hit!

Each character has two items slots for Items that “help” (see above), but arguably the Items are more important for stopping a hit!  Players can destroy an item to avoid a hit!  (Thematically, the item takes the hit instead of the character).

Items are a coarse way to stop hits; it’s usually better to stay out of way of hits if possible (since you only have two items)!  One-Hit Heroes uses a notion of an “Aggro track” for each hero.  See the track running left to right at the top of the tray? It’s empty for Will right now.

… but Edric (above) has a track almost full of Aggro!  Basically, the fuller the track, the more likely you are to incur the wrath of the boss and take a hit!

This is a boss-battler after all!  The Punch-Bot (the very first boss from the very first episode) only attacks when a Heroes’ Aggro is in the “red range”.  So, if the players can keep their Aggro low, Punch-Bot won’t even attack!

But, Aggro will go up.  Either from bad news cards  (like above) …

… or every Attack you do ups your own Aggro! If Sofia uses here Sidearm (above) to so one yellow damage, then does one damage to the Punch-Bot, but takes 1 Aggro!  Every attack you do that does damage causes Aggro back to yourself!

Luckily, each player has cards to manage Aggro; some cards (like Taunt above) will move Aggro around, and other cards will just discard it.    Every Hero has a different way of dealing with Aggro; some move it around, some discard it, some avoid it as much as possible, and some have cards that help others!  Each Hero has a different flavor of cards!

Interestingly, there are two different kinds of damage: yellow and orange (light and heavy damage, respectively).

To take out a boss, you have to do both all yellow and all orange damage.  Punch-Bot (above) needs to take 10 light damage and 5 heavy damage to take him out.

If players can defeat the Boss before said boss does one-hit to anyone, the players win! If the boss does one-hit to anyone (and it can’t be blocked or avoided), all players lose!  It’s a boss-battler!

Solo Play: Built-In Mode

The box is confusing; it implies there are no solo modes!  2-4 Players means no solo mode, right?  Nope!  There are actually two solo modes!

The first  solo mode is described in the Hero Set-up on page 3 (see above).  Basically, the solo mode is that the solo player has to alternate between two Heroes!  The solo description (above) is simple and very functional; it’s all you need.

For my first solo game, I played Will and Edric against Punch-Bot from Episode 1!  See above!

The game balance in this game is kept by having a Hero go, the Boss go, the next Hero go, and so on.  Basically, heroes and the boss alternate, so you can “kinda” have any number of heroes.

From a game balance perspective, I always worry that you need to adjust the hit points for the number of players … but since each Hero has exactly 1 hit point, that’s not really a problem here, is it?  Well, it didn’t seem to be: I was able to play all the way through Episode 1 (four boss battles) and I had a great time!  It was close; strictly speaking, as I lost a battle at one point, but it’s very easy to reset and play again since the game is only 20 minutes per boss.

This solo mode emphasizes that characters must work together to keep Aggro under control; in order to survive, both players will be doing things to move and discard Aggro.

Solo Mode 2: Do66-0 Pack

The second Solo mode does NOT come with the game; you must purchase the D066-0 Hero Pack (see above).

There is a little discussion of the DO66-0 pack (and a link) in the back of the instruction book.

Basically, the DO66-0 mode is a companion that you play in solo mode INSTEAD of a second Hero.

It’s much easier to play with DOGG-0:  DO66-0 gets a turn without having to provoke an extra Boss turn.    But, he also can’t do much, as he has no cards to play!  All he can really do is block and roll the damage dice … no cards.

In fact, it’s so easy to play, you can give DOGG-0 to younger players and have them play with you (that’s what Beginner Mode is).

I got to be honest, I didn’t enjoy DO66-O solo mode that much.  DO66-0 does very little on his turn: “about” one damage per turn, depending on what you roll on the damage dice. (He does add new stuff once you start drafting, and that does make him a little better).

I actually think the better use of DO66-0 is to bring in younger kids so at least they can participate; he’s so simple to play and kids can feel like they are helping.

I prefer the base (original) solo mode; it’s two characters and is how the game as meant to be played.  The base solo mode emphasizes how important the sharing and cooperation is in the game, especially to mitigate Aggro problems.    This DO66-0 solo mode was “fine”, but I probably won’t come back to it.

Cooperative Mode: Casual Gamers

My first experience cooperatively was with some casual gamers: my nieces.  We just played through a single boss: a 20-minute game.

The game was easy to explain to non-gamers!  They got the gist of the game pretty quickly, but needed a few clarifications.

I think my nieces liked the game and appreciated how short it was.  They did want to play again, but we ran out of time (it was like, Spring Break or something).

What I found: One-Hit Heroes is a pretty simple game to explain, even to non-gamers.  The hardest part was explaining some of the text on the cards, but even that wasn’t so bad.  My nieces like the game and would play again.  They also appreciated how simple it was to learn and play.

Cooperative Play: Gamers

   

Me and a subset of my gaming group played through Episode 1 cooperatively.

One-Hit Heroes has a nice way of eliciting cooperation; you will lose if you don’t.  🙂 Maybe a better way to say that is that the game goes cause conversations to happen: “Uh oh! I am about to die!  Can anyone save me?  Should we do some stuff before the next villain?”

The cooperation seems to come out fairly organically; and thank goodness everything is open hand with full communications!  There’s no “oh, I can’t show you this because of limited communication“.  Nope!  People talk, people realize they might die, so people cooperate to block, steal Aggro (in a good way!), and try figure out the best way to move forward.

And the ability to see what’s coming ALSO helps!  By seeing the bad news coming up, but not actually here yet, seems to encourage discussion and cooperation.

Overall, the Episode 1 went well; we cooperated, we discussed, we planned, we had a good time.

Teresa was a 7/10, Andrew was a 6.5/10 (which is actually quite high for him).

Episodes

A single Boss battle is about 20 minutes.  If that’s all this game were, I’d be a little down about it.  Luckily, the Episode really fills out the game.  An Episode is a series of 4-5 related bosses, with upgrading happening between bosses!

Episode 1 has four bosses: see above.  All the bosses are all very different, and have very different arcs as you fight them.

Arguably the best part of this game are the upgrade decks!  After you defeat each boss, players get a chance to draft and add two new cards to their deck!

Skip the next few pictures if you don’t want too many spoilers.

Basically, the players “draft” and each get two cards to upgrade their deck!  This is basically deck-advancement like we saw in Adventure Tactics (see here): your deck gets better and better between games!

The decks are also labelled at the bottom right so you can separate them back to their original decks.

And after every boss, you get another 2 cards until you finish the episode!

I will say this: the game says to “draft” until you get two cards, but I think it might be more cooperative to just ‘decide as a group’ what you get.  This is the House Rule we implemented: let me and my friends choose the paths we want our heroes to take!  I understand why “drafting” works, because then you don’t have to worry about arguing over cards, Alpha Players telling people what to take, and so on.  But, if you have anything of a reasonable group, I would suggest just choosing as a group the cards you each want.  Caveat Emptor.  If you have a slightly contentious group (or are playing at a convention where you don’t know anyone), maybe drafting is the better solution.

I’ll say this again: the upgrades are probably one of the funnest parts of the game.  Unfortunately, your upgrades don’t travel with you between Episodes: you have to start fresh to a new Episode.

Things I Liked

Upgrades: Upgrading your deck is one of the more satisfying and fun parts of the game!

Arcs:  Given how simple this game is, the arcs on the different types of Bosses are all very different! It’s actually quite impressive how differently each boss plays! And fun!

Components: The components are pretty nice and I like art. It’s comic-booky and attractive without being too “cute”.

Simple: This game is easy to teach and easy to learn.  I found even casual gamers got into it pretty quickly.

What I Didn’t Like

Too Random: The game can be too random.  I lost a few games because of one die roll.  It’s not too big of a deal because it’s just 20 minutes per game, but it is frustrating that an entire game can go amiss because of one die roll!

Too shiny: It’s too hard to capture in pictures, but the game is too shiny.  The cards aren’t linen-finished, so they tend to have glare, especially in harder light.  And the plastic trays also have a lot of glare: I tried to capture some of that in the picture above.  I think this game would be a lot better with duller, linen-finished cards and a tray that was less shiny.  The glare was distracting enough that we had to point it out.

No Continuations? As cool as the Episodes are, and even thematic within, the game game doesn’t feel super thematic.  While there is continuation within an episode as you keep getting upgrades, there’s no hook that keeps you vaulting into the next episode: remember, you lose ALL your upgrades between episodes, so you start fresh.  That actually feels a little debilitating!  I’d rather the episodes built on each other you felt the deck was YOUR CREATION … as it is, you start anew every episode.   There’s no “hook”: your deck resets and you start over.  Kind of a bummer? I just spent the episode building my deck … and now it’s gone.

Conclusion

One-Hit Heroes fits well into many groups; casual gamers, gamery gamers, and even solo gamers!  The base game is easy to teach and play at 20 minutes, which makes it easy to bring out.  My favorite part of the game, though, was upgrading my deck within an Episode!  It’s fun to figure out how you want to advance your character!

The game looks great on the table and has a fun table presence!

My only real complaint is that I feel that there’s a theme or overriding reason to keep playing after I finish an Episode. I really like the upgrading my deck between Bosses in an Episode, and it’s sort of frustrating that you just “throw it all away” at the end of an Episode!

As a solo player, I’d probably give this a 7.5 or 8/10.  The game is much more fun, I think, as a cooperative experience at an 8.5/10.  It would actually give it a little higher score if the dice rolls didn’t make or break so many games!  But, since the game is so quick at 20 minutes per game, it’s usually not a big deal. 

Neat game.  I think you’ll have fun with just about any group you bring it out to.