So, just so you know: we are talking about Invincible: The Card Game!  This is the one that has the subtitle Guardians of the Globe (see above).  You have to be careful!  There are at least 3 or 4 other Invincible games: some of them great (see our review of Invincible: The Hero-Building Game) and some of them … less so.  What about this one?

Invincible: The Card Game was up on Kickstarter back in October 2024: see link here.  I love the Invincible universe in the comic-book world, so I went all-in and backed the full Kickstarter and probably got waaaay too much: see above.

The Kickstarter had originally promised delivery in January 2025, but it didn’t arrive until the last week of September 2025.  It was about 9 months late, but given the state of the world and shipping, and it’s a Kickstarter, I guess that’s ok.

Invincible: The Card Game is a cooperative deck-building game for 1-4 Players.  It’s very very much like Astro Knights , a cooperative deck-building game we’ve reviewed here (Astro Knights) and here (Astro Knights: Eternity).  

In fact, Invincible: The Card Game is so similar to Astro Knights, you can combine them and play them together! 

Let’s take a look!

Kickstarter Extras: How Much Do You Need?

So, before we get going too much, we should have a quick discussion on “Should I get the Kickstarter extras?”

The “bad-guy” mat (see above) is probably worth getting.  It helps organize all the cards and where they go during play.  I don’t love how “busy” the art looks; I feel like it gets in the way of gameplay a little, as the art is distracting.

The “good guy” mat I was less in love with (I got four, one for each player).  See above!! I don’t love the layout for a bunch of reasons.  For one, I want to use the bottom space for “cards in hand”, but the “invention” space takes away from that, so that the whole bottom of the mat seems like wasted space.  I would have put the “invention” to the left or somewhere out of the way!  The “invention” is a very short-lived concept in the game (usually, you buy your invention in the first few turns), so I wouldn’t devote so much space (if any, esp. at the bottom) to such a short-lived card.

A bigger problem is the discard pile: it should be turned sideways!  For one, it’s clearer the cards are discarded (remember, the “Discard Pile” notation is under all those cards!).  Secondly, the Afterburn effects are harder to read when the discard is up right!  See above!!! What does that say?

The entire purpose of the Afterburn effects is that while a card is in your discard, you can use that ability!  So, it should be easier to read! 

We saw the Afterburn idea first in Astro Knights!  See how much easier it is to read those effects when your discard is sideways? See above!  (There was no player mat for Astro Knights, so we could do the right thing and have the discard sideways).

Another problem with the mats were the Assist Zone!  You are supposed to put cards in the Assist Zone when you Assist (a really great concept in the game), but there’s one main problem with that!  More than once, you “forget” about the card being in your hand because it’s in the Assist Zone and you take your turn “forgetting” to use the card!  It would be MUCH better if you just kept your hand of cards in front of you and “nudged” the Assisted cards up an inch to show you’ve used them for assist!  That way, they stay in your hand, but you have marked that it’s Assist has been used!  See above as Eve has a card in the Assist Zone, but it looks like she only has 4 cards in hand! It’s too easy to forget that card is still in your hand.  Just nudge the card up to show it has assisted. 

The rest of the player mat worked fine, but I think it should be thinner (for more space for “cards in hands” and moving inventions), and it should have the discard space sideways.

Of course, mats are always nice because they make cards easier to pick up and handle.

Another thing that came with the Kickstarter are sleeves! My “default position” is that you should usually get sleeves when you have a deck-builder.  And I think that’s still true here.

I am VERY HAPPY that the Turn Order deck has its own sleeves!  If you ONLY sleeve a few cards in the game, you MUST sleeve the Turn Order deck!  These cards are touched all the time!  After many games of Aeon’s End and Astro Knights, trust me on this!  My original Aeon’s End Turn Order deck is a little grody!! 

The sleeves are very nice for Hero cards (see above); these are the yellow sleeves with Invincible on back!  Unfortunately, there are no sleeves for the “bad guy” cards!  If you want to sleeve them, you’ll have to use different sleeves (as the “bad guys” cards have a different card back).  So, I went all-in to get all sleeves, and I was a little disappointed I couldn’t sleeve the entire game! I love the Hero card sleeves (they are very very nice), but I can’t sleeve the bad guys cards without having to use/buy a separate set of sleeves (I think I have some leftovers from Thunderstone Quest I can use).

There’s also two expansions that came with the Kickstarter; these are just more heroes and more villains.  We’ll (probably) review those separately later.

I admit I was a little underwhelmed by the extras.  The only thing I’d say you should probably get is the “bad guy” mat, but even then, I thought it was too busy (from an art perspective).   The sleeves were nice, but realize that they ONLY sleeve the Hero cards, and you’ll have to get more sleeves for “bad guy” cards!! The player mats were the biggest disappointment: they were too tall and needed some reorganization … I’d only get the player mats if you love this game. 

The only thing you HAVE to do is make sure you sleeve the Turn Order cards (either with the given cards or some others).  These cards get handled SO MUCH as you play.

Rulebook

This is an excellent rulebook.  It’s “essentially”, in many ways, a copy of the Astro Knights: Eternity rulebook in turns of layout and progression.

The rulebook gets an A- on the Chair Test.  It opens up and lays flat on the chair next to me, making it easy to consult.  It has big fonts, lots of pictures, and is easy to read.  It’s very easy to consult on the chair next to me. I wish the font were just a little bigger.

The Components page has pictures with annotating text.  

Even after pointing this out in the Astro Knights: Eternity review (see here), they still don’t note that the Turn Order cards are in deck 1A!!!!  I think this will still confuse some people, as they expect them in hand (before opening anything … remember: all decks say STOP! At the top, so you are reluctant to open anything right when you get the game).

One huge mistake the rulebook still makes (and we had the same problem with Astro Knights: Eternity) is not addressing how to play for the first time UP FRONT!!!  See ON PAGE 28, there’s a small sentence that says: “To play our expedition, skip reading this rules section for now…” … however, in order to play the game you still kinda have to start opening decks up!    It would have been SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER if the rulebook, on page 2, said something like “To play and uncover all content in this game, you will need to play the pre-written expedition! See page 28!”  Since I had played Astro Knights: Eternity and had to suffer through this already, I knew how to do this.  New players may not. Caveat Emptor.

I like how the rulebook has summaries of the cards immediately after the Components page.  I also like how the “new rules” are emphasized in Red above … The Assist keyword is a new rule (but not if you know Astro Knights: Eternity … that was kinda/sorta/not really like the Bolster keyword … it’s still newish for some people).

It is interesting how the set-up isn’t until halfway through the book … still, I think it works.  If you have the mats, like I do, this isn’t AT ALL what my table looked like.  Oh well.

The end of the book has keywords summaries: it’s not an Index, but it’s probably as good as we can hope.  I consulted the back of the book several times during gameplay. 

Overall, this was an excellent rulebook full of good examples.  I wish they had addressed the first play issue better.  Especially since I didn’t get the First Play Sheet (see later).

Unboxing and Gameplay

This is a actually a pretty thick box; see Can of Coke above for perspective.

It’s about half the width of a Ticket To Ride size box.

This is a cooperative deck-building game, so there are a lot of cards.  See above. 

The expedition book will tell you when to open the decks above.  The game has a campaign (called an Expedition) which will allow you to open up and see all the content in the game over 4 games.  This is a completely resettable campaign (as I did reset everything after playing it solo).

Each Player takes the role of a Hero from the Invincible universe.  If you don’t know the Invincible universe, you aren’t alone.  I know it from collecting comic books for years, and many people know it from the recent animated show.  None of my friends knew this universe.    Each character is kind of different (some have more slots, more hit points, faster power chart), but what distinguishes each character is their “special power”.

If, for example,  you look closely at Robot above (and yes, that’s his name in the comics), you’ll see written in blue (corresponding to the power chart) his special abilities: Stun each Enemy or Gain the top two Tech supply…

This is a deck-building game, so every player starts with a “crappy” hand of cards that they will upgrade and cull as the game goes.

Like most deck-building games, you can buy cards with Fuel to get better Fuel,  Tech, or Weapons!!  The six piles above form the market; the top two piles get you better Fuel (purple) the bottom three piles give you better Weapons (orange) and the the upper right pile gives you Tech (green).

The interesting thing about this market is that every deck is full of different cards.  If you are used to Aeon’s End or Dominion, where every deck in the market has the same cards, that’s not what you get here! Each card in a deck has a similar cost and “flavor”, but they are all different.

Every game has a “bad guy”, the first is The Flaxans (see above).

Usually, you have to bring the “bad guy” to 0 hit points to win the game; this is denoted by a health dial.

At the same time, you are protecting the city!  You are a superhero after all! If the city ever goes to 0 health, or all heroes are reduced to 0 health, players lose!  

The expedition has four chapters (each a self-contained game), each with special cards and envelopes.

Overall, this game has a lot quality components!

Where’s My First Play?

Where’s my First Game Setup sheet?  I did not get one!  I am VERY SURPRISED, because the Aeon’s End games (made by the same people) have amazing first play sheets! Am I the only one who didn’t get one?  Hopefully, if you get this game, they will have rectified this issue.

Art: Is This a Coloring Book?

So, I love the art of the original Invincible comic:  It feels clean without being too messy.  That art really complements this universe.  See some covers and inner pages above.

Unfortunately, I feel the art in this game is more … anemic.  Compare the Atom Eve and Invincible characters (above) to covers from the comic!  The player art in the game just seem … lesser.  To the point that it bothered me.

And Robot feels so anemic (above), he feels like a page from a coloring book!

From just one frame in the comic, Robot looks great! But the character in the game made me cringe. “How could I explain this to my friends?  This looks like a coloring book!! Really, though, this is a great comic!!”

I was told by my friends to mellow out, as the game art is more consistent with an animated series anyways. So, the art we are seeing is more like the animated series. I guess.

Maybe this is just me, but I would have loved this game a lot more if the art had been … more like the comic book than the animated series.  (To be clear, even though Invincible: The Hero Building Game didn’t have art that quite as good as the comic, it was still significantly better: see review with lots of pictures here).

Decide for yourself.  To be clear, I like the game, but I don’t love the art.

Solo Play (true solo)

There are two ways to play solo (thank you for following Saunders’ Law)!  

Our first play was true solo, where the solo player takes control of one character.  See above as Invincible battles the Flaxans alone.

There is a major difference in the true solo game: the Variable Turn Order deck is changed!  Instead of having 6 cards, there are only 5!  The Villain goes twice as normal, but the Hero only gets to go three times (as opposed to four turns in any normal game).  See above.

I think the idea is that the Hero gets a chance to refine his deck much more quickly, so that he has to be limited to three turns for balance.  The problem is, I think the solo mode is fundamentally more fragile.

My first true solo game was a massive bummer: I lost my being reduced to 0 hit points very quickly.  My second game was much better, and I think I just barely lost.  

The problem is,  the true solo game is very fragile.  In a 2 to 4 player game, there are multiple players with multiple hit points, so there are 20 to 40 hits points total distributed among the players!  In the solo game, the solo player has only 10 hit points (or less)! If the randomness of the game is too much, the true solo player will take that 10 hit points and die quickly!   And that’s what happened in my first solo game.   The other problem is that with multiple characters, one character can be reduced to zero hit points and still be useful as long as someone still has hit points! With one character, that will never happen.   

We saw this same problem in the app for Aeon’s End: the solo player gets fewer turns.  And frankly, I don’t play the app solo anymore because of this.  The true solo game is just too fragile and it’s too easy for the randomness inherent in the game to overwhelm you.

If you really want to try the true solo game, a simple house rule might be to allow the true solo character to double the number of hit points (have 20 hit points).   At least then it will allow the solo character to absorb more of the damage before dying (simulating multiple characters taking distributed damage).  I am surprised this isn’t built-in to Invincible: The Card Game; I know some games, like The Heroes of Terrinoth, where they balance the game by giving fewer players more hit points.

I probably won’t ever play this game true solo ever again.

Solo Play (Two-Handed)

Ah, but two-handed solo was much more fun!  The solo player alternates between two characters like a 2-Player game: this is the way this game was meant to be played!  Two characters who can assist!  Characters who can keep playing even after the other has been down to 0!  More hit points to take damage from the bad guys!  And four full turns for the heroes for every two turns of the bad guys!

This is the way I played the Expedition solo: Two-Handed Solo.   I recommend you play Two-Handed solo if you wish to play; it’s the way the game was meant to be played.  The only real downside to Two-Handed solo mode is there is more maintenance: you have to maintain two hero decks/stats as well as maintain the “bad guy” decks/stats.  There’s less maintenance in the true solo mode (as you only operate one hero), but (as you now know) that true solo game is much more fragile.

Solo Expedition

The Expedition is a series of 4 games (or more games if you lose) that you play in a row. (If you lose, you just play again with some adjustments).   New cards, new abilities, new heroes, new villains, and just new stuff comes out after every game of the Expedition and augment the next game!! By the time you get to the final game, you are playing with a lot of cool new stuff!

SPOILERS BELOW:  for the rest of this section, we’ll be discussing and showing pictures of the the chapters 1-4 of the Expedition.  Most of this won’t spoil too much, but if you want to be completely surprised, skip to the Cooperative Play section.

Chapter 1: Invincible and Atom Eve

The first Expedition game has us fight the Flaxans: it’s the only enemy you have when you first unbox your game!  I chose Invincible and Atom Eve to be partners in my first Two-Handed solo game of the Expedition!  They did great and were able to take down the Flaxans.  Atom Eve‘s special power seems very specialized, and I didn’t find myself using it at all (it’s very city based). Invincible‘s special power was more interesting and I used it at least once.  To be fair, I didn’t need to use the Special Powers too much, because the first game is simpler.

This is really just the base game with nothing special.

Chapter 2: Rexsplode and Robot

For Chapter 2, you fight the Titan!  He’s all about damage reduction!  And this Chapter also introduced something called Inventions!  Basically, Inventions are a card only you can buy, but you get to choose it at the start of the game; it allows players to strategize a little on what their characters may focus on.

Titan’s really hard to do damage to!

To change things up, I had Rexsplode and Robot fight the Titan.  Rex has a very weird power (use a weapon twice, but blow it up), and so does Robot  (he grabs tech)

And we saw exactly the situation we discussed earlier in the True Solo section!  Robot was reduced to 0 hit points, but because Rexsplode was still alive, Robot kept fighting!  Even Rexsplode was down to 3 hit points, but they emerged victorious!   I think part of the issue that they didn’t do better was that I didn’t use their powers very well.  

The Inventions were interesting, but not a real game-changer.  It’s just one more card you can buy.  It does give each hero some focus, though, and some chance for discussion/interaction when you choose, so that helps cooperation.  Note above that I put the Inventions on the LEFT of the mats (instead of under the character).  Again, the player mats could have been better.

Chapter 3: Monster Girl and Duplikate

Chapter 3 introduces Monster Girl as a new player character.  The “bad guy” now is Sinclair!

Monster Girl and Duplikate went after Sinclair!  

Something new from this chapter: The Combo Powers!  Each player gets to chose a Combo!  The Combo Powers are interesting because they allow your partner a special action whenever you do an action! For example, when player 2 activates their ability, player 1 gets to draw two cards!  And when player 1 attacks with debris, player 2 powers up!   

Monster Girl and Kate (with their Combos and Inventions) were a great pair! They handled Sinclair and all his crazy machinations!  And this was the first game when I really feel like I was very strategic and took great advantage of both the Special Powers and the Combo Powers!  Both Monster Girl and Duplikate did a great job of helping each other all the time! This was by far my favorite game of the Expedition.  It was just fun!

If Inventions were pretty good, I think The Combo Powers are a bit of game-changer (in a good way), especially if you can harmonize so that the characters combo powers really reinforce each other!

This was my favorite game of the Expedition.  The villain was still hard and interesting, but the Combo Powers stepped up the game for me!

Chapter 4: Monster Girl and Duplikate

By this point, I had tried all the heroes.  I had so much fun with Monster Girl and Duplikate, in my previous game, I took them for the final run against Omni-man!

Chapter 4 introduced the Team Attacks.  You get to choose one of six (I think).  See one of them above.  Basically, your characters can choose to do one of these three sacrifices on their turn.  If, all three sacrifices have been done, players can choose, at any time, to get the reward!  The coolest part is that you can choose WHEN to get the reward so you can make sure the sacrifices are timely and not in vein!

Omni-Man is a VERY different villain, as you basically have to stop him from destroying earth with his catastrophes!  Basically, you have to make a TON of sacrifices as you play!

This was a super cool way to end the game.  Monster Girl and Duplikate did a great job making sacrifice after sacrifice to save the world!  And they did use the Team Attack, but it wasn’t as game changing as we had hoped.

It was fun to save the world!

Putting It All Back Together

After I was done with the solo campaign, the Expedition book gave us directions on how to put the game back to its pristine state;  I reset the campaign so I could play cooperatively with my friends.  Every card has a notation about which deck it came from (see above).

Cooperative Play

Invincible: The Card Game took over my game table for a cooperative game for a game night.  

The Assist keyword was the hit of the night!  Everyone loved the idea that they could help someone else out when it wasn’t their turn!  And the Afterburn effects were also a big hit!  (I didn’t talk about Afterburn too much, because we already saw in Astro Knights: Eternity,  but Afterburn was great in our solo games).

The cooperative game worked, even though we lost.  We had fun and would play again.

What I Liked

Universe.  I really do like this universe! Retheming Astro Knights to this universe really did work.

Assist:  I think Assist was what Bolster (from Astro Knights: Eternity) wanted to be. Assist is easy to explain and easy to play: when it’s not your turn, you can offer an ability/something to another player!  Take a look at some of the cards above. This one thing really boosted my assessment of Invincible: The Card Game!  It makes the game more cooperative, more interactive (as you pay more attention to other people’s turns), and generally makes the game more fun! (Bolster was the idea that when someone else had to discard, you could get something.  It was clumsy and harder to use.  Assist is what we wanted but didn’t know it).

If there were one thing that elevates Invincible: The Card Game above all the Astro Knights or Aeon’s Ends of the world, it’s this.   (Put Assist with Friends and Foes module from Aeon’s End: Descent, and you might have a Top 10 game!)

Afterburn: The Afterburn effects are really a neat thing.  Sure, we saw them in Astro Knights: Eternity, but they work great here too! It’s just another choice you have when buying a card to help future you!  

Things I Didn’t Like

Time: I have played this game a LOT.  I don’t think I ever saw a game anywhere NEAR 60 minutes.  Except maybe that pure solo game when I lost so quickly! That 60 minutes for estimated time seems off by about 2x.  90-120 would have been better?  Maybe, maybe, after you have read all the cards and know everything in the villain and box you are playing, sure.  But a new game with new rules and a new Villains (which is what you want to keep the game fresh)?  No way for 60 minutes.  

Art.  I love Invincible and I love the art of the original comic book.  The art is in this game seems anemic and more like the coloring book version of the universe!  Maybe this is just me.  My friends told me to mellow out; it’s more like the animated version.

Player Mats:  I had so many problems with the Player Mats; I think they should be redesigned. (see our discussion in the section at the beginning). Another problem is that all mats have the be symmetric, but sometimes when I lay out cards next to my friends, I want the layouts to be mirror images!  For example, the Combo Cards should probably be NEXT to each other so that’s it’s easier to remember when to activate them! Bah, maybe I’m just grumpy and you’ll be perfectly fine with the mats.  But I think I struggled with almost every decision they made.

True solo: I think the True Solo mode is too fragile.  I think an easy fix might just be to give the solo character double the hit points. I am also reminded that Aeon’s End: Descent had a solo mode with that DIDN’T use fewer player actions, and it worked just fine (so fine that it made the #3 spot on our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024), so I really don’t think you need to only have 3 player action cards.  Ugh.  

Variable Turn Order: We’ve said it many times! There are problems with Variable Turn Order games!  See out discussion here:  A Discussion of Variable Turn Order and Ways To Mitigate Its Randomness! In all of our games, we did have to use our ad-hoc house rule of never letting the Nemesis have more than 2 turns in a row (at least twice).   (I did note that some of the Afterburn effects allow you to have some choice on the Variable Turn Order deck, so I appreciated there was some mechanisms in the game to affect that, but it’s still pretty random).

Conclusion

I’ve been grumpy a lot this review; I think that’s because I know this game and this system fairly well, so I have some experience with what seems to work.  But don’t get me wrong, this is an 8.5/10 game for me.   And the Assist keyword is probably my favorite new thing in this system!  It really facilitates cooperation!!!  (I am so glad they kind of “jettisoned” Bolster)

There are just some things that could have made this a 9/10 for me!  I just don’t think this will ever be a 10/10 for me because of Variable Turn Order issues (unless they find some way, like Fate Tokens, of mitigating it).

The Expedition is a fun way to reveal all the content of the game! And four chapters (games) seems just right as the length of a campaign! Any longer and it seems too much, any shorter and it leaves you wanting more.   

And the game says you CAN play this Astro Knights.  I guess I never got that far? I still have at least two expansions to play before I even get anywhere near that!