On the back of the game box there is a quote, “The number of ways you can make four starting teams of three warriors is… get ready… 59,412,095,438,884,442,171,015,559,612,238,483,426,494,737,984, 818,216,132,171,763,717,851,980,462.” That’s a big number. Want a smaller number? Here you go. The number of playtester’s credited by the game… get ready… 25. That around 2,376,483,817,555,380 x 10 to the 57th power games per person. Strictly from a math perspective and assuming the original number is correct (I’m not doing the math), that’s a lot of playtesting for 25 people.
The game feels this lack. The basis of the game is you play a team of three superheroes in a gladiator/deathmatch capture the flag game against 1 to 3 other teams. At the beginning you are dealt 9 superpower cards that you divide into 3 sets of 3 however you want giving one set to each hero. Certain superpowers work well with other superpowers and determining the right mix is where the entertainment value of this game resides. As there are 100 super power cards, you can see how a number like the one above might possibly be reached (any math guru’s out there want to confirm or deny this, I’d be interested in knowing).
The most glaring problem with the game however is the problem of diagonals. Officially there are no diagonals in the basic game. You can only move orthographically and attack other heroes that are in a square orthographically aligned with your hero, (i.e. to due N,S,E,W). Diagonals are barely touched upon in the rules. The slim diagonal rules that do appear, seem to indicate that the only diagonals allowed are 45 degree diagonals, but this is never actually said. This poses a serious problem as a number of superpowers allow characters to use diagonals. My group’s biggest question is how do you determine range for a diagonal ranged superpower?
Another problem with the game was the lack of movement. Every piece on the board can move 2 squares per turn. Any character with a ranged superpower is going to be able to keep range from their target with ease unless that target has a superpower to counteract the range advantage. Anyone with a diagonal superpower and a ranged superpower is down right deadly. The lack of movement does not allow for much maneuvering. Tactical movement does not play a large part in the game, rather superpower allocation and die rolls tend to determine the winner. Also, although you get 3 heroes you only receive 1 activation phase so all 3 heroes need to be activated at the same time, which again limits a number of tactical choices such as drawing the enemy out.
Without a superpower to help them, most heroes are pretty fragile. Each begins with 6 hit points, and a significant number of super powers do 1d6 damage. That allows for a number of one shot, one kill type situations where it’s possible for a hero to die before they are even activated or had a chance to accomplish anything.
The quality of the product is okay at best. The card stock feels weighty and will probably last, but the artwork is almost non-existent. The 100 power cards have text explaining the power, that’s it. There is no humor text, no artwork, no hints on how to use the power, nothing. The character cards for the heroes are essentially monochromatic with a picture in the upper right hand corner. The double-sided game board is flimsy but has some interesting detail. Then comes the cardboard.
There are a lot of cardboard tokens. There are cardboard characters, cardboard flags, cardboard home bases, cardboard gadgets and cardboard superpower effects. Each cardboard character is double sided and folds into a base. At the top of the folded character are two holes where you can puts superpower effects like “stunned” and “frozen” so that you remember that a character is under an effect. When the character is folded you can also place gadget and flag tokens on the side of the character where they should stay in place. The idea would be cool if it worked. Unfortunately it doesn’t. The power tokens slip and fall into the character all the time and the gadget and flags only stay in place near the feet of the character where the base is.
All that being said I remember being really excited about this game. It sounded interesting. Mix and match you superhero for maximum effect. Create a team that compliments each other like the X-Men or Fantastic Four. The idea in and of itself is great, but the rules are just untenable. This game could be fairly enjoyable with a port to another Steve Jackson rules set like Frag for instance but in their current invocation the game is slow, dull and incredibly unbalanced. A game can take between 15 minutes and 2 hours and really depends on the luck of the superpower draw. Lots of points for the idea, but the execution of this game is just plain poor. Save your 30 bucks and try something else, this game is speeding to the clearance rack in the fast lane.
