Let me by start in saying, I'm a bit behind on reviews, I've fallen out of the habit of getting them out immediately so this review is a bit behind when it should have been written and card games are not my forte


     The Supers is a a card game, I am covering both the main game, . The Supers: The Good, and the first expansion The  Supers: The Bad.

     I love superhero games of all sorts, so a card game with the premise of "build your superhero" is something I've really wanted for a long time. Not "build a team", nor "build a super-heroic story" just a card game of building your super-hero and pitting them against villains, foes, or even events. I first encountered the concept with preview cards for Chrysalis, the erstwhile Elementals CCG (that to my knowledge never took off).




      Play in The Supers is built around a 6 card player's pack. A player pack has a single unnamed hero card that provides an archetypal "origin", The Good set has the following hero cards: Alien, Techie, Mutant. A freebie add on that was given to me as a reviewer (and whose status I'm not sure of in the full game) is a card called Crusader.  The Bad expansions adds the Vigilante. The cards with the exception of the Crusader have both male and female versions in terms of artwork, but are otherwise identical in play.
      Each character card has the following information: Hit points for that hero listed on it, a text box with the special trait or powers derived from the origin, and the artwork. These hero cards provide the basis for your "deck", you then select 5 other cards to build your heroes abilities with. These vary but consist the following kinds of cards: (G indicates cards found in The Good, B for those Found in The Bad)


Powers 

• Crushing Blow (G)
• Elastic Stretch (G)
• Energy Blast (G)
• Energy Bolt (G)
• Feral (B)
• Flight (G)
• Fire Manipulation (G)
• Ice Manipulation (G)
• Illusion (G)
• Magnetic Manipulation (G)
• Psi Blast (G)
• Radiation Manipulation (G)
• Seismic Wave (G)
• Shapeshift (G)
• Solar Radiation (G)
• Super Strength (G)
• Super Speed (G)
• Whirlwind (G)
• Wings (G)

Tactics & Schemes

• Breakout (B)
• Charge (G)
• Diabolic Device (B)
• Devistation [Yes that's how its spelled on the card] (B)
• In the Crosshairs (B)
• Intimidate (B)
• Is That All You've Got (B)
• Enrage (B)
• Hired Muscle (B)
• Out of the Rubble (B)
• Rapid Fire (B)
• Sneak Attack (G)
• Shared Fate (G)
• Solemn Perch (B)
• Sidekick (G)
• Take Aim (B)
• Theatrics (G)
• Torture (B)
• Underworld Connections (B)

Gadget

• Bind Device (G)
• Blades (G)
• Blaster Weapon (G)
• Body Armor (G)
• Exoskeleton (B)
• Mechanical Wings (G)
• Power Gauntlets (G)
• Power Suit (G)
• Shield (G)
• Utility Belt (G)

Places

• The City (G)
• Hidden Lair (G)

     Each card when activated provides an effect in play, based on the cards text. The exact nature of the effect varies from card to card. Activating most cards involves exerting (turning sideways to show they are powering another cards ability.) The cards have some redudant effects: There is  both  a Body Armor card and an Armored Suit card, an Energy Blast card and an Energy Bolt card.  While these card do have some variant mechanical differences the comic logic variance doesn't seem to be vast enough to make two separate cards to me.

     Another issue of design comes up in The Bad, which adds Schemes for villains but many of the cards are titled "Tactics & Scheme" thus usable by either side, this greatly decreases the usefulness of the Vigilante, whose ability is to use cards labelled either Tactics or Schemes.  

     Some powers also have origin limitations which only make little sense for the game. Flight, can only be used by an alien or mutant--Alien's come with "Airborne" innate--thus not needing to take the flight card.



     In general terms the artwork is decent, black and white, game style comic-art, taken from The Devil's Workshop Image Portfolio, the rules consists of 4 pages of text with two example cards printed in them. A lot of the basic rules cover explaining how to read the cards, but unless one is new to card games, some of it is unnecessary (and being this is a PDF product I doubt many people will be coming to it without some experience with card games) in spite of that it is nice to actually get a detailed breakdown of the cards formatting.

     Game play begins by building a deck for your hero, then finding an opponent. You see, in spite of my desires for a superhero card game that has them doing heroic things-rescuing innocents, stopping fiendish plans, dealing with cataclysms; The default play of The Good is to bash other heroes. This is not a selling point for me. The Bad adds villains to fight,but it is not much improved in terms of play its little more mechanically than a drawing of lines to indicate one side as good and the other as bad.  (I suggest if you get this game to get both sides for completion and some added play benefit.)

     Despite long standing tradition, the super-heroic brawl, is not very fun on its own without the story behind it to give it some ethical, moral, or other weight of interest to me, but for a card game its a solid basis for a quick in and out game. Though for a game specifically about super-heroic brawling it just barely achieves its goal.

     In play one takes a character card, and their various abilities. You Shuffle the abilities into a face down draw deck, and place your hero face up on the table. You then draw a card (whichever opponent goes first)--if the card is a power, gadget, or place, it goes directly onto the table face up. If it is a tactic card it may be played face up, or face down. This is problematic because it heralds that YES you have tactics to trigger at a future point, just not what kind of tactics.
      Generally though the limited build number of cards in a player's deck greatly limits options of play. It does keep that play fast. But it means one bad card will very much one side the fight without any chance of turning the tables. It does however prevent optimal tuning in some ways--there is little beyond a play deck being good, or terrible in play--which means that for all intents and purposes what you play, the hero card, the powers matter only if the build is good, not if they are in any way flavorful or do interesting things.

      Every hero card can perform a basic attack without needing to exert another card to power that act. Basic attacks do allow you to do some builds that can initially hit  their opponents early on and rapidly before other cards are in play that can counter or derail that effect (except of course if your opponent is a mutant--mutants having innate resistance to damage, the numbers being so low for most things in the game this means that their armor, counters a basic attack without other card played to boost the damage.)
       The explanation on a Mutants ability is poor and unclear (being it entirely written on a card), the same goes for a couple of other cards--for example in the release of the game I have Power Gauntlet was listed as a power--discussion with one of the creators made it seem that this was an error and should have been a gadget like most of the other "items", for a card game with so few rules/cards the errata and unclear text makes play even more problematic, but not impossible with a little common sense.

The basic rules (in brief) of play.

Choose and build your good guy or bad guy deck.
Find an opponent.
Lay out your character card and shuffle your other cards.
First Player Draws First Card and places it into play. May attack.
Second Player draws card and places it into play. May attack.
Then the game follows a regular pattern:
Refresh step: any cards utilized to power other cards by turning them sideways (and making them temporarily inactive by
setting their status to exerted) may be refreshed to ready state.
Draw new card from deck and reveal it if it is power, gadget, place.
If Tactic of Scheme, may play face down, or play face up
If played face up is the tactic/scheme is activated immediatly.
Ready: Ready any non attack cards that require some form of payment to keep going or activate.
Attack: Choose an attack for this turn. Basic, Power, Gadget.
Ready Step: After an attackm may activate any non damage power, gadget, or flip a tactic/scheme card. Any hero or villain
knocked out is removed from play for the rest of the game.


       I played some one-on-one games with my nephew (9) in order to get a feel for the game. In general patience seems to be an effective way to beating ones opponent simply by waiting to build the right combination of cards. (For example: Crushing Blow plus The City plus Seismic Wave for an Alien hero.)

      Fortunately you can only have one of each card in your deck and the balance seems fair--effective combos take a lot of time to build up to, and a player who can maintain steady hits throughout the game can also win if they maintain a constant unrelenting barrage. That being said there is not much tactical yield in the game, it simply doesn't have enough cards that are brought to the table to allow more depth of play.. What could of been a game of extended ballet battles and super-heroic fisticuffs is more a short, simple, slug fest. This is neither good nor bad judgment--It makes the game easy to get into, explain, and play with anyone, but it won't likely encourage long term play, or recurring  play except for those who just want to waste half an hour between other endeavors.

     Overall I feel the game has some significant flaws, and would like to see it reworked and improved. Perhaps with an objectives system of scoring. (Villain has plan cards like "hold city hostage for cash" and gets points towards that every time he does  damage to hero or the environment, hero gets points for countering villains plan) or something along that line to make it
more goal oriented.

    As a superhero brawl game is reasonably fun, but not brilliant  but does have a reasonable buy in price even if you do have to print the cards out  yourself in black and white. I'd rate it 3/3  (I want to dock it a point for not having 'Mad Scientist's Lab' as a place, but that be unfair)