Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid Review

"This game is mean."

"I thought we'd get more time!"

"We barely made it."

"I'm scared of hard mode."

These words, and many more like them, were uttered by myself and my friends upon playing the Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid board game. I've never seen so many people facepalm in sheer terror in my entire life. It is an adrenaline pumping, crotch kicking, heart-stomping good time. If you don't finish your first few games in an adrenaline rush you're either a god amongst board gamers or you don't have a pulse and need to be put back into your pine box, with a stake in your heart and your mouth stuffed with holy wafers. Alternatively, you need to be put out into broad daylight in a glass box.

What is the source of the incredible stress of this cooperative game? Regardless of player count (which ranges from 2-6) the A.I. of the game works exactly the same: draw five cards from the monster deck and deploy the number and type of figures (between 5 to 15, average 10 figures) on the cards to the locations shown. If you hit the Panic Limit (between 4-7 figures) of that particular location it becomes panicked and all further figures are placed clockwise to the next location. You lose the game if all locations become panicked. Yes, that death spiral is quite real, and it is quite worrisome to deal with at times, with some of the games we played barely squeaking by. The problems are almost always desperate in nature; there is no moment when the players can breathe.

Furthering the stress of the game is the free form nature of the rules governing the group, which aren't very much. Each player has between 2 to 4 actions they can take each turn, depending on player count. The basic actions are Recover (where you can get back some cards you played in Fight), Fight (everyone at that location joins the battle for free!) and Move to any location on the board(move to the Command Center and you can recover you whole deck for free! But you burned an action to do it!). These personal actions can be taken in any order the group likes. And this order of things is the norm: players get to choose who will fight as well as who will take damage or any other nasty effect that the game throws at you. There's no structure to keep the players organized, which means you can get stuck in conversations where you start to digress to future turns only to realize you never took the original turn and someone should get on that, now.

On the second, third, and fourth turns of the game you will see two monsters and the boss, in that order. The fact that this happens every time you play the game does not make it more predictable. For one, you're shuffling the aforementioned cards into the deck at predetermined ranges. For two, the impact these monsters and the boss makes upon the board is entirely dependent upon how you've been managing the minions. Monsters and Bosses automatically panic the location that they're placed in, which means that if you were being an idiot about the minions the game can end as early as round two! And these advanced enemies are not nice. There's plenty of cards in their decks that will render you out of energy, out of cards, out of hope, and if you do not manage these monsters well you will get murdered. Oh, depending on your player count you have a certain number of "lives", with the higher player counts getting less of them. Be careful: if you don't have any when a character dies you lose the game!

The Cyclopsis Boss Expansion.

No, I don't own it.

I'm scared to try it.

I MUST GET IT

So you have two ways to lose the game. How do you win? By surviving up to the Boss, beating it, and then surviving the rest of the round. Notice how the word survive showed up twice??? One wrong move spells disaster, especially with the ridiculous Boss cards, which are broken without being unfair. You have the ability to stop these (and all enemy cards) from activating, it's just a question of navigating your options.

I know I haven't talked much about mechanics for this game, and that's intentional. There's a lot of corner cases and each ranger plays rather differently from each other, and there's actually a fair amount of crunch to pick up, but not an overwhelming  amount. There is definitely a learning curve to this game and it can demand a whole heck of a lot of you. But, if you're willing to meet the challenge, this game will take you on a whirlwind tour of every little thing that could possibly want to kill you. When I first beat Scorpina I flipped the figurine off in a rush of adrenaline. When we beat Goldar we sank back into our seats, exhausted but happy.

If you can afford to buy this incredibly beautiful board game (and it IS lovely- the minis and cards are all seriously on point) and survive the adrenaline rush I highly recommend it. I Kickstarted it and I am blown away by how demanding and fun the game is. I like a challenge that does not bend to me, but requires that I bend to it in order to master it. And this game has that quality in spades.