Marvel Dice Throne

So this happened on Christmas.

Like I've said before, Dice Throne is what I call a treadmill game: the goal of the designers is to get you to keep buying more stuff from them to keep kitting out your modular experience. If it’s done poorly you got something like Marvel Champions: just ooooone mooore expansion and then the game will be more than acceptable! And given how much money that means, it’s never acceptable!!! EVER. From my Season One review you’ll know I already found that set much more than acceptable: I used it almost every day for a year before wanting another box. I wanted to get Season Two, but I got outvoted for the Marvel box by certain smaller compatriots.

Last note: I am a weary Marvel fan. I began as a precocious child who called Marvel editors to chat (see here for more on that) to a jaded post-One More Day bitter man. I do not like most of Marvel’s modern comics, buy Rippaverse and Alterna, and at this point I await the day Marvel’s stupid decisions catch up with them and they decide they want to compete with manga, which is currently stomping the shit out of them, and good riddance. 

Really the last note: I know Marvel is a jerk to work with. They have a rep in the TTRPG community as divas. So the Dice Throne people, should they read this, need to understand who the vitriol is really aimed at. The Dice Throne folks, in my opinion, aren’t trying to get us to buy again so much as let the incredibly stuck up and arrogant pricks at Marvel know they’ll play ball. Some will rankle hard at me saying it, but Marvel’s arrogance in licensing is a poorly kept secret.

So we’re going to get the man-bitching out of the way: the character selection is… unfortunate. No Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, or Tony Stark is a “we don’t want to make money!” move, flat. With the glaring exception of Captain Marvel I do not mind the rest of the choices. But Captain Marvel being in the box hurts my already jaded soul. Obviously the gambit paid off, coz these incredibly talented people got to make the X-Men box! But man the gambit, while necessary, is painful.

The graphic design feels weird to me this time around. There is so much freaking purple everywhere, which for whatever reason bothers me. The design of the symbols can also be really busy, particularly on Scarlet Witch and Loki. Mileage (and taste) may vary, of course, but this is my blog, so the graphic design isn’t as much to my taste as the cleaner, less purple, Season One box. 

All that’s (not) well and probably a bit grating to read. What do I think of the one thing anyone who reads this blog knows I actually care about: the design? Is this treadmill treating me well? Will I buy more? Yes, yes, and definitely yes! Allow me to elucidate, oh you who put up with my bitching. 

I love the character designs for this box, for two reasons. As a singular box these characters are really fun to play, especially Captain Marvel! Anyone picking up this box is going to get a truly varied set of characters. From “punch me, I dare you” Black Panther, to Loki, who made my brother CACKLE in glee as he played him, there isn’t a dud in the box. It’s not there. If anything I am clicking with these characters faster than Season One! Now, granted, this ain’t my first rodeo with the game, but several characters (I’m looking at you, Moon Elf and Treant) from Season One I totally bounced off for the first six months. That simply didn’t happen here. Make of that what you will. I will write more the characters in follow up posts, but for now I happily can say I love all of them.

As a TTRPG designer who has made a whole ten bucks (literally), I found myself a better designer after playing this box. I didn’t comment all that much on the particular characters in Season One coz I honestly didn’t have much to say, beyond the characters worked extremely well! Playing this box, however, I found myself in an entirely different world. I actually felt disoriented after the first game, coz the style was so different. CP ramping was almost non-existent, defensive abilities weren’t as powerful, and base damage was a lot higher. The games were faster, much faster than I was used to. After a few games I found myself leaning into the new style, learning to appreciate that I couldn't lean on my defense and making the most of the main roll phase. There's an urgency, a demand to focus on the right now, that isn't in the season one box. What you prefer does actually come down to taste, not an objective standard: I've played with people who hate the Marvel box for the very reasons that make it good, and who would love Season One for the same reasons they hate the Marvel box.

That.

Is.

A. Fantatstic.

Success!!!!

I've had more conversations with people about their tastes between these two boxes than you'd expect. What's more it's not even "Oh such and such box is better, I prefer the design style of such and such box." Good game design drives you straight into the subjective, far far away from whether or not the game itself has any merit. You talk with your friends coz the objective reality has been handled for you.

As far as balance between the season one and Marvel box I got, on a casual level they hold up really well. Ninja's two outings against Thor was so inhumanly painful for him I was shooting Blake inappropriate jokes for awhile, laughing about how Ninja clearly wanted a... piece... of  Thor. Yeah, a piece. We'll just say that. It was hilariously awful for Thor. But at the same time Scarlet Witch can tear into everyone, and there's no general feeling that anyone is actually outmatched here. Are there characters who are objectively better than others? Sure. Can I leverage a viable strategy to get around it? Definitely. That's not a small thing to achieve.

So, let's sum this up. Not only did the Dice Throne folks manage to make a product with Marvel (who not only don't actually care about their characters but also are notoriously picky and unrealistic in their goals), not only did they make a fantastic box that I find to be a triumph of design, not only is it balanced with the box I already had, but they get to do it again with the upcoming X-Men box. I hope the designers patted themselves on the back, coz man they deserved it.

The Most Important Thing Heroes of the Grid Taught Me

Play is not the same thing as games. Play is a state of creativity and imagination that is objectively good for you. One of the ways us humans make play easier is by designing games. I'm pretty sure at this point the point of a game is whether or not it actually makes play easy to enter into. So long as a game can get someone into play then it is doing its job.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about Heroes of the Grid. It’s been longer since I’ve played it. This has been a practical thing: toddlers destroy cards with alarming quickness, and the heart of HotG is in its cards. So up went the game! It’s too bad, but I’d prefer to be able to play later than lose components now. And I do actively feel the loss: the Guardian system, as I believe it is now called, is a fantastic thing. Mr. Ying had better be proud.

First off, the cards. They’re not too wordy, but the concepts they frequently communicate allow for a decent amount of depth for what they are. The cards and how they interact have a learning curve to them, but once a player understands what they’re looking at they find a responsive and intuitive ruleset, so much so that letting yourself lean into it is the trick. Looking for structure in the game rules themselves will only lead to frustration; there is no rule telling you what to do. Most new players I’ve introduced to the game sit there blinking, deerlike, as the structure has no inherently obvious use. “What do I do? When may I do it?”

Heroes of the Grid, in that respect isn’t like most board games at all. The rules are specifically reactive to the conversation at the table. Gameplay hinges off your ability to look at the board and talk about what you see, with friends who aren’t trying to boss you around. The conversation at the table is itself the game. Heroes of the Grid just gives you cards and dice to steer that game in unexpected ways.

I play this game a lot with my sons who, while they don’t really grasp the mechanics of the cards yet, still very much understand this rule: talk and play a card at some point, maybe even roll some of those chonky dice! Other games I’ve thrown at them they like well enough (Lanterns particularly) but time after time they open the box of cards for Heroes of the Grid and we fantasize about when we’ll next get to play.

So now we get to my point: the other day one of my sons was going through the cards as we both pined about being able to play again. My son knows I love playing MMPR Red Dragonshield, colloquially known as Jason Dragonshield. My son asked to see Dragonshield's deck and noticed that I was picking and choosing from the MMPR red cards. He realized I was constructing a deck, that I was making it up. He was stunned; he thougth there was a predetermined list of cards for Jason Dragonshield! I laughed and told him that the game supported you making your own character from the available cards you had. My son's face lit up, and he asked me to show him the deck all over again and explain it to him.

Jason Dragonshield

Team Tactics (Gain energy, someone else plays a card)

Blade Blaster (Dump energy for damage, 1 to 1)

Risky Moves (Take damage to grant bonus dice to another attack)

Lead the Charge (2D attack next attack at +1D)

Haymaker (1D attack, more dice for each shield on top of discard pile)

Power Sword (5D attack, +2D next attack)

Start with Dragon Dagger(3D twice) and Dragon Shield (-3 damage +1D next attack) in hand, giving you a greater than normal hand size. 

My son was curious about my choices, so I broke down the tactics of having a leader who could become a serious fighter if he needed to be. I had to break down each card and why it went into the deck. I then grabbed a few more rangers from the box and showed him how to balance the deck, and that there was a huge variety of things that could be done to make exactly what you wanted. I watched as my son's eyes glazed over a second trying to comprehend what he had just been told. He was no longer looking at a box of predetermined options, but an entire box of tools.

So now in the mornings whenever we take "the box" out he asks me how I would combine characters and why. The game went from just being something to do to being a vehicle to actually engage in play. Heroes of the Grid makes an honest attempt to put mechanics at the service of the conversation and off-table creativity, and that's positively impacted my son, who's now realizing their may be more to playing a game than just following the directions and seeing what happens.

It's a really cool thing to watch.

Dunno if this post any other point than that. But there it is.

Bargain Quest Review

There are very few games I would say a perfect, or close enough to it to where it doesn't matter anymore. I suppose I should say that there are games that I find to be perfect for me, but I can't bring myself to say so. There are games that just hit an ideal so purely and effectively that I can't help but love them with all I've got. 

Oh, is Bargain Quest one of those or what. 

The idea behind Bargain Quest is ingenious:  you are a shop-keeper in a typical Dungeons and Dragons fantasy world. Your town is in peril. The heroes have come. But they need things to go into the dungeon and fight: weapons, armor, knicknacks, that sorta thing. So they come to you. The shopkeeper. And it's up to you. 

But that bottle of snake oil? It can look like a magical ointment and cost a lot more. Maybe, just maybe, you can pawn it off and make a buck. It's just one thing, right? Right? And maybe your hero dies. He can't come back and complain, can he??

Actually that's a bit dark when you put it like that.

At any rate, this is a drafting game: draw four cards. Pick one, pass to the left, keep going until the cards are all out. One of those cards is your display item, which is used to attract customers. It can't be used to actually sell to someone, so you have to be careful what you put in the shop. You then sell as much stuff to your hero as he has money. And you send him out.

And here's where it gets tricky.

Because new heroes will invariably have more money than returning customers. So maybe you want to make them to survive! But there's this freaking deck in the game that you draw, which gives random modifiers to your heroes. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. But they come with these awesome adjectives ("Heroic", "Nervous", "Gloomy") that give you just this tiniest bit of an idea of what's going on in the hero's skull. They also make it impossible to predict exactly how things will go down. I mean, you can prep if you know the range. Within reason.

You then get Victory Points for damaging and surviving the creature, as the fame of your shop spreads. And these are not small-fry rewards either: each Victory Point is equal to 10 bucks! Okay, it's not actually dollars, but I'm not sure what the money denomination actually is. It sure isn't gold. Point is, if your adventurer does well you may be able to keep up with your compatriots who decided to throw their dudes under the bus. But that's only a maybe, and that gray area is where the fun of the game is.

Regardless, you get to upgrade your shop and add employees, after seeing what happens to the heroes. You can add more items to the display, add more storage space so you don't have to junk as many cards between rounds. And then you keep doing that until all the monsters are defeated! Hooray! It's a very simple idea. And it's this simplicity that Jonathan Ying owns, all the way through.

May The Power Protect You: Rocky DeSantos (MMPR Red) V2

When I first saw the new Rocky deck I thought him a tank. It's not hard to see why I thought this: Rocky's Bravery made me want to throw Rocky into all the damage taking situations I could. And that was a disastrous decision: one of my few recent losses was specifically because I kept trying to tank with Rocky. Rocky just doesn't work as a tank, at least for me. But I don't think he's meant to. I think Rocky is a masochistic leader. 

Risky Moves is the lens I've learned to see Rocky through. For one energy you can take up to three damage, giving bonus dice to another player equal to the damage Rocky took. This is one of the best leader cards in the game, hands down.  I've seen such spectacular results from it I'd be tempted to say it's one of the best leader cards in the game! For one energy you get to add three dice to another attack; that makes a normal 2D attack comparable to a frickin Power Weapon. For one energy. You pair up Rocky with someone who can get 3D for no energy (MMPR Zack, Adam, or Kat) and you're dishing enormous potential damage for almost nothing. And that's before you stick this card on a Power Weapon, at which point you're dealing simply ridiculous damage.

Yes, I consider activating zords more costly, because they're normally once a round. 

"But Nathan!" you protest. "Its not just an energy! Rocky takes damage too! That's not nothing!"

I agree. It's not nothing.

It's an opportunity. 

And it's all because of Bravery. Rocky's ability isn't once a battle, it's at your discretion. Which means that, as you take damage, you're going to be able to pick up other cards. It may make Rocky a bit more reliant on recoveries, and you may never see him start a battle. But the opportunity cost I've found to be consistently worth it. You can cherry pick your draws and get more resources to keep the momentum on your side. And this game is all about getting momentum and keeping it.

Square Up is Rocky's second most valuable card. You get an energy and stack your deck. It's meant to be played after Risky Moves, which means that you can effectively get Power Weapon damage for free, so long as you have an energy to begin with. You can then dish out your big and expensive hits and keep the momentum going. If you can get some damage reduction from someone else you can then tank a hit, draw Square Up, and then play it, putting it atop your deck. It's a neat little trick and feels good to pull off!

Power Sword is freaking amazing, especially if you can combo it into Risky Moves next turn! It takes a lot of energy, but your momentum will be huge and it may buy you some time. Or just end a battle entirely.

Sturdy Blow is meant to be fodder for Risky Moves, lowering the sting considerably. Otherwise it's a reliable damage dealer. Given how swingy I've found the dice reliable is always good; I find it better to buff a sure thing than speculate. If your dice luck is better than mine (it isn't hard!) you may not like this card. And that's fine. But I need all the help I can get!

Haymaker is a tricky card. For it to be truly worth its time it has to have another Haymaker or Power Sword at the top of your discard pile. It's not that this is impossible to pull off, but the circumstances you'd find that three shield card at the top of your discard pile are... be limited. But how often do you really want Rocky to be hitting directly anyways? The rest of his deck is centered around Risky Moves. I treat Haymaker as a backup for when other options aren't available. 4D for one energy is good, so when it comes up it's nice to have! But I don't focus on it all that much.

The Red Dragon Zord costs you one card to make it a terrific buff. But who would want to give up a card? Well, Haymaker exists, right? So does Sturdy Blow. Giving up a card you weren't interested in using much isn't really that much of a cost. And who knows? Maybe discarding a Haymaker will set you up for its twin to deliver a bone-crunching 4D. I'm always drawing the two copies together, much to my annoyance. Maybe you have better luck shuffling. But I don't, so I'll take advantage, thank you very much!

Rocky's got a lot of potential. If you play him correctly your damage output will be consistently high, allowing your group to keep momentum going and recover with the extra time if need be. He's not as directly offensive as Jason but I'd be lying if I said that Rocky doesn't now have a special place in my heart. If you're okay with sitting in the back and being pretty roughed up after every fight, despite never taking a hit, then Rocky is your guy.

Or, y'know, if you like dealing incredibly stupid amounts of damage for practically nothing.

May the Power Protect You: Ashley Hammond (Space Yellow)

Let's get something out of the way: this game is not perfectly balanced. It can't be. There's too many interactions to test for to make it balanced.  This is a balance conscious game. There's a baseline usability that's required for all the characters; you must be this effective to be in the game. MMPR Jason is clearly meant to be this benchmark of balance. I don't know of a single character who fails that litmus test. But some characters are better. It doesn't mean they're broken, but they take advantage of the basic rules of the game better than other characters. Ashley is one of these characters. No matter what you do with her you're going to benefit, somehow.

Optimism is one of my favorite character abilities in the game. My dice luck, even with rerolls, is so bad that I'm for sure to get the additional energy almost immediately. And that's helpful for pushing forward. That extra little boost goes a long way. Obviously if you never roll a miss result on these dice Optimism probably won't be too useful to you, but if that's the case I'm not sure you're a real person to begin with. Or, y'know, not playing with loaded dice. Actually that last one is more likely.

Rapid Fire is one of the best cards in the game, particularly if you have a reroll ability available. Roll, see the 0's, spend the energy Ashley just gave you, add two more dice, and then reroll them all! Ashley can either wreck shop with her own cards or throw it onto another character's attack.

Take Aim is a great card. We've talked about it before, with Kimberly. Any energy generation is good. And rerolls are absolutely necessary. Moving along.

Trick Shot is a weird card. On the one hand, 0's are good for hitting targets not adjacent to the target. On the other hand, I target a card to freaking blow it up. That doesn't make sense, it's backwards! So I target GUARD cards I've already damaged by attacking another card not adjacent. I roll badly enough, it certainly works for me! The reroll from Take Aim may be used for... unusual reasons... here.

Yeah, huh.

Precise Shot ignores GUARD and doesn't do a lot of damage, even if it's for sure damage. Once again, the card presupposes some damage has already been dealt to the target, or maybe there's a bonus I don't know you having.  Regardless, this probably isn't going to be a card you'll be using to one-shot a high health target. And that's okay. It's almost like you may have damage being sprinkled all over the place from Trick shot.

Star Slinger is like a reverse Power Axe. It is just as tricky to pull off on a small grid, with differing logistics required.  I generally find that having an enemy card with FAST puts you on the back foot; normally you want to hit the very first card in the sequence and splash the back cards. You can still do that here (just go to the rear-most card), just expect to take some fire for it. 

Ashley's zord lets you hang yourself as a group, by drawing as many cards as everyone likes. You're either nuking yourself or doing a last-ditch assault. And y'know what? I don't care. I generally don't draw cards, and am usually too cowardly to do so. If you want to? Go for it. That's never been me. Well, until I really need to do it. That's different. 

Ashley isn't broken, not by a long shot. But she is really good. Her cards take advantage of the base engine of the game really well, and she has some genuinely unique cards. She's definitely in my top five to play! There's always something interesting going on with her, and she can hit pretty much whatever she wants, whenever she wants. This makes her a great offensive character.

May the Power Protect You: TJ Johnson (In Space Blue)

I have the worst dice luck in the world. The worst. In one of my latest games I'd marshalled 12 dice, with a Dragonzord in the wings. We were all so excited! 24 possible damage! I picked up the dice.

Twelve. Twelve. TWELVE

0's.

We won that game, for the record. Somehow. Turns out that Rocky's Risky Moves is an amazing card to pair with... Pretty much anything. More on that on a different day.

Point is, TJ was made for my kinda luck in mind. Y'know, folks who can't roll dice in this game, not without throwing around words to make a sailor blush. TJ's utility is obvious. And playing him is therapeutic. I would argue there's not a whole lot of depth to TJ: swap out dice for guaranteed damage. He does some interesting deck manipulation, but he's definitely a one-trick pony. That isn't a disparagement, for the record. Not everyone who plays this game is going to want a complicated puzzle to finagle into cooperation. I am usually not one of those people; Jason Zeo Gold may be my favorite ranger to play at this point. But simple can be nice. And TJ is simple. So yes, this post is going to be short.

TJ's are variations of losing a die in favor of flat damage. Unless you're playing a completely defensive team these abilities are never not going to be useful. Some character and zord abilities might not see use in every battle. I seriously doubt that'll be the case with TJ and his zord. Someone's always gonna need something to be for sure.

Buster Rifle is TJ's bread and butter attack. Everything else offensive either sets it up or imitates it. Cosmic Cleave is specifically designed to make Buster Rifle work better; Cosmic Cleave can be a good spot to get guaranteed damage on, just saying ! Astro Axe is just a souped up version of Buster Rifle. If you can get your team to use some deck manipulation characters then you'll be able to dish out three consistent damage easily. That takes a weight off of everyone else, allowing other people to recover or go to other spots. If you do TJ right he can solo entire teams of footsoldiers, just with Cosmic Cleave and Buster Rifle.

Strategic Defense is there specifically so you can get your Buster Rifle into a prime spot. It's also nice to have when you know FAST cards are a serious contender, allowing everyone to get their decks ready for rocketing. This is definitely one of those cards that can completely change the course of the battle, as it throws that extra energy into the pool. You can go and throw out a Power Weapon without dipping into people's reserves, creating situations where you're already on the right foot.

Precision Tactics is one of those fun little cards that's great to throw at Power Weapons. Most of the time I don't want spike damage with a power weapon, just something consistent. Precision Tactics gives you that. It's also a nice card to throw onto a chain of "play another card", of which we're getting more and more. Last game I played with TJ we were playing MMPR Jason, MMPR White, and Jason Zeo Gold. We had rounds where we were just passing from player to another, throwing in modifiers, always ending the handoffs with TJ so we could throw out 5-10 damage for practically no energy, not to mention no dice rolling!

TJ is a really simple character. He can either amp up everyone else by removing dice from the equation or solo a few rounds of footsoldiers. He's not the most complicated character in the world, but he's good to throw at beginners who feel more comfortable with some complexity and have them feel effective, especially if you spend a moment showing them how the deck works. He's not my favorite, but some days.... with 12 0's... I'm glad I got him.

In the interest of full disclosure, the author play-tested a prototype of TJ. A most sincere thanks to Jonathan Ying and the folks at Renegade!

May the Power Protect You: Adam Park, V2 (MMPR Black)

Welp, Renegade did it. They made Gen 2 Ranger decks.

Awesome!!!

What'd they do with Adam?

Well, the big things didn't change: newbies hate Adam. If you're new to the game and disagree, comment! Tell me I'm wrong! I'd love to hear it! All I can tell you is what I've seen. Which I find sad, because Adam, once properly mastered, can just wreck everything in sight. I know, 'cause I've done it. The blood flowed, monsters screamed, and Adam's white portions of his suit went pink from the river of crimson he stood in. He's an offensive powerhouse, able to destroy pretty anything that stands in his way. 

Oh, I didn't say it would be easy. Adam is not an easy guy to master; if you don't he's a mess.

Adaptable, Adam's ability, is... complicated. Once per battle, you can swap the top card in your discard pile for a card in your hand. Six of your ten cards have effects that are relevant, so long as they're the top card in your discard pile. The other four, however, do not. Keep in mind that you play the card, and then discard it; you cannot activate an effect as you are playing it, because it's not in your discard pile.  I don't know about anyone here, but Heroes of the Grid is a huge adrenaline rush for me. Stopping to think is not a forte I have, just in general, nevermind in the middle of a game that gets as intense as this. Now, others may not experience this. But, even after dozens and dozens of games, I still do. I have totally gone and put down a card with no real thought to what that does to Adam's discard pile.

Please don't be stupid like me. Please.

Watch what you put into that discard pile.

Rapid Hit is not an easy card to parse. I generally do not put up card text. Part of it is that I'm lazy. But the other? I want you, the reader, to already have familiarity with the character. That doesn't cut it here. This is the most complicated card I've come acrost so far, and so I'm going to put the text up.

ATTACK: 1D

After you resolve this attack, perform a second attack with 1 die.

While this card is the top card of your discard pile, add 1 die to each of your attacks.

So, first off, it's not one attack, but two, at one die apiece. Now, normally that's not going to matter too much, but this is Adam, so this isn't normal. Suffice to say that, for Adam, this is an amazing card. You can generate two energy with Leapfrog Strike, start chains against multiple GUARDED opponents (others can then throw modifiers onto both attacks).... or do a total of four dice with a previous Rapid Hit...

Or four native dice with Power Axe. Given the nature of how Power Axe works, that extra die can (and does) make all the difference. Without outside buffs Adam can out-damage Zack with the Power Axe. With outside buffs he can make Zack's damage look like a joke, with less outside help.

Leapfrog Strike is just your typical 2D attack. You play it to set up so you can get a free Cosmic Cannon or Power Axe, or a crapton of energy from Rapid Hit. Or, y'know, a no energy 3D attack. It's really that simple. And useful!

Cosmic Cannon is at its most useful when being augmented by Leapfrog Strike, or being used for defense. There are better cards to attack with otherwise, but when being used for defense or a free 3D attack? Or being augmented by Rapid Hit into a one energy 4D attack? Okay, that last one is better. There's some interesting combinations you can get from this card, just can't look at it directly.

Exploit Opening is essentially Hip Hop Kido turned into a card. It's a Reaction, so it's got one use: exactly what you see on the card. If anyone doesn't think there's a use for this card, this isn't the character for you. You should already be paying attention to the board state already. And this card allows you to focus on another card that you know you can kill, altering the flow of combat. This can be a really useful card to have, allowing Adam to one up Zack, once again.

Okay, let's get this out of the way: the Mastodon Zord is one of the best zords in the game. You just kill a footsoldier, flat out. If you do this during a combat, however, the card "linked" to that figure is not destroyed. This means that the Mastodon Zord really only has one use, at one time: right at the beginning of the round, lower the area with the highest amount of figures. It's useful, but it's boring. The other zords usually require at least some strategy, something more than just remembering to use the darn thing.

The Lion Thunder Zord is not as good, technically. You can't just shut down a figure whenever you want, you have to destroy the card, in the action sequence. But this has some more interesting choices. You can team this up with Adam's ability to ignore GUARD to give complete and total access to the board, or just get rid of that one footsoldier that would make things so much easier. They do exist, especially in boss fights. It's not functionally worse than the Mastodon Zord but this is a lot more interesting.

I always found Adam more interesting the Zack, but with this new deck I think he's actually a good deal better. Adam doesn't quite have the defensive capability of Zack, but he's more self-sufficient than Zack. Adam takes a bit more work to pull off, but he's got a diverse toolkit that pays off the investment. 

The fact that Adam is my second favorite ranger has nothing to do with it. At ALL.

Promise.

Really!

May the Power Protect You: Carlos Vallerte (In Space Black)

There's something special about Carlos.  There's that rush of adrenaline as you look at your hand. You gotta kick out as much of it as you can, assuming you drew many cards at all. And as you start your play you'll realize that there's a lot of control here: you don't have to get to Hot Blooded right away, but can sit in the back, preparing for your burst of power. Yeah, that means you're not all that good solo, but provided you get the support you need you can come in, wreck the crap out of a few cards in a single blow, and be back in time for dinner.

Hot Blooded isn't something to use all the time. Never was the rule "Draw one card at a time" so relevant; only draw what you need to get through the fight. If you draw Rising Moon draw your max hand size, because you can place the rest of it back if you want to. And that's the key: if you have Rising Moon there is absolutely no reason not to max that hand out. At all.

Meteor Smash is a freebie draw when you're drawing up your hand.. If you get this card immediately draw another two: one to pay for its kicker, and the other one because duh. I know there's an option to gain an energy or add a die. If you're within your reroll trigger go for the extra die. At least, that's what my rule of thumb is. Every shot from Carlos needs to be a kill shot, if not a serious rocker.

Covering Strike is, once again, a freebie. You can draw an additional card if you draw this one, without hurting your chances of getting to Hot Blooded. And let's not be joking around: unless you have a good reason to let someone else put a card atop their deck that ability should be used on you, so that way you can get back to Hot Blooded.

Moon Fang Piercer is where things get a bit tricky. It's a hard hit, but it needs to be the absolute last or second to last card you play to be worth it. And that means that, whenever you draw this card, you should seriously consider not drawing anymore. Like, check and make sure that everyone else thinks they can carry that particular battle beyond the one card you'll be smoking, but unless there's a clear and present need to draw more cards? You probably shouldn't.

If you draw Lunar Lance you'll need a bare minimum of three cards in your hand, possibly more, depending upon how people are feeling with their hands. If you haven't figure it out yet, I check how others are doing before I make decisions about my hand when playing with Carlos. Heck, I wouldn't even draw until I know what everyone else has. And that pays off the best when you get Lunar Lance. Combine this card with his Astro Blaster and Carlos can hit anything he likes, with a reroll to boot.

Mega V2 is good for cycling useless cards out of your hand and getting your deck stacked back up. It's also good for whenever you need to get your deck stacked up against a hit. Not to mention being able to throw out a bunch of cards when you need to, for a clinch hit.

Carlos is my favorite of the In Space Rangers. Properly played he's a bruiser with a Russian Roulette heart. He's challenging to play, sure, but we left simple with the core box. And I can't say I'm terribly disappointed that's the case.

In the interest of clarity, I helped playtest prototypes for this character. A sincerest thanks to Jonathan Ying and Renegade Studios!

May the Power Protect You: Rocky DeSantos (Zeo Blue)

No, not like this.

Please.

I'm begging myself: Nathan, don't come back like this.

But the truth is the truth, regardless of my ability to stomach it. Freaking Flannery O'Connor.

Let's get something out of the way: I hate the character of Rocky. I just do. If you like him that's cool.... but I just can't stand any frame the character is in. He's just so freaking nondescript to me. Yeah yeah yeah, that's probably not fair, but my return to May the Power Protect You is because of Rocky and I get to be grumpy about it.

So. Freaking. There.

My sister Anna had come over for Thanksgiving. She's been going through a bit of a gaming renaissance herself, having her own portable gaming collection, with plans to expand. She and I have enjoyed more than a few games of Marvel Champions together, as well. It's been nice to connect over that with her. So I decided to show her Heroes of the Grid and basically guilt-tripped her into it. It'd been a few months since I'd been able to really play, and at this point I was truly desperate to even get one game in. Anna agreed, probably out of pity.

I presented Anna with the various "types" of characters, and Anna said she wanted MMPR Zack and.... Zeo Blue?? I tried to change her mind. Rocky was not going to be a simple character to learn, given he was outside of core and she herself said she wanted someone simpler. But Anna saw the mechanics and theme and went "No no! I like this 'Let's Party' card! I like this whole jumping around having a bash! I'm doing this!"

I keep forgetting that I am the dour one of my family. And, if you couldn't tell, I am not the type to get into a "Let's parTAY" mood. I like my long slogs of matching wills against another person or the game engine. I am the thing that just keeps moving forward. 

That. Is. Not. My sister. Either of them, come to think of it. Sunshine and rainbows illuminating copious amounts of blood, with giggles of eldritch horror, that's their style.  Cthulhu Pony. It's party time with your guts is the order of the day! Their giggles in non-Euclidean geometry will accompany you well past the gates of Hell.

So, Called Shot, Rocky's ability. I don't like it in the slightest. It means I have to pick and choose targets well ahead of time. I'm supposed to be building an engine of destruction, which will reap in the energy and allow either myself or others to pull off the big shots. Thanks, I hate it. I want to be taking hits to the face and laughing as punching me killed you. Called Shot doesn't do that, to a degree I find obnoxious. Anna though? This is what ultimately sold her. Figures. Freaking sisters.

Triple Threat is the basic attack card of Rocky. And I never freaking draw it. Ever. No, really, in the multiple times I've played Rocky it never comes out. Anna though? Figures. She drew it all the time! This is one of the two cards that lets you get your energy out. Hit multiple targets, let a soft character take the hits necessary to get your engine up and running, and be all happy and shit. Let's Party does away with the attack and lets you attach more targets- I mean energy - to the monsters. If you're doing your job correctly you can get a third to three-quarters of the board tagged in a single turn, perhaps more if you've got someone who has passing cards in their arsenal. That's definitely something to check out with your group: party composition matters pretty strongly with Rocky. You want to make sure you got someone who can turn monster attacks into momentum and another person who can pass the ball back.

I mean, it's a partAY, right?? Gotta have someone to goof off with and the freaking designated driver to make sure he can carry your drunk ass home!!!

Erhem. Excuse me.

The reason, of course, to get Triple Threat and Let's Party! out is for Power Spin and Power Axes. Again, I'm absolutely lousy at this timing. Anna, of course, pulled it off without a hitch. We would watch as a ripple of damage would just flatten everything in its path; two or three enemy cards would die, we'd get massive amounts of energy, and all of a sudden we could finish the fight. And yeah, that was a good feeling! I'll admit it! I've been talking mad crap about Rocky this whole time but c'mon, felling multiple cards at one with good play just feels amazing! 

I just wish I wasn't such a dunce about it. 

Reckless Assault is kinda the weird card of the lot. It does low damage, costs and energy, and might get you another card play... if you kill the target? With two dice? Have you ever met me?? 

Oh c'mon, it was working for Anna too!

OH COME ON

Rocky's zord has one use: get Let's Party! back into your hand. That's it. That's its point. It's that simple. Go forth. Prosper. Do your thing.

God I hate this character. It's everything I don't want in a character. Ever. Period. But my sister got a core set 'cause she had such a fun time with Rocky, specifically, and wants to play the game with me as often as she can now, so...

Damnit.

Just damnit.

Dinogenesis Review

 

Right after playing with John I posted this on the Facebook:

"On turn two of Dinogenics John turned to me and asked who else I was going to kill. 

You see, I'd gotten a T-Rex on turn one but hadn't bothered to get the fence to keep him in. He ate some folks. It was a thing in the news. 

Which I covered up.

And I got a huge advantage from the whole debacle, as that T-Rex helped me dramatically throughout the rest of the game. All because of a few eaten schoolchildren.

Yes, school children. John and I couldn't have been laughing harder.

I'm a bad person. I don't care. This game is great"

But a few caveats are in order. This is not a rules-light game. There is a ton of information to process, all of it crucial, and a good deal of it are exceptions to the “normal” rules. The game does not attempt to hold your hand, although it does throw out not-so-subtle hints that being an immoral jerk is going to get you what you want. It merely tells you what's probably the best general way to go about winning... and that's it. 

By the time John and I got done we knew we'd missed a lot, and that was alright with us. We had a ton of fun, laughing for the entirety of our playthrough. But we both acknowledged we'd hardly played the game to its fullest potential. The immediate reason why we didn't in our first playthrough is obvious: there are hundreds of cards and buildings,  more than a few dinosaurs with a couple of stats on them... and it's all very small. That may be my only real complaint, honestly. There's a ton of information on these things and they're quite small, to begin with. So you have to be committed to learning each of these little bits of cardboard that are only a bit larger than my thumb. But these little buildings and the cards and whatnot are potent; once John figured out how powerful they could be he narrowed my lead from thirty points to nine, in two of the seven rounds this game exists in. I looked down at my own stuff and realized I could have been pulling similar shenanigans. 

Fortunately the core gameplay loop is a lot of fun. After you're done bringing in visitors to your park you get to place your workers in differing areas of "the mainland", which let you do various actions. There's just never enough spaces to put stuff down, particularly the space that lets you get rid of scandal tokens, which you can get for a bunch of different things but principally from letting your dinosaurs eat people. Well, that and raiding the boneyard, but we're not talking about that here. The point is, there's not enough spaces, which means going first is crucial. You go first by your reputation score, which is generated by having dinosaurs and buildings. Do not. Do NOT. Forget the buildings. John  and I did, only to find that John focusing on buying and purchasing buildings closed my lead by a significant gap. I still won, but I won by 9 points, not 30. 

This game feels huge. Yuge. John and I knew we had missed the vast majority of the game, but the theme, rules we did get right, and the sheer amount of laughter we had over the dying screams of school children sold the both of us pretty damn hard. Looking up the rules afterwards and realizing that we screwed up a lot we were relieved to discover that my win was still legitimate, more or less; we managed to recognize the game's core, even if we got a lot of the details wrong.

There are solo scenario rules in this book. I've tried one of them and found it to be fun, although not to the same extent. I've not played the others, so I can't speak to them, but that satisfaction of laying out that park is still there. It's so cool to see the fences and dinos and your park... you just can't really deny how freaking close the theme is.