Space Cat chose to play this game from our game library.
Professor and I have played the base game a few times, and it is hard. We were soundly beaten by the villains the first time (which may have been due to a learning curve), but we’ve really struggled to win this game in the past.
Energy cards:
- Strange Alien Artifact
- First of Your Kind
Because we received a boost for having a gender in our heroes names, we all made sure we had that.
- Space Cat – Spooky Girl
- Chubby Unicorn – Star Girl
- Professor – Spider-Man
Powers:
- Blazing Firearms
- Long-Distance Shot
- Impenetrable Skin
- Rooftop Leaping
- Luck Control
- Martial Arts Mastery
- Life-Draining Touch
- Devastating Uppercut
The rules for a faster game allow players to start with more plot points. This allowed us to buy more cards at the beginning. We all picked up at least one Strange Alien Artifact and one First of Your Kind to help build up our energy. It was a good opportunity to pick up the more costly power cards. No one grabbed a story line card because we weren’t really impressed with what the top card (Immortal) had to offer.
The first Minion was pretty tough. Even though the card only had 2 hp, its special ability allowed it to ignore one type of damage. Unfortunately, most of our power cards dealt physical damage, so it took a while to get the right hand combination to take him down. Things went a little better after that.
Professor favored Impenetrable Skin which allowed him to block no matter what his dice roll was. I liked Luck Control because not only could I control a die result, my card could be sacrificed on another player’s turn to help prevent a power deck from running out.
Things were looking a little grim near the end. We’d lost the rest of the Strange Alien Artifacts early on and Long-Distance Shot followed shortly after. We were quickly running out of Blazing Firearms (our only other ranged attack). One more round, and I don’t think we would have made it.
Thankfully I drew an awesome hand that gave me just enough power to take down Baron Oleg Van Genz. Metro City was saved!
This game can be really rough. It is not an easy win, so for new players I strongly recommend starting with more points to buy cards (the “faster” game play), and working your way down to the typical 5 points. It takes a good portion of the game to build up your deck and be able to take on the bad guys, which can be frustrating. While you’re working on your deck, the city is being destroyed (unless you are truly awesome at rolling dice). Playing the faster game also makes you feel more effective as a player. When you take several turns where you can do absolutely nothing, it starts to wear on you making the game less fun. Being able to attack or simply build your deck during a turn makes you feel like you’re really helping your team. Since it had been so long between plays, I’m not sure how much the expansion added to game play, but I did like some of the new cards we were able to play with.
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