Tommy's Take on Thanos Rising

I know board game reviews aren't what tends to draw folks to this blog (and based on my blog views since Google+ died, I'm not sure anything really draw people here), but my son(s, actually) and I have been playing Thanos Rising by USAOpoloy, and I thought I'd post some thoughts.



TRUTH IN GAMING JOURNALISM DISCLAIMER: No comp copy was provided of this game. Bought with my own money. That said, I was pushed into writing a review primarily because there are promos available for this game and USAopoly said they would provide promos if I posted a review.

JUST THE FACTS:

• MSRP is $49.99
• 42 Asset (Hero and Villain) Cards
• 4 Team Base/Summary Cards
• 4 Team Deployment Tokens
• 15 Power Dice
• 1 Thanos Die
• 1 Infinity Stone Die
• 50 Damage Counters
• 30 Infinity Stone Control Counters
• 30 Bonus Tokens
• 1 Deployment Zone
• 1 Infinity Gauntlet
• 6 Infinity Stones
• 1 Thanos Figure
• Rules
• 2-4 players
• Estimated playing time 45 minutes
• Ages 10+.

BUT WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

• In a pinch, it's a loose adaptation of the Avengers: Infinity War film: Most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's mightiest heroes teaming up to stop Thanos from gaining the Infinity Stones. This is accomplished (or not) by lots and lots of dice rolling.
• The game is fully cooperative, and is played against the game itself.
• I've found it completely playable solo (I used two "teams", essentially playing it "two-handed").
• I play it primarily with my 5 year old, with him deciding what he wants to do and me advising if it's a really ill-conceived point.
• While randomness is king, factors such as hero abilities and bonus tokens help mitigate that somewhat.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

• Each player selects (or is randomly dealt) a home base and a leader: Captain America and The Avengers Compound, Gamora and Knowhere, Dr. Strange and The Sanctum Sanctorum, and Black Panther and Wakanda. Any hero not selected here is added to the Asset deck for potential recruitment later.
• Each team - as well as each hero - is keyed to one of the four dice types: Red dice are Battle Dice (Captain America's specialty, as well as other physical fighters such as Hulk, Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and Black Widow), Cosmic dice are black (but purple on the hero cards) and cover Gamora and heroes like the Guardians of the Galaxy), Technology dice are blue and are the purview of Black Panther (as well as heroes like Iron Man and The Iron Spider(-Man)), whereas green is Mystic (which includes heroes like Dr. Strange, Wong, Heimdall and Loki).

THANOS RISING

Fine. He'll do it himself.

• The two Thanos boards are impressive pieces of work: The first is an image of the Infinity Gauntlet with pieces cut out to loosely fit the Infinity Stones, as well as rounded slots around the board that seat the trackers for Thanos' search for each stone. The Infinity Stones themselves are colored plastic pieces that look like uneven gemstone and sit loosely in the Gauntlet as Thanos consolidates his power. On the flipside of those trackers is a power that is revealed if Thanos acquires the Stone in question. The second board is 3 "sectors" that each have room for 3 Asset Cards (for 9 cards in play at once, hero or villain). These can be heroes to recruit, or villains to be defeated. An impressive Thanos statue sits in the middle of this board, rotating around as Thanos moves from sector to sector, attacking heroes who would stop him and activating his minions to aid him.

The Mad Titan looking looking for the Stones.

THE ENDGAME

• By default, the heroes have a single win condition: Defeat 7 of Thanos' minions to disrupt his quest for the Infinity Stones (though the rules suggest upping the number of villains to defeat - all the way to 10 - of you want to make it harder).
• If Thanos ever holds all 6 stones? You lose. If Thanos ever defeats 10 or more Heroes? You lose due to sustaining too many losses. If Thanos ever defeats all the heroes on one team, you lose because he successfully broke one of the fronts in the war against him.

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT

• So, once you're set up, you'll have a hero and a base. The Sector board will have 9 assets (randomly drawn) on it to recruit or fight.
• You have to decide which sector you want to send your team to, based on who is there to attack or recruit,
• Thanos always goes first, and does so by the player rolling both the Thanos die and the Infinity Stone die.
• The Infinity Stone die has 6 faces, matching each Stone. Whichever one is rolled, add a counter to it. If the player's turn ends and there are 5 counters on that Stone's card, the Stone itself moves to the Gauntlet and Thanos gains access to the power of said Stone.
• The Thanos die will either rotate Thanos clockwise or counterclockwise, at which point he will attack any heroes in his sector (including the current player's team if they went there) and activate any villains in his sector (each of whom have a different ability: Ebony Maw allows Thanos to roll the Infinity Stone die again, while Proxima Midnight attacks the heroes on the active team, regardless of the sector they are in), or it may cause him to stand pat and either a) roll the Infinity Stone die again (and attack heroes in his sector and activate villains) or b) allow him to trigger all villain powers (and attack the heroes in his sector).
• Once Thanos has done his damage, the player assembles their dice pool (from their base card, plus any bonus dice listed on their hero cards) and rolls them, attempting to match symbols on the dice with symbols on the Hero and Villain cards, with the idea that matching all the symbols on the card allows you to recruit the hero or damage the villain.
• Red Battle dice are weighted towards Battle results, Green Mystic dice weighted towards Mystic results, and so on.
• You can only assign dice symbols to one card each turn, but you can assign as many dice as you have (that match) to the chosen card. Any dice left over get rerolled, and you repeat the process until you are out of dice, or you have no cards left that you can successfully trigger regardless of your roll.
• At the end of the turn, any Infinity Stone cards that have been filled up are retrieved by Thanos. Any Hero cards whose symbols you match are recruited (and any damage sustained so far is discarded). Any Villains whose symbols you have matched gain a Damage counter and you get a Bonus Token (more on this later). Finally, any Heroes or Villains whose cards have been filled with Damage counters (including ones in your team) are defeated, discarded from the Sector board, and replaced with new cards from the Asset deck.
• Then, check victory conditions (does Thanos have all the Stones? Did you beat enough Villains? Did Thanos beat enough Heroes?)

SO, IT'S JUST A DICE FEST?

• Well, yeah.
• But not a completely random one.
• Each Hero (and Base) has a special ability that can impact the game. For instance, when you make your initial roll, you check to see if you rolled  4 symbols matching your base. If you did,something happens (Avengers Compound adds 1 damage to a Villain, Knowhere removes an Infinity Stone counter, etc). But, of course, that still comes down to random rolls.
• Each of the four "leader" heroes mentioned above gain a bonus die if you recruit a hero of their type to the team. That bonus die will be one of two types (your choice) so you can look at the sector to see whether you most need, say, an extra Mystic die or an extra Space die.
• Heroes like Wong and Hawkeye let you flat out reroll dice before you start assigning them, if you really need something other than what you rolled.
• If that's not enough, Heroes like Friday (yes, Iron Man's A.I. replacement for JARVIS is a recruitable hero in the game) allow you to change a Technology result to any other face on the die, or Rocket, who lets you change any Tech or Cosmic die face to any other face on that die.
• And if THAT'S not enough, then some of the Bonus Tokens (mentioned above) are actually just Battle, Cosmic, Mystic and Technology results that you can play to ensure you succeed. (The rest of the Bonus Tokens are either extra dice, allow you to remove damage from heroes, or allow you to remove counters from the Infinity Stone cards). The best part? You can play them on any players turn, whether you need that extra push to beat a Villain or your buddy is trying REALLY hard to recruit Thor and didn't get the Cosmic symbol they needed, but you happened to have a Cosmic Bonus Token sitting right there.
• Some heroes provide situational bonus dice (like Drax, who gives you an extra Battle die as long as there's a villain in your sector, or Hulk, who gives you more dice the more damage he's sustained).
• Other heroes focus on healing and saving, like Mantis, Groot and Iron Spider (who gets to remove damage counters from heroes whenever you deal damage to a foe).
• So, yes, there's lots of dice rolling, but you can plan and build a team that gives you a real shot at winning by identifying who synergizes together, then utilizing Bonus Tokens and Hero abilities to get what you need, when you need it.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• The box says 45 minutes to play. The website says 60 to 90. My experience has been closer to the website's than the boxes.
• This is definitely an MCU game, as all the cards are very much in the likeness of their MCU counterparts (aside from The Collector, whose face is covered in shadow...I'm assuming there's some likeness rights issue with Benecio Del Toro?).
• The character selection is mostly really good...then you get to things like Friday as a recruitable Hero and Scarlet Witch nowhere to be found (they did later release Scarlet Witch as a promo card). A headscratcher to say the least.
• This is one of my prettier games I own, because of all the nice bits that came with it and the fact that I can't paint worth a crap, and Thanos comes pre-painted (unlike my legions of cold, grey miniatures occupying all my other boxes).
• I have fun playing it solo or with my kid. He completely grasps all the goals (stopping bad guys, recruiting heroes, etc), just doesn't always have the best strategy (but he's 5, so, y'know).
• The game does a great job of capturing the feel that Thanos is inevitable, as you can't fight him directly and he moves like a force of nature through the game, inflicting chaos and pain as he hunts down the Stones. Even the one game I won came down to a nailbiter as he had two of the stones and beaten 7 heroes before I finally beat enough of his warriors to win the game.

WORTH IT?

• I think so. I'm a Marvel guy, and they implemented the MCU license nicely here. Most of the Hero cards abilities made me nod my head and go "Yeah, that makes sense" when I read them.
• You have to be okay with chucking dice and dealing with random results. That's my cup of tea. If it's not yours, there's not much to recommend here.
• Most importantly, the proof is in the fun, and we've enjoyed every game so far (even my 16 year old did, and it's like pulling teeth getting him to play board games).
• After we lost our most recent game (when Thanos gained his final 3 Stones in one turn due to the Time Stone activating), my son said "I hate Thanos". He's gonna love it when we finally beat him together, and it's going to make my day.