Heroes Wanted Review

There's been a spate of games featuring superheroes of late, the lion's share of which are deck- or dice-building games. While popular, I'm not entirely sure that these mechanics capture the feel of a superhero story. Sure, they feature artwork straight from the pages of the comics, but art does not a theme make. Heroes Wanted from nascent publisher Action Phase Games is a refreshing change from both the licensed heroes as well as the same, tired mechanics that the recent superhero games share. The game is a meeple-loaded miniatures game with card play, and despite dice rolling not being at the fore of the design, there's enough randomness that the puzzle-type nature of the game is not off-putting, even for an old Milton Bradley game aficionado. In short, it captures the feel of being a superhero in ways that other contemporary games have failed to do.

One of the greatest things about this game is that you're not a licensed character with defined powers, but rather you put your hero together in pieces. This is done by getting three cards of a "top half" and three cards of a "bottom half", then choosing one of each and building the hero you will use. This results in some insane combinations of powers and names such as "Promo Hunk", replete with the Abs of Truth and Majestic Flex powers, and decorated with paste-up adverts all over his torso. It's pretty damned wild, to be honest, and we always get a kick out of the characters we end up choosing. There are two tremendous decks of top and bottom cards, so it's incredibly unlikely that you're going to get the same exact setups twice, even if you play fifty times.

Each character's top card has a symbol which defines the kind of powers the character will possess, and it’s somewhat disappointing that there are only four types. Each type has its own hand of cards, although most of them are common to all types, but the type-specific cards are where the real powers lie. A really slick mechanic is that you don't actually gain access to all the cards in your hand until you've "powered up" by performing tasks, which are tracked on your character card. This is sort of like "leveling up" in an RPG game, which is a really cool incentive.

Villains are generated in the same way, although completely random, and end up with such colorful characters such as "Ms. Franken-Skunk", who has the power of Stink Punch. It's surprisingly fun to see the kinds of disparate characters which come into play, although I have to admit that despite being very different graphically, many can be somewhat similar in the powers they wield. Still, the way they respond to the heroes is usually different, so it's not droll or repetitive.

Another great part of the game is that it's very much story-driven, and it comes stock with two double-sided boards which act as the canvas where the story unfolds. There are several scenarios for the boards, so you can literally play the game many times before coming back around to replay a scenario. Each is very different, and as a bonus in the replay value department, there are a pile of 5-space trackers called "headlines", which provide points to the players who accomplish the tasks printed thereon. In some cases, it's simply to beat up a certain number of minions, of which there are two kinds, and in others it's to damage the main villain a certain amount. The player who does it first gets the highest score, then the score value for performing the tasks diminishes by a couple of points for players who perform the task second, third, and so on. It's a great way to make the scenarios different, even through a replay of the same scenario. In all, it's really great design work.

The game itself is card-driven, so you play cards to do every action. Moving, attacking, and defending are all done by playing cards from your hand. Each card has a value on the top, and this is the defense value. If you're hit by an opponent, you must discard enough points' worth of cards to defend yourself, or you're hit for a point of damage, and lose all your cards. The next turn, you're stuck just "resting", which is shorthand for recovering all of your cards. It's a very simple system, but it's incredibly effective and leads to a ton of tough decision points. I hesitate to call it a "resource management" mechanic, but it kind of feels that way when you're stuck in a situation where you want to attack, but can't because you know you're going to catch a beating if you do. It's very tense, and infinitely fun.

I'm a big fan of the game, and I think that it is good for older kids and adults alike. While it's intensely violent in the abstract, it's more "Adam West Batman" than "Zak Snyder Superman", so it's appropriate for all ages. It's just a great little superhero game that does everything a superhero game should.