Superhero boardgames

I have been a huge fan of both boardgames and superhero comics for most of my life. So I have always been interested in a combination of the two, and consistently disappointed with everything that I've seen. Marvel Dicemasters was only the most recent travesty, as an awkward set of unthematic procedures and colorful dice.

While pondering this topic, I found a site with a terrible top 10 list on this topic:

www.toplessrobot.com/2013/05/the_10_best...hero_board_games.php

I did enjoy one section regarding the top-rated game on that list, Super Powers Skyscraper Caper. "The mission of the game? FOR THE HEROES TO PUSH THE VILLIANS OFF OF THE SKYSCRAPER. Fuck and yes. Better still, you earn "hero medals" for killing the bad guys."

What superhero boardgames have you enjoyed, and what made them fun? And what particular challenges are posed by the concept of a superhero game that cause so many designers to fail?

I've played X-Men: Alert by Pressman and designed by Berg (or was it Borg)? That one wasn't bad, basically just a dice rolling game but you built a team and had a few choices to make at times. There was also the Under Siege that I bought at the same time when I was a kid. I remember being amazed when the total rang up at $9 even for the two. That one was a little more in depth so I never played it as a kid or as an adult for being too kiddy. Both have great minis though.

Heroes Wanted which was a bust.

DC Deckbuilder and I didn't feel like a hero or super.

Pack of Heroes actually looks promising for a light two player card game that looks to play a bit like Summoner Wars.

I've heard a lot of good things about the Spiderman game from Tilst which was designed by Christopher Bollenger (I'm sure I butchered his name) the Earth Reborn/Dungeon Twister guy.

Zev was trying to solicit a copy of Capes and Cowls I assume to look at a potential print, not sure what ever happened with that.

Dicemasters which had theme in that you were massing up a pile of heroes to go charging to your opponent like many comic covers, beyond that though, yeah not much.

The Batman Gotham City Strategy Game I thought was pretty cool by playing as the bad guys and making it an area control game over Gotham. This is actually the only one I'm thinking about picking up.

Michael Barnes wrote: My wife was on a commercial shoot a couple of months ago and one of the people she was working with in the art department was the wife of the guy that designed Capes and Cowls. Very weird. I should have seen if she could get a copy from her.

Problem with superhero games is that they are all, effectively, the same game. City map or other geographical representation. Crime markers/villains/events happen. Heroes go to those places and do something to make said markers/villains go away. This goes back to the old GW Judge Dredd game, which is kind of like the template for most superhero games.

That Wizkids Batman game tried something different, making the players villains and Batman as a mutually controlled figure. Had it been better design-wise, it could have been the first great superhero game.

Another big issue with superhero games is that they always feel like they're made by someone who has kind of a casual, more mainstream interest in the subject matter...so if they have licensed characters, it comes across like comics never left the Silver Age. If they have made-up characters, they have about as much authenticity as superheroes made up by kids whose parents won't get them Marvel/DC halloween costumes.

I swiped this response from another thread here, to get things going.

Great points all around. Heroes patrolling the city seems to be a common implementation, because patrolling against crime seems to be the most basic function of a superhero. The WizKids Batman thing was have been more of supervillain game, but I would have totally gone for it except that it didn't sound good. And the licensed character thing is a legitimate concern. Either the game has a license, but the concept of the characters is stuck in a bland silver age version, or the the unlicensed game has really lame heroes and villains.

My favorite superhero boardgame so far is Strange Synergy, except that I had to remake my edition with new components before I wanted to play it. The name is terrible, because it doesn't even begin to hint at superheroes. The concept is that each player (2-4) draws random superpower cards and uses them to customize a team of three superhuman characters. These teams then engage in a superhuman version of Capture the Flag. My favorite part is that roughly half the powers are hidden from opponents at the start of the game, because there is no visual clue to the powers that a given character might have. The remaining powers are more obvious, like superhuman strength (bulging muscles) or robotic body. While no superhero boardgame could ever capture every imaginable power, it's obvious that Strange Synergy missed out on the ability to fly. Probably a game balance issue, since groundpounders would be helpless against a flying opponent with a decent ranged attack.

Unfortunately, Strange Synergy suffered from a terrible art decision. Kaja Foglio did the art, and it was clear that she and the game designer had little familiarity with superhero tropes. So instead of cool-looking superhumans in costumes, you get orcs(!), goths (!!), catgirls (!!!) and mad scientists. So I found a bunch of generic-looking superheroes and villains at a website for some dude's Champions campaign, and swiped lots of pictures for standup cardboard tokens. I also bought some extra standup holders from Steve Jackson games and painted them in various colors, so my game now scales up to 9 players for maximum ridiculous mayhem. Then I even replace the lame box cover artwork with a color copy of a cover from the Elementals vs. Justice Machine mini-series.

Super Deck!

Isn't it pathetic that one of the main problems with superhero games is that the art ALWAYS sucks? It makes no sense...Marvel has some of the finest pencilers and inkers in the business on the payroll and they let Wizkids slap whatever dated-ass, tasteless superhero art they can scratch together on Legendary. I have Marvel BOXER SHORTS that have better artwork than Legendary.

You know what the problem is here? THEME.

Let's say I'm making a Spider-Man game. If I'm a typical board game designer that thinks that theme is pictures, flavor text, and characters...then I make a game where players play Spidey or one of his associates and they run around NYC stopping crime and occassionally fighting Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Electro, Etc. Maybe you roll dice at them or build a deck. Maybe over the course of the game you get better at rolling dice or building a deck to fight them.

But I'm a BETTER game designer that REALLY wants to express some of the same THEMES and concepts that are in Spider-Man comics...then I do something totally different. I come up with mechanics that illustrate the core "with great power comes great responsibility" THEME. Peter Parker's struggles with being a teenager/young adult are as important as punching Doc Ock. Aunt May is a major concern. Photojournalism works somewhere in there. As does cracking wise and struggling with both self-doubt and relationship issues.

And I also design my game with the understanding and acknowledgement that Spider-Man is a still-current, still ongoing series so I use characters,artwork, typefaces and storylines from RECENT, ACTUAL comics...not this vague, pop understanding of the character and stories that may as well have been gleaned from the side of a lunch box or a coloring book.

So in sum, if you think that "Spider-Man" is theme...you're dead fucking wrong and you're already headed toward making yet another game with a map of the city, crime markers that pop up, rolling dice to make a bad guy card go away, and so forth.

You know who needs to make a superhero game? Reiner Knizia.

EDIT- oh, he did! He made a Spider-Man game for Ravensburger, 2012. It looks cute. And it looks like there's actually THEME there- Spider-Man's mobility and the NYC skyline are major mechanical features of the game- not "Spider-Man punches Lizard".

Michael Barnes wrote: So in sum, if you think that "Spider-Man" is theme...you're dead fucking wrong and you're already headed toward making yet another game with a map of the city, crime markers that pop up, rolling dice to make a bad guy card go away, and so forth.

Bah, your game sounds boring. This "With great power", photojournalism stuff...Bah! Humbug!
Give me powers and bad guys to beat them up with. That is all I want.

For an individual hero like Spider-man, the patrolling game actually seems about right. Aside from his great power set, it seems like the only interest level would be variable combinations of villains, terrain, and maybe some extenuating circumstances. Like, Gwen Stacy in danger, or secret identity at risk.

For a team fight, Strange Synergy really does scratch that itch nicely for a non-licensed game.

Although I am not at all a fan of the deckbuilder mechanic, it does seem suitable for more of a saga approach to a superhero team game, to reflect changing team rosters and resources.

Either way, a good superhero game should allow for powerful characters smashing up the landscape and using found stuff as weapons. Like ripping out a streetlight post and smacking people with it like an over-sized baseball bat. Or tossing a sewer lid like a Frisbee. Knocking down walls or even buildings, for an epic feel. Getting distracted by innocent bystanders in danger.

Barnes -- seriously, track down a copy of Capes & Cowls. Most thematic superhero game I've played, even though it is more abstract than most.

I can't say I've played too many super hero games. Although it has it's flaws my favorite is still Marvel Heroes. The rules aren't all that intuitive, and it's flaws become more and more apparent each time I play (been a long time though). Still, it has the BEST combat system I've ever played in a game. I love the combat.

I'm not sure if you all are talking about strictly, literally board games, but sentinels of the multiverse is pretty awesome. Vs. system and Overpower were both good, heroclix and the fan customs for heroscape are great brawlers. But none of those are board games.

There's a sentinels brawler coming out that got some good buzz from gen con demos.

VonTush wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote: So in sum, if you think that "Spider-Man" is theme...you're dead fucking wrong and you're already headed toward making yet another game with a map of the city, crime markers that pop up, rolling dice to make a bad guy card go away, and so forth.

Bah, your game sounds boring. This "With great power", photojournalism stuff...Bah! Humbug!
Give me powers and bad guys to beat them up with. That is all I want.

You can (and should) still have all that. But if you want there to be an actual THEME, there needs to be something else.

I played a couple of different Marvel games that Richard Launius designed, one of which I was sort of working on developing and trying to get the Ares Games guys to pick up as a Marvel Heroes card game (this was before they lost the license and the licensing fees blew up through the roof after Iron Man). It was fairly standard stuff, but there were a couple of THEME pieces that I thought were lightly handled, but they added a greater feel to it being a superhero game. One is that heroes could be affected by events in their "private lives"- maybe waylaid for a mission or not able to perform up to par. Another is that some heroes naturally worked better together than others to reflect rivalries and competing agendas. So Daredevil and Punisher didn't work together so well, but Spider-Man and Johnny Storm did.

If you're going for something that doesn't really have a theme other than "superheroes/villains beating the shit out of each other", a Wiz-War style game sounds like a pretty good idea.

Or Epic Duels Marvel, which should have happened five times over by now.

Strange Synergy is very likely directly inspired by Wiz-War. It plays somewhat like Wiz-War, only you get a team, the special abilities are fixed once you start (instead of cards that you draw and play), and the map is boring instead of a neat dungeon labyrinth.

Marvel Heroscape is the only supers game worth playing as far as "board game". I still posit that Legendary is the best superhero themed table game of all time, but not because it's that good, while it is good, but rather because all of the other suck hot, sweaty, unshaven balls. Balls that are covered in Michael's skid-marked boxers, no less.

It shouldn't be that fucking hard. Maybe I'll have to make one after Project X is done and when I'm happy with Hoodrats, which is 99% at this point. You might not believe me, which is fine, but I think I've made the best, most thematic Euro-style worker placement game ever. A shame that myself, my friends, and the people who have blind playtested it for me will ever see it. There may be nothing more enjoyable than watching a lily white D&D guy utter black and latino slang while talking about drug dealing...while placing meeples.

If Wizards can make a D&D themed euro placement game that works, how come nobody has figured out how to make a really unique, truly awesome super hero game in the last 50 years?

Most fantasy adventure / dungeon crawls are superhero games in an alternate setting. Your cleric can cast revive or repel undead? That's some superhero material right there.

The problem is that the Marvel/DC type superhero setting comes with a LOT of baggage and expectations, and that is hard to execute in a meaningful way.