Thanos Rising - Review

Should you fling this game onto your table like Captain America's shield, or shoot it back with Iron Man's repulsor rays??  We let you know...

We say...

Read on for more.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!

Thanos has arrived with his gang of villains and it's your job to take them down in this new Avengers: Infinity War themed cooperative board game for 2-4 players by USAopoly called "Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War.  

When I first heard of this game, I was skeptically excited since, as a massive Marvel comics fan, I am always on the lookout for a quality Marvel superheroes board game to fill the comic book board game void in my life left by Legendary: Marvel.  I tried Sentinels of the Multiverse, but alas, that was not the superhero game for me.  I also had Legendary: Marvel, which I enjoyed, but with all of the expansions, and massive setup, it became a bit too overwhelming for me.  Recently, as my comic book nerdiness sent me into a multiverse of excitement over the soon to be released, Avengers: Infinity War movie, I heard that USAopoly was going to be releasing a tie in board game.  A movie tie in board game?  Uh oh, that can't be good...  Or is it??  

My nerdy excitement got the better of me, and urged me to buy Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War upon seeing it in my LFGS.  However, I thought, will this be a fly by night, short lived experience, or might it just have enough meat to remain in game play circulation?   Well, it ends up that USAopoly put together a really solid cooperative board game with Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War with outstanding component quality.

Thanos Rising is a family/gateway cooperative board game, which we found is a great experience for both families, newbies, and more experienced gamers.  However, as with the comic story of Marvel's Infinity War, don't think that this will be a walk in the park, as Thanos Rising is brutally difficult to win.

The players have one winning condition,  in the newbie game, take out 7 of Thanos' villains.  After a few games, you may want to try the more difficult base game where the players need to take down all 10 of Thanos' villains.  However, whereas the players have this one goal to win, Thanos has three ways to defeat the players: (1) collect all 6 of the Infinity Stones and destroy the universe, (2) kill 10 heroes, or (3) completely kill off all of the heroes in one player's team.  So far, we have experienced 2 of these losing conditions.

In Thanos Rising, the players take the HQ of one of the four superhero teams in Avengers: Infinity War.  You can have the Avengers Compound, Wakanda, Doctor Strange's Sanctum, or be in Nowhere.  Each location comes with it's own team leader.  The players take the card with their team leader and place it by their HQ.   Each location and team leader has a special ability on it which can be triggered once per turn if you meet to corresponding activation conditions, but we'll get more into that later.

The game is setup with two game boards, one for the tracking Thanos' collection of the infinity Stones and the other which is the sector map.  Start by shuffling the asset deck which is comprised of various heroes from Infinity War, and Thanos' villains.  You then distribute cards around the sector map.  There can only be three cards in each of the three sectors of the universe.  A huge, beautifully sculpted and pre-painted miniature of Thanos stands tall in the middle of it all looking down upon all of the puny mortals.

The players turns are separated into 4 phases.  In the first phase, the active player takes their team's token and places it into the sector that they wish to go to.  Remember, that there are only 3 sectors and each sector hold three cards.  The sector that they place their token into signifies which of the three cards that the player is either going to fight or try to recruit onto their team.

In phase two, Thanos attacks.   He rolls two large, chunky dice.  One tells you what Thanos will do, while the other die signifies which of the six Infinity Stones Thanos is closer to obtaining for his Infinity Gauntlet.  Sometimes, the active player will need to rotate Thanos to another sector where he will attack everyone there, including the active player's team if his/her team token is in that sector.  Each hero in that sector receives a damage cube.  When that heroes damage area is filled up, Thanos has killed them. Sometimes, the player will have to roll the Infinity die again, while the worst outcome is the gauntlet which allows all of the active villains on the board to attack.  This is where things go really wrong!

In the third phase, the active player rolls dice and assigns them to cards within the sector they are in.  Each player begins the game with 4 dice, however, based on their HQ, which dice they roll are different.  For instance, Wakanda rolls three red attack dice and one blue tech die, while Nowhere allows the player to roll three red attack dice and one black cosmic die.  There are 4 different colors of dice, red (attack), blue (tech), green (mystic) and black (cosmic).  Each die has all of the various symbols used in the game, but each color specializes in one of the categories, which leads to the strategy of the game. 

The player then allocates or places dice symbols which match symbols on either a hero that they are trying to recruit for their team, or the symbols to fight a villain.  The catch here is that the active player may only place dice on one card per roll of the dice and only matching symbols.  Also, each villain can only be attacked once per turn.  If the player is able to match symbols rolled on their dice to all of the symbols on a hero card, they get to take that hero and place it into their team.

The strategy here is that certain heroes synergize with other heroes in order to either allow the player to roll more dice, different dice, or offer a special ability.  Each hero recruited to a team has their own special abilities.  It's awesome to see your team grow with the characters you want to be on your team.  However, it is definitely not an easy task to recruit these heroes.  It is not easy to roll everything you need to recruit them, so expect a rousing cheer from the other players when you finally succeed in recruiting that elusive hero that you've been trying to get for the last 5 turns.

The player can also try to fight Thanos' goons the same way they recruit a hero.  However, each villain has multiple damage counters and can only be attacked once per turn.  When a player successfully damages a villain, they get to draw a bonus token.  These are various symbols or tokens which can be used by anyone at any time during the game, so long as it's after Thanos' attack.

Finally it is the cleanup phase and the next player takes their turn.  Play continues until either side's victory conditions are met.

Now, what did we think of the game?  Well, first off, let me tell you, that Thanos Rising can be brutally difficult to win.  The players always feel overwhelmed.  Out of the 5 games of Thanos Rising that we have played, we still have yet to win one game!!  We came close once though.  We could have won in about 2 additional turns, but in the end, Thanos got all of the Infinity Stones and destroyed everything.

I didn't talk much about the Infinity Stones during the game description, however they are centrally important to the game.  The players by all means, do not want to allow Thanos to get the Infinity Stones because once Thanos puts a stone into his gauntlet, each successive time players roll that color on Thanos' Infinity die, that stone's power triggers.  Each Infinity Stone is on a circular disc with spaces for Infinity cubes to be placed on them when Thanos rolls that color on his die.  Once Thanos obtains the final cube for an Infinity Stone, the players flip over that color's disc to reveal what will now happen when that color gets rolled on Thanos' Infinity die.  This further excalates the brutality.

Okay, now back to what we thought of Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War.

I absolutely love this game!!  It is so well designed and well published.  This itches the comic board gaming itch so well.  It's fun and a well designed co-op.  The randomness of the dice counters alpha player quarterbacking.  However, that being said, there is quite a lot of randomness to this game, which to me, fits in well with its theme.  The players realize how desperate the Avengers' situation with Thanos truly is.  However, often the players are left to the results of their dice rolls, which I know some board gamers do not like.  However, a friend of mine who usually does not like randomness in his games played and actually liked Thanos Rising.  This alone should be a testament to the game.

Myself? I don't usually mind randomness in my games, so that did not bother me.  In a game such as this, I think the randomness is necessary to capture the theme.  Furthermore, the theme truly does shine through here.  Thanos Rising has the feel of Pandemic, with the gameplay style of The Elder Sign.  However, I would much rather play Thanos Rising that either of the other co-ops.  I just have so much more fun with Thanos.  It also doesn't hurt that I love the source material and am fan of Marvel.  However, all of the players in all of the 5 games that I've been a part of really enjoyed Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War.

That too is a testament to the game.

Finally, my wife loved it and asked to play it a second time right away...

That also is a testament to the game.

Finally, we here can with great joy give THANOS RISING: AVENGERS INFINITY WAR...