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Be the first to review “Kick-Ass”
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New York City is being overrun with criminals. The Police Department either can’t handle this new wave of crime, or has been corrupted from the inside and refuses to help. In these troubled times, certain individuals have stepped up to keep the streets safe…while making sure they aren’t late to work, or they don’t miss another dinner date. Saving the day isn’t easy when you’ve got an active social life to maintain.
In Kick-Ass: The Board Game, players take on the role of one of seven masked vigilantes trying to keep New York City safe. Working together, they must keep the Evil Boss’ plan from coming to fruition. Each round, they travel to the various districts on the game board, beating up minions, doing good deeds for the citizens, and trying to keep their personal life from falling apart. It’s a difficult task, but luckily, they’ve got their friends to help them out.
The game includes five different bosses, and all of the different heroes, bosses, mini-bosses, and minions are represented by miniatures. Each of the seven heroes has unique gear and activation cards that they can use.
—description from the publisher
Ages | 18+ |
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Players | Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
Play Time | 60m – 90m |
Designer | Hjalmar Hach, Maurizio Vergendo, Roberto Pestrin |
Mechanics | Cooperative Game |
Theme | Comic Book / Strip |
Publisher | CMON Limited, Delta Vision Publishing, Edge Entertainment, Galápagos Jogos |
Callomac
I like the theme, art and general mechanics of the game. It's a Pandemic-style game, where you have to balance completing objectives with combatting threats that spawn each turn. I have played the game both with one hero and with two heroes. The game is very different with one versus two heroes. I think it is completely broken (and unwinnable) at two players, better (but still requiring too much luck) at one player, and possibly winnable at four players. I'll start with two players: at this player count the game is completely unwinnable without amazing luck. In two straight games I was overrun with minions by the start of the fourth round (out of 9), and I think there is nothing that could be done to prevent that. The basic design of the game is that you draw a spawn card each turn (three turns per round) and then play one action card per player. So you each get one action per player per spawn. In a two player game you start by spawning 2 minions per turn, which is manageable. But that rapidly increases because most spawn cards also boost the enemy spawn rate, so the spawn rate quickly ramps up to unmanageable levels. 19 of the 25 spawn cards boost the spawn rate, so after three rounds (3 spawns per round) you have typically boosted the spawn rate ~7 times, such that you are spawning 4 or 5 enemies per spawn (for two players). That's a problem for two reasons. First, you have to spend turns working on objectives in addition to fighting enemies. That's typical for a Pandemic-style game, but you only get one action per player per spawn, and completing objectives takes almost half of the player actions. That leaves about one fight per round (in a two player game) which is far too few to handle the spawns, at least after a couple rounds. The best you can do in a fight, because of limits on the number of minions per area, is to kill three enemies (4 if you clear the police department), plus maybe one additional per round (which is three turns) using equipment. That's slower than the spawn rate by the third or fourth round. But you can't fight that much because you don't have enough health or happiness to fight every action. And, even if you could, you are very dependent on lucky dice rolls to clear a full area in a turn (dice only hit on three sides of a d6, or 50%). This all makes handling 5-6 spawning enemies per turn impossible. I can't even imagine how you could win a two-player game. You simply do not have enough time at the start of a game to build up your character and buy necessary equipment to deal with the fast ramp-up in enemy spawns. A one-player game, however, plays a lot different. Enemy spawns in a one player game are much less than half those in a 2-player game (e.g., no spawns for the first couple rounds, then only one or two per round for most of the rest of the game). In my one-player game I never felt even remotely at risk of losing by being overrun with enemies because the map is large enough to accommodate the trickle of spawns until late in the game - you can just ignore most of them. Instead, the focus in a one-player game is on completing objectives - you still need to complete the same tasks as in a two-player game (no player count scaling), despite having half the number of players and this half as many objectives. So the focus in a one-player game changes from fighting to manage the overwhelming spawns to completing objectives (some of which involve fighting). Despite the lack of scaling of objectives I had no trouble completing them (by skipping fights unless required by the objective). But, there is still the issue of randomness - a bad roll or two while fighting super minions (spawned by the boss) and you can fail a boss objective and lose the game (as I did). So, one player is a completely different game than two player, much better, but the dice are too punishing to make it rewarding. I have not played the game three or four--player but based on the rate of enemy spawns you get I'd guess that the game is hard but winnable at four player (and maybe winnable at three players). This is because you get twice as many actions (four players compared to two players) but spawn barely more enemies than in a two-player game (e.g., you spawn 8 per turn at the max spawn rate for four players, compared to 6 per turn in a 2-player game). Even though the enemy spawns would be more manageable at four players, you'd have to be lucky to make any mistakes (or have bad dice rolls) since one or two bad spawns in a row can completely overrun city hall and lose the game. I think there is a potentially fun game here, given the mechanics and theme, but it's completely broken by the overwhelming difficulty at two players, and likely only a decent experience at one player (my experience) or four players (which I have not played). You can house rule it to make it more balanced at intermediate player counts - e.g., cut the rate of the spawn tracker increases by half - but I can't imagine this game was play-tested to be balanced at intermediate player counts. Note that I have seen a couple comments on the BGG forums suggesting that the game isn't too hard, and some saying that they have won easily. Those comments must come from people playing at four players or one players, but I don't believe it's possible to win a two-player game.
bigoi75
I've played it solo (twice) and in 3 player count and it work well! First play was a little bit slow and confusing since there are lot of things to keep in mind BUT already on second play I start to enjoy this game. With bigger player count difficulties raise up but working in team you can afford this. Dice results must enter, so there is lucky (also with card draft for object, events, villains etc.) but you also have tacticts to play and you never feel frustrated. It's a long game (60-90 is not real ... just consider at least 45min/player) and some being a cooperative is necessary to have a good grooup, but if you like the comic (and even if not) justget this game a chance. Played only first scenario (Red Mist) until now. I'll tray asap the other ones.
gatchaman
Had fun for a couple of plays. The action selection is cool, upgrading your actions is cool. But there's just way too much upkeep and bookkeeping for the amount of choices you are making. Flip a card, add some minions, resolve events, get new cards in the market...so many things! Then you get to play three cards. The minis look cool but are more trouble than they are worth.