by kakitamike
I got to demo this at gencon, and while I liked the theme, I felt like it had a few problems.The combination of only 1 currency, plus not having a fixed set of cards to buy (there's 5 cards available to buy at any one time, and refill from a random pool, ala ascension) made it feel like just buying the most expensive card every turn was the clear choice. And since you defeat villains with the same currency, there's actually no choice when you come down to it. Can I defeat a super villain? no? then buy the most expensive card.
The weakness cards in the deck also felt like they detracted. Unlike a game like dominion or tanto cuore, where those filler cards are worth points at the end of the game, the weakness cards literally do nothing. They're just dead cards with no value at all.
The demo game I played also suffered from everyone having cards that tore apart other people's hands, which lead to several turns of nothing going on, with people not buying anything or defeating anything, which leads into another problem.
As far as I know, there's one win condition. Having the most points after defeating the last super villain. If you don't defeat at least one, you ca count yourself out of winning the game, ro placing anywhere near the top.
And with so much hand destruction, and no alternate way to win, games can just drag on for far longer than they should take. It reminded me of dominion where I watch a player run through their entire deck to, in the end, buy maybe one card. But it took that player 5 minutes to buy that one card instead of a few seconds.
The theme is nice. Many players during the demo seemed to like being their favorite super hero. But I just don't see lasting appeal to this game. At best, it might be a good gateway game to get new fans into the deck-building genre.