Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War

published by USAopoly

TL,DR Corner

• Players: 2-4
• Time (on box / actual): 45 minutes / 90 minutes
• Setup / Teardown Time: 4 min./5 min.
• Footprint: Medium table
• Components: 3.5/5
• Fun-factor: 4/5
• Replayability: 3.5/5
• Style: Co-op, dice allocation, team-building
• Summary: A rules-light co-op game whose difficulty hinges more on randomness, but still allows for some tactical decisions to save the day.

Getting the right balance of difficulty down in a co-op game is tough. Often, because you're not focused on balancing players against each other, you must create some sort of engine that is easy to get running to act as the adversary. Too much scripting can lead to experiences that get quickly stale, with nearly a one-shot feel to them. While perhaps satisfying the first time, they quickly lose their appeal as the players reveal whatever scripted elements are hidden from view initially. Meanwhile, too much reliance on randomness (whether it be via card draws, dice rolls, or similar mechanics) can leave players feeling godlike in one game, and crippled observers in the next, the very definition of a "swingy" gameplay experience.

TR:AIW is definitely weighted on the random side of the scale. The challenge comes from attempting to construct teams that provide enough bonuses (in the form of hero-healing, or giving the team more dice to roll) to quickly take down the major villains of the game. They can only win by defeating 7 of his minions (represented by a certain type of card, set in an array around a three-sectioned board) before he manages to 1) KO an entire team, 2) KO 10 heroes, or 3) collects all of the Infinity Gems into his gauntlet. Therefore, it becomes a co-op game of risk-to-reward, building synergies between team mates without leaving your fellow players no team members to recruit. Meanwhile, everyone is watching Thanos become stronger with each passing turn.

The game is themed strongly enough that it really does feel like you're working with the actual characters of the MCU, unlike some games with a pasted-on theme that could be swapped out with almost anything, and yet stay fundamentally the same. It's not so tightly themed, however, that one must know all the details of the MCU to enjoy it, nor does it give away anything from the movie after which it draws its name. It's also engaging enough that players will constantly have to be watching the board evolve, and discussing with each other next steps, heroes they'd like to enlist, and villain targets that look ready to cause major mischief if they are not dealt with quickly.

Those discussions carry one downside, in that they can be the source of some lag in the play of the game, but they really convey the coordination needed between all these heroes to handle the threat that Thanos and his minions pose.

The game comes with four hero teams to start with, as well as their team's Team Leader. Each team has a special power that can occur during their initial dice-roll on their turn, though all the Team Leaders seem to have a variant on the "Get an extra die of [x] color if you have a team member that matches type [y]" ability. The Avengers, for example, led by Captain America, are really good with combat (they always start with four red combat dice), and Cap gives them an extra combat die if there is another Avenger on the team (signified by a matching color on their card), and if they roll a total of 6 combat symbols on the first roll of their turn, they can deal an extra damage to any villain that is on the board. Dr. Strange gets an extra Mystic or Cosmic die if they have another Mystic hero (such as Loki, Thor, Heimdall, etc.), and can gain an extra Bonus Token (which might grant anything from extra dice to healing or removing cubes from the Infinity Stones boards) if the player rolls four Mystic symbols on their opening roll.

These abilities all work together fairly smoothly, though it does feel very tempting (and in fact, can turn out to be very rewarding) to only recruit characters of your "class" in order to maximize those combinations. Meanwhile, the villains, if left unattended, will help Thanos rack up more Infinity Stone markers, or bash the hell out of heroes. This leaves the players with a balancing act where they are trying to build up enough heroes that they can survive longer, combining their powers to deal damage to the villains, or taking the team they have out to deal with those villains.

Component-wise, the cards are nicely made, the art on them appears to be concept art or something close to it from the actual movie, but not movie-stills. The boards are sturdy, and the dice feel good to throw, appearing sharp and well-crafted. The damage and the status cubes in my copy, however, bore sprue-marks, or dings or chips, and the Thanos miniature has a nice base-paint level, but shows flashing around certain parts, as well as some molding errors that seem a touch underwhelming for a game at this price point. (Again, I haven't heard of anyone else seeing issues like this, and they don't have any effect on the game's play.)

Lastly, not a lot of cards are provided in the game, so you'll regularly see the same villain cards come up from game to game. This might start to drag down replay-value, if they don't release expansions with new villains and hero teams. Nevertheless, in four games, there were plenty of close calls, and it held an almost exactly 50:50 win-lose ratio, so there is plenty of game to master here, from the time you first open the box.

These small quibbles aside, in all four or five games I've run so far, I've only heard positive remarks from the players, who greeted the challenges warmly, even when they were trounced by a combination of bad draw and bad rolls. Players were eager to play again and keep trying at it, which is a hallmark of a good co-op experience. I hope to see USAopoly release some expansions in the near future, but in the meantime, I'll have fun taking on the mad Titan at home and at shows with friends.