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Whichever player manages to reduce the health of their opponent’s team to zero is named the winner of the game. Marvel Dice Masters is a great series for players who want a straightforward game that allows them to use some of their favourite characters from the comics. A twist on the beloved deduction card game that’s more than just a different theme As it is in the original Love letter game, each card in Infinity Gauntlet has a different power.
When you are together you’ll get a powerful bonus from that bond,” explains Purdue, “however, if you’re on the negative side, the reverse is true: being together makes you subject to difficult penalties.” Regardless, all these versions are in support of some kind of zoomed out version of some of our favourite heroes and villains. As the game progresses, other allied mutants can also appear, offering special abilities like Sage, who lets you reroll two blue dice, ignore Magneto symbols. The X-Men can also build bonds with each other, which offer unique benefits when you deploy on missions with your bonded partner. Love for example lets you add an extra dice of any color to your pool. But bonds can be broken, and love can turn into regret, which takes away a dice from your pool. X-Men Mutant Insurrection games always work towards the final showdown with famous villains from the X-Men universe. X-Men: Mutant Insurrection is a fully cooperative tabletop game for one to six players. While experienced players can blast through a game solo or with a partner in a bit over an hour, the game really comes into its own with three or more players, and I’d expect that to be a two-hour-plus playthrough for most groups. I recommend a larger group size because so much of the X-Men mythology circulates around the ideas of community, teamwork, and competing personalities, and it’s hard to nail that vibe unless you have a similar mix of different folks at the table. X-Men: Mutant Insurrection is apparently based on an older FFG game in the Elder Sign series, and in both games, the players lead a team of characters against an increasingly challenging series of somewhat randomised encounters, in the context of a wider plot. Where Elder Sign was based on the somewhat overused Lovecraft universe, X-Men: Mutant Insurrection is obviously based on the comic book world that shares the same name. Notably then, fans of the X-Men (comics in particular) will see characters and artwork that they are very familiar with, and this is one of those occasions where I think the thematic universe actually enhances the appeal.
Review Summary
A co-op board game that has players protecting humanity as a team of mutant characters The standees and art-style in Mutant Insurrection make it a love letter to the X-Men comic series. For the casual or lapsed comics reader, understanding that Armor, one of the X-Men included in this box, is from a timeline when the Scarlet Witch stripped nearly a million mutants of their powers, leaving only a handful with their abilities, is likely to be a novel and interesting springboard into a whole new love of the comics. Equally, Krakoa mentioned above, is literally a sentient island in the pacific ocean who managed to capture a number of the original X-Men (Cyclops, Angel, Iceman, Jean Grey and so on) before having them liberated by, what were at the time the ‘New X-Men’ (Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm etc). All of this is really to highlight that these character’s histories are just made out of the parts we’ve already experienced of them through comics, film and TV. We play games with familiar characters from other media partly for exploration and partly for that aspect of remixing something we know. We’re X-Men. We know the risks. I have little fear for our friends… They’ve made their decision. And until we see them again, I will keep them in my prayers. But I fear more for those who would stand against them.” However, that also brings me to one of my main complaints about the game. The player scaling just isn’t that great. X-Men: Mutant Insurrection works best when you have other heroes at a mission for all the reasons listed above. When you are down to just two players, the game loses some of its charm. Therefore, after our first 2 player game, we played every other game at that player count two-handed. Controlling two mutants wasn’t any harder than one, and you got a lot more flexibility in missions and assists. But if you are a “play as the rules are written” type of gamer, then you’ll want to avoid this one unless you have at least 3 players.
The X-Men lend themselves to so many different takes and tones that going iconic lets the most fans find something they recognize as being like their preferred version,” says Perdue, “regardless of whether they are long time comic reade rs or only watch the movies or one of the animated series.” In the game, this dynamic is reflected by bonds, double-sided cards that have a positive effect on one side and a negative effect on the other,” says Purdue, “bond cards come in pairs, and when you get one you give the matching card to another player.” The next step is assist cards – if another player has deployed their character to the same mission as the active hero they can choose to give them their assist card, meaning that they can then choose to collect the dice from either their own assist card or the assisting player’s card. This can help if the assisting player has a better dice combination for the particular mission on their assist card than the active hero. Once the required six dice have been collected it’s time to roll the dice and see if you can complete objectives. Dice will be spent to complete objectives on the mission card and to complete an objective you must complete all the requirements on the objective. The requirements are broken down into power, teamwork and fight, and these symbols are on all the dice in different ratios making it important to have the right combination of dice available to increase your chance of completing all the objectives and succeeding at the mission. If by the end of everyone’s turn the mission/s have been completed you will be receive a reward, which can take the form of healing, reducing threat, creating a bond between characters or taking a mutant card. A mutant card will be a supporting X-Man which will add bonuses to your character’s turn, including things such as dice re-rolls or changing dice faces to more favourable ones. Bonds represent the relationships between the X-Men fluctuating positively or negatively depending on the situation.
The designers understand that while the X-Men may be individually powerful, their success and failure is always based on how they function as a team. After you’ve chosen which mission you’re going to take on, it’s time to roll your dice! Wolverine and Cyclops will each have a chance to defeat Avalanche, but you leap forward with Cyclops to take the first swing. Even though Wolverine isn’t leading the charge this turn, he’s still able to assist, and Cyclops can benefit from Wolverine’s assist card, gathering two red dice and two yellow dice from his own card, plus another red die and a blue die from Wolverine’s
Players can choose from 16 different X-Men to control, from the franchise’s biggest stars such as Wolverine and Rogue down to deeper cuts like Armor and Magik. Because the game is fully cooperative, you’re welcome to play more than one character if you have fewer than six people at your table; the game plays at its best with four or more characters, since you’ll get more complexity in choosing your team-ups and get to see more missions. A lot of players will recognize some core elements from games like Elder Sign,” says Perdue, “players will have missions to take on, roll dice, and match symbols. But a lot of the nuts and bolts are very different.” Yet Perdue’s throughline for this game comes from somewhere a little further out, “my big influences for games like Mutant Insurrection – and I guess really for most games – are tabletop RPGs and Cosmic Encounter,” says Perdue, “RPGs with rulesets that varied a lot depending on your character type, like Shadowrun, really cemented for me how powerful mechanics can be in helping to make a theme or setting engaging, and I love the freeform storytelling.” I like the classic stuff myself, so players will see a lot of Magneto, the Sentinels, and the Hellfire Club, plus iconic foes like Juggernaut and Sauron. Like with the hero roster, there are a couple weird ones in here too, like Krakoa, the sentient island that the team fought in Giant-Size X-Men #1.”Each character has their own pool of four dice representing what they’re best at. For instance, the strong and smart Beast has an even split between red dice, which represent fighting prowess, and blue ones indicating intelligence. Meanwhile, the extremely powerful telekineticist Phoenix has almost entirely yellow dice that represent stranger mutant powers. Each die has a different concentration of symbols, with red emphasising fighting, yellow power and blue teamwork. A bond like Love can be a powerful boon—but if it gives way to Regret, it could tear the team apart from the inside. Your missions lie at the heart of every game of X-Men: Mutant Insurrection. You’ll save humans from imminent danger, travel across the globe to advance the story, or come face-to-face with a villainous mutant intent on rampant destruction. No matter where your mission takes you, every mission offers a series of objectives that you’ll need to complete, using the symbols that you roll on your dice.
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