Stand with Batmann, Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC Comics’ most famous heroes to duel villains, crises and challenges! See what it’s like to have superpowers and overcome evil!
Superhero Duel by Cryptozoic Entertainment and Egmontu is a deck building card game. The game engine, developed by Matt Hyra and Ben Stoll, uses mechanisms that are well-known from other card games of the genre.
We build our deck from famous heroes and villains from DC comics, as well as their characteristic Equipment and Superpowers. We play the role of one of the Superheroes – depending on how we agree with other players, we can randomly choose it or choose it. They include Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and others. Interestingly, we will meet the same heroes later in the Main Deck, from where we buy cards, only under a slightly changed name, such as Man of Steel, Princess Diana of Temiskera or The Fastest Man on Earth. Each character has its own unique skill that the player will be able to use throughout the game.
Draw a card!
Superhero bonuses are presented as simple activities, such as drawing an additional card or adding a Power point, when we use, for example, Equipment or Super Powers in the current turn. So we get purely mechanical commands – the creators did not make much of the plot with them. Only with the Flash card does the rule that the player who plays it starts first, because, as you know, this character is the fastest. In other cases, the skills are not justified in any way.
All the cards are described in a similar way. Of course, in card games, fast-paced action is much more important than rich story plots, and thanks to the smaller amount of text, more space is left for attractive graphics from comics. However, sometimes adding even a few words before the dry command could stimulate the imagination and add extra flavor to the game.
Superpowers and other attractions
We start out with the simplest and lowest power Blows, but over time we gain more and more equipment and allies. The general rules are very simple and clearly described in the manual. We have five cards in our hand per turn, thanks to which we buy more from the bank or defeat the Super Villains. Among them were, among others, Joker, Brainiac and Deathstroke. The player with the most victory points in his deck at the end of the game wins. Along the way, however, we have a lot of various changes, thanks to the Rogues attacking us, as well as various actions from the acquired cards. Some of them give us a permanent effect that we can use every turn – these are Locations. We use others once, until we shuffle our deck. In addition to helping each other with Heroes, Superpowers and Equipment, we have the ability to disturb other players by using Rogues. The plot is not fully thought out, because we are all Superheroes, so theoretically, we should fight on the side of good, and meanwhile, we can attack each other. Playable, it is quite interesting.
The basic set of the Superhero Duel
In the base of the game we get as many as two hundred and fourteen cards, many of which are the same, e.g. starting cards: Blows and Helplessness. as well as two separate piles of Kopniaki and Weaknesses. In addition to these separate types, there are many repetitions in the Main Deck as well. Therefore, before the first game, it is necessary to shuffle it very carefully – otherwise repetition can become tiring. However, the creators thought about how to use doublets to make their presence more meaningful. Some cards make the collected copies from a given series give us additional Victory Points.
Apart from the fact that the graphics are repeated on the cards, I must admit that the packaging is also not very original. We have seen the images of the heroes it contains before. Personally, I even have a poster on my wall with them on. However, the box itself deserves great praise because it is very practical. It contains a lot of compartments that allow you to segregate cards, as well as a lot of free space where additional sets can also fit.
Stand alongside Batmann, Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC Comics’ most famous heroes to duel villains, crises, and challenges! See what it’s like to have superpowers and overcome evil!
Expansion Set 1: Crisis
In the first expansion, we get the same seven Superheroes that we already had in the base (with the difference that this time they have slightly different skills) and additionally seven completely new ones. Among them were Green Arrow, Constantine, Zatanna Zatara, and Swamp Monster. In addition, we will face stronger Super Thieves here, called the Impossible. All villains except Hades are duplicated from the base game as well.
Crisis and common fight against evil
Before fighting each of the Super Villains, we must first overcome the current Crisis. Before this happens, we are also forced to annihilate all the lesser Rogues currently available in the bank. There are no more transfers here! Each Crisis has a constant negative impact on the activity of all players. We will fight such adversities as Tide of Terror, Identity Crisis, Escape from Arkham or Meteroid from Kryptonite. In view of all these difficulties, it is comforting that this time we will fight evil together! This expansion forces us to play a cooperative game. He ruled out the possibility of attacking each other by preventing the collection of Rogue cards. We also no longer count victory points. Therefore, with the basic mode (described in the appendix), the element of competition is also omitted. Instead, we find many skills in the new cards from the Main deck,
Changing the rules of the game
With the introduction of the cooperative mode, the ending has also been modified. We will win if we have defeated all the Super Villains, and we will lose if we run out of Main Deck sooner. You need to hurry, because another important change in the rules is drawing one card from this pile each turn, no matter how many cards are currently in the Bank. In the base, we always had five of them, while here there may be a lot of them or, for example, only one. Of course, it’s fun to play when you have more choice. However, when the game is at an advanced stage and everyone has a lot of power, it often happens that there is not much left on the table. Unfortunately, you have to wait for this stagnation until, for example, a new Crisis or a Super Thief comes to the rescue, ordering you to put in more cards.
The base game Superhero Duel can be played by two to five players, and the Crisis expansion also introduced Solo Mode. I appreciate it very much, because there are relatively few such card games, and they can be valuable especially now, when we cannot meet our friends due to the prevailing pandemic. One-player games are therefore a pleasant alternative to spend your free time.
As a bonus variety, we get various difficulty levels described in the manual. There are as many as nine different points that we can use separately or in combination. Some of them look quite funny as they involve discarding cards from the expansion and going back to the Base itself. However, whatever they are, they give us a lot of possibilities in the next games, and thus also a great replayability.
Stand alongside Batmann, Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC Comics’ most famous heroes to duel villains, crises, and challenges! See what it’s like to have superpowers and overcome evil!
Appendix Watchmen ( Watchmen )
Guardians is a crossover expansion pack that includes the plots and Superheroes of the Watchmen comic book series Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It allows us to play one of the legendary characters, such as Nocny Puchacz, Roschach, Komediant and Dr. Manhattan. In addition to the large Superhero cards, the set includes eleven cards of the Main Deck (perhaps not much, but they contain the most important characteristic themes for this series, such as the New York Location, Ship of the Eagle or Superpower Disintegration), as well as challenges, conspiracies, impure machinations and loyalty cards. The latter are secret and define the roles of the players. Most people will be part of the Loyal team working to overcome the Challenges, and one will become a Conspirator, sabotaging the activities of others and trying to finish the Main Deck as soon as possible. In a two-player game, it may happen that both players are Loyal, but not know it.
In order to speed up the game, the Conspirator uses the possibilities offered by regular cards (some of the expansion packs are especially beneficial for him, and one even allows him to destroy a Loyal player) or, if he succeeds, performs Dirty Machination. It allows him to lay out a secret plot, ensuring a constant effect of destroying cards from the Main deck each time he plays a card of a certain type. After he does, everyone knows who he is and they play together against him. To win, in addition to their Challenges, they must also defeat his Conspiracy.
The Superhero duel with the Guardians added becomes a typical “hidden roles” card game. It is therefore ideal for a party where, when playing in a larger group, it is more difficult to see who is the Conspirator, which can cause funny situations if, for example, someone makes a mistake about the identity of others and tries to disturb a teammate.
Just like in the Crisis, we also add a card to the bank every turn. Thanks to this (and the actions of the Conspirator), the game can be much faster than the basic game.
Summary – what to choose?
The Superhero Duel is perhaps not very original, it has some plot shortcomings, but it is quite fun to play. It is very attractively published and contains a multitude of appetizing comic book graphics, so it is a good collector’s item for fans of DC Comics.
Additional set 1: Crisis I definitely recommend to fans of cooperative games as well as people looking for an interesting single-player game. It expands the basis of the Duel of Superheroes with new story plots and gives it more sense and logic. Thanks to various modes and various elements modifying the difficulty level, it also strengthens its replayability.
The Rangers add-on gives the Superhero Duel the perfect form of a party game. The gameplay is faster and more dynamic. For a conspirator sabotaging the struggles of Loyal players, it will be much easier to hide their evil intentions in a larger group of people.
Nasza ocena: 8.5/10
Superhero Duel is a great and very playable DC Comics card game. Thanks to add-ons, you can play it many times, both alone and with a group of friends at a board game.ORIGINALITY: 7/10
REPLAYABILITY: 10/10
QUALITY OF THE ISSUE: 9/10
PLAYABILITY: 8/10