Mutants on the board – review of the game “X-Men: Mutant Rise”

Who has not heard of Wolverin, Cyclops or Storm? The X-Men team has been accompanying us in comics, movies and books for years. This time, thanks to the Rebel publishing house, they moved to the board game  X-Men: Mutant Rise !

We’re going to save the world!

X-Men: Mutant’s Rise  is a game designed for a minimum of one and a maximum of six players. It was created under the license of Marvel, so during the game you will meet well-known heroes (and anti-heroes), as well as experience adventures taken straight from the comic book cards. Although the title itself is new on the market, board game players will quickly realize that they have already played something similar. Well, it’s a reworked version of the  Sign of the Elder Gods. So we have different characters, stories and we will not have to deal with Cthulhu, but all the mechanics remain almost unchanged. First, we will have to properly arrange all the elements on the table, and there are a lot of these. Here you will find cards for power, intrigue, mission, villains, plot, school, support, bond and threat, tokens for success, damage, training and resolution, a threat track, markers, special dice, and a figure of the X-Men plane, i.e. the Blackbird. Then everyone chooses the mutant they want to start the game with (during the game, we may be forced to exchange our  homo superior  for another one), and at the end we will have to draw the main plot, i.e. the final goal of our mission.

Once we have everything ready, we will start our game. From now on, we will have to decide every round whether we want our hero to go on missions scattered around the world, rest at Xavier’s school or fight the threats revealed during the course of the game. Because  Mutant Rebellion is a cooperative game, we will confer with friends what is best to do at the moment in order to reach the main goal, chosen by us at the very beginning. And so round after round we will have to make decisions, roll our dice, fight enemies and try to keep our mutants alive, while making sure that our indicator does not reach the tipping point on the threat track. If we make it to the final fight and defeat the main enemy – we won! On the other hand, the death of all X-Men, exceeding the value of “15” on that track, or the lack of threat cards means failure. This is what it looks like in a nutshell. Detailed instructions have been written on 24 pages that must be read before the start. Fortunately, the game itself turns out to be much simpler after a few rounds,

Nothing special…

Like most games, also  X-Men: Mutant Rise it has many advantages and disadvantages. In this case, there are a lot of both. Let’s start with the cons. As already mentioned, the manual consists of 24 pages. However, the problem is not its thickness, but the lack of accuracy. Even after reading the whole thing several times, we will not be able to fully understand the rules. That’s because some of them just aren’t there! It is not known exactly when we can finally move on to the final battle. Neither has it been explained exactly how to deal with threat cards. After all, both issues are crucial for the game. Fortunately, you can now find a set of rules revised and supplemented by players on the web. In reality, however, the publisher should take care of it. Another problem is that if we don’t get into the X-Men and read the stories on the cards, our game will quickly boil down to the fact that we will only move pawns and throw dice. Too much repetition can make the game get boring quickly. In addition, if we find someone in the team who already has a few games behind him and likes to be a typical leader, he will start to rule and direct our movements. In this case, he will play alone, and our role will be reduced only to throws. To all this, it should be added that the graphics on the threat cards have not been taken care of. Although we will find various descriptions on them, the drawings will remain unchanged, which will greatly spoil the atmosphere and the possibility of transferring to the world of comics. who has a few games behind him and likes to be a typical leader, he will start to rule and direct our movements. In this case, he will play alone, and our role will be reduced only to throws. To all this it should be added that the graphics on the threat cards have not been taken care of. Although we will find various descriptions on them, the drawings will remain unchanged, which will greatly spoil the atmosphere and the possibility of transferring to the world of comics. who already has a few games behind him and likes to be a typical leader, he will start to rule and direct our movements. In this case, he will play alone, and our role will be reduced only to throws. To all this, it should be added that the graphics on the threat cards have not been taken care of. Although we will find various descriptions on them, the drawings will remain unchanged, which will greatly spoil the atmosphere and the possibility of transferring to the world of comics.

… But it’s not too bad

Fortunately, in X-Men: Mutant’s Rise also has quite a few advantages that will improve her overall rating. As already mentioned, some cards are missing interesting graphics. Most, however, have pictures straight from Marvel comics. They bring to mind, first of all, the famous animation from the 90s X-Men, but also notebooks created by Jim Lee. Both our heroes and their enemies are doing great on them. Besides, the team looks even better on cardboard figurines, and their Blackbird, although simple to build, deserves recognition. However, this is not the only thing homo superiors fans will enjoy. The publishers prepared for us as many as sixteen different Xavier students, including the most famous ones like Wolverine, Beast or Rogue, but also less popular ones – in the form of Armor or Shadowcat. In addition, we will also find midfielders from the New Mutants team, such as Warlock, Wolfsbane or Cannonball. Of course, each of them has their own unique powers. The game will be a good opportunity to refresh your knowledge about mutants, and to introduce new readers to this world. Thanks to the simple rules, we will start playing with new people quite quickly. Although, in fact, this title is more suited to playing solo than in a team. In this way, no one will direct us, and we will check ourselves which strategists are. And there are 8 different plots and 32 plot cards to choose from. It will make us a lot of entertainment, unless, of course, we feel into history and do not get bored with repeated dice throwing. By the way, it is another treat for Marvel fans, because all the stories are known from the most important notebooks about the adventures of the X-Men.

It all depends on the player

As you can see, the title is not flawless, but it also has many advantages. It is a game that will surely appeal to fans of the X-Men themselves, but also to people who like storylines. Those who care more about interesting mechanics will quickly get bored. After just a few rounds, they will come to the conclusion that everything is based on rearranging the figures and matching the dice results. Admittedly, a lot of work and effort was put into the artwork of the heroes themselves, but at the same time, pictures for the threat cards were omitted. While it’s a cooperative game, it’s more suited to playing alone. The rules of the game, on the other hand, are simple and easy to explain, but to get to know them, we’ll have to do some research on the Internet. The extensive instruction does not contain all the rules and it is easy to get lost in it. X-Men: Mutant rebellion  as mediocre.