There are a few different areas in nerdom that really shine for me. These are avenues that I have enjoyed, collected and experienced for many years. One of those is board games and everything that goes with them, that is a world I have really enjoyed getting more and more into. Another is superheroes and other comic/movie characters that let me escape into some fantasy world of creation with action, suspense and marvels of imagination. When these paths cross, magic can happen. I love themed superhero games with movie/comic personas and other fantasy characters at my fingertips to play with. Sometimes the results are great, other times not so much. Today we will take a look at one of those instances where the world of board games and the world of pop culture smash together and see if they got the formula right!
Funkoverse Strategy Games are published by Funko and designed by Prospero Hall Games. The game plays ages 10+ for 2-4 players. There are a variety of options in game type available that we will discuss.
Overview
In Funkoverse you will play with between 2-4 players and go up against each other in a combat based game to determine the winner in a wide variety of game types. You will control multiple characters of different Intellectual Properties (IPs) that you can mix and match on your team as well!
Setup and Gameplay
(For ease of discussion, I will go through the game as if you were playing with two players and using a DC Comics Funkoverse box.)
Players will pick between 3 characters on each side and attach the light or dark colored bases to them to designate their team. Collect each of the character’s cards and place them in your play area along with the exhaust markers, ability tokens that match and a cooldown track. The dice are victory point tokens are placed in a general player area.
Each round players will alternate single turns until all the characters have gone once, then the round ends and a new one will begin. In a round players will chose one of their characters and perform up to two actions for them. These actions include:
Move-Move up to 2 squares in any direction. Movement is based on single squares on the board and can be moved straight or diagonally but never through your rivals or obstructions on the board. You cannot move onto a square with a rival or ally to stay there. Movement can go into a spot with an obstruction but only if it doesn’t fit the entirety of the square.
Basic Challenge-Challenges are where you fight an adjacent rival by rolling the combat dice. Adjacent counts in this game if the other character is one space away but also visible and not limited by any obstructions. In a basic challenge, you roll two dice and the your opponent will roll dice equal to their defense found on their card. Each character wants to get successes based on attack or defense. Starburst count as 1 attack and the shields count as 1 defense. The 3 exclamation points counts as 3 successes for that character. If you have more successes than the defender, they are knocked down. Knocked down characters can be Knocked Out by being challenged and losing again. They are removed from the map and placed on the Cooldown track at 1.
Assist-This move will allow an adjacent ally to stand up a Knocked down character and bring them out of the potential of harm’s way.
Interact-Interact is used in a variety of ways in the different settings of the game type and board. They may allow you to do things like picking up victory point crystals or capturing a flag on the board of your opponent to score points. This will vary each game type.
Ability-You can spend an ability token to use a special ability listed on the character’s card. Each character brings a number of tokens based on their character card to your ability token pool. The actions have a number on them, and that is where the token used goes on the Cooldown pool. Each character brings a unique ability list that can really change the direction and momentum of the game as you play.
Use Item-Characters can be equipped with items that stay with them the entire duration of the game and can be used in various ways. When an item is used it is sent to the Cooldown track fo the duration printed on the card for that item.
Rally-If your character is knocked down you may use both of your actions to stand your character back up.
Once you have taken your actions with your characters you need to Exhaust your character and move to the next player to use one of their characters. Then the next player takes a turn with the same options.
At the end of the round when each player has all of their characters Exhausted, Cooldown begins where everything on the track moves down one number and anything that slides off of the 1 spot moves back on to the game board. Characters return to the starting area, ability tokens return to to the token pool and item cards are back in play as well.
Impressions
What could be better:
Variety. Now don’t get me wrong, I love that there is DC, Harry Potter and Golden Girls available right now so close to release but I would love to see other IPs get in the mix. I fully expect that will happen with time and I look forward to seeing what they throw in this world and how it all interacts together!
What I liked
Gameplay. This game is done so well for a skirmish/battle setting. I love how easily it is to pick up and learn and the mechanics are smooth. The game comes across like it has been polished through a lot of playtesting and thought behind the design. I appreciate the balance that the game seems to bring to the table and have had close matches in each match I’ve played so far.
Options. In regards to the gameplay this box is full of a lot of variety. The characters provide multiple choices of how to best mix and team-up your squad. The game types vary as well giving you quite a few different game experiences to get to the table.
Components. Who doesn’t love a good Pop! figure? These are smaller than the standard size by about a third and come with multiples in the box. They are beautiful sculpts and really (no pun intended) pop on the table! The rest of the components including the game board and art is great and vibrant in design. It’s nice to see an IP based game that doesn’t reuse artwork seen in other games or comics.
Future. I think the potential for where this game can go is one of the most exciting things. There are so many IPs in the Funkoverse that I would think the potential additions could be endless, and that is an exciting thing for the future of a game like this. There are so many I can think of right now that it gets me excited just thinking of the combinations that would be possible to battle on my table!
Overall
The Funkoverse Strategy games are a true suprise in a box for me. I came for the wonderful sculpts because who doesn’t love a good Funko Pop figure? The game looks great on the table and when it is set up we have had a lots of eyes interested in it when they see it from a distance. The art and the IP drew me in but the gameplay and the quality of this game kept me around past any initial excitement.
I think some hobby boardgamers may have given this game a glance and an assumption that it is light, but trust me this is a game you need to get to the table. It has an easy entry for casual players but at the same time offers enough meat in the game to really reach a seasoned player. The characters all feel balanced when you play them out, each bringing their own unique blends of aggressive and defensive moves. I appreciate the strength of the game play here-you can really tell that playtesting and care was put into it to make sure there was balance throughout and nothing that screamed overpowered or poorly designed.
Overall this is a win for Funkoverse and I hope the start of some really high-quality combat games set in a variety of fun universes. There is so much I want to explore and I can’t wait to see what direction they take the game in with new maps, characters and other additions. Make sure to check this one out and get these adorable characters to your table soon!
Be the first to comment