Grabbed this because the art direction hooked me immediately, 1920s rubber-hose cartoon villains, real personality on every card, and I’ll say that part fully delivers. This is a beautiful looking box, no complaints on production.
Mechanically it’s a boss-battler in the vein of a couple bigger, heavier games in that space, heroes draft weapons and gear and gang up on a rotating cast of bad guys over four rounds, and I went in hoping for a lighter, faster version of that genre. What I got instead is a game that’s light in complexity but not in playtime, and that mismatch is where it lost me some.
The bosses get meaner every round on top of dealing damage directly to players every few hits, which ramps the tension fine early, but starting health is low enough that a rough opening couple turns can put a player functionally out of the fight before the game’s even found its rhythm. Had exactly that happen to Renata in our second session, one bad early exchange and she spent the rest of the scenario just going through motions rather than genuinely competing, which soured the whole session.
It’s fully scenario-based so a full playthrough does wrap in one sitting, that part’s a real plus if you don’t want a campaign commitment. But compared to the couple other boss-battler-style games I’ve got on the shelf, ones with more mechanical weight and a cleaner sense of what they’re trying to be, this one lands as a disappointment by comparison, too much luck deciding outcomes for a game that otherwise wants to feel tactical, and a runtime that outstays the amount of actual decision-making on offer.
Great art, mixed execution. Wouldn’t steer someone away from it outright, but it’s not earning regular rotation here.