Mythic Games in recent times it has accustomed us to huge projects, titles that fill players with huge boxes, lots of models, and very complex rules. Super Fantasy Brawl, is a skirmish for 2 to 4 players, with an average duration per game of 30-40 minutes, which will surely fill you - as usual - the house with its giant box, with several miniatures, but this time with a lean and suitable for this type of game.
How to give them a good reason
Before starting you need to know that Super Fantasy Brawl is a hexagonal “arena” skirmish, where players must choose their own composition of heroes, create a game deck, and conquer objectives. After this small introduction, let's go to see the gameplay in detail.
Each player will have to choose three heroes among those released so far (there is already a well-assorted roster of 12 champions). Each chosen character will have a card with him that shows his basic statistics: hit points and possibly an armor. Each of these cards is double-sided, because if the hero manages to kill an enemy hero, he evolves, also acquiring a special ability. In addition to the character card, each hero has six action cards. This set of cards will then need to be mixed together with those of the other two heroes to form your draw deck.
Once you have decided who your team will be, you will start by arranging the heroes one at a time with your opponent on the board, to your liking, but on the starting squares of your team. As soon as all these preparations have been completed, we can start giving them a good reason, but with the aim of conquering first five trophies or trophy points. Each batch of Super Fantasy Brawl takes place in several alternating rounds of play. During his game turn, a player must draw 5 cards from the game deck and can perform three actions, each distinguished by three cores of different colors: red, blue and yellow.
These cores, in addition to marking the type of card or action that can activate a player (the cards of the characters that make up the game deck are of different colors and types), can also be used to carry out basic actions described next to them in the legend, such as moving your champion one hex, or dealing damage to all nearby enemies in a hex, healing your unit for a wound, and finally planning the next activity. Obviously the cards you will have in your hand they will trigger the most disparate effects and they will practically be your extra resource for winning victory points. As a good skirmish, the title is strongly focused on fighting and it is only thanks to the killing of an opposing character that you can "enhance" your champions, acquiring important skills, however the interaction of the objective cards is not to be underestimated, because thanks to these you can easily accumulate the five necessary victory points, also because every kill in this title is never final and it is therefore important to know how to implement solid strategies.
The objective deck scales across a portion of the board, so each player will have certain game turns to be able to capture an objective before it ends up in the graveyard. As the rounds progress, the objectives will yield more trophy points, and this is what has given us the pace of play in several games, because each player, in addition to betting on succulent objectives, had to pay attention to the maneuvers of his opponent. I must say that I got along very well with Super Fantasy Brawl, because the strategies can be well thought out, there are no dice to roll, but simple calculations to be made, with each attack having a range and damage, as well as some special effects. There are only reaction cards that you can play to defend against an attack, but it requires spending a core, and thus depriving you of an action in the next turn.
They are not just barrel!
As soon as I saw the huge box of Super Fantasy Brawl I seriously thought not to be faced with a skirmish title with a duration of only 30-40 minutes, but to be faced with a game with a regulation to be studied for several days, looking for quibbles and small gaps in order to better face the pitched battle. After having unwrapped it and opened it, breathing a sigh of relief, we fortunately found that this is not the case. The regulation of the title is really simple, with Mythic Games has decided to turn to a concept of cartoon-like fantasy miniatures, with “plastic” prints that are simply above average.
The game board also seems huge, but then when you go to count the spaces to move, between traps and large monuments dedicated to the gods of Fabulosa, we immediately realized that combat is practically an immediate consequence. With this spirit we marked the first game immediately after reading the regulation, and already from here we realized that the fight was indeed fundamental, but not the only catalyst for achieving victory. The title is very focused on the control of the different game areas (obviously there is the blue, yellow and red area, but there are also the two starting ones), and they are marked as we said before by the mission cards, because they are the ones who will give you the victory points. The conquest of an objective is not easy, also because in addition to positioning yourself correctly you will have to wait for the end of the opponent's turn, which he can easily manipulate through playing cards, pushing attacks and other skills that could ruin your plans. Even the randomness of the objectives will always make the games sparkling and will not only force you to continually spawn your heroes and attack, but will stimulate your minds with the search for objectives and combinations that will ruin the plans of your opponents.
We really appreciated this title, also because players will be free every time to choose their heroes and then to play with them if they want always different decks. This will stimulate players to try all the characters in the title, with the aim of finding the best performing team, the most synergistic, or simply the one that best reflects their style of play. Especially in the first few games we suffered a bit from the classic game paralysis, each player had to carefully read their cards and think well about what to do, even the opponent who can respond took a long time to understand what to do. Eventually they exist approx 20 keywords to learn and then once you get the hang of it, the title flows much more and is certainly more engaging. At the level of regulation we do not agree with the complete one omission of the explanation of the hero cards by the company. There is no explanation of the background and abilities and therefore it will be directly you to experiment and understand if the character is a support, a tank or a chosen hitter.
After expressing ourselves on the main dynamics of the game, we can talk about the materials used by Mythic Games. The stylistic aspect chosen for Super Fantasy Brawl it's really eye catching, which is why the miniatures are really beautiful too. The cards in addition to having beautiful designs are of the highest quality and that is why we advise you to protect them. Of course all this quality has been enclosed in a practically infinite box that takes up a lot of space, even if each component has its own tray to be arranged and protected, there has not been an optimization of space and can be really cumbersome.
Final Battle
Super Fantasy Brawl is a title that despite its enormous features manages to be dynamic and fun, and although the regulation may seem thin and lacking a bit of attention on the heroes, the gameplay is well done and manages to capture the attention of the players, offering their games are always different and complex strategies to implement. The possibility then that Mythic Games can easily expand the roster of champions and in-game events is very easy, and that is why we can safely recommend to all lovers of this genre Super Fantasy Brawl, because your games will not end up being trivial fights, but they will take a really interesting strategic turn, in addition to the fact that the more you master the title, the more the games will have a high and competitive tension line.
As if that were not enough, the company has introduced the ability to play in four players: this is one of the features that we appreciated the most, because if two are already complex when you are in pairs, you need to create a perfect understanding with your partner in order to bring home the victory.
