Funkoverse Strategy Game
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My last Instagram “What we played this week” had the Funkoverse Strategy Game in it. And people were like “ha ha… really?” And I have to say. “Ha ha. Really.”
The game is… great.
Like, seriously, there is one hell of a good time in this blender of genres and IPs. Now, I LOVE me some fantasy battle games with miniatures. Gridded or measured. Hundreds of hours in X-Wing, 40K, BattleLore, Warhammer, HeroScape, Warhammer Underworlds. I love fantasy minis beating the snot out of each other.
When Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls knocks out Harry Potter with a Batarang… Yes, OK, there’s a sudden bizarre WTF culture shock. But if you can put aside the fact that Batman and Joker should not team up to take down Ron Weasley, once you can just let all your boundaries flake away and look at the game here. There’s a really good time here.
Right now, the only packs available are Harry Potter (2 or 4 pack), DC (really, it’s Batman, 2 or 4 pack), Rick and Morty (2 pack) and Golden Girls (Oddly, a 2 pack). Rumblings tell us we will be seeing Back To The Future and Jurassic Park so far. Who knows what else? Hopefully, the other two Golden Girls…
What you have is AMAZING table presence in the game. The minis are hilarious, the maps gorgeous and clear, the tokens all prepunched and in excellent quality, the victory gems are about twice as large as the usual. Everything you get screams top quality. Stop laughing. Really.
Each pack comes with two maps (one piece, double sided, excellent quality). And four scenarios. Right now, the four scenarios are the same for each, varying locations to match the map, so in one pack you get two scenarios for one side of the map, two for the other. The scenarios are Leaders (one character scores more than others for kills), Flags (Tag and teleport back home for points), Territory (King Of The Hill space occupation) and Control (Claim zones). Each map also has Victory Points you can claim, and they will respawn later.
Now, the game engine itself. Wow. You’ve seen most of it before. Kind of. I activate a dude, you activate a dude, until we’re out of dudes, then do it again. Actions are things like Challenge (not attack, this is family friendly), Move up to two spaces and use an ability. This is nothing really new. In play, the game feels a LOT like a super simplified Warhammer Underworlds, where position may matter a lot more than killing, and shoving characters around can score as much as knocking them out. Characters all “basic attack” the same, with a standard two die roll, and they have varying defenses. The dice are very well made. You get a full set with each pack at this time, which means you will soon have six thousand dice. On the die is the usual - hits, blanks, defend and crits. Crits nicely count as 3 hits or defends. This means even if you attack with 2 dice, I have a chance of defending with only 1. If the defender loses, they fall over. Hit them again, they are off the map, respawning next round.
Army building is painfully simple. I have no idea why these characters seem balanced, their powers are astoundingly asymmetrical. Three guys and an item. That’s it. Some items go better with some teams. Yes, you actually put the little item in the miniatures hand. It’s so cute, I’m gonna die.
Then, there’s the a-ha moment. The brilliant twist that sets the game well above many, many other far more serious games.
There’s this cool down timer. Every major character (there’s cheesy cardboard henchmen discs that don’t have abilities, just feed those to the dog) has 3 abilities and a passive ability. I swear, know your scenario and plan carefully. If it’s a tight map, having mobility may not be that important, but area attacks can be. And if you’re on a map with few walls and have abilities that require you be out of line of sight, think about it first.
When you use an ability, it will have a colored symbol. You take the token of that symbol and put it on the specified spot on the cool down track. When all guys have moved, everything slides down the track. Characters have three abilities and each gives you two tokens when in your army. And those cooldowns vary. A killer power move might have a four turn cool down. That locks up that token for quite a while. Hopefully, in army building, you decided to take another character giving you that colored token. That’s right. Tokens are army wide, not character. So, having the right guys with Voldemort lets him use his massive attack multiple times a turn. Not having that synergy would have him use it once and then wait.
This. Is. Awesome. If you do a certain effect with Dude 1, you have to weigh how much it will change your tactics for dude 2 and 3. If they, well, survive to take their turns. This makes order of activation hugely important.
And OF COURSE there are characters that totally muck with that cool down track. This makes army building an amazingly fun exercise. It’s like a Magic The Gathering Deck. How many colors do you want? What fits your strategy for that specific team? And the individual characters – the abilities are spot on. They FEEL like those characters. Batman and Voldemort are monsters in combat. The Golden Girls are manipulators. Robin is a very specific support character. The army builds are incredible.
In the end, the game can be played as a very light intro to skirmish games. But in a turn, choosing who to activate and what to do is an amazingly broad array of options. With each guy having 3 active abilities and 3 guys out there, trying to counter the same of your opponent, the decision space is definitely chewy enough to get into. It feels incredibly flexible. And I have no idea how they balanced these things, but it feels right.
Yes, we bought some on sale. And after one night of playing what we had maybe seven or eight times, we went out and bought the rest on sale.
I swear. It’s hilarious. It’s just FUN. I cannot describe this enough. Is it super deep? No. But its so incredibly well made, both the rule set and the physical components, it’s just... Fun.
TLDR: Best light skirmish game out there in an insane mix of genres.
