Game Spotlight – Smash Up

Posted on Posted in Game Spotlight, News

Smash Up is today’s featured game because I’ve been stalling around since Hanabi wondering what game to Spotlight and also because the Marvel Smash Up has been knocking around waiting for me to Spotlight Smash Up. See, Alderac Entertainment Group made Smash Up…and then 9 million expansions to Smash Up and then they made The Big Geeky Box. I, of course, bought Smash Up after having played it once and then pretty soon after that, ran out of room in the original box to put the expansions I bought.

These are just what I’ve collected so far and I’m missing Awesome Level 9000, The Obligatory Cthulhu Set, Pretty Pretty, Munchkin (a standard sized box that I did not know existed until writing this up), Oops You Did It Again, World Tour Part 1 (OMG it has Luchadores!), World Tour Part 2, and maybe singleton factions of Sheep, Penguins, Goblins and Titans? The website is a little funky today but you get the picture. 

Wrapping around to the beginning of the paragraph, I saved the Marvel box to show you what size your base Smash Up is going to be (10 inches by 10 inches) but then also included The Big Geeky Box because you are probably going to get some expansions and the base box will only hold two before things get dicey.  

In the base set you get to combine 2 factions from the roster of: Aliens, Dinosaurs, Ninjas, Pirates, Robots, Tricksters, Wizards, or Zombies to form a double deck of Smashed Up mayhem. Each faction has abilities in line with its theme: Dinosaurs are gonna be stompy, Ninjas are gonna be sneaky, Zombies are gonna come back from the dead and Robots will probably take over the planet once the game is finished.  Each faction also comes with 2 bases that are on point for the theme (I’ve only got one base each represented here). Lastly, there are chits for specific abilities cards may have. Expansions have many other fun factions to combine but there is not enough room here to list them all.

A faction deck consists of Minion and Action cards which you can play on your turn. Minion cards will be played on bases that you are trying to capture. Each Minion is worth a certain value (see the number in the upper left hand corner), and eventually you will want to have the biggest value of Minions (added up) on a base.  Action cards can either be instantaneous one off cards or ongoing cards that augment a Base or a Minion. 

Left: Base almost scored, Vampire Truckers have the most points but Itty Critter/Star Roamers is hoping to come in second by playing a Base enhancement. But wait! Shark ‘Nadoes pulls a minion from another base and comes in second. SCOOOOOORE!

Bases are scored when all the Minion values on the base are added up and that number meets or exceeds the base’s number (again, on the upper left of the card).  The person with the highest Minion value on a particular base scores the number of victory points equal to the leftmost number on the base, the person with the second most Minion points gets the second number and the person with the third most Minion points gets the last number. Everyone else is SOL. The winner of the game is the person with the most points after someone has reached or exceeded 15 victory points.

Things I liked: 

  • The first player determination. Heh…but that’s not gonna be me most of the time. 
  • The Factions. You might think that it would be a pain to re-sort the decks but as you can see above, they each have a unique symbol in the corner and the cards themselves are different enough to be easy to spot even if you can’t see the symbol. Also, AEG put a lot of thought into each faction. I’ve showcased some of the amusing cards for each faction above but I really like how each deck is unique to the theme.
  • Play is not as straightforward as it may seem. Sure you get to X points and the base “pops” but the flavor text to a lot of cards can either add points in certain circumstances, subtract points, or even destroy base enhancements or the entire base itself. So 20 points might not actually be 20 points and that puts some spice into the game.

Things I didn’t like: 

These are somewhat bigger than a nickel but smaller than a quarter and already too much for one bag.
  • The chits. I mean, per game the chits are neat and essential to keeping straight some of the powers on the cards but every expansion has chits so even though I don’t have probably half the expansions, I’m already drowning in chits. Plus, they keep sliding around since the cards tend to get bumped and jostled.
  • The Bigger Geekier Box is not cheap and just comes with, maybe one or two factions with bases? And you will most likely get a couple of expansions because who doesn’t want to play Tornado Luchador? That base box is gonna run out of room much faster than you are prepared for.
  • Combining factions is super fun but some faction combinations aren’t as awesome as others. I think Zombie Ninjas cleaned our clocks while Shark ‘Nadoes sounded AWESOME but turned out to be just kinda alright. It might be that it also depends on what other factions are in play – maybe Zombie Ninjas won’t be as formidable against a different set of factions.