Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 expansion review

Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 card game expansion — Bring on more factions!

Smash Up is a fun card game that pits players against each other with 2 mashed up faction decks of cards. The base Smash Up game includes 8 different factions from Aliens and Robots to Pirates and Ninjas. But there is also a lot of open slots in the game box – making it very obvious that more factions were to come.

So it really wasn’t much of a surprise when AEG relatively quickly released Smash Up Awesome Level 9000.

The basic game play of Smash Up is simple. Each player takes 2 faction decks (20 cards in each faction deck) and shuffles them together and takes a number of cards into their hand. Each faction has a mix of Minion and Action cards that players use to smash “Bases” and earn points.

The combination of various faction abilities is what drives the strategy and fun of playing Smash Up. That’s what also keeps the game interesting because in one game you may have Zombies/Dinosaurs to play with and in the next game your Zombies may be paired with Pirates. Every combination gives the game a new twist.

For a more detailed explanation and video review, check out our original Smash Up review.

What’s the draw of Smash Up Awesome Level 9000?
Well, besides the “Awesome” name, there are 4 distinct things to like about the expansion: Bear Cavalry, Steampunks, Ghosts, and Killer Plants!

Those are the 4 new factions in Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 and they’re what this expansion is all about. The one we love the most is the Bear Cavalry. They’re awesomely powerful. The Bear faction includes strong Minions and powerful actions that has that player moving other Minions all over. They simply force others around. But they don’t need just actions to show their power. Even the Bear minions move other minions around.

Here’s a few examples of the Bear faction cards:

Bear Cavalry (minion power 3): Move another player’s minion from here to another base.
Cub Scout (minion power 3): After another player’s minion moves here, if it has less power than this minion, destroy it.
General Ivan (minion power 6): Your minions cannot be destroyed.
Commission (action): Play an extra minion. Then move another player’s minion from the extra minion’s base to another base.
Superiority (action): Your minions here cannot be destroyed, moved, or returned to your hand or deck by other players’ cards.

While not as strong as the Bears, the Steampunk faction mixes things up through cards that grant additional minion power and let players pull from their discard pile or bring cards back into their hand.

Examples of the Steampunk faction cards:

Captain Ahab (minion power 2): Move this minion to a base that has one of your actions played on it.
Steam Man (minion power 3): Has +1 power if this base has one of your actions played on it.
Mechanic (minion power 4): Choose an action in your discard pile that can be played on a base and play it as an extra action.
Escape Hatch (action): When your minions here are destroyed, place them into your hand instead of the discard pile.
Accromotive (action): If you have a minion here, you have +5 power here.

The Ghost faction is our least favorite faction of the expansion. The main reason is that a lot of the power stem from not having many cards in your hand. And when we’re playing Smash Up we like to keep many cards in our hand because it gives us more options each turn. However, if the Ghosts are paired with a faction that let’s you play extra minions or extra actions, then it isn’t so bad because the partner faction will have you getting rid of cards faster. And a number of the Ghost cards also have you discarding cards from your hand to cycle through.

Examples of the Ghost faction cards:

Spirit (minion power 3): Choose a minion. You may discard cards equal to its power to destroy it.
Spectre (minion power 5): If you have 2 or fewer cards in your hand, any time you can play a minion, you can play this card from your discard pile instead.
Across the Divide (action): Choose a card name. Place any number of minions with that name from your discard pile into your hand.
Ghostly Arrival (action): You may play an extra minion and/or an extra action.
Shady Deal (action): If you have two or fewer cards in your hand, gain 1 VP.

The Killer Plants have some pretty cool abilities that are also fun to play with. The first game we played with the expansion the Killer Plants were combined with the Dinosaur faction and there were some pretty cool combos played. A number of the abilities mix the game up by letting the controlling player do something extra at the start of their turns.

Examples of the Killer Plants faction cards:

Water Lily (minion power 3): Draw a card at the start of each of your turns. Only use one Water Lily’s ability each turn.
Venus Man Trap (minion power 5): Search your deck for a minion of power 2 or less and play it here as an extra action. Shuffle your deck.
Sleep Spores (action): Other players’ minions have -1 power here (minimum power 0).
Choking Vines (action): Play on a minion. At the start of your turn, destroy this minion.
Overgrowth (action): At the start of your turn, reduce the breakpoint of this base to 0.

Obviously we haven’t played these new factions with all the combinations possible from the base game, but we’re sure there are some pretty sweet combos waiting to happen. One combo we’re interested in seeing would be a team of Bear/Dinosaurs – can anything stop that potential power!

Is it really Awesome?
Obviously the entire reason to get an expansion for Smash Up is to add new factions into the mix. With the expansion, there are now 12 faction decks to provide a wide range of faction combinations.

In addition to the 4 new factions, the expansion also includes 8 new Bases as well as the original 16 Bases reprinted. The reprints of the original bases are nice because the text on the cards is much easier to read. AEG increased the font size on the original base cards so players don’t have to squint so much to read the ability of each base.

Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 also includes Victory Point tokens! One of the big complaints of the original game was that players needed to grab a pad of paper and a pen to track everyone’s victory points along the way. Now AEG has added in VP tokens to dish out when players score! Not that writing down scores was a hardship, but the VP tokens are a simple and nice touch.

Final Thoughts
A simple question can sum up our thought about this expansion. Will we include the Smash Up Awesome Level 9000 expansion every time we play Smash Up? Absolutely. This one is almost an no-brainer. Not only do the new factions extend the number of potential faction combinations, but they’re a lot of fun in and of themselves.

We don’t know how many more expansions AEG has planned for Smash Up. All we know is that our game box still has slots for 5 more faction decks.

Summary of Added Components: