Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War board game review

It looks like Avengers Infinity War smashed all global box office records with the biggest opening weekend of any movie with $641 million!

It also broke records in the US with $258 million – knocking out Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($248 million).

Wow!

That says a lot about what all the Marvel superhero movies have established leading up to this mega hit. The anticipation was palpable and the payout knocked it out of the park.

While we didn’t see Avengers Infinity War opening weekend, we did the next best thing — we played the about-to-be-released board game, Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War!

That’s right, we were lucky enough to get our hot little hands on a copy of Thanos Rising from USAopoly before it’s release to stores and we’re going to tell you all about it!

 

How to play Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War

Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War has the same premise of the movie — all the superheroes band together to topple Thanos before he can claim all the Infinity Stones and destroy everything.

In the game, you and your friends / family also band together and recruit superheroes to your team to beat Thanos’s villains before he captures all the Infinity Stones.

Like many cooperative board games, there’s one way to win and many ways to lose.

In Thanos Rising, players have to collectively defeat 10 Villains to win. But if Thanos gets all 6 Infinity Stones, or defeats 10 (or more) Heroes, or one player’s whole team of Heroes are defeated, Thanos wins and all players lose.

To begin, each player selects a Team sheet and the starting Hero card for that team. The rest of the Hero cards are all shuffled together with the Villain cards to create a draw deck. The first 9 cards are drawn and placed around the central board. Thanos is also placed in the center of that board, randomly facing one of the sectors (each sector has 3 cards).

The Infinity Gauntlet is also placed on the table with an Infinity Stone in each colored circle around it. And the Bonus tokens are placed face-down on the table and shuffled around. Then players are ready to roll.

 

Game Turns

1. On a player’s turn, they first choose which sector they want to send their team to recruit more Heroes or fight Villains. They don’t actually move any of their Hero team cards to that sector, but simply place their Team token in that sector to signify where they are.

2. Then they roll the Infinity Stone die and the Thanos die.

The player places a yellow cube counter in an empty space of the Infinity Stone matching the color rolled. If the spaces are completely filled for a particular Infinity Stone, the Infinity Stone is moved to its place in the Gauntlet and the circle tile is flipped over. Any time that color is rolled again, the effect listed on the circle tile will activate (and it won’t be good).

 

The Thanos die result has different outcomes. It may cause him to turn Left or Right to a different sector. It may cause the Infinity Stone die to be rolled again. Or it may cause all Villain abilities in the sectors Thanos isn’t facing to be activated.

Once the effect of the Thanos die is resolved, Thanos attacks all Heroes in the sector he’s facing – meaning a red Damage cube is placed on an empty space on the Hero card. If the active player’s token is also in that sector, all Heroes on that player’s team are also dealt one damage.

If that weren’t bad enough, then all Villain’s in Thanos’s sector are activated and their effects are carried out.

 

3. After the bad stuff happens, the active player then gets to roll their pool of dice.

The color and amount of dice a player gets to roll depends on their Team and the Heroes they’ve recruited to their team. In the beginning, players will only roll 4 dice. But they can recruit more Heroes to their team along the way that may increase that amount.

A player takes all the dice in their dice pool and rolls them. They must now assign one or more dice to 1 Asset card (Hero/Villain) in their sector. The dice they assign must match the symbols on the cards. Once assigned, dice can’t be moved.

Then they take the remaining dice and roll them again.

Once again they assign one or more dice to 1 Asset card in the sector. If none of the symbols match, they set aside one of their dice. They continue rolling and assigning dice this way until they are out of dice.

 

4. When a player has assigned all their dice, they then resolve the Asset cards where their dice are placed.

If all the symbols required on a Hero card are matched by dice placed on it, the player successfully recruited that Hero. They take the Hero card, remove any Damage cubes on that Hero, and add the card to their Team of Heroes. (Players can recruit Heroes no matter their affiliation / color.)

If all the symbols require on a Villain card are match by dice placed on it, the player deals damage to that Villain. They add 1 Damage cube to an empty space on the Villain card and claim a random Bonus token. (Only 1 damage cube may be added to a Villain per turn by matching dice symbols. Additional damage may be dealt by special Hero or Team abilities.)

If at the end of a player’s turn, any Hero or Villain has all their Damage spaces filled, that card is removed from the game. Any empty spaces in a sector are then replaced with the next card from the draw deck.

The player then takes back their Team token from the sector and play continues with the player to their left.

 

Game End

Players continue recruiting Heroes and attacking Villains until one of the following conditions occurs.

• 10 Villains are defeated = Heroes / Players win!
• 10 Heroes are defeated = Heroes / Players lose
• Thanos captures all 6 Infinity Stones = Heroes / Players lose
• One player’s whole team of Heroes are defeated = Heroes / Players lose

Then players either celebrate their grand victory together or wallow in their defeat.

 

Can the whole family enjoy playing Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War?

We sure hope so!

Because we’ve had a great time playing Thanos Rising and think your family will enjoy it to.

The published recommended age is 10+. However, we know there are a lot of Marvel fans younger than 10 that may really enjoy playing Thanos Rising as well.

Especially because it’s a cooperative game. And with cooperative games, younger players can more easily join in the fun without needing to understand every aspect thoroughly on their own.

Younger kids will easily understand the concept of rolling dice and matching the symbols with the cards. And they’ll easily understand they want cool Heroes on their team and to attack the Villains. Even if they can’t read yet, the abilities and effects on all the cards can be read aloud by other players.

Of course, we realize that even though the movie is breaking box office records, not everyone is a Marvel superhero fan. And the theme may not appeal to all family members. The good news is that players can have fun playing even if they aren’t familiar with the characters on the cards.

Disclaimer: Similar to our comments in our review of Abyss about the box cover art, some people may be completely turned off by the menacing look of Thanos on the box cover. Take for instance, mom. Yep, that’s right. Mom really, really doesn’t like the vibes Thanos is giving off on the box. So I guess it’s a good thing we store our boxes so only the sides show on the game shelves.

 

What we love about Thanos Rising

If you haven’t guessed by now, most of our family members really enjoy playing Thanos Rising.

First of all, we love the cooperative nature of the game.

You may already know how much we like games where we get to work together as a team. And when we get to all play superheroes, even better.

Because the game involves a lot of dice rolling, we haven’t run into any problems with one person trying to control what others do on their turn. Sure other players may chime in with their thoughts on where you ‘should’ place your dice, but it still comes down to which Heroes you want to recruit or Villains to attack.

Second is the variability and luck factor.

At the heart of Thanos Rising is the luck of the dice rolls. And in this case, every turn feels like a press-your-luck moment. Some times, the dice just won’t go your way. And other times, you may knock it out of the park / galaxy.

There’s also the random factor of when certain Hero or Villain cards appear as well as which way Thanos turns before he attacks.

It all adds up to the third thing we love which is that all players are engaged in the game play the whole time.

Even when it’s not their turn, players are anxious to see the result of their teammate’s dice rolls. And that’s because the results will impact the state of the game when it comes to them. You may have great plans to attack a Villain on your turn, but when it comes back to you a Hero may be almost full of damage and you instead shift to recruiting them before they’re defeated.

Fourth, all the various abilities granted by the different Hero cards and Bonus tokens. The various Heroes are great to mix and match since games will play out differently depending on which Heroes get teamed up together. And the Bonus tokens come in handy when the dice rolls don’t want to go your way.

Lastly, we’ll mention the game components themselves.

Having a menacing Thanos looking down over the sectors in the middle of the table is pretty sweet. And the large gems that represent the Infinity Stones are awesome as well.

We probably don’t have to say much about the artwork on the cards because it’s taken straight from the movies. So it’s legit.

And the text on the cards is also very easy to read.

The only problem we’ve had with the components isn’t unique to this game. And that’s the warping in the boards and cards. After a couple days in the open, our Infinity Gauntlet curves upwards and all the cards don’t sit flat on the table. I’m pretty sure our current attempt at a remedy will turn out well, (we’re stacking a bunch of heavy games directly on top of the gauntlet board to flatten it out) but we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

How does Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

As you might expect, Thanos Rising gets very high marks on our “let’s play again” game meter.

It’s definitely a keeper to add to our growing shelf of fun cooperative board games. And it’s getting a prominent space on that shelf because of how simple it is to set up and play without having to remember complicated rules.

When we want some fun, cooperative dice rolling action, we’ll gladly turn to Thanos Rising!

We’d like to thank USAopoly for a review copy of Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War.