Funkoverse Strategy Game Review

When I first came across the Funko POP characters years ago, I was hooked. My favorites were the Star Wars characters and I bought a bunch to sit atop my office shelves.

Since then, the number and variety of Funko POP characters available seems endless.

And when the Funko documentary, “Making Fun – The Story of Funko” hit Netflix in 2018, I had to check it out as well. They’ve struck gold at the perfect time with all their pop-culture fun.

So when I heard they were making a board game, I immediately added it to my “want to play” list.

Thanks to Miniature Market, we got a number of Funkoverse Strategy Games in time for Christmas last year!

And now, a few months later, we’re ready to tell you all about them!

 

How to play a Funkoverse Strategy Game

The gameplay is the same for all Funkoverse Strategy Games. The only differences are the different boards and characters with their unique abilities. The goal of the game is to be the first player to reach the target amount of points. Players will gain points in different ways depending on the game scenario they choose to play.

To begin, players will choose which board and scenario they want to play. Each Funkoverse game comes with a double-sided game board and 4 scenarios (Territory, Leaders, Control, and Flags).

Players also choose which characters to have on their team. Then they place those character figures on the same colored base (clear or black to designate their team) and take the character cards and associated starting tokens (indicated in the bottom right of each character card).

A team can be made up of 3 characters. The base game boxes include 4 Funko figures and 2 “basic” characters represented by tokens. Players can choose to play with only 2 characters on their team or to also include a basic token character. But if players have an additional Funkoverse game, they can also choose a Funko character from that game set to include.

For example, the Funkoverse Harry Potter base game (4-pack) includes Harry, Hermione, Voldemort, and Bellatrix and 2 basic token characters. The Harry Potter 2-pack includes Ron and Draco as well as 2 basic token characters.

Each round, players take turns choosing a character to do up to 2 actions. The possible actions are:

• Move – up to 2 squares
• Basic Challenge – rolling dice to knock down or knock out another character
• Assist – stand up a knocked down ally
• Interact – scenario-specific action
• Character Ability – spend an ability token to do something special
• Use Item – do what the special item card says

After completing the 2 actions, the player places an Exhaust token on that character to signify it has been activated this round. That character can’t be used again this round. Then the other player takes a turn in a like manner.

Play goes back and forth until all characters have been activated for the round.

Players then remove all Exhaust tokens from their characters and move all items on their Cooldown track down a level.

Players also alternate which player begins each round.

 

Challenges, Abilities, and Cooldown

Challenges are how players knock down and knock out their opponent characters. When performing a Basic Challenge, the active character rolls 2 dice. Each “pow” symbol counts as 1 success and each “!!!” counts as 3 successes for the attacker. The defending character rolls a number of dice equal to their defense value on their card (often 2 dice). Each “shield” symbol counts as 1 success and each “!!!” counts as 3 successes for the defender.

The results are compared and the character with the most successes wins the challenge. If it’s a tie, nothing happens.

If the attacker won the challenge against a standing character, then the defender is Knocked Down (placed on its side on the board). If the attacker won the challenge against a Knocked Down character, that character is removed from the board and placed on their Cooldown track in the first level.

If the attacker lost the challenge, unless an ability says otherwise, nothing happens.

Knocking down and knocking out characters may also be a way to earn points – depending on the scenario.

Some character abilities also include challenges that allow the character to roll more than 2 dice in a challenge. Whenever a character uses an ability on their card that has a token symbol, the player uses one of those tokens from their token pool and places it on the Cooldown track at the level indicated by the ability. If the player doesn’t have a matching token in their pool, they can not use that ability.

For example, one of Batman’s abilities is “POW” – which is a Challenge using 3 dice. It also requires a Red token which would then be placed on the 2 space of the Cooldown track.

At the end of each round, all items (tokens and characters) on the Cooldown track move down a level. Anything on the 1 space moves off the Cooldown track and is again able to be used. When Characters come off the Cooldown track, they’re placed back on the board in their Starting Area as designated in the scenario.

Players continue activating their characters from round to round and gaining points until one player reaches the target number of points for the scenario. That player wins!

 

Can the whole family enjoy Funkoverse Strategy Games?

With how cute the Funko characters are, you can be sure kids will want to play Funkoverse Strategy Games!

The good news is that the gameplay is simple enough, they’ll be able to.

They only catch is being able to read the cards and plan their strategy.

“Strategy” is part of the name of the game. And it’s true that the game requires a bit of strategy. But it’s still on the light side.

Players should plan out their moves. They’ll have to decide in which order to activate their characters each round. And when to use certain character abilities. That’s because once used, they’ll have to wait for the tokens to come off the Cooldown track before being able to use it again.

Thus, there is a cost to using an ability – and that cost is time. So that takes a bit of strategy to get used to.

Yet, the Challenges – which can have a big impact on the outcome of the game – are settled based on the luck of dice rolls.

Which means the Funkoverse games fall in the sweet spot for fun family board games because they have a good balance of both strategy and luck!

While the player count says 2 – 4, we feel this really plays best as a 2-player game. That’s because the game really is a battle between 2 teams. And those 2 teams will most likely consist of 3 characters.

So if you’re playing with 2 players per team, you must choose which of you will control which characters. Such as, “I’ll control Harry and Ron and you control Hermione.” But in doing so, the player controlling Hermione will have to wait for 5 other characters before being able to go again. And that’s just not as fun.

Whereas, with 2 players, you’ll each get to control 3 characters and do your own planning of when to activate each character. That way you get more action (and don’t have to worry about hurting a teammate’s feelings by putting off their character’s turn).

There’s also a lot of replay value in the Funkoverse games because of the different scenarios!

For example, playing a “capture the flag” scenario creates a different game atmosphere than fighting to maintain control of certain areas.

Plus, you can mix and match characters from different games!

(Of course, that is if you have multiple games. And based on how these games are packaged and sold, and how tantalizing the character models are, that’s a serious temptation!)

For example, we have the Harry Potter and DC 4-packs and 2-packs which means we have 12 characters to choose from when making our teams.

We’ve had Harry Potter team up with Voldemort and Catwoman to take on Batman, Harley Quinn, and Ron Weasley. And the mash-up is a ton of fun!

And they can do battle across 8 different maps with 16 different scenarios to choose from.

Don’t take this to mean we’re promoting spending tons of money to buy different packs, but we do realize it’s a big temptation. It has been fun though. So you’ll have to be the judge for your situation.

(I will say though that I still have my eye on the latest one – Jurassic Park. How cool would it be to throw a Raptor or T-Rex up against Bellatrix?)

 

How do the Funkoverse Strategy Games score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

I bet you already know the answer to this question. Yes, Funkoverse Strategy Games score high on our “let’s play again” game meter. they’re fun head-to-head battles with very cool character models and straightforward gameplay.

Yes, the dice rolls can leave one of us moaning at times. But they can also get us celebrating unexpected come-from-behind victories. And when anything can happen, that’s reason enough to dive in again and again with different characters, maps, and scenarios.