For more years than I can remember, I’ve seen Funko figures on the shelves at local stores. While they have always looked cool, I’ve never really given them more than a cursory glance as I’m not really in the market for more action figures or toys. Yet darn if that Kylo Ren figure wasn’t always trying to tempt me…
At Gen Con this year, Funko figures made their debut in the form of Funkoverse Strategy Game. No longer content to just sit on your shelf looking awesome, the Funkoverse Strategy Game lets players build a squad and battle their opponent for supremacy. Designed by Prospero Hall (Horrified, Villainous, Jaws, and a ton of others), the Funkoverse Strategy Game seeks to make their mark on the skirmish world. Let’s see if they succeeded.
Gameplay Overview:
There are actually a few ways to play the Funkoverse Strategy Game. The rulebook starts players off with a basic play mode to get their feet wet, and after that, offers up four different play modes (Flags, Control, Territory, and Leaders).
Assembling your squad is about as easy as can be. Choose any three characters and one item. You can mix and match between universes as well. For this review, we were giving Harry Potter 100 and DC 100 sets, so my latest team consisted of Harry Potter, Batman, and Hermione Granger.
To play the game each player alternates taking two actions with an unexhausted character. Different actions include:
- Move: 2 squares in any direction, including diagonals.
- Interact: Activate tokens on the board.
- Assist: Stand up an adjacent ally.
- Rally: Stand up your character if they are knocked down. This takes both actions.
- Ability or Item: Some require actions to use.
- Basic Challenge: Roll two dice to challenge an adjacent rival. Every hit icon is one success, while every “!!!” icon is three successes. The defender then rolls 2 dice, with every shield being 1 success and every “!!!” being three successes. If you roll more successes than the defender, you knock them down. If they were already knocked down, they are knocked out.
Character-specific abilities require tokens to activate. These are placed on the cooldown track in a specific spot, depending on how powerful the action is. For example Batman’s Pow! ability requires placing a red token on space two of the cooldown track, which lets him challenge with 3 dice. If you are out of tokens of the needed color, you can’t use an ability.
After all, characters have taken a turn, the round ends and exhaust tokens are removed from the characters. All tokens and items on the cool down track are shifted once number lower, with any moving off the track being available again.
The basic game ends when a player knocks out a rival’s character, and the full game ends when a certain point threshold is reached (points are earned in various ways depending on the scenario).
Game Experience:
I must say, I was really impressed with the mechanics behind the Funkoverse Strategy Game. What could have been a mediocre skirmish game leaning on the licensed figures as a crutch ended up being a really innovative strategy game. Don’t get me wrong, the Funkoverse Strategy Game is definitely a light, tactical game, but that’s one of the things I love about it. The rules take all of five minutes to learn, yet still offers enough depth to keep the game interesting.
One of the primary reasons is that each character feels both thematic and unique. For example, Batman is all about doing damage and being in the thick of the fight, while Hermione’s abilities are more support focused. Every character has three different abilities and also a unique trait. I think players will have a lot of fun mixing and matching different characters for their team. And because squad building doesn’t require calculating points or anything like that, building a new team is a breeze.
I also thought that the cooldown track was an inspired mechanic. Instead of having to keep track of energy to spend on various powers, you just place a token on the track and activate the ability. The balancing mechanic is that powerful ones take longer to refresh. Each character adds two tokens to your pool at the start of the game (of four possible colors), yet the tokens can be used for any character’s powers. So the grey token that The Joker provides can be used to activate Lord Voldemort’s Confringo power. All in all, it worked really smoothly.
I’ve played the Funkoverse Strategy Game both with my regular gaming group and some kids as well, and all of them had a good time. When playing with little ones, we tend to stick to the intro rules and just go for a knockdown. Even at age 9, my opponent was able to figure out how the abilities worked and only needed help here and there with strategies. For the adults, I’d definitely recommend sticking with the scenarios, as the gameplay in those is much more interesting.
As much as I’m enjoying the Funkoverse Strategy Game, the only thing that didn’t wow me was the combat. I’m never a huge fan of opposed dice rolls of this type, as they can be really random and swingy. And the game doesn’t offer a ton of ways to mitigate the luck of the dice rolls. However, with one more hit symbol than defensive symbol on the dice, the game does seem to reward offensive and attack strategies.
Final Thoughts:
I came away really impressed with the Funkoverse Strategy Game. It’s light, tactical nature makes it an excellent entry-level skirmish game that offers some solid replay value. And as you might expect, the production values are fantastic with fully painted minis and dual-sided game boards. Squad building was super easy and you can mix and match from any of the games in the Funkoverse universe. Currently, you have options between Harry Potter, DC, Rick and Morty, and The Golden Girls (yes, Dorthy, Rose, Blanche, etc…).
While I expected the Funkoverse Strategy Game to be primarily a family game, I was really impressed with the mechanics and feel like it’s a great option for anyone looking for a streamlined skirmish game that uses some characters they already know and love.
Final score: 4.5 stars – An easy to learn skirmish game with a ton of options for building your favorite team.
Hits:
• Smooth and streamlined mechanics
• Squad building is easy and flexible
• Different scenario options and intro rules for younger gamers
• Excellent production values
Misses:
• Opposed attack rolls are never my favorite and can be swingy
I did not like the game. Rules are not as clear as I thought. My Grandson was disappointed. Maybe he thought it was a easy gameboard. We took it back.
Yeah I can understand that. It looks really cool from the box but it’s not just a simple roll the dice and move your token type of game. It’s too bad you returned it though because if he spent a little more time with it, it CAN be quite fun. It’s kind of a intro to the more complex types of games out there. It’s a step up in difficulty from the Monopoly’s and LIFE games that young kids are used to. We plowed through the first game today, just the basic game, me and a twelve and ten year old. By the end we started to get it. We will try the more advanced rules tomorrow and see how it goes. There’s definitely a learning curve but once you get past that, it’s more enjoyable.
I’ll also mention, there is a great resource called board game geek. Google that name with the name of a game and you should find their forums. The people there are very nice and usually quick to answer questions about any game you might be confused about. I had a question about Funkoverse and posted it and within the half hour had my answer. Just keep it for future reference!
I completely agree with your assessment. I am both impressed and even more enthused by Funkoverse. This is an incredibly simple game with clear rules. It’s sold at Target and probably other mass market stores, so the typical Monopoly game consumer could find Funkoverse too complicated.
For a gamer, Funkoverse packages variable abilities, special actions and opportunity costs in an experience pitiable for nine year olds.
I am selling more complex games that I used to play regularly. Funkoverse has many of their features but strips them down to their simplest implementation. There’s a lot of chrome with the miniatures and components, but the game is solid.
So I need 2 games to use all the abilities? Not cool funko
No you don’t need two games. There are two player sets and four player sets. You can combine the two player ones with other two player ones or with four player ones. You can just play the four player one as well. You can just play the two player set. It’s up to you.
Can you play with two players only? like a date night game?
Absolutely.
My wife and I love this game. We are board gamers, me more than her, and we have a good collection from different types to sizes. My wife prefers strategy games and i enjoy complex with various components. This one give us both. Light strategy for my wife and team building with variants, for me. Also our 10 and 8 year olds enjoy playing. It’s a win, win, win for us.
My family is having a hard time understanding the rules of the basic game, we haven’t even tried the full version yet. If the characters can only move a total of 4 spaces before they are exhausted how do they ever get close enough for challenges? I haven’t come across this problem in any forums so it must something we’re doing wrong. Could any help us? We’re playing the Harry Potter version.
You probably wont in the first round. But after that you can. Your character is unexhausted at the end of every round. Page 6 of a rulebook “ending a round”. So round one, they move twice, a total of 4 squares. Round 2, they can move once (2 squares) and should be close enough to challenge now.