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In this game, many card combos can be assembled for decent results. Most of those combos do not need to be “counter-drafted” to prevent your opponent from getting them. You can simply keep working on your own deck strategy and allow your opponents to build theirs. One exception to this is Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad (SS) boasts the most efficient bonus points in the game. While most others require a certain number of specific cards to gain their bonus, SS scores its points exponentially starting with the first! One is 1 point, two are 4 points total, three worth 9 total, etc.
The deadliest part of SS is their special ability to make ALL opponents discard their hands, effectively giving you double turns. This is obviously game-changing. And, best of all, it is NOT an attack and cannot be prevented by defense cards! A player allowed to collect multiples in his deck can develop an engine, using card draws and stackers, to set this combo off as often as possible.
I made the mistake of playing this after I had played Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Deck-Building Game and one thing it has going for it is the ramp of archenemies (supervillains).
After playing DC Deck-Building Game a few times, I saw why the villain ladder was used for LotR because DC has a tendency to drag on with no one killing the arch-villain and then suddenly, everyone can and the whole game ends in about 4 or 5 turns.
If you take the arch-villains, and divide them up into 3 power levels (low; medium; high;) and then randomly draw arch-villains from each pile evenly until you have the required amount of arch-villains, placing the high-powered villians face-down on the bottom of the arch-villian deck, the mediums in the middle and then the lows on top with Raz Al Ghul being the topmost, face-up arch-villain.
This way, the game builds to a finish rather than feels boring before suddenly ending.
We have created a version that allows us to create new combos by playing two heroes per player. Having more than one version of the game makes this more easily possible. We have the two stand alone versions and the Crisis expansion heroes. We have made all sorts of ways to vary the Heroes. Total random, You pick one random opponent gives one, opponents choice, and on and on. The fun comes when you start trying to create new combos with each Hero team. Something like Batman and Robin is a no brainer go equipment. But get something like Swampthing and Constantine and thing get more complicated and fun. Have fun and let me know what your favorite teams become.
Here is my personal ranks of the Super Heroes. This is based off my experiences in a 2-3 player game, and of course there are always exceptions with the right luck. Also unable to rank Manhunter due to not having the promo.
1. Aquaman – Aquaman starts out strong and the ability to use cards you obtained for next round, is very strong. You can create combos this way and even locations get flushed out of your deck faster.
2. Wonder Woman – There are few villains that Super Heroes feel they need in their deck and no other heroes have abilities that chain off villains. Most other times villains are killed because there was nothing better on the board. This gives Wonder Woman the opportunity to focus on villains and constantly activate her ability to draw extra cards, and there is no limit to how many times you can do it in one turn.
3. Cyborg – His ability is limited to once per turn, but he has flexibility in both equipment and super powers.
4. Superman – His ability is a nice buff that is unlimited off super powers. While very similar to batman, the benefit is that if the lineup is not very pleasing, superman can always get kick cards that count as a super power.
5. Batman – Batman has a nice unlimited buff like superman but has no fallback card to purchase if equipment is not available. Equipment is also highly sought after for defenses and other perks.
6. Green Lantern – His power is versatile, so it can benefit off any kinds of cards but I can’t help but feel this is best mid game. It takes awhile before you get 3 cards to give you the bonus unless you are lucky and in end game the most you can get is 3, where as superman and batman can go above 3.
7. Flash – Going first is ok but nothing fancy. The ability to draw and extra card is nice, but it’s limited to once per turn and all other heroes love to have draw card abilities as well. So you are competing to get the cards you benefit most from. Leave Flash at the bottom for me.
This is just my take. I definitely feel there is some wiggle room to shift the ranks and I’m honestly most shakey about Green Lantern. I hope this helps!
If you already haven’t discovered this or played Aquaman very often, I would recommend trying to scoop up locations out of the line up. Reason being that locations are just enough cost for Aquaman to place it on top of the deck. Once you get the location in your hand, you may play it and leave it out permanently since there are no cards that gets rid of locations.
This gives you the benefit of the location immediately and you also get to remove the location asap, so that it doesn’t hog room in your deck for other cards.
If you have the opportunity to pick up Robins and Bat Signals, these combo quite nicely out of the discard pile.
Bat Signal: +1 power and put a hero from your discard pile to your hand.
Robin: +1 power and put a equipment card from your discard pile to your hand.
Example:
2 Robins and 1 Bat Signal are in your discard pile and you get 1 Bat Signal in your hand.
Use Bat Signal to obtain Robin > Use Robin to gain Batsignal > Batsignal for Robin again > then Robin to get another random piece of equipment.
This gives +4 power and another equipment card of your choice.
It is important to understand that when X-Ray Vision is played that the chosen card is removed from the top of the deck from which it was shown when it is played, then put back after it is completely resolved. This is important in cases where the chosen card is either an X-Ray Vision, Clay Face or Starro. When any of these cards are chosen then they will reveal (or discard in the case of Starro) the card that is now on top of the deck that the chosen card was taken from (i.e. the card that was below the chosen card).
This doesn’t happen that often but it can happen so be ready for it!
Power
Introduction and Notes
Buying Villains
Maximizing Damage (or how to properly play villains that interact with other players)
Utility Villains
Other cards
Summary
Batman is all about equipment and unlike Superman he gets a bonus for ALL equipment he plays, not just different equipment. There are a number of cards that you will want to keep an eye out for as well as they help to augment your equipment arsenal.
1. Equipment: If you see it, buy it. Period. The only time to not buy an equipment card is if there is a card that is a) Very/Extremely beneficial to the first or second person to the left of you OR b) You have enough power to buy an uber card (like Man of Steel, Lobo, J’onn J’onzz, etc.) that would be better than the equipment you could buy.
1. Getting the Batcave goes without saying, but the Titans Tower location keys off of cards with a cost of 2 or 3 and a majority of the equipment are of cost 2 or 3 (exceptions being Cape and Cowl, Green Arrow’s Bow and Bat Signal). Netting an extra card every turn is a fantastic strategy for any character, but these two locations are your best bet.
2. Robin is another card that should always be highly sought after, especially if you can get a hold of a Bat Signal. Keep in mind that you can buy cards mid turn and then play other cards so you can buy an equipment from the line up, place it in your discard pile then use Robin to get it and play it this turn. If it is a Bat Signal even better as you can now go get a hero…if that here is Robin you can then get another equipment, etc..
3. Batman is, in my opinion, probably the most unbalanced hero in the game. By unbalanced I do not mean is is overpowered, what I mean is that with 2-3 players he is great, with 4-5 players he feels weak. The reason for this is the cost to benefit ration on most equipment and the number of characters that can benefit from them. The Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and Cyborg can all benefit from equipment cards without them being a detriment to their strategy. In a 5 player game you have 4 other players which not only want to deny you the equipment but you also have 4 other players that will want to actually use it. Equipment is a hot commodity and the more players you have the harder it is to come by. The moral of the story is, if you are choosing heroes, consider how many players there are before choosing Batman.
4. The Dark Knight is a great card, but like Princess Diana you need a Bat Signal to make this really worth while. If you get both then you are in a good spot to be able to more than one card for free (assuming the line-up has any equipment) as you can use your Bat Signal to get The Dark Knight on turns where there is equipment in the line up.
The moral of the story is that Batman can be very powerful, but his dependence on a resource that is highly sought after makes him harder to play (not impossible, just harder in this player’s opinion) than other heroes in the 4-5 player realm, he is a sure bet in 2-3 players though.
Green Lantern appears to be an undervalued hero to many but he has a lot of potential if you get the right cards. The key to playing Green Lantern is buying multiple different low cost cards (basically the opposite of The Flash) mixed in with some drawing abilities.
1. Any card that allows you to draw a card is great. Kid Flash is, in my opinion, a better card for Green Lantern than it is for The Flash. The reason being that it a) Satisfies 1/3 of his ability and b) gets you another card that can potentially satisfy more of his ability. Cards that are best to satisfy this are: Kid Flash, The Penguin and the Batmobile. Remember: always lead with the Penguin so that you keep 0 cost cards in your hand in order to satisfy his cards effect. Locations should also be sought after, but this is true for ALL heroes as Locations are naturally the highest sought after cards in the game due to their rarity and consistent output.
2. The cost to power ratio of cards should always be considered, but even more so for Green Lantern. You want to buy as many different cards as you can so don’t fill up on Kicks if you have any other option in the lineup that gives you 2 or more power and a cost of 3.
3. Think about other cards that don’t allow you to draw a card but rather get a card into your hand in another fashion or allow you to play another card, even if temporarily.
a. Examples of cards that get you another card into your hand: Robin, Bat Signal, Super Girl and Man of Steel. Super Girl in particular is phenomenal for Green Lantern because if there are still Kicks in the Kick pile then you know you are playing it to get 2 power, 1 VP and fulfilling 2/3 of your ability.
b. Examples of cards that let you play another card temporarily: X-Ray Vision, Starro, Emerald Knight, J’onn J’onzz.
4. Defense cards are great for everyone, but any defense card that also nets you another card can be good. Early on this will hurt you in general because playing a defense card means you lose a card that can satisfy part of your ability and potentially getting one or more 0 cost cards which means you lost the chance to satisfy your ability. Get Defense cards, but be mindful of the number of cards in your hand that can satisfy your ability and make an educated guess as to whether you can satisfy it still if you defend an attack.
5. Destroy cards are great for everyone, just like Defense cards, but it should go without saying that the more starting cards (cost 0) you can get rid of then the higher the probability you will satisfy your ability.
6. Deny, deny, deny. Due to the fact that Green Lantern isn’t tied to any one card type you are free to buy whatever you want so make the most of this by denying cards to other players that they need for their strategy.
The point is, don’t underestimate the usefulness of a potential +3 power per turn (mid to late game) as well as the ability to not be tied to a specific card type. The ability will not kick in until probably around turn 7+ but if you set things up right then you will be good to go.
In all deck-building games deck control is most important, you will soon enough be flooded in cards, but controlling which of these you get in your hand is very important.
For this reason I always try to get Penguin, Super Speed, and any cards that allow you to remove cards from your deck.
The Batmobile also helps this in case you get a bad hand you can recycle it, and as Batman it is even better as you still get the +1 Power from playing it.
We have come up with a new variation to our play. We have played this game so much at our store that we tend to really break turns with crazy plays but the games can take a bit long due to this, so we put ourselves on a clock. This variation is a timed game. We decide how long the game will go. Once time is up the player who is played ends their turn and the game is over. Each player is also only allowed so much time per play turn. If they run out of time the loose the rest of that turn no more buys allowed. it has made for some crazy fast play and real excitement with big plays that may not pay off due to time. We have the games run max of 21 min for 3 player and 25 min for 4 player. So far we have not tried it with 5 players. Each players turn have been limited to 20 seconds or so. Mind you all of this can be adjusted to your taste so have fun. Expect to be a bit tired at the end of the game its a real blast.
Don’t underestimate the power/usefulness of Locations. They’re pretty much all great and as a bonus they don’t clutter your deck since they’re played at the beginning of your turn when drawn and remain as a permanent effect from then on. They can be rare, but usually when they show up in the lineup on my turn, I try to grab them before any other cards. There are obvious combos too, like Arkham Asylum with the Wonder Woman player, or Fortress of Solitude with the Superman player.
When provided the ability to destroy a card most people will go after a weakness or vulnerability card. When these are gone, it is time to burn punches. Yes, you get power from these cards, but they take up space in your hand from the more powerful cards in your deck.
If you find yourself falling behind in points because you are unable to gain Super Villains, try to buy the right cards in the line up.
Utility Belt – worth 5pts when you own 4 or more equipment.
Green Arrow – worth 5pts when you own 4 or more heroes.
Suicide Squad – each card is worth as much as the amount of Suicide Squads you own.
With the upcoming release of the new DC Deckbuilding game, there a variant of the game in which you work with a partner to beat the big bads. In an even group of six or more players combine both decks into one monstrous pile and pair off. Each pair will share 6 Weaknesses and 14 Punches in a combined deck, that both players of a team draw from. The players on each team make purchase as normal from the lineup during their turn but draws and discards are made into the shared pile. In the end the team who has the highest deck score wins.
Not all heroes are created equal. Aquaman and Wonder Woman seem to have advantages over the other heroes. This imbalance can cause players to feel oppressed from the very start if they are not satisfied with their random draw. Also, some of us just want to play our favorite hero!
To balance this, we do a silent auction before the game. Every player writes down a list of characters (one for each player) and puts a number next to the character name. The number represents how many negative points they are willing to start the game with. You may also write “no bid” which means you are happy to stick with a random character after all the others have been distributed.
All players reveal their bids. If nobody matches picks, then everybody loses their bid in points and gets their choice. Matched picks are rewarded to highest bidder with the loser moving down to his second choice character. Ties are resolved with a secondary silent auction between those players for just that character, where the bid must be higher than the first.
This format adds a new fun layer of strategy to what could be an extremely random event of the game. Players can pay what they feel is fair to possess the “best” character. This in turn makes the weaker characters stronger by because they can be played without the self-imposed handicap.
Power
Introduction and Notes
Buying cards with cost 5 or less
Master of Locations
Utility Cards
Summary
Cryptozoic now has a Multiverse Box to store all sets and expansions in one place. This is great! It comes with plastic themed dividers and some extra cards to add to the game. This is a great addition for a great family of games!!
In response to Mat’s suggestion let’s take it a step further to include Batman and Superman in multiplayer games…
Cap their superpower abilities at a +3 each max per turn to keep this from getting out of hand in a runaway leader sort of way. You want everyone to have fun and play a balanced game.