Misfit Heroes Review – Where Whimsy Meets Strategic Tableau Building

Review by Lincoln Hoppe: The Game Bard

First Impressions 🦸‍♂️

Misfit Heroes, designed by Phil Walker-Harding and published by AEG had me at ‘supermodel cyclops,’ but the satisfying puzzle sealed the deal.

How Misfit Heroes Works 🎲

Misfit Heroes is a refreshingly clever tableau building game that lets you craft your own zany heroes, serving up a delightful combination of strategy, humor, and replayability.
Each player creates their own tableau of Misfit Heroes – funny, quirky, odd, and adorable characters arranged in a 4×4 grid. When one player completes their grid, the game ends.

And it doesn’t take long – the box says 30-45 minutes, but at 2 players, I’ve found it’s less than 30.

On your turn, you take 1 of 4 actions:
• Recruit a Hero into your grid
• Draw new cards
• Gain 1 influence token
• Or gain 10 bucks from the supply. 

Card Crafting: The Heart of Heroes 🃏

The pre-game crafting of cards is awesome – where else can you create an inflammable jester, a graverobbing queen, or my wryly redundant favorite, a gigantic giant?”

Before your first game, you overlay clear character cards onto background cards, placing them in sleeves (included – card sleevers rejoice!) to generate unlikely combinations. You’re not crafting during the game, but before or after, like a mini-game of mixing and matching at your own pace.

Want to hear some of my favorite combinations?

How about a veterinarian knight patching up your war horse? Or a famous monk signing autographs between meditation sessions? The architect orc – I hear their designs are absolutely smashing. And don’t forget the kind bandit, who always leaves a thank-you note after robbing you. Or the thrifty lord, pinching pennies in his perfectly practical palace.

Gameplay & Scoring: Building Your Team 🏆

Don’t let the bright whimsical cover fool you – this is a smart game with juicy choices to make, where simple rewards often require deliciously difficult decisions.

It’s not just the characters that combine in crazy ways – the Recruitment and activation boxes mix and match too, creating endless possibilities for scoring and cascading actions.

Each hero scores as specified on their card, plus you score additional points by claiming regions with influence tokens. There’s a race element here – first player to claim each region gets the most points, with decreasing values for later claims.

Let me share a fascinating choice from my last game:

I had a card that scored points for each star ability in its row and column. But some star-ability cards gave rewards for flipping and deactivating them. Throughout the game, I wrestled with this delicious dilemma: take the immediate reward, or save the card for end-game scoring?

With its mix-and-match card system, Misfit Heroes offers near infinite combinations while maintaining a rulebook that’s just 8 pages long – I love this kind of elegant design!

Final Verdict: Should You Play Misfit Heroes? ⭐

This is a game that can be enjoyed by newer gamers gently touching the puzzle’s surface, and by the full-on gamer who wants some brain-juggling crunch to their game.

You know what makes a hero? Some say it’s bravery. Others say it’s sacrifice. But in Misfit Heroes, sometimes it’s just being a supermodel cyclops who knows how to work it. And that’s the kind of hero I want at my table.

Video Review Link 

by Lincoln Hoppe

Original Music by Lincoln Hoppe: The Game Bard

Review based on Prototype provided by AEG.

Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG)

Designed by: Phil Walker-Harding

Board Game Geek Page: Misfit Heroes

My Board Game Geek Page: Lincoln Hoppe