Remember the Silver Age of American superhero comics? Even the most down-to-Earth DC characters were always chasing off on science fiction jaunts: in those pre-Dark Knight days, Batman was more likely to be involved in thwarting space alien invasions or off on a time-travelling adventure than in tackling criminals in Gotham City; rarely a month went by without Superman being confronted by yet another super-powered emigrant from Krypton (as a child reading the comics, it sometimes seemed to me that there must have been nobody home on the planet when Krypton exploded). Meanwhile, Marvel comics seemed to solely involve interchangeable heroes and villains beating each other up. It may've just been The Thing's catch phrase, but to me, 'It's Clobbering Time!' pretty much summed up the entire Marvel universe of the period.
For me then, Wise Wizard's Kapow! invokes a flood of memories. Even before you open the box, it reminds you of Silver Age comic books, with a box lid design modelled on a comic book cover from the period, complete with its comic code approval stamp. And thematically, this is Marvel comics as I remember them before their superheroes became brooding and full of existential angst. In this game, playable solo but essentially for two (or four in team mode if you combine Volume 1 and Volume 2), players each have a superhero or supervillain character and they are just trying to beat up their opponent (ie: reduce their health counter to zero).
In terms of objective then, this is akin to other well-established Wise Wizard games like Star Realms and Hero Realms. Those, however, are deck building card games. By contrast, Kapow! is a more visceral dice chucker. And what's more, you're not just rolling dice and allocating them to your hero/villain's board for their attack/defence/power up values, you're also drafting more dice and even dice building!
Each box comes with four sets of five different custom six-sided dice. Your character will start off with some of these and be able to add more as they spend rolls on power ups, but the standout feature of Kapow! is its six individually customisable dice. We've seen customisable dice before, of course. Among gamers, Dice Forge (Libellud) is probably the best known game where players are constructing their own dice but Lego got there first with their Heroica range and with the customisable dice that were included in many of their children's board games (for example, Atlantis Treasure). The customisable die faces in Dice Forge were unduly fiddly, particularly on disassembly, but it's notably easier to alter the faces of the dice in Kapow! And Wise Wizard have even given thought to those without fingernails by including a couple of separating tools.
With the ability to add and to modify your dice, players are incentivised to do more than merely slug each other, but for those that do just want a slugfest, there's the option to put together videogame-style combos to substantially increase the damage you dish out with your attacks.
Part of the joy of Kapow! is that it feels like mindless fun so you hardly notice that there's a strong underlying cerebral element in weighing up how best to optimise the impact of your dice rolls and whether to try immediately to wear down your opponent or go the slightly longer 'power up' route.
Doug Hettrick, Larry Bogucki, Carl Van Ostrand and Rob Dougherty have designed Kapow! so new players can be eased in with a basic game before moving on to playing with the specific character boards for more challenging asymmetric combat. There are six different character boards in each 'Volume' of Kapow!, so if you buy both Volume 1 and Volume 2, you'll be able to choose between 12 different characters. Sadly, Wise Wizard haven't so far gone down the IP route, so these are heroes and villains made up for the game rather than familiar characters from the Marvel or DC comic book universes. Each Voume comes with two player screens, and you'll need those because gameplay in Kapow! is predicated on simultaneous dice allocation/action selection. Hence with both sets, you're also able to play 2 v 2 The Brave & The Bold-style team-ups. Clobbering Time has never been so much fun!
(Review by Selwyn Ward)