Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Heroes
Four rookie heroes are available to play, each pulled from Cecil's list of candidates:
Invincible (real name Mark Grayson) hits hard and moves fast, and is expected to develop enhanced endurance that will help him stay in a fight longer. He is Omni-Man's son, which means his ceiling is enormous, but he only just got his powers, making him the least experienced of the group.
Atom Eve (real name Samantha Eve Wilkins) generates versatile energy constructs, useful both for shielding civilians and allies and for hitting hard when she needs to. She is confident and brilliant, and can technically manipulate matter at the molecular level — effectively god-like power that she currently mostly uses to punch bad guys and protect bystanders.
Rex Splode (real name Rex Sloan) specializes in blowing things up, letting him handle large groups of enemies by himself, though he sometimes hurts himself and the people around him in the process. He is reckless and none too careful, but he gets results.
Robot (real name unknown) is a tactician who coordinates the team on the fly, engineering solutions in the field to get the most out of everyone's abilities. His true identity is a mystery, but his intelligence is not in doubt.
Game Components
The box includes: 3 zone boards and a Guardians HQ board; 4 hero boards, 4 matching hero standees, and 7 episode cards; 129 cubes (24 black and purple, 27 each of yellow, orange, and blue) along with 4 bags, a rescue die, a crash die, 9 minion tokens, and Robot's drone token; 6 helper cards, 6 challenge cards, and 4 reminder cards; 62 damage tokens in values of 1, 3, 5, and 10; 4 starter power cards, 4 "Learn By Punching" cards, and 30 civilians; a round marker, 3 KO markers, 20 thwart tokens, 16 strengthen tokens, and 4 defiance tokens.
For your first game (Episode 1), the Super Power, Level I Villain, Level II Villain, and Event decks come shrink-wrapped in a fixed order — do not shuffle them. This episode also uses 6 shovels, 6 bomb tokens, and a "Choppa" token as episode-specific components.
Components used only in the full game (i.e., not needed for Episode 1, but used in every other episode) include: 36 Ultimate Power cards; 4 Signature Power cards and 3 Experimental Technology cards; 13 Level II Villain cards and 12 Level III Villain cards; 6 red cubes; Eve's Bubble token; and 12 Omni-Man Event cards.
Setup
1. Set Up the Battlefield
Line up the three zone boards where everyone can reach them, arranged left to right. In each zone, place ten civilians: three in the safety area and seven in the danger area. Then set the Guardians HQ board below the center zone board.
2. Select an Episode and Difficulty Level
If this is your first game, play "Short-Staffed in the Hero Department." After that, you can play any episode on its own, or run through all seven as a campaign (see Campaign Mode below). Place the episode card above the zone boards, showing the side that matches your hero count (indicated in the upper-right corner), and set the round marker on the leftmost space of its track. Check the Episode Guide for any special setup instructions tied to your episode.
Also agree on a difficulty: Easy, Normal, or Hardcore. This choice affects a few of the remaining setup steps.
3. Set Up the Decks
Episode 1: Set the Super Power, Level I Villain, Level II Villain, and Event decks near the zone boards exactly as packaged — do not shuffle them, since they're ordered to match the examples in this book and the app tutorial. (If you've already shuffled them, the Episode Guide explains how to restore the original order.) Leave the Level III Villain deck and the Ultimate Power deck in the box; they aren't used in Episode 1.
Full game: Build your event deck using your chosen difficulty. Shuffle the Level I, Level II, and Level III events separately. Start with a face-down stack of all the Level III events, then deal a number of Level II events on top based on difficulty, then a number of Level I events on top of that:
| Difficulty | Level I Events | Level II Events |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 3 | 3 |
| Normal | 2 | 2 |
| Hardcore | 0 | 3 |
Return any unused Level I and II events to the box unseen. Then shuffle and set out the Super Power, Ultimate Power, Level I Villain, Level II Villain, and Level III Villain decks near the zone boards (Level III Villains aren't used in Episode 2).
4. Create Supplies
Set out the damage tokens, thwart tokens, strengthen tokens, and both dice where everyone can reach them. Put the minion tokens near the villain decks, and the three KO markers near the Guardians HQ board. For each hero in play, put one "Learn By Punching" card face up near the Super Power deck, and return any extras to the box.
5. (Optional) Take Helper and/or Challenge Cards
Skip this step on your very first game, and also skip it if you're running Campaign Mode (which determines helper and challenge cards on its own — see below). Otherwise, your team may choose up to two helper cards (to ease the game) and/or up to two challenge cards (to toughen it). Each episode has a recommended pick for both in the Episode Guide, or you can select at random. Helper cards taken this way lower your final score; challenge cards raise it (see Scoring, below).
6. Set Up Each Player's Hero
A. Select and set up heroes. Each player picks a hero and takes that hero's board, its matching starter power card, and its hero standee. Place your hero board in front of you and slot the starter power into the purple-outlined slot along its bottom edge. Place your standee in the zone shown on your hero board next to your hero's name. Take a defiance token and a reminder card; put the defiance token in its spot on your hero board face up (bag-side showing), and keep your reminder card nearby. Some starter powers call for extra components (noted in parentheses in the table below) — set those near your hero board too.
| Hero | Starter Power | Signature Power (full game) |
|---|---|---|
| Invincible | Flying Charge | Going to the Limit |
| Atom Eve | Convenient Creation | Bubble Up (+ bubble token) |
| Rex Splode | Big 'Splode | Fire Up (+ red cubes) |
| Robot | Coordinated Assault (+ drone token) | Technical Genius (+ Experimental Technology cards: Experimental Blaster, Experimental Jetbike, Experimental Optics) |
Full game: starting with Episode 2, each hero also unlocks a signature power, which acts as a second starter power and goes in the black slot at the top left of the hero board.
B. Set up bags and cubes. Fill your bag with 6 black cubes and 3 each of yellow, blue, orange, and purple. Return any leftover black cubes to the box, and place the rest of the yellow, blue, orange, and purple cubes near the zone boards as a shared supply. The 6 red cubes belong to Rex Splode's "Fire Up" signature power in the full game; put them back in the box if you're playing Episode 1 or not using Rex.
C. Draw starting hands. In the full game, each hero draws four cards from the Super Power deck and one from the Ultimate Power deck. In Episode 1, each hero instead draws five cards from the Super Power deck (you can leave them face down near your hero board without looking until the first Training Phase, to speed up your first game).
Winning and Losing
Your episode card shows the win condition for the current mission, and you win the instant it's satisfied. In Episode 1, for example, you win once all three Flaxan villains (the entire Level II Villain deck) have been defeated. Check the Episode Guide for each episode's specific win condition.
You lose immediately if any of the following happens:
- Your heroes are collectively KOed a third time.
- Fifteen civilians have died in total.
- Every civilian in any single zone has died.
- You run out of time on the episode card's track.
If you'd like to grade how well you did, see Scoring under Modes of Play, below.
Round Structure
Every round proceeds through four phases, in this order:
- Advance the Episode — move the round marker forward on the episode card's track and resolve whatever icons appear on the new space.
- Hero Phase — heroes pull cubes from their bags and spend them to activate powers.
- Training Phase — heroes spend confidence to learn new powers and improve their bags.
- Villain Phase — an event card is revealed, telling the villains and minions how to act.
Advance the Episode
Move the round marker one space along the episode card's track (in round 1, it starts on the first space). Each space lists icons underneath it that you resolve in order, which can include placing a villain, placing minions, and triggering episode abilities.
Placing Villains
When the track shows a villain-deck icon, reveal the top card of the matching deck. The icons in the card's upper-right corner tell you which zone it enters. Place the new villain in the leftmost open card slot of that zone. If both slots in the intended zone are already full, use the nearest available slot instead (villains that would start in the two side zones default toward the center zone if possible; villains that would start in the center zone let the players pick which adjacent zone to use). If there's no room anywhere, discard the villain with the least remaining health to make space for the new arrival. If you ever run out of a given villain level entirely, reshuffle that level's discard pile into a new deck.
Once placed, resolve the villain's arrive power (if it has one) in its zone. For instance, in the Episode 1 example, the second villain revealed is Flaxan First Wave, whose arrive power endangers a civilian — moving one civilian from safety to danger in its zone (see Endangering Civilians, under the Villain Phase, below).
If a villain's damage-dealing arrive power triggers but there's no hero standing in its zone, it endangers that many civilians instead.
Placing Minions
Minions are one-health enemies represented by small tokens. When the track shows a minion icon, place the indicated number of minions in each zone called out — most commonly, one minion per zone. Each zone can hold at most three minions at a time; ignore any minions that would exceed that cap.
Episode Abilities
Many episodes have unique abilities tied to icons that also appear on the track, triggering at the point shown.
Hardcore Additions
Some track icons are printed beneath a special hardcore symbol. Ignore these unless you're playing on hardcore difficulty, in which case resolve them normally.
Hero Phase
During the Hero Phase, heroes fight by repeatedly drawing cubes from their bags and spending them to fill their powers, continuing until each player chooses to stop or overexerts and crashes.
Pulling and Playing Cubes
Draw three random cubes from your bag at a time, placing them in the ready area of your hero board. Then, in whatever order you like, play them onto matching colored symbols on your powers — black cubes are wild and can cover a symbol of any color. Each power lists how many symbols (cubes) it needs; you don't have to fill them all from one pull, since a played cube stays in place from pull to pull until the power is complete.
Cubes are played one at a time, and the moment a cube covers a power's last remaining symbol, you resolve that power immediately, before playing your next cube. Cubes are not removed after a power resolves — they stay put, blocking the power from being used again this round.
Example: Invincible pulls a blue cube and two yellow cubes. He plays the blue cube first, filling the single symbol on his basic Move power to shift into an adjacent zone. Then he plays both yellow cubes to complete his basic Attack, dealing 2 damage to the villain there.
If you can't or don't want to play a cube, set it in the dropped area of your hero board instead. All three cubes from a pull must be either played or dropped before you pull again, and once dropped, a cube is unusable for the rest of the round.
Heroes pull and play independently — you don't need to sync your pulls with teammates. If two heroes complete a power at the same moment, the players decide the order, but each power must fully resolve before the next begins.
Example: Atom Eve pulls two yellow cubes, but there's no villain in her zone for her basic Attack to hit. Seeing that Invincible already has two of the three purple cubes needed to fill Flying Charge — which could bring a villain into her zone — she leaves her yellow cubes in her ready area and waits for him to pull again before deciding what to do.
Continue pulling three cubes at a time, playing or dropping them, and resolving any completed powers, until you choose to stop or you crash. A hero crashes the moment they pull a fifth black cube, whether from the bag or already sitting on their board or in the dropped area — overexerted, they must immediately stop everything they're doing (see Crashing, below).
Defiance
Each hero starts with a face-up defiance token. If you pull three cubes you don't want, you may flip your defiance token face down to set that pull aside, pull three fresh cubes, and then return the first three to your ready area — as long as the original pull didn't cause you to crash. (Defiance cannot undo a crash.) To flip your token back face up and recharge it, you must visit Guardians HQ.
Range
Unless a power says otherwise, it can only affect your own zone — wherever your hero standee currently stands. The main exception is the Ranged keyword, which lets a power reach into an adjacent zone instead.
Basic Powers
Every hero board comes with these baseline abilities.
Damage. When a power deals damage, place that many damage tokens on a single enemy within range — you cannot split damage across multiple enemies. A villain card's upper-left corner lists its starting health, with separate totals for 2-, 3-, and 4-hero games. Once a villain has taken damage equal to its starting health, it is defeated and discarded (start a discard pile if you don't have one yet). Effects that boost damage — including a strengthen token — apply to any damage icon on a card, even one buried in its text, but they never add a damage icon to a power that doesn't already deal damage. If a power does something extra based on how much damage it dealt, count the full amount even if it was more than needed to finish off the villain.
Move. Move your hero standee to an adjacent zone, or to Guardians HQ from anywhere (and from Guardians HQ back to anywhere). Note that the two outer zones are not adjacent to each other. While at Guardians HQ, you can't target anything in any zone, even with a Ranged power — but if you begin a Hero Phase there, you heal 2 damage and recharge your defiance token.
Rescue. A Rescue power can either move a civilian from danger to safety, or attempt to save a crashed hero (see Crash Rescues, below).
Thwart. Thwart lets you head off bad things before they happen. When you thwart, place a thwart token on a villain in your zone or on an episode ability. Once every space on a villain or ability is covered, it's fully thwarted — the next time it would act, remove the tokens instead of resolving it (this is the only way thwart tokens come off). If you didn't finish covering a villain, or the Villain Phase doesn't call on it, the tokens simply carry over to a future round. Below each episode ability is a tag showing where a hero must stand to thwart it: "Global" means anywhere, while other tags name specific zones (Episode 1 only uses Global abilities). Some episode abilities also require extra thwart tokens depending on hero count — for example, one ability costs one additional token in four-hero games.
Training. Many powers grant confidence when used. You don't spend confidence during the Hero Phase — it's simply tracked for the Training Phase that follows.
Power Cards
Beyond their basic powers, heroes start with a starter power card (and, from Episode 2 on, a signature power too), and learn additional power cards as the game goes on. Filling a power means using its text, dealing whatever damage it shows, and gaining whatever confidence it shows. When a power offers multiple effects, you may do them in any order and skip any you don't want, unless the card says otherwise — for example, Invincible's Flying Charge lets him deal 2 damage and/or move, in either order, or skip the move entirely. You may choose separate targets for each effect on a card (for instance, damaging one villain while thwarting another, as long as both are in range), and a Ranged power lets you pick different zones for its different effects.
Power cards can have a wide range of effects; if a word or icon is unfamiliar, check your reminder card or the Quick Reference at the back of this book.
Most power cards show a Type icon in the upper-left corner: Might, Energy, or Tech. Types don't do anything by themselves, but some card text refers to them (Combo is the most common example — see Keywords and Card Mechanics, below). The basic powers on your hero board, and Learn By Punching, have no type.
Full game — Ultimate Powers: Starting in Episode 2, Ultimate Power cards enter play. Each one is placed beneath a Super Power that shares its cube color, and you can't play any cubes on it until the Super Power above it is filled (you cannot pair an Ultimate Power with your signature power). Many Ultimate Powers require more than one color of cube, and those symbols can be filled in any order.
Crashing
The instant a hero pulls a fifth black cube, they crash — pushed too far and now in danger. Every black cube on that hero's board and powers counts toward the limit, including cubes sitting in the dropped area. When you crash, leave the three cubes you just pulled in your ready area and tip your standee on its side to signal your teammates.
From that point, your team has until the end of the Hero Phase to rescue you (see Crash Rescues, below). If they succeed, you get to use the cubes from the pull that crashed you. If they don't, you roll the crash die at the end of the phase and take the damage shown; rolling the "1+" face means you take 1 damage and roll again, potentially several times in a row.
Crashing is not the same as being KOed — you're only KOed if your health hits 0 (see Getting KOed, under the Villain Phase, below). You might still get KOed as a result of crash damage, but until then a crashed hero can still be damaged by villains, healed, or moved by teammates. A crashed hero cannot pull any more cubes for the rest of the round, though they can still benefit from powers that tell them to pull cubes.
Crash Rescues
To save a crashed teammate, use a Rescue power while standing in their zone (or a Ranged Rescue power from an adjacent zone), then roll the rescue die to see if it works. Regardless of the result, neither you nor the crashed hero can pull any more cubes this round — attempting the rescue takes everything out of you.
The rescue die has three possible outcomes:
- Epic Rescue or Rescue — the attempt succeeds. Stand the crashed hero's standee back up: they won't take crash damage at the end of the Hero Phase, and they can now use the cubes from the pull that crashed them. On an Epic Rescue (the face with the confidence icon), the rescuer also gains 1 bonus confidence for the next Training Phase.
- Failure — the attempt doesn't work, and the crashed hero remains in danger.
A Rescue power worth 2 or more lets you make a separate attempt for each point of value, and you can split the rescues between civilians and crashed heroes, watching how one attempt lands before deciding on the next.
End of Hero Phase
The Hero Phase ends once every player has either chosen to stop pulling or been forced to stop by crashing or attempting a crash rescue — players can stop independently, so one hero may keep pulling while another has already finished. At that point, any crashed hero who wasn't rescued rolls the crash die and takes the resulting damage; if this brings them to 0 health, they're KOed (see Getting KOed, below). Otherwise, stand their standee back up — they're no longer crashed.
Training Phase
During the Training Phase, each hero may learn powers from their hand by spending confidence (or discard a power to take Learn By Punching instead), gain a cube by discarding a matching-colored power from their hand (once per phase), and discard or rearrange powers they've already learned. Once everyone has finished, all players reset: cubes return to bags and hands are refilled.
Learn Powers
Add up the confidence values on every power you filled this round — that total is what you can spend learning new powers this Training Phase. A power's confidence cost is printed in its upper-left corner, and you may learn as many powers as you can afford; any confidence left unspent is lost at the end of the phase.
When you learn a Super Power, slot it into the color-matched space beneath your hero board, where it becomes usable like your starter power on future rounds. Beyond the four printed colored slots, each hero also has two "flex slots" that can hold a power of any color, kept beside and beneath the hero board. Each slot holds one power; if you're out of room, you may discard an existing power to make space, and you can freely rearrange your powers between slots (as long as the color restrictions on your first four slots are respected).
If a power's effect is unclear, check the Quick Reference at the back of this book, the Keywords and Card Mechanics section below, and/or the Card Clarifications section.
Learn By Punching is always available as a fallback: instead of learning a power from your hand, you may discard a card from your hand to take a Learn By Punching card and place it in an eligible slot beneath your hero board.
Gain a Cube
Once per Training Phase, each hero may discard a power from their hand to take a cube matching that power's color from the shared supply and add it permanently to their bag. This can be done in addition to learning powers (or taking Learn By Punching). If a cube color runs out in the supply, heroes simply can no longer gain that color.
Reset
Once you've finished learning powers and/or gaining a cube, return all your cubes to your bag and draw power cards until you have five in hand again.
Full game — Ultimate Power Cards: When you learn an Ultimate Power, it must be placed beneath a Super Power that shares at least one cube color with it (you cannot pair one with your signature power). If it requires two colors, you may pair it with a Super Power of either color. You may rearrange powers during the Training Phase to change an Ultimate's pairing, but if it ends the phase without a paired Super Power, discard it. If you discard a two-color Ultimate Power from your hand to gain a cube, choose one of its two colors. When resetting and drawing new cards, you may draw at most one card from the Ultimate Power deck per refill; the rest must come from the Super Power deck (or you may draw entirely from the Super Power deck if you prefer). There's no cap on how many Ultimate Powers you can hold at once — only on how many you draw in a single refill.
Villain Phase
Now the villains act. Reveal the top card of the event deck and resolve its instructions from top to bottom.
The card's minion area tells every minion in play to take an action; if a card has no minion instructions, minions simply don't act (and this area is ignored if no minions are in play). The card's villain area tells you which villains activate and which of their abilities to use — find the matching icon on the villain's own card and carry out what's shown next to it.
If a villain is fully thwarted, remove its thwart tokens instead of resolving the first thing it attempts to do that phase — for instance, if the event calls for both a villain's power and its strike, a fully thwarted villain has its power icon skipped (tokens removed) but still carries out its strike. If a villain wasn't fully thwarted, any tokens already on it simply remain, doing nothing yet, so you can finish thwarting it in a later round.
Endangering Civilians
When a villain endangers civilians, move that many civilians in its zone from safety to danger. If there aren't enough civilians in safety to cover the full amount, kill the difference from the danger area instead, moving them to the casualties area of the HQ board. For example, if a zone has one civilian left in safety and a villain's power endangers two, first move that one civilian into danger, then kill one civilian already in danger.
Enemy Damage
Whenever an enemy deals damage, it hits every hero standing in its zone. If no hero is present, it endangers that many civilians instead.
Getting KOed
A hero is KOed once they've accumulated 10 damage tokens. Move them to Guardians HQ, remove all their damage tokens, and place a KO marker in the Hero KOs area of the HQ board. Three total KOs across the team ends the game in a loss.
A few less common cases in the Villain Phase: if a card directs multiple villains to use multiple abilities, resolve them one villain at a time, starting with the leftmost villain named, working through all of its abilities in the order shown before moving to the next. Minions and villains are treated as distinct — an effect that targets one never applies to the other — but the term "enemy" covers both (as well as the Machine Head and Omni-Man bosses that appear in episodes 4 and 7). Whenever you need a random zone, roll the rescue die; each face's background color corresponds to one of the three zones. If a tie ever comes up in resolving an event, villain power, or episode ability (for example, two villains tied for "highest health"), the players choose among the tied options.
Keywords and Card Mechanics
Combo. A Combo effect gives you a bonus if you've already filled a power of the matching Type this round. You only get the bonus once per power, no matter how many qualifying powers you've used; it's checked only at the moment the Combo power itself is used (using a matching power afterward doesn't retroactively trigger it); and it only looks at powers currently filled on your board — it ignores powers used through special effects (like "From the Lab") and powers that were used but have since been discarded or cleared by another effect (like "Clean Slate").
Explosive. A power with Explosive deals its listed damage to every enemy — villains and minions alike — in the hero's zone.
Gain Cube. When a power shows this icon (or says "gain a cube" in its text), immediately take a cube of the indicated color from the supply and add it permanently to your bag. If the supply of that color is empty, nothing happens. Red cubes can only be gained through Rex Splode's Fire Up signature power; a card that says "gain a cube of any color" can only choose among yellow, blue, orange, and purple.
Heal. Healing removes damage tokens from a hero, never taking them above their maximum health (usually 10). Like other powers, healing can only reach heroes in your own zone unless it also has Ranged.
Ranged. A power with Ranged can target your own zone or an adjacent one, and this applies to every effect on the card — you can choose different zones for different effects on the same power. For example, Robot's Coordinated Assault could deal its damage in one zone while placing the drone token in another.
Strengthen. Using a power with this icon lets you place a strengthen token on one of your own powers, permanently adding 1 to any damage it deals. You can only strengthen your own powers, never a teammate's, and only powers that deal damage. The bonus applies to any damage the card deals, including damage buried in its text, but not to other effects that already increase damage. For example, if Invincible strengthens a power that deals 1 damage as its main effect and grants +1 to other powers of its type, the strengthened power now deals 2 damage but still only grants +1 to others; he can't strengthen a power that never deals damage in the first place.
Modes of Play
Scoring
The game ends the moment your team completes the episode's win condition, or triggers one of the loss conditions listed under Winning and Losing. If you'd like to rate your performance, score the game as follows:
- Score points for winning, based on difficulty: 20 for Easy, 30 for Normal, 50 for Hardcore.
- Score 1 point per Level I villain defeated, 2 per Level II, and 3 per Level III.
- Lose 1 point per civilian casualty.
- Lose 3 points per hero KO.
- Score 15 points for each challenge card you took on.
- If you're not playing Campaign Mode, score 10 points if you took no helper cards, or 5 if you took exactly one.
The Episode Guide also lists a bonus scoring condition specific to each episode.
Challenge and Helper Cards
Challenge and helper cards adjust the game's difficulty. Challenge cards impose an ongoing condition that makes the game harder. Helper cards grant the team a one-time special power to use whenever they need it to make things easier; helpers belong to the whole team rather than to one hero, and the team decides together when and how to use one. Unlike normal powers, helper cards aren't restricted to a hero's current zone — they can affect any zone — and unless a helper specifies otherwise, it can be used any time a power could be activated.
Solo Mode
In solo play, one person controls two heroes, each with its own bag and hero board. Follow normal 2-player setup, except that instead of drawing separate starting hands, draw a single seven-card hand shared by both heroes (in the full game, from Episode 2 on, this shared hand is five Super Powers and two Ultimate Powers). Use the 2-player health values on villains and the 2-player side of the episode card. During the Hero Phase, you may pull and play cubes for either hero in any order, exactly as if two separate players controlled them — but each hero can only pull from and play cubes out of its own bag.
Solo Training Phase. Your two heroes share one hand of cards during the Training Phase, but track confidence separately. For example, if one hero has 2 confidence and the other has 4, either could learn a 2-cost power from the shared hand, but only the one with 4 confidence could afford a 3- or 4-cost power. If you don't have a suitable power for a hero, that hero may take Learn By Punching instead (discarding a card as usual), even if your other hero already learned a power this round. Each hero may still gain one cube, discarding a card from the shared hand to do so. Don't refill the hand until both heroes have finished their entire Training Phase (in the full game, you may draw up to two Ultimate Powers when refilling).
Campaign Mode
Campaign Mode strings all seven episodes together in order for the same team. Track your progress on the campaign sheet on the back of the Episode Guide, or with the Dire Wolf Game Room app.
You get two attempts to win each episode. If you lose, gain the helper card listed for that episode in the Episode Guide (or a random one if you already have it), and try the episode again if this was your first attempt; otherwise move on to the next episode regardless. You keep any helper cards until you actually use them to win an episode — so unused helpers carry forward, and a helper you use in a losing attempt comes back to you at the end of that episode along with whatever helper the loss grants. When you win an episode, score it and proceed to the next.
Each episode also lists an optional challenge card worth bonus points, which you may only attempt if you won the previous episode (on either try).
Campaign scoring. If you're using the Dire Wolf Game Room app, it tracks campaign scoring automatically. Otherwise, mark a loss on the sheet without scoring it; score a win using the normal method above, but skip the step that rewards taking few helper cards; and if you won an episode on your first attempt, add a bonus 10 points. After all seven episodes, total your scores and check page 10 of the Episode Guide to see how your campaign rated.
Hero-Time Variant
For a faster-paced game, try playing in real time: set a 10-minute timer at the start of each Hero Phase, and when it runs out, the phase ends immediately. Heroes may finish resolving any power they were already in the middle of, but any cubes still sitting in their ready area count as dropped, and any hero who crashed and wasn't rescued rolls crash damage as usual at that point. For a more relaxed pace, use a 15-minute timer instead; for a frantic one, try 5 minutes.
Card Clarifications
This section resolves questions that come up for specific named powers and villains.
Autosave — After you use it, the next time a hero in your zone crashes (no matter where they were when you filled Autosave), you may attempt a rescue on them, on top of the card's normal Rescue 2 effect. You still roll the rescue die as usual, and you still can't pull further cubes this round.
Bi-Plane — If this villain can't move (either because it's already in the rightmost zone, or the next zone already holds two villains), it instead endangers four civilians in its current zone.
Bubble Up — Atom Eve starts the game holding the bubble token on this power. Keep the token there whenever no hero currently has it. When she gives it to a hero (herself included), place it near that hero's max-health icon. It stays with them until it actually blocks damage, or until Eve reassigns it to someone else — it does not expire at the end of a round. The bubble only blocks damage from villains; it does nothing against minions, crash damage, or damage from a hero's own powers. Once it blocks damage, returning it is not optional.
Chain Lightning — Pulling a black cube with this power in play doesn't force an immediate crash, though you still can't play a black cube if doing so would cause you to crash. You may keep pulling cubes even in situations that would normally stop you (having already crashed, or having just attempted a crash rescue).
Cecil's Contingency — After an event card is revealed, you may spend this to cancel up to two villain powers and/or strikes for that Villain Phase — they can belong to the same villain or two different ones, and you don't need a hero present in the villain's zone. You can only cancel abilities that would occur in that specific Villain Phase; you can't save the effect for later.
Clean Slate — Removing cubes from an already-filled power forfeits any confidence it granted, and it no longer counts as "filled" for Combo purposes. Black cubes returned to your bag this way no longer count toward your crash limit unless you pull them again later. If you crash, get rescued, and then fill Clean Slate, you're still considered to have crashed and still can't pull more cubes.
Convenient Creation — Check how many civilians are safe in your zone at the moment you fill this power; you only get one of its three listed effects, not a combination (for example, you can't rescue a civilian first and then claim the bonus for having four or more safe afterward).
Coordinated Assault — Robot starts the game with the drone token on this power. It stays there whenever it isn't placed on an enemy. The drone only comes off when a hero uses it to boost their damage, or Robot moves it elsewhere by using the power again — the enemy that gets damaged doesn't need to be the same one holding the drone, or even in the same zone, since this power has Ranged.
Defensive Mastery — Permanently gain a cube of the indicated color and immediately play it to another eligible power (or drop it if you can't or don't want to play it). Resolve Defensive Mastery itself completely before resolving any power the new cube might complete.
Fire Up — Rex starts the game with the supply of red cubes kept beside his hero board; this is the only power that grants red cubes. Red cubes can cover a symbol of any color, and any power filled using a red cube gets +1 to its damage, exactly as if a strengthen token were applied. Whenever a hero fills a power using red cubes, they take 1 damage per red cube used, regardless of what the power itself does — this happens only once per fill, even if some other effect causes the power to repeat.
Flaxan Tank — If this villain is in the leftmost zone, its ability only endangers two civilians there instead of the usual amount.
Flurry of Blows (see also Launch the Robots and Miracle Grow) — Repeat this power's effect once for each of your other currently filled powers of the matching Type; powers played through special means (like From the Lab) don't count, nor do powers that were used and then discarded or cleared. Each repetition grants that power's damage and any accompanying text, except for the instruction to repeat.
From the Lab — Powers discarded to use this effect don't grant their confidence, and they don't count toward Combo or any effect that cares how many powers of a Type you've used.
Going to the Limit — Black cubes pulled with this power in play are returned to the bag before they can cause a crash; this is not optional. Other cubes go to your ready area as usual. You may pull cubes even in situations that would normally stop you (already crashed, or having just attempted a crash rescue) — if you pull cubes while crashed, you can't play them until you're rescued.
Guardians, Gather! — This power cannot gain red or black cubes. If a crashed hero gains a cube through it, they can't play the cube until they're rescued.
Heroic Assembly — Choose any helper card your team doesn't already hold (and hasn't already used this game) and add it to your available helpers; you don't have to use it right away. In Campaign Mode, unused helpers gained this way carry forward to a future episode.
Home-Cooked Meal — Automatically rescues a crashed hero with no die roll required. You don't need another hero in range, and the rescued hero doesn't lose their future cube pulls — the rescue doesn't cost them anything.
Hurl Into Space — The targeted villain skips both its strike and its power in the Villain Phase, and can't be damaged, but keeps any damage and thwart tokens already on it, and still occupies its space in its zone (so it still counts toward that zone's villain capacity).
Immortality — Using this removes it from your hero board and sets it aside; from then on it protects you from being KOed even on a later round. Any cubes on it return to your bag at end of round. If it's discarded through From the Lab or Unlikely Ally, set it aside instead of putting it in the discard pile. It has no effect if copied by Relentless Barrage.
Launch the Robots — See Flurry of Blows, above.
Learn By Punching — You may only take this if you don't already have a copy in play. Like any power, you must fill it to trigger its text; once filled, you keep its confidence whether or not you later discard it.
Magmaniac — This villain's power damages other villains and minions in its zone as well as any heroes there. If no hero is present, it only endangers three civilians rather than six.
Master Gator — If this villain can't move into the zone with the most civilians in danger (because two villains are already there), or is already in that zone, it resolves the rest of its power where it stands.
Mental Mastery — See Defensive Mastery, above.
Miracle Grow — See Flurry of Blows, above.
Molecule Makeover — This power cannot gain a red or black cube.
Multi-Paul — This villain can't be damaged while any minion shares its zone, even by an Explosive power that would otherwise wipe out the minions too.
New and Improved — If the discarded power had any cubes on it, move those cubes to your dropped area. You may discard a Super Power to learn an Ultimate Power, or vice versa, as long as every Ultimate Power you hold is paired with a matching Super Power by the time you're done — and you may even discard New and Improved itself this way.
Power Conduit — You can't take more damage than your remaining health (though you may still choose to KO yourself deliberately). You may heal yourself before taking damage, if you've filled another power that lets you.
Relentless Barrage — Powers reused through this effect don't grant their confidence again, nor do they count as an additional use for effects like Flurry of Blows, Power Surge, or Launch the Robots.
Resilient Spirit — You only count as having healed a hero if that hero was below maximum health at the time.
Still Have a Job — Every villain endangers one extra civilian upon arriving, even ones that don't normally have an arrive power at all.
Such Heroic Nonsense — If only one villain is in play, it only uses its "leftmost and rightmost villain" power once rather than twice.
Technical Genius — At game start, Robot sets the Experimental Blaster, Experimental Jetbike, and Experimental Optics cards aside near his hero board. When he uses Technical Genius, he chooses one of the three and gives it to any hero (including himself); that hero needs an open slot for it, discarding an existing power if necessary (any cubes already on that power are dropped). When a hero fills an Experimental power, they return it to the side of Robot's hero board during the Training Phase; if they never use it, they may hold onto it for a future Hero Phase instead, or return it unused to free up a slot. Only filling Experimental Optics grants its bonus power.
Telekimeanness — If you choose the "move an enemy" option, move an enemy from your zone into an adjacent one. "Knock" carries no special meaning beyond its name — you simply choose a minion and another enemy in your zone and deal 1 damage to each.
Turn the Tide — Deals 1 damage for each civilian you personally moved from danger to safety this round (you may want to keep those civilians visually separate from others already in safety, to track the count).
Two Places at Once — After resolving everything else this power offers (damage, movement, and/or Rescue 2), you may repeat all of it once more; you don't repeat the instruction to repeat itself.
Weapon Mastery — See Defensive Mastery, above.
Whirlwind Mode — You must resolve this power's damage after its move, not before.
Wildcard Energy — If you discard a two-color Ultimate Power to gain a cube through this effect, you get both colors.
Quick Reference
- Combo — A bonus granted if you've already used another power of the matching Type this round.
- Confidence — The total confidence on powers you've filled this round is what you can spend learning new powers in the Training Phase.
- Damage — Place the indicated number of damage tokens on the target; damage can't be split across multiple enemies. When an enemy deals damage, it hits every hero in its zone, or endangers that many civilians if no hero is present.
- Endanger — For each icon, move one civilian in the zone from safety to danger; if none remain in safety, kill one from danger instead.
- Enemy — A term covering both villains and minions.
- Explosive — Deals its damage to every enemy in the zone.
- Gain Cube — Permanently gain a cube of the indicated color and add it to your bag.
- Guardians HQ — Beginning a Hero Phase here heals 2 damage and recharges your defiance token.
- Hardcore — An icon on the episode track that's ignored unless you're playing hardcore difficulty.
- Health — The amount of damage needed to defeat a villain or KO a hero; add tokens as damage is taken, remove them as it's healed.
- Minion — For each icon shown, place a minion in each zone indicated (most commonly, one minion per zone).
- Move — Move your hero standee to an adjacent zone, or to/from Guardians HQ.
- Place a Villain — Reveal a villain from the indicated deck and place it in its zone.
- Power Symbols — Cubes pulled from your bag are played onto these symbols on your cards; filling all the symbols on a power (using it) resolves it. Black cubes are wild and cover any symbol; the other symbols are yellow, blue, orange, and purple.
- Ranged — May target an adjacent zone as well as your own.
- Rescue — Move a civilian to safety, or attempt to save a crashed hero.
- Rescue Die Effects — Epic Rescue (saves the crashed hero and grants 1 bonus confidence for the next Training Phase); Rescue (saves the crashed hero); Failure (the crashed hero remains in danger).
- Strengthen — Place a strengthen token on one of your own powers, permanently adding 1 to any damage it deals.
- Thwart — Place a thwart token on a villain or episode ability; filling all its spaces blocks its next use.
- Villain Power/Strike — When an event card shows either symbol, find the matching symbol on the indicated villain's card and resolve the effect next to it.
- Zones — The three zone boards. A villain's starting zone is shown at the top right of its card; if both slots there are full, place it in the nearest available slot instead.