Rating: 8.1 Very Good
Popularity:0
Difficulty:Easy
Year:2019
Players: 2-5 players
Playing time: 120-21 minutes
Age:8+

Created by: Hassan Lopez, Rob Guillory

Published by: Eagle-Gryphon Games

Description:

Maniacal is a strategy game in which 2-5 aspiring supervillains compete to become the most infamous in the world. Choose from one of five villains, each with unique abilities and weaknesses.

First, build a secret base by drafting from over seventy different rooms, such as a Robotics Lab, Massage Parlor, or Torture Chamber. These rooms will attract a motley assortment of henchmen to your lair: Beasts, Criminals, Scientists, and Mystics.

Want more brainy Scientists around? Build rooms that appeal to them (a Planetarium? or perhaps an Intrinsic Field Chamber?). In this way, each player will construct a unique secret base and recruit a unique crew of henchmen.

Then, assign your henchmen to evil contracts posted around the globe. Become a local warlord in Asia. Steal a nuclear warhead in Europe. Build a floating fortress of doom in South America! Time, however, is a critical resource.

The farther away a contract is from your secret base, the more weeks you spend and the fewer contracts that you'll complete in a round. Succeed at contracts to earn infamy and money. Fail, and your henchman might get injured, captured, or serendipitously gain a superpower.

Build your secret base, recruit henchmen, and complete as many missions as you can. Along the way, hire mercenaries, hatch schemes, and chastise your lackey.

Do so, and the history books might remember you as the best of the worst!

Prices:
Retail Price:$0

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Components

  • 1 Gameboard
  • 75 Secret Base Room cards
  • 40 Henchman cards
  • 97 Contract cards
  • 8 Mercenary cards
  • 14 Power cards
  • 25 Scheme cards
  • 5 Supervillain cards
  • 7 Lackey cards
  • 5 sets of wooden player tokens
  • 28 Trait dice
  • 10 Injury tokens
  • 1 white Round marker
  • 55 Money tokens
  • 8 Finale cards
  • 10 +1/+2 tokens
  • 30 Hero cards
  • 5 Player Aid cards

Object of the Game

Each player in MANIACAL takes on the role of a comic book Supervillain. Your goal is to earn the most Infamy points through 3 rounds of play. Infamy is primarily gained by completing contracts (such as, Steal a Nuclear Warhead) that appear on a world map. …



Unique Supervillain Strengths and Weaknesses

Each Supervillain has a unique strength and weakness; these are optional abilities that you can adopt into your game to further individualize each Supervillain. You may use these in a variety of ways.

If you want the Supervillains to feel powerful and effective, have everyone use their strengths (but ignore the weaknesses).

If you want the game to be more challenging, have everyone use their weaknesses (but ignore the strengths).

If you want the"full", but also most complex experience, then have everyone use both their unique strength and weakness. …



The Arctic Queen

Secret base location: Glacier Bay, U.S.A.

A solitary and introspective figure, the Arctic Queen seeks to usher in a new planetary Ice Age. Her lackeys, Sabra & Sable, are genetically engineered sabre-tooth tigers, imbued with supernatural intelligence by the Arctic Queen's magic.

  • Strength: Exceptional Smilodons

    Your Lackey is exceptional (use the "Exceptional" Sabra & Sable card).

  • Weakness: Suspicion and Discord

    If your contract team includes more than one henchmen type, the target value is increased: +1 for 2 types, +2 for 3 types, +3 for 4 types. …



These rules detail how to incorporate an automated squad of annoying heroes (Defenders of Planet Earth) into the game. This automata is required for 2-player games; you may also adopt it for 3-player games, if you want a tighter, more competitive experience.

Additional Components

  • 30 Heroes cards
  • 10 +1/+2 tokens

Setup

Shuffle the Heroes deck and place it near the gameboard. Choose a set of wooden tokens to represent the automata.

The automata will not need a score token. Place the automata's 4 small tokens on the starting spaces of the Attraction score tracks along with the players'. …




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