Release Date:  June 10, 2020	Download: PDF
Designer: Prospero Hall   Art: Jenny Frison	Publisher: Ravensburger
2-5 players  | 45-60 min  |  ages 10+  | 5-8 min to learn | MSRP $35

 

Long ago, Amazons were given a formidable task by the gods of Olympus - protect Doom’s Doorway on the hidden Island of Themyscira. 

Countless dread beasts, powerful magic, and fallen gods have been imprisoned through this gate to the Underworld.

The Amazons have watched and waited, ever-vigilant, for this day…

Three enemies now threaten the island: Ares, Circe, and The Cheetah. It’s time to sound the alarm!

Don your golden armor, your battle tiara, your lasso, and your sword.

Can you lead Wonder Woman and her band of fierce warrior women to save their home?

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Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons is a cooperative programmed action game whose base mechanism might make you think of stud poker. Each turn a plan will arise from partial knowledge each Amazon shares. But these plans are temporary at best. The game encourages a flexible mindset and demands teamwork. Diana and her allies must coordinate their efforts to accomplish as much as possible each turn or face ruin.

Read on to learn why we think Wonder Woman earns our highest honor and discover how it is leading the way to a new era in media licensed games.

Written review continues after the break.

Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons     Ravensburger  |  BGG

The Concept 

Long ago, Amazons were given a formidable task by the gods of Olympus - protect Doom’s Doorway on the hidden Island of Themyscira.

Countless dread beasts, powerful magic, and fallen gods have been imprisoned through this gate to the Underworld.

The Amazons have watched and waited, ever-vigilant, for this day…

Three enemies now threaten the island: Ares, Circe, and The Cheetah.

It’s time to sound the alarm! Don your golden armor, your battle tiara, your lasso and your sword.

Can you lead Wonder Woman and her band of fierce warrior women to save their home?

The Components

The focus of Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons is a large board with a map of Themyscira. There are 15 locations on the island. Each location is well marked and connected by roads and paths. The board also features two score tracks - one for the island defenses and one for the enemy you are fighting. 

Players will use a deck of 60 Hero cards to determine actions each round. Each card has a title, flavor text from the comics, and 2-3 emblems along the bottom edge of the card. Each emblem is small banner with a distinct icon and a number. Some hero cards also have special ability text printed in bold.

There are also relic cards with tokens, representing magical equipment you may have access to during the game.

Each enemy - Ares, Circe, and The Cheetah - has a cardboard standup, a large format reference sheet, and a deck of action cards.

The enemy’s forces are represented by small cubes in three colors: orange, purple, and green. 

Amazon forces are represented by small white cubes.

Each player will take on the role of a specific Amazon from Wonder Woman comics. There are five characters in total. Each Amazon has an illustrated player mat where you will place your hero cards.

Each Amazon also has a detailed miniature. The minis are well sculpted and have been washed with gold paint. They are really nice as-is, but for anyone with the urge, they would look even better painted up with the color schemes from the comics.

 

The Mechanics

Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons is a cooperative programmed action game whose base mechanism might make you think of stud poker.

The goal of the game is to reduce the enemy’s strength to zero before the island’s defenses are reduced to zero. Some enemies may include additional ways to lose.

The basic structure of each round follows a familiar pattern for co-ops: the game will get a turn to try and beat the players. Then the players will get a turn to try and beat the game. After each side has had a go, we will assess the damage (if any) done by the enemy. 

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Each round begins with the enemy moving to a location on the board based on the draw of a card from the enemy deck. Depending on the enemy certain colored cubes will be added to the board. Then enemy cards are drawn (based on the number of players) and the effects listed on each card are dealt with.  

The stage is now set for your team to go to work. Over the course of each turn, players will select 3 of 5 action cards to play. Cards will be selected in secret and placed face down on player mats and the activated in sequence.

The Amazon turn has three parts: strategize, battle, and action.

During the strategize part of the turn, each Amazon will receive 5 Hero cards total. 2 face up and 3 face down. Do not look at the face down cards! 

As the name suggests, you want to strategize together by looking at all the face up cards and come up with a plan of action based on the information you have available.

Each card you select will be played to use one of the emblems at the bottom edge of the card. There are four types of emblems: feet, swords, books, and stars.

Feet allow you to move. Swords allow you to fight. Stars allow you to recruit  more Amazons (white cubes). Books have different effects based on which enemy you face.

No matter how many emblems are present on a card, only one emblem is  used when played. 

So, if I decide to play a card with an emblem showing 3 feet, that means my character can move up to three spaces on the board. 

If I play a card that has 2 stars, it means I can add two Amazon cubes to the board (provided I am on a recruiting space on the board - the ones marked with a star)

If I play a card with 2 swords and I am in a space with an enemy cube, I consult the enemy reference to see how many swords are needed to defeat the cube. If I have enough, then I remove the cube.

Each turn a plan will arise out of the partial knowledge your team has. The bulk of the game will be spent in this part of the turn each round, with players discussing and debating what might be the best move for each Amazon. 

Once some sort of consensus is reached, the turn moves into the battle phase. Silently, each player now looks at the 3 face down cards and must select 3 of their 5 cards to play as actions.

These actions are sequential and will be resolved in order. There are action slots printed on each hero mat. So, I decide on 3 cards and then place one on slot 1, slot 2, and slot 3.

When everyone has placed their cards, we finish the turn with the action phase by revealing and completing the action cards in order. All Amazons reveal the card in slot 1.

The actions can be resolved in whatever order the team wants. When all actions are complete, flip over cards in slot 2 and resolve them. Then do the same with slot 3. 

Our hope, over these actions, is to remove enemy cubes and, most importantly do damage to the enemy. That’s the only path the victory. In order to damage the enemy, you must play at least four of the same emblem in one action. You can team up together to combine emblems for a massive attack and your Amazon helpers (the white cubes) can be added to your total on any action that involves conflict.

Each villain offers a new and different set of challenges to puzzle out. Ares must be dealt a final blow by the Sword of Hephaestus, so one Amazon must travel to each temple on the island to gather blessing tokens for the sword. Circe grows more powerful and harder to defeat with each magic beacon (purple cube) on the board. The Cheetah can win by reshuffling her action deck three times, so many of her actions allow her to discard cards, accelerating this process, putting more pressure on your team of Amazons. The game encourages, no, it demands teamwork with players needing to coordinate their efforts to accomplish as much as possible each turn or face ruin.

After all actions have been resolved for the turn, we consult the enemy reference to see how much damage (if any) is wrought on the island. The damage will relate to what color cubes are present on the board and their location on the board. Worst of all, each enemy has multiple ways to do damage, so even when you have one contained, another may wreak havoc. Managing the enemy's cubes is like mythological whack-a-mole!

Eventually one side will prevail. Either you will bring the enemy down, reducing its health to zero or the defenses of Themiscyra will fail and the island will fall into ruin.

What Sets This Game Apart 

Games that are tied to well known media licenses often fall far short of the mark when it comes to gameplay. Not so with Wonder Woman. 

The tension and critical decisions are divided between teamwork and individual agony. As a team you try and put together the best plan you have with the partial information you are given. The old adage is no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. So true in this game! 

There’s a sort of inverse stud poker at work here. Your plan is based on a collective gamble since at least one of the cards you will eventually play as an action is unseen and unknown to the group. Sometimes that gamble will pay off handsomely with a great turn. Others, you may have to throw out the plan as-discussed and come up with a new one on your own. 

To make matters more interesting, more than one Amazon may end up having to scrap the initial plan, meaning no one ends up moving or doing what was initially agreed upon! This can create as much chaos as the enemy BUT it can also lead to different and even better results.

The game encourages a flexible and adaptable mindset. Don’t get so attached to the first group plan that you become blind to new opportunities when you see all your cards and have to make your own decisions.

Final Thoughts 

Historically, expectations for games with media tie-ins are quite low. The assumption has been, a media tie-in game is a money grab. The publisher puts minimal effort into the design process because the game itself doesn’t matter. Fans will buy the game no matter what. 

This knee-jerk assumption is being challenged today by a diverse group of publishers, but I think Ravensburger is leading the way.

As a lifelong fan of DC comics, I come to a game like Wonder Woman with eyebrows raised, skeptical they could do justice to Diana and the rich world that authors and artists have created for her for decades.

It’s clear the design team has passion for the source material. They honor it by incorporating a great cast of allies from Wonder Woman’s many storylines. 

Mala is Diana’s best friend and former lover.

Nubia is a demon hunter and Diana’s twin (molded from the same mystical clay)

Artemis briefly replaced Diana as Wonder Woman and escaped death itself.

Phillipus is the General of the Amazons and trained Diana.

Each Amazon has in-game abilities that synch up with her character’s strengths.

Phillipus, for instance, gets an extra face up card each round, allowing everyone to plan for battle more effectively. 

Each enemy also threatens and attacks in ways that feel right to anyone familiar with the comics. 

Ares corrupts Amazons, summons servants of war, and throws down blockades. Circe transforms Amazons into animals and draws power from magical beacons making her harder to kill. Cheetah flashes about the board dropping cubes that let her quickly discard cards in order to find powerful relics.

This game world is one anyone familiar with Wonder Woman will recognize and want to play in.

Ravensburger is helping pave the way for a new era in media licensed games. Prior to this title, JAWS and Horrified each use their media licenses to enrich the game experience and make it more fun.

Wonder Woman provides many different challenges for its team of Amazons. It stays true to the characters and the world and makes them an integral part of the game.

If Diana snagged me with her lasso of truth, this is what i’d say:

Wonder Woman combines accessible yet challenging decisions with characters and stories you’ll love to play through, win or lose.

We can’t compete with a seat on the Justice League, but we hope Diana saves a dusty corner of her trophy case for our Spiel of Approval.

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Written by: Stephen Conway

 

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