KAPOW! Volume 2 Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Kapow Volume 2, published by Wise Wizard Games. Kapow Volume 2 is a dice building game where you are dueling your opponent trying to reduce their life to zero.

Superheroes and dice chucking can be a lot of fun, but those themes and mechanisms aren’t always implemented well in such games. In KAPOW!, heroes and villains duke it out in the streets using a pool of dice to power special abilities that will determine whether good or evil wins the day. Does this game manage to succeed on the promise of engaging gameplay and a cool theme? Tune in to find out.

KAPOW! Volume 2 is a pool-building, dice-crafting game from Wise Wizard Games designed by Doug Hettrick, Larry Bogucki, Carl Van Ostrand, and Rob Dougherty for 1-4 players that plays in about 20-40 minutes.

In a standard 1 vs. 1 game of KAPOW!, each player takes on the role of either a comic book Hero or Super Villain. Players get a screen, a player board, a character board, and a health tracker, plus some starting dice. The goal is to knock out your opponent by building a pool of dice that will activate various attacks, abilities, and power ups.

Each round has four phases, and play continues until there is a victor. In Phase 1, players simultaneously roll their dice, placing them in boxes on their player and character boards to select abilities for activation. Most actions will be taken later, but a few immediate abilities can be applied at this time for things like rerolls or healing. Dice selection takes place secretly behind the player screens, which have quick references printed on them detailing things like the round structure and die-face distributions.

The meat of the round plays out in Phase 2, where players will attack and defend. In turn order, a player will remove their screen to reveal which attack abilities they’ve chosen. Attack damage is calculated by combining one base attack with any number of attack kickers and multiplying that value by any one activated attack multiplier. The defender