Quick Look: Meek Heroes: Victory
Designer: Joe Bragg
Artists: Jason Licht
Publisher: Meek Heroes Gaming
Year Published: 2023
For more information follow the link to BGG Page or Publisher Page
Meek Heroes: Victory is a Biblically inspired, 2-4 player competitive strength deck-building game. Each player moves their hero throughout the city to collect resources, purchase upgrades, and charge their mech. When the player feels they are ready for battle (which can happen at any time), they start battling bosses at the henchmen level and work their way up through the agents and finally to the principalities.
To battle a boss, a player uses their deck to play cards adding up strength points, similar to a game of war against a target number. A player wins a battle if the strength points are equal to or greater than the boss’s strength and have not played an auto-loss card that they could not negate.
Players may call upon allies for support and continue to upgrade as they press through battles. Enemies will grow stronger. The first player to redeem 3 henchmen, redeem 2 agents, and banish 2 principalities is the winner.
Review:
Overview:
I learned about Meek Heroes: Victory while doom scrolling on Facebook one day and reached out to the designer about the game. The designer generously gave me a copy of the game to add to my board game collection. This game’s review is in my opinion and is not affected by receiving a free copy.
To view the rules please check out the publisher’s website www.meekheroes.com or follow the link directly to the rule page: Meek Heroes: Victory – Rules
144 Cards
100 Gems
4 Player Mats
4 player pawns
20 Player Mech Battery Token
1 Victory Dice
Meek Heroes: Victory is set in a dystopian future where demons and their henchmen have taken over your hero’s city. It is your mission to rid the city of this evil oppression. You take on the role of one of four characters that have recently become believers in Jesus, and although you are still learning you cannot sit back and allow the forces of evil to take over. You take the reigns and join the spiritual warfare gripping your city.
At the heart of the game, it is a deck-building game. Along with the deck building mechanic, there are elements of worker placement and resource management. On your turn, you place your player pawn on one of the player board locations. These locations will gain you a certain number of resources and allow you to perform differing actions for each location. For example, if you place yourself on the Onyx location you will gain 2 Onyx gems and be able to purchase new cards for your battle deck or trade resources for different ones. As you move your player pawn to different locations and gather resources, you can use those resources to purchase new cards to add to your battle deck or to charge the batteries to a mech suit that can be used in battle against the differing bosses. A further breakdown of gameplay will follow later in the review.
The artwork connects with the theme well, the color scheme adds to the overall atmosphere the game is trying to achieve. Using a darker palette of colors, with the use of bright red to give that sense of danger and evil. In contrast, the upgrade cards representing the weapons and battle deck cards use a bright palette with more blues and cooler colors giving the feel of comfort and hope. I feel that the color choices made by the artist and graphical team play well into the thematic approach of the game. The character design leans heavily on a dystopian comic style with an urban feel. Playing into the idea that you are a hero who is using the powers of God to fight back the forces of evil. The graphic design of the game is clear, cards are easily readable with no confusion on what effect or benefit is gained.
The components are of good quality, and the gems, pawns, and battery tokens are solid and come in plastic bags for organization and storage. The cards are on a good weight card stock with a gloss finish, the text is clear and readable. The only concern is that when I first opened the box, I had to separate the cards into their perspective decks, all cards were in one giant deck in the box. Which caused the initial setup to take longer than desired.
For setup, each player will receive a player mat in the character of their choice. Along with the player mat, each player will get an initial battle deck that they will improve on during gameplay, players will collect the player pawn of their character color the 5 mech battery tokens in their color and the mech card for their character.
In the middle of the table an area with four rows of cards will be set up, this is called the pasture. This area is where the upgrade cards, ally cards, and boss cards will be located. For more information on setup instructions please refer to the rules located on the publisher’s website.
After setup, the first player will place their player pawns on one of the locations on their player mat. They will follow the instructions listed in that location. All locations will gain the player the listed resource. Along with the resources some of the other actions are trashing a card from your battle deck, this allows you to get rid of an undesirable card from your deck, but you cannot remove the auto loss cards (Those can be removed through the purchase of upgrades). Other actions are to buy upgrade cards, trade resources, or charge your mech batteries. Along with the locations that gain resources and allow you to perform actions, there is the location where you go to fight the boss battles. This location is where you will place your pawn to fight either the henchmen, agents, or principalities that are terrorizing your city.
At the beginning of the game, you could go straight to battle a boss and with a perfect deck draw win against low-level henchmen but in most cases, it will result in a loss. With a loss, you will have a negative consequence of paying resources or the boss becoming stronger for the next battle. When battling a boss, you will face that boss in battle until it is defeated. To ensure that you have the best chance for victory, gather your resources and purchase upgrade cards, these cards will increase your strength points and grant you effects that can assist in battle. Along with the upgrade cards you can use your resources to charge the batteries of a mech suit that will fight beside you in battle. The mech suit will give you more strength points and allow you to negate one of the auto-loss cards found in your battle deck. Along with the upgrade cards and mech, the ally cards are used to grant one-time effects to help in battle, simply pay the required resources and use that effect. The game will continue until a player wins by defeating three henchmen, two agents, and two principalities in battle. For a how-to-play video and more in-depth gameplay rules please go to the publisher’s website.
Thoughts:
Meek Heroes: Victory is a fun and enjoyable game that keeps players engaged. The way in which your battle deck is built contributes to the theme perfectly. As you are a new believer you may not have all the tools available to you to fight off the evils of the world. However, as you learn and progress your battle skills and weapons become more powerful. As I played through the game, I got this sense that I was becoming stronger and the anxiety going into a battle was less because I felt that my deck had been built to give me the best chance at victory. Although there was always that auto-loss card lurking in the deck, so when you saw one of those upgrades on the table that allowed you to get rid of the loss cards you tried to scoop it before anyone else on the table. The gameplay is smooth and fast with little downtime in between turns. Even when it was not my turn, I found myself looking at what the other players were doing so I could try to either get in front of their strategy or maybe figure out what upgrade card they were trying for by the gems they were gathering. The game is fun but on top of the fun is the message that is behind the theme. We must work on ourselves to continue to get stronger to face the evils of this world, and while this game is heavily themed around biblical principles and Jesus, I feel it can be enjoyed by non-believers due to the mechanics being polished and creating a fun playing game. With the theme and the game being put together so well, it works great as a family game or even a gateway game to non-gamers to introduce them to deckbuilding and basic worker placement mechanics. The box suggests 12+ for the age but I have played the game multiple times with my younger children to great success, my one son can even win the game, with very minimal help.
There is a lot to say positive about Meek Heroes: Victory that it is hard to focus any time on the negative. If there was anything I would mention it would be the subtle elements of take that in the game and the competitive nature of the game. When you look at the game thematically, you are Christians trying to rid the city of evil forces. It kind of breaks the theme when you are stealing gems from another player or stopping their action when fighting a boss. Thematically the game lends itself to more of a Cooperative game. Even with this small negative, the game is fun, and those little blemishes can be overlooked. However, in talking with the designer they are working on a co-op expansion and solo play.
is available (USA ONLY) for only $39.99. Check it out and get yours’ HERE.
Find out more at BGG.
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Steven Foster – Reviewer
Steven is currently a stay-at-home dad, homeschooling his two young sons. He is a father of 8 children
ranging in age from 26 to 7. He and his wife of 22 years have been foster and adoptive parents for 15 of
those years. Steven began gaming as a young child playing family classics like Monopoly and Uno. In the
early 90s, he started playing Magic the Gathering with the alphas and started his first Dungeons and
Dragons campaign in 1995. His first Euro-style board game was Catan in 1997 but board games would
soon be out. Steven left tabletop gaming in the early 2000s and got into online competitive gaming with
Counterstrike, and Halo then eventually started competitive Call of Duty tournaments. He started
playing board games again in 2019 at the start of the Global Pandemic. Board games became an escape
during a time when a family of 9 was stuck in the house together. Steven fell in love with board games
and quickly amassed a decent collection. Steven enjoys board games and their ability to bring people
together and create lasting memories. Some of his favorite types of games are polyomino, tile
placement games, and worker placement games.