I had a great chat with the folks at Pinnacle Entertainment Group about their upcoming Doom Guard boardgame. On Kickstarter for another day or so, it is a cooperative game of superheroes (and villains) banding together to defeat threats to the entire planet. The base game has players fighting Cthulhu through a campaign for fairly short (60 min or less?) scenarios, although you could also play scenarios as one-off things. There are two expansions that add in another campaign: one campaign fighting the legions of hell and another campaign repelling an alien invasion. One juicy teaser before the meat of the article, it looks like Pinnacle is also planning on creating a similar game based around the Deadlands (old west + magic) roleplaying game setting.

First, a bit of background on the theme. Doom Guard is a boardgame that uses the backdrop created for the Necessary Evil RPG back in the early 2000’s. Aliens invaded the Earth and killed all the superheroes. Players were supervillains who had to band together to kick the aliens off the planet.

There were a couple more settings books after the first, and then all three were put together as an updated boxed set under the Doom Guard title. Players could play as anything from hero to vigilante to villains (hopefully with a heart of brass at least…) Doom Guard the boardgame focuses on Liberty City where the players, as heroes or villains, fight through the minions of evil and defeat the big bad guy (Cthulhu in the base game) to win the day.

Liberty city is laid out as a map of about 10 different locations connected by various routes. With fewer players, fewer locations are used. In each location, a tile is placed that represents one of many different city landmarks. These are mostly randomized so every game will have some difference. The big evil boss thing has its own board (which changes depending on the boss, of course) which rests adjacent to the top of the main board and provides a connected spot for the Ultimate Evil Landmark to be placed.

Gameplay is a bit whack-a-mole where evil minions spawn and the players (called Guardians) chase them down (or avoid them) while trying to get their stuff together enough to go in and fight the boss. This has to be done before the “Doom Track” reaches zero (some things can make it back up if necessary.) Part of the game is the accumulation of corruption, both for Guardians and locations on the board. Too much corruption makes Landmarks (location tiles) Fully Corrupted and they flip over to a much less pleasant side. Guardians also flip after taking too much corruption, landing on their Crazed side. This opens up new powers and abilities for a player, but usually has some sub-optimal side effects. One character is a vigilante who, when flipped, just doesn’t care anymore and collateral damage is not something to worry about. Ogre (an evil Tony Stark who only cares about their company profits) gains corruption as their suit is damaged. Their Crazed side actually makes them become slightly more helpful, until they get their suit fixed (flip back from Crazed) and start smacking things again. Every character has a condition which will allow them to flip back from Crazed to normal.

A player’s turn is governed by action dice. They roll 6 and get to choose 4 to use. The faces of the dice correlate to Fight, Move, Draw a Card (cards from a set that is unique to each character), Wild (any of the previous options), and “Bad Face” (whatever they’re calling that…) The “Bad Face” is used to trigger enemy abilities. Why would anyone ever choose a Bad Face as one of their 4 out of 6 dice? Well, as players are damaged, they also lose access to some of their action dice – eventually only rolling 5 or 4 or less…

Combat is governed by dice. Damage is applied to enemies but may also end up applied to nearby buildings as collateral damage. (Which would push it towards Fully Corrupted, remember?) Players can use shields and the like for protection, but they can also choose to use the shielding to reduce the collateral damage instead.

In the Villain phase, anything the players did not deal with gets to take a turn. This includes all the minions and often includes a hefty dose of corruption all around (to players and locations.)

Each game scenario has a set of cards specifying tasks that the players must achieve before moving on to the next card. Get through all the cards and take on the big bad guy before the Doom Track runs out, and you win the scenario.

As mentioned, there’s a Kickstarter campaign going on for just another day or two. There’s the base game and optionally the two expansions, each with a new big bad guy (hell & alien.) I have to give the game props in that it does NOT include buckets of minis. Most things are represented by standees, which I’m fine with and take up much less space and weight. However, players can purchase an STL pack which has files that can be used to 3D print figurines (players, minions, etc…)