Funkoverse Strategy Game: Harry Potter Base Set

Funkoverse is now officially my new favorite game. It is the perfect tabletop skirmish game (on a grid) that I have been waiting 20 years for.

Folks are calling it a successor to Heroscape, but slicker. There are no points for building your army & no long complicated set-up. Just pick any three characters and a scenario and play.

The powers are thematic and fun. Plus there is no killing. Characters get knocked down and knocked out, so it is possible to return them to play.

And it’s relatively inexpensive.

I feel like I can ignore every overpriced, over produced, giant box of grey plastic minis that comes down the pike. It isn’t going to do this style of game any better.

Huh, that's a surprise!

Hrm. Sounds collectible, which is an auto "no go" in my book. Also, to my (very uninformed) understanding, you need 3 figures per player, right? Which makes the 2-packs (i.e. the only IP that interests me at the moment, Rick and Morty) kinda understaffed, no?

I agree. While it doesn’t quite have the more in depth charm of adapting a favorite IP that other Prospero Hall games have, I think I’m willing call Funkoverse my favorite of their games. It’s brilliant. I hope it has a long lifespan, it deserves it.

I like it, my kids like it, it sets up in 3 minutes and takes 20 minutes to play. The figures are fun and there’s definitely a game there. It’s a home run. But I would still rate it below Unmatched and Wildlands/Helter Skelter.

I think it really does need 3 characters per side. Less than, and it just isn’t as engaging. You can run the tokens if you don’t have 3 per side and that’s fine but they aren’t as much fun.

I actually like the Rick and Morty set the best- they have the most fun abilities.

The only complaint I really have is that it feels like it should be more...more weapons, more scenarios, and of course more characters. I guess that will come in time, though.

Really excited about Aggretsuko and that little chainsaw.

FWIW, I like it much more than Unmatched but you’re right, Wildlands is better.

I have all of it now, including the Golden Girls set I was holding off on. Not sure I could pick a favorite set yet though, they all bring something cool.

Jackwraith wrote: Hrm. Sounds collectible, which is an auto "no go" in my book. Also, to my (very uninformed) understanding, you need 3 figures per player, right? Which makes the 2-packs (i.e. the only IP that interests me at the moment, Rick and Morty) kinda understaffed, no?

It’s not collectible and you really only need a minimum of 2 figures per side. The game does greatly benefit from having 3, but they do give you “dummy” characters, so to speak, for the 2 figure game. The Harry Potter and Batman sets (Batman set is definitely better than HP and I’m not just saying that because I prefer Batman) and their respective 2 figure sets are thr better starting points.

The 2 character sets really come into play when you start building your own teams. It cannot be overstated just how cool it is that there are no points to build your team with. Just take 3 figures, mix and match as you like, maybe a weapon, pick a scenario and that’s it.

I can see where the purchasing model might not jive with people who don’t really do minis games, but I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. Yes, the option open up when you have more of it, but I don’t see it as all that different from say, Cthulhu Wars or Villainous. You’re picking up stuff to plug into what you already have. The same could be said of most games with expansions.

Jackwraith wrote: Hrm. Sounds collectible, which is an auto "no go" in my book. Also, to my (very uninformed) understanding, you need 3 figures per player, right? Which makes the 2-packs (i.e. the only IP that interests me at the moment, Rick and Morty) kinda understaffed, no?

All the sets come with a “basic” character token for each side, which acts just like a character but has no special powers.

The game can be played with each player having:

1 character figure and 1 basic token
2 character figures
2 character figures and 1 basic token
3 character figures

The two packs are stand alone games, with each player getting 1 character figure and 1 basic token. So you can play the game, but you won’t enjoy the power synergies of playing 2 or 3 characters.

Obviously, playing 3 characters is where the game shines. So you really want some combination of sets that gives you at least 6 figures.

As far as being collectible, the only reason to buy anything else after you have 6 figures is because you have played the heck out of what you have and want to add some new powers or maps into the mix, in which case I’d say someone had gotten their money’s worth; or an IP that you love is released, and you want to experience it. My problem is that I find all the figures adorable and am tempted to buy IPs that I’m not so much into.

If you are at all interested in Funkoverse, I’d wait until an IP that you love comes out, and considering how many IPs Funko owns, eventually one will.

I like it better than Unmatched. It’s more accessible and intuitive and fun.

I was disappointed with Unmatched. It was drab. It felt like they were trying to make the mass market, Ameritrash game more serious and worthy, and threw out some of the spark that made epic duels fun. But it could be that I have only played the 1st set of Unmatched, which I believe was Robin Hood and Bigfoot. Those characters just didn’t excite me.

I played a demo of the Funkoverse at BGG.Con with the wife (after watching a demo at GenCon), and it was very meh (and somehow the demo-er got the very simple rules wrong). The wife later played another game without me (with the correct rules) and told me to forget about it. I get the curb appeal, but found it not very interesting.

I've so far resisted the calls of Unmatched, as I still have a copy of Epic Duels that barely gets played, as it is. I'll bet I'd like Unmatched more then I think, but I'm looking for any excuse I can to stay away from new games.

Well I wish y'all could have mentioned this when the game was on sale at Target last week.

I have Unmatched, and its production value is top notch. The illustrations are pure gold. I'm not 100% on the game, as I haven't had much opportunity to play. The new 'big box' for 2020 (Sherlock, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Invisible Man) is pretty awesome. My biggest gripe remains; I bloody hate that the support characters are chits instead of minis.

It will go on sale again. The Harry Potter 4 character set is currently $23 on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2TjAdVh , and the 2 character set is $11 https://amzn.to/32u6TiM . Batman is a few dollars more.

My oldest kids (11 and 7) are pretty big HP fans so I bought the four figure base set hoping it would be a great game to play before bedtime. It hasn't. We started with the base scenario (KO one figure) which was extremely boring, and even with the capture the flag scenario I have a hard time seeing the really cool synergies. But maybe it's just because we haven't gotten around to including the two items/weapons yet. And we haven't done that because for some reason it's a game we always end up arguing about. They argue about which characters to play, who has the coolest powers, whether the game is fair and all kinds of other stuff which usually isn't a big deal. We are going to give it another chance because it looks great, but I'm thinking of selling it to get Death Eaters Rising instead.

If you found Funkoverse to be boring, you will go positively comatose from Death Eaters Rising. It’s quite forgettable and loaded with effects that hardly evoke the characters they’re attached to.

Josh Look wrote: If you found Funkoverse to be boring, you will go positively comatose from Death Eaters Rising. It’s quite forgettable and loaded with effects that hardly evoke the characters they’re attached to.

Good to know. We like Hogwarts Battle (even if it does go on for a little long in the late games) and are fans of coop games in general. And from reading about Death Eaters Rising it seemed like a fun coop. But having effects that don't match characters or too repetetive play (I'm looking at you, Castle Panic) sounds like a solid no.

And it's not that Funkoverse was boring. It was more that I - from the one or two real games I got to play - had a hard time finding out what's so tactical about it. It seemed like you would at some point meet up somewhere and just slug it out.

In my one game of capture the flag, I found Funkoverse quite tactical. I rushed flags while my wife prioritized murdering me. I had a solid early lead but lost a lot of tempo in the process. By the time she switched to flag grabs, she was able to guarantee the win. If you want to play well, you really need to consider the scenario points.

It hasn’t been said enough yet in this thread, but the skill cool down system is brilliant. It’s clean, intuitive and offers strategy to your deck building. Do you go hard in two colors to keep your options open or diversify? So good.

Yes, the cooldown track is handled really well and I like that your KOs go on there as well as the objectives. I hope they lean into that mechanism more with some of the future sets, there's a lot that could be done with a simple timer.

TBQH, I actually didn't like the game when I first got it. I picked it all up (sans Golden Girls) when it was first out and I played the Batman set first and thought it was cute and was by default the best Batman game. But I also felt a little shruggy about it, mainly because I was coming into it off Helter Skelter, Warcry, Kill Team, Frostgrave, and heavier games. I had a definite "that it?" kind of reaction to it.

But over a couple of games, I really started to appreciate how simple and direct it was...and it was still doing a lot of things that usually happen in a skirmish game. You have to be in the mindset that it is FAST and that you might have to race to score points off objectives rather than beat down Joker. The abilities are a nice mix- some are more subtle than others, some more impactful, some can shift the game, some are super conditional.

I am actually a weirdo and won't mix the Batman and Harry Potter sets. But I will put Morty in there with Harry and Hermione or Rick in with Joker and Harley. Maybe when there are more available.

I do wish that the tokens weren't so dumpy looking. ROBOT, ALIEN...come on.

Jurassic Park and Aggretsuko come out next week, definitely picking them up. Kind of weird that Unmatched also has a JP set coming.

I think they may have shot themselves in the foot a bit by not having 6 figures in the first sets that they released. I don’t think the game really shines until you are playing 3 characters, and have 6 tokens to spend.

For those of you who haven’t played, each character has 3 special powers, but to activate those powers you need to spend a token of a certain color. That token is then exhausted, and depending upon the power, it will unexhaust in 1-3 rounds (there is a cool down track that makes it easy to track this). There are three different colored tokens. Each character gives you two tokens which all go into your pool and can be used to pay for any of your characters’ powers. Having those two extra tokens gives you more flexibility and opportunity for clever play.

I think that which color tokens a character gives you may also come into play if you had a few different sets and were drafting characters. Characters X and Y and Z might have awesome powers, but if they don’t contribute the right color tokens to your pool, you won’t have much chance to activate their powers. Therefore, you might choose characters X and Y for their powers, but choose character B for their tokens which will allow you to activate X and Y powers more often.

You also need to think through how many rounds it will take to fire off a power again. For example, using my one yellow token on X’s yellow power means I won’t be able to use Y’s yellow power this round. And then I might not get my yellow token back for another couple of rounds. This may be easy for an adult gamer to sequence, but may be more difficult for a less experienced gamer or young child.

It is also very much a game that you play against another player, not against the game. The skill level of your opponent is going to impact how challenging the game is.

These are some of the reasons why I feel Funkoverse plays on different levels depending upon your age and experience as a gamer. There is a lot more to it than meets the eye, especially if the only thing someone has seen is the tutorial game, which is really lame and boring.

@Michael

I agree that fast, simple and direct is an excellent way to describe Funkoverse. That is a lot of why I love it.

But it also has all this clever under the covers stuff going on which is exciting to discover. It provides those ah ha moments which I love. Like, “Oh dang, I can use Voldemort’s power to get Draco into position to push Ron out of the score zone.”

Miniature Market has it for 20 today

It's a good game for sure. Does everything you want from a skirmish game - exciting die rolls, objective play, sharp cooldown mechanism instead of juggling resources. I prefer Unmatched because it's laser-focused and short, but FV is quality.

What are everyones storage plans for this game? Already a bunch of sets and probably lots more to come. Original boxes? Funkpop storage? Big-ass plastic bin? Out on shelves?

I've got a Really Useful Box that holds everything right now (All HP and DC, plus Golden Girls, Aggretsuko, and Kool-Aid Man).

I have the entire first wave in the bigger boxes that came with Batman and HP. One box is pretty much the “build your team” box, with the figures, characters cards, weapons and bases, the other is the “pick your scenario box,” all the boards, scenario cards, one set of the tokens you use all the time, and one set of VP tokens. All the extra crap you really don’t need cluttering up those two boxes is in one of the smaller 2 figure boxes.

I got all the Jurassic Park stuff but haven’t opened it yet, so I’m not sure if it will fit yet.