Is your family filled with Marvel Maniacs like ours is?

Any time we see a game with that sweet sweet Marvel logo on it we are instantly intrigued. After eyeing Wakanda Forever in the aisles of Target for a while we were finally able to get it to the table for a few plays and today we’re sharing with you our thoughts on the highs and lows of this new Marvel game!

What is Wakanda Forever? 

Wakanda Forever is a new game from Spin Master set in the world of Marvel’s Black Panther for 3 to 5 players.

Here you will all by attempting to claim the mantle of Black Panther, proving yourself worthy of being the King of Wakanda. 

Along the way you must all battle villains, mine for Vibranium to upgrade your tech, and, when the time is right, challenge your tribe mates for the throne of Wakanda to win the game! 

How do you play Wakanda Forever?

There are two types of game lengths that you can play in Wakanda Forever. A short game or a long game. While the game is played the same in each, the number of Wakanda Points needed to win will be less in a short game. The number of players determines the number of points needed to win.

The game follows a basic pattern during play.

1. Villain Attacks.

If you are just starting or have just defeated a villain, grab a new villain and put it on top of The Great Mound (the plastic tray) Adjust his health following the number on the card and place the villain token next to the tribe the villain is attacking. This is shown by a color on the villain’s card.

2. Mining for Vibranium.

All players except the Black Panther will roll the two blue Vibranium Dice and collect Vibranium stones. Players may not have more than 15 Vibranium in their possession. If you are being attacked by the villain you will only roll one Vibranium Die. If you are the Black Panther you will not roll, but will gain one Vibranium for each tribe that voted to yield to you in the previous voting round. (more on that below)

3. Power your Tech.

After mining from Vibranium, you will be able to use it to power up your tech. This enables you to roll the gray tech upgrade dice when fighting the villain. Players will secretly select how much Vibranium they want to spend and place it under their cups behind their player shield. You can spend a total of 0, 1, 2, 4, or 6 Vibranium to roll an additional 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 Tech Upgrade Dice respectively. Once you’ve selected the amount you wish to use, push your cup in front of your shield. 

4. Defend Wakanda.

Now you have the opportunity to fight the villain and defend Wakanda. Everyone gets to roll the purple battle die as well as any additional tech upgrade dice they paid to power up. The player who is currently the Black Panther goes first. Only they are allowed to roll the red Dora Milaje Die in addition to the purple battle die. On your turn you’ll pick up your cup to reveal how many Vibranium stones you spent, returning them to the center, and then take the dice powered and roll them, along with the purple die. There are three types of sides to the dice:

Blank: you missed and nothing happens.
Vibranium: take one vibranium stone and place it behind your shield.
Hit (Black Panther,) you damage the villain equal to the number of hits rolled. Earn one Wakanda Point for each of these hits, placing them behind your shield.

After rolling and resolving, your turn is complete and play passes to the next player. If the villain still has health after everyone goes, skip to the voting round.

5. Villain is Defeated:

The player who dealt the final blow to the villain earns the three bonus Wakanda points then earns wakanda points for the amount of damage they dealt to the final health total of the villain. Players with Vibranium still under their cups return it behind their shield.

The villain card is then given to the player who is currently the Black Panther. This is not necessarily the person who dealt the final blow. The current Black Panther gains the card  and places it in front of their player shield so the villain power is visible to all.

Put the next villain in line into the center of the Great Mound.

6. Voting Round:

Now players immediately move into the voting round where the current Black Panther can be dethroned. This happens whether the villain was defeated or not.

Players take their Voting discs, secretly choosing whether they wish to challenge for the throne, or yield to the current Black Panther. If multiple players wish to challenge the Black Panther then the player with the most Vibranium behind their player shield gets the chance to challenge.

Both the challenger and the Black Panther may use Vibranium to upgrade their tech for the battle revealing the amount spent simultaneously. Players then roll for the 1v1 battle where only the hits rolled count. Whoever rolls more hits is named the Black Panther, the winner then takes or keeps the Black Panther Totem in front of them and steals one Wakanda Point from the loser.

Then the next round begins.

The game ends as soon as a player has both the title of Black Panther and the required amount of Wakanda Points. They then shout, “Wakanda Forever” to inform the rest of the players of their loss.

What do we think?

While we are huge Marvel fans in our house and really wanted to like this game it kind of fell flat for both Adam and myself. Why? Mainly because the game is incredibly random, even for a dice game. Not only that, but there was very little that allowed players the chance to mitigate that randomness.

In our games, it was not uncommon for a player to have spent four or six vibranium only to end up rolling all blanks on their dice. In fact, this happened to me on nearly every single roll. I could definitely see this being frustrating for many players. Whether you’re trying to attack a villain or challenge the Black Panther it pretty much renders any strategy you may be attempting to implement worthless, coming down completely to the dice roll.  

The villain punishment is also entirely random. Every villain will target a specific tribe which stops them from being able to roll both vibranium dice during the mining phase. There is no rhyme or reason to which tribe the villain is targeting, it is just targeting a specific color, so if you’re that tribe, bummer for you.

Being punished for no reason isn’t really great. I would have preferred to have seen the villain target someone with perhaps the most money, or the most special abilities, or maybe the villain is trying to help the person in last place by trying to woo them over to their side so they got something special if they chose not to attack. I don’t know, but something other than just a random tribe would have been nice. 

Much like how it is easy to roll blanks on all of the dice, it’s not uncommon for one player to be targeted multiple times in a row. This hurts that player’s ability to earn enough vibranium to upgrade their dice or challenge for the throne. If you don’t have enough vibranium to challenge and become the Black Panther, then you can’t earn the special abilities on villain cards, let alone win the game. 

In the short version of the game, each player is dealt a villain card so that they start the game with a special ability. I highly recommend playing this way. Now, there’s still even some luck involved with that because not all villain abilities are helpful. For instance, I had one that allowed me to get a tech upgrade die for free when attacking the villain as the Black Panther. However, I could never become the Black Panther to use it so it did not do me much good. 

For a dice game with such a large dose of random, it takes quite a long time to play. When playing the long version, it really started to overstay its welcome around the 30 minute mark. The short game felt much better and I would recommend playing that rather than the long game. 

We are huge Marvel fans in our home and some of our most favorite games are marvel themed, so we were sad that this one didn’t quite do it for us. I think it might work a bit more for a younger audience though I typically try to stay away from this amount of luck and randomness in games for kids. That being said, we did still have a fun time playing this and our friends who joined us mentioned that they enjoyed it. 

If you’re a big fan of Black Panther from either the movies or comics, you might be more inclined to enjoy this. We did have fun making everyone say “Wakanda Forever” with the arm motions whenever the player holding the mantel required it of us lowly tribesman. However, I’d recommend that you pick up The Marvel deck building game Legendary if you’re looking to play a more themed experience involving this character. 

The Black Panther theme doesn’t really hit well for us in this game the same as the Marvel theme in SpinMaster’s other game Hail Hydra did, which was also designed by Nick Metzler. I highly recommend checking that one out. (We talk about it in THIS POST.)

Because of all this, I would recommend that you give Wakanda Forever a test play before purchasing. The game itself is very well produced and I absolutely love the art style the cards have. It also comes with a very nice insert that doubles as the center game component which I love. Spin Master has been putting out some really nice looking games lately in the Marvel world and even though Wakanda Forever didn’t hit quite as high for us, I’m still excited to see what’s next.

A special thank you to Spin Master for sending us a copy of Wakanda Forever for review. As always our thoughts and opinions are our own. 

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Game Info:
Title: Wakanda Forever
For: 3-5 Players Ages 10+
Designer: Nick Metzler
Publisher: Spin Master
Published: 2019

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