Comic Hunters Reviews: collect Marvel's rarest comics!

Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher, currently considered the largest comic book publisher in the world. In 2009, Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel's parent company.

Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman under the name Timely Comics. The Marvel brand only started effectively in 1961, with the release of Fantastic Four. Marvel has several characters (Spider-Man, Captain America, etc.), teams (Avengers, X-Men, etc.), and antagonists (Thanos, Red Skull, etc.).

Several series, cartoons, films and games were made using the Marvel universe, and of course board games are no exception. We'll see some famous Marvel characters in Comic Hunters!

Comic Hunters is a 1-to-4 players game, age 12+, by designer Robert Coelho. Art by Diego Sá.

Comic Hunters was released in Brazil in 2020 by Bucaneiros. World wide release will happen in late 2025, by Arcane Wonders and Spin Master. The main mechanics are: hand management, auction, sequencing, collecting sets and purchases.

Comic Hunters gained mass attention when it was noticed by none other than Tom Vasel, from the Dice Tower channel, putting the game on the Essentials list. This helped to spread word about the game, and quickly afterward international publishers announced the game's release. Recently, the game was re-released in Brazil by Copag.

The Game

As comic book collectors, we take pride on having the best Marvel comics - well, almost all of them! There are still some rare, hard-to-get volumes that are missing. Either the first time our favorite villain appeared, or a special edition with a turnaround on the hero's path, maybe the debut of the new uniform, a memorable fight against an archenemy, and of course the invaluable #1 issue! So, we will have to look for these rarities in specialized bookstores, auction sites, second-hand bookstores and comic conventions. However, we are not the only ones looking for them. We must hurry and finish our collection first!

This is the background for Comic Hunters!

To complete your comic book collection, there are 135 cards in total with the original art of the Marvel comic book covers. We spend the whole game trying to collect these rarities. The comics feature 8 different heroes, namely:

- Captain America;

- Doctor Strange;

- Spider-Man;

- Iron Man;

- Hulk;

- Black Panther;

- Thor;

- Black Widow.

The comics have different features that make them unique, for example:

- new graphics;

- a memorable fight;

- a first time showing;

- the famous #1 issue;

- a special edition.

In the game, comics also have a secondary market value, which indicates the period the comic is from, where to find it, and how much will it cost to have it in your collection:

- Value 1: found in stores, new releases, recent comics, published from 2000 onwards, considered contemporary;

- Value 2: found in second-hand bookstores, published in the 80s and 90s, considered modern;

- Value 3: only found on online auction sites, really sought after, all from the 60s and 70s, considered classic.

Now that we know which comics have which Marvel heroes, what are their features, and where to find them, it's time to build our collection!

The setup is somewhat simple, with 8 steps that we'll explain in text and with an image afterwards:

- Step 1: Shuffle the comics' cards into 3 separate decks according to their market value and place them next to the main board, which should be in the center of the table;

- Step 2: Form a 4th deck, the Grand Convention deck, with some cards from the 3 previous decks, depending to the number of players;

- Step 3: Place the track marker at the beginning of the itinerary, that is, at the start of places you will visit to build your collection;

- Step 4: Draw the hero tokens, depending on the number of players;

- Step 5: Give each player 15 money tokens, to be used in auctions;

- Step 6: Randomly choos 3 highlight tokens that will award bonus points at the end of the game;

- Step 7: Remember to have a notepad at hand to keep track of the score;

- Step 8: Give the first player token to the player who most recently purchased a Marvel comic.

Comic Hunters has 3 rounds, and each round has 2 phases:

- Phase 1 - Digging for Treasures: Visit 3 of the 4 locations to acquire comics from different eras;

- Phase 2 - Organizing Collections: Start or expand the comic collection for one or more heroes, and update the track marker accordingly.

Phase 1 is when you search for comics, following a different path in each of the game's 3 rounds. The idea is to improve your collection, prioritizing comics with heroes that award the most points depending on the highlight tokens. This is how you'll choose which comics are the best for you.

To do this, each round has a different path and each location has its own way on how to obtain the comics; here's an image to help you understand:

The cool thing is that each location has its own mechanics, which makes the game very interesting:

- Store: Each player takes 4 HQ cards from deck 1, chooses 1 of them and passes the rest to the next player; everyone does there are no more cards;

- Second-hand Bookstore: Using HQ cards from deck 2, you have 2 choices: put a card into play in a row (equal to the number of players and a maximum of 4 cards per row) or take a specific row for yourself, that is, you either put the card into play or take an entire row;

- Auction Website: With the HQ cards from deck 3, the player separates a group of comics for auction, equal to the number of players. An amount of comic cards, depending on the number of players, will be announced for auction, and any payment is deducted from the 15 money tokens received at the beginning of the game;

- The Great Convention: Comic cards from the 4th deck are laid out. We can manipulate them by moving them around, then choose one of the heroes and take all comics of that hero from a row or column.

After completing one of the pathes, the first player will now be the player to the left. Then we proceed to Phase 2, where we organize our collection. It is time to play the cards that we got in the Locations!

Each collection must start with 2 or more cards with the same hero, but in order to play them we pay a price by discarding other cards from our hand. In other words, we have to pay the market value of each card, according to the following image:

This is where you must make strategic choices, which are difficult but necessary. Always go for the highest-scoring heroes and highlights, to score more points.

By now, it is possible to rearrange and organize our collection with the cards we played, remembering that a hero's collection cannot have less than 2 cards. This is also strategic, as points are awarded according to size and variety of collections.

Finally, looking at the comics played for the turn, update the highlights according to what's been added to your collection.

This is a round in Comic Hunters!

Ending the Game

The game ends after Phase 2 of the 3rd and final round.

Now it's time to score points:

- collection size: for every 3 comic book cards, with one or more heroes, score points according to the number of cards in the collection;

- collection variety: if you have collections from different heroes, good! Remember, the minimum is 3 comic book cards to set up a collection;

- highlights: if there is a tie, add these points to the category immediately below, divide it by 2, and round it down;

- savings: check how much money you have left and add these points.

Whoever has the most points wins the game! In the event of a tie, whoever gets more highlights wins. If the tie still remains, the player with the largest collection wins. If the tie remains, they share the win!

Comic Hunters is clearly about managing your hand of comic book cards that will be used both to build your collection and to pay for the ones you want to add. So, basically, it's about choices and sacrifices. However, the comic book cards you discard may end up in your opponent's hand, so be careful!

It is very important that, in any path, we maximize our comic book collection. However, comic book cards have a cost, so, sometimes it is necessary to give up some specific cards to get others with a higher value, so we can pay for the ones we need.

The best locations for this are second-hand book stores and online auctions, where comic book cards are valued at 2 and 3. Some of the 2 and 3 value cards can also be found at the Grand Convention. Use this to your advantage, otherwise you will have to give up good comic book cards from your collection to pay for others.

Another important and strategic detail is that you are only allowed to keep 2 cards in hand from one round to the next. Therefore, be prepared to play as many as you can, remembering to sequence in order to both play and be able to pay for them.

The comic cards used to pay the market value costs are added to the 4th deck, the Grand Convention deck. It is, of course, reshuffled, but keep in mind that what you discard may end up in other players' collections. In other words, when paying costs, pay attention to your opponents' collections.

In auctions, be careful not to overbid. This can cost you dearly, as a smaller amount of "money" in your collection can make your next bids more difficult and reduce your points at the end of the game.

Finally, the basics: having the comic with the hero that scores the most points, with the highlight that scores the most points, is the perfect combo for your collection. While possible, you will have to fight for it. Manage your resources so that you can use them at the right time.

Use your strategy, build the best and most valuable comic collection and win in Comic Hunters!

Unboxing:

Rules:

Gameplay:

Comic Hunters is a great game for kids, as the game features original art of Marvel comic book covers. It's nostalgic for parents, and fun for kids who may only know the heroes from movies.

The game encourages management, strategy and logical-mathematical reasoning - it's a learning and entertaining tool.

Managing your comic book cards and strategically choosing between playing them or discarding them to pay for other cards will make kids find themselves in various situations of choices and decisions that will impact their collections. This is a lot of fun, and they can even compete over who has the “prettiest comic book cover”. It's exciting!

Calculating costs to play a comic book card will require logical-mathematical reasoning, since values need to be exact - there is no “spare change” in the game. This is an excellent math exercise for kids.

Another thing that will entertain children is seeing their favorite heroes in ways they have never seen before; it will be amazing, they will enjoy each comic card and have fun with the old versions of their favorite heroes.

From an educational perspective, Comic Hunters stimulates management, strategy, decision-making, logical-mathematical reasoning and, on top of that, it is fun!

I recommend Comic Hunters for your collection!!!