Giant Killer Robots: Heavy Hitters is a game I backed on Kickstarter and it is amazing! I’ve always loves board games as a fabulous way to pass time with wonderful people. This game is full of quick movements, sneaky strategy, and brutal attacks that are somehow less painful as the setting is just a little bit zany.
The setting is the dystopian future where mega-corporations are competing for the rights to destroy the abandoned cities for precious resources. Instead of destroying each other with paperwork and legal fees for these rights, they instead have the sport Giant Killer Robots (GKR) where giant robots kill each other, and tag buildings with their corporate sponsor’s logo to rip down the building. For Hapsi!
You are a GKR pilot and get to choose between 4 corporations. I chose Thunder Happy Pharmaceuticals based on the colour, because blue is my favourite. You then get to chose which of the 8 pilots you want to play, I chose after randomly selecting from the deck. Then the buildings are placed on the board, the cards are set up, and we’re ready to play!
The aim is to tag buildings and kill your opponent, but you only have 5 energy per turn to spend so you have to budget well. If you overspend your energy, you take damage, which means less card options and less hit-points until your opponent blows you off the map. Tagging buildings is super important because not only can you destroy them when you get to 4 tags, but you get a sponsor card for each building you tag. This gives handy actions you can use to mess up your opponent’s play. Of course you also win the game when you have destroyed 4 buildings, so there are many good reasons to tag buildings!
You can also deploy unmanned support units to help you. These can heal you, shoot or scout. They also tag buildings and take up valuable space on the board. And the extra targets to distract from dealing your Heavy Hitter more points of damage are always appreciated!
The damage that is able to be thrown around is not to be sneezed at. One round alone I ended up landing over 10 points of damage with the combination of some awesome weaponry cards, some very lucky dice rolls, and some very unlucky dice roles for my opponent. At the start of the game 25 hit-points seemed like it would go a long way, but by the end of the game conserving hit-points became a necessity.
The game ended in a tense round where I had to destroy my opponent’s heavy hitter or they would have been able to place their last tag on their fourth building to destroy it and win the game. The dice gods decided in my favour (just!) and I blew up the enemy Heavy Hitter with my last weapon and the help of a sponsor card. It was so close ad very exciting!
This game is engaging and I had a blast playing it! It did take a few turns to wrap my mind around how to play properly, but once I had it, this game flew. One of those “wow where did those hours go?” kind of games. Also need to try out the mercenary drones that came as a Kickstarter exclusive next game. Thought it would be best to keep the first game simple. With four players plus mercenaries I can see this game getting out of hand quickly! But it is a lot of fun to play, so give it go!
