Mechs vs. Minions

Opening this box for the first time is a whole event, layer after layer, and I understand now why people describe actual audible reactions doing it, little oohs and aahs at each reveal. That’s not hype talk, the packaging design is doing real work, and it sets a tone the game mostly lives up to once you’re actually playing it. I ordered mine the week it went up, and I remember Riot’s own storefront buckling under launch day demand, which is a strange thing to be nostalgic about but I still bring it up when this game comes up in conversation.

Programming games usually aren’t my thing, I’ve bounced off a couple where the whole point seems to be laughing at whoever screwed up their card sequence worst, which isn’t fun for the person on the receiving end. Mechs vs. Minions sidesteps that. You’re programming your mech’s moves cooperatively against the board, not against each other, so a bad plan is a shared problem to laugh about together instead of one player’s public failure.

Difficulty across the ten missions is not smooth. A couple of the early ones feel like a tutorial dragging its feet, and then a mid campaign mission spikes hard enough that my group had to replay it twice, adjusting our card programming each time before it clicked. I don’t mind a difficulty spike, but the campaign’s pacing could use another editing pass.

Components are the headline here and they earn it, oversized mech pieces, a real toy quality to them, and the legacy style stickers you apply as you go give the whole thing a permanence I found myself second guessing before committing to the first one. It’s a big box too, not something I’m bringing anywhere, this one lives on the shelf and gets pulled out for a full campaign night, not a quick filler slot.

Four stars. Doesn’t fully escape the genre’s rough edges but comes closer than anything else I’ve played that programs a robot with a card queue.