I’m fairly certain I’ve said this before, but since our CrowdFUNding Spotlights often reach new eyes I’ll say it again. I don’t really do video games. I’m not intentionally a snob about it (I honestly hope I’m not unintentionally one either) but just not good at them and they rarely give me the sorts of interactions that I’m looking for. There are, admittedly, exceptions to this. A combination of nostalgia, demographic aim, and my own penchant for child-like wonder, means most of those exceptions tend to land on Nintendo systems. Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Super Smash Bros, are all games I will usually enjoy. More recently Nickolodeon All-Star Brawl has become the platform fighter of choice; it includes many of your favourite Nick characters in the same way that Smash Bros pulls together Nintendo characters.
This Mascot Fighter model has been used all over the place in analog gaming; card games like Weiß Schwarz and Pocket Paragons come to mind, but there are many others. Funkoverse is the only board game example of the sub-genre that I could think of… until now. But Iconoclash has gone in a very interesting direction with it. 1v1 battle card games will always have similarities. Funkoverse uses a top-down perspective that has characters moving on a flat map. Iconoclash uses the same side-view that platform fighter video game uses, which is very rare on a tabletop.
So far there is a single two-character box and four stand-alone boxes with four Fighters, a double-sided map board, etc. Each Fighter comes with an oversized printed meeple, a reference sheet, a health tracker, Fighter Randomizer card, and card deck, all unique to that Fighter and all fitting into a single deck box.
The large boxes also include a six-fold, double-sided, Environment board, a specific Environment Deck (so that every game and every board is different), and an Environment Randomizer card, with the specifics also fitting into their own specific deck box.
I was thrilled to luck into a pre-production copy of the Castle Clash box, and despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to play it. Both groups that I was supposed to play with LOVED what they saw, however. The art is gorgeous, and the oversized meeple are nothing short of impressive. [Editor’s Note: Just a reminder that all the components, etc, are subject to change in the final product. The size of meeple has been the topic of a great deal of conversation.]
Pledge Levels begin at $20 (USD) for the two fighter Cross-Dimension Zero box. $40 adds your choice of the Castle Clash, Battlegrounds, or LevelMAX four-fighter boxes. $80 gets you the complete “season 1” set of boxes totalling 14 Fighters. Above that are a set of premium pledge levels that also allow the backer to design an Item ($180), an Alternate Costume ($290), or an entirely new Fighter ($3000) to be included in a future set. Now that the game has funded, SMG will be putting out polls to determine the coming stretch goals.
One of the things I love about this game is the potential for future expansion. Already in this (season one) campaign, there are characters from other publishers’ games including Seventh Cross, BattleCON, Millennium Blades, Bullet, A.E.G.I.S., and Temporal Odessey. Strange Machine Games also has their own unique and licenced IPs that could show up down the road (Hello, Robotech anyone?) They also have the ability to easily put out new Environment or Fighter sets at will. By labelling this as “season one” there will almost certainly be more to come in the future, and I couldn’t be more excited for it.
You can back Iconoclash on Kickstarter until May 5, 2022.
You can find Strange Machine Games online at strangemachinegames.com or Facebook at facebook.com/StrangeMachineGames.
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