Action figures + game = Something I almost certainly will buy. Although nobody seems to know how to do it well. A couple Origins ago, I was really psyched to demo Z-G, a tactical combat game with robot figures and a zingy anime style. The demo did not enthrall me: the robots were too loose to pose (or even stand once weighed down with their ridiculous oversized weapons), the combat system involved matching color stripes on cards, and there was this whole complicated range-measuring thing that instantly annoyed me.
Then came WizKids' Shadowrun game, which basically applied a x4 growth hormone to their own Mage Knight style of clicky base games. The action figures here were classically unposable and just about immaterial to the game itself. The only aspect they added was the ability to hold different weapons and gear, which would then give varying abilities and effects. Yawn.
Now there's Xevoz, a shudderingly ugly name for an entirely new brand... although the toys themselves are spawned from Hasbro's existing Stikfas line.
I like Stikfas. Although I own exactly none of them. I see them at TRU all the time, glaringly obvious in their white sealed boxes. I know nobody is buying them, certainly not at TRU anyway. What kid is going to reach for the unpainted solid black buildable fireman figure in the generic looking package? Stikfas figures are aimed squarely at adult collectors, particularly the customizing crowd (which is why Stikfas exist, to be hand-built, hand-painted, and hand-posed.) I do respect their stark white, almost Apple-like design. But I doubt it's bringing in the dough. The component pieces still come on plastic trees, for chrissake.
Enter Xevoz, a fusing of the Stikfas design aesthetic with the incomprehensible backstory of Lego's Bionicle, topped with a simple die-rolling game.
Who figured Bionicle would hit, by the way? Lego had several pre-Bionicle test brands - ThrowBots and the like - but going whole hog into this dense fantasy world was such a risk. Could have been a huge embarrassment. As soon as you saw the original marketing stuff, you knew this had the potential to die hard, because they were taking it so damn seriously. Have to hand it to them, they didn't do a shitty job on it. Lego must have sent somebody into the mountains for a month to formulate the Bionicle backstory, full of tribal warfare, ancient prophecies, unpronounceable nouns, and the strange amalgam of sci-fi cool and medieval storytelling. Although the toys themselves bother me to no end; they're comprised of about forty pieces, all specialized shapes and pre-formed hulls. They lack the build-it-yourself imaginative quality of the classic Lego stuff.
But Bionicle did hit, and Xevoz is aping it like crazy. The world of Xevoz is also filled with tribes and war and storyline and design-via-icon. Xevoz can't even be bothered to settle on one genre either. Back in my day, you had Young Male Power Fantasy toy lines that pretty much kept to one species/genre. The Sectaurs were insects. The Thundercats were cats. Transformers were robots. G.I. Joes were soldiers. The Food Fighters were food. Masters of the Universe were wrestlers with randomized heads. The initial line of Xevoz "kits" - they call them kits since you get to build them yourself, Stikfas style - includes a soldier, a pirate skeleton, a cat-man, a robot, a bug, a ninja, and some kind of elemental fire creature. And each one represents an entire faction of like species on the world of Xevoz.
Is that the world's name? I don't know. Probably.
Just like Bionicle, they are taking this super-seriously. Custom fonts and TMs abound. I glossed over all the character bios and fact sheets; I'm more interested in the game. Like I said, it's die-based. You build your own die (called a BATTLE HELIX (TM) ) that represents some of the key parts used in the construction of your figure. The die is fairly ingenious... it is made of six long, three-sided wedges held together by rubberized endcaps. Oh, excuse me, the wedges are called POWER GLYPHS (TM). If you mix and match pieces from the various kits, you get to use the accompanying wedges in your custom die. Each wedge has a number on it that shows how strong the attack is... two numbers actually, you have to call your attack before you roll it, and you have to live by whichever half you chose.
Your figure is your life meter. As you take damage, you have to disassemble your guy bit by bit. The last man standing is the winner... although it's usually the last leg standing. Most games we've played have ended with a groin+legs battling a single foot+shin. Hilarious.
That's the rules for the basic version of the game, which is the rules included with each single figure kit. The BATTLE TERRAIN 2-PACK kit adds in a simple gameboard and the appropriately advanced rules. The board has two sides (although they made it so the sides weirdly unfold like a book, not just flip over) and each side is tailored to give one species benefits. +1 to your roll and such. If the current board doesn't match your figure type, you better win some rolls and maneuver your ass over to a warp space so you can take the battle to your home turf.
I wouldn't even try to play the version without the game board. Being able to add to your roll and control the board adds a bit of much-needed strategy. And without those pluses, any roll of 1 would be completely useless, since it would always be beaten or tied and thus have no damage effects.
I like that the game is so modular. Future toys might have more powerful wedges, new abilities, new boards. So there is the potential to develop a real, adult game out of this. If Hasbro doesn't do it, maybe I will. If they are following the Bionicle model, they should have the next year's worth of toys planned out so they can hit the ground running should Xevoz be a hit. Hopefully it's not a planned obsolesence like Rumble Robots.
But the best part is the figures. They are completely badass. The clean, matte-finish design gives them that slick retro style. And they pose like nothing else. One of the great benefits to the ball-and-socket Stikfas is the incredible level of poseability... and the Xevoz line takes that and runs with it. I loves me my Marvel Legends figures, but any kind of cool pose aside from Prototype Model #1 means exposing bad paint apps, pin joints, and mismatched thigh halves. Xevoz has none of that, you just have to accept the stylized form.
OK, maybe this is all explained in the Xevoz Handbook, but why does the insect come with an extra head shaped like a light bulb? Or the cat-man's bonus boxing glove hands? Somebody at the design factory must have slipped in some silliness when the stern and grim story people weren't looking.
