Board Game Review: Street Masters: Twin Tigers and Redemption

Today we’re tackling two of the expansions to Street Masters, both of which will be available in stores. The next review will feature those which are Kickstarter exclusives. Luckily, they’re launching a new Kickstarter, Aftershock, on October 23rd (as seen on the right), and according to Brady when I asked, it seems like most, if not all of the KS exclusives from this release should be available on that KS as well. I will, of course, be sharing the release of Aftershock here on Dice Monkey when it goes live. Today’s reviews will cover Twin Tiger and Redemption.

Twin Tiger

This expansion adds two new fighters, two more stages (one double sided map), one new enemy deck, and two new allies/rivals. It’s a great expansion to the core game and provides some great dynamic environments and two very distinct fighters.

The two fighters here are avatars for Adam and Brady, Axel and Rhys respectively.

Axel is a highly defensive deck, both giving himself defense tokens as well as allies. He’s essential if you’re playing a larger game, because he’ll provide you the needed defense needed to let you whittle down the Boss’s wounds. He’s a good one, but I don’t imagine he’d be super useful as a solo. At least link him up to Rhys.

Rhys has two knives, called Rhys’ Pieces (yup). Rhys has a lot of cards to help him acquire these cards from your deck. Once he’s got both, he deals a ton of damage. He’s a good solo fighter for this reason (which matches Brady’s personality well; if you follow him on social media, you see him trying out a lot of solo games), but if you’ve got him in there with Axel, they’re a true force to be reckoned with. Axel protects Rhys while Rhys whips his knives out and gets to chopping.

The Under Destruction stage features a series of conveyor belts as well as time bombs! The conveyor belts all lead you toward buzz saws, while the villains activate the time bombs to blow up the building. Once three bombs go off, the players lose. Very tense.

Poison the Well is the second stage, which takes place in a sewer, a classic video game fighting location. The sewer is full of poison vats which the villains are trying to open the flow of, while the players are trying to keep them all shut. It’s a good stage and great for brand new players, as it’s pretty simple and straightforward.

The Onyx League is the enemy deck which features Mack as the boss. Mack carries a machine gun which makes him very deadly. On his turn he attacks and then retreats, taking aim and forcing the players to constantly discard defense tokens. Again, Axel comes in handy here, hopefully to keep the players defended dispute the danger. His three minions feature one close-combat enemy and two short-ranged ones. The two ranged minions, Felicia Salt and Veronica Pepper, have decent defense when they first arrive, so they’re not to be trifled with.

All of the minis have a great sculpt, and all of the decks are pretty straightforward. Its a solid expansion.

Redemption

Redemption is a smaller expansion which doesn’t include any minis, but utilizes the ones you have in a new way. The set allows you to now play Ah Long, Juan, Dmitri, Kemono, Jackal and Shadow, the Bosses of the core set, as fighters in their own right. I’m a big fan of this, because in the core set, I found the look of Ah Long and Shadow to be far more interesting than any of the fighters. I immediately thought, “I want to play those guys.”

Ah Long, the Boss from the Golden Dragons, uses fantastic magic to enhance his fighting abilities. Ah Long has the ability to attach Bane cards onto enemies, then unleash those Banes, healing allies and harming enemies. When Ah Long releases his Charged ability, he gets to attack with three dice, and then resolve every single Bane card on the table. It’s brutal and powerful.

Shadow, of The Kingdom, creates Shadow duplicates which they can then swap places with, have attack on their own, and, once Charged, Shadow just creates a new illusion every turn or swap places with them. Unfortunately, when an illusion is destroyed (they only have a single wound and can’t get defense tokens), one damage is dealt to Shadow, so you’ve got to be careful how you deploy them. When they finally unleash their Charged ability, you and all illusions attack, then you gain a defense token for every different target attacked. I love this fighter.

Juan of The Cartel has his handy shotgun. Juan can do things like dealing 3 enemies 3 damage at once, while pushing them back away from you. He’s one of the few fighters who’s focused on ranged attacks, and he definitely uses that to his advantage, dealing a ton of damage to a large group of enemies. His unleashed ability allows him to empty his barrel, dealing up to eight damage at once.

The leader of The Brotherhood, Dmitri, is another ranged fighter, but he has a much more extensive arsenal, from knives to guns to grenades. He also has some minor healing abilities, just enough to catch your breath. He focuses on managing his ammo, then expending his ammo for different bonuses.

Kemono, the six-armed monster of The Kingdom, uses those arms to his fullest. One attack allows you to attack six times at once, while others allow you to channel energy to different cards while powering yourself with energy until your Charged ability unleashes your current tokens on every energy within 4 spaces of you. If you time this right, you’re basically a walking nuclear bomb.

Jackal is a psychic M. Bison, able to possess enemies and attack them from within, while unleashing mind spikes into their brain and dealing damage to enemies around the possessed enemy. She’s pretty terrifying, and with her Charged power, she deals a ton of damage to the possessed while healing herself for any damage she deals. She’s a mean fighter who makes you happy that this is a cooperative game so when you unleash these abilities no one else at the table feels bad for you using it.

This is another solid expansion which adds a ton of variety to the game, allowing you to replay the game with content you already own in a way you couldn’t before. This should be the first thing you pick up after the Street Masters Core set.

Next time we’ll cover the Legend of Oni expansion as well as the Stretch Goals.