Welcome to Kickstart Monday! This is our weekly series featuring 2 or more crowdfunding projects that have caught our eye. We scour over platforms like Kickstarter and Gamefound to find projects that interest us. This week’s picks are:

Read on to find out why we picked them…

Misfit Heroes

First up this week is Misfit Heroes from Phil Walker-Harding and AEG games on Kickstarter.

Misfit Heroes is a humorous combo crafting and tableau building game for 2 to 4 players. The game is set in the world of Absurdia, a wild place where things like goblins, imps, golems and pirates live alongside scientists, farmers, cultists and mimes.

To start the game you will build a shared deck creating unique hero cards by combining a hero card with a transparent background and an attribute card in a card sleeve. By combining heroes with attributes you’ll end up with things like a Reptilian Elf, a Radioactive Mage or a Gangster Mermaid. And because you build a new deck each game every game will be different!

Each player will be building their own tableau of heroes recruiting them from your hand by paying their cost in coins. Heroes potentially have recruitment abilities that trigger right away or end game bonuses as well as special activation ability which can be triggered by other cards in your tableau. Your goal will be to build your tableau with good combinations of abilities so that you can gather influence from your cards and use that to complete quests.

There are a limited number of quest cards that decrease in point value so grabbing the most valuable quest first is important. The game ends after a player places their 16 hero and who has the most points across their heroes, quests, remaining influence, and coins will be the victor!

Misfit Heroes is available now with the following pledge levels

  • Heroes of Absurdia – $40 – One copy of the retail edition of Misfit Heroes with all base game stretch goals
  • Maximum Absurdity – $80 – One copy of Misfit Heroes retail edition plus the Deluxe upgrade kit which includes: neoprene playmats, wooden components and coins, a micro expansion, enamel first player token and a deluxe box. 

If you are ready to recruit some weird and wacky hero’s consider making a pledge for Misfit Heroes on Kickstarter before April 4, 2025, when the campaign ends.

Widget’s Workshop

With our second pick this week we have another game featuring some transparent card crafting with Widget’s Workshop from Phase Shift Games on Backerkit.

Widget’s Workshop is a set collection card crafting board game for 2 to 5 players. At the start of the game using what they call a “Drop Style” mechanic where you will dump a big messy pile of gear shaped parts cards onto the table. Each card has a transparent background and represents a single part for building a robot or a golem like bodies, arms and legs. On your turn you will extract one parts card from the pile but you must do so using one finger only!

You’ll construct robots and golems in your workshop bays trying to combine each part’s unique characteristics. Parts can have elements like fire, earth, air and water, or be specialized in strength or speed as well as be either mechanical or organic materials. You score points for collecting sets of matching attributes and after a certain number of constructs have been assembled based on the number of players you’ll total up the points for your collected sets and the player with the most optimized constructions will be the winner!

Here are the pledge options available for this campaign:

  • Widget’s Workshop – $15 – one copy of the base game
  • Widget’s Workshop plus neoprene mats – $40 – the base game plus 5 neoprene workshop mats. 

If you are looking to back Widget’s Workshop you’ll need to get into gear before April 3, 2025, when the campaign ends. 

Did we miss your favorite project?

Thank you for checking out this week’s Kickstart Monday! If you find these interesting or want some attention on a Kickstarter or other crowdfunded projects that you would like to read more about please share your thoughts with us via social media or email.

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