FTW Staff Picks - Rhino Hero: Super Battle

The original Rhino Hero has always been a favourite among balancing, dexterity games. It's not exactly a game that needed a sequel or expansion, but the creators decided to give it one anyway. Rhino Hero: Super Battle is kind of like a mixture between Jamaica and Rhino Hero, where players race to the top of the building. More is not always necessarily better, but in this case we're willing to give it love. 

In Rhino Hero: Super Battle, players don their capes as one of 4 superheroes who are battling their way to the top of the ever-growing complex. The game begins with 3 foundation tiles. Each player starts with 3 roof cards. The current player chooses one of their roof cards and then builds walls according to the chosen roof. They then roll the movement die to determine how many floors they may climb up. If any two players are sharing a floor, they roll their respective combat dice to see who must be forced down a floor. Players continue building and climbing until the structure collapses. The player who was the highest up before the collapse (excluding the current player) is declared the winner! If the current player was the highest, everyone else are declared the winners!

Where Rhino Hero feels similar to Uno, Rhino Hero: Super Battle has more in common with Jamaica. Players are racing to the top, and anytime they share a space they battle to determine territory. While the number of spaces you can climb is determined entirely randomly, the player's control comes from how they build the complex. In the original, the only thing to control was the types of walls used to support the building. Here there are far more options in terms of building. 

Rhino Hero is a bit of challenge to see just how high you can stack the cards. I've seen quite a few buildings that needed a 2nd game just to keep stacking. In Rhino Hero: Super Battle the fun comes in expanding outward in all directions. It is still a game that relies quite a bit on luck, but like most novelty games it bring a lot of laughs with it. The games last a little longer, making every next move feel like it could be the last.