Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter Miniatures Game

August 10, 2016

New has been relatively sparse regarding the upcoming miniatures game by Jasco Games. After their success with the Megaman Board Game, Jasco Games announced at the GAMA Trade Show in early 2016 their new video game board game tie in, with Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter getting the treatment this time around.

Despite the announcement and buzz surrounding the Universal Tactics system they are using to dictate gameplay in this miniatures system and license tie-ins, Jasco Games has said little about this system in the following months, with little more known in the 3rd quarter of 2016 than in the 1st quarter.

(Bison disapproves of your slacking, Jasco Games!)

What is known is that the first wave of miniatures for this new Fighting/Universal Tactics will be Street Fighter. Jasco Games stated that an initial estimate of 30 fully painted miniatures will be available during the kickstarter for the Street Fighter Miniatures Game. Further, they stated that the game will be specifically tailored to the fighting style employed in the game series.

In addition to a large number of miniatures available in the game, Jasco Games has stated that the Universal Tactics will have a customizable deck (possibly unique for each fighter with some basic moves), terrain, and destructible environments. Plus, all the stages should be available to fight on as well, which affect gameplay.

(As long as this is an available stage, I don't care what they do.)

While this does sound like a lot of fun and, if done right, a good miniatures game, Jasco Games mentioned this sytem is being developed not only by Jasco Games, but also Capcom, and additional design teams. It seems almost like too many people on one game but, it often takes a village to make a great game and the fact that Jasco is willing to seek out quality designers is a good sign.

For example:

Rob Daviau: Heroscape and Star Wars: Epic Duels

Darrel Hardy: Runebound

Kevin Wilson: Descent and Arkham Horror

There is some decent pedigrees working on this game and makes me more confident that, despite a larger team, the game will be good. Additionally, you can see a lot of their influence in the Universal Tactics system as terrain, fights (or duels) and customizable decks are in present in games they have previously worked on such as Heroscape, Arkham, and Runebound. There are dice too. Cuz they can.

(Photo from the last designer's meeting)

The second wave of miniatures for the Universal Tactics planned will be Mortal Kombat X, and the last planned (as of 2016) is Dragon Ball Z. The core game format is 1 vs. 1. Additional formats planned are 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3, and Boss Mode (aka 3 vs. the game). While each specific set will be tailored to the fighting style indicative of that game series, each set will be interchangeable with one another and you can use part of one to fight with part of another.

Despite the interesting and exciting nature of this Universal Tactics system, and the good designers working on it, the fact that almost no information has been provided by Jasco Games or the designers in six months, especially when they have initially planned for a later 2016 kickstarter (now pushed back to 2017) is slightly concerning. In their GAMA announcement they state they have the licenses for the games involved but with a lot of people working with zero news makes me wonder what the progress on this game is as there is little information beyond what I have given here and zero pictures other than the two 'coming soon' photos at the head of this post.

It will be interesting to see this game when it there is more to see.