Second Look - Boardgame reviews in depth. Check out that cat.Having seen High Heavens a few years ago a PAX East, I was excited to finally get a copy of my own. I really enjoyed the game when I demoed it, and I’m glad to see not much has changed in the time I’ve spent waiting to play again.

High Heavens is a game of epic battle between the Norse and Greek Gods. Setup and play is super simple, with a nice deal of depth provided by the Gods’ powers and spell cards. Each turn you have 3 actions to summon Gods from your hand, cast spell cards, or have your Gods take action. Actions include moving, attacking, and using some special powers. Each God has a stat for movement, health, range, and melee/range damage. The goal of the game is to wipe out all the opponent’s Gods, or destroy their home base.

One of the coolest mechanics of the game is the rings. High Heavens comes with a pile of stack-able rings. There’s red rings that indicate health. Your Gods will sit upon a tower of these until their health is gradually chipped away. There’s also orange rings for attack bonuses, silver rings for armor, green rings for poison, and black rings traps. You can always tell the condition of a God by looking at the stack they’re standing on. The last color ring is white, which represents obstacles that can be placed on the battlefield. It’s worth noting that weapons and armor a God has are dropped when the die, and can be picked up by other Gods to use.

IMG_20150924_104341I ended up playing this one with my 8-year-old daughter, as she’s really shown an interest in games with miniatures. She picked up the rules extremely quickly, and after a close game, she managed to take down my home base after wiping out a majority of my Gods. I have to say I really thought I had the game locked down, but some cleverly played spells turned turned the tide in her favor.

So in closing, I still enjoy the game as much as I did when I demoed it 2 years ago. The final components are really top notch, from the plastic minis to the rings and the excellent Neoprene board. I look forward to checking out some of the add-ons to the game, the largest being the addition of Egyptian Gods.

A copy of High Heavens was provided free for review by Wild Power Games.