Who’s your favourite super-hero? For me, it’s got to be Rhino Hero! This plucky little caped crusader is back and this time he’s going up against his friends!  

If you haven’t played the OG Rhino Hero, it’s basically a tower building game based on the age-old house-of-cards mechanism. Using floor cards and wall cards, the idea is to go up, up, up as high as you can. You place a wall card and then try to balance one of your own floor cards on top. And the floor card you place shows where the next player must place their own wall card on their turn (as well as a few bonus actions on some!). Rhino Hero hops up the levels surprisingly sprightly for a, well, rhino! There’s only one tower and the winner is the builder who places all their roof cards first. Although, if any player razes the building to the ground, whoever has the fewest roof cards left at that point wins!  

Supercharged!  

In Super Battle, the underling tower building mechanism remains the foundation. Still adding wall cards and still placing floors that go up, up, up! You also still get three floors each (and the rest forms the 3 card pool and the draw plie). But this time, the walls are either tall or short, and you get your own character (Big.E, Giraffe Boy, Batguin, and of course Rhino Hero). Oh and there are some crazy spider-monkeys hanging about the place just waiting to cause havoc. If you place a floor that shows one of those cheeky chaps, you’ve also got to balance one by it’s only-slightly-curvy-tail!  

Now, when the floor looks like it is going to stay standing, the player rolls a die which dictates which floor they are going to. And when a character reaches the same story as another character, a battle commences! The arriving player is the “attacker” and the existing character must defend their position. Each player rolls a die and the highest number wins. The loser has to drop down to the levels below. But if it meets another player then another battle ensues! Oh and if the tower topples, whoever was highest at the time wins!  

Final thoughts  

This is a great family, dexterity game. HABA are a good bet when it comes to enjoyment, quality, and engaging kids in play that bigger kids also find fun. 

It’s got a few more elements to it than the streamlined, elegantly simple original which is great for slightly older children. The battles are silly and harmless, but they are entirely luck based. Players have no agency over whether they go up or down (same as when placing characters after adding floors). And by that I mean there’s no strategy to keeping yourself in the lead. It all turns on the roll of a die. But that could also be a good thing because it means nobody gets “the blame” for sending their opponent’s character down the tower. Feelings can’t get hurt when ”the dice did it!”.  

It’s interesting that the Attacker die is slightly weighted in that player’s favour, but they’re both still unpredictable when it comes to the results!  

After multiple plays, our cards are still robust – the creases and edges aren’t overly fluffed or worn. Plus, thanks to a gigantic box, we can fit our original copy into the Super Battle box for space saving. 

We really enjoy both the OG and this new supercharged version. In fact, I don’t think we have had a situation where anybody we have played it with hasn’t enjoyed Super Battling! Even after the kiddos go to bed, we have started a game with just us big kids, and the results have been hilarious!  

Personally, I think our son is in it for the fall. He loves building up the tower as high as possible only to then “accidentally” cause it to tumble like, yep, you guessed it, a house of cards! But that’s cool with me because ultimately this game is all about having fun together! 

This blog was written by Favouritefoe

Editors note: This post was originally published on April 21st 2023. Updated on 9th May 2024 to improve the information available.